Nathan E. Lewis

Remembering the Covenant: March 26 “The High Place� (Deuteronomy 12)

Humanity, regardless of religion, has worshipped on the high places. Tibetan monks live in caves and huts high in the Himalayas. Christian orders have built monasteries on the summits of Europe and Africa. The God of Israel instructs her to remember the blessings and the curses of his covenant, by ascending to the high places. On Mount Gerizim, Israel is to present the blessings of the covenant. On Mount Ebal, Israel is to present the curses. From the very beginning, God has associated himself with the mountain. In the middle of Eden stood the mountain of God. In the evening God would descend the mountain to walk with Adam and Eve. God commands Abraham and Isaac to ascend Mount Moriah to offer sacrifice to him. Moses ascends Mount Sinai to meet with God, to receive the law. King David develops the city, Jerusalem upon Mount Zion. His son, Solomon, builds God’s temple at the summit of Zion. Worship in the high places is not merely a pagan ritual. It is part of the worship of the one, true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In Deuteronomy 12, God commands Israel to destroy the worship sites of the idolatrous nations. Israel is to purge the high places of any altar, sacred stone, Asherah pole, and idols used in the worship of false gods. Another common site of worship has been at the base of a tree. Israel is to purge idolatrous worship from these sites as well. In (4) Moses emphatically says, “You shall not do so unto the Lord, your God.� What does he mean? Israel is not to engage in idolatrous worship. The nations surrounding Israel were polytheists, that is, they worshipped several gods. And so, they had several sites, one for each god, in the high places. Imagine each summit and every old growth tree littered with shrines. God said, “You are not to worship as a polytheist. I am the one and only God and so you are to worship, all of you together, at one place, the one place I will show to you.�

Where will this one place be? God has recently instructed Israel to ascend two mountains to proclaim the blessings and the curses? Will the one place be Mount Gerizim of Blessing or will it be Mount Ebal of Cursing? Before God reveals to Israel the place of worship, he instructs them in how to worship him.

In (6) we learn that worship is our giving to God. Israel is to bring to the one place her sacrifices, her tithes, special gifts, freewill offerings, and firstborn of her flocks. Our giving to God is a response to his generous giving to us. He is the ultimate source of everything we possess and enjoy. Our needs are ultimately met through him. Our sacrifices, tithes, gifts, offerings, and first fruits are token parts of what we have received from God. In gratitude we give them back to God. In doing so we acknowledge that God is the source of everything we possess. Part of our gifts to God offered in worship is used to provide feasting among us.

In (7) we learn that there is a horizontal aspect to our worship of God. In the presence of God we feast together! The focus of our feasting together in the presence of God is to rejoice in God’s blessings of us. Can you imagine the Church bereft of feasting? By divine command, the worshipping community of the Church is a feasting community. Fellowship, rejoicing, and gratitude mark the community as one that worships in the presence of God.

In (14) Moses repeats that this worship of the one, true God must happen in the one place, the one place God will set aside for all the people to gather in his presence. Israel may slaughter her animals in her many towns, but she is to gather all of the tribes to the one place to worship, to feast together in the presence of the Lord. What if the one place is a great distance from my town? Am I supposed to haul all of my raw meat for the feast by cart for several days? God’s law makes provision for those who live far away from the one place to join together in sub-communities to feast together. Then, these people who live far away are commanded to bring the special sacrifices, gifts, and offerings to the one place. The law of God thus made provision for local worship as well as centralized worship. The law outlines both vertical and horizontal aspects of worship. Nevertheless, the one place of worship seems to be most important.

Does the instruction concerning the slaughter of animals and the draining of blood make you squeamish? Does it offend you? We have removed ourselves from the slaughter of the animals we eat at supper. Very few of us have ever butchered a chicken, let alone a lamb. But our grandparents undoubtedly did so regularly at the farms they called home. The law of God given by Moses gives detailed instruction to the slaughter of animals and the draining of the blood. The founder of Islam, Mohammed, incorporated these laws into the Quran law. As the Muslim community grows in the Portland metro, we are noticing little Halaal markets opening in our strip malls. The markets sell meat that has been slaughtered and drained strictly according to the Halaal rules that are based upon the laws of God delivered by Moses. What is the purpose of these laws? Why is God interested in the slaughtering of animals and the draining of their blood? As we continue to study Deuteronomy, we shall discover that God is interested in all of the details and departments of our life and of this world. He is interested in our economies. He is interested in our health. He is interested in the proper use, care and protection of the animals. He is interested in worship of his holy name. He is interested in the fellowship of his children. But there is one interest and purpose behind these rules of slaughtering and draining of blood that rises above all other interests and purposes. These rules ultimately point to the One Person and his experience at the one place. The obeying of these rules was Israel’s anticipation of the One Person fulfilling the law at the one place.

Many people who oppose Christianity accuse us of being a cruel and sordid religion. Why would anyone choose to be part of a religion that is fixated upon the shedding of blood? Why would we choose to worship a God who allows his one and only Son to be crucified upon a Roman cross? Isn’t there something sick and wrong about the central image of our faith being a naked dead man hanging on a cross? The answer we should supply to those who accuse in this manner is this: “Yes, there is something sick and wrong about a naked, dead man hanging on a cross.� God command Israel to sacrifice animals; the surrounding nations sacrificed their children in the fire. God is protecting Israel from doing the same. Israel is not to worship God in the same way as their neighbors. God hates the sacrificing of children to the gods. If this is true, why, then, does God sacrifice his one and only Son?

On both historic sides of the law given by Moses, this sacrificing of the son is a tripping point for many people. God commanded Abraham to take his one and only son, Isaac, to the summit of Mount Moriah, to sacrifice him there as an act of worship of God. What kind of a God would issue such a command? At the summit of Mount Moriah, the angel of God stopped Abraham from plunging the dagger into the breast of his one and only son. God had provided a ram, caught in the thicket, a sacrifice in place of Isaac. Then God dispensed his law in full form through Moses, instructing Israel to sacrifice the blood of bulls and rams, a sacrifice for the atonement of sin. All of this sacrificing came to a screeching halt, fulfilled in the final and perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the one and only Son of the heavenly Father. But the fundamental problem of sacrificing the son has not gone away. Why would we worship a God who sacrifices his one and only Son?

Here’s the reason whether we like it or not. God is the Creator and controller of all creation. He is infinitely just, wholly justified in terminating the entire human race for its disobedience of his holy law. Out of his great love and mercy, God has made a way for his justice to be met and satisfied. He has offered up as a sacrifice his one and only Son, the Perfect Man, Jesus Christ. The heavenly Father did not allow his Son’s body to decay in the tomb but raised him to new life on the third day. In this way, the curse of death demanded by the law has been met.

Pagan religions spill blood and do so cruelly, and purposely to appease the gods, many gods who thirst for blood. The problem is not that Christianity is a bloodthirsty religion. The problem is that humanity is a bloodthirsty race. The human race is deserving of its own destruction, having rebelled against its Creator. The human race sheds the blood of its children out of selfishness. We control our population and seek to rid ourselves of problems by sacrificing our children. The heavenly Father sacrificed his son, not out of selfishness, but out of love for us. His Son willingly laid down his life in obedience to his loving Father. The bloodshed of pagan religions never comes to a stop. But the blood of Christ shed has brought all blood sacrifice to a halt in the true religion of the one, true God.

So what about this one place of worship so important to God? Where is it? After the law was given and Israel entered the land, God appointed in the golden days of David and Solomon, Mount Zion, the city Jerusalem, as the one place. Actually, the temple in the city and on the mountain was the one place and most specifically, the central and private Holy of Holies inside the temple was the one place. No one but the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies.

One day Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well. She asked him a question: “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.� The Samaritans were descendents of Jews who had intermarried with surrounding people groups and thus, they were offensive to the Jewish community. The Samaritans established a worship site on the summit of Mount Gerizim! I wonder how it is that they chose Mount Gerizim over Mount Ebal? Wouldn’t you choose the mountain of blessing over the mountain of cursing? Which mountain did Jesus choose? At the summit of Mount Zion, in the holy city of Jerusalem, wicked men in powerful offices condemned him to death on a mountain outside of the city walls. Golgatha is a little nob of a hill today. It was a bit bigger 2,000 years ago. In Abraham’s day it may have stood at an elevation that we westerners would recognize to be a small mountain. Golgatha, the hill upon which Jesus was crucified was none other than the Mount Moriah of Abraham’s day. It was the mountain of curse transformed to blessing. This is the mountain where the son of Abraham was spared by the kind provision of God. But in Jesus day, the Son was not spared. His life blood was spilt according to the ancient laws of Moses, so that all of God’s children might have life eternal.

The Samaritan woman said, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.� Jesus said, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in Spirit and in truth.�

So where is this one place? The one place is the One Person. We worship in and through Jesus Christ. United to him, we receive his Spirit and thus worship God in Spirit. Through Christ Jesus we receive the word of God, his very truth. We worship God according to his truth given to us through Jesus Christ. The one place is the One Person, Jesus Christ.

In the highest of all places, the heavenly Zion, there is no “temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and the Lamb is its lamp.� The high place, the one place is God. To him be the glory both now and forevermore. Amen.