Overview of Leviticus 18

Leviticus as a Foundation for Christian Teaching on Sexual Ethics

We return once again to our study of the book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus will be both in chapters 1 and 18 this morning, Lord willing. Initially sort of doing an overview, but you can turn to chapter 1 of the book of Leviticus.

Let's ask the Lord to bless our time together. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, as we once again open your law, 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. We would ask that you would give us understanding so that when we are given opportunity to give testimony to the culture around us, we can do so with accuracy.

We can do so in a way that honors you, honors your word. We pray in Christ's name. 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 abilities at turning something into a sermon.

To be honest, attempting to work through the holiness code and the law of God in such a way as to prepare us to speak to the culture around us, it was probably a fool's errand as far as preaching is concerned.

This would fit a whole lot easier into a Bible study series than it is a sermon. However, it's been my experience that for some reason, people are more likely to listen to a sermon than a Bible study.

I guess there is a natural concept in the mind that, well, the sermon is more important. The Bible study is less formal. Maybe it doesn't carry as much weight. I don't know. But certainly we are going to speak anyways to honor the Lord and to be prepared.

We all know, obviously, in our society, if we keep up with the developments, that for all intents and purposes, by Supreme Court inaction just a few weeks ago, the other shoe has dropped, so to speak, and it will just be a matter of time before, as one person has, I think, well put it, same-sex mirage is legal in all 50 states if it isn't really already.

I think that's an excellent description. I've been trying to find, you know, natural marriage sounds like, I don't know, natural tofu or something like that. I've been trying to find a phrase. I think it's a good phrase because what is a mirage?

It's something that looks like something that it isn't. That's an excellent description given the fact that marriage is defined by God and by simple common sense in a particular fashion. When you decide to put two people together where neither one is a husband and neither one is a wife, that ain't a marriage no matter what else you might want to call it.

That is coming our direction. We know that that's based upon a 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 creator God and therefore there is no relationship to be had between the creator and any kind of ethics and morals.

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 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 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, 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 where an actor representing the president utilized certain portions of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, maybe even Numbers as I recall, as a means of mocking the idea that we can derive any meaningful moral understanding from the law of God in this day.

And we recognize from that that there is an incumbent responsibility upon you and I as believers, especially in light of the fact that there really is no question that the New Testament understanding of human sexuality, marriage, etc., etc., is derived fully from this Old Testament revelation.

It is laid upon this foundation as upon its bedrock. No one can seriously say that what we have in the New Testament is meant to be some kind of radical 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 1 Corinthians chapter 6, we're going to be able to accurately handle what verses 9 and 10 say, and then go to verse 11, which says, But such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.

If we're going to be able to go to that and say, such were some of you, we have to be able to understand the foundation upon which the Apostle Paul is functioning. And that means we're going to have to roll up the sleeves and do some elbow work, 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. They may require you to concentrate a little bit more than you want to concentrate.

They don't fit into nice, neat outlines, but hopefully they will allow us to speak to the society around us. Now, 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 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. And before we look at the first verse and remind ourselves of the concept of divine revelation and its authority, I do want to invite you, just for a moment, to think with me about the form of the book of Leviticus itself.

Now, we're also going to be looking outside of Leviticus later on. It's parallel passages. Remember, Deuteronomy means the second giving of the law, or the second statement of the law. And that means there are parallel texts between what we have in Leviticus and what we have in the Deuteronomos, the second law.

And so looking at those parallels is going to be extremely important, and it's going to be very helpful to us in shedding further light upon what is intended by these very, very ancient words. And I remind you, we're reading some of the most ancient words available to mankind.

Despite many of the liberal denials, the reality is there is no meaningful reason to question that these words do not go back to minimally 1 ,200 years before Christ and, more optimally, the period of 1 ,400 years before Christ.

And hence, 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, how can anything that was written that long ago really have any meaning for us today?

As we will see 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.

What is Leviticus all about? Why is there a book that has almost no narrative in it? It is a difficult book to read because it is primarily all law. It's not put in much of a context. I mean, it is in 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, it's not that easy of a read. We all will have to admit that, especially that first time we read through the Bible. But when you think about the very purpose of Leviticus, many of our friends, maybe even our friends within what calls itself the Christian church, might entertain some questions as to, why does my 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 dead bodies.

It just doesn't seem overly relevant to me. But I think it's important for us to think about why we have this book. Think about the problem that Israel is facing. As we've read through and we've been going through on Sunday evenings, we've been reading through this portion of the Scriptures, a number of times something has happened and the result is a plague breaks out amongst the people.

God's wrath breaks out amongst the people and some fairly substantial number of people end up being cut off. They end up dying. Why is this? Well, because all of a sudden, God's doing something that he has not done before.

Think about it. 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.

The tabernacle is mobile. The nation is mobile. There are certain places, remember we read through, where this tribe will set up camp here and that tribe there and this tribe there and there and you've got the tent of meeting in the middle and this is how Israel is to move.

They're wandering in the wilderness. They haven't gotten into the land as yet and what's changed? Well, 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 and there's God's tent.

God's dwelling amongst his people and that immediately raises the question, 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 Holy God and so there needs to be instruction as to how you're to live. Now think about something else. There were three states in which the average Israelite could find himself at any one point living amongst the people of Israel.

Three, not states as in we have, but status, conditions and you're familiar with the terms in the Old Testament. Most translations will use clean and unclean. Unfortunately, that sounds like a hygienic thing.

So pure, impure might be another way of translating it. And then the state of holiness, a special state that priests were to be in who were ministering in the tabernacle itself. You could take a Nazarite vow and enter into a special state of holiness.

But in essence, as you lived, you're a carpenter or something like that. You take care of the cattle or something like that. As 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, there would be times. What would make you impure? Well, we know touching, for example, a dead body.

Well, 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 that you were all of a sudden now less righteous than somebody else.

It was a position, a status. And so there had to be laws and rules given to govern what each of these states was, defined what each of these states was, and how you would move from one to the other. If I have to move a dead body, how do I go from the state of now being unclean or impure to the state of purity?

And the normal situation of the 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 God's tent. And there's that pillar of fire by day and the pillar of night and the pillar of cloud by day.

He's calling us to be a holy people. We are to be a people who represent Him in this world. And so I need to know how to do these things. And God calls special people, priests, to be involved in helping the people, in instructing the people.

And they need instruction. And that's what the book of Leviticus is all about. And one other thing before I look at the outline of it. 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 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 New Testament. And 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' favorite phrases that comes out of the Holiness Code. And the reality is that when you look at what Christ does, when you look at His teaching about the necessity the Son of Man must give Himself in this way, we're assuming a background and we know what that background is even if we're not overly familiar with the book of Leviticus.

We understand the concept of sacrifice, purity, impurity, holiness, the offerings, the priesthood, etc., etc. And you may recall when we went through Hebrews, 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 who are really uncomfortable with this stuff, and it seems so ancient, it seems so old, it seems so outdated, but they just go, 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. If you listen to His teaching, He's doing something about this God's Word and the law and fulfillment and have you not read what God spoke to you?

And in quotes from the Pentateuch and all the rest of this kind of stuff, there is 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 modern schizophrenia, which is primarily created by a distrust of the power of the Word of God and the Spirit of God to draw people to bow their knee 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 not to tell them about some of the rough stuff until you've friendshiped them in deep enough, you don't really believe, to be perfectly honest with you, that the Word of God, the Gospel, and the 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 them in. That's really what's behind all of that kind of a problem. And I'm telling you, 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 tsunami of people. Big name people. In essence, saying, we don't have to worry about what's in this book. We don't have to worry about what's in Romans.

We don't have to worry about what's in 1 Corinthians. We don't have to worry about what's in 1 Timothy. We don't have to worry about what Jesus said about marriage and how He defined it and how it's impossible to apply those words to anything else.

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 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 just simply an unchristian pagan concept. But, I'm telling you, you're going to see more and more and more people saying, I'm just not going to go there anymore.

It's going to happen and we need to know why we are not following them. 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 what the Scripture says about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen. Thank you. Let's look at the book of Leviticus. Chapters 1 -16 are laws concerning sacrifice and approach unto God. And obviously, the priest needs to know, okay, how do you do this? I mean, ask Aaron's sons.

They need direct instruction as to exactly how to do this. What are the sacrificial regulations? What about the priesthood? How do you become a priest? Who is a priest? What's ordination? What's the priest supposed to do?

That's chapters 8 -10, for example. You have that. And what happens if you deviate from what God has commanded? There you have chapter 10. And then, of course, well, all right, you have 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 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. And so chapters 11 -15 give you laws concerning uncleanness, laws of food, clean and unclean animals, concerning childbirth, infectious skin diseases, and mildew.

Those very chapters, like chapters 13 -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 struggle with some of the laws that seem so capricious or random to us.

And by the way, let me warn you ahead of time. If your mind is 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 naturally click into the, well, that would make sense because of this.

You know, well, we're not supposed to eat pork because, well, pork can give you trichinosis. 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 God has said to differentiate His people from those around them. And that's the first and foremost thing because unfortunately what we don't often do is seek a 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 whether they're handling the text consistently. And that puts you at a disadvantage.

No question about it. They don't care about honoring God's law. They're not concerned about that. 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 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. I was just listening to a fact I'm going to talk about probably on the program this week.

A pretty well-known New Testament scholar just gave a talk a matter of weeks ago in which he presents the thesis and he brilliantly argued. Brilliantly argued. I'd never heard it before. Brilliantly argued.

Dr. Gundry, pretty well-known, presented the idea that in Matthew's Gospel, Peter is a false apostle and apostate who was not a follower of Jesus Christ. Period. End of discussion. I had never heard that one before.

But he presents an incredibly strong case. I mean, you can't just dismiss it because he draws parallels here. Jesus said this, and Peter does that. I mean, it's almost overwhelming. Very well argued. Now, you're sitting there going, do you agree with him?

Of course not. But you see, the difference between me and Dr. 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. It's the presuppositions that you bring that determine the parameters of what you're going to be able to do with the 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 God-inspired works, there's all sorts of stuff you can come up with that never would have suggested itself to me.

In fact, 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 play with it. I bought some Elmo puzzles for Clementine this week. And so far, 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 take the Clementine approach to exegesis of the New Testament, 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, but, you know, there's the problem.

And I realize that most of the 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, 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 look at 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 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 Day of Atonement. It sort of stands unto itself as a single chapter. And then some people begin the Holiness Code and will 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 sacrifices at the tabernacle and prohibition against eating blood and things like that.

And it seems to me that that's a 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 this way of breaking it down is somewhat arbitrary because there are times where both Leviticus and Deuteronomy absolutely defy easy categorization and easy outlining.

But in essence, what you have is the laws for covenant morality and non-conformity to pagan practice. That's chapters 18 through 20. That's going to be the focus of our study. Chapter 18, laws restricting sexual relationships.

Chapter 19, laws promoting practical holiness before God and man. And chapter 20, laws requiring capital punishment. That's what we'll be focusing upon. And then from there, you have laws for priestly sacrifice and so on and so forth, appointed feasts and things like that.

But we'll be looking especially at chapters 18 through 20. Now, before we go back and let's turn to Leviticus 1 .1, but before we go there, let me just mention something in passing. Especially as we deal with Leviticus chapter 18, I need to let you know beforehand 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 Bible, hopefully you have already explained to them that the Bible is an incredibly practical book.

The authors of the 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 are the words of God and we're seeking to honor God, than the way that sadly normally happens.

And that is, in most churches, these texts are sort of just left off to the side and you're 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 PhD up front who knows how to selectively cite these texts and absolutely embarrass someone right out of their mind and hence bring much more weight to bear against someone and you end up with people losing their faith while they're at college and university.

It's happened over and over again. You would think we would have figured it out by now that it would 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 over the dinner table but I will just let you know that that is the case.

The Divine Name, Divine Revelation, and the Authority of Leviticus

Now, I want to look, first Leviticus 1 .1, then we're going to jump 17 chapters. How's that? But I think I've laid a reason for this. Now, in the Hebrew text, Leviticus is not called Leviticus. It's Yikra.

Yikra means called out. And you see Leviticus 1 .1 says, Then Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting say. And the very first word is Yikra, to call out. 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. I hate to inform you that when it comes to even that which calls itself Christianity, if you believe that what is narrated here is in fact divine revelation that Yahweh called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.

Notice, from the tent of meeting. From the very place where God was meeting with His people. The very focus of so much of what we see once the wilderness wanderings start taking place and everything after Exodus, etc. etc.

And eventually being transferred into the temple in Jerusalem. If you believe that God actually spoke these words, you are in a small minority. The vast majority of Old Testament scholarship in our day does not believe for a moment that there was ever...

Well, first of all, I would say the majority would not even believe that there was a historical Moses. Moses might have been a bunch of different people put together in the tribal memory of the Jews or something like that.

A composite guy or something like that. Or if there was someone even like this, we don't know much about him. All the stories about him are meant to create the priesthood structure and the authority structure in Israel, etc. etc. etc. etc.

That's going to be if you go to almost any secular university. And sadly anymore 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, will at least allow for, you know, we want to have as many paying students as possible. So, you know, we need to let those neo-fundamentalists in. So, you know, we won't laugh too loudly at the people who think there really was a Moses and things like that.

But, you know, we sort of treat them as they'll get it 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. That's just the way that it is. We are putting ourselves in the minorities. Why do I say that to you? 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, 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?

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. 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 view.

And it's not because, it is not because of the overwhelming weight of the arguments. I assure you. It almost, well, it does make me laugh when I talk to my liberal friends. Absolutely true, folks. When you go, when you're a conservative, and you go to a conservative school, 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. That's just the way it is.

I mean, some of you have seen some of my debates. Most of the liberals I debate, they didn't even Google my name before doing the debate. They have no idea what I've written about anything of the subject.

You know why? Because they don't care. They don't think 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 in its argumentation and no one's ever responded to it.

This stuff has been responded to. Liberalism has been responded to forever. They just don't know it. And it's just they quote themselves and themselves and themselves. It just creates this huge mass of self-citation.

And it looks like, wow, everybody believes that. And if I want to be, if I want to get a teaching position, I better go that direction. If I want to be cool, I better go that direction. I would suggest to you that none of the New Testament writers could have even begun to conceive of the mindset that is part and parcel of most of modern Christian scholarship today.

Could not have even begun to conceive it. And it's not because they were stupid. It's because they knew what Jesus taught concerning the nature of the Scriptures. And it's what they believed concerning the nature of the Scriptures.

And they wouldn't have even hesitated to say, well, of course, Yahweh spoke to Moses from the tent of meeting. And, of course, He called to Him. And, of course, these are His words and His revelation.

This represents His very being and His holiness and His righteousness. Never even given a second thought. Only today, when there is an assumption of naturalism, assumption of materialism, does that become an issue.

But it will end up determining how we interpret much of what comes after this. If you reject this and say, well, what you really have here is a bunch of cobbled together stuff that represents all sorts of different movements badly put together sometime maybe after the time of David, maybe even during the exile.

And finally coming together only at the time of Nehemiah. And 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?

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, 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 that God has spoken, He has revealed Himself, and certainly Jesus believed enough to go to a cross, then you can't adopt that perspective. You have to instead look at what the Scriptures truly have to say.

So, I just want you to know, ahead of time, that as we look at these texts, if you wander off to the local Christian bookstore, or these days, just click over to Amazon or Logos or wherever it is you end up 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. If you believe in divine revelation, it's going to lead you to a different place. Turn with me then to Leviticus chapter 18.

Leviticus chapter 18. Let's read just the first few verses together. We'll only get a start this morning and then continue this evening. Once again, for those of you visiting, those who haven't been here, especially in my study here, I think it is important to once again emphasize the personal nature of God's revelation.

Therefore, when I read verse 1, I will say then, Yahweh spoke to Moses. Now, please be aware, if you go down to the local Jewish bookstore, don't use that term with the folks at the local Jewish bookstore.

They are not going to be happy with you. They don't believe in utilizing the divine name. But that's a Jewish tradition. It clearly was not the tradition of Jesus and the disciples. It was not the tradition at the time of the writing of the New Testament.

When we use the term Lord, it is so generic that especially when we are trying to contrast the true covenant God of Israel against the false gods of the peoples around Israel, it helps to allow the text to speak for itself.

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, I am sure. Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, I am Yahweh your God.

You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you live, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You are to perform my judgments and my statutes to live in accord with them.

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. I am Yahweh. Now then, notice something.