The Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the Land of Promise that He might dwell among His people and that they might worship Him faithfully and sacrificially. The Lord did not permit them to worship wherever they wanted, but in the place He willed. In fact, God instructed the people in Deuteronomy 12:11, “Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you.” In time that place would be Jerusalem (I Kings 11:36).
Jehovah directed His people to offer spiritual sacrifices in the place of His special presence. For the nation or for an individual to worship in another place or in another way, contrary to God’s commands, would blaspheme God. They were to follow His specific orders.
In our day, we worship the Lord where His name is, where His special presence is: in the church. We don’t substitute church, neither do we create a kind of church that contradicts the Bible’s teaching. We follow God’s specific commands and worship Him faithfully and sacrificially in spirit and in truth in the church.
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