A particularly enjoyable thing to do is to read an article on something you’ve thought a lot about and to come away with a number of insights. Daniel Block’s article on Deuteronomy 12 is excellent, and especially worthwhile for anyone formerly in the History of Ancient Israel class. Entitled “The Joy of Worship: The Mosaic Invitation to the Presence of God,” the article is in the April 2005 issue of BibSac. A few quotes from the article to encourage you to read it.
“Many Christians think of Israelite worship as boring and repetitive rituals performed by the priests on behalf of worshipers who stood by passively observing the proceedings. But the picture Moses painted here in Deuteronomy differs radically from this image” (147).
“This is as much an invitation to continuous and repeated fellowship with Him as it is a command to appear before Him regularly” (145).
And one to provoke your thinking (is Block right on this?): When Paul declared that there was no difference in people before God (Gal 3:28), “he was not addressing an Old Testament problem. Instead he was correcting the misogynistic social developments reflected in rabbinic writings and institutionalized in the design of Herod’s temple, with its separate courts of the women and Gentiles, respectively. But this kind of social stratification in the assembly of worshipers is foreign to the Old Testament” (137).
And finally, “Those who worship God in spirit and in truth are…to recognize that in worship what He says is always more important than what believers have to say to Him (cf. vv. 6-11)” (149).
Recommended!