Deuteronomy chapter 12

vs 23

More repetition. No blood.

vs 24

Discard it.

vs 25

This formulae of things going well for you marks this out as one of the laws Israel is to follow. It might also mark a break between sections, but I'm not sure about that.

vs 26

So now we're back to those people who can reach the place God chooses. Or are we? It could be that the relaxation above is only for the sake of eating meat. But they possibly were still expected to bring their grain offerings and other things.

vs 27

Blood is importantly sacrificed, but not consumed - you may eat the meat, but even in sacrifice the blood is not for God's people. It is kept separate, holy if you will.

vs 28

And there is the ritualistic sort of saying that goes with following a rule.

vs 29

Now again the focus goes to the nations who are being driven out, and what happens after that. God looks ahead - he tells Israel what he's going to do after the immediate problem is solved. That's what faith is meant to look like, I suppose - we should be looking forward to what happens next, and planning strategically, because we should have faith that God is going to work.

We might say that we don't know what's going to happen with the same clarity that Israel knew that God was going to drive people out before them, but they still were lacking in faith and ended up not being able to drive them out. Surely if we know the mind of God through being transformed by his renewing, then we can do such strategic planning.

vs 30

You might not think that it is strategic planning to think about what not to do after something has been accomplished. Well, I would say that if you are thinking ahead, you are more likely to think about what should and shouldn't be done. Sometimes our biggest mistakes come after we achieve something quite exemplary for God, because we just lose it in the moment and do something silly.

vs 31

This makes me think of politics, or teaching. Christians might strive to get power or influence in these fields, which is very godly. But they spend so much time thinking about how they will win the battle to get influence, that once they've got it, they don't know what to do - they haven't thought about how they should use their influence! They just figure that having Christians in the position is better than having a non-Christian. But then they don't know what to do, so what do they do? They turn to non-Christian practices that were being done before they got there, and lo and behold that nothing much changes. Certainly not as much as should have changed.

vs 32

At first I thought one of these was easier than the other - probably that not taking away was easier than not adding to. After all, If you respect the laws, you won't ditch them. Of course, every time we fail to obey a law we are in fact taking it away from the laws. Adding laws is all too easy too, but the reason we do that is because we think that there is something missing, which shows an innate lack of trust in God to supply what we need.