A reading from the book of Deuteronomy.
Be careful to follow these statutes and ordinances in the
land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to
possess all the days that you live on the earth.
Destroy completely all the places where the nations that
you are driving out worship their gods on the high
mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.
Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn their
ashrae poles, cut down the carved images of their gods and
wipe out their names from every place.
Don't worship the Lord your God this way.
Instead, turn to the place the Lord your God chooses from all
your tribes to put His name for His dwelling and go there.
You are to bring there your burnt offerings and sacrifices,
your tents and personal contributions, your vow
offerings and free will offerings, and the first born of
your herds and flocks. You will eat there in the
presence of the Lord your God and rejoice with your household
in everything you do, because the Lord your God has blessed
you. You're not to do as we are doing
here today. Everyone is doing whatever seems
right in His own sight. Indeed, you have not yet come
into the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God
has given you. When you cross the Jordan and
live in the land the Lord your God has given you to inherit,
and He gives you rest from all the enemies around you, and you
live in security, then the Lord your God will choose the place
to have His name dwell. Bring there everything I command
you, your burnt offerings, sacrifices, offerings of the
10th, personal contributions and all your choice offerings.
You vowed to the Lord. You will rejoice before the Lord
your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female
slaves, and the Levite who is within your city gates, since he
has no portion or inheritance among you.
Be careful not to offer your bird offerings in all the sacred
places You see, you must offer your bird offerings only in the
place the Lord chooses, in one of your tribes, and there you
must do everything. I command you the word of the
Lord. Let's pray together, Lord, Your
dwelling place is lovely. In your dwelling place is where
those who are gathered in your name lift up their voices and
praise your name. Your dwelling place, Lord, is
where your Holy Spirit is present, and we thank you that
you're present here this morning.
We also ask for open ears among everyone gathered here, everyone
listening, that we would hear your word from Deuteronomy
afresh this morning. I pray that you'd set us apart,
Lord, as your holy dwelling place, your sacred space, in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Please be seated. I invite you to turn to our Old
Testament reading today. It's Deuteronomy 12.
It's printed in your bulletins. You can turn there in your
Bible. It's close to the front part of
the Pentateuch, the last of the five books of Moses, and it's a
part of a sermon, extended sermon from from Moses, the
spiritual leader of the people of Israel.
We're in a series right in the middle of a series called Sacred
Spaces. Sometimes we think about heaven
and God as being distant and far away, but in this series we've
seen that what the Lord loves to do is to draw near and find
places of overlap where we can encounter Him right here in our
everyday life and be changed and set apart for His mission in the
world to renew all things. Now, today's sacred space, we,
you know, we've looked at the garden, we've looked at the
Tabernacle, we've looked at the mountain, and all of these have
different significance points. But today's sacred space is the
temple. And this one I think might bring
the greatest challenge to all of us.
Why? The temple is all about where
God chooses to dwell. It's his preference sets the
tone for where he meets with us and we are used to choosing how
we encounter God and there's a clash that we might feel
immediately as we and maybe you felt it when you were hearing
the Deuteronomy reading because so much about the temple is
where God chooses to dwell. Verse 5 turn to the place the
Lord your God chooses. Go there.
Verse 11, The Lord your God will choose the place to have His
name dwell. Verse 14 Offer burnt offerings
only in the place the Lord God chooses.
And this presents a dilemma to us who are so used to having all
kinds of choice, especially about personal things.
Will we worship the Lord God in the way He chooses or the way we
choose? Tara.
Isabella Burton is a young intellectual, and she chose for
many years how she would connect with the Divine.
I'm quoting here from an article she wrote.
She says I kept an an altar that was a fusion of Roman Saints,
icons, and Wiccan candles I purchased on the Internet.
I was a little bit Catholic, a little bit Episcopalian, a
little bit Jewish, and a little bit Pagan.
And what she was experiencing was like, hey, I have no use for
institutional religion that's failed so many people and I have
no interest in it. You don't get a choice in
institutional religion for how you connect with the divine.
And so instead she opted for what she called intuitional
religion. Intuitional religion.
She's not saying intuition's bad, but she's saying that the
way that she practiced her religious faith, the way that
she found spiritual meaning, was to make intuition the
foundation, the cornerstone of her spiritual life.
No more was it dogma. No more was it rules.
No more was it structure. It was intuition.
On that which would be built a flourishing spirituality.
In her book Strange Rights RITES, Strange Rights, Burton
describes how modern people do this.
They turn everyday experiences into something supercharged with
spirituality. So diet and exercise and
Wellness become supercharged with spirituality, or politics
and social activism become supercharged with spirituality.
Or relationships and dating and and romance become supercharged
with the divine or even technology and techno utopia
becomes this religion, almost semi religion or even immersive
theater and music and literature becomes the place where you
encounter something numinous and otherworldly.
And it's like there's little shrines everywhere, little gods
everywhere, there's spirituality everywhere.
And it sounds very trendy. It sounds very new and and some
measures of it are, but it turns out that this approach is not
new. In fact, verses 2 through 4
references many of the spiritual options available to God's
people as they approach the Promised Land.
Moses says destroy completely all the places where the nations
that you are driving out worship their gods.
On the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green
tree, tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn
their asharah poles, cut down the carved images of their gods,
and wipe out their names from every place.
That is the names of the gods represented by these totems and
these altars and these sacred shrines.
The closer Israel got from the wilderness to the Promised Land,
they encountered these upwardly mobile, urbane forms of
spirituality that were tempting them especially.
Hey, mix what you're doing with Yahweh.
That's interesting. Mix it with what we're doing,
and you'll have the optimum spiritual experience.
Everywhere they looked, there was deities and shrines.
I mean, it was right there. It was very convenient, very
pleasurable. Everywhere you hiked, everywhere
you went, there was a way to connect with something greater.
Let's say your crops weren't doing too well and you wanted
divine help. Well, you can make an offering
to bail. He was a Canaanite deity.
You had control over the agricultural situation.
And if you wanted a little bit more control over your life,
you'd make an offering to bail. And the promise would be he'd
make your crops grow. He'd make you more wealthy.
Or maybe you wanted more children for your family.
That was often a measure of survival for these families.
Would would they have children with these children survive
infancy and one of the ways that people sought a connection with
God that would help their families grow is they would make
an offering to Ashara. And Ashara was kind of Bale's
understood to be Bale's consort like his other half.
And there were temple prostitutes.
These references to the mountains and hills of every
green tree at some point in in that reference.
There's, there's a, there are prostitutes there that if you
could basically subscribe to their services, that was a way
for you to make an offering to a share.
You give some cash, you engage in, in worship of a share, and
then you're more guaranteed kids for your family.
And if and, and if the the person serving you conceives a
child, that child would be offered up in sacrifice.
And that was how the system worked.
And that was what Israel was tempted to do.
These religions, I, I think it's hard for us to understand how
much of A pull these religions had because they offered
security, they offered prosperity, they offered
pleasure, they offered everything that human beings
want. And it wasn't God choosing, it
was, it was us choosing. It was them choosing.
They got to choose all the time. And so we think about how would
this impact a community? How would this impact God's
people? And he makes an observation.
Moses makes an observation in verse 8.
You are not to do as we are doing here today.
Everyone is doing what seems right in his own sight.
Even as Moses is imparting God's word to the community, there's
chaos, it's pandemonium, it's random spiritualities
everywhere, and it's destroying the unity of the people of God.
You know, intuitional religion was not necessarily good forgot
it was leaving them scattered and confused.
And and what's underneath this is what's happening to the poor
and the marginalized who are trapped in these systems.
Think about the children being sacrificed.
Think about the women and the children serving in these
religions. Think about the the poor and the
servants who who who are breaking their backs or giving
their lives to keep the system running, keep the system going.
They were not faring well. They didn't have choice in the
matter. They were under the control of
bail and under the subtle control and tentacles of Ashara,
and they couldn't get out. And I wonder how much relief
they would feel to hear all those verbs that make us
uncomfortable in the modern era from verses 2 through 4.
Destroy completely, tear down, smash, burn, cut down, wipe out.
This was a destruction of intuitional and institutional
religion. That was that was absolutely
hurting and crushing people left and right.
How much relief would they feel, as one cultural commentator
asked, when we are all our own high priests, who is willing to
kneel? And the answer is the poor and
the marginalized and the weak. And I think that they rejoice to
hear some of those words. And some of you know what it's
like. Some of you are here and you've
been burned by institutional religion, or maybe you've been
burned by intuitional religion and you know what it's like to
be under someone's control and how hurtful that can be and how
destructive that can be. Or maybe you watch someone under
someone's control. The Lord never intended it to be
that way for us. He never intended people to be
to be crushed by the power of a system or a person.
He never intended God's people to worship, worship of the
living God and worship of Baal and to combine those things and
make a Frankenstein monster that crushes people.
And I want you to know the Lord's heart is for you and He's
the great Physician and He's here to heal you and welcoming
you into freedom and into life and into wholeness.
And I even invite you to let your heart rejoice when you hear
some of those words. Tear down, burn, destroy
completely because the Lord God is talking about foul
controlling systems that destroy the image of God.
It must no longer exists. It must be torn down.
Now, if bail represented control, Ashara represented
compromise. Compromise.
Ashara was very malleable and kind of like adjust to whatever
situation you're, you know, you're in, you're involved in
whatever commitments you have. I can work with that.
She was seen as sort of complimentary to the faith of
Yahweh, like, oh, we can worship Yahweh.
We could ever share. It's like totally like it works.
And for some people it worked, so to speak, but but the Lord
God didn't see it that way from the Lord God's perspective, like
this isn't working for me. This is spiritual adultery.
It's a betrayal of the covenant. Now, we don't worship Bashara in
our culture, but we might worship at the altar of what
Tara Isabella Burton called in between this, going back to her
spiritual life and spiritual journey.
She says this most demanding part of embracing Christianity
was sacrificing the safety of In between this I could no longer
be a little bit Pagan. Halloween parties that
ironically but not really celebrated witchcraft or other
staples of my secular New York life were no longer simply
curious parts of my spiritual eclecticism.
I had to pick a side. And she talked about how her
Christianity had to impact, if it was real, it had to impact
how much she was drinking and whether she was monogamous or
not, and how she engaged on social media and, and how she
planned her life and how she hosted parties and how she
engaged with her community. It had to impact all those
things. She had to pick a side.
And I think for some of us who've dabbled in in between
this, we've just got to ask ourselves, like, if I had to
pick a side, which side would I pick?
And if not, then when? Like when am I going to pick?
What am I going to choose? When will it matter in
betweenness? In betweenness can can wreck our
faith in our souls just like none in betweenness.
Worshipping, control and Baal. Institutional religion can leave
us hurt and disillusion. Intuitional religion can leave
us scattered and divided, as Saint Augustine prayed.
Our hearts are restless until we rest in Thee.
So true. And here's a good tonic for our
confusion and our hurt friends. It's that clear simplicity of
verse 4. Don't, don't, don't worship the
Lord your God this way. Repent.
Demolish all those foul things in your life.
Deconstruct all those false idols that hold you hostage.
But not just that. It's not just the neg.
God doesn't leave us with a void, with a negative.
He fills our life and fills our community with a positive,
unifying way forward. When we leave intuitional
religion behind, we can take up something much better, and that
is intentional worship. Intentional worship.
Intentional worship is friends, what we were made for.
Intentional worship is God's path for us, which he lays out
in verses 5 through following and I just want to like invite
you as we look at verses 5 through 9.
Investigate if your greatest fears about losing all your joy
and losing all your agency come true as the Lord God describes
it. Intentional worship starts with
showing up where God is present, showing up physically where God
is present. Verse 5 Instead, turn a great
word for leaving behind idols. Turn to the place the Lord your
God chooses from all your tribes to put His name for his dwelling
and go there. Turn and and go there.
Go where the Lord's name is. You'll notice that Moses doesn't
say go to the temple. Temple didn't exist yet.
This is the spiritual foundation of the temple, but it's not yet
the temple. He says go to the place God
chooses to place His name. The name of the Lord is his
personal presence. It's the story and reputation of
His saving acts. It's his glory and beauty.
It's his power and authority. Where the name of the Lord
dwells, there is power. And he bids us come join him, to
be in union with Him. Why do we love seeing our
favorite musicians play live? You know, like, what's the often
like? The quality of the music is not
as good as the recording, but it's so fun, isn't it?
To see the musician in person, to see them walk on stage, to
see them move around, to soak up their essence and their vibe and
watch them play and maybe even see them make some mistakes and
be like, oh, they're human too. And I love this artist and we
and walk away feeling like there was a connection made.
And This is why some some super fans follow them everywhere they
go. They they go to all of their
different concerts because they can't get enough.
Wherever the musician places their name, the fans want to go.
And wherever God shows up, he calls his people to show up
there too. Wherever he is in the
wilderness. He made his name dwell in in the
Tabernacle, as Father Samuel preached on last week.
It moved with the glory cloud and the nation followed it.
Years later, he did make his name dwell in Jerusalem in the
temple where the Ark of the Covenant was right smack in the
middle. And and God's people would make
pilgrimage from all over the world to to be in the presence
of the name of God when the Samaritan woman.
In our text today, ask Jesus where the proper place was to
worship God. She was asking where do we
physically go to gather around the name?
And Jesus said an hour is coming.
It's even here now when the true worshippers of God will worship
him in spirit and in truth. And ever since, where true or
three are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ, he's he's with
them in their midst, because in Jesus the fullness of God was
pleased to put the fullness of his name in Jesus.
And Jesus has seen fit to put the fullness of his presence in
the Holy Spirit, which is present where believers gathered
in his name. His name is the name above all
names. It's his death and resurrection.
It's his ascension, it's his sending his Spirit.
His name is his promises which are coming true and are true
already. His name is his glory and
authority. His name is the name before whom
all knee, every knee on heaven and earth will bow because He is
worthy of our, of our allegiance and our loyalty.
He's worthy of us smashing and tearing down all idols because
his name is the glory that fills the earth.
His name is the healing waters that can heal our greatest
wounds. His name is the resurrection
promised to us. When we gather here, we're
gathering around a building. We're gathering in the name of
Jesus and the building is a tool to do that.
And it's this tool goes away. He'll give us another place to
gather. But when we gather around the
name, we don't show up empty handed.
In verse 6, we are learning about something we can bring to
the celebration. Verse 6, you are to bring there
your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tents and
personal contributions, your vow offerings and free will
offerings, and the first born of your herds and flocks.
This is a description of sort of A-Z offerings that Israel will
bring throughout the year. Like you think about all the
seasons of the year, the Day of Atonement and the the Feast of
Booths and all of the different weekly and seasonal sacrifices.
It's like everything. This is the full Max of what
you're going to bring. And this is your personal
investment and contribution in worship.
And the Lord will take these contributions and he'll, he'll
bless them. And then out of this will come a
community and forgiveness and love and grace and a light for
the nations. God shows up with his name and
presence. We show up with our sacrifices
of grace, like overflowing with Thanksgiving for God.
And that's how a holy community is formed.
Now, some of you have already done this this morning.
You sacrificed something to be here, haven't you?
I think in our modern world, our wholehearted personal physical
presence is maybe our greatest sacrifice.
Our schedules, like you know how hard it is to get on someone's
schedule. The reason is because like, our
time is super precious in the city, really valuable, really
under demand, and being wholeheartedly in a place we're
all paying attention to the same thing and giving our hearts to
the same thing. Like that almost never happens
anymore unless you're being paid to do it.
And you guys aren't being paid to do it.
You're sacrificing to do it. Some of you rode 2 buses to get
here this morning. Some of you wrestled with
toddlers to put on Sunday shoes to get here this morning.
You know, some of you got up early and is.
Some of you said no to fun stuff and brunch and cool things and
festivals to be here this morning.
That was a sacrifice and it's beautiful in the sight of God.
And some of you have sacrificed much more than that.
Nights and weekends and Sunday mornings to be a part of a
ministry team or lifestyle adjustments to be sacrificially
generous so that the next generation can hear about the
deeds of God and showing up, you know, to your city groups when
you when you've got a headache after work, but you show up
anyway because you love the people there.
Those are beautiful sacrifices and God blesses it and sees fit
to form a community out of it. I was talking with someone in
our church this week about how like it makes sense for people
when you enter a nuclear family and you have kids and
everything. Like, of course I'll sacrifice
for them. Of course I'll show up to their
games. Of course I'll make dinner for
them when when I don't feel like it.
We're talking about how that that sense of like, whether I'm
feeling it or not, commitment is where the bonds of community are
formed, not only in the family, but in the church.
And thank you for showing that. Thank you for doing it, whether
you feel like it or not. It's interesting when I talk
with people who move away from Chicago, who've been part of
Emmanuel and and I talk with them about what life is like,
they're like, man, that's the best thing about Chicago was my
time at Emmanuel. But I never ever hear them
saying I really regret like the sacrifices I made to be a part
of the community. I never hear them say like I
wish I would have slept in maybe the morning of, but when they
reflect on the meaning of their life, like what was the meaning
of your time in Chicago? But like actually, the sacrifice
is part of the meaning and and the greater joy and community
and connection in the presence of with God and with others
being unified in around the name of the Lord.
Man. There was something really
precious about that. And that's that's God's way.
It it's part of the plan. Actually is is sacrifice, but
it's joyful. It's not a forced March.
It's it's not an obligation. It's it's willing and it's
joyful. As we see in verse 7.
It it's a there's an overflow. You will eat there.
Moses says you will eat there. You will eat there of Chicago.
Hear this. We will eat there in the
presence of the Lord our God and rejoice with your household and
everything you do because the Lord your God has blessed you.
He's blessed you. There's a joyful feast when God
calls us to gather in His name. You know we're at the beginning
of tailgating season. You're aware of this tailgating
season at stadiums all over this grand country, including a
Soldier Field. People show up sometimes as
early as 6:00 AM, apparently. They open their tailgates, they
start grilling their meats and young and old and people wearing
jerseys, and they're feasting with joy in the name of their
team, you know, celebrating victories past, however few they
may have been, always hoping for the victory to come, you know,
and it's joyful and it's awesome.
Now this is a much better celebration, this feasting,
verse 7, feasting in the presence of God because his
victory is a lot more sure. And there's a there's a GAT,
there's a sense of festivity and overflow of God's victories over
sin and death. We celebrate why?
Verse 7 says because the Lord your God has blessed you.
He's blessed you. The very food that you're eating
is part of his blessing. The family that you're eating
was as part of the blessing. The community that's surrounding
you is part of the blessing. The name that dwells there is
part of the blessing. Oh, the Lord your God has
blessed us. And so we gather around the
table, and we have that taste of the feast to come.
And I hope it spills out. And, and I've been talking with
people about this new season for our church, and there's this
hunger and this cry for feasting together.
And there's so many lonely people in our city who long to
be included at tables. May there be much feasting at
Emmanuel in our time. That's what it means to be a
temple of the living God. It's a feast of joy.
That's what intentional worship means.
And maybe we're intentional with our joy, and sometimes we feel
it and other times we don't. But it's the reality under which
we are standing. It's the cornerstone.
We can rejoice because God's deeds are good.
One really cool feature that the Lord has designed this
intentional worship with is is that He includes people that
would otherwise be left out, and we can even read about this in
verse 12. You will rejoice before the
Lord, your God, you, your sons and daughters, your male and
female slaves, and the Levite who is within your city gates,
since he has no portion or inheritance among you.
Can we see how radically inclusive this list is?
These, these many of these people would not have been
invited to participate in the intuitional religions of their
day and in many cases would have been left out in the
institutional religions of their day.
But here with intentional worship, they're they're
included, they're invited in and other iterations of the same
command and other and other parts of the Old Testament begin
to add other groups in that were being left out, widows and
orphans. And this continues into the New
Testament as we gather around the name of Jesus, that we don't
show partiality, that we include people up and down the social
ladder. And, and actually, that's part
of the beauty of the name of Jesus is who he wants to include
and who he wants to gather in to be a part of our table
fellowship. And there's a sense of joy and
justice that flow together in intentional worship.
But this doesn't happen automatically.
You know, part of the sacrifices that we make is that we we're
looking out for people that don't have anyone to talk to.
We're looking out for people who might feel left out or
intimidated. We're looking out for people who
might feel otherwise just invisible in every other part of
life. But here we have the eyes of
Christ to see them in the hands of Christ, to include them.
It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, this intentional
worship, you know. He chose to leave the comforts
of heaven and sacrifice Himself to, to, to, to dwell with us in
a humble, lowly place. He chose that His name would
dwell with the humble with us. And when He saw us scattered on
every high mountain and on every green hill and on every green
tree, He chose to go looking after us.
He chose to leave the 99 and find us and gather us in to join
Him in this intentional worship of joyful feasting.
He chose to, to to sacrifice for us so that we could be made one.
And so we're gathered, friends, you know, we're gathered here
not by our own choosing, but because he chose us.
He's gathered us, He's invited us in.
And we have responded freely to God's invitation to to join him,
to worship his name, to love our neighbor who has gathered around
us, and to celebrate that it was His name and his sacrifice and
His victory and His feast that has made us a new people.
So let's make it our intention, friends, to forever and now keep
the feast in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, Amen.