Deuteronomy 23:1-8

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning. We're at Deuteronomy 23 verses 1 through 8. We're going to be talking about different people who weren't allowed to be with the assembly. This is one of those ceremonial laws that I'm going to talk about today. Let's have some coffee.
We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Lord, you are an amazing God. And we thank you for Blessing it is to be your people. Lord, it's a blessing we don't deserve, but it's given to you freely by grace. We pray that your spirit would please help us as we read your word now to understand it, that you would make it sweet like honey to us, more precious than gold. In Jesus's name, amen. All right, here we go, Deuteronomy chapter 23, verses one through eight.
He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation. None of his descendants shall enter the assembly 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 Pithor of Mesopotamia to curse you.
Nevertheless, Jehovah 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 the Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land. The children of the third and fourth generation born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord.
Well, we need to ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to these words? So, A, what's this about? As a congregation assembles, specifically for their holy feasts and their ceremonies and things like that, as they would get together, there were people who were not allowed to join. This is because the word for holy is kadosh, cut, set apart, put, sanctified, right? They're other.
And so there's a core group of people that God says, these are the ones who are allowed to come before me. And so he goes through a list of negations, who's not allowed to come before him. Well, those who are emasculated, right? Men who do not have their nether parts anymore, or who have been crushed or mutilated for some reason that way. He says that they're not allowed in the assembly of the Lord.
Why, right? Well, that's the place of the sign of the covenant. And that's the place where even as we talked about going through those whole laws of sexual morality in chapter 22, God is deeply concerned with progeny and sexual purity and ethics like that. So none of those type of men would be allowed. Verse two, of illegitimate birth, right?
If they can't prove that they're Israelites, They don't know their parentage. This was a promise to Abraham and his offspring. So they're not allowed to enter the Lord, into the assembly of the Lord, to the 10th generation. Now the Ammonite and the Moabite, they're not allowed to ever enter into this assembly of Israelites.
Why? Because when the Israelites came out of Egypt during that time of the Exodus, They tried to hire a witch doctor, Balaam, to come and curse them. And he tried and he tried and he tried. It wouldn't work. And eventually, actually, what he did was he, we find in the book of Numbers, what he does is he can't get to them by making God curse them. So what does he do? He brings home Moabite women to intermarry with. And there's even Phineas who has to go and end a plague that God's brought upon the people because There's even men having open sexual relationships with Moabite women.
And so God says they're not allowed ever in the assembly. And then there's a lesser amount for Edomites and Egyptians, right? The Edomite, they're not to abhor, nor are they to abhor the Egyptian, right? For two different reasons. the Edomite is the brother of Esau, right?
And so if there's somebody who's converting from that family line and wants to join Israel, they're allowed to in the third generation. Also, if it was an Egyptian, right? They were their sojourners in the land that they're in. And so he says, okay, If an Egyptian comes and they want to be your people, they're not allowed in the assembly, but the third generation down from them would be allowed. And we know that there were Egyptians who came up out of Egypt with the Israelites and seem to have converted. So there's these different classifications of who's allowed to be in and who's not allowed to be.
So that's what this is about. So B, what's the best verse to summarize this? Well, I'm going to go specifically 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. I know that doesn't mention the word assembly, but I think that's getting at the idea behind it, right?
God has a chosen people. people he loves, the people he's redeemed, and those people are the ones who are set apart as holy. And so this is this picture of God setting them apart and being a holy people to himself. So, what does that leave us with, with sea calling? What are we called to do? How does this show us Christ?
Well, this is a huge dividing wall where you have Jewish people on one side of the wall and Gentiles on the other side of the wall. And there's generations that literally genealogies that keep them separate. There's cultures that keep them separate. There's dietary laws that we're going to go through that keep them separate. There's everything that God's instituted to keep them separate.
The book of Ephesians tells us that Jesus Christ has torn down the barrier wall between Jew and Gentile. That he has saved us by grace through faith. And we're no longer concerned with the endless genealogies, but it's in Jesus Christ that the gospel, the good news of God making us holy by his works has gone to all the nations.
And so it's no longer the Jews against the Ammonites. It's no longer the Jews against the Moabites. It's no longer the Jews against the Edomites. It's no longer the Jews against the Egyptians. It's no longer all these different things. But no, it's about whether you're in Christ or not.
This is the blessing of the new covenant, the expansiveness of that covenant. And so we follow after Him. We thank the Lord that I should be one who would be excluded from the assembly if this was ancient Israel, but instead the Lord allows us to come. Tells us to come to him, to hear the good news and to be saved. Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you so much. You are an amazing God. It's so wonderful to hear your word. and to have hope. Lord, we pray that we would follow after you and we would recognize the height and the depth and the breadth of love that you have shown us in Christ Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. May the Lord bless you, knowing that he is calling people to himself from every tribe, tongue, and language, and that you can sing praises because of his mighty work in and for you. I'll see you next time. Bye.