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Be Careful to Obey the Lord Your God
Be Careful to Obey the Lord Your God Deuteronomy 12:1-32 Key Verse: 12:28 “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.” Last week our key verse was “Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.” The way that we show our love for God is by keeping His requirements, His laws and His commands always. This idea is a very important Biblical principal. Even Jesus says in John 14:14 “If you love me, keep my commands.” We can also see the importance of this idea in today’s passage. In this passage, we learn why it is that we should obey God. We also learn that obedience to God must be done in the way that God commands us. Often these commands may seem harsh or unnecessary to us, but we must remember that God is the creator and we are the creatures. As the creator, God gets to make the rules that we must follow. May God bless our study of this passage and open our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can fully obey Him in this generation. First, do not worship God any way you chose. (1-14) Let’s look at verse 1. “These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land.” The book of Deuteronomy is essentially a series of speeches that Moses gives to the Israelites as they were camped just east of the Jordan river, preparing to go over and take possession of the Promised Land. In these speeches, Moses reviews the Law of God that was given to them 40 years earlier at Mt. Sinai. Moses does this so that they will not forget to love God by doing what God wants them to do. In an earlier speech, in chapter 5, Moses had reviewed the 10 Commandments and in chapters 6-11 he had reviewed several other points of this law with a few history lessons to remind the Israelites that they had not been keeping these laws even from the time they were at Mt. Sinai. To Moses, these decrees and laws of God were essential for the survival of the Israelites. They were about to go into a land filled with people living in fortified cities, with large armies and more military experience than the Israelites. If they were to enter that land on their own, there was no way they could survive let alone drive those people out and possess their land. The Israelites needed God to fight for them. Moses knew that the key for this was that the Israelites live according to the way God instructed them. In short, God wanted the Israelites to live as His chosen people, set apart and different from the other people because He wanted to reveal Himself to the world through them. So, Moses starts this chapter by reminding the people that they must be careful to follow all the decrees and laws that he was reviewing for them. They were not to do this just for a short period of time while they were conquering the land, they were to live according to these decrees and laws “as long as you live in the land.” Here we learn that obedience to God is a lifelong commitment. I believe that too many people today have forgotten this. Many people think that if they go to church on Sunday, sing a few hymns, get baptized and maybe do some type of short term mission or hand out tracks in the local market after the Sunday Worship Service they are doing all that is required. They then go about and live their life anyway they choose until the next Sunday Worship Service or “must go to” prayer meeting. But this isn’t what God is asking for. God is asking for a lifelong commitment from His people. God wants to bring us all into His promised land, but he wants us to live in it according to His rules “as long as you live in the land.” That means if we are in a worship service, a prayer meeting or if were just walking down the street on a Tuesday afternoon we should be living according to God’s decrees and laws. As we have studied, the way to do this is to always have God’s decrees and laws in our minds and hearts. The only way to do this is by continually reading, studying the Bible and praying about the way that God wants us to live. It is not easy, but we must learn to meditate on His law day and night until it becomes part of our life just like eating and sleeping. So, what is the first thing that God wanted the Israelites to do when they entered the land. Look at verses 2 and 3. “Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.” God wanted them to get rid of the Canaanites’ idol worshiping places completely. God was not to be worshipped in the same way that idols are worshipped. People who worship idols usually do so only when they want something. In the movie Risen, the centurion who is investigating Jesus resurrection makes fun of the idea of worshipping the Roman gods as he sat in a bath with the Proconsul of Jerusalem, yet when he was alone and was getting nowhere in his investigation, he turns to his idol of Mars, offers it some money and says that he will build temples and hold games in Mars’ name if Mars would help him find the body of Jesus. This is typical of idol worshipping people. If they don’t need anything, they don’t think about their gods, they only think about themselves and their own comfort. But that is not the way He wants His people to live. We just learned that living for God requires a lifelong commitment. God knew that if the Israelites allowed the foreign places of worship to stand, they would be tempted to worship the one true God as those people were worshipping their God’s, so God ordered those places to be completely destroyed. Once they had done this, where were they supposed to worship God? Look at verses 5 & 6. “But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.” God was going to choose the place they must go to worship Him. We know from reading the books of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 Kings that the place God chose was Jerusalem. There Solomon built the temple and it was there that the Israelites were to bring their tithes, burnt offerings, fellowship offerings and special gifts they had vowed to the Lord. We might ask ourselves, “Why did God choose just this one place for the Israelites to worship Him?” After all wouldn’t this make it very difficult for the people living a long way from Jerusalem to worship God. I think it would make it difficult and this may have been one reason. If something is difficult then we must think about it more or concentrate harder on it. A more important reason God may have had for doing this was simply to show His people and the people living around them that He was not like other gods that people worshipped any way they chose. God is God and we must worship Him as He says not as we want. So you may be asking yourself, “Do I still need to go to Jerusalem to give my tithes and offer sacrifices to God?” The answer is no. Jesus brought a new covenant with God’s people with Him. His death on the cross did away with or replaced the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament. Shedding the blood of a lamb or a bull for the forgiveness of sin, or as a fellowship offering to God is no longer needed because Jesus sacrifice is all we need. But don’t we still need to go to Jerusalem to worship God? Again, the answer is no. Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet because his message was often so gloomy and miserable for the Israelite people. But in chapter 31, he prophesizes about the time that God will bring his people back from their exile and a new covenant that God will establish with them. Verse 33 says, “’This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” Furthermore, Jesus says in John 14:23, “Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.’” Because of Jesus and the New Covenant that He brought with Him, we no longer have to travel to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and worship Him, we can worship Him wherever we are because He is living in us. But this doesn’t mean that we can worship God in any way we chose. There are still many idolaters out there who are trying to get us to worship God in ways that are simply not Biblical. Many of these idolaters are leading people astray making God out to be some kind of genie who exists just to give us whatever it is that we want. They will often preach that if you set your mind on something whether it be wealth, a beautiful house, a handsome husband or a beautiful wife, God will give it to you because He loves you and wants to bless you. I believe with all my heart that God loves you and wants to bless you, but I don’t think He wants you to worship Him like this. This is not worshipping God, it is worshipping yourself and your own sinful desires. These are the very desires that God wants you to give up so that you can have Him. We still must worship God in the way that He says. In the New Testament, it says that God is looking for worshippers that will worship Him in spirit and in truth. I think that we must worship Him as our creator and cry out in our spirit for His truth to fill us and enable us to live according to His decrees and laws. Second, live freely and enjoy the land God is giving you. (15-32) Beginning in verse 15, Moses starts to talk about everyday living in the land. Look at verse 15. “Nevertheless, you may slaughter your animals in any of your towns and eat as much of the meat as you want, as if it were gazelle or deer, according to the blessing the Lord your God gives you. Both the ceremonially unclean and the clean may eat it.” Moses is simply saying that every animal that is killed for food, doesn’t have to be brought to Jerusalem and offered as some sort of thank offering for the food that God has provided, rather the Israelites were free to slaughter their own food on their own lands. There is one phrase in verse 15 that comes up in various forms throughout the book of Deuteronomy and the Bible as a whole. It is a phrase that is easily overlooked, but it is an essential doctrine of our faith. The phrase is “According to the blessings the Lord your God gives you.” They were free to eat as much as they wanted, but only in accordance with God’s blessing upon their lives. This verse implies that we receive everything through the grace and blessing of God alone. We would have nothing to eat if God didn’t provide it for us. Our entire lives our based entirely on God’s blessing upon it. Later we will see how we can live our lives under God’s blessing so that everything goes well for us and for are children after us. In verse 20, Moses tells us that God’s plan for His people is to bless them. Verse 20 says, that God will enlarge their land according to His promise and they would have plenty to eat. Again, Moses repeats that they are free to kill and eat as much as they would like in their own lands. However, there were three things that they must remember while they were doing this. They had to remember that slaughtering these animals in their own lands were not to be acts of sacrificial worship. All worship and sacrificing was to be done in the place of God’s choosing. The second thing they must never forget was that they were not to eat the blood of the animals along with the meat. They were to pour the blood out like water on the ground. This particular requirement seems to me to point directly to Jesus. Verses 23 & 24 say, “But be sure you do not eat the blood, because the blood is the life, and you must not eat the life with the meat. You must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water.” When I think of Jesus on the cross, I am reminded of John 19:34 which says, “Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.” Our life is in the blood of Jesus which has been poured out on the ground like water. The third and final thing Moses commanded them to remember was to never neglect the Levites. The Levites didn’t have any inheritance in the land and they didn’t have any other profession other than doing the work of God in the various Jewish communities. The Israelites were to remember this and support them when they could. Likewise, we should never forget those who give their life just to do the work of God. We should support them materially as well as in prayer every day. Now let’s look at our key verse to find out why we should carefully follow all of God’s decrees and laws all our lifetime. “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.” If we look carefully at this verse, we will see again that it is God’s desire to bless His people and see that things go well with them in the Promised Land. However, in order for God to do this, His people must be careful to obey all the regulations that God has put before them. This is a big problem with many people who claim to be Christian today. They really want God’s blessing on their life, but they really don’t want to carefully keep all of God’s regulations. Many of them lead very busy lives so they think that they don’t have time to study the Bible or pray. But if they don’t do these two basic things, how can they expect to carefully keep God’s decrees and laws. We have seen that keeping the ten commands according to the standard that Jesus gave us in Matthew 5-7 is humanly impossible. If people don’t take the time to carefully read and study the Bible, they might kind of know the 10 commandments, but they won’t know the standard the God will use when He judges us. Moreover, since this standard is so far beyond us, how can we hope to live up to it without constant prayer asking for Jesus perfect help. What is even worse is that many people who want to live under God’s blessing don’t even know what that blessing really is. Many of them think, as I’ve said before, that that God’s blessing consists in material wealth and worldly success. However, these are the very things that Jesus warns us not to chase after. If we are chasing after these things our minds are not focused on what our true goal should be and that is the Kingdom of Heaven. One big problem is that there are many people who claim to be Christian pastors who are teaching large numbers of people that God wants to bless them in this way. People are believing those preachers and many are being led astray. That is why God needs a chosen people today. I believe we are that chosen people, so we must be very careful to obey all of God’s decrees and commands for our lives. In this way, God can use our life to show others what real blessings from God are like. I pray that God will grant each one of us a heart that is willing to study the Bible diligently, be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances and make a lifelong commitment to do God’s will for us in Christ Jesus by carefully following all of His decrees and laws. |
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