“You will not do things the way we do them here today, where everyone does whatever in his own opinion seems right…”-Deuteronomy 12:8
Starting from verse 8, we are introduced to yet another fundamental Torah principle.
It is God, not man, who authorizes how He is to be worshipped.
So what is the proper worship of God supposed to consist of?
Simple, His ordained ceremonies are to be carried out in His ordained ways at His appointed times.
We’re talking about the Biblical festivals here folks.
At this point, I’m well aware that the vast majority of the gentile church will respond with a bored yawn and justify their lack of interest by saying “Look man. This is the 21st century. I can worship the Lord any way I want.“
My response?
No you can’t.
Of course you’re not required to make a journey to a Temple that doesn’t exist.
Nor do you have to recite certain traditional prayers or have one distinct order of service.
And you’re not forced to worship the Lord at a certain location.
However, the Torah makes it clear that there are certain specially designated dates and times and ways we are to keep…
…and if we don’t keep them, God makes it clear we are not worshiping Him at all.
If we insist on doing things our own way, we are no better off than some of those rebellious Israelites who wrongly thought it was okay to do things the way their Canaanite neighbors were doing them as long as they were paying homage to their God.
This is pretty much the way the vast majority of Christendom thinks today.
Remember, God ordered the religion of the Canaanites to be destroyed.
Therefore, if what God did in the past is any indicator of what may happen in the future, I would say a healthy respect and fear for God and His clear instructions should take priority over our fleshly desires.
To this point, I want to leave you with an interesting quote.
Have you heard of Walter Kaiser, Jr.?
He is considered to be one of the most conservative Bible scholars of our day.
He also happens to be the academic dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Some believe his works have influenced the Evangelical movement and its doctrines more than anyone on the planet today.
But I digress.
Take a look at the below quote and pay special attention to those parts I bolded and underlined dealing with the “Old” Testament and how he says its rules and regulations are still relevant to the modern believer today.
I think you’re going to be quite surprised.
“……in order to make up for the hiatus of instruction on all sorts of practical questions about how to deal with everyday problems such as ‘youth conflicts’ and the like, Evangelicals flock by the thousands in every major metropolitan area to special seminars as an open testimony to their hunger for true biblical instruction on matters that were (actually) dealt with in the OT law. To be sure, most of these seminars on youth problems, marriage enrichment, and business management techniques drew heavily on the Biblical Wisdom Books of the OT (especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon). But what few have realized, and what still remains as one of the best kept secrets to this very day, is that these same Wisdom Books have as their fountainhead the Law of Moses. One need only take a marginally competent reference Bible and notice how frequently the text of Proverbs, for example, directly quotes or alludes to the books of Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in its popularized “bumper sticker” way of theologizing. Just these few examples should be enough to warn the contemporary pastor and teacher. We must overcome our inherited prejudice against the OT, especially as concerns the Law. We must immediately move to balance the spiritual diet of God’s people. Few people today would espouse a junk-food nutritional plan as a regular plan of good eating; but how many Christians prefer to eat only the ‘desert’ as found in the NT? In order to address this imbalance…….we (must) begin to use the OT in a more balanced and holistic teaching ministry.”
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