Deuteronomy 12:29-32

All right, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 12. What's those verses there? Verses 29 through 32, 29 through 32. We're gonna be talking about something you need to be careful about, the Israelites, right?
So, I'll have some coffee, we'll pray, I'll get into God's word. You don't want any coffee? Oh man, you don't want any octane? I'll grow hair on your chest. Okay, you wanna pray, you want me to pray? All right. Lord, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for the blessing. It is to read your word. Please help us to understand it. Please give us your spirit to give us right attitudes, good hearts, or let it sink in. We pray in Jesus's name. Amen. All right. Deuteronomy chapter 12, beginning of verse 29. You want to read or you want me to read? I can read. Okay.
You're being very passive this morning. when the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess and You displace them and dwell on their land take heed to yourself That you are not ensnared to follow them After they are destroyed from before you that you do not inquire after their gods saying oh How do these nations serve their gods? I will also do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination to the Lord which he hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You should not add to it nor take away from it. All right, so three questions we gotta ask. Alright, so what's this about kid? What do you mean by that Nope Solomon didn't sacrifice his son It might have been Manasseh who even sacrificed his son, or made him pass through the fire is how the Bible calls it. But yeah, sacrifice his son in fire. Yeah. So the abominable God of Molech or Chemosh. Yeah.
That reminds me of that, what God means by don't do this. Even if you think, even if you're like, well, I'm still serving God, I'm just worshiping him. Isn't that interesting? That these people would think that the Israelites could think that they were still serving God, but doing it the way that the pagans did? Yeah, right. But that's what it's almost like the syncretism, right?
Like, oh, I can take these ways. Oh, look, they worshipped the god of thunder, Baal. And they worshipped him in these ways. And so I can worship God in the same in a similar way. Right. Because it's God, the god of thunder. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe I can worship him just like they worship Baal. And then God is being worshipped. That's kind of how the reasoning went.
And God is saying, don't do that. Don't do it, guys. Don't you're going to go in. There's going to be people there. Don't don't ask about their gods. Don't ask how they were worshiped. Don't don't do it. Right. Because if you do it, you're going to want to worship God that way. And that's not how he's commanded you to worship him. What they're doing is an abomination to him. And yet. What happens? That's exactly what they do. And then they get in trouble. It's they go. They get in trouble. to get in timeout that's a nice way to say be exiled Yeah, right. And then they become self-righteous.
Right. But yeah, this is this is the interesting thing. Right. It's kind of like there's if you're driving down one of the gravel roads, right, there's a ditch on either side. Right. And on one side, there's a they've got a ditch and the ditches, they can start worshiping idols or even worshiping God like the pagans through their idol worship.
Or the other side is, right, what you're talking about is, then they can be like, well, we're so self-righteous, we don't even, we can be good enough to be God's people. Both of them are wrong. Neither side is right. So the side of the legalist can't look at the side of the idolaters and go like, oh man, look at us, we're so much better.
No, they're in the ditch. They worship themselves, their own traditions. And these guys in the district, are you legalist? Look at you. You just, you, you, you don't even know how to worship God with freedom. All the while, I got to say, no, there's a, there's a narrow path. Neither of you walk in the way of faith. Neither of you are worshiping me.
You think we still got similar dangers today? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What do you think is the best verse to summarize this? Oh, there's one. Well, there's only four, so I hope there's one. Here's it. 31. That's what look at this. I have the first part of 31 double underlined. Yeah, that's what I got underlined, too. But then, you know what? I got verse 32 starred.
So I'll let somebody else tell me what they think. Let's go ahead and do see calling. What are we called to do? What do you think? I was kinda already thinking of that. I was kinda thinking that God calls us, like, well, I can worship God, but you see, like, these Hindus, you see, well, they have, like, an idol, so I'll just make an idol, and if I worship that idol every day, I can still do my walk today, but I just have to make sure I worship that idol.
Yeah, right. Are there are there people who will still have this syncretism today, right? Acting as if they can worship God through all sorts of unbiblical means. Yeah, right. But no, God, God is tells us how we are to worship him. Right. And so there's certain parameters he puts around. In our tradition, in our theological tradition, we call that the regulative principle of worship, the regulative principle of worship. We don't get to make up how we want to worship God. He's the one who's given us precepts, right?
Do these things, right? Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, right? So what do we sing? Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. He's the one who tells the pastors to preach. And so. There's a preacher. He tells us to pray that we pray And so there's there's certain things that he's told us to do and that's what we do. Do we go past that? That would be adding to it Exactly. Right. And so we don't do those either. Right.
That's why we don't there's we have Roman Catholic friends who will pray to saints and pray to Mary and stuff like that. And we say, well, hold on here. God told us not to do that. We have one mediator, Jesus Christ. He's the only one between us and God. And so we we pray in Jesus's name alone. And we don't let dead people pray for us. There's nothing in the Bible that gives us that type of authority to do that And actually that sounds a whole lot more like pagans who are so Kind of a big ball of yarn, isn't it?
You think people would like it if they certain like some of my Roman Catholic friends, you think they would like what I just said? No. But I think it's what the Bible tells us, both Old and New Testament, right? There's certain. elements of worship that are that other circumstances that aren't like we're not in the Old Testament anymore, so we don't have a prescribed time.
Is there any where in the Bible where it says you must worship God on the Lord's Day at 936 a.m.? Well, yeah, they had hours. It was about the sixth hour of the day. There's nothing that says you must worship the Lord during the third hour of the day. Right. Roughly 9 a.m. Right. There's nothing in there. So that's what we would consider a circumstance of worship. Right. So elements of worship would be like words, sacrament, prayer. But circumstances would be like, what type of building do you meet in? What time do you meet? What color is the carpet?
Right. Those are circumstances where it seems like there's wisdom that's needed for that, but we don't add to or take away from the Lord's worship. OK, that was a lot. You done? You want to pray or you want me to pray? I can pray. OK, thanks for talking. I appreciate you doing that.
Lord, we thank you so much. Father, we pray, knowing that we can be self-righteous. And we could also be drawn towards idolatry. Father, we pray that you would please help us to honor you, to worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, please. Offen our hearts and open our eyes to know how we are to serve you. Bring you glory in Jesus's name. Amen. All right. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you enjoy your Lord. Rejoice in who he is. And may you worship in spirit and truth. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. You press the button.