You'll take out your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Deuteronomy. If you are with us for the first time this evening, I have been working through the book of Deuteronomy slowly as I preach in the evening service. So I assure you, I did not pick this text at random tonight. It is what is next. And this is part of the discomfort and yet joy of expositional preaching through books of the Bible is that sometimes we have to face these passages we would much rather just skip over. Deuteronomy 23, verses 1 through 13. If you are using a pew Bible, you can find that on page 209. Page 209, Deuteronomy 23. First, let's pray that the spirit would illumine our minds. Lord Jesus, we do thank you that even in your ascension to heaven, you are not silent. You continue to be our prophet. And you do so through your scriptures, which you have given once and for all to your church as they are living and active. We thank you that even as we come to the pages of the Old Testament and laws that seem strange to us at times. But here we hear your voice. Here we meet the gospel. And so we pray that you would give us eyes that we would see Jesus, ears that we would hear his voice. Christ, we ask these things in your name. Amen. Deuteronomy 23. No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off, shall enter the assembly of the Lord. No one born of a forbidden union may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the 10th generation, none of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord. No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord. Even to the 10th generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever. Because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way when you came out of Egypt. Because they hired against you Balaam, son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. But the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam. Instead, the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loved you. You shall not seek their peace or 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 were a sojourner in his land. Children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the Lord. When you are encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep yourself from every evil thing. If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp, he shall not come inside the camp. But when evening comes, he shall bathe himself in water, and as the sun sets, he may come inside the camp. You have a place outside the camp, and you shall go to it. And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you. and to give up your enemies before you. Therefore, your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you." Praise God for the reading of his word. We live in a profane culture. By that, I want you to understand exactly what I mean. I do not mean that we live in a culture that speaks and does obscene things. It certainly does. But that's not primarily what I mean by profane. We use the term profanity to describe a list of words that are considered indecent. However, the verb to profane literally means to violate the sanctity of something. That is, to treat something that is holy as though it were unholy. Profanity, properly speaking, is not about obscene speech, but about the misuse of that which is sacred. And of course, in our rapidly secularizing world, the very idea that there is anything at all that is sacred is fading. We can think of the ways that shock art has taken religious symbols and use them in blasphemous ways. We can think of the way that film, and especially animated sitcoms, regularly use God and religious themes as punchlines and brazen acts of profanation. But there's one bellwether I think is actually more indicative of how widespread our secularized profane instincts have become. I was sitting and watching a sitcom some years ago, and I heard the characters repeatedly use this phrase, oh my god. And suddenly it just hit me. How insidious this really is, these three little words, oh my god. Because if we were to make a list of the top thing that indicate the increasing secularization of our culture. I don't think how many of us would, there would be many of us that would put that in such a list. But there's nothing that so bluntly tries to strip God of his transcendent holiness like using his very name as a curse or a joke or a meaningless exclamation. The abuse of God's name as a way to swear or simply exclaim, it's actually, I think, one of the most powerful instruments of secularization in our world. Nothing desacralizes your view of the universe quite like treating the very name of God itself in such a way. Because if we really truly felt the overwhelming weight of his glory and his majesty, the lethal danger of his holiness, We would not dare to take his name upon our lips as nothing more than an exclamation. A few things really tend to numb our hearts to this hair-raising character of God's majestic otherness than to just blurt out his name as though it were nothing sacred at all. I often think when I see actors on TV do that, what would they do? They shouted, oh my God, and suddenly he answered them. What if in a moment, a thunderclap, he said, here I am. Why do you speak my name? How utterly terrifying God's holiness is to sinful creatures. And so how ridiculously callous it is for them to just spit it out. without sensing that holiness. A few things I think actually advance the secularization of our culture quite like profaning the very name of God himself. Nothing contributes to this instinct that there's nothing truly holy, nothing truly sacred, stripping it all down. We can start with God's very name, trite, casual, even obscene. And I say that because when we come to a text like this in Deuteronomy 23, There are certainly a lot of things in here that strike us as weird. But actually one of the most significant obstacles we face, at least in the cultural prejudices that our world seeks to catechize us with, is the notion that there is even such a thing as the sacred. That there is in fact a realm of things that are set apart, that cannot be used blithely. like anything else in our world. But at the heart of the gospel is a savior who comes to reclaim the sacred. Among the many wonderful things Christ comes to do is that he comes to set us apart from profane use. He comes to write the holy name of God on us. claim us, by writing that name on us that our world seeks to misuse at every turn. He writes the holy name of God on us and by doing so he devotes us, he sacralizes us, he makes us holy. This is what we call the great gospel work of sanctification. Although these verses of Deuteronomy 23 are strange, and let's go ahead and say it, wildly awkward, and as such they may seem like an unlikely entry point for this great reality of the gospel, they are nevertheless exactly that. So the truth I want you to see from scripture tonight's this. Christ has sanctified you for the worship and warfare of His holy people. Christ has sanctified you for the worship and warfare of His holy people. We'll consider three points. First, a holy assembly. Second, a holy army. And third, a holy future. A holy assembly, a holy army, a holy future. Speaking of our first point, a holy assembly. The first thing to note about the laws that we find here in verses one through eight is the first thing we should focus on is actually not the cringeworthy category of people that are talked about in verse one, but rather what it is they are excluded from along with the other groups of people that this law talks about. We see repeatedly in them, verses one through eight, deal with those who can and cannot enter what? Enter the assembly of the Lord. That raises the question, what exactly is this assembly of the Lord that they either can or cannot enter? Well, the assembly of the Lord has imbued the people of God as they have come together in holy convocation to worship the Lord. And it's worth pausing for a moment to reflect on how this Old Testament reality shapes a New Testament reality. As a rule, I typically try to avoid showing off Greek and Hebrew words in the pulpit like I'm a first-year seminary graduate. But I think that there's actually no other way to get at this tonight than by doing a little bit of that, so bear with me. The Hebrew word that gets translated in these verses as assembly is the Hebrew word kahal. It most often refers to when Israel's gathered together as a congregation to worship the Lord. Sometimes it also refers to when the elders of Israel come together to be a judicial assembly and render the judgments of the Lord. Here in Deuteronomy 23, it's clear that it refers to Israel as they have assembled together to worship the Lord as his holy congregation. But here's the thing. Before the birth of Christ, The Old Testament got translated into Greek. Greek had become the dominant language of the ancient Near Eastern world because of the conquest of Alexander the Great. And so there was this translation of the Old Testament into Greek, it was called the Septuagint. And the Septuagint, written before Christ, translates the word kahal here in these verses into the Greek word ekklesia. And as many of you are aware, maybe some of you are aware, the Greek word ekklesia shows up repeatedly in the New Testament and is translated as church, the church. What's the point of all of this Greek and Hebrew, pastor? Well, the church is not a New Testament invention. It's an Old Testament reality. But what church refers to most basically is what Deuteronomy 23 is talking about. The church, most basically, is the assembly of God's people who have come together to worship him. Now here in the Old Testament, there's a distinction that's implied between God's covenant people as a whole, and his worshipping assembly, because the worshipping assembly of Israel is not completely coextensive with Israel. There are many people who are covenant members of Israel who nevertheless cannot enter into the worshipping assembly. That's a barrier, of course, that Christ will break down in the new covenant. But here in Deuteronomy 23, we need to understand just exactly what Moses is talking about when he's talking about the assembly of the Lord. He's not talking about the whole of Israel. all of God's covenant people. What he's referring to is God's covenant people, and among them, those who are able to and can gather in holy convocation to worship him. Not every Israelite could enter the worshiping assembly. Anyone who was unclean, whether because of leprosy or contact with a dead body or had given childbirth or some of the other things that we find, particularly in Leviticus, they could not enter the assembly of the Lord. The assembly of the Lord comes together to meet with the Lord, and therefore not only can nothing that is sinful enter his presence, so too can nothing that is unclean. To be unclean is not necessarily to be sinful. Uncleanness is a broader category. It's connected with sin, certainly in the sense that it is connected with the order of death that marks a fallen world. uncleanness is related to the curse, to death and all that is associated with death, disease, bodily excretions, mutilation, things that lack wholeness under the Old Testament holiness codes, lack holiness. And that informs then this first group of people that are excluded from the worshiping assembly in verse one, men who have been made eunuchs, by various horrific acts of castration, probably intentional, are unable to enter the assembly of the Lord. And the rationale at work here is similar to why Israelites could not offer animals in sacrifice who had some sort of deformation or who had been maimed. That which is holy is whole. And eunuchs have been made unwhole in a radical kind of way. The second category excluded in verse 2 is connected with this as well. Those who were born of forbidden unions could not enter the assembly. So illegitimate children born out of illicit affairs. Those born from incestuous or forbidden relationships were unable to come together with the worshiping congregation of Israel. And the logic of this is connected with the covenant as well. Marriage and procreation are deeply embedded in Israel's life and covenant with the Lord. Think of the importance of procreation to the Abrahamic covenant, that the Lord promises to carry on his program of salvation through Abraham's seed. And so those who emerged from sexual unions that violated the boundaries of holiness bore the mark of such unholiness and therefore could not enter into the holy assembly. And though it's not obvious, perhaps, there's a bridge between such children and this next category of people in verse three. The Ammonites and the Moabites had a rather sketchy origin story in the Bible. Go back and you read Genesis 19, particularly verses 36 through 38, you would find that those people groups descended from Lot, and particularly This episode where Lot's two daughters, in an act of desperation to secure Lot's line, decide to get their father drunk and to sleep with him. The very names Moab and Ammon or Ben-Ammon, as the text mentions it, have connotations of incest. Moab in Hebrew means from the father. Ben-Ammoni means son of my people. So perhaps there's implied, this implied bridge between the forbidden unions of verse 2 and the Moabites and Ammonites in verse 3. If that's so, it's left unsaid. But what is made explicit is that they are excluded because of their opposition to Israel when they, Israel came to enter the land. They hired Balaam to try to curse Israel. Now we get to verses 7 through 8 and something surprising happens. We might expect, Another couple categories of people who can't enter the assembly of the Lord, but what we encounter instead are two groups of people whose children eventually can enter the assembly of the Lord. See verse 8, children born to the third generation of Edomites or Egyptians could come into the congregation of Israel as they gathered to worship God. Now something that's assumed here needs to be explained and made explicit. This is not just talking about any Egyptians or Edomites. It's talking about Egyptians and Edomites who had joined Israel. Either men who had become circumcised and embraced the sign of the covenant, or women who had married Jewish men and by virtue of their marriage become part of the covenant people. their grandchildren could eventually find full inclusion into the worshiping assembly of God's people and be indistinguishable from the rest of Israel. And this points up something very important. Israel was never, ever a people defined exclusively by bloodlines. The inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God was possible even under the Mosaic covenant. The essence of Israel is not what Israel is according to the flesh, but what Israel is according to the covenant. And we get here then, a hint at that, and a hint at something important. In the very beginnings of God's covenant dealings with Israel, with their father Abraham, what was the promise? that what God is doing in Abraham ultimately aims at bringing blessing to all peoples, the whole world, not just Abraham's physical seed. So hints of that destiny actually shining forth in this law, Edomites and even Egyptians, Egyptians, Israel's former captors and oppressors, could even under the Mosaic law find a pathway into inclusion into God's people and have descendants who would be fully included into the worshiping assembly of the Lord. And in all of this, we need to understand that what's at play here, what the backbone of this is the sacredness of what it meant to come and to gather together and to worship the Lord as his people. The space where the living God descends to tabernacle among Israel is totally unique, totally other, totally holy. And the holiness of that reality, it's connected actually with the very next thing that Moses touches upon in verses 9 through 14. It brings us to our second point, a holy army, a holy army. The provisions that Moses enumerates in verses 9 through 14 deal with certain things about the conduct of Israel's army when, as we read in verse 9, they encamped against their enemies. They're going out to war. And this may seem disjointed, perhaps, when you first read it, from what precedes it in those who can and can't enter the assembly of the Lord, but it's actually related. Because both the assembly of Israel gathered to worship the Lord and the encampment of Israel gathered to go out and do battle against the Lord's enemies, both of those spaces are holy spaces. And so we need to bear in mind that Israel's warfare was always holy war. As God's old covenant people, there was a sense in which everything about their life was holy. They were called to be a holy people, set apart from the nations as a kingdom of priests unto the Lord. Everything about their life in a certain respect was holy, and consequently their warfare was not just any ordinary warfare, it was truly holy war. The battlefield was a holy place for Israel. Her warfare was an act of worship and an act of obedience to the Lord. Hence Israel, when they went to battle, what would they bring with them? The Ark of the Covenant. This symbol of the Lord's presence is thrown among his people. The Ark symbolized the reality Moses speaks of in verse 14. The Lord walked amidst Israel's army as they were encamped, and he did that to what? To deliver them, to fight for them against their enemies. And that reality is at the heart of why Israel's wars are truly holy wars. They were wars that were ultimately fought and won by Yahweh himself as he was the divine warrior. Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. He goes out to do battle on behalf of his people. And so when we consider Israel's warfare in the Old Testament, we need to reckon with the fact that it's utterly unique. It's unlike anything in our world. No other nation in the history of mankind can claim what Israel could claim in the Old Testament. That is, to literally be a political theocracy, this manifestation of the kingdom of God within specific national boundaries, geopolitical. Because of that, her warfare is completely unique and unrepeatable. It's a really and truly holy war. These sorts of provisions here are wrapped up with this. Awkward as they may be, it's why they were in place. Israel's army had to keep themselves ritually clean. They had to be pure, cultically, in their military camp. Because what they inhabited there was a sacred space. The Lord of hosts, Yahweh, had come to fight their battles for them and walked in their midst. The divine warrior had entered their camp. And so as we see in verses 12 through 13, they had to make sure that they very carefully dug a latrine outside of the camp and went there. The Ark of the Lord rested in their midst. And this reality is also wrapped up with the provisions of verses 10 through 11. Israel's warriors would be unclean if they had a discharge of semen in the night. I know that's the last thing you expect your preacher to say from the pulpit, but sometimes the Bible makes us feel a little awkward. Scripture doesn't always cater itself to our sense of propriety, but uncomfortable as it may be, this text of scripture is what I must exposit this evening. And it's actually helpful in understanding other parts of the Bible, too. If you're familiar with the story of David and Bathsheba, when Uriah comes home, this law is probably why Uriah doesn't go home to be with his wife. rather sleeps on the doorstep of the king's palace. Why? So he could be ritually clean, ready in a moment to return to the holy sphere of Israel's warfare. So as gross as and uncomfortable as details these law may seem, they actually highlight one of the profoundest sources of consolation, not just for Old Testament Israel, but for us. They're motivated by this principle that Moses outlines in verse 14, the principle that Yahweh is the divine warrior. He's the one who fights his people's battles. The hope of that doesn't fade away when the Old Testament laws are abrogated. Certainly the nature of holy warfare changes from the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament. No longer are God's people constituted as a theocratic nation. No longer is the warfare of God's people conducted through physical combat and armed encampments. But God's people are no less under assault now than they have been at any moment in redemptive history in the Old Testament. Behind every earthly power that has ever set itself against God's people are the strategies of that ancient serpent, the dragon, Satan. The book of Revelation, as we've seen in the morning, has to say to us, the evil one and his powers of darkness have always been busy threatening God's people. They have not stopped doing so. Yet, wherever and however you may endure the dragon's rage as a member of God's people, whether it comes in the form of overt persecution from earthly governments or in the form of the seduction of a corrupt culture, or in the form of falsehood and even abuse which has infiltrated the walls of the church itself. Wherever Satan plies his wiles, you could face them unafraid because of this reality. The Lord fights for his people. That's what Martin Luther understood. He captured so well in that great hymn of his that we sing. Did we in our own strength confide striving would be losing we're not the right man on our side the man of God's own choosing just ask who that may be Christ Jesus it is he Lord what Lord Sava oath the Lord of hosts is what that means the divine warrior is his name from age to age the same and he must win the battle God fights for his church Christians God fights for you What have you to fear? And of course, just because God fights for his people, it does not make us passive. So we find here in Deuteronomy 23, the Lord of hosts walks among the encampment of Israel in order to do battle on their behalf, and yet there they are encamped, taking up arms, ready to march into combat. The Lord's pleased to win the battles of his people in such a way that we still have to fight. And he fights in and through us. His sovereignty does not negate our agency. Rather, it upholds it, gives it efficacy, and secures its outcome. But the combat of Christ's holy army now, it's not engaged with swords and spears or bombs and bullets. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Make no mistake, the New Testament consistently presents the nature of the Christian life as a life of combat. Paul's imagery, the whole armor of God, it's been used rightly, in Christian children's ministries, but been used in such a way that perhaps we've lost sight of the gravity of its details. Perhaps when you think of the armor of God, it summons that cute picture of your kid in plastic armor, but not the grim realities of warfare that Paul has in mind. You need a helmet, Christian, because there's someone who's trying to cleave your skull You need a breastplate because there is a swordsman who's trying to spill your guts. You need a shield because there's an archer who wants to pierce your spleen. The Christian life is a bloody fight to the death. But in it, you are assured of this great truth. Yahweh sabaoth, the Lord of hosts is your champion. And there is no monster which the bowels of hell can spit out that can withstand the holy fury with which he fights for his people. That is of great comfort. But of course, these requirements of ritual purity, Deuteronomy 23, they remind us of another facet of God's warfare of his through his people in the New Covenant, Christ is inaugurated. I hope you remember something of my series, The Revelation in the Mornings. I know there's been a lot of details, but hopefully you can recall that these laws are actually part of the background for the image of this holy army of the Lord that John sees in his apocalypse. Revelation 14, the army of the Lamb shows up as 144,000 warriors, and what are they? Virgins. Those who have not defiled themselves with women. That's alluding to the requirements of the holiness of combat that are here in Deuteronomy 23. And of course, in John's Apocalypse, this is not a literal image. This army of the Lamb is a symbolic picture of the church, deployed in the field of battle as we engage in a combat against the dragon which consists in bearing to the nations the word of our testimony. The Holy Army of the Lamb is an army that conquers by way of Christian witness. It's an army of evangelists. And in that warfare, the church participates in the mission of Christ as he opens up new possibilities for those who can now enter his holy assembly. Under this, we come back full circle to some of the questions that are raised in verses one through eight. We come to our third point, a holy future. The mission of Christ's holy army, which bears the witness of the gospel to the nations, it has within it this hope that Christ has finally broken down all of the barriers that the Mosaic law has erected around those who can and cannot enter into the holy assembly of the Lord, barriers like what we find in these verses of Deuteronomy 23. The Mosaic laws prohibited eunuchs from entering into the assembly of the Lord. If you keep on reading through the Old Testament, within it, you will find the hope of a future that presents something different for these kinds of outcasts. The prophet Isaiah looks to the day when the Lord would bring about the final salvation of his Messiah. And in Isaiah 56, the Lord promises something marvelous. It's worth reading. Turn to Isaiah 56 quickly. We can read it together. If you're using a Pew Bible, it's on page 783. 783, Isaiah 56. Begin in verse three. It's worth contemplating these seven verses here, this group of verses. Beginning in verse three, let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely separate me from his people. And let not the eunuch say, behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant. I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant. These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Those last words, hopefully, remind you of something. Because they're exactly what Jesus says when he comes to cleanse the temple. This is the vision and the mission of Christ. He comes to gather the nations into his people, to give them a place in the worshiping assembly of the Lord. And he gives such a place to the eunuch as well. It's not accidental that among the very first converts the book of Acts records, we meet a man Philip evangelizes and baptizes in Acts 8, the Ethiopian eunuch. And when Philip encounters this eunuch, he's reading of all books which the book of Isaiah, And he's doing of all things what? He's going to Jerusalem to worship the Lord. The Ethiopian unit could not do that with full inclusion under the laws of Deuteronomy 23. And yet we're reminded in that story of Acts 8 that God has done what the law could not do as it was weakened by the flesh by sending his son. And in Christ's work, unclean and unwhole outcasts become fully sanctified and fully included. We should also know in light of the exclusion of the Moabites in verse three, that the Lord determined to make a very conspicuous exception to this, even within the unfolding of the Old Testament. Perhaps the most famous Moabite of all time, is the Moabites, who has a whole name of the Bible in her honor, a whole name of a book of the Bible in her honor, Ruth. Ruth's a Moabite. But not only is Ruth grafted into Israel, she's grafted into the line of Judah. She bears the peculiar honor of being the grandmother of King David and King Solomon, the very kings to whom the construction of the temple would fall and whose role would be to lead Israel in worshiping the Lord in it. So this law in verse three was not absolute and unyielding before the electing grace of God. Indeed, it was through this Moabite woman that the Lord chose not only to grant to Israel the great kings and temple builders of the Old Covenant, but to give to them as well the greatest king and temple builder, the great grandson of Ruth, Jesus Christ. And so what we discover again and again in the unfolding narrative of God's redemption is that where our unholiness, my unholiness, your unholiness, by rights, should place us on the outside looking in? God's grace yet finds a way to sanctify us, to give us a place in his worshiping assembly. Does that through Jesus, the one whose blood possesses the power to render holy the most unclean of wretches and to make whole the most broken of outcasts? And so even here in these laws, the, to our sensibilities seem like some of the strangest and most awkward laws we could possibly read in a Sunday evening service from the old Testament. Even here we place our fingers on threads that lead us to the gospel. There's no unclean outcast whose impurity can resist the sanctifying power of the blood of the lamb. No one whose marred deformity can resist Christ's power to make them whole again. But as Christ sanctifies us, we're not entirely passive. Just as Israel could count on the Lord to fight her battles for her, yet still had to take up her encampment and go and fight. So we can trust that Christ sanctifies us, and yet we must be fully engaged in that process of sanctification. Paul says this, 2 Corinthians 7 verse 1, since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of the Lord. You must be clean and holy, Christians. not clean and holy in a way that conforms to the types and shadows of the old covenant, but clean and holy in a way that conforms to Christ, who is the substance of those types and shadows. So in a culture which seeks to profane every nook and cranny of the world, which seeks to leave nothing sacred, nothing unsecularized, this is our struggle. We must be holy. And we must be holy not just in some sphere of religiosity that's sequestered from our day-to-day life. We must be holy in a way that reaches into every crevice of our existence. We must present our whole selves as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. We live Coram Deo. We walk constantly before the living God. through Christ has written his holy name upon us and has claimed every square inch of our lives. So as the Puritans were fond of saying, all of life must be holiness under the Lord. This is the holy war we fight. This is the great contest of our sanctification. We strive in that war in the hope that Christ is the one who is fighting in us and with us, who is working his holiness out in us. And he will at last ensure that we have clean hands and a pure heart. And so by the virtue of his blood can stand in his holy place. Christ has sanctified you for the worship and warfare of his holy people. Let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you for these promises. We pray now that you would fit us for your service, further the work of sanctification you are doing in us, that we would not grow weary and discouraged, that we would lift up our eyes, that we would see you, Lord Jesus, the Lord of hosts, champion of your church, who fights our battles for us. in whom we have the victory. We ask these things in your name. Amen.