Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Offended By the Old Testament? | Torah | Deuteronomy 23

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

There are some Bible passages that are offensive to modern ears. How do you deal with hard Bible passages? What’s actually moral and immoral? In today’s episode, Patrick discusses Deuteronomy 23 to show how to read difficult passages of scripture. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 23

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Here's a little secret. A lot of pastors and teachers avoid going to certain parts of the Old Testament because it says things that are just offensive to modern ears. The kinds of passages that, you know, atheists or anti-Christian activists used to show that at its root, the Bible is immoral. At its root, Christianity is damnable. The irony is that often the reason we are offended by the Bible isn't because we live in a post-Christian culture. It's because we live in a culture that has been so deeply shaped by Christian values. The reason we're offended when the Bible talks about

excluding someone because of their race or sex organs is because the Bible taught us that everyone is made in God's image and worthy of dignity and embrace, which begs the question, does the Bible contradict itself? What do we do with the tough passages? Well, I'm not a fan of avoiding hard things. I'm a fan of going headlong into them, wrestling with them, and seeing what gold we can pull out. In Deuteronomy 23, Moses explains how Israel can keep itself pure and holy, namely by excluding people. Deuteronomy 23 verse 1. No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord. Let's pause.

Here's a verse that excludes anyone who intentionally or accidentally disfigures their sex organs. This would include eunuchs, men who were castrated by kings, so that they could oversee the king's wives and concubines. I mean, doesn't this seem unfair? Doesn't this seem unjust? Well, let's keep going because it only gets worse. Verse two, no one born of a forbidden marriage, nor any of their descendants, may enter the assembly of Yahweh, not even to the 10th generation.

Here, Moses is banning anyone who marries a Canaanite or foreign woman from entering the assembly, not just them, but also their descendants. This sounds like a ban on interracial marriage. Isn't that wrong? well, it maybe gets worse. Verse three, no Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the 10th generation. So here you have it. Two specific people groups who are banned. Isn't that racism? To explore this, we have to get to the heart of why these laws were laid down and how they were deployed. How they were deployed maybe actually matters

the most because despite having these laws on the books, the rest of the Bible seems to move in the exact opposite direction. Let me give you some examples. Ruth, she was a Moabite woman. So she was from the people group banned from the assembly. But Boaz, who wasn't Israelite, he marries her. And their great grandson is King David. His son Solomon would build the temple. And so clearly this entire family is breaking the rule against descendants of Moabites entering the assembly. I mean, they built the place where the assembly happens. There's an entire book of the Bible celebrating Ruth's godliness. She's upheld as the embodiment of a wise woman, the kind of woman described at the end of the book of Proverbs. Moreover, Matthew, he explicitly names her in Jesus' genealogy. He's proud of Ruth.

But she's a Moabite. She's excluded. And so are all of her descendants. So how do we square that circle? Well, let's just move on to Unix. And the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, seems to contradict Deuteronomy 23. This is Isaiah 56, verse 3. Let no foreigner who is bound to Yahweh say, Yahweh will surely exclude me from his people, and let no unit complain, I am only a dry tree. For this is what Yahweh says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me, and hold fast to my covenant, to them, I will give within my temple and its walls. So this is the place of assembly, a memorial and a name, better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. And foreigners who bind themselves to Yahweh to minister to him,

to love the name of Yahweh and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold fast to my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain. So he's talking about Jerusalem. He's talking about the temple and give them joy in my house of prayer. They've been invited into the assembly. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

In the New Testament, the first convert outside of Jerusalem, is an Ethiopian eunuch, which means the first person to bring the gospel to Africa was supposedly banned from the assembly. You see, the stories of Ruth, the words of Isaiah, the teachings of Jesus. They've so shaped our modern imagination that we see embracing all humans as deeply moral. That's something ancient Greeks would have never thought. That's something ancient Romans would have never thought. That's something ancient Babylonians would have never thought. It's something no other culture except for cultures shaped by Jesus could ever possibly think. But isn't Deuteronomy doing the exact same thing? Well, now that we know how the law was applied and thought through, now that

we know that Moabites and foreigners and eunuchs are in fact welcomed into God's kingdom in the story of Israel, we can finally go back to why this law existed. You see, it couldn't have existed to permanently exclude all of the people it seems to permanently exclude. The laws of the Old Testament weren't just codes to be precisely followed. That's how modern laws tend to work. They were principles laid down to shape wise minds. In context, the main concern of Deuteronomy 23 is worship. Moses' ban has absolutely nothing to do with racial hatred.

It has everything to do with a deep concern that Israel wouldn't be tempted to worship foreign gods, the gods of Moab, the gods of Ammon. This explains why a Yahweh worshipping Moab, by, just like Isaiah talks about why that kind of person was not only welcomed into the assembly, but could become the great-grandma of Israel's royal line. But what about the eunuchs? The reason why this law is in place is maybe a bit more complicated. The tabernacle, the place where everybody assembled, it was supposed to be a reboot of the Garden of Eden. When you went to the tabernacle, it was supposed to be like going back into the Garden of Eden, the place of delight where everything is

right. Everything is pure. Everything is joyful and full. And in Eden, everything is the way it should be. It means no disease, no death. That's why no human remains. Dead bodies were allowed in the tabernacle complex. That's why human excrement and things that caused disease weren't allowed inside of the tabernacle complex. But one of the main themes of Genesis and Eden is God's call for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. Tragically, a eunuch can't do this. And so, for the tabernacle to faithfully show and tell the story of Eden to the world, it would have to be a place where a eunuch couldn't worship, because in some senses, he didn't tell the story of Eden the right way. And yet Isaiah shows that the tabernacle was only a picture. It was a temporary thing. It wasn't

the end of the story. And that, in fact, in the end, God would not only embrace eunuchs, but he would give them names that last forever. And this shows that God embraces all people who don't belong in Eden. In other words, people like you and me. You see, sinners don't belong in Eden. We desecrate Eden with our presence, and yet, just like God welcomed in the eunuch, he welcomes us in as well. So what can we take away from Deuteronomy 23? First, that the Bible is a unified story that points to Jesus.

When someone pulls a passage out of its context and reads that story outside of the bigger story of the Bible, you should get skeptical. They might make what sounds like a great point against Christian. Christianity or the Bible, but they de-contextualized it. What they're saying isn't true. It doesn't actually make sense. But the second thing we should take away is this. This story reminds us that just like Israel, we are supposed to reboot Eden. In other words, we should value our own holiness, and we should fight for holiness in our churches. One way we do this is by obeying Jesus's commands to embrace and welcome everyone. Jesus only calls the church to exclude those who have entered the

church. They've committed their lives to Jesus already, but continue to sin brazenly without any repentance. They say, I don't want to change at all. That's what we call church discipline. And Jesus explains that in Matthew 18. But that's a minor theme. The major theme is this. We are called to embrace everyone, no matter what was in their past. I think of trans friends. You've had surgeries. They can't undo. That doesn't mean that they can't be welcomed into our churches. In fact, it means quite the opposite. They must be welcomed. And I think of Isaiah's words to them. that their children will be many as they make disciples, that they will have a name which endures forever. We all make decisions we can't undo.

But that doesn't mean that God has excluded us. In Jesus and through his death, he has made a way for us to re-enter Eden. And now our calling is to rebuild Eden and to seek holiness together. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.