Living in Obedience to God's Commandments

Deuteronomy, chapter 23. What the book of Deuteronomy is set up to do is to explain to the people who are followers of God how they ought to live. And whenever you use the word love in any kind of context, it has different meanings to different people. What the Bible is trying to show us is what is it that God expects out of us. And if you're raising children and they show respect for you, they do the things that you tell them are right to do. If they don't do the things you tell them are right to do, then you consider them to be disrespectful. And if they love their mother and dad, they do the things that you tell them to do. And what God is trying to do to his own people, now he's just started this nation. They're just beginning now to have a home. And he's letting them know through all these regulations, when we read them, they seem kind of odd to us sometimes, but what he's doing through all these regulations is he's saying to them, this is how I can know that you love me. If you love me, Jesus said, keep my commandments. So in the Old Testament, what he's saying is, if you love me, this is the way you'll live. And he has in mind almost every detail of life with some instructions about what to do. Almost every detail of life, he has something covered about it. Now, the second thing that you have to see when you're looking at the book of Deuteronomy is that God is holy. He lives a perfect life. He has a perfect mind. He makes right choices all the time. He never makes choices that are wrong. And as children of his, followers of his, he has for us to set an example of absolute perfection. The Bible has the goal, be perfect as Christ is perfect, as God is perfect. Be holy as I am holy. So God's goal for us is really high. So when we look at all these things that he's asking, we're looking at what they mean with regard to a good life that is holy and reflects something of the character of God. If we don't understand all of them, then it's probably because we don't know very much about how they lived and what was going on and what they were really being asked to do. In this chapter, he's talking about people who come before the assembly of God. The assembly of the Lord was what we would call the church gathered together. They were oftentimes what we would call a business meeting. They would come together to make decisions about what needed to be done. They would come together to find the will of God about a certain matter. Or they would come together to find out what was happening in this community that was offensive to God. Sometimes it's something like whenever they went to fight a battle and lost and they came back and they had an assembly of the Lord and they came down and said to God, show us what we did wrong. And he had them bring every family in every tribe, someone from every tribe until he identified the tribe where the problem was. Then he had them bring every family until he identified the family where the problem was. He showed them exactly what was wrong and needed to be changed. So the assembly of the Lord is what we might call a group of people who are devoted Christians. Now this is for the New Testament time. Devoted Christians belonging to God, working for Him, who are gathered together to conduct the business of God. Sometimes it's listening to the prophet. Sometimes it's making decisions about what needs to be done. So the assembly of the Lord, he's saying here are the people qualified to be in the assembly of the Lord or we would say the congregation of the church or a member of a church. That's kind of what the idea is. So the very first verse he says, no one who's been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord. This sounds odd to us. But one of the things that we don't have in our culture that's very... I don't even know if it's anywhere around here, but in India they have something of this nature. Young girls in India are sometimes taken and they're put into prostitution service in the religions in India. I don't know very many places in the world where that still happens, but this was very prominent or common in the days of Israel settling in the land of promise that God had given them because the Canaanites who lived there, their religions were very much focused on this element of sexuality or fertility and the religions that they had were very sexual in nature. So sometimes a person would become a eunuch or be castrated or castrate himself so they could participate in some of the fertility cults of that time. And so the emasculation or the castration of this person was a sign of his dedication to his God, this fertility God. So he was like saying, anyone who is a follower of Satan should not be allowed to be in the church and help decide its direction and its purpose. That sounds sort of better to us, but that's basically what he's talking about. Here's a man who has given himself to the servant of an enemy of God. Now, when you gather together to try to find my will, when you have a man like that in your congregation, you're never going to be able to have a clear direction as to what you ought to do. So all the men who've done this and are dedicated to a foreign God, when you gather together in the assembly of the Lord, they should not be allowed to have a voice. They should not be allowed to present their ideas. They should not be allowed to participate since their life is already devoted to someone who's an enemy of God. And that's what he's talking about. Now, the Bible does tell us that God is not contrary to people who are eunuchs. In fact, if you remember in the New Testament, one of the very first converts to the Christian faith in the New Testament was an Ethiopian eunuch. He was traveling along the road and I've forgotten who it was that came alongside of him. And read to him and he was converted. So we know that God does not hold against a person who for any kind of reason is a eunuch. It can be because of an accident or it can be because of the job that you had. This man had the job that required this to be done for him for a king. So God is not opposed to this problem or this issue. He's only opposed to it in a certain set of circumstances where it would direct a person or indicate that a person was not open and willing to be obedient to God. So what he's saying is, don't put in your congregation people who are listening not to me, but to the enemies of my kingdom, Satan and his powerful forces. Because you'll never be able to make good decisions or do the things that ought to be done. So the congregation looks at itself and says, that's its doctrine. The congregation should be composed of people who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ and have been baptized to show their complete surrender to the Lord in every matter in their life. And those people then are qualified to be a part of those who are working, making decisions and trying to find the will of God. Second verse says, No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the tenth generation. Now if you have some translations, read this that no one should be born as a bastard. I think it says in some translations. That's not a good translation of what he's talking about. It's one part of it, but there's a series of instructions that God gives about who is to be married. And it means like no brother and sister to be married. A man's not to marry his father's wife, his stepmother. There are certain forbidden marriages in Leviticus. There's quite a few of them. In Leviticus 18, there's 14 verses that describe people who are forbidden to be married. In chapter 20 of Leviticus, there's 11 verses describing who is proper to be married and who is not proper to be married. So what he's really talking about here is no one is to be allowed into the congregation who is the result of a marriage that God has forbidden. Because it means that in that family, this family is living contrary to the instructions from God. Now in our culture, just because your parents do something wrong doesn't necessarily mean the children are going to do it too. Although oftentimes our influence as parents comes to our children. But in the culture that the Bible's raised in, children were very submissive and obedient to their parents and grew up not rejecting their parents as oftentimes is true in our culture. So when you have someone who is from a family where they ignored the clear instructions of God and chose to get married in whatever way they wanted to, you have someone with an influence in their life that has been taught by the very home that they grew up in, the instructions of God are not binding on us. And when you have somebody coming into the community of faith, trying to find the will of God or search for the direction of God or to find out what God wants, they must be completely surrendered and submissive to the authority of God. If they're not, then when decisions are made or whenever things are done, you have people who are sort of torn between what our family's always done and taught me and what God says I should do. And what God wants in his family of believers is that everyone there has said, we will live in obedience to Christ. So if you grew up in a family where certain things are far different, they seem to impress and influence children in the same kind of direction. So if someone has openly disobeyed these clear laws of God, then their children are not allowed even to the 10th generation. 10 generations down the road, things change, families change. So then by that time, perhaps that will be what should be done. Or it might mean the word, the letter 10 in the Bible sort of means forever. Might mean that they should never be allowed. We don't know exactly how that would, how that struck them. And in verse 3, he says, no Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the 10th generation for they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way. And when you came out of Egypt, they hired Balaam, son of Beor from Pethor and Aram and Naharim to pronounce a curse on you. However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loves you. Do not seek peace or good relationships with them as long as you live. Again, this is another one of those places where in our culture, family traditions just don't carry down for generation after generation after generation. But did you notice in the Boston bombing thing that happened? There's two young men that put this bomb. They came to America. They went to our schools. They appeared to be perfectly normal American young boys. But deeply ingrained in them was the loyalty to Islam that made them willing to die and punish people in our country because they had this deep loyalty to the religion of their childhood and the country from which they came. You can see in some of the places in the Middle East, in Syria, for example, where one group of people who are Muslims and another group of people that are Muslims and they have different backgrounds, but they are so caught up in perpetuating the traditions of their fathers that violent wars are very common with them. Many parts of the world, family traditions are strong. I was visiting with the man who has married a young lady in our community and I did the wedding for him. And he was from a Slavic country in Eastern Europe. And I asked him about his background and his family's Orthodox religion. And all of his family is Orthodox. Every member of his family is in the Orthodox religion. So he comes to this country. He's going to an evangelical church. He's made a commitment to Christ. He's been baptized in a Baptist church. And I said to him, now, if you should ever decide to move back to your home country, would you look out and find a Baptist church to join? And he said, oh, no, no, I couldn't do that. My family has been Orthodox for many generations. If I go back to my home country and I'm a citizen in that country, I have to be in the Orthodox church. The power and influence of family tradition around the world is so much different than it is in this country where we're a bunch of people homogenized. I mean by that, you know, you take the milk and the cream and you put it in there and it separates. If you homogenize it, the cream and the milk all mix together and you put it in a bottle and it never will separate again. In this country, you have people that are German and Irish and every kind of other national background. And you put us all together and mix us up and we don't even know what our past is. I could not tell you what nationality my father's family was from. We never talked about it. I don't know what they were. German, English, Irish, I don't know. It just wasn't important because we were citizens in Oklahoma. That's all we were. But for many people in other parts of the world, they can trace back for hundreds of years their family traditions, their religious backgrounds and their binding on them. Here, there is two countries, two countries that the Israelites ran into on their exile. And when they came to those countries, the people said, you cannot come here. We won't give you freedom to travel through our country. We won't allow you to have water even though they offered to pay for it. We won't allow you to get any food even though they offered to pay for it. They turned against Israel and refused any hospitality to them. And they were very forceful. And they brought their armies to bear and saying, if you cross into our territory, we will attack you. The Lord knew that these countries were dead set against the people of His own land. And if they came, an Ammonite or Amorite came and settled in their country and would come to their traditional meetings, their assemblies of the Lord, that their own feelings of animosity toward these people so deeply embedded in them would control them. Instead of being interested in what the Lord had to say, they would be driven by these forces that they grew up under. So His rule was, no one is to come into the assembly of the Lord until he is completely devoted to the purpose of the Lord. He cannot have any resistance and animosity toward the people who are part of the family of the Lord. And these people must be exempt from ever being a part of the assembly that comes before God for worship and for decision making and for determining the will and direction of God. Because their background is so filled with animosity toward the people of God that they're not allowed to be a part of the community of faith. Now, of course, He's talking here for us about the church. Making sure that when people come into the church, they really have surrendered themselves completely to God. That there's no hold on their life. That still they hold on to this self-will or their own direction. But in their lives, whatever God wants is what they're going to be faithful and determined to do. Then He said in verse 7, Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. Do not abhor an Egyptian, because you lived as an alien in his country. The third generation of children born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord. Now, the Edomites were descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. So they are really distant relatives. They would have had the same respect and admiration for God as Jacob did. They were both aware of their father, forefather Abraham and Isaac. And so they would have been trained in the religious traditions that Jacob's children would have. But there was this little bit of difference between them. So you watch them for three generations to see if they really are people of Israel. That is, the descendants of Jacob and Esau. Make sure that they really are devoted to following Me. So three generations go by, and then you can see if these people really are devoted to Me. And they can become a part of the assembly of the Lord. Now, it ought to let us see how important membership and the fellowship of the Lord really is. It's a very important thing. There are a lot of churches that think, well, membership is not really important. What God taught His people was, it is very important for the people in your congregation who are making decisions and who are trying to shape the direction of it, that they're absolutely completely devoted to Me. Because it's the only way I can guide you. When you sit down to be able to decide what we're going to do, and some people are talking about what they like, some people are talking about what someone else does, some people are talking about all these different things, then all of a sudden you have divided directions. But when you come together, and the Lord is in charge of everyone's life, and you say, what should we do? Then everyone is looking to the same person for directions. That's the only way you can have a common goal. It's for everyone to have the same mind and the same direction. So you can see how careful God was to tell the people of Israel, make sure when you come before Me in worship, when you come before Me to find direction, that every one of your people are devoted to listening to Me and acting in obedience to Me. He says those that are permanently excluded, and then He tells those that on certain conditions they can be accepted within the community of faith. Now, He moves from this to talking about what it is in the lives of these people that would prepare them to be a part of the assembly of the Lord too. Verse 9, When you are encamped against your enemies, keep away from everything impure. If one of your men is unclean because of nocturnal emissions, he is to go outside the camp and stay there. But as evening approaches, he is to wash himself. At sunset he may return to the camp. Now, what he's talking about here really, this is not the best translation. He's talking that literally what it says is anyone who has any discharge in the night, it can be anything from throwing up, it can be anything from nocturnal emissions from a man, it can be someone who also just goes in the camp and goes to the bathroom. Any kind of discharge in the middle of the night that would not be normal, where you want people to be around you when you did it, is to make that person unclean. Now, what the Lord is at here is talking about to his people how important purity is. And purity in the Bible doesn't always mean that you're simply without sin. It has an impact on your personal behavior. Before the priest could come before the Lord, he had to go outside and take a bath. And then he had to go and put his robes on. And when he did some task, he would go outside and wash his hands. Every person who came before the Lord had to be clean and pure, physically as well as spiritually. You've heard the saying that cleanliness is next to godliness. That comes as a result from all of these instructions that God gives. When God is giving us directions about what he wants us to live, he expects us to live in a way that when we came before him, we are pure. Now, if you were invited to go to the White House, and you were prepared to be there, and the television cameras were on you, you would want to wear clothes that were clean. You would want to wear clothes that reflected that you were properly dressed, because of your respect for God. Now, what God wants for us is to have in our lives this kind of respect for him. I don't mean that he's talking about when you come to church, you're to do this. But it's our lifestyle completely all the time. I don't want you to be the kind of person that people look at you and say that person is unkept, that they have no pride or they have no respect for themselves. I want people, when they look at you, to say this person is a respectful and clean person, that they dress and they act in a way that means that they live in the presence of God all the time. Now, there are times whenever a person has to get dirty because of their work or because of what they're doing, but the simple remedy is whenever something like that happens, you wash yourself and then you can return to the presence of the Lord clean. God does not ruin us or destroy us or eliminate us because we might get dirty or have something unkept in our lives, but he wants us to reflect his character of godliness and purity and cleanliness is one of those qualities that mark God. To be clean, not only in our action and behavior, in our mind, in our talk, but also in our lifestyle. So here he says, you're to make sure that the things you do, even at night, do not cause a reflection on you. Make sure that you do take care of these problems when they occur. You clean yourself up and you make yourself presentable and then you come back into the family or the community of faith. Now he says, and this is talking about the army, when you go out in battle, I want you to think even in those circumstances that all of my warriors, they're my warriors and they're my people and they're to live and act in a different way. Verse 12 says, designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As a part of your equipment, have something to dig with and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and curve up your excrement. For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away. Now what he's talking about is the fact that God lives with his people. We're even more aware of this because the Holy Spirit's with us. Our own personal lives, our homes, the places we work, where we have control over, God is there with us. And just like the TV cameras would come in and where you're working and take a picture of you, you'd try to make sure that everything was nice, everything was clean, everything was presentable. Your life as a follower of Jesus Christ should always reflect this concern about your own personal lifestyle. He's talking here about things that are nasty and dirty and filthy. You go around the world and you go to places in the world where they just throw out in the middle of the street their garbage, they throw out in the sewers run down the middle of the street. In places where God is in control, those things are less and less prominent all around the world. Because God does want his people to be people who are pure and clean and holy. And the holiness inside is reflected on the nature of the lifestyle of the person. Now, what these stories are telling us is God cares how his people live. Not just that they make holy choices about spiritual matters, but their own personal lifestyle is important to God. The way we keep our homes, the way we keep our yards, the way we keep our cars, the way we keep our homes, our business places. All of these, God wants to reflect his character and nature. And he wants us to live in a way that's different than people who do not have him in control of their lives. These may seem like small issues to you. Personal cleanliness, cleanliness of our families, the cleanliness when we're out at war. But they are things that God sees as reflections of our own nature and character. So whenever God is giving direction to his people, he's saying to them, everywhere you go, whether it's in war or in your home or in your business, you should be different than the people around you. It's not a matter of the culture around us approving of us. It is a matter of saying, my primary concern is that God be pleased with all of my life. Now, you may never have thought before that God cares how you dress. You may never have thought before that God cares about your personal cleanliness. You may never have thought before that God cares about your home, and how you live, and how your house looks, and how your yard looks. But God does care about every detail of our lives. Because everything about us says something to the people around us about who we are and how our lives are controlled. My people, God says all the way through these stories in the Old Testament, my people should be different than the people without me. Not just in their spiritual dimensions, but in all the matters of their life. So when God talks about his people, he's talking about people who have high aims for their own life, their own character, their own behavior, their own dress, their own homes. Because the Lord has said, this is the way I want my people to live. Now, the best example I know of this is, whenever you're growing up, and my mother used to say, you have to go in and wash yourself. And as a young boy, I just thought that was the worst thing in the world, I had to go take a bath. And she made me, because she said, no child of mine is going to run around looking like that. God says, no child of mine is going to run around looking like that. My mother didn't say, if you love me, you'll do it. She said, you're going to do it whether you love me or not. And that's what the Lord says too. So Father, teach us to respect you, and to always be conscious that wherever we are, whatever we do, we reflect you. And we ask that because of our lifestyle, our nature, and our character, that people would see you as a God of great purity, holiness, and righteousness. In the name of Christ, we ask it. Amen.