A Community of Worship
For Meditation (Corey Widmer)
As the people of Israel stood on the threshold of the Promised Land, the very first instruction God gave them wasn’t about how to build cities or manage their farms—it was about how to worship. Before God taught them how to live, He taught them how to love.
Deuteronomy 12 paints a beautiful and deeply relevant picture of worship at the center of life. God calls His people to tear down false altars and gather around the place He will choose to put His Name. In other words, worship is not something we invent; it’s the response we offer to the God who reveals Himself and draws us near.
This passage holds together several tensions that continue to shape faithful worship today: worship that is exclusive (directed to the one true God) and yet inclusive (open to all people and nations); centralized around God’s chosen presence and yet decentralized into every home and moment of daily life; communal and yet deeply personal; marked by joy and also reverence.
All of these find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the true Temple and center of our worship—who gathers His people, fills them with joy, and sends them into the world so that all of life becomes praise.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
Why do you think God begins the laws of Deuteronomy with worship rather than ethics or justice? What does that reveal about what’s central to our lives?
In what ways can our worship today be both exclusive (faithful to God alone) and inclusive (welcoming to the world God loves)?
How does our gathered worship on Sundays shape and sustain worship in the rest of life?
What helps you personally experience both joy and reverence in worship?
What might need to be “torn down” in your life so that God truly remains at the center of your worship and love?
Deuteronomy 12:1–14
These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land. Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.
You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. There, in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the Lord your God has blessed you.
You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you. But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. Then to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name—there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the Lord. And there rejoice before the Lord your God—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites from your towns who have no allotment or inheritance of their own. Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.
Read along with us this fall! Download our Deuteronomy Reading Guide here.