Deuteronomy 23

God has always been the King of heaven and earth. Since sin entered the world through Adam, we do not see that reign of God very well. One day we will see Jesus reigning over everything in a renewed earth where the wicked will no longer be nearby to oppress the righteous.

We are looking for God's promises to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, God has been working. God was working among the people of Israel as they waited to go into the promised land. He gave the Law of Moses to Israel to set them apart as a special people, a people who were eager for a Messiah King. Now the King has come. Many Jews and non-Jews follow this Jewish King.

Gentiles who follow Jesus do not have to keep all the laws recorded in Deuteronomy as if they were Old Testament Jews. How then should the church use books like Deuteronomy today?

The ceremonial and civil laws recorded here for Israel were part of God's revelation leading us all to the Messiah King. Together with the writings of the prophets and other inspired messengers, these laws led the people of God to a new covenant era. In that coming day, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon God's people. That day has arrived.

We are people of the Holy Spirit, but we can still make excellent spiritual use of the Law of Israel. That Law teaches us about the coming King who is now reigning over us. Our King shows us what He loves and what He hates, and He gives us His Holy Spirit. We can ask the Spirit of the living God to mold us into His image, and to make us more and more like Jesus Christ. Our goal is not just a surface religious picture. We want the power and integrity of a renewed heart and life.

The Lord Jesus loves purity. That love of God for holiness was once expressed with outward regulations for the worship assembly that kept the Israelites as a separate people until the coming of the final King. Now we have a holiness that no commandment could ever bring, and that no system of excluding the wrong kind of people could ever produce. People are removed from the membership in the body of Christ not based on who their parents and grandparents were or because of some outward deformity, but because they will not repent when they are confronted with their own sin. Even their exclusion is an act of the grace of Jesus Christ with the sincere desire that they will reconsider their lives and be brought back into the fellowship of those who walk in the light.

The uncleanness that we are most concerned about is not an outward ceremonial impurity that violates the Old Testament Law, but the inner impurity of a heart that will not obey God. In the Old Covenant ceremonies, the community of Israel was cleansed from external filth by bathing in water. In the New Covenant age, all kinds of people experience an inner cleansing by the renewing power of God's Word and Spirit. They live together in a growing relationship with the Lord. Jesus became the unclean and excluded One for us. There was no sin in Him, but He was cut off from the assembly of the Lord in order that we might be brought in.

Under His present reign we experience a freedom from the enslaving power of evil that could only be symbolized by outward ordinances in the days of Old Testament Israel. Today, slaves of sin have been set free. Prostitutes have been forgiven and eat at the King's table. Debtors have been released from the bondage of what they could never repay.

This is happening even now in the lives of those who know the power of the kingdom. The King has made a vow. He has promised to knit together a glorious family of purity and truth by the power of His own atoning blood. To live in the light of His reign is to walk in the power of heaven.

We are poor and needy, but the King bids us to walk in His garden every day. We eat bread from His fields and receive fruit from His trees. We grow in Him, and His Name is glorified.