New And Improved is Not Improved at All

“Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee.” (De 16:21 AV)

As a child, my father had purchased a bit of land that was originally a potato farm.  He dug a two-acre pond, planted a massive amount of fir trees, and allowed the rest to revert back to nature.  We used this land as a place of rest and exploration.  We cleared a court for volley ball and badminton.  There was the every-under-construction log outhouse.  There was the fire pit for cooking and the fire pit for water sterilization.  We took our bicycles with us and had our own wilderness BMX trail.  One particular activity was for all us boys to build our own ‘forts’.  My father would not allow us to cut down trees, but we were able to use fallen timber to construct our own ‘home-away-from-home’ which no one was allowed to visit.  No matter how crude, we took pride in our shelters.  They were something that we built from our own imagination and with our own craft.  It wasn’t nature.  It was a manipulation of nature.  Such is the case above.  Improving on, or modifying God’s design because man might have a bit of pride in doing so, was forbidden.

The Hebrew word for ‘…grove…’ is the same word used as the name for a Phoenician goddess.  Although in this particular passage, the grove that was planted was not carved into a goddess, the images mentioned in verse twenty-two were.  The altar was to remain in the court of the tabernacle and eventually the temple.  If the children of Israel were to plant groves to surround the altar, one of two things were true.  They would have to replace the tabernacle with something of their own design, or believe they were improving on God’s original design.  Either way, if they were to do this, they believed God’s design lacked a certain human ‘flare’ and the addition of groves or idols would only enhance the worship experience.

I have been around a long time.  I have seen many things.  There is a fine line between divinely ordained and designed worship and man’s attempt at improving upon it.  It is easy to cross over into what is not of the LORD and purely man-made.  Much of what we offer today has too much humanity in it.  This is the entire foundation of bible translation perversion.  This is the foundation of much of what we call Christian music today.  Even preaching has devolved into this practice of commentary on our behalf and little to do with Holy Spirit empowered and lead preaching.  I have been guilty of this very thing.  Holy Spirit led worship cannot be improved upon.  Mankind and God’s people have been tempted to do this since Cain offered vegetables.  To the LORD, this is an abomination.