The One Place of Worship
Moses taught the Israelites how to stay pure in their worship of Yahweh. The Israelites had one place where they were to gather together in worship. Today, believers are called to be temples where God’s spirit dwells…
1. Destroy the pagan worship centers (vs. 2-4). Anything that would take their focus off their creator onto a created object was not to be kept. Anything that takes our devotion greater than our devotion to Christ is in danger of capturing our focus.
2. Don’t drink the blood (vs. 16, 23, 27). The blood represented the life of animals that were sacrificed at the altar. When believers stop finding life in Christ, they will find life somewhere else. Believers were made to find true life in the power of the Holy Spirit.
3. Don’t eat the first fruits (vs. 17). Things that were vowed to be given to the Lord, belonged to the Lord. We sin when we don’t offer our first fruits to Christ. This could be tithes, time, possessions, or anything we put before knowing Christ.
It is easy to get caught up in all the regulatory laws and ceremonies found in Deuteronomy. These laws, then, served the purpose of creating clear guidelines for pure worship of Yahweh.
Meditate on 1 Corinthians 3:16-17. The church is God’s temple, and every Christian is called to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. Let your one, singular place of worship be a choice to treasure Jesus before anything else.
Jason Marshall