May 6, 2022
Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 12:2-4
Destroying pagan worship
We read in Deuteronomy 12:2-4:
2 You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. 4 You shall not worship the LORD your God with such things.
We read a lot of passages similar to this. Yahweh wanted His people to destroy places of pagan worship.
Now, we read through those passages and yes, that’s nice and all but have we thought about how this also applies to us? It’s easy to simply discover what God commanded the Israelites, but how should this affect us?
Certainly, there are no high places, sacred pillars, altars, and wooden images that we must destroy unless you have those in your own backyard.
So, what could be the lessons we must learn from these passages?
Here’s an important lesson:
All of us, to some extent, have pagan places of worship in our hearts.
These places represent the type of worship that we do for other “gods” that we may have. Whatever we see as more important than Yahweh, that’s our pagan worship.
The problem is not that we don’t worship. Instead, the problem is that we worship too many things that there is little worship left for God.
We may worship ourselves, others, material wealth, our job, education, worldly entertainment, and so much more that we are worshiping the creation rather than the Creator.
Like what was commanded to the Israelites, we must destroy these pagan places of worship in our hearts. We must see to it that our hearts are only reserved for true worship.
We must utterly and completely destroy the altars and high places of “pagan worship” in our lives.
Only then we will be able to worship the Almighty in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).
To learn more about loving God, please watch, “What is your greatest passion in life?“
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