Week 59, Day 5: Because you are different

Today’s Reading:  Deut 14:1-29

Some thoughts from today’s reading…

Moses goes on to tell the children of Israel that they are not to eat any detestable thing.  He reminds them of the animals that they may and may not eat of.  What I want to focus on in this post is why they were to make this distinction in their eating choices.  It is because God has chosen them for His own possession as a holy people.  Therefore they were to be different.  God tells them what foods they are to abstain from as part of their distinctiveness.  Because they are God’s people, a holy people, they were to have different standards for what they ate.  Many have tried to explain why the distinctions are made between these animals.  Why Israel could eat one animal but not another one.  What I am emphasizing here is that because they belonged to God it required them to maintain a different lifestyle than those people who were of the nations around them.  It has always been the case that God’s people had a different standard than those of the world.  I am sure that the gentiles would not have understood why they didn’t eat certain things or may have thought it even strange, but that didn’t change the fact that in order to be pleasing to God the Israelites had to keep to God’s instructions. 

Question:  What commands today do you think cause Christians to stand out from those in the world?  What commands might the worldly think strange?

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