The Law is Never Fulfilled Outside of Christ

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, we come to You in humble awe.

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You are the one true God. There is none other like You. Come, we pray, bless our hearts and our minds as we study

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Your Word. Send Your Holy Spirit into our lives so that we may grow in love and grace and that we may go forth into the world proclaiming

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Your Gospel so that others may learn of Your saving grace. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

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All right, I'm afraid to ask the question, but were there any questions?

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Please escort Bruce out of the building during this portion of the Bible study. No? Oh, good.

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Oh, wow. I get to get back into Leviticus and so I get two Sundays in a row. Maybe we can make some tracks in Leviticus before the church council meeting, which could be very awkward now at this point because of how little

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Leviticus we've been doing. All right, we're in Leviticus. We're going to be in chapter 17 and working our way through.

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We actually did part of this last time we touched on Leviticus.

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And the idea here then is in this portion, God is going to make it very clear that when it comes to sacrificing your animals, the sacrifices are to be done in a particular place.

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And if you decide to kill them ahead of time, you still need to bring them to the tabernacle so that you do not have people surreptitiously sacrificing to goat demons.

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I don't know if you've noticed this about human beings, me included, you included. We have a tendency that when we're heading off in the wrong direction, we like to engage in misdirection and put on pretenses all the while, while somehow disguising our sinful behavior to make it look like we're doing right when in fact we're doing wrong.

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It's kind of a fun thing being a sinner that way. And I would put it to you this way.

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If the thing that you really want to do is causing you to engage in obfuscation in order to do it so that people who rightly understand

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God's word will not be alerted to what you're doing, then you're sinning. It's kind of how that goes.

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So that's a good test. It seems a little obvious, but sinners being what we are, and we all have a sinful nature still, which is for the birds.

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I'm really looking forward to not having one anymore. And luckily mine keeps getting older and older. I keep telling people

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I can play Santa Claus now at the mall without a false beard. Yay. Hazzah.

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All right, Leviticus 17. This part will be review, but let's keep it for our context.

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Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the people of Israel. Say to them, This is the thing that Yahweh has commanded.

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If one of the house of Israel kills an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp or kills it outside the camp and does not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it as a gift to Yahweh in front of the tabernacle of Yahweh, blood guilt shall be imputed to that man.

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And this isn't talking about butchering an animal for the purpose of steak, food.

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In fact, the book of Deuteronomy, middle portion of the book of Deuteronomy chapter 12, if I'm not mistaken, doing this from memory, does talk about you have the right to butcher animals for the purpose of eating as many as you want, as often as you want to your heart's content.

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That's not the issue here. The issue is the pretense of making sacrifices and sacrificing the animals for religious purposes.

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So you've killed this animal, but there's blood guilt now being imputed to you because the animal isn't dying for the purpose of either being eaten or truly a sacrifice to Yahweh.

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This is something else. He shed blood that man shall be cut off from among his people. This is to the end that the people of Israel may bring their sacrifices, and here we can see the context, that they sacrifice in the open field that they may bring them to Yahweh, to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting and sacrifice them as sacrifices of peace offerings to the

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Lord. Now, a little bit of a note. In the ancient world, deities and sacrifices kind of went hand in hand, and you'll note that sacrifices were a part of ancient

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Judaism, and it was all type and shadow pointing to Christ, but generally in the ancient world, their view of deities, they were pretty capricious, very hard to please beings, and so you had to figure out how to get on their good side, and so sacrifices of one kind or another was for the purpose of getting the attention of the deity, earning from the deity particular things, and oftentimes fertility cults were quite popular.

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We're not talking about just mere fertility in the concept of human conception. We're talking about the fertility of the earth itself, and so the belief was that the deities, in order to earn their favor and to show them that you are humble and contrite and that you desired their favor, you would traffic in sacrifices of one kind or another to placate or to get the attention of or to earn the favor of that deity, and so oftentimes, along with this, in a kind of a polytheistic world where there's multiple different types of deities that you can worship, oftentimes people would have their particular favorites, so I'm gonna go and make a sacrifice to such and such a deity, and what

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I find fascinating is that that mindset is not all that different than what crept up in Roman Catholicism in the

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Middle Ages, this concept of praying to patron saints, and over and again,

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I point to the kind of bizarre ideas that come along with this, and if you haven't heard,

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Saint Christopher was like a totally bogus saint. Yeah, my family was

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Roman Catholic at the time of my birth, and at my baptism when

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I was an infant, I was given a Saint Christopher medallion by my grandparents, and I remember when

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I got old enough to actually pay attention to that there was such a thing, they made a point of saying, have you seen this, you got this when you were christened, and there's a

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Saint Christopher medallion and Saint Christopher was supposedly the fellow who at one time helped

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Jesus cross a river, or maybe the River Jordan, and because Jesus was too small to actually ford the river himself, so Saint Christopher decided to carry the load, and I guess as the story goes, that when

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Jesus got on his back, the fellow nearly fell into the water and drowned because of how heavy

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Jesus was, and as the lore goes, he was so heavy, the reason why he was so heavy is because he was carrying the sins of the world.

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It's not a dad joke, I'm just telling you what I was told. Okay, so I kind of, but yet, how many

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Roman Catholics to this day are told to offer prayers to Saint Christopher for one thing or another, and the same with the

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Saint Joseph, Saint Joseph, not the biological, but the earthly father, the legal father of Jesus Christ.

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If you're having difficulty selling your home, yep, you bury a Saint Joseph statue in your yard and there's a particular prayer that you, and your house will just go like that.

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How did that house sell? The market's not even doing very well. Well, we put a Saint Joseph statue in our, this is nonsense, this is utter nonsense, but you gotta note, it operates kind of off that same principle.

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I give, I do, I perform, then God acts. And then, of course, the question is, it has to be called, where did you learn this?

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Where did you learn these things? How did you figure this out? I always think it's hilarious when you consider that down in certain states in the

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United States, there is a frog that excretes a particular enzyme and it's illegal to actually engage in frog licking because it's a hallucinogenic.

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In some of these states where this frog is prevalent, you can be arrested for frog licking. Of course, my question is, who's the first person that went, hey, there's a frog right there.

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I think I'd like to lick it. You gotta remember, this is the South. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

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The same guy that had, God, yeah,

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I see the connection. I see the connection.

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So you'll note then, you'll note then that when it comes to idolatry, there is a pseudo profound aspect to it where you are being given privy information that other people just don't have.

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We've discovered through our religious experimentation that if you offer this many sacrifices of this particular animal to this particular deity, the results you'll get back are fantastic.

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It'll clear up the zits on your face, you won't have acne, and you'll be married within six months.

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And so we've learned all this stuff. You say, where did, how did you figure this out?

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It just sounds like you made it up. Yeah, right, because probably you did.

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And so then you'll note then, could you imagine if, you know, years from now,

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Barb and I put our house on the market and it's not selling, and you just happen to be walking by my house at the time

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I was digging a hole to put a St. Joseph statue into my yard? That would be one of those really awkward moments.

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In fact, I'm pretty sure if I ever decided to do something like that, I'd wait until the middle of the night, two in the morning, because I know that none of you are up, right?

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Because I don't want to be discovered, I don't want to be found out. Yeah, just, that's it.

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Honey, I'm going to go get one of those ground radar things. We've got to find out if there's any St. Joseph statues in our yard.

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And don't be digging them into my yard just for fun. It's not funny. I can't get you out of my crib.

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You know, no, no, no. You're not getting out of the crib, B. Yeah, that reminds me of when

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I was a kid, you know. You know, attending the Nazarene Church, all the sermons were about what you're not supposed to do, right?

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You don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. I'm sitting there going, dang, that sounds fun. Yeah, I haven't tried that one yet.

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Just give that a whirl, see what happens. No, I know.

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So you can see then here the idea is that there are people in the camp of Israel who are hanging on to some strange belief that there are these goat demons need to be placated by sacrifices.

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And so they're not bringing their sacrifices to the tabernacle. They're sacrificing them outside of the camp.

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And of course, the question is, hey, Shlomo, why are you sacrificing that animal right here? You know, it's not, go mind your own business, you know, stop talking to me like this, right?

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And so the idea here is that they're hiding their true intent and God's cutting this loophole out and making it very clear this is not going to stand.

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So the priest then, talking about the real sacrifices, shall throw blood on the altar, blood on the altar of the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting, burn the fat for the pleasing aroma to Yahweh.

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So they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to goat demons after whom they, and boy, this is just such a fun word, yeah, whore.

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This shall be a statute forever with them throughout their generations. I made the point, always worth, you know, at least mentioning it in passing when the text is calling for it, that idolatry and adultery seem to go hand in hand there.

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That it's, idolatry is the spiritual form of adultery. Adultery is idolatry in and of itself.

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Scripture makes that very clear that it is. And so God then, in talking about faithlessness of Israel, and when it comes to idolatry, will liken it to not just adultery, but an extremely reprehensible form of it.

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You know, the fellow who goes and visits the brothel or something to that effect. Now you shall say to them, anyone of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice and does not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it to Yahweh, that man shall be cut off from his people.

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So this is an excommunicatable offense. And the reason being is that you're not really part of us.

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And so excommunication in this sense is simply ratifying what the person already believes and saying, you want to worship other gods?

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Go right ahead, you're not of us. And so you'll note then that idolatry is something that puts somebody outside of the religious community.

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And that continues to this day. Okay, so we're talking about how the

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Samaritans set up their own worship site. All right, so in the book of Deuteronomy, let me do this, you know,

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I'm gonna, let me get to it. I think it's Deuteronomy 12, but I'm doing this from memory, so give me a second because I could actually be wrong.

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There is a fascinating piece to what's going on in Deuteronomy chapter 12.

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And that is that God uses Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, uses the geography of the place where they're going to make a point.

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Maybe it's in 11, hang on a second, I knew I was doing this from memory, but hold on, Deuteronomy 11. If not,

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I'm just gonna look up Gerizim. All right, let's see here. All right, we gotta find

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Gerizim. Hang on a second here, I'll do it this way. Gerizim, there you are.

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And it's Deuteronomy 11. Okay, so Deuteronomy 11. I was in the right chapter second time around.

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Deuteronomy 11, and particularly 29. And let me show you how this works.

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All right, so I'll start in verse 26 for our context. The Lord's speaking through Moses.

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See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. And this is covenant talk. So the Mosaic covenant, like any contract, there's responsibilities, and you get to enjoy particular benefits.

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And if you don't follow what you agreed to, then there's going to be consequences. And in the

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Mosaic covenant, those boil down to blessings and curses. Blessings if you obey, cursings if you disobey.

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And then what God does is actually quite fascinating. So he says, see, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse.

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A blessing if you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I command you today, and a curse if you do not obey the commandments of Yahweh your

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God. But turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today to go after other gods that you have not known.

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And when Yahweh your God brings into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal.

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Blessing is on Mount Gerizim, the curse is on Mount Ebal. And you know, this isn't a very direct command against idolatry.

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But how human beings operate is kind of fascinating is that, well, now the

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Samaritans who are breaking away from the true worship of God, they can invoke something in the scripture and say, we're gonna set up our worship center on Mount Gerizim because that's the place where Yahweh set his blessing.

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Does that make sense? Now, if we were to do just a little bit of work, let me find this real quick in, let me open up my browser and go to Google real quick here.

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All right, T and we want maps .google .com. So if we were to look for, funny enough, if I look for it in Hebrew, I won't find it.

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But if I look for it in Arabic, I'll find it. Jebal Gerizim, let's see, a second here.

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I have a latency in my internet connection because we are in the middle of nowhere. All right,

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I'll just do it. Hang on, let me do it in English. Hang on a second here. Mount Gerizim, there it is.

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All right, so it'll take a second for it to load, but it's a fascinating place.

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And I'll see if I can kind of describe the geography here. You'll note that this is in the

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West Bank of Israel today. The modern -day town of Nablus is the town of Note.

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And on either side of this valley, because Nablus is built in the valley, it's built in the valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal.

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So Mount Ebal to the north, Mount Gerizim to the south. Jacob's Well, Sychar, is in this spot.

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This is the place where Jesus, in John 5, had the encounter with the woman at the well.

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And the tomb of Joseph, his bones are here in Nablus. That's where they ended up taking them.

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But if I were to do just a little bit of work here, let me see if I can do this.

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And there we go. I'm gonna come down here. Let's see if that one will give me what

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I want. I'm gonna try this one real quick. Now, if I lucked out,

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I got the right one. I do a lot of traveling the world with other people's vacation photos. It's just, it's a lot cheaper.

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So this is the top of Mount Gerizim. And these are the ruins of the

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Samaritan temple complex that was up there. And you can't really see it too well, but if we look just north, so I'm looking north here, you can see the top of Mount Ebal, all right?

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So the way God set it up in Deuteronomy 11, the blessing is on Gerizim, the curse is on Ebal.

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And you notice there's no corresponding curse complex on Mount Ebal. But so the way this kind of worked out then is that the

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Samaritans, as they broke away, the leader who pulled them away from the nation state of Israel intentionally set up and recruited

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Levites to help to do it, to set up their own religious system altogether. And that just became corrupted and headed off in weird directions.

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And one of the things that they engaged in, which is kind of fascinating, you remember the bronze serpent from the book of Numbers.

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The bronze serpent, they ended up worshiping it. Was it Nihashtan was the name that they gave to it.

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I'm doing that from memory too. And so there's a little subtext later in the book, in the

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Old Testament, where they went and destroyed the bronze serpent because they set it up now as an image and an idol that they were worshiping.

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And so you'll note then that idolatry oftentimes will not completely leave to form its own cult and its own mythology.

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Instead, what it'll do is it'll take elements of the truth that is historically accurate, that have connections back to the truth of God, but then completely twist and warp them.

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And that's precisely what the Samaritans ended up doing in setting up their competing temple complex.

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And although they have clear instructions in Leviticus, as well as Deuteronomy, forbidding them from doing the things that they did, they took the blessing of God that was placed on Mount Gerizim and used it as a pretense to support their false worship.

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I don't know, that was a long answer to a short question, I think. But did I overdo it? Yeah, if I can't nerd out on theology,

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I can't nerd out on anything. Yeah, New Hashtan, yeah, yeah. So, all right, coming back then to our text.

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So the idea then is that that's how they do it. So you'll note then that the Samaritans then in setting up their idolatrous worship and standing in defiance of the clear instructions of the word of God use pieces of the word of God as a pretense for what they were doing while at the same time engaging in rank idolatry.

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And beware, we are all tempted to do these things. We are all extremely attempted to do these things.

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Now, it's easy to point out, you know, you look at what's happening within, you know, kind of radical leftist

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Lutheranism, you know, how they are establishing, you know, female priests and ordaining, you know, those who are impenitent sexually.

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And you sit there and go, how are you doing this? And oftentimes, well, the Lord's doing a new thing.

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He's doing a new thing. This is just one of their arguments. They got a whole lot of other ones. But you'll note that they keep the veneer of Christianity while at the same time evacuating of its biblical meaning while pouring in their own definitions.

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And that's a very cult -like behavior. You know, I always like to point out that when you take a look at something like the

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Mormon cult or the Jehovah's Witnesses, they use the exact same set of words we use.

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They'll talk about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They will talk about Jesus Christ.

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They will use words like atonement and sacrifice and baptism. But it's not the use of the word that makes them

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Christian or not Christians. It's the meaning of it. So if you were to sit down with a Mormon and ask the

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Mormon, okay, who is Jesus Christ? And it's a fair question because you use the word, you use the phrase, who is

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Jesus Christ? And they say, well, he's the spirit brother of Lucifer. Well, that's different, okay, right?

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And you use the name Elohim for God the Father. Who is Elohim?

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Elohim is our God. And he was once a man like you are now who was obedient to his

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God. And through the law of eternal progression, he then was able to earn the right to become a deity himself.

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And if we are obedient to him, then we can become gods and goddesses like he and his many spirit wives that he has.

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Multi -level marketing. So you're saying that Mormonism is a spiritual form of Amway?

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I just want to make sure the inference was correct. Okay, yeah, right, exactly.

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And so that's the thing. And so you'll note then, idolatry oftentimes will keep a

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Christian veneer while evacuating the words of any of their Christian biblical meaning.

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And so they can sit, and so the person who is catechized into these systems can sit there and go, we're biblical.

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We believe the Bible, oh, and the Book of Mormon. Oh, and the modern day prophecies and stuff like that, right?

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So, but you're going to have a hard time communicating with them in any kind of effective way as far as calling them to repent or demonstrating that their doctrines are false if you just take their use of the words and say, they're using this and mean it the same way

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I understand it. They don't. They don't at all. It's quite the mess.

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So, all right. So, all right. Look at how far we've gotten through Leviticus today.

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Aren't you happy? Yes, I'm expecting to like two stars on my star chart at the at the church council meeting.

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Anyway, hang on a second here.

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I need to have a drink. All right, and then coming back to the point then that this makes.

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You'll note that excommunication was practiced in ancient Israel and the person who is an idolater is excommunicated.

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Same today in Christianity. If you are a true idolater, you know, this is an excommunicatable offense and you'll note then that when it comes to church discipline, ultimately church discipline is giving somebody what they already want.

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That's kind of a strange way of putting it. But so when a person commits a sin, maybe they engage in the sin of idolatry.

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If you confront them and say brother, sister, this is idolatry. This this is a breaking of the first commandment.

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You need to repent and you need to be forgiven and they double down and say no. You can't you have no right to tell me who or what

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I am going to believe in or pray to or anything like this and you sit there and go right.

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I may not have the authority to tell you whom because Christianity isn't isn't believed in via waterboarding.

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You know, we're not going to waterboard you until you you know, until you get rid of all of your idolatry.

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But the idea here is that if you are part of the church, then being a part of the church is that you are repentant.

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And if you are impenitent when it comes to your sins, then ultimately you want to have it your way.

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Okay, you can have it your way, but you can't have it your way and be part of the body of Christ because to be part of the body of Christ is to be a penitent sinner in humble submission to the authority of Christ.

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Now that does not mean we don't sin. All of us sin daily. We sin much. And so the Christian the entire

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Christian life from beginning to end is one of daily repentance returning to your baptism again saying to God, I'm wrong.

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You're right and we have to do this. This is a daily exercise. But when you when you are so clearly shown that you are in sin and you double down and say nope,

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I'm not repenting. I'm not doing anything wrong and how dare you you close -minded Nazi bigot tell me what

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I should believe or not believe or do or do not do, right? You most unloving unkind blankety blank.

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Right? Right. And you basically at that point it's like, okay, you want to be an idolater?

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We are going to let you be an idolater. Just not with us. So when it comes to excommunication, you're giving the person really what they want and the first and it's strange to me that somebody would want to want to put up a pretense to their neighbors and to their fellow

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Israelites. I'm with Yahweh while all the while secretly back doing this thing sacrificing, you know, the demons and stuff, you know, making sure no one's seeing it, right?

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You're not really with Yahweh. So let's so excommunication really frees that person up.

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They don't have to put on a pretense anymore. They can just be what they want to be. Now they will probably end up in hell.

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But see the thing is that hell is the place for everybody who wants to have it their way, you know, and do their own thing.

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Yeah. I know in New Testament excommunication, 2

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Corinthians has a model for reconciliation. Yes. And Christianity is, so much

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Christianity is the accurate teaching of what was in the Old Testament. Yeah.

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Is there an equivalent for it in the

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Torah to 2 Corinthians? Boy, that's a good question. Off the top of my head,

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I can't recall one, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that I'm old.

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All the prophets are. Yeah. Yeah, you're not with me anymore. Come on back. Yeah, but there's like no formal process though.

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So when you talk about the prophets, you know, so they are like the covenant prosecuting attorneys.

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But over and again, listen to their appeal. They are not like any prosecuting attorney

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I've ever heard because the prosecuting attorney is all about just nailing a person and proving they're guilty.

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But the prophets always assume that the person's guilty. That's like not even up for question.

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So the thing is, is that, so God through the prophets is saying, you're doing this. Why are you doing that?

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That's stupid. Repent. I'll forgive you. And so at the end of the day, if you were to talk about a process, it requires them to recognize that they have committed idolatry, to repent of their sins, and to turn.

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And the assumption is, is that what they're being called back to is just to be restored to what's already in place.

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And so I would, you think about the fellow, and I can't remember the king's name off the top of my head, but things had got so bad in Israel that within the temple itself, they had set up little grottoes to the false deities.

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I mean, the temple itself became the complex of syncretism. Right. And they didn't even know.

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And so they put a funding project together to renovate, you know, because, you know,

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I don't know if you've noticed this about buildings, but they need paint and things like that from time to time, you know, and you gotta clean things up.

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And so they actually put a project together to raise funds to repristinate the temple.

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And while they were doing the construction work, they found the Torah. And I always like to say, it's like, you know, the priests who found it, they were all, there's a book.

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And the other guy goes, we had a book? Yeah, there's a book, it's right here. Well, what's it say? Oh, you don't wanna know what it says.

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Okay. So they read the book, and oh boy. And so what they did is they ran that thing up the chain of command.

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They took it to the king. The king read it. The king read it and went, oh, good, good, googly moogly, we're in trouble.

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Okay. Right. We have a book, and oh my goodness, we have totally departed from all the ways. That guy repents on the spot.

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He repents on the spot and totally just gets rid of all the syncretistic stuff going on.

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And here's what ends up happening. If I'm remembering the story correctly because I'm doing this from memory, things have gotten to the point where I think it was a prophetess, not a prophet, who actually came to him and said, the

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Lord has seen your repentance in sackcloth and ashes. And he's noted this.

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And because of this, the destruction that he has promised in that book that you read will not happen during your lifetime.

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It'll come after you. Now, that's all from memory.

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There may be details that are a little sketchy. That's because I'm sketchy. See, he's having...

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That's a funny way to say it. Mm -hmm.

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This is correct. Yeah. Yeah.

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So the kings of the Torah had to make their copies of God's Word pointing to Christ who was king and is

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God. Yeah. Now you're getting into advanced theology. Sorry. But you're correct.

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Christ is the halagos teotheo. He is the Word of God in flesh.

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That was a good point, though. Yep. Let's keep working our way through Leviticus so I can earn more points with the president of the church council.

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All right. Let's see. I know. All right.

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So we got that part. Verse 10 now. So if anyone of the house of Israel or of the strangers of the sojourners among them eats any blood...

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We've talked about this as well. Good to review it. The life is in the blood. All of that is then pointing to the very radical thing that Christ says on the night that he was betrayed.

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Take, drink. This is the cup of the new covenant. I'm messing up the verba now.

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But you know what I'm saying. Getting old. Creeping decrepitude is involved. This is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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So there's the blood. So this is, again, this is reserved. So no

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Jew, self -respecting Jew who is following Torah is going to be eating any blood. And then we get to Christ and Christ says, take, drink.

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This is my blood. The life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls.

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It is the blood that makes atonement for the life. There we go. And see, now you get a statement and Hebrews makes it clear.

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Not the blood of animals. It's not the blood of animals that makes atonement by the life because we are not saved by the blood of animals.

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We are saved by the blood of Jesus. The once for all sacrifice. But you get the theology then. It is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

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And this is pointing then to Jesus. So therefore I have said to the people of Israel no person among you shall eat blood neither shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.

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So if anyone also of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them who takes in hunting any beast or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with the earth.

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So dry venison. Just saying. That's how that works.

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The life of every creature is in the blood. Its blood is in its life. Therefore I have said to the people of Israel you shall not eat the blood of any creature for the life of every creature is its blood.

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Whoever eats it shall be cut off. Every person who eats what dies of itself or what is torn by a beast whether he is a native or a sojourner shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening and then he shall be clean.

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So if you see a dead deer on the side of the road and you decide to butcher it you are unclean until the evening.

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Just so you know. But if he does not wash them or bathe his flesh he shall bear his iniquity.

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Chapter 18. So Yahweh spoke to Moses saying speak to the people of Israel say to them I am

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Yahweh your God you shall not do as they did in the land of Egypt where you lived and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan to which

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I am bringing you. You shall not walk this is how you conduct your life.

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You shall not conduct your life in their statutes. You shall follow my rules keep my statutes walk in them.

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I am Yahweh your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes my rules. If a person does them he shall live by them.

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I am the Lord. Now a little bit of a note here. Paul uses that language to talk about how we are not saved by the law but saved by grace through faith.

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Now remember the law was not given for us to earn salvation because if a law had been given by which salvation could be achieved or which we could be justified.

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Paul says in Galatians then Christ died for nothing. So here's the principle then and this text explicitly says it.

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You want to live by the law you must do those statutes and can keep on keep on keep on keeping on through the night.

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Yeah. Brady Bunch reference but no one got that one.

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Good. Yeah yeah yeah. Alright so the idea here is that so if you want to if you want to live by them you got to keep on doing them.

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You're never done. The law is never fulfilled. You can't check it off and say finish. So you shall keep my statutes if a person does them he shall live by them.

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I am Yahweh none of you shall approach anyone of his close relatives.

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Now we're going to get into the awkward uncomfortable portion of the book of Leviticus. We will just walk through this and not do the beavis and butthead thing.

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So the idea here is this is going to get a little bit awkward graphic and I point out this by way of preface it is utterly sad that humanity has to be told in this explicit detail what you can and cannot do sexually.

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Some of this stuff is like so obvious duh. But the reality of this is our sin is so deep the corruption of our natures is so obliterated and we are so blinded even by especially by our sexual passions that we find really funny loopholes to where we go something like this well

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God didn't say I couldn't do that so it must be okay.

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So God is going to get down into the gory details we're going to go into sub points and he's going to cut off all of the escape routes and shut every one of the loopholes so that you you know so that you can understand when the commandment says you shall not commit adultery and this is an expansive concept then as it relates to what you can and cannot do sexually.

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God now is going to drill down and say in case you are wondering here's all of the different things, different ways that you are forbidden to behave so none of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness.

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I am Yahweh. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father which is the nakedness of your mother. She is your mother.

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You shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. It is your father's nakedness.

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You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter whether brought up in the family or in another home.

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You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter for their nakedness is your own nakedness and you shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter brought up in your father's family since she is your sister.

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You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister. She is your father's relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister for she is your mother's relative.

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This is embarrassing that he has to go into this detail. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother.

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That is you shall not approach his wife. She is your aunt. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter -in -law.

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She is your son's wife. You shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife.

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It is your brother's nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter. You shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness.

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They are relatives. It is depravity. You shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.

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If you want to marry your wife's sister, wait till your wife is dead. But you'll note then that the idea here is that creates a rivalry.

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You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. You shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her.

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You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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Always worth pointing this out. Let me make the Hebrew a little bit bigger. Molech.

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Now, in Hebrew, the points, the little points, those marks are not technically part of the original text.

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These are the Masoretic vowel points and these tell you how to pronounce these things.

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Now, it's important to note you know, these letters, Memelad Koth, this here, those are the three letters used for king.

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So, when we talk about King David, Melech Dawid, those are the same three letters that are used.

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And so there was a ancient deity named

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Melech. Scripture doesn't call him that.

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They pronounce his name Molech. Melech means king. Molech means shame.

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But no worshiper of Molech ever referred to their deity as Molech.

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What God do you worship? I worship Molech. Right? No. It's king.

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And so you'll note here there's a little subversiveness that goes on in the

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Scriptures and that is a refusal to identify that deity by the name given it by the idolaters because they just won't.

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So, it is an utter shame that people would worship this deity and it's horrible to describe what people did here.

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So, the worship of Molech involved a large bronze statue.

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And this thing had its arms out and its hands open. And what they would do is they would build a fire under the arms of Molech and they would get his hands to the point where they were red hot.

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Physically you can tell. It's like putting an iron in the fire until the end. It's like that. So you have this deity's hands glowing red and then they would take an infant child and put it in its hands.

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It's horrifying. And is it any wonder that even the

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Mazarites when they would point this would not point it with Molech. So you should not give any of your children to offer them to Molech.

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And so profane the name of your God. I am Yahweh. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.

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It's an abomination. You shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it. Neither shall any woman give herself to any animal to lie with it.

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It's a perversion. Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things for by all these the nations

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I am driving out before you have become unclean. And the land became unclean so that I punished its iniquity and the land vomited out its inhabitants.

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But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.

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For the people of the land who were before you did all of these abominations so that the land became unclean.

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Lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

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Now a little bit of a note. Homosexuality is mentioned in there and you'll notice it's the smallest part of the list.

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The whole list itself lists out heterosexual sin after heterosexual sin after heterosexual sin after heterosexual sin.

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Oh and by the way homosexual sin also bad. It's an abomination.

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And I always find it fascinating that we somehow engage in a tacit form of self justification when it comes to the fact that many of us don't ever struggle with anything homosexual and we talk about homosexuals as them.

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But you're going to note here this is a list that's so complete as far as the heterosexual sins are concerned that every loophole had to be closed heterosexually that I mean when you define sexual purity this narrowly which is what

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God does then you recognize that the vast majority of sexual sins that occur on planet earth are not homosexual.

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That's the minority. The gaping gaping huge amount of sexual sin that occurs on this planet in this community in our country is heterosexual.

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And what I find fascinating is that I don't hear hardly anybody calling it out.

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That's wrong. Yeah? The big challenge they gave you to be quite aware of and this came up states here in America people voted for quite a set in church but it didn't maybe can't carry through silence on its own.

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You lose the ability to evangelize. Justly, even using

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Scripture you can condemn this behavior and Jesus condemned it in the Sermon on the Mount. Yep. The society will end with a speck in your eye.

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And that's it. And I think the church lost the debate going back into the sexual revolution.

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I think the boomers really did a disservice to our culture and to the church as a whole because it was the boomer culture that brought about so much of the change of sexual mores to no fault divorces to where the church has its hands tied in obvious cases where its members are engaging in sexual immorality.

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And so everybody knows that in such and such a church you've got that couple, they've been living together for years and they keep coming to church.

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And yet somebody who's struggling with homosexuality, well we immediately identify that guy and flush him out.

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All the while putting up with the couple that are clearly disobeying the command of God. And we're inconsistent.

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And so what ends up happening is that rather than saying that the law equally condemns us all, now it's the law

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I'm overlooking these parts in order for me to look down the nose at this other group as if somehow

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I'm okay but they're not. Isaiah 65

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Smoke. It's a smoke in his nostrils.

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The God who is long of nose says that's a smoke in his nostrils. Beware. Right. So again, note then when we talk about God's law and this is straight up 200 proof undiluted law.

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So we talk about three uses of the law. Civil use, the government uses it to curb evil, to punish the evildoer.

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Second use of the law is the theological use and it's the primary use mentioned in Romans 3.

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It's to show us our sin and our need for a savior. And how many of us in reading the law here can sit there and go, you know,

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I'm doing alright. I'm pretty good. Yeah. I thought it was going to be worse.

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I'm only mostly dead. And then the third use of the law then shows us what a good work is.

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And so then you'll note then that repentance, metanoia, is that change of mind. It's that metanoia is this idea that God, you're right.

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I'm wrong. And then what is expected then is the fruit of that repentance is the amendment of life.

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So, you know, the idea here is that it's really easy for us when

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God's law points its righteous trumpet fingers at us and blares in our face you have fallen short to sit there and go how dare you tell me

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I've fallen short! You know. And it doesn't care if you sit there and have a temper tantrum.

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You've fallen short. But that's a good place to be in. Because when you realize that you've totally screwed up you haven't kept this, all pretense of self -righteousness falls away.

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And usually it's the people who are relying on their self -righteousness that are the most incensed when you point out that they're a sinner.

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Who are you to tell me I'm a sinner? How dare you! Well, you are.

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And the problem is that they're depending on their self -righteousness they're in brownie points with God and it's not going to work.

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So you'll note that preaching the law requires us to not shave off any of the hard edges or not to selectively use it against one group of human beings while ignoring other portions of it that may or may not apply to us.

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It doesn't work that way. So at the end of the day we sit there and go yep

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I said it this morning in church I confess that I am by nature sinful and unclean I have sinned against you in thought yeah, check, word check, deed and things

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I've done, oh yeah things I've left undone, don't talk to my wife yeah check, right?

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So you'll note that all the escape routes are cut off. The law doing its work is going to drive you to this point where you say yep, that's me.

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And only then are you able to hear those words Christ has died for you.

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He's bled and died for all of that. He's bled and died for even every one of those sins there too.

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There's nobody whose nobody's sins are excluded. You know I was thinking as I was preparing the sermon this week and pulling in that text from Hebrews 12 who for the joy set before Him who for the joy set before Him endured the cross despising its shame you know this picture that Christ has set

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His face towards Jerusalem and that for the joy set before Him He despises the shame of the cross and He endures it so that you can be forgiven.

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Whereas I have a difficult time remembering people's names I'm pretty sure

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Jesus doesn't. You know, and so when I read a text like that, especially in light of Christ setting

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His face towards Jerusalem I like to think of it as that Christ contemplating, thinking within Himself I'm going to the cross,

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I'm going to Jerusalem I'm doing this because the joy of knowing that I'm going to set.

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And then here's the fun part Him being God the level of detail in His thinking you just think has to go down to the micro detail.

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Christ for the joy set before Him endured the cross suffering its shame for Dwayne for Marilyn for Don, Michael for me for you and knows us by name you know and that's the thing that's most staggering in all of this and you'll note then that the keeping of the law is boiled down to kind of two commands you know, on these all of the law and the prophets hang

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Christ said love Lord your God and love your neighbor every sin that we commit is a failure to love

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God or to love somebody else you know I can't think of a more horrific way of hating somebody than slandering them or stealing their stuff if you've ever had anything stolen you're not feeling the love while you're giving the police report

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I can't believe this this was stolen off me I think of your bike that was stolen you can't hate somebody more than to take the thing that they need to get to work you go to the mall and you go out into the parking lot and your vehicle is missing, it's gone or you come home and all your stuff has been ransacked that person hates you they have no love for you at all but have you thought then about even sexual sin sexual sin is not love for another person and everybody tries to justify sexual sin by going back to that old 60's song love the one you're with oh boy am

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I showing my age now I didn't hear it when it first came out on the radio, I'm just saying but I'm aware of it and so everything is argued how can you condemn somebody for loving another human being well, that guy left his wife she's now taking care of three kids all on her own she could barely put any food on the table because that guy went and ran off with such and such a chick all because he says that he loves her the only person he loves is himself the only person he loves and we don't call it out well, you know he doesn't love her anymore he loves her no, he loves himself he's failed to love the one that he was called to love he's failed to love the one that he vowed to love for better, for worse for richer, for poorer this past week

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I was in Minneapolis and I was at the Higher Things conference at Concordia St.

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Paul and there was a gal there she's getting married in like a month and I met her when she was in junior high and when she told me she was getting married

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I was like, oh gosh, I'm so old I can't believe it I remember when you were this high now you're getting married so we were talking about her church,

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I actually spoke at her her father's a pastor in Grand Rapids, Michigan and I spoke at their church a decade ago and the couple that invited me just a great couple, but the wife, the gal in the couple she came down with breast cancer and despite all of their efforts to get her into remission it's gotten into a place in her body where she'll never be able to go into remission and so she has bouts where she goes into she has breakouts in cancer, she has to go into chemo again and try to get things under control and the last time

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I saw her, I mean she looked like death warmed over I'm just and I asked how she was doing and she's fighting another bout of it, but I remember when

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I saw her the last time, the thing that struck me, the thing that really struck me was that her husband, and this is a young couple,

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I mean they're 20 years younger than I am this is a young couple and the husband his whole life is about taking care of her medically she's incapable of taking care of herself and I look at that and it's the perfect picture of for better, for worse for richer for poorer

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I will love you and not another, till death do us part and marriage itself is a picture of Christ's relationship to the church and so I look at something like that, but how many men today oh my wife got cancer and I've got things

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I want to do, I didn't expect this and they would just dump her right and nobody thinks the less of them, but they should they should because it's just outright selfishly sinful it's nothing like Christ at all and so even the law itself is an expression of the love of God and we fall short when we do not love, when we are selfish when we are most like the devil we're most like the devil when it's all about me

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Lord I lift my name on high, Lord I love to sing my praises, I'm so glad I'm in my life you know that's not exactly how the lyrics go, but you get the idea.