Keep Clean in God's Presence

Hey, hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning We're at Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 9 through 14 and talk about what it means to be clean in the camp Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and get into God's Word Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word. And Lord, we pray for that your Holy Spirit would please help us as we read your word, that we would understand it. Lord, but not just that we would understand it, but you would teach us how it applies to us today and how it should give us hope. In Jesus's name we pray. Amen. All right. Deuteronomy chapter 23, verses nine through 14.
When the army goes out against your enemies, then keep yourself from every wicked thing. If there is any man among you who becomes unclean by some occurrence in the night, then he shall go outside the camp, he shall not camp inside the camp. But it shall be when evening comes that he shall wash with water, and when the sun sets, he may come into the camp. Also when 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 refuse. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and judge you and give your enemies over to you. Therefore, your camp shall be holy, that he may see no unclean thing among you and turn away from you." Well, it's an interesting passage. We need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do? So, A, what is this about? Well, there's really two situations here.
Number one, You're going to go out to war, you have a camp, it's a whole bunch of dudes, right? Maybe hygiene type stuff seems to go out the window. Maybe even purity laws may be tempted to go out the window. Not for the Israelites, though. Even when you're camping out for war and you're outside, the encampment of the Israelites and a guy has a Nocturnal emissions a wet dream.
He's got to be unclean right and this this takes this is often a personal thing Means he's got to go outside the camp himself. He's got to be a man of integrity this way and just say okay I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna wash I'm gonna be outside the camp for for a night and then I'll be able to come back in and then The second one is when they're out to war, even within the encampment, and they're going to have to go do the duty.
Right. They got to go. Number two, they got to use the bathroom. Don't do it in the middle of the camp. Go outside the camp and outside the camp. There you go. You go to the bathroom and you don't just leave it sitting on the top of the ground. Right. But you actually dig a hole. You bury it. And you keep yourself clean, right? So this is what the Lord is doing. The question is why? Why, right?
Well, that's what verse 14 gets. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and give your enemies over to you. Therefore, your camp shall be holy, that he may see no unclean thing among you and turn away from you. That's what I have underlined as the best verse for this.
This is the why, right? Why, if there's somebody who has nocturnal emissions or if they need to go to the bathroom, you need to bury your poop, right? It's because the Lord is a God who is holy, who is clean, who is pure, and he walks in their midst. He's with them. And so they need to keep the camp clean because he's holy, he's pure, he's clean, and they are to be like. Him. So here's the hard part.
C. Calling. What are we called to do? What does this show us? Christ. Does that mean we need to go outside and go to the bathroom? Or if we have some type of bodily omission, we got to leave the house and go camp out in the wilderness? I don't think that's the case today.
I think these purity laws are fulfilled in Christ. I think, again, there's three different types of laws we generally see in the Old Testament. One is moral law, right? That's the you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not kill, you shall not make for yourself graven images, those types of laws are the moral laws.
They're unchanging. Then we have the sundry laws, the civil laws. These are the ones that Nathan and I will go over tomorrow, where there's all sorts of different things and situations and stuff like that. I think those have general principles behind them, but they're not bound to us today because we're not Israel today.
And then we have purity or ceremonial laws, and those are the ones like here. And so we find even dietary laws are part of the purity laws, and those are fulfilled in Christ is what the book of Hebrews tells us. And so we don't need to follow those anymore. Or we go to the book of Acts and we see that the different dietary restrictions God has declared all things clean and do not say what is unclean, what I have declared clean. And so I don't think these laws still bind us in the same way, although I do think I just. This is one of those Commentators go on this sometimes a little bit too long, but it's interesting to note that these ceremonial laws are often very good for hygiene, right?
One of the reasons why there was massive diseases in the Middle Ages is because they forgot the art of sewage. People would just throw their waste out their window into the middle of the street. Yuck and disease and gross, right? Not so with Israel. Even when they're camping, go out and bury it. But the reason why wasn't for the hygiene. The reason why is because God walked in their midst and they needed to not be unclean, a stench before him, lest he turn away from them. And I think in our lives, we should take that principle and maybe ask, what is there unclean in our lives? Are there things in our lives that are morally reprehensible to the Lord?
Do we treat our bodies forgetting that we are a temple unto God himself? Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Spirit of God lives within you? Therefore, glorify God with your bodies. I do take these things seriously, that God has called us to be holy as he is holy.
You look down on your life and say, you know, you walk like one of my clean ones because you're one of my children. Not of a trying to earn your salvation type way. But does he, can he see there's a qualitative difference in your life with the pagans around you? Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for the joy we have in Jesus. Lord, we thank you that you have made us clean. You have sanctified us. You have washed us in the blood of the lamb. Lord, we pray that we would be quick to confess our sins. O Lord, we cannot say we are without sin. O Lord, we would be lying and we would make you a liar. Father, we confess to you the unclean places in our lives. I pray that you would forgive us. Lord, we pray that your spirit would have us turn away from that uncleanness and walk in holiness.
Thank you for washing us in the blood of the Lamb and forgiving us of all of our unrighteousness. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, may you know that when you gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, He is still walking in our midst. He is with us and in us, and He is caring for you today. Have hope, Christian. I'll see you next time. Bye.