Deuteronomy 23:9-13 Bible Study | Episode 930

May 2, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 23:9-13 Bible Study | Episode #930

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 we're dealing with verses 9 through 14. It really has to do with. With keeping the camp clean, keeping the camp from the things that would make you sick.

I mean, really, that's what's going on oftentimes when I, When I think about sickness and illness.

Well, there's, it's. There's a clear correlation between sickness and illness and sin. Now, I'm not talking about, like, if you're sick today, it has something to do with sin. I'm talking about the pictures.

The pictures are the clear correl, not the, not. Not an individual sin. If you, if you, if you, if you've got a. If, if you've got a, a bad tooth that, that's not directly correlated to some sin that you've committed or some sin outside.

None of that. That. That's witchcraft. Okay? That's not, that's not, that's not what we're talking about. And in fact, there, you know, there are things in scripture that you could say, you know, Jesus identified this as a problem, a sin or whatever.

And, and, but, but now you gotta remember,

so. And, and, and there may be a sickness or illness that may correlate directly with sin. I mean, if you've got cirrhosis of the liver and you drink, drink a fifth of liquor every day, well, you know, you probably know where that comes from.

If you're, if you're overweight and you have a little heart problem, that's probably, we probably know where that comes from. If you have diabetes and you eat two bags of Skittles every day, well, we know where.

We know where we got that from. Okay? So, so yeah, there are things that you can directly correlate, and it would be one of those things that, that you probably need to deal with, but generally speaking, sin is correlated picture wise in Scripture, one of the things that's correlated with is illness.

And obviously sin makes us ill. Sin, Sin is death. Sin, Sin leads to death. And so when, when you have sin,

it's going to be very destructive in your life. That's just the way it is. I mean there's no way to get around it. We're not, we're not trying to beat you over the head with it.

We're just,

it's just an obvious fact. Sin leads to death. Sin eats at the core of who you are. And so in my study and thinking through these things, especially a kind of deep dive look into Jesus and how he understood and saw things, especially when he was dealing with people who had sicknesses and illnesses and things like that,

and how the comments that he made, the things that he said. And then throughout the New Testament, whenever you have something like that going on and then you can even dig through the Old Testament and begin to look at that and see, see those things.

And so when you're kind of looking through all that, you say okay,

what is, what is the, what's, what's, what's going on here? Well, just a very rudimentary surface view of it. This is how I see it.

Seeing in the, the, the illnesses that literally come from your body, meaning the, the illnesses that are like cancer,

things that are a malfunction of your body, the way your body was naturally made to run and function. Well,

those things maybe something with a, maybe something that, like my lymph nodes or something, my lymphatic system,

maybe something that has to do with my skin,

something that has to do with the way my body operates and how it is malfunctioning in the op, in the operation of my body, some hormonal issues that come from, you know, your liver, your pancreas and all that not functioning well.

Those are pictures of the sin in our lives that are, is slowly killing us. It's just, it's, it's an, it's a sin that is, is something maybe we grew up with or maybe we've, we've made a part of who we are in some way in our life.

And, and those are pictures of things that, that destroys now though. And you know, ultimately cancer is one of those things that really in heart disease and things like that, things that come from the inside, those things kill us at a pretty high rate.

Then you have things that come from the outside, like viruses, like bacteria, things like that that I get from the outside world that also can kill me. And we know that in detail.

Now, you know those things, there are bacterias and viruses out there that will kill you.

And we get them from the world. And that's a picture of the sin of the world having its effect on our lives also and causing death in our lives. So you have the inward that are sin, that's a part of who you are, and then you have the outward sin.

And generally speaking in scripture, you'll see that the Bible kind of makes a correlation there. Very rudimentary, very on the surface, but it makes that correlation.

So when God is dealing with cleanliness in the camp, what he's saying is we need to keep our house in order or our camp in order. We need to do the things in our lives to keep us away from the things that will kill us from the world or from the outside of ourselves,

outside of our own personal humanity.

And so when he's telling them to keep the camp clean, what he's telling them to do is order their lives in such a way that sin is not a natural element of that life.

Sin's not something that's going on in your life all the time and that is attacking you from the outside.

So if we read that in that context, if we kind of think through it that way, when the army goes out against your enemies, verse 9 of chapter 23, then keep yourselves from every wicked thing.

Notice I'm not trying to rid myself of the effects of my own sin nature. I'm trying to keep the wicked things on the outside away from me. I'm trying to move them.

I'm trying to keep those things from having their destructive influence and force in my life. If there's a man among you who becomes unclean by some occurrence in the night.

Now look, he's not, he's not making a correlation that he's necessarily sinful. Somehow he becomes unclean. And, and you know, we, we're sinful on the outside, we're sinful on the inside.

We know we have sin that we. God's not making a judgment call as to whether it's his fault or anyway, it doesn't matter. If he comes unclean by some occurrence in the night, then he shall go outside the camp.

He shall not come inside the camp. What is God doing? Well, he's removing the person from.

From God's people, from, from being right there intimately inside with God's people, and he's taking them outside the camp. Why? For him to become well,

for him to heal so that he is not a problem.

For God's people, not so that the sin doesn't spread. He says he shall not come inside the camp, but it shall be. When evening comes, then he shall wash with water.

And when the sun sets, he may come into the camp. What he's saying is, and that's the beginning of a new day for them. Remember, new days began being at sunset.

So on the new day, when things are. He's. He's been outside the camp, he's been separated. When the new day comes,

which is a picture of redemption and all that kind of stuff, the beginning of God's process of redemption, you say, well, night is the beginning. Yeah, you gotta go through the night.

And then joy comes. In the morning,

he's allowed back in the camp. He comes back in. All right. Now that's a picture of sin, and it's also a picture of illness. God's trying to keep. Keep the camp clean in just a very natural, you know,

cleanliness and, and. And in lifestyle way. If somebody becomes unclean, get them out of the camp.

I mean, you know, that makes sense. But on a sin level, if somebody is involved in something, they need to be segregated out a little bit for a little while.

They got. They've gotta. They've got to get that issue dealt with. Whether it's a personal issue or whether it's an issue from the world, whatever that issue is, segregate them out and let them deal with it.

And that's what's going on in a real physical way for the Jews. And what's going on, what should go on in a real, real spiritual way in the church. So he says also, you 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 refuge refuse. Well, this is about making sure, you know, when you get rid of your refuse, that it is well taken care of.

You got to have something outside the camp, and you got to have a place for it where you can go out and you can dig a hole and do your business and then come back in.

Now, this thing's at just a. Just a human level. This is just obvious instruction God's given them. He's saying, you know, if you've got. You got to have a place to have your latrines.

I think about that in the military, they're always cutting, you know, digging. Digging ditches and cutting holes for latrines. They don't do that as much anymore because there's so Many.

There's so much technology out there to handle it. But,

you know, originally I remember those things, you know, back in the, in the 90s, and, and I remember those things being out there. It's a good thing to not leave the refuse in camp,

by the way. That's the product of what we would say, sin. You know, it's the negative product of the food we eat and all that. It's the stuff that's got to be gotten rid of.

Well, he says do it outside the camp. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to give your enemies over to you.

Therefore your camp shall be holy. Meaning you got to make sure you get rid of the junk. You got to get it outside the camp. If somebody becomes unclean, for whatever reason, they become unclean, got to separate them out.

If,

if they, if, if you're camping somewhere, you got to have a place to put your refuge. It doesn't need to be in the camp either. Because why? Because we already have a problem with sin affecting us inwardly.

Our own personal sin, which is pictured by certain illnesses. Cancer, in my opinion, being like the key one. It is the easiest one to understand. I have cancer starts on the inside and it kills me.

And then you've got, you know, viruses and bacteria on the outside that kill me. So I've sinned that my own sin in my own life and my own passed down generational issues,

I got to deal with them on the inside. And then also I've got to make sure that I understand that they're sent out there in the world and, and that those viruses and those bacteria, I need to at least do the very basic things to make sure they don't affect me either.

Well,

you got to do the same thing in the camp. The physical things, you gotta, you gotta make sure if somebody's unclean, you don't expose them to everybody. And you gotta make sure that the refuge is.

Take refuge, is, is taken out. And it makes just perfect sense when you kind of think about it. When you think about this in that context, it makes really good sense.

How do we deal with these things? Well, somebody's got an issue that could easily spill over into other people's lives and cause damage. You got to,

they're unclean. You got to get them outside the camp or you've got to put them on. You can't let them be right in the midst of everybody. You've got to put them kind of separate.

And then,

and then if obviously you're always going to have the byproduct of, of life that has to be dealt with. And those things have to have a place outside the camp.

They're not to just stay in the camp. Got to get rid of them.

And that's how we should live our lives on a very physical level. And that's how we should live our lives as believers when we're dealing with the struggles of sin in our lives and others.

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.