NOVEMBER 11
TOPIC: DO NOT FOLLOW UNNECESSARY DEEDS
Memory verse:-
You are the children of the lord your god. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, for you is a people holy to the lord your god. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession. Do not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep.
You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud. However, of those that chew the cud or that have a divided hoof you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the hyrax. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a divided hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you the pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses. Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales. But anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean.
You may eat any clean bird. But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the cormorant, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat. All flying insects are unclean to you; do not eat them. But any winged creature that is clean you may eat. Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner. But you are a people holy to the lord your God. do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
-Deuteronomy 14:1-21
R.M. Edgar gives 5 reasons about which God forbade the act of making themselves bald for the dead. Two out of the five he wrote that:
I. What was meant by cutting one's self and making one's self bald for the dead? It implied manifestly some post-mortem merit and service. It was akin to the sacrifices which often have been presented in connection with death. It was the sacrifice of something short of life, but yet valuable. It was the sacrifice of sightlines, if not of beauty, in the interests of the dead. It implied that something could be done for the departed by those who remained, and which self-denying love gladly undertook. Hence these practices brought out the hopelessness of sorrow as it exists in the heathen world, and the desire to propitiate offended deity by sympathetic suffering and sacrifice.
II. The prohibition summoned the Jews to hopeful sorrow. The dead were to be regarded as in the hands of god, and he was to be trusted with them absolutely. No post-mortem sacrifices were to be attempted, but the cases left with implicit confidence to the ever-living and gracious father. "Prayers for the dead" and "masses for the dead" but express the pity of human hope, and the dread and doubt with which the dead are left in the hands of god. Israel was prohibited from any such infirmity.
I see that the lesson there from for as Christians is simple, we need not to follow unnecessary sacrifices and acts which are not approved by our lord.
Prayer:-pray for more insight into the word
pray for righteousness devoid of hypocrisy
What to meditate on:
Do we need to avoid eating all that are mentioned above as Christians?
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