Overview of Leviticus 18

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We return once again to our study of the book of Leviticus the book of Leviticus It will be both in chapters 1 and 18 this morning
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Lord willing initially sort of doing an overview, but You can turn to chapter 1 of the book of Leviticus Let's ask the
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Lord to bless our time together Indeed our gracious Heavenly Father as we once again open your law
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We ask that you would be with us that you would give us guidance and understanding Lord we know that today there are many in our land who profess your name and yet who are embarrassed by the words contained in your scriptures
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We would ask that you would give us Understanding so that when we are given opportunity to give testimony to the culture around us so we can do so with accuracy
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We can do so in a way that honors you honors your word. We pray in Christ's name.
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Amen For those of you who have not been with us in the previous portions of this study after we finished working through the book of Hebrews I chose to Enter into a study that absolutely defies my extremely limited
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Abilities that turning something into a sermon to be honest attempting to work through the
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Holiness Code and the law of God in such a way as to Prepare us to speak to the culture around us
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It was probably a fool's errand as far as Preaching is concerned
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This would fit a whole lot easier into a Bible study series that is a sermon
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However, it's been my experience that for some reason People are more likely to listen to a sermon than a
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Bible study. I guess there is a natural Concept in the mind that well the sermon is is more important The Bible study is less less formal.
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Maybe doesn't carry as much weight. I don't know but Certainly we are going to speak anyways to honor the
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Lord and to be prepared We all know Obviously in our society as we if we if we keep up with the developments that for all intents and purposes
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By Supreme Court in action just a few weeks ago The other shoe has dropped so to speak and it will be just be a matter of time
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Before as one person has I think well put it same -sex mirage
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Is legal in all 50 states if it isn't really already. I think that's an excellent description
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I've been trying to find you know, natural marriage sounds like I don't know natural tofu or something like that and I've been
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I've been trying to find a phrase and I I think it's a good phrase because what is a mirage? It's something that looks like something that it isn't
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And that's an excellent description given the fact that marriage is defined by God and by simple common -sense in a particular fashion and when you decide to Put two people together where neither one's a husband and neither one's wife that ain't a marriage matter
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What else you might want to call it and so that is coming our direction. We know that that's based upon a
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Fundamental change in our society's view as to the nature of man and as to the nature of Our relationship to God or in this case our society has clearly determined that there is no
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Creator God And therefore there is no relationship to be had between the Creator and any kind of ethics and morals and we know that we as believers are going to be called upon to pay the cost of Fidelity to Christ and to his word in regards to this matter now some people as you may know are
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Already running as far and as fast as possible From the idea that there is any intimate connection between this subject and the gospel of Jesus Christ that you can continue to be faithful to the gospel of Christ and to his word and To hold a third way or multiple ways of viewing what the
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Bible says on this But we've already been dealing in the previous studies in this section with the idea that God has given his law
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That God has given his word and we have seen that this is in fact a gospel issue but to be able to respond to the society's attacks upon our beliefs we must be consistent believers and We began this series by listening for example to a popular clip from a television program from a number of years ago
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Where a president accurate actor representing the president utilized a certain portions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy Maybe even numbers as I recall
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As a means of mocking the idea that we can derive any meaningful
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Moral understanding from the law of God in this day And we recognized from that that there is an incumbent responsibility
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Upon you and I as believers, especially in light of the fact there really is no question that the
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New Testament understanding of human sexuality marriage, etc, etc is derived fully from this
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Old Testament Revelation it is it is laid upon this foundation as upon its bedrock
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No one can seriously say That what we have in the New Testament is meant to be some kind of radical
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Departure from the moral and ethical standards that are laid out for us within the Old Testament but that means that if we're going to be able to go to first Corinthians chapter 6
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We're going to be able to accurately handle what verses 9 and 10 say and then go to verse 11
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Which says but such were some of you but you were washed you were sanctified You were justified name if we're going to be able to go that and say such were some of you
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We have to be able to understand the foundation upon which the Apostle Paul is functioning
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And that means we're going to have to roll up the sleeves and do some elbow work
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Use some elbow grease whatever it was elbow grease for I'm not really sure what that was for But anyways do some hard work shall we say in the text and have some sermons that aren't necessarily overly enjoyable
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They may require you to concentrate a little bit more than you want to concentrate. They don't fit into nice neat outlines
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But hopefully they will allow us to speak to the society around us now
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One of the things we've already done is we've looked at the book of Deuteronomy We've looked at the God of the people of Israel We've looked at the necessity of loving
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God the relationship between loving God and being obedient to his law. These are all Vitally important things, but we now turn to the book of Leviticus itself.
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And before we look at the first verse and Remind ourselves of the concept of divine revelation and its authority.
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I do want to Invite you just for a moment to think with me about the form of the book of Leviticus itself
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Now we're also going to be looking outside of Leviticus later on its parallel passages remember
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Deuteronomy Means the second giving of the law or the second statement of the law and that means there are parallel texts
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Between what we have in Leviticus or we have in the deuteronomas the second law
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And so looking at those parallels can be extremely important be very helpful to us in Shedding further light upon what is intended by these very very ancient words
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And I remind you we're reading some of the most ancient words available to mankind despite many of the liberal
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Denials the reality is there is no meaningful reason to question that these words
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Do not go back to minimally 1 ,200 years before Christ and more optimally the period of 1 ,400 years before Christ and hence
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They are very very ancient words that have been preserved for us And that's one of the main problems that some people have is that well
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How can anything is written that long ago really have any meaning for us today as we will see?
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in Leviticus 1 1 that will take us back to the whole concept of Inspiration, but I want to give us a bird's -eye view for a moment of the book so we can see why we're focusing in Where we will be focusing in which will be beginning in verse 17
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What is Leviticus all about? Why is there a book that has almost no narrative in it?
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It is a difficult book to read because it is primarily all law. It's not put in much of a context
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I mean it isn't a context once you have Genesis and Exodus and you have numbers and Deuteronomy It's got a context there, but as a book unto itself.
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It's it's not that easy of a read We all will have to admit that Especially that first time we read through the
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Bible But when you think about the very purpose of Leviticus many of our our friends may many of maybe even our friends within what calls itself the
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Christian Church might Might entertain some some questions as to you know. Why does my
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Bible have a weird book like this that talks about? examining Sores on hands and freckles and all sorts of weird stuff like this and going outside the camp and not touching it dead bodies
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And it just doesn't seem overly relevant to me But I think it's important for us to to think about why we have this book
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Think about the problem that Israel is facing As we've read through And we've we've been going through on Sunday evenings.
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We've been reading through this portion of the scriptures number of times Something has happened and the result is a plague breaks out amongst the people
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God's wrath breaks out amongst the people and Some fairly substantial number of people end up being cut off they end up dying
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Why is this well? Because all of a sudden God's doing something that he has not done before Think about it
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You're amongst the people of Israel at this point in time and you live in a tent why do you live in a tent well because Israel doesn't have its land as yet and So Everything's mobile.
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The tabernacle is mobile. The nation is mobile. There are certain places you remember we read through where where this tribe will set up camp here and that tribe there and this tribe there there and you've
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Got the the tent of meeting in the middle and and and this is how Israel is is to move
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It's a they're wandering in the wilderness. They haven't gotten into the land as yet and What's changed well
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God is amongst his people you're living in a tent and You can open the flap of your tent and look down the road
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And there's God's tent God's dwelling amongst his people and that immediately raises the question.
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Um How do we deal with this because obviously there are a number of times They didn't really know how to deal with this and the result was plague breaks out and you've got fiery serpents there's a problem when you've got sinners and in their midst is the
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Holy God and So there needs to be instruction as to how you're to live now think about something else
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There were three states in In which the average
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Israelite could find himself any one point living amongst the people of Israel three not states as and we have but state
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Status conditions and you're familiar with the terms in the Old Testament Most translations will use clean and unclean
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Unfortunately, that sounds like a hygienic thing So pure impure it might be another way of translating it and then the state of holiness a special state that That priests were to to be in who are doing ministering in the in the tabernacle itself
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You could take an as right vow and enter into a special state of holiness but in essence as you lived your you're a carpenter or something like that you take care of your
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Help take care of the cattle or something like that as an a normal person you would go in and out of a clean unclean pure impure state and Those two states didn't really have much to do with your righteousness because when you think about it
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There would be times what would make you impure? Well, we know touching for example a dead body well
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Somebody had to do it And if it was a relative your father your mother you're going to become ritually impure by touching that dead body and it didn't mean you but you are all of a sudden now less righteous than somebody else it was a a
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Position a a status and so there had to be laws and rules
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Given to govern what? each of these states was Defined what each of these states was and and how you would move from one to the other if I have to move a dead body, how do
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I Go from the state of now being unclean or impure to the state of purity and the normal Situation of the
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Israelite would be to be in a state of purity But I need to know how it is especially in light of the fact that right down the road there is
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God's tent And there's that pillar of fire by day and the by night and the pillar of cloud by day
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He's calling us to be a holy people. We are to be a people who represent
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Him in this world. And so I need to know How to do these things and and God calls special people priests to be involved in Helping the people and instructing the people and they need instruction and that's what the book of Leviticus is all about him
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One other thing before you look at the outline of it. Let me let me suggest something very strongly to you. I Don't think that We could make much sense of What happens in the self -giving of Jesus Christ on the cross if we didn't have
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Leviticus in the background I remember Weeks and weeks ago months and months ago We looked at how often the book of Leviticus is quoted in the
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New Testament It's quoted very often It's toward the top of the list of books that are cited especially in the book of Hebrews and places like that But certainly love your neighbors yourself is one of Jesus's favorite phrases it comes out of the
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Holiness Code and The reality is that when you look at what
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Christ does? When you look at his teaching about the necessity the
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Son of Man must give himself in this way We're assuming a background and we know what that background is
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Even if we're not overly familiar with the book of Leviticus, we understand the concept of sacrifice
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Purity impurity holiness the offerings the priesthood Etc. Etc.
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And you may recall we went through Hebrews We had even had we had to step out of that text and read an entire chapter of Leviticus just to have the background to understand what the high priest was doing and the offerings and so on and so forth so When you have people today
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Who are really uncomfortable with this stuff? It seems so ancient it seems so old it seems so outdated but they just go
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I just give me Jesus I Get really frustrated with that because Jesus didn't just plop down out of the sky and Start something completely new
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If you listen to his teaching he's doing something about this, you know You know
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God's Word and the law and Fulfillment and have you not read what
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God spoke to you and in quotes from the Pentateuch and all the rest this kind of stuff there was a there was in his own teaching an intimate connection to what we have in the book of Leviticus and in the entirety of The Old Testament scriptures and so the the modern schizophrenia
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Which is primarily Created by a distrust of the power of the Word of God and the
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Spirit of God to draw people To bow their knee before before Jesus Christ I mean that's what it is if you think you've got to look like the world and act like the world and entertain people in and make sure
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Not to tell about some of the rough stuff Until you've friendship them in deep enough
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You don't really believe to be perfectly honest with you that the Word of God and the gospel and the
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Spirit of God Is really powerful enough to draw people into following Jesus Christ because you're using something other than that to sort of trick him in That's really what's behind all of that kind of a of a problem and I'm I'm telling you
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I've told you before I'm going to tell you again over the next number of months you will see a tsunami of people a
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Tsunami of people big -name people in Essence saying we don't have to worry about what's in this book.
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We don't have to worry about what's in Romans We don't have to worry about what's in 1st Corinthians I have to worry about what's in 1st Timothy We have to worry about what
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Jesus said about marriage and how he defined it and how it's impossible to apply those words to anything else
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They'll say you just don't have to worry about those things. We just need to be loving like Jesus was loving Well, the first thing that showed that Jesus was loving is he loved his father and he lived as the perfect man and he
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Honored the word which according to New Testament writers He himself had given to us and so the idea that the love of Jesus would cause us to not speak the truth to others is
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Just simply an unchristian pagan concept But I'm telling you you're gonna see more and more and more
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People saying I'm just not gonna go there anymore It's gonna happen and we need to know why worry we are not following them
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Because I certainly pray to God That this building and this pulpit will be reduced to rubble before anyone ever stands behind this pulpit and denies
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What the scripture says about the gospel of Jesus Christ? Thank you Let's look at it.
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Let's look at the book of Leviticus chapters 1 through 16 our laws concerning sacrifice and approach unto
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God and Obviously the priest needs to know okay How do you do this?
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What's what's the I mean ask Aaron's son? They need directed instruction as to exactly how to do this.
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What are the sacrificial regulations? What about the priesthood how do you become a priest who is a priest what's ordination?
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What's the priest supposed to do? That's a chapter is at 8 through 10. For example, you have that And what happens if you deviate from what
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God has commanded there? You have chapter 10 and then of course, well, all right.
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Yes sacrifices, but Why would we need to be offering sacrifices? Well, we've gotten into a situation where there is uncleanness and so uncleanness needs to be dealt with We have
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God living in the tent and we want to be able to approach to him We want to be able to hear from him. And so we need to remove the barriers that are there
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And so chapters 11 through 15 give you laws concerning uncleanness laws of food clean and unclean animals
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Concerning childbirth infectious skin diseases and mildew Things that those very chapters like chapters 13 through 14 chapters 15 that we don't really like reading but they are extremely practical and relevant to the fact that What God is doing and we're going to spend more time on this later on as we really?
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Struggle with some of the laws that seem so capricious or random to us and and by the way
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Let me let me warn you ahead of time if your minds like my mind Which for most of you thankfully it isn't but if your mind is like my mind the natural thing for you to be doing when you encounter almost any of these laws as we read through them is you you naturally
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Click into the well that would make sense because of this
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You know, well, we're not supposed to eat pork because well pork can give you a trichinosis
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Well, the reality is there wasn't any more or less danger in eating pork than there was beef or any of the things that you could eat and Our mind is automatically trying to go for a justification of these laws rather than starting with this is what
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God has said to differentiate his people from those around them and that's the first and foremost thing because Unfortunately What we what we don't often do is seek a
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Consistency in our interpretation of these texts and that's what we've got to try to do I realize that most of the people you're going to be talking to Who would be promoting a different perspective don't care about?
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Whether they're handling the text consistently and that puts you at a disadvantage. No question about it
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They don't care about honoring God's law, they're not concerned about that.
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They're not really looking they don't have anyone who does not have the highest view of Scripture is going to find a myriad of ways of getting out of the social pressure that is coming upon us to abandon a
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Biblical sexual ethic and morality There's a million ways to do it. If you don't have the highest view of Scripture It's easy to get around this
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I was just listening to a Fact I'm going to talk about probably on the program this week, but a pretty well -known
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New Testament scholar Just gave a talk a matter of weeks ago in which he presents the thesis and he
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Brilliantly argued brilliantly argued. I'd never heard it before brilliantly argued
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Dr. Gundry pretty well -known Uh presented the idea that in Matthew's gospel
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Peter is a false apostle and apostate Who was not a follower of Jesus Christ period end of discussion now?
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I had never heard that one before But he he presents an incredibly strong case
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I Mean you can't just dismiss it because I mean he draws parallels here
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And but do you said this and Peter does that and did another that I mean, it's just almost overwhelming
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Very well argued now. You're sitting there. Good. Do you agree with him? Of course not, but you see the difference between me and dr.
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Gundry is I don't just have the book of Matthew. I have Mark Luke and John and I happen to think there's something that unites them together and you see he doesn't think that way
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It's the presuppositions that you bring to determine the parameters of what you could be able to do with text and once you no longer think that there is a consistency that goes from Genesis to Revelation that there is that beautiful tapestry of Harmony and consistency that comes from the fact that these are
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God inspired works There's all sorts of stuff you can come up with it never would have suggested itself to me in fact
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It never suggested itself to anybody But you can come up with new stuff as long as you hack it all into pieces and you can you know?
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play with you know, I I bought some Elmo puzzles for a Clementine this week and So far
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Elmo I think is now in about a thousand pieces But she does like carrying around parts of them So, you know if you can you know, if you can take the
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Clementine approach to exegesis in the New Testament You know, you can just carry around pieces and go look how this fits with that Wow It wasn't meant to go together that way when you had the whole puzzle
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But you know, there's the problem and I realize the most of people that we're talking to They don't share our presupposition as to the highest view of Scripture and That makes it a whole lot easier for them to put this over here and then put those two things together and oh look
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It's a new thing and it just happens to fit with what our society likes. Isn't that wonderful? We can't do that We can't do that because of the foundation we stand on and it's a foundation that I would say very clearly was the teaching of Jesus and his disciples as well in regards to the nature of the scriptures and so We we look at these
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These particular laws and like I said the mind automatically starts going for find something outside that's going to substantiate these things start with them first and Start with the idea that God is seeking to make his people
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Different from those around them and then we can work on Some of the reasons from that then remember when we were going through Hebrews We did step out to look at chapter 16 the law of the
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Day of Atonement. It sort of stands unto itself as a single chapter and then some people begin the
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Holiness Code and We'll say the Holiness Code is chapters 17 through 27 Chapter 17 is a little bit like chapter 16 as far as I can see and that is you know you're talking about the tabernacle and and sacrifices of the tabernacle and Prohibition against eating blood and and things like that and it seems to me that that's a
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Transitionary chapter and that the real Holiness Code begins with chapter 18, which is where we're going to dig in Is with chapter 18 and that goes all the way to the end of the book, but you'll notice and these
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This this way of breaking it down is somewhat arbitrary Because there are times where both
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Leviticus and Deuteronomy Absolutely Defy easy categorization and easy outlining but in essence what you have is
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The laws for covenant morality and non -conformity to pagan practice that's chapters 18 through 20
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That's going to be the focus of our study chapter 18 laws restricting sexual relationships
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Chapter 19 laws promoting practical holiness before God and man and chapter 20 laws requiring capital punishment
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That's what we will be focusing upon and then from there you have laws for priestly sacrifice so on and so forth
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Appointed feasts and things like that, but we will be looking especially at chapters 18 through 20
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Now before we go back and and and let's let's turn to Leviticus 1 1 but before we go there, let me just Mention something in passing
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Especially as we deal with Leviticus chapter 18 I Need to let you know beforehand
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This is all about sexual relationships between men and women and Parents you need to be aware of the fact that that's what it's about and Obviously if you're encouraging your young people to read through the
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Bible Hopefully you have already explained to them that the Bible is an incredibly practical book the authors the
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Bible know mankind and know mankind well and Address a wide variety of things some of which are uncomfortable to speak of But the fact of the matter is it's there and it is far better to Address these texts here in the community of faith where we as the gathered body believe these the words of God and we're seeking to honor
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God Then the way that sadly normally happens and that is in most churches these texts are sort of just you know left off to the side and and You sort of counting on the fact that Not too many people get through their yearly reading program anyways, and maybe aren't paying a whole lot of attention when they're in Leviticus And then these people go off to university and all of a sudden you have a guy with a
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PhD up front Who knows how to selectively cite these texts and absolutely embarrass someone right out of their mind?
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And hence use much more bring much more weight to bear against someone
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And you end up with people losing their faith while they're at college and university It's happened over and over again
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You would think we would have figured it out by now that it'd be far better to deal with these things here Than it is someplace else, but it might result in some interesting conversations in the car on the way home
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Over the dinner table, but I will just let you know that that is the case Now I want to look first Leviticus 1 1 then we're going to jump 17 chapters.
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How's that? But I think I've laid a reason this now in the
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Hebrew text Leviticus is not called Leviticus It's your car the car means called out and you see
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Leviticus 1 1 says then Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting say and The very work first word is you thought to call out
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Yahweh called out to Moses and so We have at the very beginning a question that will determine how we deal with the rest of the book
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I Hate to inform you that when it comes to even that which calls itself
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Christianity if you believe that What is narrated here is in fact divine revelation that Yahweh?
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Called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting notice from the tent of meeting from the very
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Place where God was meeting with his people The very focus is so much of what we see once the wilderness wandering start taking place and everything after Exodus, etc etc and eventually being transferred into the the temple in Jerusalem if you believe
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That God actually spoke these words You are in a small minority the vast majority of Old Testament scholarship in our day
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Does not believe for a moment that There is ever well first of all the vast
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I would say the majority would not even believe that there was a historical Moses Moses might have been a You know a
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Bunch of different people put together in the tribal memory of the Jews or something like that a composite
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Guy or something like that or if there was someone even like this.
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We don't know much about him All the stories about him are meant to create
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The priesthood structure and the authority structure in Israel, etc, etc, etc, etc
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That's going to be if you go to almost any secular University and Sadly anymore.
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It's almost any Bible college or seminary the Fundamental approach is going to be that this is probably the best way to think but a lot of seminaries for example
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Will at least allow for you know? We you know, we want to have as many paying students as possible so You know, we need to let those neo fundamentalists in and so what you know
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We won't we won't laugh too loudly at the people who think that there really was a Moses and things like that But you know, we sort of treat them as they'll don't get it
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Eventually, it's sort of this scholarly pat on the back and a little grin and things like that And if you're wondering if I've ever experienced it, yeah, that was seminary for me at Fuller Theological Seminary And that was a while back so I would imagine it's a whole lot worse now
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That's just the way that it is. We are putting ourselves in the minorities. Why do I say that to you?
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Because if you think you're in the majority and find out you're not that can be rather disturbing to you if I inform you right now
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Don't expect a bunch of people to agree with you at least you're at the starting point you're at the right starting line for the race and You're aware of the fact that well, why is that?
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well because the vast majority of Especially over in Europe you have state churches filled with non -christians and the state churches have state universities and They're filled with non -christians and yet they get paid by the state to do religious studies.
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Well when you have unbelievers Handling the Holy Word of God you're going to end up with every kind of perversity on the planet and it can become the point where it becomes the majority of you and It's not because it is not because of the overwhelming weight of the arguments.
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I assure you It almost well, it does make me laugh when I when I when
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I talk to my liberal friends Absolutely true folks when you go when you're a conservative and you go to a conservative school
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You study what the liberals say you read their books you interact with their perspectives When you go to a liberal school the conservatives are idiots and it's a waste of time to read anything that they say
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That's just the way it is. I Mean some of you have seen some of my debates Most of the liberals
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I debate they didn't even Google my name before doing the debate They have no idea what
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I've what I've written about Anything of the subject, you know why because they don't care They don't think
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I could possibly have anything meaningful to say on this subject at all that's the mindset and So it's not that this perspective is just so Overwhelming and it's in its argumentation and no one's ever responded to it's been
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This stuff has been responded to liberals been liberalism's event been responded to for ever they just don't know it and it's just they quote themselves and sells and sells it just creates this huge mass of Self citation and it looks like wow, that's it
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Everybody believes that and if I want to be I want to get a teaching position. I better go that direction.
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I Want to be cool. I better go that direction I would suggest to you
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That none of the New Testament writers could have even begun to conceive of The mindset that is the part and parcel of most of modern
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Christian scholarship today could not have even begun to conceive it It's not because they were stupid It's because they knew what
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Jesus taught concerning the nature of the scriptures and it's what they believe it's during the nature of the scriptures and They wouldn't have even hesitated to say well, of course
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Yahweh spoke to Moses from the tent of meeting and of course he called to him
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And of course, these are his words and his revelation. This represents his his very his very
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Being and his holiness and his righteousness never even given a second thought only today
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When there is a assumption of naturalism assumption of materialism, does that become an issue but it will
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End up determining how we interpret much of what comes after this if you reject this and say well
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What you really have here is a bunch of cobbled together stuff that represents
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All sorts of different movements badly put together Sometime maybe after the time of David maybe even maybe even during the exile
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And finally coming together only at the time of Nehemiah And it's it's it's badly edited together and nobody knows where almost any of it came from Hey, if that's where you start, why should you think any of this has any relevance today at all?
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I Understand why liberals are what liberals are. It's because of your view of Scripture and so as long as you are a good naturalistic materialist,
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I'm not really sure why you're going to a church, but You know, that's the direction you're going to have to go but if you believe
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That God has spoken he has revealed himself and certainly Jesus believed enough to go to a cross
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Then you can't adopt that perspective You have to instead look at what the scriptures truly have to say
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So I just want you to know ahead of time That as we look at these texts if you wander off to the the local
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Christian bookstore Or these days just click over to Amazon or Logos or wherever it is.
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You end up, you know getting your electronic books at Don't be shocked if the majority of what you get just seems to be completely disconnected from what we're saying when it is just realize it is because of a fundamental difference in presuppositions the starting place
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If you believe in divine revelation, it's going to lead you to a different Different place turn with me then to Leviticus chapter 18
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Leviticus chapter 18 Let's read just the first few verses together.
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We'll only get a start this morning and then continue this evening Once again for those of you visiting those who have been here
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Especially in my study here. I think it is important To once again emphasize the personal nature of God's revelation
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Therefore when I read verse 1 I will say then Yahweh spoke to Moses now
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Please be aware if you go down to the local Jewish bookstore Don't use that term with the folks at the local
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Jewish bookstore They are not going to be happy with you They don't believe in utilizing the divine name, but that's a
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Jewish tradition It clearly was not the tradition of Jesus and the disciples it was not the tradition at the time of the writing in the
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New Testament and When we use the term Lord it is so generic that especially when we are trying to Contrast the true covenant
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God of Israel against the false gods of the peoples around Israel It helps to allow the text to speak for itself.
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So I will be Reading it in that way and forgive me the few times that I will forget there will be some times when that will happen
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I am sure Then Yahweh spoke to Moses saying speak to the sons of Israel and say to them.
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I am Yahweh your God You shall not do what is done in land of Egypt where you live
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Nor are you to do what is done land of Canaan where I am bringing you you shall not walk in their statutes
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You are to perform my judgments and my statutes to live in accord with them.
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I am the Lord your God So you shall keep I am Yahweh your God See, I told you so you shall keep my statutes and my judgments by which a man may live if he does them.
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I am Yahweh Now then notice something if we go down toward the end of the chapter
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Specifically verse 24 Do not defile yourselves by any of these things for by all these the nations which
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I am casting out before you have become defiled For the land has become defiled
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Therefore I have brought its punishment upon it. So the land has spewed out its inhabitants
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But as for you you are to keep my statutes and my judgments and shall not do any of these abominations
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Neither the native nor the alien who sojourns among you for the men the land who have been before you have done all these
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Abominations and the land has become defiled So if the land will not spew you out
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Should you defile it as it is spewed out the nation which has been before you For whoever does any of these abominations those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people now
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We begin with Some very important considerations right from the start
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You can see and we only have a few moments in which to do this. You can see that the writer is
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Giving us a general framework in which to understand the rest of the chapter General framework is what
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I'm addressing in this chapter explains Why it is that the
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Canaanites are going to be driven out of their land and in many instances Exterminated and it's right here
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That we have a connection with one of the great apologetic issues when you are seeking to bring the
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Word of God to bear in our culture and that is the assertion while the Bible condones genocide and Why there are many in our day today who call themselves
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Christians who? Absolutely reject that God had anything to do with this.
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I recently had a little bit of a dialogue electronically with a man named Brian Zahn Brian Zahn is a pastor of a church back in the
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Midwest And Brian Zahn wants to tell us that he believes in the
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Old Testament What does he believe about it That it's a true
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Accurate representation of what the Jewish people thought about God hear that That is not we believe you see his concern is if we accept
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That what God said to do in the Old Testament is what God really says to do then. I can't have the very fluffy emotive
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Squishy God that I like to present and so what we have in the
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Old Testament is not God revealing himself It is an accurate account of what the
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Jews thought about God, but you see until Jesus came along No one really had a good idea and that's becoming more and more and more
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What's actually being preached in the churches of our land not overly subtle when you lay it out that way
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But for many people they don't get it They don't hear it the first thing that God says and this little
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I'll close with this the first thing Yahweh says I Am Yahweh your
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God. What have we already established? No, man will ever love the law of God while you hate the
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God of the law no man. No woman will ever love the law of God while you hate the
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God of the law and Anthropology our doctrine of man our understanding of the scriptures teach make it very clear
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The heart of stone Love God or hate God Hates God, so we should not be surprised at the vitriol that is expressed
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Toward the law of God in our society Should not surprise us for a moment. It should grieve us
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But there's a difference between surprise being grieved it should not surprise us
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We should not be left gasping. Oh, you're not immediately submitting to what
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Leviticus says We understand that and we need to understand that when
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God begins this chapter about Delimiting the proper realm of sexual behavior amongst humanity
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He doesn't do so by saying This is what's best for you.
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It may be he starts off by saying I am Yahweh your
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God and As long as someone does not have a creator who made us
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There will never be any meaningful moral or ethical system that drives from for that could be given to uncreated beings
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God has the authority to say this is right. That is wrong
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As long as you say, I think I have the right to tell God he's wrong There's never going to be any meeting place here.
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And so as we look this evening, I would encourage you if you have time this afternoon Read through the chapter
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Because we will want to make application and begin to understand How to deal with what
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God has given to us in his word Let's close the time of prayer a great heavenly father
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Once again, we do thank you for the preservation of your word that we can struggle with words that were written long long long ago
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Because you have preserved them for us and we know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ held men in his day
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Accountable for these words that God had spoken them directly to those individuals
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And so Lord, we know that they are abiding there if they honest us and we need to understand them
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Lord in our day And so bless our time give us clarity of thought.
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May we not forget? May we not be so easily distracted by what comes after Lord bring us back together again this evening.