We'll open your Bibles if you would to Deuteronomy chapter 23. We are at the halfway point of our sermon series on your changing body. We've talked about this over the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago we looked at Ephesians 4. how the mature church is measured by the stature of Christ. The mature church has two things, knowledge and community. We looked last week then at Jesus' words on the Christian community from Matthew 18, and today we will continue to look at this time Moses' teaching on the Christian community. There's some pretty hairy stuff in this chapter. Moses lived in the Bronze Age, and he is not afraid to go there. This is stuff that was important in that time, and as we'll see, a lot of this is coming back in a very major way, ripped from the headlines type stuff that the church needs to know how to deal with. part of a good community, a Christian community, a mature community. We've talked about we're growing. We don't just want to grow, we want to grow up. Deuteronomy chapter 23. He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the congregation of the Lord. One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the congregation of the Lord. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall enter the congregation of the Lord forever. because they did not meet you with bread and water on the road when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pthor of Mesopotamia to curse you. Nevertheless, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. You shall not seek their peace nor their prosperity all your days forever. You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you are an alien in his land. The children of the third generation born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord. When the army goes out against your enemies, then keep yourself from every wicked thing. If there is any man among you who becomes unclean by some occurrence in the night, then he shall go outside the camp. He shall not come inside the camp, but it shall be when evening comes that he shall wash himself with water, and when the sun sets, he may come into the camp. Also, you shall have a place outside the camp where you may go out, and you shall have an implement among your equipment. And when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it, and turn and cover your refuse. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and give your enemies over to you. Therefore your camp shall be holy, that he may see no unclean thing among you and turn away from you. You shall not give back to his master the slave who has escaped from his master to you. He may dwell with you in your midst in the place which he chooses within one of your gates where it seems best to him. You shall not oppress him. There shall be no ritual harlot of the daughters of Israel. nor a ritual male prostitute of the sons of Israel. You shall not bring the hire of a harlot or the price of a dog to the house of the Lord your God for any vowed offering, for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God. You shall not charge interest to your brother, interest on money or food or anything that is lent out at interest. To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all to which you set your hand in the land which you are entering to possess. When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it. The Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you. But if you abstain from vowing, it shall not be sin to you. That which is gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth. When you come into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes at your pleasure, but you shall not put any in your container. When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain. Thus far, the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Father, open our hearts to understand your word this morning. We need your help. by the power of Your Spirit, illuminate Your Word to us. Father, help us to grow up, to be the mature church that You are calling us to be, to be faithful in all of the areas that are pointed out in this chapter, because You walk in our midst. Give me wisdom, help me to speak boldly and powerfully to your people. Help us all to listen, to weigh what is said, and to be transformed by the strength of your word. We pray in the name of your beloved son. Amen. How did we get to Deuteronomy 23 for Palm Sunday? It's a very straight path, actually. Palm Sunday is about the king entering the city of the great king. Psalm 48 calls Jerusalem. Jesus quotes those words in Matthew 5. Jerusalem is the city of the great king. Jesus comes in as king to take possession. They all shout, save us and wave the palm branches. And then he leaves again. He does not spend the night in the city. He goes back out to Bethany to say, this was just a preview. I'm not here permanently. I will be coming back and then I will be taking possession at that time. This is a trial run. That's what Palm Sunday is about. So we see Jesus comes into the city and he cleans up the city, he confronts the money changers, he drives them out, he cleans up the temple, he confronts the Pharisees with the blistering parable of the vineyard owner, and he even gets the Pharisees to say, oh yeah, anyone, any landowner who had that happen would come and kill those people. And Jesus kind of looks at them and they realize that he's talking about them. He's cleaning up the city of the great Cain. Well, what does that imply for us? Obviously, we shouldn't let money changers crowd into the temple, things like that. Deuteronomy 23 is the most concentrated passage in the Old Testament that describes how to live with the king in residence. The most important verse in this chapter is verse 14. The Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, therefore your camp shall be holy. We are the city of the great king. We are the camp of Israel. We are the church militant. God walks in our midst, and he has certain standards. He says, I want to see this, and here's what I don't want to see, where I'm walking. The triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem prefigures the permanent entry of our king into the city of the great king. and that in turn demands a certain way of life from us as the citizens of that city. We are the citizens of the city of the great king and therefore we need to live a certain way. This chapter talks about that in really three points. The church is only for true worshipers, the church must be clean, and the church must be a fit place for God to dwell. It's for true worshipers. It needs to be clean. It needs to be a place for God to dwell. As you can see, we start verses one to eight, are all about this theme of entering the congregation of the Lord. Who can enter the assembly or congregation of the Lord? And Moses gives us this blizzard of regulations. Some may enter, some may enter after 10 generations, some after three generations, some immediately. can enter the congregation of the Lord. Now, what's the issue here? As you read it, you say, well, obviously the issue is ethnicity. Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Edomites, different rules for each one of these groups. And then the issue is bodily integrity. That the one who is emasculated, he's not allowed. And his descendants are not allowed. verse two, something like that. It's not clear exactly what the one of illegitimate birth is. You can dive into that if you want. No one knows. There's a lot of different guesses about it. The rule is that certain people cannot enter the assembly of the Lord. And as you look at this rule, and evaluate it in the light of scripture, you see that it is not about ethnicity. And it's not about bodily integrity. Why do I say that? Well, there are certain examples. The Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord forever, even after 10 generations, says verse three. And yet, you fast forward a few books and you come to the story of Ruth, the Moabite, who enters the congregation of the Lord right away, in the first generation. She comes to Bethlehem and she starts worshiping God and no one blinks. No one says, um, she's a Moabite. Why is she here? The rule is not about ethnicity. Otherwise, there's no way Ruth would have become King David's great-grandmother. Right? David is definitely entering the assembly of the Lord. And then, this stuff about the eunuch in verse 1. Well, Isaiah 56 promises, within the temple of God, within my house, a place and a name better than sons and daughters. And therefore, Moses is talking about something for which ethnicity and bodily integrity are only proxies, and that something is true worship. Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, they don't worship the true God. Those who don't worship the true God are not allowed in the assembly of the Lord. Unix, same thing. It's a proxy for false worship. Commentators had some very interesting, very creepy texts from the ancient world about ceremonies of castration that were all part of worship of these false gods. I'm telling you folks, there is nothing new under the sun. Today we call it bottom surgery or transgenderism. It's the same thing. Someone who is worshiping their false god and therefore goes out and gets turned into a eunuch is not welcome in the assembly of the Lord so long as he continues to hold the view, continues to worship the false god that made him do that in the first place. It's the same thing with the Ammonite, the Moabite. It's not about ethnicity, it's about worship. Everything we read in Matthew 18, that's all glorious stuff. We heard that last week. But before you can welcome little children, before you can go after the lost brother, before you can forgive, you have to be a true worshiper. Moses is getting at that very, very basic bedrock reality of the church. The first part of growing up, the first part of maturity is the church. is being a true worshiper, not an Ammonite, a Moabite, a eunuch. Not that those people can't worship God, but if they aren't worshiping God, they're not welcome in the assembly of the Lord. The unrepentant transsexuals and idolaters are excluded. The repentant ones are always welcome. The church is for true worshipers. Not just anyone is welcome here. Those who want to worship the Lord, though, we welcome with open arms. He goes on to make another point about cleanliness, particularly in the context of the church militant. Verse 9, when the army goes out against your enemies. So he's not speaking of the assembly of the Lord in the same sense as in the first eight verses. This is specifically an assembly for war, the army. On the march, what does the Lord want to see there? Well, let me just say this is a comment, once again, really on the gathered people of God, what we call the church militant. We are organized as an army, onward Christian soldiers, and we are fighting something. We're fighting our own flesh and our own wicked desires. We're also fighting the world and the devil. We stand against these three major enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The church is supposed to be fighting back against these enemies. And God tells us in this passage, the church that is fighting needs to be clean. Community means not only loving one another, but also excluding the people and the things that attack and damage our community, especially in terms of our martial aspect as the church militant. And thus, he says, when the army goes out against your enemies, keep yourself from every bad thing. The words really are that general. Every bad thing. We all know that. Church is not a place for bad things. Bad things should not be in here. No bad things allowed. That's basic, but that's also nonetheless profound. The church is a place for good things and only for good things. Get rid of the wicked things. What sort of wicked things, Moses? Well, he speaks in terms of ritual purity. If you become unclean by something that happens at night, and again, the language is extremely vague. Probably most of your translations have massively over translated and substituted something specific. There is nothing specific in the Hebrew. It simply says, Something unclean happens to you at night and of course if you want to know all the ways you can become unclean You're welcome to go read Leviticus. There's lots of ways from a lizard falling into your stew to Any other kind of a thing emissions of blood or other bodily fluids? But not all bodily fluids apparently if you spit you're not unclean, but there's there's a whole bunch of rules about that What is the point? well this notion of ceremonial uncleanness was a teaching aid that God gave to Israel to teach them about moral uncleanness. And that's how that applies to the church today. If an unclean person, someone morally fouled up, is in the church, it weakens all of us in our combat with the world, flesh, and devil. Deal with your sins immediately. Remember the story of Achan, one unclean man in the camp who had taken the loot from the city, led to Israel being, their army being slaughtered by this little tiny town of a few thousand people. They had just conquered one of the most powerful cities in Canaan, and then they go up and attack Ai, and they lose badly. And God says it's because there's someone unclean in the camp. If you want the church to lose, if you want the world, the flesh, and the devil to triumph, all you have to do is stop dealing with your sin. Live in a place of moral impurity. I'm in sin. I know I'm in sin. I like my sin. And I refuse to do anything about it. If you're unclean because of something in the night or something in the day, and you don't deal with it, the church suffers. The whole church suffers. Obviously you suffer too. When sin spills out of our hearts the way fluids spill out of our bodies, we're defiled and we need to be cleansed by Christ. Moses doesn't just speak of ritual purity, moral purity, he even speaks of physical purity. When you have to poo, don't poo on the sidewalk. Don't do it in the streets. Go outside the camp and bury it. And I think there's very much a literal application here. Build and maintain sewer systems. Keep your septic tank working. This is something God says to do. He walks in the camp and he wants us physically to clean up our sewage. Of course, morally, the application is the same. If there's junk in your life, crud in your life, deal with it. Don't smear it all over the church. Don't leave it for the Lord to step in or your brothers and sisters to step in. The church has to be a fit place for God to remain. As bad as it is to foul your own nest, It's far, far worse to foul the Almighty's nest. And that's what verse 14 tells us. The Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp. In the church, we build and maintain sewers literally and metaphorically to deal with the sludge of life in this world. The church will not grow up to maturity if we don't learn to be house trained. If we bring our crud and smear it on everyone, leave it here and there, lying around the church, little landmines for other people to step in. And you can laugh, but as I said, Moses is from the Bronze Age, and he is not afraid to go there, and he simply says, don't be like this. The mature church must deal with this stuff. If Jesus is Lord in the church, there's no place here The kind of moral or physical uncleanness that makes the church nasty, defiled, and unwelcoming. If Jesus is Lord in our church, there's no place here for money changers or for any other unclean, detestable, or defiling sin, and that includes the people committed to practicing those sins. Not those who fall into them from time to time. That's all of us. But those who say, I want my sin, my sin is good, I will have it, I must have it, and if you confront me about it, I will smear it all over you. God walks in the midst of the camp to do two things. The first is to conquer our enemies. The Lord is on my side as my helper. Psalm 118, I will not fear what can man do to me. God is with us. And we may say, well, the universities aren't with us, Silicon Valley isn't with us, the media isn't with us, the federal government isn't with us. What can man do to me? What can all of those things do to the Lord? They can't and they won't triumph over Him. God is with us. Don't grieve and quench the spirit is the New Testament version of this verse. God walks in the camp. Don't leave nasty things around the church. that would drive him out so he conquers our enemies he does so by walking in our midst ultimately we know as one of us Jesus the son of man is God in the flesh coming to conquer our enemies and he requires holiness therefore your camp shall be holy we have to be set apart entirely to God that's a very basic step of maturity. That means no pagan worship, no pagan mutilating of our bodies, and the rest of the chapter spells out five more ways in which the presence of the king in his city demands holiness, which is part of maturity. What are those five things? The first is that the church should be a place of freedom. You shall not give back to his master, the slave who has escaped from his master, to you. In the ancient Near East, treaties typically included an extradition clause. A slave from Moab runs away to Ammon. The Ammonites will take the slave and they will return him to Moab. We have extradition clauses like that in our treaties today, typically dealing with violent criminals. This law tells us that we're to take in refugees who are running from slavery to Satan. Ammonites, Moabites, right, former pagan worshipers who come to us and say, I don't want to serve the devil anymore. They are welcome in the church. Oh, that the church kept this, right, that the world knew that the church is a place of refuge for every sufferer and sinner. God tells us we should be. I think that we are. But we might have a bit of an image problem. getting that information out there. Oh yeah, the church is a place that beats up sinners. No, the church is a place that welcomes sinners. That's what these verses tell us. That's what God wants when he walks in the midst of the camp. He adds, don't let your daughters grow up to participate in perverted pagan worship. Don't let your sons grow up to participate in perverted pagan worship. In the ancient Near East, there was a massive spiritual dimension to these sexual activities. Moses is confronting this head on and saying, don't do it. This is not appropriate for any son or daughter of the true king. And he's also talking about the mindset that would allow this. The Old Testament references this practice of sacred prostitution many times. And as I said, it's with us still. I drove by the Unitarian Church in Fort Collins a few weeks ago and they have a banner up that says, be more gay, be more trans, be more you. Other churches fly the rainbow flag on a flagpole out in front of the church. This is not a hypothetical thing. Don't read verse 17 and say, how would that happen? It does happen. and it's not right. The mature church does not let that happen. We work and we pray and we teach against that, including by creating a biblical understanding of human sexuality. This also tells us something about Palm Sunday. The coming of Jesus into his church is not a feel-good high. Jesus comes in he immediately attacks corruption and wickedness in the temple. He curses the fig tree. He tells a confrontational parable. We live in a culture of deep-rooted sexual corruption. We do. Deuteronomy 23 is telling us to be diligent about rejecting the notion of spiritually sacred sexual minorities, eunuchs, transgenders, et cetera. that is not appropriate within the body of Christ. These people should not come into the church while retaining their commitment to sin, nor should they go out of it. That's an application here of verse 17. Well, while he's goring sacred cows, Moses moves to financial dealings, the area that Jesus focused on first in his cleansing of the temple. Individuals need to keep these laws literally. The church should not be a money lending institution, but these laws apply to the church in terms of it needs to be a place of upright financial dealings. First thing to see, God rejects the wages of a whore. If you're making money off sin, we don't want your tithe. If you're a hitman, obviously. If you're making a living through theft, those things are very basic and clear. Some professions are in more of a gray area. Show business, stock trading in the big casino on Wall Street, being a defense attorney, and so on. These professions certainly lend themselves to less than irreproachable ethical standards, if I can put it that way. If you are making money off sin, even in some kind of legal gray area, the church doesn't need that money. And to be honest, you don't either. I read a letter somebody wrote in to an advice columnist this week saying, I'm a freelance accountant. I do bookkeeping work. I got, somebody emailed me and asked if I would automate a certain bookkeeping process for them. I looked into the business, found out they run webcam shows and all kinds of other sex trade type things. I wasn't sure what to do, so I sent them a bid five times over my usual rate. They've accepted it. What do I do? The advice columnist said, don't take the job. Don't bring the wages into the house of the Lord. The way you make your money is important to God. The way you spend your money is important to God. And if you're making money by doing something that's clearly wrong, God says quit that job and do honest work with your own hands. Now verse 20. or verses 19 and 20. What is this about not charging interest? John Calvin famously taught that this prohibition is only on personal loans to a poor neighbor and has nothing to do with the complicated financial instruments that have been devised in a sophisticated modern economy. That's nonsense. Calvin maybe didn't know how sophisticated the economy of the ancient Near East was. It was pretty sophisticated as the commentators clearly recognize, and as we can recognize simply by reading about Israel and Egypt. You don't have a state with the power to enslave a nation of two million people is a sophisticated state with a sophisticated economy. Anyway, usury is associated with prostitution here for a reason. God forbids charging interest. What does that mean? It means charging a constantly increasing price, typically understood as what we call compound interest. I charge you 5% of the loan amount this year, and then I just add that on to the loan. So this year you borrow $100,000, next year you owe $105,000. The year after that, you owe $110,000, $250, and so on. The price for the use of the same amount of money is constantly increasing. That's what interest means. And that's what God forbids as greed. He doesn't forbid charging a flat price. What he forbids is the constantly increasing price. Now, maybe you're making interest on a bank account somewhere. Scripture does not forgive receiving interest. We can get into that. But he does say don't charge the constantly increasing price. That's wrong. And it's not just wrong for the individual making a loan to a poor neighbor, although it is wrong there. It's also wrong for big corporations owned by giant holding companies. It should not be done. A big part of the problem with the American church is that we stopped teaching on moral topics and began teaching only on safe topics. The good news about Jesus means that he lives in our midst, he walks in the camp, and that we need to be holy. Including on issues like this one. How you put your money out at interest. How you make your money. You might never consider becoming transgender, but if you're willing to indulge greed, God won't bless you. Or his church. Being greedy with a stranger but not with a brother, verse 20, to a foreigner you may charge interest but to your brother you may not. What is that about? That's a ceremonial law. Every law that highlights the difference between Israel and the nations is a ceremonial law. Every law that sets them apart so that they have to be different, the food laws, the purity laws, a law like this that says charge interest outside your nation but not within it, that's a ceremonial law. Don't be greedy. That's a moral law. To have a nation where they aren't greedy with each other is pretty amazing. That was God's goal for Israel. From us, he asks something even more impressive. To have a society called the church where they aren't greedy with anyone. It's hard enough not to be greedy with your own kind, but to not be greedy towards anyone is certainly a higher standard in the New Testament. Because the Lord walks in the midst of the camp, he tells us don't charge the ever-increasing price called interest. He also says the church needs to be a place of oath-keeping. When you make a vow, pay it. Do what you said. And of course Jesus comes to this very quickly in the Sermon on the Mount as well. If you say yes, Commit. Do it. If you say no, don't do it. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. If we would simply do this and keep our word, it would go a long way towards making us the holy city in which the Lord can reside. All of you can think right now of someone who told you they would do something and then didn't follow through. It might even be someone in this room. That is immature at best. Imagine a church where everyone kept their word all the time. What a blessed place that would be. And that's part of maturity that the king requires when he walks in his city. Finally, one of my favorite laws, the church is for sharing, but not for stealing. If you walk through a garden, you walk through a field, you can pick and eat while you're there. You can't take it home. You can't harvest it. The landowner is obligated to share with you. Of course, Jesus and his disciples pick the grain while they walk through the fields. That is acceptable according to this law. In here, we don't steal, but we do share. If someone is in need, you share. If you have something, give it. But if someone else is producing some food, while you may sample, you may not harvest and carry it away. It's a very righteous law. Brothers and sisters, we need to worship and serve God in accordance with these rules. Why? Because Jesus walks in the midst of the camp. The king is in his city and we need to be totally committed to worshiping and obeying him. We know that the first time he came to Jerusalem, he cleansed the temple and then died for our sins, right? He cleansed his temple and then he cleansed his people from their sin. Now that he has died for your sins, trust and obey him. Be the mature, holy people He's calling you to be. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word that gives light and understanding to the simple. Help us, Lord. Give us the grace to keep these laws. Because we have been saved, cleansed by You, brought into Your city, and made citizens, and You live here, and You tell us You want Your city to be a certain way. Give us the grace to understand and to keep these laws and statutes and commandments that we might please you and be a people holy to the Lord our God. We pray in His name. Amen.