The Purity of God in the Law

Before we look to the Word of God this morning, let me just make sure everyone knows that Pastor and his wife are fine. I think, if I'm correct, their wedding anniversary is this week and.

So.

Don described it to me as a honeymoon, so I think it's just great. Let's. We keep budgeting entire amounts of money to ship them off to conferences. They never go anyway, so I think it's wonderful. They get a chance to be away.

Lord willing, they'll be back. I'm very thankful that Brother Callahan is an elder here now because next week I'll be preaching in Tucson, the week after that I'll be preaching in Flagstaff, the week after that I'll be preaching in Salt Lake City, the week after that in Denver, and I will be back a little over a month from now for one week, and then the next week I'll be preaching in Boulder, and then after that here for two weeks, so I think I'm preaching like eight out of nine of the next weekends, just not generally here, so it is good that Brother Callahan has come along so that there is sufficient folks here to do what needs to be done, but I would appreciate your prayers for that as well as the fact.

That.

On Tuesday I.

Have.

Accepted an invitation to go back into the lion's den. I will be on the headline news program of Dr. Drew again on Tuesday evening. Well, I don't know when it's airing. I'll let you know if I can. It's being recorded Tuesday afternoon at 4 .30.

You might say, why in the world do that? Well, I'm flying over to be in studio, so.

It's a little...

When we were on before, I was on via Skype. You can't hear what's being said to you. It's very easy to cut somebody off when they're not there, and so when they asked to revisit the subject in light of some of the comments I've made since then, I had sent them links to some of the video that I had done.

I fully expect a...

I.

Fully expect to have some understanding of what the Christians went through in the Colosseum, to be perfectly honest with you, with the slight exception of the wild beasts, but I do not expect to be treated fairly or kindly.

I know that, but I do hope to have at least twice as much time as I had before, which isn't saying much, but do pray that I will have the opportunity to say something meaningful.

About.

God's purpose in this world, and especially what being loving actually means,.

Because.

It was said that I wasn't being loving last time, and I want to have the opportunity of pointing out that what Christians understand as being loving and what the world understands as being loving are two very, very, very different things, and that for them, happiness is the most important thing.

It's not character. It's not goodness. It's not what God has said that we are to be. No. It's personal happiness is the greatest thing, and so to be loving is just simply to make everybody happy. So parents, your children want to eat candy all day long.

If that's going to make them happy, go for it. It's not going to make them happy later on in the day, but we can't look down the road. We have to just... present happiness is all that matters. I hope to have the opportunity of talking about what real loving, what love really looks like, because only Christians can give the ultimate example of what real love looks like when we point people to the cross, and so I don't know exactly how that will work, but I'd appreciate your prayers for a Tuesday afternoon, 430 our time is basically between 430 and 530 is when that program will be recorded.

The Holiness Code and the Second Greatest Commandment

With that, let's turn please in our Bibles to Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19, we press on with our study of God's law, the holiness code. Last time we finished with verse 18 and once again pointed out that I think needs to be understood that here in the midst of, as I mentioned, my particular English Bible calls this section sundry laws, that in the midst of these sundry laws we have words that Jesus identified as the second greatest commandment, and that is you shall love your neighbor as yourself in verse 18, and so once again, I emphasize this simply on a practical level and for the fact that all of us may well be called to give an answer for the hope that's within us, give an answer for the convictions that are ours.

We ourselves must be convinced within ourselves of the centrality of God's revelation, the clarity of God's Word. The world will do everything in its power to diminish your faith in God's revelation. This world will do everything its power to cause you to question Jesus's own teaching about the inspiration and authority of the Word of God.

Therefore the world will be doing everything it can to convince you that Jesus was not who he claimed to be, that his teaching must be subservieted to the results of modern scholarship and to because to bow before the the altar of man's science and as the world pounds that into your mind each and every day, what they're trying to do is to cause you to abandon any hope that we can know what God's truth is and live in light of that truth, and therefore we must turn to ourselves.

We must look to ourselves, and we just basically have to do the best we can putting ourselves in the center of the universe and and doing what we can to interpret the world around us, and the result is a hopeless state.

The result is a person who has no grounds upon which to to say anything really of meaning or worth, and so remember that these words that we refer to as God's law, they are interspersed with these commandments that the Lord Jesus himself identified as so central to our understanding of who he is, and therefore to to dismiss some as being irrelevant in light of today's situation, while at least bowing, at least tipping the hat toward, you know, respecting your parents.

Is anyone really going to say it's a bad thing? Give them time. They might get to it soon enough, but recognizing that God's law is given to us for our benefit, and that it says many absolutely unquestionably true things, very important for us to have a conviction of that, and yet in the midst of having said that, we come to a section where, well, we deal with some extremely challenging material.

Let's read the last portion of Leviticus chapter 19, beginning at verse 19. You are to keep my statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together.

Now, if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed or given her freedom, there shall be punishment. They shall not, however, be put to death because she was not free.

He shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord, to Yahweh, to the doorway of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering. The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram and the guilt offering before Yahweh for his sin, which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him.

When you enter the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden. Three years it shall be forbidden to you. It shall not be eaten. But in the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy and offering of praise to Yahweh.

In the fifth year, you are to eat of its fruit, and its yield may increase for you. I am Yahweh your God. You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying. You shall not round off the side growth of your heads, nor harm the edges of your beard.

You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead, nor make any tattoo marks on yourself. I am Yahweh. Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, so that the land will not fall to harlotry, and the land become full of lewdness.

You shall keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am Yahweh. Do not turn to mediums or spirits. Do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am Yahweh your God. You shall rise up before the gray-headed and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God.

I am Yahweh. When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself for your aliens and land of Egypt.

I am Yahweh your God. You should do no wrong in judgment and measurement of weight or capacity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hymn. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.

You shall thus observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them. I am Yahweh. Now once again, we note a rather broad spectrum of sundry laws that are here. But if we think carefully, we will note that there is a way at least to see some connectedness between some of the items that are placed before us.

We will especially see that verses 26 through 31 do share a common theme, a common background in regards to the practices, the religious practices of the day there in Israel. But let's start back at verse 19, because some of you remember.

Some of you remember because you were here. I'm not sure how long ago it was now that we did this, but some of you will remember that we started off this series, this study of the Holiness Code,.

By.

Looking at, or actually listening to, I have thought it may have been the very first time in any Reformed Baptist Church that we used the sound equipment to actually play something from Hollywood in the midst of a worship service.

But we listened to that famous West Wing clip.

Where.

The president went after the Dr. Laura figure, and one of the items that was specifically mentioned came from Leviticus 19 .19, and that is this issue of the wearing of a garment of mixed fibers or mixed materials.

And so now we find ourselves there, and we look at, you shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together.

And there have been those who have sought to attempt to find some kind of moral principle that would explain what is wrong about breeding together two kinds of your cattle. Because when you think about it, if you didn't own them as cattle, and they were just roaming the hillsides, they wouldn't care about that.

And so there would be that kind of interbreeding all the time. It would be a natural thing. That's how God made them, and so why wouldn't you allow that to happen? Or you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed.

Well, if you go walking through, I know it doesn't happen here in the valley because, well, we've had enough rain recently. It's really weird. What happened this summer, by the way? How did the monsoon get here in June?

I've totally lost, I am completely confused. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've had 40 summers here. This is 41, and this is the weirdest one I've seen so far. But.

Normally,.

At this time of the year, you couldn't go walking through a field and see wildflowers and grasses growing and all sorts of things. But if you leave the desert climes that go up to Flagstaff or something like that, you might be walking in the forest and come out, and you come out on an open area, and guess what?

There are all kinds of seeds and all kinds of plants growing in that area. And so it's natural for there to be different kinds of seeds sown in nature. And as to wearing a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together, well, okay.

Now we're coming to specifically something that mankind does in the creation of clothing that is not found in nature. But it's very obvious and very clear that God has given us the ability to use all sorts of different kinds of fibers and materials, even in that day.

And there's some evidence that the high priest himself, if you look at the garments that he was to wear, would have involved a mixture of materials. And some people have actually theorized that what's behind at least that element of verse 19 has something to do with exactly that, has something to do with the high priest and maybe someone not entering into the high priest role or something along those lines.

I'm really not sure how you make that connection, but I'm just letting you know that some people have in fact theorized that particular aspect of things.

And so,.

What do we have here? What kind of overarching moral theme? I mean, I think we're gonna be able to find some very important moral themes in some of the rest of the chapter, but what can we derive from verse 19 specifically?

Especially in light of the fact there are people that will utilize this argument. What is that you're wearing? When you put your shirt on this morning, did you look at the tag? To make sure it says 100 whatever.

Problem is, what if it says 100 polyester? Does that count? I mean, there was no polyester back then, so.

You know,.

What about that? Is that really what's going on? Well, in this instance, I think what we need to recognize is that there are many of us who, because we engage in seeking to speak to the culture, seeking to be salt and light, seeking to be used of God to cause people to think about their ways and maybe consider who Jesus Christ is, who they are as his creatures, so on and so forth.

When we've heard a particular abuse of a text or abuse of a principle, it's like in the old... Okay, I'm going to prove how old I am here now. When I was young, we called it tug-of-war. Remember tug-of-war?

You know, you get a bunch of people together on one side of a rope, and you get a bunch of people on the other side of the rope, and you pull. You know what? I always found that fun. I always found that fun.

You all realize that that's now politically incorrect, because it says war. My understanding is that now when that happens... Please don't look at me like I... I'm just telling you what's happening in the educational system... that now it's called the tug-of-peace.

Yeah, I agree. See, there's the wisdom of youth. What? Yes, I don't know if now you're supposed to yell out epithets of peacefulness to the other side. Bless you all! You know, I don't know. I've lost track of the insanity of our culture, to be perfectly honest with you, but it's supposed to be the tug-of-peace now.

But returning to the tug-of-war, you are not balanced. And in fact, one of the tricks... Remember what one of the tricks was? Well, the tricks was to... One, two, three... You'd let go real quick, and everybody on the other side falls over, and then you grab, and you run like anything, and you win.

See? Because you imbalanced them. Y 'all didn't know that? Oh, wow. You have to get some of you on the other side of a tug-of-war. So, you're not balanced. You're completely off balance, because you're trying to get the center of this across a certain mark.

Well, culturally, when we're constantly at war, we're constantly trying to slow down the culture we're in, which is just running with all of its force toward a cliff of destruction. We have difficulty remaining in a balanced position, because of the constant strain that's upon us.

And as a result, we can become hypersensitive to certain misuses of principles of interpretation. What does all this mean? Well, this is what I mean. Some people become afraid of saying that if we have a specific set of laws, which I think we have here in verse 19, that were specifically given to the people of Israel at a specific time to mark them off as God's people, that is not based upon any kind of overarching moral principle, like not committing incest, or not murdering, or not stealing, or something along those lines.

If we admit that it could happen once, then what that means is someone can say, well, if that's no longer relevant, then nothing's any longer relevant, because that's what they do. They'll say, well, hey, if you can touch pigskin now, or if you can wear clothing of mixed fibers and things like that, well, that means that nothing is relevant anymore, including all the stuff about fornication, or marriage, or homosexuality, or anything else.

But when you think about that, if you just stop for a moment and consider, it's so obvious that someone is committing a gross and simplistic category error, simply recognizing that God did want His people Israel to recognize His holiness, recognize His authority over them, and therefore He placed certain strictures and certain commands upon them that would set them apart that would show them to be a holy people, and in some instances, as we're going to see in regards to the the eating of the fruit of the trees, in some instances would actually put them at a, what we might call an economic disadvantage, or in this case, certainly a stylistic disadvantage in regards to the kinds of fibers, or maybe even a disadvantage in regards to the breeding of the animals, what kinds of animals they could have, or the sowing of the seed, all of these things we recognize, and if we recognize that God had the right to call His people to behave in a certain way and to observe certain things so that it could be seen that they are God's people, to separate them out from the people around them, how does that mean that there is no moral or ethical basis for anything else that God could possibly say?

How can it be that, well, God did not want His people to wear clothing of mixed types, that they were to seek purity as He is pure, they were to seek purity in that way. Nowhere in the New Testament do you have anybody even mentioning such a stricture, or even a moral basis for saying that, well, the Romans are wrong because of the clothes they're wearing.

If there's anything about clothing anywhere else in Scripture, what's it about? It's about modesty. It's about what it says about the person, their body, not what it's made out of, unless it's made out of gold or something, and you're oppressing the poor.

There's the issue of that that certainly comes up, but the idea of there being a moral binding principle on everyone, that's not there, but why would there have to be? Why can't God say to His people, here is a situation where what I'm saying to you is, I know the people around you do this, but I want you to be separate.

I want you to demonstrate purity, and by doing so, the people of God are constantly reminded of the purity of their God. They're given things that remind them. We have the Lord's Supper. It is meant as an anamnesis, a remembrance, a reminder to us.

We need to have reminders, and here is a reminder of the concept of purity. God has said, do not do this. Now, it doesn't say, you know, abomination, all the rest of these types of things. It doesn't take it back to, you know, I'm kicking the Canaanites out of the land because they wore mixed fibers.

Nowhere to be found. But it is a statute that God gives to His people just as they are to observe the Sabbath day. They are to, that certainly gave an advantage to their neighbors. I would argue not in the long run, but it gave it a short-term advantage to their neighbors in regards to maybe getting crops to market or whatever else it might be.

But.

These things are placed upon the people of Israel as covenant markers, as things that demonstrate that these people are different than the people around them. And so, as I said, there are some people, I understand, there are some writers who've actually said that, well, we may not know why, but if you wear clothing, even to this day, of two kinds of material mixed together, that this probably has some negative physical impact upon you.

I.

Don't have any means of refuting something because I don't see any evidence of its being true. But there are those who have taken that perspective. Now, in the next few verses, you have a situation where, once again, we would have a hard time paralleling anything in the modern world because we don't have concubinage.

We do not have the forms of servitude, which will be laid out a little bit more clearly elsewhere, specifically in Deuteronomy. It's a little bit clearer in regards to what kinds of servitude there were.

Yes, that is the term slavery, but once again, I hope you understand that if you've taken the time to read the Old Testament, that the Hebrew laws in regards to slavery are very fundamentally and totally different than what you have under Roman law and even further removed from what you had in the pre-Civil War South in the United States.

That slavery, very frequently, was the last ditch. It might even be called a safety net, a societal safety net. You could no longer bring in food. Starvation was a real possibility. The last thing of value you had was yourself, and you could, by selling yourself into slavery, provide even for your family.

Certainly, it meant a diminishment in your own personal freedom, but it did mean that you would be alive the next day. And so, in this situation, you have a man who lies carnally as a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom.

So, in other words, this is not the same situation we see elsewhere in the law, where you have the two people, they're in the city, therefore, if she did not want to engage in this activity, if she cried out, there would be other people would hear, etc., etc.

The law, interestingly enough, took into account a lot of that kind of situation as we look at both Leviticus and Deuteronomy together, but she does not have her freedom. And yet, it's still identified as a sin.

However, it says, there shall be punishment. They shall not, however, be put to death because she was not free. Now, it's very interesting that you have here a.

Insistence.

That we look at the position in which the individuals were involved and the the power structures that were involved in this situation. And the man is the one who is to bring a guilt offering to Yahweh, the door of the tent, a ram for a guilt offering.

That was not a small punishment, unless the person happened to be extremely wealthy, I suppose. But there was a need for a ram for a guilt offering beyond what you would have on the Day of Atonement. So, when this was found out, whenever that would be, this guilt offering would need to be made.

And the priest would make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before Yahweh for his sin, which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him. And so, there is a...

We can, I think, see the importance of the fact that the law is not just simply a black-and-white, if-this-happens-do-this situation. It recognizes even that its own strictures set up situations where it would be inappropriate for the ultimate penalty to be brought here.

And, in fact, even the opportunity for forgiveness is provided through the sacrificial system. And so, there is a recognition that there are levels of guilt. There are levels of accountability. And when the woman was not free, then she cannot be put to death.

And even, I think, probably because of the the fact that this seemingly would indicate some kind of situation where the woman was in this person's home, or at least in this person's circle of the people that he would be around very regularly, a recognition of the necessity of providing a means for forgiveness here.

So, what we can see, I think, in these few verses together, is that the law recognizes the need for looking at the circumstances, which, by the way, just briefly also indicates. I think this is very, very important.

One of the elements that must be kept in mind in looking especially at the punishments in the Old Testament law is that the assumption is that we're dealing with godly judges. The assumption of the application of God's law is that.

You have.

Priests, you have judges, and that they are functioning under the law of God. This, to me, is one of the most important issues in regards to looking at God's law, various movements that exist today in regards to God's law, and the discussion of the application of God's law.

The assumption is that there is a culture here. There is a land here. There is a people here who are covenanted with God, and hence you have just judges. Any system of government, I don't care what the system of government is, that has judges in it, if those judges become unjust, that system will be overthrown.

And we are seeing that around us, sadly, all the time. No system can possibly survive with unjust judges, and there is a simple necessary need for righteous judges, for there to be righteousness in any land.

And I believe it is a blessing upon a land to have just judges. And therefore, it is judgment upon a land when judges judge unjustly. No question about that whatsoever. Now, then you have, in verses 23 through 25, you have a discussion of the fruit of the trees.

And again, people have speculated that when you plant new fruit trees, you know that it takes a while for them, normally, not always, but normally it takes a while for them to produce good fruit. Obviously, it depends on the kind of fruit tree and so on and so forth, but people have said, well, generally for the first few years, it's not really all that good anyways, and so on and so forth.

Okay. Maybe so. I'm not saying that I can say, no, that has nothing to do with it. But what it does, what I seem to see here is, especially verse 24, but in the fourth year, all its fruit should be holy and offering of praise to Yahweh.

Now, let's say the first three years, the fruit wasn't all that great anyways, and so the disposing of it wasn't a big deal. And then let's say the fourth year, the fruit's great. It's wonderful. What do you clearly see here?

But a call for the people of Israel, not only to recognize that the increase of their flocks, the increase of their crops, the increase of their fruit, all comes from God's hand.

It's all His.

In so much of what we have here, there is a restraint upon the greed of man. There is a restraint upon the greed of man. It is not until the fifth year you are to eat its fruit, and its yield may increase for you.

So after five years, I mean, that's an investment. You've got to have trust that God's still going to be taking care of you. Five years down the road to be able to take the position that the person of God is being called to take here,.

And.

You have to trust that God's going to care for you, and God's going to make provision for you, and provide for you and your family, even on that fourth year when, oh, that fruit is so good. And you happen, of course, to have picked to, you know, to raise the very kind of fruit that you love so much.

But still, if you want to have that fruit, you don't get to take it off your own tree. You got to go buy it from one of your neighbors who got started before you. They're in their fifth year now, I guess.

And so there is a, there is a voluntary giving up of self-advancement and self-enrichment under the authority of God. Now again, He put fruit upon the earth for man to eat. Adam and Eve could eat of any tree in the garden, except for one.

And that means all that fruit was good. I mean, there's some fruit I do not like. Ask my, ask my family. I am, I am by far the pickiest eater in the family. There's, there's no two ways about it. And there's some things I wouldn't, I would no more want to bite into that than, you know, I just, I still want to do it.

But there's some stuff that's really good. I was teaching this past week. I've been teaching at Phoenix Seminary on Wednesday nights, as you know, and, and one of the students brought in some grapes. And oh man, those, those were great.

Those were, I'm so, aren't you glad that God made grapes? I, I'm, I'm very thankful that God made, I don't know why He made kumquats and a few things like that, but grapes, I'm very, very thankful that He made.

And so there, there is a, we, we recognize God said it was good. He said those things were good. And so what you have here is a, is a restriction upon the people of God that reminds them in various ways, if they will reflect upon these laws of who their God is and who they are as His people.

Now we know that unless the Spirit of God changes the heart, there's going to be no reflection. There's only going to be chafing. There's only going to be resistance. There's only going to be dislike.

There's only going to be the idea, well, God's just, just trying to kill my joy or God's trying to ruin my bank account or whatever else it might be. But the point is that the people of God were not to be concerned about where they stood in the social order.

They're to be concerned about their obedience to God and their demonstration of their covenant relationship with Him through their behavior, and that behavior included.

The, um,.

Taking the time to think through. They even had to keep track. Well, which year is this? When did, that'd be the hard part for me. Especially now that I'm on the far side of the half century mark because it's sort of like, well, what year did we get that car?

Do you remember what year we got that car, honey? I don't remember what year we got that car. It was only three or four years ago. Was it three or four?

I don't know.

I mean, you'd actually have to keep records to be able to remember to try to fulfill these laws because I would forget. I would, I'd have to get out the calendar or, you know, call my daughter or my son or something to figure out when in the world it was.

I did a certain thing. So, it would take some preparation. There would have to be some planning.

Involved. Now,.

Very quickly, I think we can sort of tie together much of what's found in 26 through 31 because I think there is a common thread here. And it all goes back to the idolatrous worship of the people of the land at this time.

And so,.

The only thing that you might go, well, I can't see how that necessarily fits. I mean, verse 30 is a positive. Instead of don't do these things, it is do this.

So,.

Keeping my Sabbaths and revering my sanctuary, that's a positive attitude that one is to have toward Yahweh and toward the commandments that he's given to his people. But if you look at all the rest, you can tie everything, including the eating of blood, which is what begins with, you should not eat anything with the blood.

You can tie everything else in here into the idolatrous practices, worships, and beliefs of the people around Israel. And so, you have divination, you have soothsaying, the verses 27 and 28.

Again,.

We talked about this. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it because we talked about it, what, about four sermons ago in this series. Again, see, I can't remember. I'd have to go to Sermon Audio to figure out exactly how far back it was.

But you'll remember that we looked specifically at verse 28. We looked at its background. We looked at the fact there's a parallel to this particular verse in Deuteronomy 14, 1. And that what it's really focusing upon, we don't know exactly what the tattoo marks means.

It's a hapoxlegomena, a disputed hapoxlegomena. When you look at all of it, it is about changing one's appearance. And it has something to do with idolatrous worship and specifically in verse 28 with something about the dead.

And Deuteronomy 14, 1 parallels that again with the dead. And so, we know that.

Soothsaying,.

Divination, we remember the situation, remember with Saul and the witch at Endor and things like that. And so, there clearly was in the world around the Israelites the practice of religious divination, contact with the dead.

We talked, when we talked about Leviticus 19 .28 before, the fact that there were two possibilities that I saw is that what's being talked about here is either fearing the dead in the sense of honoring them and seeking to gain their favor.

Or more likely as I see it, what's really going on here is altering your bodily appearance so as to avoid the curses of the dead because there's just all sorts of evidence that in the religious milieu of the day there was a great fear of spoken curses.

And remember what was earlier in Leviticus 19? Remember the statement? In regards to the deaf, you shall not what? Curse a deaf man. Curses were considered to be extremely important things, that they carried a level of reality with them.

And so, the curse of the dead, the idea would be the person dies and now maybe in the afterlife, they have even more of a capacity to do something to you. And what we saw was the point of all of this is do not imitate the people of the world in fearing the dead and having contact with supernatural spirits because all of that, no matter what you believe about, all of that's under the sovereignty of God.