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a distinctive people

Deuteronomy 22:8-12 (JDV)

Deuteronomy 22:8 If you build a new house, make a railing around your roof, so that you don’t place blood-guilt on your house if someone falls from it.
Deuteronomy 22:9 Do not plant your vineyard with two types of seed; or else, the entire harvest, both the crop you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will become defiled.
Deuteronomy 22:10 Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together.
Deuteronomy 22:11 Do not wear clothes made of both wool and linen.
Deuteronomy 22:12 Make tassels on the four corners of the outer garment you wear.

a distinctive people

Whether it was the houses they lived in, the crops they produced, or the clothes they wore, the Israelites were to demonstrate that they were distinctly the people of Yahveh. His rules made sense in their context, because they represented a way of life that was diametrically opposed to the paganism of the nations who had previously possessed the land. Anyone rejecting these rules would be immediately recognized as a violator — not just of societal mores, but of the covenant itself. The Israelite was called to be different from others, but the same as his brothers.

Christians as well have an obligation to live distinctive lives. They should live as “children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom (they should) appear as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).

Is your light shining, or do you look too much like the lost around you?

Lord, make us a distinctive people.