Avoiding the Abominable
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Recap last week: Being careful to worship God’s way.
4 Characteristics of a place to worship God:
A place where God is present
A place where God’s people gather
A place that is different from the world
A place of ministry
Today’s passage: the warning is reiterated and a new specific sin is articulated: The sacrifice of children.
In the next chapter, the people will be warned about prophets who would come and attempt to steer the people of God astray.
This morning, we will hone in on vs 29-32
A question to ask ourselves: Why do God’s people need so many warnings about not sinning? Why are we surprised when people sin?
People are sinful. Paul writes about this in Romans. All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God. And Paul says that his people, the Jews, are not better off in this area. All have sinned. In fact, he writes of how the Jews had the prophets and the law, so they should be better off, but also that having the knowledge carries more responsibility, so that sin is more pronounced among those who have received the laws.
So even though ignorance is no excuse for the lawbreaker, the expert in the law is held to higher account for their transgressions.
Anyone who has trained for law knows that you have to memorize and review and study again, so that you get things right. No successful person in any field will have ignored all the wisdom they have learned; rather, they continue to read and study and learn so that they can avoid costly mistakes.
The point is that humans are forgetful and in need of constant reminding. I don’t recommend to people to read through the bible just once and never open it again, I recommend reading it again and again, becoming intimately knowledgeable about it. We cannot assume we have arrived and no longer need training.
“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land,
take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’
You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.
Very often in scripture, when God’s people are given a command, it is linked with a reminder of what God has done or something God has promised. Here in verse 29 we see this:
“When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land,
The people have been promised that God would cut off the nations before them. They would assume ownership of land that God was giving them, and this would mean that they would be dispossessing the nations who were currently occupying that place.
So there is hope being given in the promise of this land, and based on what the Lord was going to do, they were to obey this command.
They were going into a place that was their own inhabitation or property, but had been previously occupied by pagans who had vile worship of their demon gods. God’s people would be tempted to look into the practices of their predecessors in the land.
take care that you be not ensnared to follow them, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods?—that I also may do the same.’
God knew that his people would be tempted to sin, because He knows the nature of man. All have sinned, and all are sinful in their very nature: Rom5.12
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
The sin nature never stops trying to influence the person, even the person who has dedicated themselves to God and trying to serve him.
This is why we need so many reminders and warnings not to sin. Because our very nature is to sin.
Next, one of the most vile sins, which is referred to as abominable, is listed
You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
RC Sproul:
Child sacrifice was common in ancient times, especially in the Phoenician colony of Carthage in North Africa. In ancient pagan cultures, children were sometimes sacrificed in times of great need as an expression of devotion to a god (
Examples of God’s people violating this command not to sacrifice children are many:
And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand,
then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.”
So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand.
And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter.
And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.”
And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.”
So she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.”
So he said, “Go.” Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains.
And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel
that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.
Even the Psalms mention how the people violated this command:
They did not destroy the peoples, as the Lord commanded them,
but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did.
They served their idols, which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the whore in their deeds.
And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.
Notice how RC Sproul mentioned that children were sometimes sacrificed in times of great need. Some pro abortion advocates in our times say that abortion needs to be available because people cannot afford to have a child.
Abortion has been cited by the church of Satan in lawsuits demanding access to abortion because they claim it is part of their religious freedom to conduct abortions. There is truly nothing new under the sun.
You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to the their gods.
Every abominable thing. Things the Lord hates and forbids in worship are the things that are done in pagan worship.
God forbids fornication and sexual depravity in worship. Pagan worship includes it and it goes beyond seeming religious to be a way of life for many
God forbids self-mutilation, but pagan worship includes it, and even many troubled teens have vut themselves, and going even further, transgender mutilations have been attempted by some to be seen as a sacred right.
God forbids divination, sorcery, witchcraft, interpreting omens, casting spells, and fortune telling, but many seek out horoscopes and these types of abominations
God forbids consulting the dead
He forbids idols, sacred poles, pillars, or groves
Do you see the pattern? What God forbids in worship, false religions promote. What God says is abominable, false religions consider sacred.
Many people today think that there are sacred rights to abortion, to transgender mutilations, to sexual perversions.
God says no, he keeps reminding, he keeps warning.
“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.
This verse is a bridge to chapter 13. In the Hebrew bible verse 32 is included in the next chapter. God again is telling his people to be careful to do his commands, and not add or take away. This echoes Rev22.18-19
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book,
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
God’s people are told again and again to not add or take away from His commands. They are told not to take away or add to His teachings. The penalty for violating this is in the curses He has laid out
God wants us to take worship seriously.
The Regulative Principle of Worship:
Welcome to a Reformed Church: A Guide for Pilgrims The Word and Worship
Over the centuries, Reformed churches came to call these ideas the “Regulative Principle of Worship.”6 The Regulative Principle of Worship holds that we worship God in the manner He has commanded us in His Word. As the Westminster Confession says, “But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited to his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture” (21.1).
In the Reformed churches, we hold to this principle because we take the Bible seriously. It is God’s Word to us for our faith, as well as for our worship and Christian life. Scripture alone is our ultimate rule, and it sufficiently gives us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (
In Conclusion: We are Stewards of God’s Grace, so we must be careful to do all he has called us to do, and not fall into the temptations of the world around us:
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,
so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.
With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;
but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.
The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
