Devotionary

In Deuteronomy 15:19-23, Moses is going to bring up the topic of the firstborn again. He first addressed it in chapter 12 and then again in chapter 14. But this time he is going to discuss the sacrifice of the firstborn of the flock and the herd. The doctrine of the firstborn was to have strong significance for the people of Israel, providing a link all the way back to the days before the exodus from Egypt. As a result of God sparing the firstborn son of every Hebrew family, as well as the firstborn of their sheep and bulls, the Israelites were to dedicate these animals as offerings to God. They belonged to Him. And the presence of the Levites among the other tribes was to act as a constant reminder that they stood as substitutes for every firstborn male among the Israelites. The tribe of Levi had been dedicated to God for His service. And the firstborn of the flocks and herds also belonged to God – as tokens of thanks and expressions of worship.

Poverty and need are nothing new. They have been a part of the human condition ever since the fall. In fact, they're both a byproduct of sin's entrance into the world. With sin came death. And not just the physical kind. Poverty is a form of economic death that leaves an individual, a family, or even a community experiencing the slow and debilitating loss of life. When the resources necessary for experiencing fullness of life are unavailable, it results in a host of people who become like the walking dead, robbed of their dignity and devoid of any real hope of change. In Deuteronomy 15:12-18, Moses addresses the issue of poverty among the people of Israel and gives them God's divine plan for alleviating it. In a nation that was guaranteed the blessings of God, there should be no one who suffered want. God's blessings were meant to be shared.

God is a gracious God, and no one should have known that better than the people of Israel. He had repeatedly extended to them His grace and mercy and, in most cases, in spite of them, not because of them. He had chosen them as His own, not because they deserved it, but because He wanted to express His love for them. And God expected His chosen people to treat others with the same graciousness and goodness that they had received from Him. In Deuteronomy 15:1-11, Moses encourages the people of Israel to care for the poor and needy among them. He had even come up with a plan for forgiving debt and allowing people a chance to start their lives anew, with no threat of prosecution or slavery should they fail to pay all they owed. These kinds of initiatives, ordained by God, were meant to set the people of Israel apart from all the other nations and to mirror the loving, gracious, and forgiving nature of their God.

In Deuteronomy 14:22-29 Moses is going to remind the people of God of their obligation to keep the designated feast days that God had established for them. These were non-negotiable events in which every Israelite was to participate. But the feasts and the sacrifices that accompanied them were about more than law-keeping. They were designed to be communal festivals of celebration and thanksgiving to God. Three times a year, the nation of Israel was to gather at the site of the tabernacle and share the joy of being God's chosen people. They had ample reason to rejoice and God wanted them to do it together – as a family. And He made sure that everyone was to be included, from the widow and orphan to the foreigner in their midst. They were to share their food and their common sense of gratitude to God for all that He had done for them.

The Israelites were meant to stand out from the crowd. They were to be distinct and different, from their actions and attitudes to the way they dressed and the food they ate. God had called them to be His prized possession, having set them apart as uniquely His and having provided them with His law which would dictate every aspect of their behavior. He had even come up with regulations regarding their food consumption. They were not free to eat whatever they wanted to eat. Rather than allowing themselves to be driven by their appetites, they were to live in submission to the will of God. God knew what was best and by obeying His commands, they would express their trust in Him. While the rest of the world did whatever they deemed best, the people of God were to do what God had determined to be holy. And in Deuteronomy 14:1-21, Moses makes that point perfectly clear.

As followers of God, we are under constant attack from the enemy as he attempts to deceive us and draw us away from our devotion to God. He will never be content with our faithfulness to God and will do everything in his power to cause us to defect. His attacks are relentless and merciless. His temptations are unending and his techniques are deceptive and deadly. And in Deuteronomy 13:1-18, Moses warns the people of Israel that the enemy will prove highly resourceful, using the least likely sources to convince them to abandon God. The call to commit idolatry doesn't necessarily come from expected sources. Moses lists the prophet, a close friend or family member, and the society as a whole as three possible threats to their faithfulness to God. If the people didn't remain alert to the threat, they would find themselves drawn in and dragged down the path of apostasy.

God had intended for Israel to stand out as a nation. He had chosen them and set them apart as His own prized possession. Now, as they prepared to enter the land God had promised to give them, Moses warned them to maintain their set-apart status. They were not to blend in or cozy up to the nations occupying the land. There was no place for compromise or thoughts of coexistence with the Canaanites. In fact, God had made it clear that the Israelites were to eliminate every last Canaanite and to purge the land of anything and everything associated with them, including the altars and high places they had constructed to their false gods. In Deuteronomy 12:29-32, Moses reminds the people that emulating the Canaanites was a bad idea. Worshiping their gods was even worse. And any thought of adapting their forms of worship were to be avoided at all costs. In this case, imitation would NOT be the sincerest form of flattery.

The sacrificial system, instituted by God, required the shedding of animal blood in order to atone for the sins committed by men. This seemingly barbaric and gruesome ordinance was required by God and practiced by the people of God so that they might remain in His good graces – in spite of their ongoing struggle with disobedience and unfaithfulness. During their years in the wilderness, the people were required to slaughter all their animals at the tabernacle. It was there and there only that blood could be shed. But, now that they were preparing to enter the land and the permanent home of the tabernacle would prove to be too far away for some of the tribes, God was providing a special dispensation. Deuteronomy 12:15-28 reveals that God would allow the people to slaughter animals within their own territories, but the divine ban on the consumption of blood held fast because the life is in the blood.

As Christians, we tend to make a habit out of doing things our own way. Even when it comes to worship, we have strong opinions about what kind of worship we find most enjoyable and acceptable. But the problem is that worship was never intended to have man as its focus. We are the worshipers, not the ones being worshiped. So, our worship is meant to be God-directed, not man-centered. And in Deuteronomy 12:1-14, Moses warns the people of Israel that their worship of God was going to be according to God's standards, not their own. Once they arrived in the land of Canaan, there was going to be one divinely approved place of worship. No more setting up shrines and altars wherever they felt like it. And they were to refrain from adapting and adopting the pagan shrines, converting them for the worship of Yahweh. That was going to be unacceptable. Doing what was right in their own eyes was not going to be an option. Their worship of God would have to be on His terms, or not at all.

Wholehearted obedience to God flows from a heart of love for God. Without love, obedience becomes nothing more than legalism, a heartless attempt to do what God requires – out of fear rather than faith. Instead of viewing God as a loving Father who has our best interest in mind, we begin to view Him as a taskmaster who demands that we earn His favor through self-empowered adherence to His commands. But heartless obedience is doomed to failure. And that is what Moses attempts to warn the Israelites about in Deuteronomy 11:13-25. God wanted to bless them. But it was going to require that they obey Him. Yet God was not interested in an obedience motivated by fear and driven by a desire to earn good things from God while avoiding His bad side. No, God wanted the Israelites to obey Him because they loved Him. Their adherence to His commands was to be driven by their appreciation for His goodness and grace.