“For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies from you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.”
~ Deuteronomy 23:14
Hi James and Ellen,
Do you know if God is protecting you? Do you think that you need God’s protection? Your grandmaa and grandpaa know that God is always protecting them. Your grandmaa and grandpaa know that they really need God’s protection all the time against an enemy who really does not like what your grandmaa and grandpaa are doing as missionaries. Your grandmaa and grandpaa know that God could take them home to heaven to live with Him at any moment so . . . your grandmaa and grandpaa want to make sure that when it is God’s foreordained time for Him to take your grandmaa and/or grandpaa home to heaven to live in their heavenly mansions with Him – where their souls or spirits or new bodies will eternally live while they spend all their time praising God, that when that moment arrives that they will not be doing something with their planet Earth assigned lives that is compromising their faith in what Jesus did on a cross to defeat death for them while atoning all their sins with the blood that He shed.
When your grandpaa was a student at Moody Bible Institute, your grandpaa in order to graduate needed to take two required music classes. Your grandpaa enjoys some music but . . . your grandpaa knows very little about music. One of the first things that your grandpaa had to learn how to do in the first of the two required music classes that he needed to take was to look at the notes of a song and then using a small wood stick tap the beat of the song on the desk where he was sitting. Your grandpaa had absolutely no idea how to read the notes of a song let alone how to tap the beat of the song. On the very first day of the first of the two music classes that your grandpaa needed to take, the teacher of the music class put the first note of a song on the blackboard and then he asked the students in his music class to tell him what song the note began. No guy or gal who was in your grandpaa’s music class of probably thirty or more students could tell the music teacher what song the one note began. When the music class teacher put the second note on the blackboard, the guy who was sitting next to your grandpaa on your grandpaa’s left said out loud the name of the song. Your grandpaa knew that no matter how many notes of a song that the music teacher wrote on the blackboard that he would never be able to identify the name of the song from the song’s notes. The student who was sitting to the left of your grandpaa in that first music class that your grandpaa needed to take at Moody Bible Institute was a tall, blond guy. When this tall, blond student noticed that your grandpaa did not have a clue what he was doing in the music class that he needed to take, the guy began to help your grandpaa do what your grandpaa had to do to pass this music class that he needed to take at Moody Bible Institute. A number of years later, a tall blond pilot – Steve Ross, and his wife joined the same mission agency – South American Mission, that your grandmaa and grandpaa were missionaries. When Steve saw your grandpaa again, Steve immediately recognized your grandpaa from the music class at Moody Bible Institute that they had been in together. Steve for the last several years flew for another mission agency that flew into places that are located in the Caribbean. A couple of weeks ago as Steve was returning home after making a flight with a friend to someplace in the Bahamas, another plane struck Steve’s plane head on not far off the Deerfield Beach pier. A God-fearing, caring, happy family guy one moment was doing what he really enjoyed doing and then the next moment this God-fearing, caring, happy family guy found himself in heaven – face to face with his Heavenly Maker. Your grandpaa can easily recount time after time when he and/or your grandmaa found themselves in a potentially catastrophic situation where . . .
God did not want His specially chosen guys and gals – the Israelite people group’s guys and gals, to have or to live dirty, filthy, disobedient lives. God expected His specially chosen guys and gals to have and to live lives that were holy from being proactively obedient to His will. God mandated a law that no guy or gal among His specially chosen guys and gals was to hurt his or her own body in any way. God mandated a law that no guy who was not one of His specially chosen guys was to go into His temple even though the guy was married to one of His specially chosen gals. God mandated a law that His specially chosen guys and gals had to go outside their camps to go to the bathroom. God mandated a law that none of His specially chosen guys and gals were to be abused by other guys and gals. Deuteronomy 23 is complete with rules and laws that God gave to His specially chosen guys and gals that He expected His specially chosen guys and gals to obey or else. Why do you think that God gave His specially chosen guys and gals a whole lot of rules and laws to obey? Verse 14 says, “For the LORD your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies from you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.” Do you want to have God – your Heavenly Maker, protect your camps – your lives, from your enemies? What do you think would be some of your enemies that would have you living dirty, filthy, disobedient lives? Are you God-fearing, caring, happy kids or are you egotistical, selfish, mean kids? Are you living your lives to please yourselves to make yourselves happy or are you living your lives to please God to make God happy? No guy, gal or kid knows when he or she is going to be translated from planet Earth to heaven. Are your camps – your lives, holy today in case you should suddenly find yourselves face to face in heaven with your Heavenly Maker – that you will not arrive in heaven with dirt, filth and disobedience in your lives? Your grandpaa wants his camp – his life, to be clean when the moment arrives when God takes him up to heaven to live.
Deuteronomy 23 (394)