I'm praying you all have a good productive day for the Lord! Deuteronomy chapter 23.
God has some definite strict rules on who can and cannot enter into his assembly and strict rules to ensure the Israelites are being holy.
We can't expect to enter God on our terms and expect God to bless us and our ministry and our testimony before others. To come before God on our terms is to bring with us a selfish compromise in given areas that we want to enjoy but yet we are unholy. This means we aren't broken before God. We are crazy to expect God to accept our lives while holding on to parts of this world / sin. Instead, we must be broken before God and humbly come before him having let go of sin in the world so that we meet his holy expectations. We push God away with un-Holiness and we welcome him with Holiness. Where do I need to be broken before God so that I am Holy? Truly holy? Where do I need to be humbled, And holy so God can be all he wants to be through me?
We see how there were people excluded from entering the assembly of the Lord in chapter 23. I think back to Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden and how simple it seemed to be for them! Don’t eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That’s it! Nothing else required! Of course we know how they couldn’t follow that one direction so here we are now in a world full of sin and suffering from the consequences of sin.
I don’t know about everyone else reading Deuteronomy, but as I’m thinking about all of these rules and restrictions and how complicated it all seems to be getting for the people in what they can do and what they can’t do, it just makes me more thankful for Jesus and how He came to rescue us. Everyone can rejoice that there aren’t any exclusions on who can be saved!
I was reading from Romans today. I would like to share Romans 3:19-26. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
Then we go on to read this amazing truth about God’s love for us in verses 6-8 of Romans 5.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Uncleanness in the Camp
Pastor Gary gave a sermon on that chapter….it wasn’t what I was expecting, but he pull it all together…it was good
Not the most popular topic