Sundry Laws: How Do They Apply Today

Leviticus 19 and the Call to Holiness

We continue, ooh, with both microphones on, there we go. We continue our study this evening in Leviticus chapter 19. Leviticus chapter 19. And once again, let us ask the Lord's blessing upon our time.

Our great heavenly Father, as we open your word once more, even in these brief moments which we have together, we ask that you would honor your name, that you would honor your character, your holiness, amongst us this evening.

As we handle your word, may we do so recognizing that our Lord and Savior taught us to believe these are the very words of God. So may we bow before his authority. May we accept, may we understand, and may you change us to your honor and glory.

We pray in Christ's name, amen. This morning, we began looking at this 19th chapter and we saw that in essence, the overarching theme is our holiness, our walking in holiness, what it means to be in covenant with God and to love him and to demonstrate that love.

I did not plan that the text we just read from Deuteronomy would be read this evening, but I can't imagine a better text to read along with this because it very much repeated many of the themes that we mentioned this morning and certainly demonstrated the centrality of the call to love Yahweh, your God.

And I'm afraid that that is an element that is so often missing as people seek to look at this text of scripture is the concept of the fact that if we do not love this God, if we do not desire to glorify this God, then any law he's going to give, no matter how extensive it might be, no matter how minimal it might be, no matter what aspect of life it touches, any law that God is going to give to us is going to chafe, it is going to be a burden.

Central to this understanding is that we desire to love God and that we recognize that God is holy and that holiness is something that is attractive to us, not something that is repulsive to us. And of course, we know that anyone who remains in their sin, anyone who is in rebellion against God will find that holiness that is his to be something that is repugnant and repulsive.

And we cannot argue somebody into loving the holiness of God. That is clearly, I think, obviously a work of the Spirit of God in a person's heart. And so we began looking at chapter 19 and we came to the section that I mentioned in at least this particular printing of the English Bible that I have in front of me is entitled Sundry Laws, which is what you do when you really don't want to put a whole bunch of subtitles in and just go, well, these are laws and there we go.

But as we will see, they are very important laws. I want to look specifically at verses nine through 18. If we can get through them this evening, I don't know that I can, but I will do my best. That's certainly my goal.

Provision for the Needy Through Gleaning

Now, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest, nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard.

You shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am Yahweh, your God. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely by my name so as to profane the name of your God.

I am Yahweh. You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God.

I am Yahweh. You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor.

I am Yahweh. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. You may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am Yahweh. Now, it's very clear that these verses in this section have a very close relationship to one another. They speak very broadly of the proper relationships that are to exist amongst God's people as they live as a people in the promised land.

And we looked especially at verses 9 and 10 very briefly this morning, just simply to note their overarching meaning, and to recognize that at the end of verse 10, it says, you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger.

The needy and for the stranger. Now, the stranger would be the non-Israelite, the one sojourning in the land. The needy would be the Israelite who, for whatever reasons, has maybe lost their inheritance.

Whatever other situations might arise, maybe foolishness on their part or foolishness upon those before them, they've lost their inheritance. They are needy. And therefore, provision is to be made for them.

Now, notice it's not forcefully taken from one group of people and given to another group of people. Instead, it is the produce of the land. And we can recognize, as we mentioned this morning, that when you harvest the land, there are different levels of completeness, I guess we might say, in how that might be done.

Obviously, in our modern day with the machines that we now have, you could harvest the land significantly more fully than you could in a day when you would be reaping by hand or by very primitive tools.

And so even today, when the harvester goes through the field, there is going to be stuff that is blown about, knocked about. It's going to end up on the ground. And there's going to be those areas that you don't exactly get.

I mean, I guess I'm not certain of this. But my understanding is that farm equipment today is pretty advanced. And in fact, they've got tractors now with GPS. And so you can, I mean, it used to mean something about plowing a straight row.

You'd put your eyes down there, and you'd keep your eyes on the goal and all the rest of that stuff. Now, you just got to make sure your GPS is working correctly. And you've got a good fix on the satellites.

And just let the machine do its thing. Well, back in the olden days, and this was really the olden days, there would obviously be things that were left over. Because you'd miss a section. You wouldn't have perfectly straight furrows, et cetera, et cetera.

And the point is, there would be food left, either in the field or fruit in the vineyard. And even when you were trying to harvest fruit from the vineyard, there would be stuff that would be dropped.

To the ground.

And so the point is that this was to be utilized. Obviously, however, the poor and the needy would have to come get it. It doesn't say, and you shall gather these things up and place them in the central storage houses.

It doesn't say that. The poor and the needy would be able to come and to freely enter into that land and to be able to gather that which would provide for them and provide food and sustenance for them.

And when he makes this command, God says, I am Yahweh.

You're God.

So clearly, there is not only the provision for the poor of the land, but there is also, I think we need to see, a subtle rebuke and prohibition of not only a sense of entitlement on the part of the person.

Well, this is my land. Everything that's mine.

I don't want anybody coming on my land to get anything for me. You have that kind of an attitude. But there's also a rebuke of greediness here. You think of the story that Jesus told the man who saw all the produce, and he builds himself barns and bigger barns and so on and so forth.

And there was just this attitude of self-sufficiency and greediness that was being rebuked there. And I think you have the same type of rebuke here. As you are told, no, you shall allow these individuals onto your land, and you shall allow them to reap from the very corners of the field and from so on and so forth, the gleanings.

This will provide for them something that is important to them in regards to their sustenance and their survival. In the same way, in the rest of the section, you have laws of what might be called general equity.

Without which, no society can truly survive. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. And so there is to be a recognition of the proper fact that God provides to individuals their own property.

The things that God has given to them, they come from his hand, and they belong to those individuals. You are not to simply remove property from someone else's possession. You shall not steal. And of course, this would be the case of the Israelites together with one another.

They were not to steal from one another. That would cause great division in the land. That would cause great problems amongst the people. But likewise, you shall not deal falsely. Now here we start talking about an underlying attitude.

If you do not steal from someone, it's because you have a respect, a respect for God and a respect for that individual and for the law that God has established in the order in the land. The same way when we're talking about dealing falsely, that is engaging in commerce, engaging in any kind of buying, selling, all the kinds of interaction that we have with our fellow citizens.

This is not to be done on the basis of falsehood. In other words, the positive command would be, you shall be a people marked by truth. A people marked by truth. And that is also the very foundation of the last phrase, nor lie to one another.

Nor lie to one another. A mark of the people of God is we recognize our God is true. Our God is truthful in what He says to us. And therefore, we want to reflect Him, even in those situations where that might be to our detriment.

You know that in many situations in our land today, the idea is you've got to get ahead. You've got to get ahead. You've got to have an advantage over someone else. And to assume truthfulness on the part of many in our society is, unfortunately, to show oneself naive.

And so we have to have all sorts of contracts. And we have to have all sorts of, well, no offense to anybody, I know we have some around here, but we've got to have a lot of lawyers. And they've got to draw up those contracts.

And when those contracts are broken, they get to go to court. And we all get to pay the tax money to have the judges and everything else. And unfortunately, it's just assumed, especially within business, that it's a kill and be killed type of a context.

And the idea that a man's word is his bond is obviously something that's more for the history books than it is for reality in our experience today. But to reflect God and to reflect God's dealings with us and His commandments with us, we cannot steal.

We cannot deal falsely. We cannot lie to one another. The people of God are marked by truthfulness. And God is glorified when we act in such a fashion. You shall not swear falsely by my name so as to profane the name of your God.

I am Yahweh. Now, of course, it's rather unusual these days for people to take much in the way of oaths to swear by the name of God or anything else any longer. But it's certainly, we know that there were various oaths that were taken in the temple.

There were things associated with that. We think of the Nazirite vow and issues like that. And here you have a prohibition of swearing falsely by my name. Obviously, to invoke the name of the covenant God of Israel, to invoke Yahweh's name, was to say that I swear by the greatest authority there is.

When we swear by something, we are in essence saying, well, I am invoking the highest authority that I can invoke to guarantee the truthfulness of what I am saying to you now. Well, obviously, if you do that in such a fashion so as to lie, to seek to deceive, to cheat, or any other way, you are showing absolutely no respect whatsoever for the one by whom you have sworn.

So if you've sworn by the king, then you're showing disrespect to the king. If you swear by the very name of the covenant God of Israel, then you are denigrating that God and you are profaning his name.

You're making his name a common thing. So obviously, there is supposed to be some kind of true weight for someone to say I swear by God in the same way that Paul, for example, in Romans chapter 9, he says, my conscience bears witness.

The Holy Spirit testifying together with my conscience.

I am not lying.

I have severe pain and grief in my heart for my fellow countrymen. He's basically saying, I can tell you with all the honesty that I have, and the Holy Spirit is testifying with my spirit. This is true.

Despite what all the Jews have done to me, I truly desire to see the salvation of my fellow countrymen. And so obviously, to make reference to those higher authorities is to either honor them, because you are honestly saying, yes, this is the case.

Here is the reality. Or to profane the name of Yahweh by associating him with falsehood. And so obviously, if the Jewish people were to go about in doing business with the people around them and swear by the name of Yahweh that their scales are accurate or that they're going to fulfill the conditions of the contract and so on and so forth, and they became known as a people who never did that, then what would be the reflection upon the name of their God?

The pagans, the peoples of the land would rightfully denigrate that God as a God that has no meaning, as a God who is not the creator of the universe. Verse 13, you shall not oppress your neighbor nor rob him.

The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. And so the assumption is that you're going to have to have some kind of interaction with your neighbors. It's not like here in the valley.

Certainly in my neighborhood, people move in and out all the time. And we have those six to eight foot solid block fences. I was looking at Google, at the street level Google stuff. I was looking at my old houses where I lived back in Pennsylvania long, long ago.

And I was looking at them, and I was surprised to discover that in one of the houses I lived in, Charlemontown, Pennsylvania, they put up a fence. Now, it's a fence you can see through, but they put up a fence.

Because back in the olden days, we didn't have a fence around the backyard. And so I could go running through the backyard. I remember one of my fondest memories of childhood. Doesn't happen here, but back then, we had fireflies.

Y 'all know fireflies? If you're a native here, you're going, what? Do they start forest fires? No, no, that's not what they're about. And it was really gross, because what we would do is, once it was dark, we'd chase those fireflies around.

We'd get a glass canister, and you'd catch them. And then we discovered that if you take them, and you squish them on your tennis shoes, your tennis shoes will glow for a little while. And the next morning will be really gross.

But we're kids. Who's thinking about what they're going to look like the next morning? Until then, you're running around with glowing stuff on your shoes. This was before kids had the shoes that lit up.

And all that kind of stuff.

So this is how you made your shoes glow back when I was a kid, before the internet and cell phones and things like that. So anyway, I was looking at that, and I just noticed that we just had so much more ease.

Of access.

You knew who your neighbors were. Here, it's sort of like we're all fenced in, and it's just, mm. And that's not the way it was, obviously, in the ancient world. You were going to be, you were actually, in many ways, dependent upon your neighbor for many things.

You couldn't have the nice little, I'm safe in my little box type of a situation in that context. And so you were not to oppress him or rob him. You were not to deal falsely with him. In other words, there was an incumbent duty upon people who were in covenant with Yahweh, the creator of the universe, to act in such a fashion as to be a neighborly person, to not rob that person.

And if you hired that person, if you brought in a fellow Israelite and hired that individual to do work, the wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. It wasn't like you gave somebody a 30-day contract, and at the end of 30 days, you had to pay up.

No, that's not how it worked, especially because most of the time, you'd be paying somebody in something other than money. You'd be paying them in food, in sustenance, and something like that. And so the point is that there was to be a prompt rendering of payment to the hired man, because that hired man, that may be the only way that he can have sustenance for that day.

And so there is to be a great concern about integrity in how we deal with others and how we deal with our neighbors. And that really comes out in verse 14. You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God.

I am Yahweh. Now, there's almost no parallel to these aspects, the loving aspects of the law of God in the surrounding cultures of that day. When you hear the first, you shall not curse a deaf man. A curse would be a spoken thing.

And so the obvious idea is that you can get away with cursing a deaf man, because he's not going to hear you. Now, a curse was considered to have meaning behind it. You are actually wishing and invoking some kind of judgment upon someone, which means there would have to be some kind of reason for it.

And the point is, the deaf man could not respond to the speaking of such a curse, because the deaf man cannot hear that curse. I mean, if you really wanted to say that this person had done something tremendously evil and that there was a curse upon them because of God's law, then you would have to go out of your way to communicate to the deaf man what it was the person had done wrong.

The idea is, he lacks the ability to hear, and therefore you shall not curse the deaf man. Or, obviously in the same context, you shall not place a stumbling block before the blind. But you shall revere your God, I am Yahweh.

So it is not just simply, well, be a nice person and don't do this. It is a demonstration of reverence for God, because God has made that person in his image. And God could have taken from you your gift of sight.

God could have taken from you your ability to hear. You have blessings from God, and therefore, if you mistreat those individuals, you are demonstrating you are not thankful and do not recognize the blessings that you yourself have.

Therefore, you are not revering God. You are not showing reverence for God, who has made every man and placed him in the position that they are. And so there is to be a kind of simple human respect that is based upon a reverence for God.

If we have a true God who has made us as his creatures, that's the very essence of any type of meaningful law is the recognition of the value of human life, and that value comes from the fact that God has made us.

That is why we see Western culture collapsing into moral and ethical chaos, is because we no longer have a creator. We no longer have a God who gives meaning to life and that we are to reverence and revere, even in our treatment of our fellow man.

That is no longer something that is relevant to most people in our society. You shall do no injustice in judgment.

Wow.

I hate to go through this so quickly, because we could expand upon this section almost indefinitely in light of what we see today. Unjust judges are a curse upon any people. Judges, judges are a blessing.

We see the establishment of judges within the people of Israel. And what is absolutely necessary for those judges? That they be righteous. That they first and foremost recognize that they are subservient to God himself and that the authority they have is derivative from God himself.

Just judges are a blessing upon any land. Therefore, unjust judges are indeed a tremendous curse. A tremendous curse, because they shake the very foundations. Remember in the Psalter, we're told that justice is the foundation of God's throne.

Well, if the judges are to reflect, and the only judge that's ever going to be truly just is one who recognizes he's supposed to reflect the God who made him. A judge who reflects God's justice is going to be a judge who is not going to be impressed by the money you have.

He's not going to be impressed by the big name you have. He's not going to be turned by a bribe, because he's always looking first and foremost to the one that he is representing to his fellow man. That's what the judge is supposed to do.

He is always going to be seeking God's wisdom in giving the proper judgment. That's what a judge will be held accountable by God for doing. And so, you shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great.

See, there's the two extremes. And we see it all the time. We see that people who are great, they've got the money, and they get the lawyers. And so, there are those judges who will defer to those who have power, who have influence, who can guarantee a nice, cushy retirement, whatever else it might be.

But there's also the other side. Notice, both sides of the path are marked off here. You shall not be partial to the poor. Just because a person does not have a lot of money doesn't mean that you shall stick it to everybody else and say, well, let's just even everything out here.

That is not a biblical concept. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great. But what are you to do? The positive command? You are to judge your neighbor fairly. God has given the standards.

The standard is truthfulness, righteousness, judgment. God's law gives us the framework in which to judge these things. There is a commandment to judge your neighbor fairly. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor.

I am the Lord. A person who goes around amongst the people as a slanderer, a person who is always looking for the newest juicy bit of information, and is always reading between the lines, it might indicate this.

This person said that. It might indicate that. That person spreads disorder, breeds distrust, lays a foundation for anger and violence amongst the people. And just as that was very true in that day, my friends, we now live in a day where we can slander people into thousands, hundreds of thousands.

We possess, through technology, the capacity to absolutely ravage someone's entire life. And oh, how people are doing that today. Oh, the shaming and the bullying electronically that is being done by the politically correct today.

My goodness. And yet, sadly, I see it amongst Christians. I see many a Christian who has just as much an itching ear to hear the newest thing. Did you hear about so-and-so? The Bible says that we are not to accept accusations, except on the witness of two or three witnesses.

And yet, all you've got to do is get the same story repeated two or three times, and man, we're on top of somebody. We live in a day where we need to really go back to biblical standards at this point, because I am deeply concerned.

I am deeply concerned in light of the technological capacities of the enemies of God that the kinds of attacks that we could see in the future will be of such a character that none of us will be able to defend ourselves against them.

We're already seeing it happening right now. We already know that if you will stand up for anything moral and ethical in our society, you will be ravaged. But we're starting to hear. I heard a story. I have not spent a lot of time studying it, but about someone in the press where a governmental agency basically hacked their computer and placed files upon their computer and then charged them for having the files upon their computer.

That kind of power and ability in the hands of corrupt people could be an extremely, extremely damaging thing. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, at least amongst ourselves. At least amongst ourselves.

We should always be the first ones with a word of forgiveness and the last ones with words of condemnation. Let grace mark our language and our approach. Truthfulness and honesty always be the goal that is ours.

And you are not to act against the life of your neighbor. Act against the life of your neighbor. You mean attack them physically with a sword or something? No, but there are things that we can do that can endanger our neighbors.

By not doing certain things or by doing certain things, we can endanger our neighbors' lives. I mean, I understand that there is a house. In fact, I run by it fairly frequently. I ran just off one of the roads near us.

And my understanding is, now it's fine. There are just normal people living there. But I noticed for a while it was sort of abandoned and stuff and learned that it was a meth house, that someone had built a meth lab in that house.

It was right next to a school. I mean, literally, the back fence was right next to an elementary school. Now, those places, I don't know if you ever noticed that, but it's a really dangerous thing to do.

Not only can you kill yourself, but you can blow the whole thing up if you don't know what you're doing. And most people who do that don't know what they're doing. So that would be just a really obvious way where you could be endangering the life of your neighbor.

But there could be simple things that you could do that would help to secure your neighbor's property or your neighbor's life. There is to be that kind of, well, it's going to be summed up at the end of verse 18, love your neighbor as yourself.

So do not act against the life of your neighbor simply means look beyond yourself. Don't just simply, you know, if you've got a stream flowing through your property, and it's I really like this, think about what you're going to do with that.

If you do a certain thing to it, maybe dam it up or change the direction or something like that, you might end up endangering your neighbor's life. Think about yourself living in a community rather than just me in my little box is the idea that is clearly here.

Internal Hatred, Reproof, and Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. In your heart. Now, sometimes we get the idea that when Jesus gave us the Sermon on the Mount, he was doing something that no one had ever thought of before.

Everybody just always had the surface level view of the law. Well, no, that's not true. Here, you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. It was the surface level externalism of the Pharisees that Jesus is primarily focusing upon.

When he says, you have heard it said, but I say to you, he's putting that spotlight where it needs to be, where the regenerate heart that loves God's law is already going to be aware of these things. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart.

You go, well, obviously that can't necessarily work for an unregenerate person. Well, obviously so. Many of these laws only make sense in the hearts and minds of individuals who have experienced God's work of grace.

But there is guidance given. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen.

Why?

Because if you harbor that kind of hatred toward one, it's easier to begin to harbor it toward another and to another. You become hardened. You begin to act on the basis of that hatred. That does not mean that everything will always be rosy between you and your neighbors.

Because the next line is, you may surely reprove your neighbor. There are times when that's necessary. Now, I would imagine that they didn't have too much trouble back then with neighbors who played their stereos too loud after 10 o 'clock at night.

There may have been some wonderful Jewish music being played on some type of instrument too late at night. I don't know. But there would be reasons to reprove your neighbor. That happens in a fallen world.

And sometimes you're doing things and you just don't even think. And so there are proper times to reprove your neighbor. But you shall not incur sin because of him. That is, do not act towards your neighbor in such a fashion as to sin before your God.

Don't be self-righteous. Be willing to live in peace and harmony with other people. This is the only way that the nation is going to be able to fulfill its purposes of reflecting God's glory. I'm speaking of the nation of Israel at this time.

Obviously, for us, as redeemed sinners, as people who have been forgiven of our sins, we can't even contemplate storing up hatred in our heart toward anyone. Because we ourselves have been forgiven. If you have experienced the forgiveness of God and Jesus Christ, then you simply cannot enjoy that experience of hatred.

Now, we can talk about hating evil and that kind of thing. But there's a vast difference between hating evil and allowing that hatred of evil to become focused upon individuals. Recognizing that we were hateful in God's sight outside of Jesus Christ.

We were all sons of disobedience. We were all under his wrath. It's very easy for us to engage in self-righteousness. And very easy for us to not hear these commandments. You shall not take vengeance.

That's repeated by the Apostle Paul, is it not? We are not to take vengeance. That occurs in Romans. We just have that section? We're getting there. OK, I'm not going to say anything more about it. I don't want to steal anybody's thunder.

But it's coming. And so it is interesting to notice that that's also quoted in Hebrews chapter 10. And so it is taken as a given that these words continue to have relevance to the people of God in the New Covenant.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people. Sounds very much like hating someone in your heart. That's the negative. You shall not allow that kind of, well, as the book of Hebrews says, that root of bitterness to grow up inside you.

There are some people who just sort of want to feed those types of things, but no. You're not to do that. You can't because the positive command that finishes verse 18, which we all know is a commandment that our Lord and Savior repeated.

He repeated, knowing that his audience would know very well where it came from. And he never said, and just because I'm quoting this doesn't mean that you're actually to look at the entirety of the law and seek to understand it and make application.

He never said that. So he knew that by quoting this, Paul knows that by quoting from the same verse, there is a message being communicated in regards to the fact that God's law reveals his heart, it reveals his nature, and continues to do so, which is why the promise of Jeremiah 31, I'll write my law upon their hearts, means it becomes an internalized thing, something that we love, not something we hate, not something that we chafe under.

But you have the commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now here, the Levitical law transcends anything that we can see in the ancient world. It transcends it because we have a personal God, we have a just and holy God, and yet he has in mercy and grace chosen a people, gives them gifts that they do not deserve.

And one of the duties that he lays upon this people is that they are to love their neighbor as they love themselves. What an incredible commandment. Here in the midst of these sundry laws comes a commandment that Jesus identified as one of the most important in all of Scripture.

Greatest commandment, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't see the part anywhere in chapter 19 that says, and the second greatest commandment is going to be contained in this chapter.

It's not there. In fact, it's just part of it's the last part of a sentence.

It's just a phrase.

And yet Jesus said, second greatest commandment. Second greatest commandment, you shall love your neighbor.

As yourself.

Now obviously, you can't do the second one if you're not doing the first one. And if you truly are doing the first one, the second one will come naturally, and that's where the problem is. Because for most people, they hear this command, and they go, I cannot do that.

I can't do it. You don't know the people that I have to do. You don't know the people in my life. You haven't been hurt like I've been hurt. But you see, if you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, that action, that obedience is absolutely transformative.

It's transformative. When love for God is your passion, then love for your neighbor as yourself will be the natural result. It can't be reversed. You can pretend, and you can be a philanthropist, and you can do good works, and you can do all sorts of stuff.

But as long as you are not in proper relationship with your creator, you will not have the proper motivations for love for your neighbor. And so here you have the second greatest command. And it comes right after things like leave the gleanings in your field.