Deuteronomy 23:1-8 Bible Study | Episode 929

May 1, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy23:1-8   Bible Study | Episode #929

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy, chapter 23. And this is,

well,

a continuation of several laws. And as we kind of go through these laws as we kind of deal with them,

the first part is about entering into the assembly,

meaning access to fellowship with God,

if you want to use the terminology and convert it to a New Testament understanding. What it, what it really means is access to,

to God. It's access to the family of God, access to the presence of God, access into the assembly of God. And interestingly, it goes into. It goes into different,

different aspects that I think some of them are very prescient, very important for the moment.

They give an insight into God's view of things. And then the next part is very, very interesting and important because it deals with a very important figure in the Old Testament and how the law, and how the law may deal with what we would call a conflict of the law.

In legal terms, in my own setting as a, as a judge, but also as a former attorney,

conflicts of law, meaning two laws, don't seem to fit together. It's hard to make them fit together because. Because if I do one, I kind of seem to be breaking the other.

And which one is, is the more dominant, which one is the more important of the laws. So when we're, when we're kind of studying through these things and looking at these things, it is, it is, it is important.

Now it says, he who emasculates,

he who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembling of the Lord. Now, back then, this would have definitely dealt with eunuchs, people who had been made into eunuchs, and they would not have entered the assembly of the Lord.

According to this passage.

That would be these people. Most of these people would have been involuntarily made. That way. And so even though they didn't do it on their own, for the most part,

to include Daniel, likely even though they may not have done it on their own, God is excluding them because of that from the assembly. And you go, well, what does that mean?

Well,

it definitely gives us an insight into how God sees that process. And especially in modern times, it might even give us a deeper insight into how God sees that process as far as how we view some of the things that people want to make okay in our society, which I would say to you is in many ways just a legacy of abomination that our society has slowly slid to.

So it says, one of illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the Lord even to the 10th generation. None of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

Now this has to do with illegitimate children. And this deals with God's wanting there to be children born of marriage. Now all of these say the emasculated one can't enter at all.

Obviously, there's not a generational issue there. The. The illegitimate birth shall not enter the assembly of the Lord is a very important understanding when we deal with Jes. Especially how the Jews are dealing with Jesus as we're going through John chapter eight, treating him as if he is illegitimate and therefore unworthy of being in the assembly.

And so when I look at this passage, I see that it is. It is one of those passages that kind of give us an insight into how the Jews were trying to use and manipulate the law to keep Jesus from being able to be a presence among the people,

be someone that people turn to for the Messiah. Now, the other one, the other one that's really, really interesting in this passage is verses three through six. It says, an Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord even to the 10th 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 and Pethor of Mesopotamia to curse you.

Nevertheless, 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 the days of your life forever.

Now, what God's saying is, don't let the Moabites or the Ammonites end. And Ammon and Moab are distant kins. Kin folks. Moab and Ammon are the children of my mind.

Just went Blank. It's. It's.

It is Esau. And while I found it Esau and.

And Lot. So you have the Ammonites who are, I think, Lot and Moabites who are Esau's kin fol. They're the descendants of them. So why is God cursing them? Why is God saying they can't enter the assembly?

Well, because they were actually relatives. I mean, you know, the Jewish people, they were all sons. They were all. They were all kin to Abraham. They were. They were all a part of the same family.

And when they needed help the most, they did not provide help. In fact, they. They tried to undermine that help and try to destroy them. And so God says they can't get in.

Now you go, well, why is this really. Why are you spending a lot of time on this? Well, because a Moabite is a very important figure in Scripture, and that is Ruth.

Ruth was a Moabite, and she was married to a Jewish man.

And then they moved to Moab, which is on the border of Israel. And so the Jewish man left his people and moved into Moab.

While he was in Moab, where he shouldn't have been, he died.

And that happens. That's a pretty good picture of. If you're not in the center of God's will and not glorifying him, really, what good are you in this physical world?

You need to move on to the spiritual world. That's a whole nother Bible study in and of itself. And then. And so God oftentimes takes you if he cannot break you, meaning break your will and allow you to begin to walk in his will.

That's a Bible study in and of itself. But under law,

the kin of Moab's husband had a duty to take her as their wife and to produce for him children. And that would have been a kinsman Redeemer, which is part of a very important idea in the Old Testament called the Goel.

And I've been teaching through that in the book of the Revelation, and I've taught that in Daniel a little bit.

It is an important understanding that Goel was either the kinsman Redeemer or the avenger of blood. And Boaz,

who is the kinsman of Ruth's husband,

took Ruth in and made her his wife and provided for her children so that she could be reunited into the family of God. And in fact, Ruth is a grandmother of David, King David.

And so these. This understanding is. Okay, well, if they're. If they're excluded from the assembly to the 10th generation, why does Ruth get To get in. Well, Ruth gets to get in because these exclusions are law.

But the law of the kinsman redeemer or the law of redemption, and I want you to just think of it that way. For the purposes of this Bible study, the law of redemption is greater than the law of death.

Okay, and you go, what do you mean with law of death? Well, all these laws that God has given us are laws that, that indicate a person is in death.

The meaning they are separated from God. They're not. If you're breaking these laws, you're separated from God. So if you are emasculated, you know, there's an element of you being separated from God.

If you're illegitimate in this passage, there's an element that, that makes you societally separate from God. Now remember, all these things, all these things that make you separate from God are provided for in the redemption of Jesus Christ.

They're provided for on the cross,

they're paid for. But understanding the significance of them and how they're out of line with God's will and how that makes you separate from God allows you to understand how to walk in the redemption that God provides for you.

And so if you have one of these issues, such as Ruth, she was separated from God, she actually married into the assembly of God wrongfully. Her husband wrongfully married her.

He should not have married her.

And then he went into her country. He shouldn't have gone into her country. Notice there's a lot of not getting it right. There's a lot of not getting it right here.

And then he dies. And Ruth decides to go back to Israel with her mother in law, who is Jewish,

and decides to seek out a kinsman redeemer. And by the way, Boaz is a type of Christ. He's a picture of Christ.

And that kinsman redeemer, he redeems her and he makes her back a part of the family of God. And so when we're reading in this passage, I think it's real important that this is right there in the middle of it, because all these issues that we see, can a person be involved in some of the cultural things that are causing issues in our society and then turn toward God and be redeemed?

Absolutely.

Is someone who is not born of a proper relationship, proper biblical relationship? Are they, Are they.

Does it make it very difficult for them to hear the gospel and stuff like that? Absolutely. Are they redeemable? Yeah, they're redeemable.

Or is someone who is not even allowed in because their family fought against Israel, worked Against Israel, tried to destroy Israel. Are they allowed in at some point in time?

Well, they are under the redemptive law. And so what does that mean? What does that tell us? Well, that tells us if we're going to deal with conflict of laws,

the law of redemption is greater than the law of death.

And we know that because the Bible says that Jesus overcame sin and death. How did he overcome sin and death? By the redemptive power of resurrection. He did. And so we know that the redemptive work of God is more powerful than the death that comes from sin.

We know that. And so obviously, in a conflict of laws,

Boaz had a duty to redeem Ruth. He had a duty to,

even though Ruth was to be excluded.

Why? Because redemption is greater than death. He says, you shall not adore, abhor. This is verse seven.

An Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian because you are alien in his land. The children to the third generation, born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord.

Now,

why is he making exceptions for them? It seems like you'd not make exceptions for the Egyptians. The Edomites and the Egyptians are pictures of the world, especially the Egyptians. But the.

What God's saying is, is they can't come in until the third generation. But you shouldn't abhor them. Why? Because God doesn't hate the world. How do we know that? For God so loved the world and so understanding that all these things where God is saying, I'm separating you out of the assembly is to reveal aspects of God's character.

He's saying, I'm holy, I don't want, I don't. You can't, can't confront my holiness. If you're trying to play games around here and say you can do this or act this way or be this way,

you can, you can, but you can't be in my presence. You can't be in my assembly.

You're going to be under the law of death. Oh, by the way,

there is redemption. And oh, by the way, I have a special place in my heart for those in the world. And I'm going to work my redemption and I'm going to work to redeem the world through my son in the future.

But for right now, you need to understand that there are things and aspects to this world that. That separates you from God. And these things separate you from God.

But by the way, I do redeem them all.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to.

Shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.