AP

Deuteronomy 23:12-14   Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself.  As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement.  For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you.  Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.

I am reminded by today’s verses of the great benefit and blessing we derive from a good sewerage system.  In a previous life I spent 10 years as an Engineer with Sydney Water and more than half of these were involved with the sewerage side of things, including one year as the Site Engineer in charge of the construction of Malabar Sewage Treatment Works.  We should be very thankful that we don’t need to keep a spade handy for digging a hole ‘outside the camp’ (as I had to do as part of National Service Army Training!).

The whole of Deuteronomy 23 is concerned with making sure that God’s Covenant people, in every situation, remained aware of the absolute holiness of their God.  Perhaps in our Gospel Age, where we are encouraged to know our thrice-holy God as our Saviour and Friend, ‘Immanuel’, ‘God-with-us’, we need other things to keep us from becoming so friendly with him that we forget, or overlook, that he is holy.

In John’s first epistle wer read:  “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9).  “Holy, holy, holy!  All the saints adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee, who wert and art and evermore shalt be.  Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see, only thou art holy; there is none beside thee, perfect in power, in love, and purity” (Reginald Heber).

Although a holy God cannot associate with ‘Sin Lite’, he is also a gracious God who has provided atonement even for ‘Full-Cream Sin’ through the death of his Son.  As John had said earlier in his letter, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.  If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.  My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.  He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 1:8 – 2:2).  Let us be thankful that Jesus’ blood covers Full Cream Sin, but let us also strive earnestly against the subtle influence of Sin Lite in our lives!

– Bruce Christian