Nathan E. Lewis

“The Covenant: Access to the Assembly of the Lord” Deuteronomy 23:1-8
(a sermon preached by nathan lewis at Evergreen Church in Beaverton, Oregon, August 13, 2006)

In 1970 The Five Man Electrical Band sang:
Sign Sign everywhere a sign 
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind 
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign
And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply
So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you’ll do
So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you
woah!
Sign Sign everywhere a sign 
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind 
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign

And the sign said anybody caught trespassing would be shot on sight 
So I jumped on the fence and yelled at the house, Hey! what gives you the right 
To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in 
If God was here, he’d tell you to your face, man you’re some kinda sinner
Sign Sign everywhere a sign 
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind 
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign
Now, hey you Mister! can’t you read, you got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat 
You can’t even watch, no you can’t eat, you ain’t suppose to be here 
Sign said you got to have a membership card to get inside Uh!
Sign Sign everywhere a sign 
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind 
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray 
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, 
I didn’t have a penny to pay, so I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign 
I said thank you Lord for thinking about me, I’m alive and doing fine
What do you think should be the rules for access into the church? Do you find, at first glance, these laws in Deuteronomy 23 to be strange access codes?
The Assembly of the Lord was the whole of Israel. This people group was defined by God’s covenant. God lived in the midst of his people, their very tents pitched around his central tent, the tabernacle. The Assembly of the Lord was structured by all three human institutions: family, state, and church. The highest expression of the Assembly of the Lord was its corporate gathering to worship Yawheh, the One True God, who would descend in glory upon his tabernacle. These laws of access apply to this corporate worship. There are other laws for access elsewhere in the Books of Moses. This selection is certainly a strange one.
What kind of a God would command his people to exclude others according to these laws? In our world we hesitate to even ask the questions necessary to discover whether or not a person fits these excluded categories. It’s none of our business. What kind of a God makes these laws our business? The short answer offends many a person, but here it is: A holy God has given these exclusionary laws with the purpose of setting apart to himself this select group of people, Israel.
The common thread running through this list of exclusions is the seeming unfairness of them. The first law excludes men with maimed genitalia. The verbs of the law, “crushed� and “cut off� do not seem to refer to birth defects. They may refer to self-mutilation, which most men would readily agree is a very small and rare occurrence. The Bible includes references to the enemies of Israel maiming captives of war in this manner. Their purpose was to prevent the propagation of Israel. Historic evidence of such maiming as rites of passage for priests of near eastern religions also exists. Yawheh, the God of Israel, chose circumcision as the sign to set apart the males of the Assembly of the Lord. This sign stops short of the crushing and cutting off prohibited in this law. And so, the vast majority of men excluded by this law would be victims in war. Why would victims be excluded from the Assembly of the Lord?
The second law excludes the children born to forbidden unions. The actual Hebrew word is related to the language of incest. The law also prohibited Israelites marrying into other religions and the six wicked nations surrounding Israel. Today we are learning to correct our reference to such children. For a long time we have referred to them as “illegitimate children.� But the children have no control over who conceives them. They are not illegitimate. If anyone is, it would be the parents. This law thus becomes a stiff deterrent to any Israelite who would be tempted to enter into an incestuous relationship or marry a Canaanite. If a child is born of such a union, the child would be barred from the Assembly of the Lord. I think that it would be fair to bar the parents. But is seems unfair to bar the child.
The third law denies access to the Ammonites and the Moabites. For ten generations, no member of these two nations may enter the Assembly of the Lord. Any member born into these ten generations is barred forever! Once again I can understand denying access to the first generation which treated Israel poorly. But it does not seem fair to punish the sixth generation, living 240 years after the fact, let alone the tenth generation living 400 years later. What was the crime committed? They refused to feed Israel as she traveled through their lands. Israel was two million strong. Imagine the amount of bread and water needed to feed them for two weeks, or two years! Imagine the trampling of plants, the trash, and the noise of such a human herd traipsing through one’s land! But the real reason these two nations refused to aid Israel was hatred of her. They hire Balaam, the maverick prophet to curse Israel. God intervened and turned Balaam’s curse into a blessing of Israel. This divine behavior is central to God’s character and work. For his children he turns curses into blessings. This is known as God’s grace. Why doesn’t this gracious God teach Israel to extend grace even to her enemies? Why does he say, “You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever�? Does not Jesus say, “Love your enemies�? In light of Jesus’ teaching, this exclusion of Ammon and Moab seems to be unfair.
Finally, the exclusions relax and Moses ends this section with a hint of gracious welcome. Israel is to welcome the Edomite. Israel is to welcome the Egyptian after three generations pass. Surprise of surprise! If God were teaching Israel to hold a grudge, he would certainly bar Egypt. While Ammon and Moab treated Israel poorly, they did not enslave Israel 400 years. Yahweh, the holy God of Israel is a gracious God and here we see the beginning streams of the Gentiles welcomed into the Assembly of the Lord. Why not start with Egypt? Today, the Coptic Evangelical Church of Egypt (Synod of the Nile) has four presbyteries, 300 congre- gations, and about 300,000 members. This church was started by the United Presbyterian Church of North America in the late 19th century. It is a member of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
Wait, wait, wait a minute. What do Egyptian Christians have to do with the Assembly of the Lord in Israel? What do these laws of access to the tabernacle have to do with the church? Are not these laws of exclusion in such stark opposition to the wide open doors of the church that we can dismiss them, ignoring them? What do these exclusionary laws have to do with the gospel?
These laws are all together important to the gospel. These laws of exclusion present a holy God who has every right to disassociate from a crushed, twisted, hateful humanity. For God, this is not a matter of fairness to individuals. It is a matter of justice upon an entirely fallen human race. God’s law makes this quite clear and maintains this holy separation right up to the climax of redemptive history, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God has chosen the black backdrop of exclusion to display brilliantly the light of his glorious gospel. The death of Jesus Christ made a way for a holy God to embrace broken humanity. As Jesus died upon the cross, the veil in the temple between the exclusive Holy of Holies and the outer courts, including the Court of the Gentiles, was ripped in two. The light of day invaded the sacred space and the glory of God poured out to bless all nations of the world. The ancient promise of the Covenant given to Abraham stands: “All nations of the earth will be blessed through you.�
The apostle Paul presents Jesus Christ as the true Isaac, the true Israel. He teaches us that the true seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ. All who have the faith of Abraham are the true children of Abraham. In his letter to the church at Rome, in chapters 11-12, Paul addresses in depth the connection between Old Covenant Israel and the New Covenant Church. Through out history, God has maintained the Assembly of the Lord. As his redemptive work has progressed, the gathering of people groups has increased. The watershed was Jesus Christ, so much so that the apostle John makes no theological apology for writing that Jesus has atoned for the sins of the world. The apostle Peter describes the New Covenant Church, that is the Christian Church, to be the true temple of living stones.
This is the continuity of the Assembly of the Lord.
Paul writes to the Church at Ephesus, “The mystery hidden for ages is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.� The growing number of Egyptian Christians today is directly connected to the law and promise of God. The covenant God has sealed in Christ Jesus has produced the church, the Assembly of the Lord in every age.
What kind of a God delivered these exclusionary laws to Israel? The same God who has made a way for all of us to enter the Assembly of the Lord through Jesus Christ, our one and only Mediator between God and us. He welcomed the Ethiopian Eunuch into the Assembly of the Lord, through Christ. He has welcomed countless children born into broken families. Open wide the doors of the Church! Welcome all the broken people of this world. Welcome those who hide it well along with those who wear it on their sleeves. Here is a trustworthy statement, “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost.�
“And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray 
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, 
I didn’t have a penny to pay, so I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign 
I said thank you Lord for thinking about me, I’m alive and doing fine.â€?