Dennis Tuuri

You might want to take the order of worship home with that version of the Beatitudes to use in your family worship. We will be singing it for the next few months. Thank you very much. So please maybe work that at home some. And it’s a chant form so we can actually at the same time you’re actually memorizing the text of scripture.

It is placed where it is because it seems like it is the New Testament version of Moses going up on the mountain to receive Christ’s 10 words and Jesus goes up on the mountain in the Gospel of Matthew to deliver his Sermon on the Mount which begins with the Beatitudes. So it seems like it’s the proper attitude and puts us in the right frame of mind as we go about seeking to obey and delight in God’s word.

We will be using a different responsive reading where we’ll be more as a group reciting the 10 words from the book of Deuteronomy. We’ve been using the Exodus version, and so I think that will be good for us as well and all of this to the end that we might understand the 10 words their significance to our lives and apply them in the context of the manner in which our Savior told us to do that in the Beatitudes.

We continue today with the second word and the text really is Deuteronomy 12 and 13 all of it but I’m going to begin by reading Deuteronomy 12 verse 17-19 please stand for the reading of God’s word I think this is the heart or at least one section that represents the heart of what’s going on in this text so Deuteronomy 12:17-19 You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain or your new wine or your oil, of the firstborn of your herd, or your flock, or any of your offerings which you vow, or your free will offerings, or of the heave offering of your hand.

But you must eat them before the Lord your God in the place which the Lord your God chooses, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, and the Levite who is within your gates, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in all to which you put your hands. Take heed to yourself that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in your land.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this text of scripture. We thank you for the beating heart of Moses’s section of his sermon on the second word of joy. Cause our hearts to be joyful today before you in this place with our Savior’s body being part of that body, his church, and with him being represented here as well by your elders in your church. Thank you, Lord God, for this high time of worship and praise. May it give us a day of joy. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Is the mic working? Okay. Seemed like it was kind of going different levels to me. Nobody knows. Sounds good. Great. Thank you, Doug H. I have courage. Well, I don’t have that much courage.

The front of your order of worship today, I thought about doing something with it and decided I probably shouldn’t. This last week, there was a news story that was kind of interesting. There was a at a particular public school, there were several songs sung kind of in praise of Barack Hussein Obama. Interesting. See, it seemed to go down again there. The mic. Can we get that fixed? Is it my problem? Okay.

So, these songs and it became a matter of controversy. I didn’t hear this one, but as I understand it, there was one of these songs is actually to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which is of course about the glory of the Lord. And instead, the song—the tune was used for glory of Obama, President Obama. And it was funny cuz I watched Fox News a day or two ago and always like the talking heads, you know, the three commentators at the end of the show, and one’s very conservative, Charles Krauthammer, and they showed this little clip of these kids singing this, and he said, “Well, yes, I think that the staff of the administration should sing it every day because we just had this UN speech in which Obama is cleansing us from all of our national sins. So, yeah, worship him.”

And then the liberal black commentator who was on that day, who is normally very supportive of Obama and stuff, he also thought this was going over the line. And what he said specifically was, “We don’t have kings and idols in this land. We have real people. They’re not kings and idols.” Kings were real, but anyway, but he associated this with idolatry, which is interesting.

And then the third commentator, somewhat more of a moderate to conservative fellow. He said, “Yeah, we don’t worship presidents. We worship the presidency in this country.” I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.”

So sort of an interesting thing. That’s why I watch the news. It’s kind of fun. So, on your cover of your order of worship today, I toyed very briefly with the idea of photoshopping the image. Yeah. I could have got in some trouble if I did that, I suppose. But the reason I thought about it was because this image is a representation of gross idolatry that’s of course prohibited by the second word.

This particular god or idol here is a representation of Molech and Molech is—the Hebrew word is the same consonants as Milcom or it means king or state. So Molech the king. So it’s king worship or state worship. Molech worship is that and we’ve seen where it’s legitimate to talk about idolatry in terms of serving some created authority such as the civil state and asserting to it god-like powers. Statism can be referred to properly as idolatry. But the term is normally reserved for this kind of worship.

And this would literally go on at times in the Canaanite world and even in the church’s history, church of the Old Testament, Israel. And you can see that what’s happening here is there’s worship going on. There’s drums being beat. There’s trumpets being blown. I don’t know why we don’t have drums here, but they’re not bad. They’re good. We should have drums. I think eventually Tony. They do. I hear in Moscow, maybe Christ Church. I don’t know. Anyway, so they’ve got instruments going on. People are on their knees. They’re worshiping. Right. So, you got worship happening. You got this big fire. There’s an altar fire, and what it does is this statue supposedly would be hollow brass. And so, the fire would stoke the image up. So it get very, very burning hot.

Okay. And then you’ve got people dedicating their children to the state or to Molech, an idol, representing the philosophical idolatry of believing that the civil state could be their deliverer. This is what people wanted when they got King Saul. They the problem wasn’t wanting a king. The problem was wanting a king like the nations around where the king is God as opposed to their king who was Yahweh who is God.

So, you know, this practice sometimes was used. These kids would be laid in the hands of the idol and cooked dead. So, the babies would be killed that way. However, more often probably or at least as often, the idea is that the child is not actually burned or maybe just lightly maybe branded or something. But the idea was to pass them through this fire where the state is the fire by means of febration.

You know, February is febration, the month where we consecrate the beginning of the year. Janus, January looks back and looks forward to the beginning of the year. But February, the whole purpose of the name of that month was this idea of you know febru, febrile illnesses—fever. Febru comes from hotness and it’s a hotness you would pass something through a fire through something these hot hands and dedicate the thing that way so the kid, the children were not necessarily killed at times they were—we know from the scriptures and other histories—but sometimes the idea is just consecration of the children of a population for the purposes of that idol, in this case the state.

And you know, this is not normally being thought of, but there has been throughout my life, you know, indications that you know, the public schools particularly are places where the child is consecrated to the state and corporate purposes. The purpose of the American public education system articulated by Dewey was not really educational attainment primarily. It was to create good citizens. So the idea was to make a good person that would be useful for the civil state.

That in itself is not a bad goal. We would hope that as good Christians, we’re good citizens, we’re good family members, we’re good whatever it is, good members of the football team. But you know, the public education system has become Godless—God can’t be referenced there—and so the greatest power evident in public schools is the state is Molech and so there’s this analogous relationship.

Now it is analogous and as I said you know you can there’s some legitimacy to talk about it that way but we want to remember that the second word specifically what it’s outlining are man-made images used as points of mediation to God and what we see today, what we’ll get to here in just a couple of minutes, is part of a sermon.

So most of the book of Deuteronomy is Moses. They’re ready to go into the promised land and Moses is preparing the people by preaching a sermon or a set of sermons on the Ten Commandments. So his text is the 10 words. Then he speaks to them a sermon about the 10 words. And that sermon has an outline to it. And that outline is what we’re trying to follow.

Now the specific sectional outline we have today that I want to talk about in a minute but the outline is he actually go at that particular time in history to the nation of Israel as they’re moving in to dispossess the land from the Canaanites and going into a place that had become gross idolatry. So it has application to us but not direct. We don’t have you know we’ve got some kids singing with a little bit of pride about you know the president. But it’s not this. Okay, we didn’t want when we go out the doors. We’re not going to see this going on.

Now, we might if the nation continues in its progression, it’s possible that this sort of thing could happen again. Think of Hitler’s Germany. Really, there was gross idolatry going on there.

So, but that’s not where we’re at. But it does have application to us. It’ll help us to look at what Moses wanted to stress as a proper emphasis of a sermon on the second commandment and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Now briefly at the top of your outline—at the top of your outline is again the restatement of the second word directly. So I want to leave that in here even as we look at other texts and so that you can remind yourself every week even though be a sermon on a sermon like it is this week. Next week, the sermon will be on Exodus 24 through the end of Leviticus. So it’ll be like what is that? I don’t know, 40 chapters. And there’s a reason for that.

The reason for that is we don’t normally think of it this way, but Moses gives the Ten Commandments at Sinai. But then he gives some other things at Sinai and we tend to remember the next things he gives—chapters 20 to 23, the 10 words and then the case laws, the civil laws—but that’s not the end of the Sinai sermon or the Sinai words that God speaks to Moses and he delivers to God’s people. All the rest of it from chapter 24 in Exodus nearly all the rest of it through the end of Leviticus is there from Sinai same place, same time. God is delivering instructions to Moses, more laws and all that stuff is about worship, nearly all of it.

So, the reason why I wanted to do Leviticus—you know, Exodus 24 through the end of Leviticus next week, and of course, I won’t talk about all every chapter. We’ll do some highlights, but the reason is because I want you to understand the tremendous significance of worship. Again, just in terms of the text, you got three chapters—laws, four chapters of case laws, laws and case laws, and then you got a tremendous amount of chapters on worship.

So, chapter the first word sets up the general ideas—to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second word tells us that in loving God in that way, it is exceedingly important what you do in formal worship, whether you’re going to bow down to Molech or you’re going to come together at the church or at the temple, whatever it is. Tremendous significance because it’s placed number two right after the general command to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Before we get to our neighbor, we’re told how to preeminently love God in the context of worship. It’s very significant and so it’s significant to understand it.

And the basic law is you shall not make for yourself a carved image. Don’t replace the word of God by which he reveals himself with some sort of other carved image. Remember, the Ten Commandments are a carved image, so to speak. They’re placed on carved tablets. The word isn’t used much. So, don’t replace God’s system of revelation with some other visual system that’s non-word-based, some other image, carved image. So, it puts it in contrast. That’s the basic command.

Well, what do men normally do? Well, they have likenesses of stuff that’s either in the heaven or that’s in the earth or the water of the earth—triple-decker universe, right? It’s set up for us here. Again, it’s given this way in lots of places in scripture. And no matter what it is, whether it’s a fish or a crowd or a moose or a star or a cloud, whatever it is, you can’t make a picture of it that you’re going to bow down to.

So, it doesn’t say you can’t make a picture of it or of God, but you can’t make a picture that will be a point of contact, a mediation between you and God. God because there’s only one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus. He’s the point of mediation. And so the central sin here is against the Son of God by setting up other mediators that we then bow down and serve.

So that’s the basic command and it’s buttressed by this lengthy blessing and cursing thing attached to it. Again, significance of worship. How you worship represents either the love of God to you because you’re loving him by means of worshiping him correctly or if you hate him, he’s going to burn out with wrath against you and he’ll actually visit your culpability to your children. This iniquity, visiting the iniquity of the fathers.

I think iniquity there means the culpability for punishment, the liability for punishment. It doesn’t mean the same sin will happen, but a liability for that punishment will be passed on generationally. And that’s because, you know, your children will be sort of like you. They’ll be non-verbal. They will be, you know, more image-based. And God hates it. He just hates that kind of worship. Even if it’s set in the context of supposed Christian worship to bow down to images to seek individual points of mediation apart from seeking Christ and him and his body and his word. You know, this is a great sin against God and he his fire burns against those because he says you’re hating him if you do that kind of thing.

Okay. So, that’s the basic second commandment. And then Moses has the sermon. And I want us just to look first at the overall structure. So on your first page of your handouts, there’s an overall structure. And there’s some bookends: statutes and judgments and commandments. And I think I have them in the first page as well.

So verse one of chapter 12 said, “These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord your God of your fathers is giving you to possess all the days that you live on the earth.”

And then it the section ends at the end of verse 18 because you have listened to the voice of the Lord your God to keep all his commandments which I command you today to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God.

So those are bookends. It marks off chapter 12 from chapter 11. That’s why we think 6 through 11 is all about the first word. One reason why—because now we have a new section and the section has bookends. It’s got marker signs up beginning and end, they match up. Okay? And they match up in a way that it reminds us that when these bookends are seen, they don’t just match up. They can do it identically. But usually there’s some movement. And the movement here is that at first it talks about statutes and judgments. And at the end, these things are acknowledged as commandments.

Now, there are at least 10 different Hebrew words used for statutes, judgments, commandments, precepts, etc. in the book of Deuteronomy. And another scholar has found two more in Psalm 119. If you read Psalm 119 much, you’ll know there’s lots of words that all refer to the word of God. And so, at least 12 significant Hebrew terms and these are three of them here.

You have to be a little careful in giving too much articulation to each, but generally a statute is a law and a judgment is a punishment for a law. So you’ve got laws, civil laws, and you got punishments. And those are set culminated at the end of the section with the word commandments. So the ten commandments, the 10 words which contain commandments contain also civil statutes and judgments. And that’s implied in what’s going on here.

So we’re supposed to be careful to observe it. And at the end, you’ve actually kept it. You’ve listened to the voice of God and you’re blessed. So those are the bookends.

Now I don’t want to confuse you any more than I have to, but let me just throw a little bit of confusion in. We’re going to look at that structure in just a minute. And I think the structure is there. Most commentators follow this outline of the Ten Commandments now or chapters 12 and 13 are second commandment. They’re a unit marked off by these bookends, but it flows out of the first commandment stuff.

Frequently when you study the scriptures, a distinct text like this one—two chapters—will be stitched or tied to the previous text. Okay? And that’s what happens here.

Open your Bibles and let’s look at verse 31 of chapter 11 and verse one of chapter 12.

Deuteronomy, while you’re turning, you can listen. Deuteronomy has a lot of interesting structural things going on. And even this last week, Ralph Smith posted on the BH list of the CRC list about the musical quality of certain verses that were actually are in the section today, Deuteronomy 12 and 13.

Deuteronomy has been the subject of a lot of analysis because it has some obvious poetic rhythms, beats, musical stuff going on, complicated structures that overlap and intertwine. You know, this is not like listening to a piece on the flute. This is like listening to a symphony orchestra that goes through a series of movements. Okay.

It’s interesting that the Lord God uses different languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek—different writers, different kinds of words—prose, poetry just being two of the major ones—different styles reflecting the personality of the different writers. And yet, one thing we see repetitively throughout most of the scriptures are these chiastic structures. So there’s something fundamental and profound undergirding languages and styles and people where it seems like the Lord God is using structures such as chiasms, other things as well, that’s the music that penetrates the whole thing and kind of wraps it all together.

So it’s kind of cool. And this one’s a little obvious, so I wanted to point it out.

So this is how the first section (6-11) is stitched to the second section (12-13). So in verse 31, you’re going to cross over the Jordan to go in to take possession of the land. Pause. That the Lord your God has given you. And when you possess it and live in it, pause. You shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I am setting before you today.

These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord God of your fathers has given you to possess all the days that you live on the earth.

Now, the most obvious there—so what we have here is a structure that has nine elements to it. And the center is that I am setting before you today. On either side of that, in verse one of chapter 12 or the last section of verse 31 before you get to that, that I am setting before you today, what do we read? All the statutes and the rules. These are the statutes and rules. You couldn’t make it clearer. They’re identical terminology around the center. And the identical terminology goes on to the next section: verse 32a, You shall be careful to do this. Verse 1 of 13b, That you shall be careful to do. Exact terminology. Okay. I mean it’s obvious.

And so what we have here is the center or exact terminology is showing us that we’re coming into a point and the center point here is that God is setting before them today that contextualizes everything that’s being—first of all it stitches together the first and second word and you know conceptually it begins by talking about going into possess the land. It ends by saying the days that you live on the earth. It goes on to say the Lord your God has given you and you possess it. And then in B it says in the land that the Lord your God of your fathers has given you to possess. Exact match. So there’s exact matches in here that tie together the first and second word or Moses’s sermon outline of points one and point two, first commandment, second commandment. They’re stitched together. They’re a whole and a unit. The second flows out of the first.

And secondly, what this shows us is that there’s a contextualization—we can say—for what’s going on here. He’s giving you these things today at a particular point in redemptive history. This is the way it’s going to work. Right now at this time this is how these 10 laws are applied as you move into this particular setting.

Now that’s a reminder to us that we can’t cut and paste here. It puts the Moses sermon as to his particular time and place and that’s given to us right in the text. God wants us to know that in a particular time and place this is how this commandment is enforced. It’s very significant because as you read through Deuteronomy 12 and 13, you’re supposed to execute certain people who get you to worship other idols, kill them. You’re supposed to burn down cities, okay?

You know, and so if we just cut and paste, we’re going to get all messed up cuz that’s not the way it looks when God applies this stuff in the New Testament. And he does, as we’ll look at the last section I just mentioned, the burning of cities.

So, you have to, you know, it’s a beautiful little structure to help you see, yeah, you’ve got separate sermon points on separate commandments and yet this kind of musical structure of chiasm or literary structure weaves them together.

So I have given you an outline here developed by Jim B. Jordan and other people have seen the same basic outline though it’s not unusual to him that I think is proper but there are other things going on in the text there’s layers to layers to Deuteronomy particularly but let’s just very briefly do an overview of what’s happening looking at that outline.

Then you go from the statutes and judgments down to commandments. The second section that we’ll look at in a minute, you don’t behave like the idolatrous Canaanites. So this is the exact, this is the rather immediate application of no idols—you know, no bronze altars, no trees you worship at, no points of mediation that the pagans use. Don’t do it that way. So that’s immediate obvious application of the second word and it refers to place, right?

So, and then it moving in, it says you’re supposed to instead have true worship at the central sanctuary. God’s place is where you’re going to have to be. You can’t go to their places. You got to be at God’s place where his name will be caused to dwell. It’s going to move around for a while. Eventually, it’ll stabilize in Jerusalem. Those places where God says he puts his name, not his presence. He can’t be held, you know, he’s not restricted to a particular environment, but he puts his name there. That place is where you have to do your formal worship.

And then he talks about slaughtering food and you can’t eat blood. Part of worship involves animals that are killed, but you can’t eat blood. A lot of worship is involved with eating. You’re supposed to be eating, getting together and worship is eating. You know, the pagans, you know, their gods say, “Come feed me. Feed me Seymour. Feed me all night long.” That’s a pagan god, right? That’s what they’re like. You have to bring food to the god.

God on the other hand, yes, the ascension offering is totally his food. But then the other offerings are for the priests and for the worshipper, for his family, as we’ll see here. When you worship God, it’s completely different than these guys because now you’re feasting together with him. He feeds you. Okay? Now, he does it with the particular portion that he’s blessed your hand to produce, but he’s feeding you, but you can’t eat blood.

We’re told in the fourth section, the middle again is an emphasis on a simple emphasis on worshiping at the central sanctuary and honoring the Levite. So, it’s place and person. You’ve got to go in this place and the person of the Levite is the right person as a mediator for you, not these other people that are bad persons.

Again, the reference to no eating of blood is given in 20 to 25. Now, we’re given the explanation why: it’s because the blood contains the life, and we’ll see that in a minute.

And then, as we continue to back out of this structure, true worship again is stressed at the local sanctuary. The same would have been stressed early on and again as it moves to its conclusion. Don’t behave like the idolatrous Canaanites. But now the emphasis isn’t on place and the idols where the placing of the idols is. Now it’s idolatrous Canaanites people—prophet, a family member someone that’s come out from your community and caused another community to go into idol worship. People are the stress.

So the structure starts by saying that a proper application of the second word is don’t go to idolatrous places where their idols are actually located. You know where that statue is. Don’t go there and in fact tear that thing down. I’m going to set up a separate place and then as you get to the end don’t worship through these mediators, these particular mediators. You worship through the person of the Levites. The persons of the Levites who of course represent the coming of the great priest, the high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that’s the idea. Moses in his sermon prohibits certain places and certain people, but those prohibitions are not central. What Moses does is he says the central theme that isn’t even stated directly in the second word. But as Moses applies it to their situation and as we apply it to ours today, the central meaning is rejoicing together in God’s place with God’s representative in the presence of God having a good time. That’s what it’s about.

There’s an old song by Leonard Cohen and he says Jesus taken seriously by many, Jesus taken joyous by a few. You know that’s true and it’s wrong. The second word as fearful as it sounds and ends with the judgment of on it contain implicitly Moses understood and we have the inspired word that God used Moses to create here that word says that at the heart of worship and proper mediation there is great joy there’s great blessing there’s wonderful rejoicing together Jesus must be appropriated joyously we must approach him and have relationship with him and his people joyously at the heart of our observance of the second word our formal worship.

That’s what Moses says.

Now, that’s good news, right? I hope that’s good news for you. I hope that when you come to church on the Lord’s day that what we have here is joy and yeah, there’s might wear a little tighter fitting clothes or whatever it is or nicer looking and stuff. Yeah, it’s good to remember that respect and honor and all that stuff, but understand that the Lord God who calls you here calls you here for the specific purpose in formal worship of rejoicing in his presence.

Now, that’s cool. That’s cool stuff. Probably should stop right there, but let’s not. Let’s go through and at least read Moses’s sermon. Very brief comments.

All right. So, after the introduction, the statutes and judgments, then he says this. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations that you shall dispossess serve their gods on a high mountains and on the big hills, the high hills under every evergreen, every green or flourishing tree. You shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place.

You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things.

Now, every time I read this now, I think of the Taliban. You know, I don’t—a lot of you don’t watch the news, but back when the Taliban was still in control of Afghanistan, it was shocking to the world that they had—there was an old Buddha, a statue of Buddha, a carving in Iraq or something. I don’t remember what it was. And they took, you know, rocket launchers thing. They just torched it, right? They broke it. And so the world is just aghast at this. We have a great cultural icon of the Buddhist faith, and the Taliban destroy it.

Well, they’re thinking this way now. They’re not thinking right. It’s a perversion of what God says we should do. I doubt if many of the Taliban were tempted to worship Buddha, right? And really it had become a historic artifact of a whole different time and place. So I’m not advocating what they did, but in a particular place, the time and place when they went into the promised land, it was proper that if Buddha was sitting there or Molech or Ashtaroth and all her feminine be whatever it was, they were supposed to destroy them. Don’t put temptations in front of your children. The perversion of good things—sexuality, forces, the family maybe of the state. Don’t get your children to perversely declare those gods as their true god by worship, by idolatrous worship.

So the emphasis here is on place. They don’t want to be worshiped with those places. Their particular stuff they’re supposed to take down. Okay. So, that’s the stress in this particular place. And at some point in this series on the second word, we’ll talk about the sin of Jeroboam that tried to incorporate idol golden calf idol with Yahweh worship. And God says don’t do that. And so, this is the problem with iconic worship where you’re bowing and venerating saints, statues, whatever it is. It’s the same kind of thing. God says, you know, if you’re attempting in a region to do that. Destroy the icons. Get rid of them. Get those things out of the way.

So place is the focal point there.

Now I wanted to read here as well Psalm 135 verses 15 to 18. This is a New King James Version.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold. The work of men’s hands. They have mouths but they do not speak. Eyes they have but they do not see. They have ears, but they do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them are like them. So is everyone who trusts in them.

So this is a description of the sort of things they were supposed to tear down. These idols that people were like were like them. There’s a relationship between what you worship and who you are. The translation, however, isn’t very good. Let me read the ESV translation, and most modern translations translate it this way.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold. The work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear. Nor is there any breath in their mouths and listen. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them.

The idea is that if you set up things that are not God or images of God that are not God as points of mediation for you in an attempt to control God, right? Because that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to define God in a particular way. You’re trying to control him by using this point of mediation. But the problem is those mute icons and idols will affect who you are. God has set it up so that the object of our worship, even if we set it up out of our own ego, the object of our worship, we will become like what we’re worshiping.

So if little kids, if school kids across America sing more and more Battle Hymns of the Republic in praise of Obama, even though it looks stupid and childish and stuff, well, okay, a little bit of pride, great. But see, the problem is that if that kind of stuff goes on, it affects the way people who people are. We like to think of ourselves as abstract and isolated from all this stuff. We’re in control. No, you’re not. No matter what you do, worship the true God and God will give you gifts and you’ll become more like him. And if you worship a false god, a one who doesn’t speak, you’re going to not talk as much. Okay? So, you’re going to become like whatever it is you worship.

And so, the second commandment and this instruction, be careful about place and thing is very important.

Verses 5 to 14 go on to talk about true worship at the central sanctuary.

But you shall seek the place, so see place is being emphasized here, where the Lord your God chooses out of all your tribes to put his name for his dwelling place. And there you shall go.

In other words, they knew God didn’t inhabit. He wasn’t bound to that place. But he puts his name there, you know, his kind of special presence. We could say, not exhaustively, but that’s where his name is going to be. He wants you to worship formally there. Now, they knew they were supposed to worship God everywhere. They could still do family worship and devotions and pray. They’re supposed to pray every day, right? They’re supposed to have that stuff on their hands, on their head. They’re supposed to be praying to God and thinking about him all the time.

But this is talking about formal worship. And the formal worship had to be in the place that God chose to put his name.

There you shall take your burnt offerings, your ascensions. That’s the essential word. That’s the beginning of all the offerings and that’s really the one that is the focal point of the thing. It’s the ascension offerings, your sacrifices, the things you kill and the other sort of sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your free will offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.

Now, without getting into all those specific blessings, some of those are required offerings and some are voluntary. I’m going to give God X if he blesses me in this particular way or he really blessed me here. I’m going to give a thank offering to God. Those are free will. Even those had to be done at the central sanctuary. You couldn’t do that on your own. You had to go to the place where God wants you to engage in that kind of formal worship.

There you shall eat before the Lord your God. You shall rejoice in all which you have put your hand—you and your households in which the Lord your God has blessed you.

So see at the central place at the right place is a place of rejoicing and being blessed by God and rejoicing in everything that we have done.

You shall not at all do as we do here today. Every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. For as yet you have not come to the rest and inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you.

So up to this point, worship was still somewhat, you know, kind of they were all together in a big lump, but it was still kind of whatever they did, there was no specific instructions in terms of the tabernacle and central worship. So things are going to change. They’re going to go possess the land and when that—when they cross the river Jordan, as it’ll say later in the text, they enter into that kind of picture of salvation. Then they have central place in which they’re to worship and that worship is joy. It’s joyous worship.

Verse 10: But when you cross over the Jordan, there it is, and you dwell in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and he gives you rest from all your enemies round about so that you dwell in safety. Then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you, your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all of your choice offerings which you vow to the Lord.

And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance with you. Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see, but in the place which the Lord chooses, in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings. There you shall do all that I command you.

Now, that’s a long section and you noted repetition in it. And if you notice that, that’s because there’s another little structure in this section where he says you’re going to go to the central place. Don’t do like you’re doing here. At the central place will be joy. Don’t do things your own way. The central place is where you’re going to want to be. That part of the sacrifice as well. And then don’t do things the way you want to.

God will bring you into central place. So there’s a structure again and there’s some minor statements of don’t do it the way you want to do it, don’t do it in any place. But the overall focal point here is that the big prohibition was against certain places and idols. And now the emphasis of this of the second word and its application is the proper role of rejoicing with your households, with your sons, your daughters, your manservants, your maidservants. The picture is rejoicing together.

And so in its central exposition of worship, Moses says that worship is about going to church with your sons and your daughters, other people from your household, getting together with all the other households, bringing your tithes and your offerings and all that stuff there. And that’s where you get to eat a portion of all that stuff. Portion of your tithes you can eat. It indicates right—doesn’t indicate any place. Here it says, yeah, a portion of your tithe is also part of what you eat.

This is why we’ve said that part of your tithe is appropriately used to finance your agape food. Well, you know, maybe at some point churches, you know, that are significant enough and where tithes are, you know, all given to the institutional church. At that point, it may be proper for the institutional church to finance the agape. Either way, the point is a portion of the tithe is what finances your rejoicing together.

Now, it’s not formal worship downstairs. It’s a get together. Your tithe—certainly tithe your offerings and tithes support this the little picture of the great feast with Christ. But this idea at the central place there’s rejoicing with families and with other households. This is what worship is all about in the context of Moses’s sermon.

The fourth section: Slaughter no blood.

However, you may slaughter and eat meat within all your gates. So you got to eat certain meat at the central sanctuary, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have steak for dinner. You can do that whatever your heart desires.

See, God’s into freedom. God’s into fulfilling your desires when they’re properly centered upon him. It’s about joy. It’s about desiring things. It’s about God saying, “You got lots of freedom to do all kinds of stuff.” And this one prohibition here in terms of the second word is going to drive you into joy and you’ll be more like me and I’m a happy guy. God says, “God is filled with joy. The fellowship of the Trinity is a joyous one, and we’re brought into that.”

So, all your heart desires according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you. The unclean and the clean may eat of it. So whether you’re in a state of ceremonial uncleanness, it doesn’t mean you’ve sinned, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a steak. You can have the steak. The gazelle or the deer alike, whether it’s, you know, wild animals you can eat, too.

Only you shall not eat the blood. You shall pour it out on the altar. The one prohibition is against eating blood. And this will be repeated in a couple of minutes.

Then at the center, we have two statements. Worship at the central sanctuary place.

You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain or your new wine or your oil or the firstborn of your herd, your flock or any of your offerings that you vow, your free will offerings or of the heave offerings of your hand. Can’t do it there.

But you must eat them before the Lord your God. So in God’s presence in this place is where he wants your the focal point of your joy to be. And particular parts of what you produce are to be rejoiced in and eaten there. That’s where the joy happens.

in the place which the Lord your God chooses and your sons and your daughters, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God in that to which you put your hands.

So joy at the center and then the next verse is about the Levite.

Special emphasis: take heed to yourself, you don’t forsake the Levite as long as you live in the land.

So the person of the Levite is being stressed along with the place. And so you know, use a portion of your tithe to fund the agape, but don’t forsake the Levites. If you use all your tithe that way, then you can’t support the Levitical ministers in the context of the church. So, you know, it’s very significant that at the center is place and person.

And of course, at the center of our worship, the place where we’re gathered together is no longer central sanctuary. It’s decentralized, but it’s decentralized still in a centralized way. There are still meeting places that were in New Testament there are now where the body of Christ convenes. That’s the place. The place is where the body is okay and where the body of Christ collectively is the church. That’s the place and the Levitical minister represents the person of Jesus.

So both place and person at the heart of a proper application of what the second commandment is all about is going to church and it’s approaching Christ as the place and the person. Christ is in heaven but he mediates to us his blessings in terms of this place, the convocated worship service of the church, his body gathered, his priests, his elders, his ministers here representing him to you. And this is the place where you rejoice, where you’re transformed. And this is the place where the special portions of what God has told you about your tithes, your offerings, etc., all that happens here. And they happen here in the context of joy, not of sobriety. I mean, sobriety, yeah, to a certain extent, but the characteristic over and over in this text is joy.

Okay, backing back out: no blood drinking.

And here we read, “The Lord your God enlarges your borders. He has promised you, and you say, ‘Let me eat meat because you long to eat meat.’ You may eat as much meat as your heart desires.”

See, it’s a match to the other section. It’s the place where the Lord your God chooses to put his name is too far from you. If it’s too far, then you may slaughter from your herd and from your flock which the Lord has given you just as I have commanded you. So in other words, the firstborn still has to go that way. But all the rest of—now not just wild game, gazelles and deers, but you can also eat cow, you can have you know cow steak, not just deer steak.

So as you get dispersed, you can’t bring all your food there to sacrifice it. You can do it locally and eat your steaks there except for the special part.

eat within your gates. which your heart desires.

Again, our double emphasis on what your heart desires.

Just as the gazelle and the deer are eaten, so you may eat them. So sacrificial animals, as long as they’re not part of the special first of the herd, you can eat those animals, too. The clean and the unclean may eat them.

Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life. You may not eat the life with the meat. You shall not eat it or you shall not eat it. You shall pour it out on the earth like water. You shall not eat it that it may go well with you and your children after you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

So what’s going on? Well, again, the purpose of the second word is proper and improper mediation. And blood can become idolatrous. The life of the flesh is identified symbolically with the blood. And so the idea is, you know, yeah, you can eat, but what you eat has to be dead so that you don’t—you’re not—you’re not tempted to think that the stuff you’re eating will mediate life to you apart from the grace that I’m going to use to make it good for you. It’s got to be dead—than dead. It’s got to be dead. It’s got to be stone cold dead. It’s got to have all that life out of it. Got to be dead.

Why? Because God wants you to rely upon his mediation, taking dead stuff and making living cells in your body from death, death to resurrection. God’s going to do that. You know, the Maasai tribes, they follow along their herds and they’ll stick big, you know, straw on the side of their cow and suck the blood out. You know, the juice man. You’ve heard me talk about this. You know, the juicer guy. You get the pears and the stuff and you pick them and before the life essence, while the life’s still in it, that’s the only time it’s good. You throw it in that blender, you whip it up and you drink it down before the life goes out of it.

And God says just the reverse. You got to be dead. Why? Because the second commandment is about mediation. Life is mediated to us through the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And when we recognize that, we are freed from all the constraints of thinking somehow that life is mediated through what we do, what other men do, whatever anybody else does, all those rituals and stuff. No, life is mediated through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We rejoice in that. God wants us to remember that. And so, he says, “When you eat food, make it be dead.” Now, I don’t think that means we can’t eat yogurt. But that’s the idea. It’s a commandment about mediation. And it is wrong for us to eat only yogurt because that’s living organisms and that’s the only way we can get life. No. God says, “Kill your food.”

When you pray this week at your home, at each of your homes, at least once this week, say, “Thank you, Lord God, for this dead food. This food that’s so dead, this steak, if we leave it on the counter a day, it will stink and flies. Thank you for this dead food. Now, please give us life through it by your grace, through the merits of Christ.”

That’s what it’s all about. Second word is about mediation.

Okay. True worship at the central sanctuary.

Only the holy things which you have and your vowed offerings, you shall take and go to the place which the Lord chooses. You shall offer your burnt offerings, the meat, and the blood on the altar of the Lord your God. And the blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall eat the meat. Yes.

So just like you poured it on the land, you poured it on the altar. The altar isn’t really special. It represents the land. That’s what it is. It’s a picture of the land. And you’re pouring out the blood again to make sure that you’re not getting mediation through blood, which is life.

Observe and obey all these words which I command you that it may go well with you.

God doesn’t, you know, God desires your well-being, folks. The second word isn’t something that God’s going to make you feel bad about. It’s to give you life. It’s because he wants your blessing. He wants you to be happy. He wants you to have desires that can be fulfilled by your work that he gives you to do. This is what God wants for you. He wants you to go well with you.

And when you remember that Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man, it will go well with you.

Observe and obey all these words which I command you that it may go well with you and your children after you forever.

See, again, second commandment, God brings iniquity, liability for punishment to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, that use idols, false mediators. But he shows mercy to thousands of generations of those that love him and do what he says to do in terms of formal worship when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God.

And then lastly: Don’t behave like the idolatrous Canaanites.

When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, you displace them and dwell in their land. Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, “How did these nations serve their idols? I also will do likewise.”

So, see, the prohibition is not against wondering what they did, but it’s wondering what they did and becoming ensnared and then doing it yourself.

You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.

For every abomination which the Lord hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

Hence, the front of the worship service, they burn their kids in the fire either consecration or killing them.

When ever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it or take anything away from it.

So now he’s talking about the influence of people. He talked about place. Now he’s talking about persons.

Then he lists specific people.

If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and he gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign of the wonder comes to pass. It’s true. He actually does it. He predicts something that’s going to come to pass. It comes to pass of which spoke to you saying, “Let us go after other gods which you have not known and let us serve them.” You shall not listen to the words of that prophet.

The test is not whether something comes true or not. The test is who does he want you to serve. And this guy is trying to entice you and ensnare you to idols.

The Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul. Say, “Oh, you better be careful. Don’t walk by sight again. Walk by the word of God. God will test you. When things like this happen, ultimately the hand of God is testing us to see if we’ll follow him.”

So if you got somebody tempting you to fall away from God, you can’t follow him. And in fact, a civil punishment at this particular place, at this particular time in history with these particular pagans, you have to then execute that person.

And then the second example is the false brother.

Your brother, the son of your mother, your son of your daughter, the wife of your bosom or your friend who is as is your own soul entices you. If this guy tries to tempt you to serve other gods, again, our loyalty is to God first and foremost. Family is subjugated. People that do great and cool things and predict the future are subjugated to the God of the scriptures.

And then finally, the last subjugation, our whole cities doing wrong things. God says, don’t listen to what they do. And in fact, if a whole city apostatizes like that, put it to the torch.

Paul writes to the Galatians, “Troublers have gone out.” If you read this last section, it’s just like what this section talks about. Somebody’s gone out, perverted a city. They now are following a false god. You got to torch it like you did Jericho or like you’re going to do to Jericho. Same curse is upon it is upon Jericho when you go over there.

Galatians, troublers go out. They try to get people to be circumcised and they’re really, Paul says, asserting a false gospel. And what does he say twice? Let them be accursed. He’s referencing this text.

Now, there’s not a civil function at work. He doesn’t say let them be torched, but they’re under the same curse of God when we seek to worship the God of the scriptures falsely. In their case, using circumcision, keeping the Torah, breaking apart the church again through special privilege of the Jews, etc.

So, persons. So, the text begins and ends with people. Or place rather and persons. At the very center is the right place, right persons, false mediation, true mediation. At the center of the text is the right place, the right person. And along with that comes all the joy, all the fulfillment of our desires, all the rejoicing together before God.

That’s why we got that coloring picture for the kids. This is what the second word says. Go to church and rejoice. Take Jesus, yes, seriously, but take Jesus as the source of true joy and blessing today as well.

You know, there’s that great Yeats poem, The Second Coming, which I’ve quoted before, and it probably is a good interpretive tool to watch No Country for Old Men, and No Country for Old Men—no music, no spirit, no presence of Christ. And whatever functions have been set up under the presence of Christ are now diminished and the sheriffs who at one time represented the authority of Christ no longer do that. They leave their jobs they lose the gift of God’s order and seeing the requirements of doing that and it’s a horrific movie in the end evil wins just like in Yeats’s poem of the second coming of antichrist he says that a land that becomes like that becomes like the Coen brothers foresee this country becoming that kind of land.

Yeats said the center will not hold or cannot hold. The center of man’s mediation, man’s attempts apart from the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, that center will not hold. It will be destroyed. The center of joy, worshiping God in the right formal way, at the right place where Jesus isn’t his people, but the right people, the representatives of Christ, the ministers of the gospel coming together to send eventually rejoice at table with him. This center will hold. It is guaranteed to hold.

All the blessings in chapters 12 and 13 are to your sons and your son’s sons that you might be blessed forever. The text told us at one particular place, the future belongs to a people who worship correctly. And that worshiping correctly is with the rejoicing Savior and his rejoicing people.

May God cause us to rejoice today.

Let’s pray.

Father, we do wish to rejoice in your presence at this place where you’ve commanded us to come together and give our special offerings and tithes. Thank you, Father, for this church. Thank you for the joy that characterizes it. Increase our joy. We would go, we would, Lord God, go from glory to glory in our joy before you and with each other. Thank you, Father, for this wonderful implication of the second word prohibiting idolatry commands us essentially to the way that is a way of joy and desires met and fulfilled in Christ our Savior. In his name we pray. Amen.