You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you. (Deuteronomy 18:13-14)
As mentioned in the previous devotion, the people of God are not to follow the ways of the nations, and in particular, we are not to think it appropriate to consult wizards, charmers and fortune tellers. These are abominable practices for which God determined to drive the Canaanites from the land for all time. Nevertheless, there have always been those among God’s people who ignored His instruction to their detriment. For instance, toward the end of his life, Saul consulted a medium. It was not long after this that the one who had murdered priests and sought to murder David ended up taking his own life. The point: witchcraft and the like is rebellion and rebellion leads to destruction.
And so the LORD challenges His people to abandon this mindset and avoid its pitfalls altogether by being “blameless, or wholehearted” before the LORD. The Hebrew word is תמים tamim and means, “undefiled, pure lacking nothing — perfect.” This is the same word that is used when God said to Abraham, “Walk before me and be perfect (tamim).” It is also the word that Messiah would used when He said to rich, young ruler, “If you want to be perfect (tamim), follow Me.”
In other words, in spite of the world’s pitch that these abominable customs are needful and help to enhance life, the Creator of the Universe says that we don’t need these things to make life perfect. To the contrary, these customs are inherently deadly and should be considered as lethal as any poison known to man. Besides, by staying away from such we can be tamim — blameless before Him and lacking nothing in our lives. We don’t need to confer with so-called fortunetellers and diviners, we have the Spirit of God working in our lives. If we are attentive to His Voice, He will tell us everything we need to know about today and tomorrow. As it is written, “Surely the LORD does nothing unless He tells it unto His servants, the prophets.” Enough said.
Blessings and Shalom,
Bill
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