In the first three chapters we have considered certain principles related to oneness. Beginning with this chapter we shall devote our attention to a number of details. The first of these details is the unique place of God's choice for keeping oneness. In Deuteronomy 12, 14, 15, and 16 the unique place of God's choice is mentioned at least sixteen times. For example, in Deuteronomy 12:5 Moses charged the people to go "unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose." According to Deuteronomy 14:23, God's people were to eat the tithes before the Lord their God in the place which He would choose. The fact that this matter of the unique place is mentioned again and again reveals its crucial importance.
The book of Deuteronomy is concerned with the enjoyment of the riches of the good land, a land described as flowing with milk and honey. The words recorded in this book, the last book of Moses, were given at a time when the children of Israel had come to the border of the good land and were about to enter in and possess it. Because Moses was concerned about their enjoyment of the good land, he spent a great deal of time to instruct them regarding life in the land. The book of Deuteronomy, therefore, is a word spoken by an aged, loving father concerning the future enjoyment of the children.
In Deuteronomy 12 the desire of God's heart with respect to the living of the children of Israel in the good land is made known. Verse 1 speaks of the statutes and judgments that God's people were to observe in the land. In the next verse Moses presents the first of these statutes: "Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall dispossess served their gods" (Heb.). In verse 3 Moses goes on to say, "Ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their dedicated pillars, and burn their wooden symbols with fire, and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place" (Heb.). Before the children of Israel could have a full enjoyment of the riches of the good land, they had to utterly destroy the heathen places of worship. All the pagan worship centers had to be utterly destroyed. Every place in which the heathen peoples had worshipped idols was to be destroyed, no matter whether such places were "upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree" (v. 2). God's people were to overthrow their altars, break their dedicated pillars, burn their wooden symbols, and hew down the graven images of their gods. Furthermore, they were to destroy the names of them out of that place. Three main things were to be dealt with: the places, the images, and the names. This reveals that the good land was to be thoroughly cleared of all the heathen centers of worship.
Deuteronomy 12:4 says, "Ye shall not do so unto the Lord your God." This indicates that the children of Israel were not to worship the Lord in the same way as the heathen worshipped their gods.