✝️🔎TOPIC: DO NOT DEFILE YOURSELF
WATCH TODAY’S DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE VIA THIS LINK BELOW 👇🏽
✝️📖TEXT: DEUTERONOMY 14:3 -21(NKJV)
3. ” You shall not eat any detestable thing.
4. “These [are] the animals which you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat,
5. “the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.
6. “And you may eat every animal with cloven hooves, having the hoof split into two parts, [and that] chews the cud, among the animals.
7. “Nevertheless, of those that chew the cud or have cloven hooves, you shall not eat, [such as] these: the camel, the hare, and the rock hyrax; for they chew the cud but do not have cloven hooves; they [are] unclean for you.
8. “Also the swine is unclean for you, because it has cloven hooves, yet [does] not [chew] the cud; you shall not eat their flesh or touch their dead carcasses.
9. ” These you may eat of all that [are] in the waters: you may eat all that have fins and scales.
10. “And whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it [is] unclean for you.
11. ” All clean birds you may eat.
12. “But these you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard,
13. “the red kite, the falcon, and the kite after their kinds;
14. “every raven after its kind;
15. “the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the seagull, and the hawk after their kinds;
16. “the little owl, the screech owl, the white owl,
17. “the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the fisher owl,
18. “the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe and the bat.
19. “Also every creeping thing that flies is unclean for you; they shall not be eaten.
20. “You may eat all clean birds.
21. ” You shall not eat anything that dies [of itself;] you may give it to the alien who [is] within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you [are] a holy people to the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.
✝️📜STUDY:
God made distinctions between clean animals that the Israelites were permitted to eat and the unclean animals they were not allowed to eat. This was to set Israel apart as His own people so that they would be holy unto Him. Verse 21 clearly shows that the strangers living among them were allowed to eat some of the forbidden meat. By this, God was telling them that because the Israelites were set apart as His own possession, they were a special people, responsible and accountable to Him. Thus they were not to live like the Gentile nations around them.
Under the New Testament dispensation in which the legalistic ordinances relating to food and interaction with non- Jewish people have been removed as shown to Peter (Acts 10:9-10), the law of true holiness still remains. The apostles emphasised this in their letter to the Gentile believers by telling them to abstain from
food sacrificed to idols, strangled meat, eating of blood and sexual immorality (Acts 15:1ff). This still applies to us today (Acts 15:20, 28-29, Col. 2:16,21). Christians, though at liberty in Christ, are to abstain from cultural practices connected with idolatry, not only as it relates to food but every ramifications. The Bible admonishes that Christians should run away from anything associated with idolatry
and sexual perversion. “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s”(1 Cor. 6:20, NKJV).
✝️🙏🏽PRAYER: Lord, help me to live my life in holiness as a person set
apart for You in Jesus ‘ Name. Amen.
