Intro to Holiness Code

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Before we open the Word of God together and consider His truth, let us ask the
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Lord to bless our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, as we gather in Your name in this place, we ask that by Your Spirit You would come and give guidance,
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You would give enlightenment, You would help us to concentrate upon Your truth, that we might leave this place better servants of our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For it is in His name that we pray. Amen. If we were like many of our brothers and sisters in the world today, we might gather and be able to hear in the distance outside the walls of this room explosions and gunfire, for there is much violence taking place in our world.
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When we think, for example, of the almost complete extinguishing of the
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Christian communities in Syria and Iraq, we know that there is great hatred of the
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Gospel amongst religious people against Muslims who consider it their religious duty to destroy the unbeliever.
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And yet, we cannot hear gunfire outside of the walls of this building, and we are thankful for that.
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Does that mean that we are not in a place where there is warfare? Well, certainly not in the sense that many of our brothers and sisters experience, but I think most of us are well aware of the fact that open warfare has been proclaimed against the
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Christian faith and the Christian worldview within Western society.
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The number of stories that we could raise in regards to the positive promotion of simple debauchery in Western culture today would take the entire morning to just outline the categories into which we would put these things.
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But we know that there are very strong voices in our nation and in Western society as a whole who detest what we believe.
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They detest the idea that there is a God who can determine what is right and wrong, a
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God that says I am your creator and therefore you will live in a certain way and that when we reject his ways, we do not experience an increase of happiness, joy, fulfillment, life.
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Instead, we experience a diminishment of all of these things. The terminology that has become common in our day is we're talking about the difference between a culture of life and a culture of death.
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A culture that either affirms the importance of life and those mechanisms that God has given us to enhance life and to enjoy life and to increase our happiness within life, or a culture will celebrate death and will engage in those behaviors that will promote death and a diminishment of our experience of life.
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That is an experience of death even while we live. For a number of decades now, we have seen with greater and greater clarity and greater and greater boldness the expression of detestation for Christian values by certain segments of our society.
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And now today, that is becoming the majority voice in our land.
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People in the highest offices in our land now regularly express perspectives that are absolutely reprehensible in the sight of a holy
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God. And they are promoting the idea of rejecting and in fact identifying as evil those things that God calls good.
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Now most of you who are regulars here are members know that on the last
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Lord's Day we completed a lengthy segment of study, a six year length of study.
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At least as far as when I have the opportunity of preaching, we finished our study of the book of Hebrews.
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And so I have mentioned that I truly believe that it is appropriate and proper in the opportunities that I have of standing behind this pulpit to address the extremely important issue of what is called the holiness code.
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The holiness code is a section of scripture found in the book of Leviticus.
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It's defined differently by different scholars. We are going to be looking at one specific section of the holiness code that is so often raised in discussions in our land in regards to God's law and God's moral law in regards to human sexuality.
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That specifically is Leviticus 17 -21. Don't worry, we're not going there this morning.
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If you start turning there, we'll actually do a little introduction to Leviticus this evening and talking about the background of the book.
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But I want to establish a few things beforehand. First of all, if you thought that there were tough sections of Hebrews, wait until we slog through this.
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I recognize that this is not the most sermonizable material, and so I must ask for your indulgence and I must establish some basis, hopefully this morning, for calling you to do the even harder work of working through this material, and hopefully we will be able to establish that this morning.
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Specifically, I recognize that some of the topics that are raised in the book of Leviticus and in the holiness code itself are not easy to discuss in mixed company, are not easy to discuss in a public context because all realms of human sexuality are discussed there.
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That's not the only thing that's discussed, but the Bible is honest. The Bible recognizes man in his state as a creature, and recognizes the necessity of laying out what
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God's will in these areas for man is. And I know that it will not be all that easy to work through this, and it's not the kind of material that at the end of the sermon everyone is going, wow, that was wonderful,
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I really feel edified. So, why do it? Well, we could simply say we need to proclaim the whole counsel of God.
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We want to be able to say, as Paul said, that he's innocent of the blood of all men because he's proclaimed the whole counsel of God.
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We could do that. But there's more to it than that.
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I am convinced that dealing with this particular section of Scripture is necessary to equip every single one of you in this congregation to present in a meaningful, sound, coherent and compelling fashion the reasons why we believe the things that we believe, especially as it has to do with human relationships to one another, the subject of marriage, the subject of human sexuality and the bounds that God has placed upon the expression of that sexuality.
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And the reality is we live in a day where because of the connectedness of the vast majority of us, through the internet and through television and film, a tremendous amount of false information has been communicated to the people in our society regarding specifically the
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Bible's teaching on this issue. And because of that, the world will attack very quickly anytime we say, well, you know,
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God has said in the Bible, well, we know about that Bible. They will attack.
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Let me give you an example of this. A number of years ago, late 1990s, you may recall a rather popular radio host.
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I don't know what happened to her. But you may recall the Dr. Laura show,
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Dr. Laura Schlesinger. And somewhere toward the end of somewhere around 1998 1999,
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I don't know the exact date, an anonymous letter was published written to Dr.
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Laura. I'm going to read you the majority of it. There's one section I will skip over just simply because, well, because.
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But here's the majority of this letter. Dear Dr. Laura, thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law.
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Laura Schlesinger is a Jewish person. I have learned a great deal from your show and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can.
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When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18 .22 clearly states it is to be an abomination.
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End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's law and how to follow them.
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Number one, Leviticus 25 .44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations.
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A friend of mine claims this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't
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I own Canadians? Number two, I'd like to sell my daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21 .7.
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In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? Number four, which means
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I skipped something. Number four, when I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice,
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I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord, Leviticus 1 .9. The problem is my neighbors.
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They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? Number five,
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I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35 .2 clearly states he should be put to death.
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Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or should I ask the police to do it? Number six, a friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination,
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Leviticus 11 .10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
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Are there degrees of abomination? Number seven, Leviticus 21 .20
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states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight.
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I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20 -20 or is there some wiggle room here?
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Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19 .27.
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How should they die? Number nine, I know from Leviticus 11 .6 -8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may
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I still play football if I wear gloves? Number ten, my uncle has a farm.
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He violates Leviticus 19 .19 by planting two different crops in the same field as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread, cotton -polyester blend.
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He also tends to curse and blast steam a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them?
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Leviticus 24 .10 -16. Couldn't we just burn them to death in a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in -laws?
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Leviticus 20 .14. I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
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Thank you again for reminding us that God's Word is eternal and unchanging. Signed, your adoring fan.
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Now, we listen to something like that and we hear the sarcasm.
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It's well written and we all know that that kind of rhetoric resonates with people in our society.
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My question for you all this morning is fairly straightforward. How would you respond?
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How many of us, upon hearing those words, were sitting there going well,
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I know we read through Leviticus recently. I sort of remember a couple of those things, but I don't remember a lot about the context.
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How many of us felt a confidence that if you could actually, let's say that was read to you by someone or those points were made to you by someone and you've just sat down on a plane and you're not just flying over to California, you're flying all the way to JFK.
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You've got five hours and you're in the window seat. And so you don't really have much of an excuse as to not pursuing this.
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You want to pursue this. This person seems to be interested, but how many of us will honestly sit here and say,
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I'd probably find a way to pretend sleep.
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Maybe I'd explain that I have a condition that as soon as the engines rev up,
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I just go unconscious or I start babbling incoherently or something like that.
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We may want to, but do we feel confident that we could engage meaningfully?
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Do you have a Bible with you? Can you open it up? Could you talk about the background of Leviticus?
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Could you talk about the Holiness Code? Could you talk about the laws for Israel versus the laws we understand today?
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And could you do so in a way that could actually enlighten the other person and maybe help them to understand why you believe the things you do.
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My goal, my hope, is that when we finish this study, and it obviously will not take us nearly as long as Hebrews did, but when we finish this study, that you will feel confident and you will desire the opportunity.
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Now, I read a little letter there and you might say, yeah, but who would actually encounter that?
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We're going to do something this morning. Thankfully I warned Pastor Fry beforehand. I did not want to have to resuscitate him or anything like that.
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We're going to do something this morning that's in 25 years. Yes, I've been here now for 25 years.
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We've never done on a Sunday morning. Now, I just want to remind you Pastor Fry, this is
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Pastor Fry's type of sermon illustration. We all know this one, right? It's a favorite around here.
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We can never get rid of it. In fact, we might bury it with somebody. I don't know, but this is the
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Pastor Fry type of illustration. My sermon illustration is to play you a sound file.
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It's going to, Lord willing, come over the speakers. We tested this Wednesday night.
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It worked fine. That is no guarantee that what works Wednesday night will work Sunday morning.
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What do I want to play for you? Well, that letter made the rounds.
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Some of you may recall that in the fall of 2014 years ago, a certain television program was airing called
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The West Wing. I never saw an entire episode of The West Wing, to be perfectly honest with you, but a lot of people did.
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And as an illustration of how absolutely committed to warfare upon the
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Word of God the media in our country is, I want to play for you a brief scene that takes place in the
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White House. This episode aired, I believe, in September or October of 2000. The President has walked in and there is a woman in the room who is specifically intended to be
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Dr. Laura. And the President decides to shame this woman for what she believes.
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We think this is a new thing. No, it's been going on a long time. So, listen to this encounter from The West Wing from September -October of 2000.
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... and even experiencing legal and civil ramifications for holding the views that we hold to, we better do so because we're convinced that to do so is to honor
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God and to honor Jesus Christ. And that will require of us a certain amount of work and a certain amount of serious thought.
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I've been forced to be dealing with this area for over a decade now, specifically.
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We wrote the same sex controversy back about what, 2003, 2004, somewhere around there.
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Maybe even earlier than that, maybe it was 2001, I don't remember anymore. That's a sure sign of being past 50 as the decades start just melding together.
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But it's been a number of years and I've had to wrestle with these texts because I have to take this into the debate arena.
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I have to take this into into a situation where there are people who know the original languages and are specifically arguing against historic
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Christian perspectives. And that means I have a pretty high standard. And I will try to bring that same high standard into what we do here.
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But in closing, let me say this to you, you may have been a little more excited about starting
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Hebrews than the Holiness Code. But I can't think of anything that is more on the forefront of the minds of anyone who is seeking to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to our culture today than this.
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Not because we made it the issue, but because our culture has made it the issue to say to you and I, I will not hear you unless you first agree with me on this subject.
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What they're saying is, I will not accept a message where Jesus Christ has authority in this particular area.
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This is a gospel issue. It's not just that you can win an argument on the bus about homosexuality.
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This is a gospel issue. And as such, I hope the Lord will bless our time.
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Help us to remember, give us confidence. I don't believe that we of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church want to be silent Christians who do not give testimony to the truth of God in a society where the conversation is specifically about what
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God has so clearly addressed in his word. I believe we want to be able to speak.
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By God's grace, it will help us to do so. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we know that it contains much that speaks directly to our day and our age.
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And yet we live amongst a people who are being told, they're being lied to. Your word's no longer relevant.
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It was just the morality of days long past. Lord, we know better and we know that this touches upon the very gospel itself, or if we cannot define what sin is.
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Then we cannot define the need for a savior. And so we thank you that we still have your word and we can still proclaim it openly.
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Bless our study of your word, our preparation to be good servants of yours. We pray in Christ's name.