(Previous post - What's In A Place? - Part 1)
I return to the last line of the Chesterton quote: “They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar and found that they were clean.”
On the cusp of entering the Promised Land, God commands His people through Moses:
12.1 “These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth. 2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. 4 You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. 5 But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go, 6 and there you shall bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, your vow offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. 7 And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the Lord your God has blessed you.
8 “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, 9 for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you. 10 But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in safety, 11 then to the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution that you present, and all your finest vow offerings that you vow to the Lord. 12 And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levite that is within your towns, since he has no portion or inheritance with you. 13 Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, 14 but at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I am commanding you.
(Deuteronomy 12.1-14)
At least fourteen times in these fourteen verses a location for worship is referenced. Three refer to a location, and worship, which is prohibited (vs. 2, 3, and 13). The rest refer to a future place of worship acceptable to God. To be more specific, making a distinction between acceptable and prohibited worship is the point of the passage. Worshipping at any high mountain, or on any hill, or under any green tree is prohibited. Worship according to the ways of the nations is forbidden. “Everyone doing what is right in his own eyes” is not acceptable worship. God will proscribe for His people how they are to worship Him, and God will designate a place for them to worship Him.
If all of this sounds rather austere to our ears, then there is an easily discernable reason.
- It is severe.
- It is constricting.
- It is limiting.
And that’s not a bad thing. Contra to what is often promoted today as the formula for “great” worship, the focused, pointed and specific worship of God among His people is a very good thing.
More about that in the next post.