In our segment today Moses mentions some pagan burial rituals and reminds the Israelites they aren't to imitate any of these practices. "You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be His treasured possession." (Deuteronomy 14:1-2)
Moses is saying, "Don't behave like people who don't know the Lord. The heathens may cut themselves to display their grief to the 'gods', believing the sight of the blood will be accepted as an offering by these false deities so rewards will be given to the departed loved one's soul. They may tattoo themselves with the names of the dead or with the names of false deities to commemorate the funeral rites of a deceased loved one. They may cut their hair off and dedicate it in the name of a false god or use the cut hair for the purpose of interpreting the pattern of fallen hair as a method of divination. You are the Lord's people and you must not dabble in the occult or in idolatry."
The Apostle Paul said something quite similar to Christians when urging them not to behave like heathens when a loved one has died. "Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope." (1 Thessalonians 4:13) Paul was speaking about the hope of resurrection, which unbelievers lack but in which believers trust. The Lord's people aren't to grieve like pagans who think souls go to some unknowable, shadowy underworld where happy or pleasurable circumstances cannot be counted on. Paul was reassuring his readers that their believing loved ones, who have died, will be resurrected in immortal bodies just like Christ's. Knowing this, there's no reason for despair. There's no reason for inflicting cuts on oneself in grief or trying to consult the spirit world.
The Bible makes it as plain as day that it's wrong for us to try to contact departed loved ones or to have anything to do with the occult or with any type of divination. This includes things which are marketed as "entertainment" such as having our palm read, using a Ouija board, consulting horoscopes, having astrological charts cast for us, letting someone read Tarot cards for us, attending a séance, or going on any of these ghost hunting excursions that have become popular in recent years. I could probably name a few more things that fall into the occult/divination category but you already see where I'm going with this. The Lord's people should have nothing to do with such things.
When the Lord forbade pagan burial rituals to the Israelites in Leviticus 19:27-28, He said that the people must not cut their hair at the sides of their head or at the edges of their beard for the dead. Also He said they were not to cut their bodies or make tattoos on their bodies for the dead. He laid down these rules immediately after saying, "Do not practice divination or seek omens." (Leviticus 19:26b) This is because the pagan funeral rituals are closely related to such occult practices as divination and the seeking of omens. The Lord's people must not blend heathen religious rites with their worship of the one and only God. If they do they will wander from the truth and fall into idolatry.
We have to be careful in our own day not to add heathen elements to our worship of the Lord. We have to be on guard against becoming superstitious or legalistic, for that's how all the other religions of the world operate. The best way to worship the Lord in the right spirit is to know what He has said about worship in the Scriptures. Trying to obtain salvation by works is what heathens do and the Bible plainly tells us that faith is the means to salvation, for we'll never be perfect on our own. Obsessively chanting or performing specific rituals to obtain favor and blessings is what heathens do; there is no benefit in us doing such things and Jesus actually spoke out against it in Matthew 6:7. You won't find the Lord telling us in the Scriptures that we have to try to find our way to salvation on our own by doing enough good works to outweigh our sins. You won't find the Lord telling us we have to chant a prayer a specific number of times in order to be heard by Him. You won't find Him telling us to consult mediums or go around seeking signs and wonders in order to know how we're supposed to live in this world. If we study the Bible regularly and meditate prayerfully over it and take it to heart, we can avoid allowing things to creep into our worship that don't belong there. Moses is reminding the Israelites in Deuteronomy 14 of what the Lord has said about funeral rites so the people won't allow the wrong kind of things to creep into their worship.
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