Deuteronomy 17:1-7 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Under the Sun Summer Worship Series Sunday, June 28, 2020 “The Sun Is Worshiped”
Last week in our worship, we heard about how the sun bowed down to a man named Joseph. This week, we’re talking about people bowing down to the sun. The one was a dream. It didn’t actually happen that the sun bowed down to Joseph. In fact, I kind of wonder what exactly it looks like when the sun bows down to someone, even in a dream. Unfortunately, though, the other one, the one we are talking about today, is very real. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not questioning whether Joseph had a dream, nor am I calling into question what that dream meant for Joseph. Things played out in history in exactly the way that God had given him a glimpse of, and he ended up in a position of great power. But the sun, the actual one in the sky, never bowed down to him. On the other hand, there are many people who have bowed down to or in some other way worshiped the sun. Perhaps you have heard of Ra or Re, the Egyptian god of the sun, often considered to be the chief of their gods. Helios is the name of the sun god in Greek mythology, and any number of descriptions of mythological sun gods picture the sun in a similar way to the way the Greeks described him: a charioteer riding across the sky in a blazing chariot. People have long realized that the sun is something special. The sun is incredibly powerful. It tracks a course, from our perspective, across the sky again and again on a daily basis. In the summer it rises higher above our heads, and we feel the difference. The temperature rises, sometimes drastically. In the winter, the angle of the sun’s rays is lower, and that area cools. In some places, it gets incredibly cold. The sun provides energy for plants. Animals bask in its warmth. It can sunburn skin for those who are not careful, and the objects that absorb its heat can cause serious burns. The sun seems constant and predictable and powerful. And so some people, historically, have determined that it was worth worshiping. And that would have been the case around the time our sermon text from Deuteronomy. In round numbers, the writing of Deuteronomy puts us about 1500 BC. This is the time of Moses who was leading the people of Israel, the descendants of Joseph and his brothers. He was leading them out of the land of Egypt and eventually to the Promised Land. And this is the time where at Mount Sinai, God was giving his people instructions about how they were to organize and live and worship. Included among his instructions were ten special commandments. The very First Commandment and the primary lesson God wanted his very own people to know was this: that he is the only God. Since he is the only God, there should be no other gods. There should be worship of no one and nothing else. God had chosen these people. He had selected them for reasons of his grace, his undeserved love, alone. Through them and to them he had given the promise of a Savior. And God wanted them to know and to believe it. He wanted them to know the depth of his love, the love that had saved them from slavery in Egypt, the love that would save them from slavery to sin. God wanted them to know his love and to love him in return. He wanted them to worship him. He wanted them to have a relationship with him. And so he taught them how they could worship and honor him. He invited them to bring sacrifices and burnt offerings. But don’t bring the ones that are lame and diseased. Don’t bring the ones that no one else would want. Let it be a sacrifice. Let it be an offering. And then God continued to give prohibitions against idolatry. There was to be no worshiping other Gods, like the supposed gods of the nations of Canaan, those who previously lived in the Promised Land. And the reason this passage has become a part of our summer worship series is that in it God specifically outlines that no one among his people was to bow down to the sun. No one was to bow down to the sun or the moon or anything else. And yes, God was serious about this. There would be a severe penalty for any who disobeyed. The penalty was death. This was an abomination that would completely change the character of the people who had been called to be God’s own and therefore it could not be tolerated. God made rules. He put policies in place
so that people wouldn’t be wrongly accused or punished. He wanted to avoid innocent people being executed, but he made it completely clear that this behavior, idolatry, was absolutely forbidden. Now, certainly, we are not talking about imposing the death penalty on idolaters today. That doesn’t take into account the context of these words or the government and freedoms that have been granted to us today. But in that specific context, God was working through those people to preserve the line of the Savior. He had his plan to maintain a chosen people from whom the Savior would be born. And the severe penalty was what he determined. Just because we don’t face the death penalty for idolatry, though, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t warn us against it. It is the First Commandment after all. God’s prohibition against idolatry recognizes that sinful people have a tendency to turn their attention away from the Creator and to focus on the created things instead. God has given us a great blessing in the sun, which marks days and seasons and years and that makes the world he has given us operate. But we struggle with focusing only on what we can see rather than on the One we do not see, the One who created it all. We struggle with the notion that God is invisible, even though he has left evidence of himself in the creation all around us. And we struggle even more at times when he seems to completely disappear when things aren’t going the way that we expect or even demand. We need to learn a lesson from these prohibitions to the Israelites, though, because God is not only our Creator, he is also our Savior. Heaven is our home and our lives on earth have meaning because we know and believe in him. And when we allow our focus, our attention, and even our worship to go elsewhere, our faith is at risk. God has made us his own people. He doesn’t want us to walk away from that. He wants us to fear and love and trust in him above all things. Because he loves us. He wants us to live with him forever. And so you might already be thinking, “I am here in church (or taking the time to watch online). I don’t struggle with idolatry. I would never worship the sun. I only worship God.” Praise God that we feel that way and that we intend to act that way. But that is also the reason we need to say a bit more about idolatry. There are some obvious forms of idolatry: practicing another religion, building an idol, bowing down to the sun or the moon. We might call these actions open idolatry. We also recognize that there are more subtle, and perhaps because they are so subtle, even more dangerous forms of idolatry. We could call this secret idolatry. Secret idolatry comes down to this: to worship God means to put him first in our hearts and in our lives. Anything else that takes his position as number one in our hearts and in our lives is an idol, it is a replacement god. I alluded to the way that Martin Luther explained the First Commandment earlier. He said, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” And when that happens, we strive to live the lives that he asks from us. But if we fear or love or trust in something else more than in God, it becomes and idol for us. When we are afraid of a disease and our first thought is not to pray to God and to trust his protection, but to turn fallible and sometimes self-contradictory experts, we bow down before the idol of science or politics. When we think that our future is secure because the stock market is trending properly and the savings account is full, we are bowing down to the idol of money. When we ridicule and mock others who don’t think the same way that we do, or treat others harshly instead of kindly, we are bowing down before the idols of pride and selfishness. It is sad to say that the objects of our idolatry are diverse and widespread. And God looks at all of this, knows all of this, and he hates it. He calls it as it is and labels it as an idolatrous abomination. And, amazingly, he loves every one of those idolaters anyway. He sent his Son Jesus to die for a world of idolaters, a world of sinners. He proved himself to be the only God by living in our world and giving glimpses of his glory in miraculous signs and wonders and dying for our sins and then rising from the grave. So he calls us warmly. Why would we want to worship anyone or anything else? Only the true God has loved and saved us. And so we bow down before him. We worship him. We thank him for all the amazing things that he has created for us, like the sun. And we focus on him rather than them. And we look forward to the day when he will no longer be invisible to us, but we will see him and be with him forever.
The Text: Deuteronomy 17:1–7 Do not sacrifice to the Lord your God any ox or sheep that has any kind of defect or serious flaw, because that is something detestable to the Lord your God. If there is found among you (within the gates of one of your cities that the Lord your God is giving you) a man or a woman who is doing something that is evil in the eyes of the Lord your God by transgressing his covenant, 3 or a man or a woman who is going and serving other gods and bowing down to them or to the sun or to the moon or to any of the army of the heavens, something that I have not commanded, 4 and you are told about it and you listen and investigate diligently, and it is established that the charge is true and that this abomination has been committed in Israel, 5 then you are to bring that man or that woman who has committed this evil out to your city gate, and you are to stone that person to death, whether man or woman. 2
A person is to be put to death on the basis of the testimony of two or three witnesses. No one is to be put to death based on the testimony of one witness. 7 The hands of the witnesses are to be the first ones raised against him when putting him to death, and after that the hands of all the other people. In that way you are to purge the evil from among you. 6