Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 6, 2022 | Leviticus - Clean and Unclean

Transcript

March 6, 2022 | Leviticus - Clean and Unclean · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we hit a milestone.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're halfway through our Leviticus series.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not halfway through the book, okay?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Halfway through our Leviticus series, though.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the other milestone that we've hit is we are exiting the uh our topics about sacrifices, okay?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about them for the last three weeks the burn offering, the grain offering, and the purification offering.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's two that we missed, um, and I'll kind of give a quick little overview of that for a second because I don't want you to think that they're not important.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that they hew kind of close to conclusions that we've made already, and so there's uh there's not much new ground for us to cover there.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is something called a peace offering.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: A peace offering was another kind of voluntary offering, like the burnt in the grain, that was done in reflection of all the things that God had done, and namely, now that you've walked through this pathway that He has provided to sort of this relationship, you now have peace with God.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in reflection of that, you would give an offering similar to the ones that we've looked at before, different though.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a big old potluck, and everybody gets to eat the food.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like this awesome fellowship where the sacrifice that you gave in peace to God was celebrated with everyone else.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: The second sacrifice is uh the last one, and it's called a guilt offering.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a guilt offering was pretty close to a purification offering, if you remember that from last week.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But in this case, if you had done something wrong against someone else, and there was a possibility that you could sort of rectify the situation financially, then you would give an offering to the Lord in addition to a 20% sort of reparation to the person.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the sacrifices.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And as we exit the sacrifices, I think it's really important, especially as we get into our topic for this morning, that we keep in mind that every single thing that we have talked about so far, God has been communicating these eternal truths to his people through these sacrifices.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not arbitrary.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a distinction that is made for one that God is just doing because he felt like it, even though he would have the right to do that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But every single part of it has been, you know, pushing us forward to Jesus or some component of God's eternal character.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So as we exit uh chapters one through seven here, which were the various sacrifices, uh, one through five was God telling the Israelites, and six and seven were uh was a message to the priests on how to do the sacrifices.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then we get into chapters eight through ten, which is uh basically God ordaining the priests, Aaron and his sons, for these ministries.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you remember, Leviticus is taking place in the desert, right?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Exodus, they've been, they've come out of Egypt.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at the base of Mount Sinai, God is giving them instructions for all the things we read about in Exodus, but also the law.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It happens at the base of the mountain, too.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so as they're sort of getting their society up and running, they're figuring out what life looks like, that is God sort of setting aside this group of individuals who are going to be priests, intermediaries between God and man.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's what happens here in chapters 8 through 10.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We are jumping into chapter 11, and 11 through 15 gets into a new area that we're generally calling the clean and unclean rules.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you have been with us at all through any of the Levitical series, you know that's some language that we've been using.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now we're getting into the part of the book where God is explaining to his people what makes them clean and unclean.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting about chapters 11 through 15 is they are book-ended by these two really interesting statements.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: In Leviticus chapter 10, verse 10, um, God is speaking to Aaron and says, You must distinguish between the holy and the common and the clean and the unclean, and teach the Israelites all the statutes that the Lord has given to them through Moses.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might recall this slide from our very first week in Leviticus.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally okay if you don't, but I did use it then because this is the uh the command that God gives to Aaron right after his sons, Nadab and Abihu, are killed for offering an unauthorized fire before the Lord.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so hopefully that idea of the severity of their sin is uh we understand that better now in a greater context.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, Aaron is given this command that the Lord is going to give these sort of instructions through Moses, but it's Aaron's job to teach the Israelites all the statutes that the Lord has given.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord distinguishes it into these categories.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that there is something that is holy and then common, and then within the common category is clean and unclean.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's three categories: holy, clean, and unclean.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And these things apply to almost everything.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: It can be people, it can be animals, as we'll see in a second, it could be um houses, it could be different sort of, you know, ready objects that they have around their house.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: This extends throughout the entire culture.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we see this that Aaron is now being instructed after the death of his sons for doing something inappropriate, that it's his job.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody, Aaron, who has struggled in the past to distinguish between the clean and unclean, that he is now going to teach the people.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so the next chapter is the one that we're going to be in for a little bit today, chapter 11.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of chapter 11 comes one more slide that we talked about in the very first week that sort of reveals God's motivation, the why behind this clean and unclean distinction that he's giving.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says, For I am the Lord your God, so you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Man, if there was a theme for this book, that would be it.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you must be holy because I am holy.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: God is holy, we are not.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to have a relationship with us, but because of our sin and his holiness, we are separated.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so the book of Leviticus is him giving a pathway to his people so that they can be reunited and have that relationship with him.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this was his sort of twofold justification.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, I'm God and I'm God, and so when I'm God, I sort of get to make these claims.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine in and of itself.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's able to do that.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's the creator of all things.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: He gets to call the shots, and so just because he is the Lord our God, we are to be holy because he's holy.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then because we're humans and we're fickle and we need more motivation than that, um, he reminds them of all the ways that he has provided for them.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Namely, for everyone who would be listening, that they had been freed from slavery, and because of that, they were to be holy because he is holy.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the this is the end of the chapter that we're looking at today.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so you might be wondering, if you don't have your Bibles, what are the things that God starts off with, being clean and unclean?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is something that would affect every Israelite daily, multiple times, and that is food.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, tell the Israelites, you may eat all these kinds of land animals.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: You may eat any animal with divided hooves, and that choose the cud.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on in verse 8, it says, Do not eat any of their meat or touch their carcasses, they are unclean for you.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you read chapter 11, you'll recognize that there's a decent amount of repetition.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to sort of follow this framework that was laid out in Genesis of this idea of land and sea and air, right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then it keeps going.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that there's a lot of repetition about these sort of words.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why is because this, well, the entire book of Leviticus, but especially this part, was supposed to be memorized.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so if something is repeated more often, it kind of breaks it down into these sections, and it would be easier for the people to keep in their hearts and their minds, as they daily are having to make distinctions about what they can and cannot eat.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a couple things I want to point out here that are really interesting to me.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that the Lord is speaking to both Moses and Aaron.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: That typically doesn't happen.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Normally he is speaking to Moses, and Aaron is sort of the one that's carrying it out.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But remember in Leviticus 10, it's Aaron's job to teach the people.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we're getting into a section here where everybody in the camp, the entire camp, needs to have this knowledge ingrained so that they are able themselves to be clean and ultimately to enter God's holy place.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first one is that it's communicated to both Moses and Aaron.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: The next is that in this chapter, devoted to all the things they cannot eat, I think it's wonderful that God is starting out with freedom.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: You may eat all these kinds of land animals.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: You may eat all of them in this situation for the land with divided hooves and that choose the cut.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: God is saying you can eat all of these animals.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's sort of this narrow band, though, that you're not allowed to touch.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this attitude that we can get within ourselves where we're like, come on, God, seriously, why what's with the what's with the division here?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't I eat all the animals?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us think back to Genesis and God in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, hey, you can eat literally everything here, except for this one tree.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we go back and we're like, are you serious, God?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, come on, what a what God is this buzzkill who doesn't want us to have a good time and is limiting us from what we should be able to have.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in reality, God's command begins with freedom, saying, you can have all of this.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a section that you have to stay away from.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have freedom, but there are rules.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds very familiar to us and our understanding of Christ.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with this here, we see that their food began the same way.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That they can eat all these kinds of land animals.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then, like I said, there's a specific instruction that they are given that they are then to apply everywhere, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: That these animals that they can eat on land, and there are other instructions for the things in the ocean and water, and there are things in air and other biomes, I don't know what to say.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they are following these very simple rules that God is setting forth, right?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: This simple thing that is to be applied across the entire spectrum.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, verse 8 do not eat any of their meat or touch their carcasses, they are unclean for you.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first hint that we have that there's something deeper happening here than just what food was good and not good to eat, that there's something uh trending deeper than just the kind of animal, that even once that animal died, it was, they needed to stay away from it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: The uncleanliness, if you will, extended beyond the life of the animal.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so even when that animal was gone and dead, the Israelites were supposed to keep in their mind that they were to stay away from it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: This law affected every part of their life.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go on beyond chapter 11, into other chapters on clean and unclean things, it gets into things like the health code.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So between food and health, God is affecting every single part of the Israelites' life.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's so amazing about this, too, is that if we thought the sacrifices were frequent, wait until every meal that you eat.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: There was not a single part of their life that was not touched by God's commands.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they were being reminded of his eternal truths.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, God, though, wants the Israelites to be able to understand these things, make sure that they're clear on what was allowed.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, well, for instance, you've got camels and hares and these things called hyraxes or rock badgers.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: They they uh chew the cud, but they don't have split hooves, and so you can't have them.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be thinking, well, who would want to eat a hyrax?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're evil little things, okay?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're little monsters.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so these are the things God says, you know, it fit one rule, but it didn't fit the other, and so it's out of bounds.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: The other one that is given there at the beginning of Leviticus 11 is pigs.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: That pigs, they have split hooves, but they do not chew their cud, which is right where they are sort of bringing back up what they have eaten and getting it again, tasting it again.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're moving on.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um these animals could not be eaten because they did not fit the criterion.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are two really big questions that come up when we are looking at clean and unclean animals.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going through Leviticus 11, you're probably asking, what is all this about?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the point?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this new?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is God just sitting them at the base of the mountain and saying, okay, uh, just off the top of my head, there are going to be all these animals that you can't eat, that you might want to eat, and um, there's no reason behind it, and also um that um I've just decided it's going to happen now.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it seems to sort of come out of nowhere.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've been getting chapters on clean and unclean, and then here comes in the middle of the book of Leviticus, God explaining it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it comes from a lot earlier in the Bible.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 7, verses 1 through 2, we've got Noah putting animals on the ark.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to Noah, Enter the Ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are to take with you seven pairs, a male and its female, of all the clean animals, and two of the animals that are not clean, a male and its female.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, I don't know about you, but in I feel like my remembrance of the ark is that there's two by two going all the way up the plank into, you know, the ship.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, that even back then in Genesis, God was distinguishing between the clean and unclean.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, really, what's happening in Leviticus is not that this is some new command, but God is bringing and reintroducing something that had been lost and was now that the Israelites were his people, saved, and were going to uh going to the promised land, they were to bring back all of these ideas from the beginning and reintroduce them.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we might say, why um seven instead of two?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because the clean animals were the ones that Noah and his family would be eating once the ark landed.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so seven gets you a lot further than two if you're trying to recreate that population.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: But these things came from the beginning, and so this is not some new idea that God had, but rather it is one of his eternal truths.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other question, and the one that's much more um probably at the forefront of our minds, is yeah, but what's the point, though?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't want to eat a camel, but why couldn't they eat a camel?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's been debated quite a bit, to be honest with you.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so a hundred Bible uh scholars were surveyed, top four answers are on the board, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there are a couple different ways that people have tried to explain clean and unclean animals in a way that makes sense.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: The first is one we've already kind of discussed, which is that maybe God was just making some sort of arbitrary distinction.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like he just can't sat down one day and said, you know what, today is the day where they cannot eat pigs.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the problem with this view is that it typically comes about when the author has failed to figure out another view, and so they've landed on this conclusion that, well, God was doing it for this some of must have been some reason, and the reasoning they would give is that, well, he was teaching them to follow the law, and he was teaching them to, you know, listen to his commands, and that they were still, you know, um being trained in discipline in this way.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that as we've looked through the rest of the book of Leviticus, especially all the things that we've talked about, everything that we've looked at so far has had some kind of deeper meaning to it.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: There has not been one thing that we've looked at where we're like, you know, God just was having a day.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every single part of the sacrifices and all the laws and stuff was pointing towards this future or God's eternal character and truth.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would probably reject this idea that the law was just arbitrary.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is that it had a hygienic purpose behind it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, as over the last a hundred years, this has grown a lot in popularity because we've learned a lot more about hygiene.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we look back on what God was telling his people to do and say, well, actually, he was protecting them.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was just taking care of them.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't know it at the time, but a lot of the animals that they weren't allowed to eat carry foodborne illnesses, and if you extend this into the rest of the law and things about skin diseases and bathing and such, well, he was just taking care of them in a time when not a lot of people were taking baths.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the problem with this is that A, we've just cared about it a lot more as we've learned more about hygiene, but B, and more importantly, later on in the Bible, uh, Jesus says that all food is clean to eat.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so if God was really trying to protect his people from bad food and then says they can eat all the food, that doesn't really follow as much.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem very consistent between the two.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: At best, it was a lovely byproduct of the law.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: The third reason, and we're getting a little bit warmer here, is that the point behind it was cultic, meaning that the Israelites were being protected from the pagan nations around them, and that a lot of the animals that were unclean were ones that other nations were using to sacrifice to their idols, and that they had no problem eating.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the prophet Isaiah talks about how the pagans were eating pig flesh.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so, by prohibiting the Israelites from eating pigs, well then they couldn't really participate in those sorts of things.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, as they're heading into the promised land, and even the nations around them in the desert, they, like I said, have no problem eating a lot of these animals.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, if they can't be near the animals, can't touch the animals, can't touch the dead bodies of the animals, it's gonna make a neighborhood potluck really difficult to hold if you're trying to connect with your neighbors to the north or wherever.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps God was protecting them.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that could be the case once more, and I think that there's a component of that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the difficulty here is that once more you can apply it across the board.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, one of the animals that the basically the best animal that was to pre be presented for a sacrifice, the bull, is one that basically every nation used to sacrifice.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're trying to cut the law and say, well, it was to protect them from the people around them, once more you would just say, maybe that was a secondary benefit of it.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's really only one answer that from beginning to end seems to communicate the truth that God was trying to give the Israelites through this, and it's that it's symbolic of themselves.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And before we dismiss it, because you're like, oh, come on, symbolism isn't.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that's kind of the point.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everything up to this point has had a symbolic meaning.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: God was not speaking in arbitrary terms.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, even when we've looked at the sacrifices and we've seen, you know, the whole method that goes into it, later on when we go to the New Testament, we're like, man, that was talking about Jesus.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's symbolism in everything that God is doing.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But how?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: What was it teaching them about themselves?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, remember for a moment that there's three distinctions to be made: holy, clean, and unclean.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: That which is holy can enter into God's presence.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: In this context, it's the tabernacle, later on the temple, way on later in heaven.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, generally speaking, most people are clean, most things are clean.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is sort of the the natural state.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It does not mean it is holy, but something is clean.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: But frequently there were laws that meant that the clean would become unclean.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked about that to an extent.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was like the purification offering and other things.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the Israelites had to be aware of this because remember, this distinction flowed not only within themselves to every Israelite, but to all objects and animals and other things.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a language that they were using to describe everything that was in the world.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so through this, there's a vertical movement where things that are some things that are unclean can be made clean, and those things which are clean can go through a ritual to become holy and fit to enter into the presence of God.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is the framework that every Israelite would understand that they fell into, and also that their food fell into.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what I mean.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, eyes on me.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can do this, okay?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Every section here is copied, whether you're an Israelite or you're looking at the food system.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: There were an there were um animals that they could not eat because they were unclean.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were outside the meal, and there were Israelites who did things that, um, whether by sinning or by interacting with basically the fallen world and things that were reminding of the fallen world, like um uh death and disease, they had to go outside the camp.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then you've got the the normative function here, which is that a lot of Israelites maintained their clean status.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was sort of their their place that they were resting in.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um they needed to be clean.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that fit a lot of the animals, too, that God had ordained for them.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You have so much freedom, but there's this small area here of things that are unclean.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so the ordinary Israelite would see in the animals, in the structure here themselves, that they were okay and they were fine, they were how they should be.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's a third tier, that there were individuals, the priests in the community.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember last week we talked about how the hierarchy of sin and the priests, the sin of the priests was more grave than the sin of a regular Israelite because of what they represented.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were holy.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: They were not just clean, but able to minister in God's presence.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then there were some animals, not all animals that were clean, but some clean animals, the ones that are in the sacrifices, bulls, goats, sheep, and so forth, that were able to be elevated to this holy status.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, through this context, daily, multiple times per day, rather, the Israelites were reminded of their own status before God as they were considering what they could eat.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a quick example here.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so for instance, one of the rules against the Israelites that they would have been reminded of is that they are not allowed to eat any blood or touch anything that is dead.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the rules that extended for their entire community.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can't eat blood, can't touch anything that's dead.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as you go in chapter 11 and look at the animals that are prohibited, and you get to the section on birds or things in the air, um, your translations are going to be a little bit different because we're not entirely sure what every animal was that was listed.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But all the ones that we are sure of were either carnivorous birds, birds of prey, or they were scavengers.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so the birds that they could not eat were birds that ate blood or birds that touched dead things.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so as they're looking out and they're making these decisions, they are reminded of God's plan for their lives as they are living out his commands in the world around them.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty amazing thing.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are other distinctions that we can make that we'll get into in other weeks, but as we look down the list, and as you read Leviticus 11, you can see that God's plan for his people was being carried out even in the food that they were supposed to be eating.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty amazing.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as that extended throughout time for well over the next thousand years, it was obviously ingrained in the culture of the Israelites.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was part of who they were.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, once more, I mean, what is not affected by the food that we're eating?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if all the foods that you ate were sort of curtailed into this list that was clean and unclean, how that might affect your daily life.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we get to the New Testament, we see that there's some friction because Jesus does not seem to be as concerned about these distinctions as his disciples are.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in that friction, a greater teaching is revealed, this eternal truth that God is trying to communicate.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not always about the food, but about what the food was representing.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: The first time it's brought up is in Mark chapter 7, verses 18 through 23.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Don't you realize that nothing going into a person from the outside can defile him?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: For it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach, into the stomach, and is eliminated.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Mark, later writing, after the revelation of Christ and his ascension, and going through his gospel, would add this postscript.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they didn't understand it at the time.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't make this statement, but Mark is clarifying what Jesus was teaching.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thus he declared all foods clean, something they didn't know later on until the book of Acts.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is going on.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is angry.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: The context here, Jesus is angry at the Pharisees because they're imposing these unbelievably heavy rules upon the people.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the code in Leviticus, you think that's complicated?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: It got added to over time.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: So much so that every single, if you know, it wasn't just about like the herbs that could be eaten, but they had to tithe a portion of the herbs in their herb garden.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are a whole lot of examples, and Jesus was angry at them.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You've placed a yoke upon the people that is burdensome and heavy, and you have made it so hard for them to know about God.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've gotten off the focus, which was never really about the law itself, but what the law represented.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: As he keeps going here, he said, What comes out of a person is what defiles him.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: For from within, out of people's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, self-indulgence, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: All these evil things come from within and defile a person.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus' focus is, it's not that he is abolishing the idea of being clean and unclean.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, he is saying how you become unclean has to do with the condition of your heart.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to do with the food that you're eating.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can still become unclean because you do these things and you walk away from God.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: The effect is the same.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're still distancing yourself from his presence, and there still is a pathway that he has provided back to him.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: But God is saying that now it is not about the food.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, it really wasn't about the food even back in Leviticus.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it was training the Israelites to have a heart for God and His commands.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing is here.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: The same principle is applied.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: God says, you have so much freedom.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have freedom in Christ, you have freedom in what you're able to do.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can eat whatever you want now, but there's a narrow band here of things that you must stay away from.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the simple command, like don't eat the animals that chew the cud, is what comes out of a person is what defiles them.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you're worried about becoming defiled and transgressing the king of the universe, look within and see what is coming out.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus' command here.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is not clean foods anymore, but it's clean hearts.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a transition that is made.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And once more, Jesus fulfilled the law.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: He is not saying that it was wrong, but rather he says this is what we were heading towards all the whole time.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That we are considering clean hearts.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Which of those areas that Jesus mentioned is an area where you need to look at your own heart.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was everything from murder to pride, foolishness, and evil thoughts.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was considering everything, all every single part of our lives.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that the new law of grace and the gospel of Christ does not touch, just as there is nothing that the law of Leviticus and the law of Moses did not touch as well in their daily lives.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are still supposed to be a community that revolves around the teachings of God.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But now Jesus has provided clarity that what they was going after all along was clean hearts.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: A last point to this is that even in the Old Testament, when David sinned against God by his adultery with Bathsheba and killing her husband, even David says back then, far before Jesus came, he says, God, what you desire is not a sacrifice, but it's a heart that is turned towards you.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're going towards.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: The second example is one that is probably a lot more familiar to us, and it's the greatest conflict in the New Testament regarding food.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's Peter in Acts 11, verses 4 through 8.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter's talking to a group.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Peter began to explain to them step by step.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the town of Joppa praying, and I saw in a trance, he's on a rooftop, I saw in a trance an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it came to me.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I looked closely and considered it, I saw the four-footed animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I also heard a voice telling me, Get up, Peter, kill and eat.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, Lord, I said, for nothing impure or ritually unclean has ever entered my mouth.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: But a voice answered from heaven a second time, What God has made clean, you must not call impure.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Put yourself in the shoes of Peter.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your entire life you have been taught to eat only certain things.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And now God Himself is lowering down this sheet, which appeared.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what all these animals were, but at like certainly the reptiles, every single one of those was considered unclean to eat.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so whether this was a mixture or whether it was all unclean animals, it's going before Peter, and he is being told that he can eat all of it.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine the like cognitive dissonance there.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've always been told this, and now I'm being told the opposite.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an amazing thing.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: But as we keep going, though, what it meant to Peter was that the gospel was not supposed to be just given to the Jews, right?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because up to this point in time, most of the believers in Christ were people within the Jewish community.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter was being told, no, Peter, this is not just for your people.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is for all people.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is for the Gentiles, the ones who eat the weird stuff that you don't like it when they eat.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, But did you know about this thing called ribs?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're able to go and have these meals with them that they weren't able to have beforehand.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, this gospel is extending into the entire world.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: What I have made clean, you must not call impure.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: God says, unclean people are becoming clean people.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the movement that we see, the lesson, the eternal truth that is being transmitted from Leviticus into our day and age now is that even today, people who are unclean, people who have vile things coming out of their hearts and minds, are people who can be made clean by the blood of Christ.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that which has been made clean cannot be called unclean.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: We should have the same sort of shock and awe about this as Peter did to the animals on the sheet.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: This idea that God has come in, has entered into our story and said, you know what, while you were still enemies, Christ died for you.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even though you've fallen short in every single way imaginable, I have come so that you may have life and have life to the fullest.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what God has made clean, which should be unclean, we cannot go back on.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: What does that say about the blood of Christ that now, as it covers those who have trusted in God, we know that there's nothing that we can do to be made unclean once more.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's an eternal state that we have been given with Christ.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's something that we should carry with us for those who have trusted in Jesus until we're with Him in heaven.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: For those who haven't trusted in Christ, they are still considered unclean.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not because of food that they have eaten or any of the other laws in Leviticus, but because they've rebelled against God.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: What was coming out of their heart, just like all of us, wasn't good.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the difference is that they did not trust in Jesus, the one who is prefigured in all of Leviticus, as the one who would save them and make them clean once more.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: As we reflect on this, we're going to transition into a time of communion.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to pray for us, and then there'll be a moment that we'll have where we can sort of think back on these things.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: What it means to be clean, even though we deserve to be unclean.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: What it means to make our hearts clean instead of our food.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: That God has given us so much freedom, but at the same time has called us to live this holy life.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you for camels and rock badgers that remind us of your eternal truths in Christ.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God, how you use that system to tell your people about hope and about a future and how they could have a right relationship with you.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you that today as we look back on Leviticus, we can think the same things.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Only now through Christ, Lord, we have a hope and a future through Him.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God, I finally I pray that by the power of your Spirit, if there are any of us who are struggling, who have trusted in Christ to feel clean, that we would remember what you said to Peter, or that what you have made clean, we cannot make unclean.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, I'll give you a few moments and then I'll come back and lead us through communion together.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we proclaim the Son's death until he comes, until you send him.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we reflect on the body and the blood of our Savior, we are reminded that we are clean, even though we sometimes don't feel that way.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: And God, that you have saved us from all of our sins and the vile things in our hearts.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: God, I ask by the power of your spirit that you would help us to examine those things, to still be people who strive to be holy because you are holy.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And God, even though we have freedom from the law in many respects, God, we're thankful that you have given it to our ancestors so that we might understand your eternal truths.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, most of all, I'm thankful that as we look to the future, God, we are anticipating a time when we will all be together.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, there will be no more things that draw us into uncleanliness, no more things that draw us into sin, no more pain and no more suffering.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: But we look forward to that time, and until then, we proclaim you.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week, everyone.