A Place for God's Name: Deuteronomy 12 and the Throne of Your Heart

Israel is standing at the edge of the Jordan. The wilderness is behind them. The promised land is in front of them, and it is full of altars to other gods.

Before God says one word about where He will meet with them, He tells them to tear all of it down.

“Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.” (Deuteronomy 12:2-3)

Only after that does He make the promise:

“But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come:” (Deuteronomy 12:5)

God would put His name in that land. But He would not move in beside the idols.

As I studied this passage, it felt as though God was asking me a question. I want to ask you the same one.

Is your heart a place where God’s name dwells? Put another way, is there room for God in your heart? Or have you filled it with things from the world, things that have crept up and taken the throne where He ought to be sitting?

Before God put His name there, the land had to be cleared

Over time a life fills up. It happens through distractions, comforts, and habits, and none of them seem very large on their own. Then one day you realize they have taken you a long way from God.

That is why the heart has to be purged, and purged regularly.

If you want to see God’s glory, if you want to hear His voice speak in your heart, your heart has to be a place where He can dwell. So where is your heart today? Is it in a condition where God can meet with you and put His name there?

There are three things in this passage I want you to see.

1. A heart left to itself goes backward

Start with the hard truth. Sin comes naturally. Living for God does not.

If you and I were left to ourselves, every one of us would go after the flesh. We require constant maintenance and constant attention to stay in obedience to God.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

The world says to follow your heart and do whatever you think is best. God says not to. Your heart will lead you away from Him. Left alone, it will lead you to want nothing to do with Him at all.

That is our natural state. Until we graduate to glory, we will struggle with it.

Look at what happened to a people who followed their own hearts:

“But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers.” (Jeremiah 7:23-26)

Went backward, and not forward. When you follow your heart, you do not progress. You regress. Things do not get better. They get worse.

We like to think we have a better plan, one better than God’s and better than the people older and wiser than us who walked with the Lord before we did. But the verdict of that passage is plain: they did worse than their fathers.

“The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” (Proverbs 29:15)

That is you and me. Left to ourselves, we bring shame. Wisdom comes by way of correction.

Nobody wants conviction. Nobody enjoys reproof. When Saul of Tarsus was on the road to Damascus, the Lord told him:

“And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” (Acts 9:5)

Those pricks were conviction, and conviction is exactly what you need. It turns you from what is hurting you. It stops you from going backward. You do not make one decision and coast on it for the rest of your life. Keeping your heart where it belongs is a fight every single day.

You cannot split the throne

Here is where many of us try to cheat. We want the desires of our heart and the things of the world, and we still want to serve God.

It does not work that way.

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24)

There are a lot of people with one foot in the world and one foot in the church, trying to please the flesh and please God at the same time. Read that verse again. If you are still holding on to the world, then in your heart you are despising God. You are despising His right to be your Lord and your Master.

God will not share the throne of your heart with the world.

So who is sitting on it? Is it Christ, or is it the world?

Are you sure the Spirit lives there?

“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” (Romans 8:6-9)

Before salvation, it is impossible for anybody to please God. It does not matter how religious you live, how much you do, or how much of the flesh you deny. If you have never repented of your sin and been born again, you can put on a show, but God knows it is not real.

So I have to ask you first: have you been born again? Does God’s Spirit live in you? Have you received the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?

If you have, then hear the second half of this. A born-again believer who chooses to live in the flesh is anything but pleasing to God. You cannot please Him by serving Him half-heartedly while secretly living in the world.

2. Destroy even the names

The problem is a wicked heart that keeps pulling you away from God. The right response is to detest sin.

After salvation the Holy Spirit lives in you.

“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19)

So what kind of environment are you giving Him to live in? If you are saved and living in the flesh, He still dwells in you. But I can assure you that you are grieving Him.

“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)

God knew Israel’s heart. He knew that if they left any of those altars standing, any grove or any graven image, they would always be tempted to go back. The same is true for you. If there is something God wants out of your life and you refuse to destroy it, it will remain a source of struggle between you and Him. Your walk with God will never be what it could be.

And He does not mean only the things that are easy to get rid of. He means everything.

Look at the end of Deuteronomy 12:3 again: “and destroy the names of them out of that place.”

He does not stop at getting rid of the idol. He tells them to destroy its very name. You need to love your Savior so much, and hate that sin so much, that you do not merely stop doing it. You want nothing to do with it, and even its name fades out of your mind.

How much do you detest your sin? Or do you quietly bring it back? It has been said that after salvation we sin because we love it. That is worth thinking about.

Do not keep the silver off the idol

“The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the LORD thy God. Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.” (Deuteronomy 7:25-26)

Notice the temptation God is closing off. Israel would burn the idol, but the silver and gold on it looked useful. Surely God would not mind if they kept that?

We do the same thing. We get rid of what we think will please God, and we hang on to the parts we think He will not care about, or the parts that seem good for us. God says to get rid of all of it. The silver will snare you.

That word detest is a strong one. It carries the idea of thrusting something away. Do you hate what God hates enough to push it out of your heart and out of your life, so that the throne of your heart belongs to Him and Him only?

Not just the sin, but the weight

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,” (Hebrews 12:1)

Getting rid of the sin makes sense to us. But God says the weights have to go too.

Something may not be sin and still be a hindrance in your walk with God. What is it in your life that is slowing you down and keeping you from a closer walk with Him?

You owe the flesh nothing

“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (Romans 8:12-13)

You are a debtor, but not to the flesh. If you have been born again, you are in debt to the Lord Jesus Christ. He paid it all on the cross, and you could never repay Him. We owe Him everything. There is nothing too much to give Him.

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” (Galatians 5:24)

You cannot go back to something that is dead. So if the flesh has been crucified, why do we keep going back to it?

This is a daily choice. It is not once and done. Every day you choose to put down the flesh and not go back.

And it is worth it.

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:14-18)

There is no sacrifice so great that Christ will not make it worth it. No suffering for His sake will be too much in the end. Every time you say no to the flesh for Christ, it will be worth it.

3. Delight in the God who chose to dwell with you

Hating sin is half of it. The other half is the question of how much you love your Savior.

If you truly delight in Him, hating sin gets easier. It stops being a drudgery and becomes a pleasure. If something offends Him, you will gladly put it down.

Once the false gods are gone, there is room for God to put His name there:

“But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the LORD your God giveth you to inherit, and when he giveth you rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety; Then there shall be a place which the LORD your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the LORD:” (Deuteronomy 12:10-11)

What an amazing thing it is that God would choose to dwell with you and me.

For the believer, the local church is that place. God’s presence is there, and that is where we come to meet with Him. But He also dwells in you every day, if you have been born again.

“And ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God, ye, and your sons, and your daughters, and your menservants, and your maidservants, and the Levite that is within your gates; forasmuch as he hath no part nor inheritance with you.” (Deuteronomy 12:12)

Real delight in God means going where He goes, being where He is, and doing whatever He asks. Deuteronomy 12:5 says it plainly: “even unto his habitation shall ye seek.”

How much do you want to be where God is?

We do not bring God down to our level. We let Him lift us up.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

Go where He chose, not where you see fit

“Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest: But in the place which the LORD shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.” (Deuteronomy 12:13-14)

Serving God is not “have it your way.” We have all heard it called Burger King Christianity. You do not pick and choose. You do not negotiate with God and say, “Lord, this looks like a good spot to worship You.” You choose what He chooses.

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

You will never find a better way than God’s way. You will never improve on what He has already established. When God is on the old paths, nothing beats the old paths.

Is there room for God in your heart?

Go back to the Jordan. Israel could not have God’s name dwelling in the land while the old altars still stood on the hills. The groves had to burn, and even the names had to go.

The man who wrote this next verse knew what he wanted most:

“One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.” (Psalms 27:4)

So what is still standing in you? What are you holding on to? What silver have you pried off an idol and tucked away, hoping God would not mind?

Tear it down.

Make room.

Is God’s name there?

Adapted from a message preached from Deuteronomy 12:1-14.