Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 27, 2022 | Leviticus - Law and Order

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March 27, 2022 | Leviticus - Law and Order · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to see everyone.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we're going through the book of Leviticus right now, if you didn't know.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually in week eight out of ten.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to tell you, this week, it's gonna be a little hard.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, next two weeks can be a lot of fun.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, you know, uh, you should look forward to that.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: But as we are talking about Leviticus, uh, we've tackled some difficult subjects together.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we've tackled um things about sacrifice, about clean and unclean.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even last week we talked a whole lot about blood.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you remember the first week that we talked about Leviticus, there were a couple themes that we brought up and said were really important for the entire series.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of those themes was the idea of God's holiness, the fact that he is different, he is set apart.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a decision God makes to be holy, but rather it's part of his nature, and from that holiness uh sort of follows all of the goodness that flows from God.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: That part of God's nature means that he cannot be around sin, which is why we need Jesus.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one of the themes.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Another one is we said that there was a lot of need in our society today for being biblically literate, that when we go through the book of Leviticus, that we can connect it to all these other different points of the Bible, which hopefully you've been able to see, and we'll continue to do that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the third one is one that is really going to be important for us this morning, which is this idea of developing a biblical worldview, meaning that as we learn more about the Bible and understand God's word, that it changes the way that we view the world around us and how we react to the world around us.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: See, as we go to the Old Testament, there's something that happens there that people tend to dislike, which is the way that God judges sin.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was actually an early church heresy called Marcionism, where people said there were two different gods, the God of the New Testament, which was nice and loving, and the God of the Old Testament, which was hard and cruel.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that really the truth?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there something deeper to it?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as we look between the two testaments and as we look back into the Old Testament, we see that God was doing something with his people that helps us to understand our relationship with Christ now.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it involves a whole lot of difficult conversations.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're gonna be doing this morning.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to better understand Leviticus 18, we actually need to go back even further in the Bible to uh Genesis 9.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you guys want to turn to Genesis 9, that's where we'll start our morning.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of goes without saying, but as you go deeper into the beginning parts of the Bible, the more that uh we're able to see these themes develop.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: That there are components of Genesis, events and people that end up playing a huge role in the rest of our understanding of the Bible.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening in Genesis 9.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: As you turn there, it is going the account that we're gonna look at happens immediately after the flood, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so God has sent judgment into the whole world for its depravity, and we've got Noah and his family that are left to sort of repopulate the earth and carry on the uh the duty of Adam and Eve.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were reading it, you would be expecting, the expectation would be that things are gonna be a lot better, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The basically we press the reset button, and so Noah and his family are going to be doing all the right things.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: We get to Genesis 9, verses 18 through 25.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Noah's sons who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ham was the father of Canaan.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Noah, as a man of the soil, began by planting a vineyard.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then Shem and Japheth took a cloak and placed it over both their shoulders, and, walking backward, they covered their father's nakedness.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father naked.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Canaan is cursed.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: He will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we look at this situation, here's already an example, just nine chapters into the first book of the Bible, where understanding our Bible is important.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because what's happening here is almost like a repeat of what happened in the Garden of Eden.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember, the first way that we see in the Bible that Adam and Eve understood the shame of their sin is that they realized that they were naked and wanted to be covered.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see in Noah's sin here, him becoming drunk and uncovering himself and basically being foolish, he becomes naked as well.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so already this theme is sort of developing, and we have to look at this account much more deeply than just sort of the surface level that he was naked.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here is a whole lot of cultural identity with morality and shame and uh being able to be righteous.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was going on was that Ham did not respect Noah, and furthermore, he did not respect or understand or care for the sin that Noah had shown.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so two different types of people are being highlighted here through the brothers in Genesis 9.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Shem and you've got Japheth, who care about their father's dignity, who care about the fact that he has revealed himself, who understand the shame associated with this and want to protect their father, much like the way that God clothes Adam and Eve.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then you've got Ham, the other brother, who does not care for their father's dignity, who does not care for his shame, and ends up showing a carelessness anyway for the sin that was displayed.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so these two are contrasting each other.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now when Noah wakes up and he uh he awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Canaan is cursed, he will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, Canaan isn't even a part of the story.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we see that Ham was the father of Canaan, Ham the father of Canaan.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here is not Noah's opinion as he sort of wakes up from his stupor.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: What happens here is something that we see elsewhere in Genesis, where the patriarchs of the family are basically giving prophetic announcements about what their descendants will be like.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Noah is not pronouncing against Canaan specifically because of what Ham did, but rather this sort of corporate identity will extend throughout Ham's descendants.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so God, in his, if you will, his all-knowing, his omniscience, knows that the Canaanite people, hundreds of years in the future, are going to rebel against God.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't going to show respect for him, they aren't going to care for his sin, the sin that their community is showing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see these lineages just developing.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Noah is doing is not saying, hey, Canaan, my grandson, you are cursed because of my son Ham.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, what Noah is doing is with the wisdom that God gives him, prophetically announcing, or basically an oracle, that what is coming in the future is that Canaan will rebel against God.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we see these things, you can think of them in a certain way.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Gloucester cheese rolling competition.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Near Gloucester, England, they're on top of a 200-yard-long hill, very steep, and they roll some cheese down the hill, and you run after the cheese and you try and catch it, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: As you go, and I very much encourage you to look this up on YouTube.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You will not be disappointed.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: As you, as almost immediately as you start the race, you begin falling and slipping and tumbling and going in even crazier fashion down the rest of the hill.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is humanity, okay?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ham is up here, and we see Ham's sin and we say, maybe I don't really understand the significance of that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the point here beyond the sin of Ham is that his descendants are going to follow in his footsteps.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: They are going to have a lack of care for God and his word, and moreover, to the story, they are not going to have any shame about their sin.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is also a microcosm of just the world that we live in today and how you and I are affected by sin.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: You might say, well, how is it fair that a curse is pronounced upon Canaan, even though he didn't do anything in the story?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the same way that you and I are affected by the sin of Adam, how we have a sin nature that makes us want to rebel against God and make us want to reject him as the king of the universe and gives us a greater proclivity to sin, it's the same sort of thing.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: We have been cursed ultimately to death because of our sin, and that is something that was done because of an ancestor.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now take all of these things together.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Take all of Genesis 9, take Ham and his descendants, and oh, yeah, the last part there, that he will be a slave to his brothers.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Shem's descendants are the Israelites.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Israelites and the Canaanites are sort of pitted against each other, even in the beginning of Genesis.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go to Leviticus 18, that is going to be very important.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 18, verses 1 through 5.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses, speak to the Israelites and tell them, I am the Lord your God.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do not follow the practices of the land of Egypt, where you used to live, or follow the practices of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: You must not follow their customs.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: You are to practice my ordinances, and you are to keep my statutes by following them.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Keep my statutes and ordinances.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: A person will live if he does them.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've highlighted here this section that helps us to see once more in Leviticus 18 this contrast that is being shown between the two.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: That the Israelites are sort of like out of the frying pan and into the fire, that they have come from the land of the Egyptians, also a descendant of Ham.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: They have come from the land of the Egyptians who do not did not care for God, did not have shame about their sin, did not feel guilt for it.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: They have come into this land where they are in a desert and they are wandering.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: They have sort of been identified as God's people.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's given them the law.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they're supposed to follow.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they're heading into a place filled with Canaanites, filled with people who have no regard for God, have no shame for their sin.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is the situation that's going on.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And God is letting them know that they are not to follow the practices of these lands where he's bringing them.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And see, that's the other point that is brought up here is God is contrasting himself, sort of juxtaposing his identity with that of these pagan nations.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I am the Lord your God.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that I am bringing you to this place.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: You are to practice my ordinances, because I'm the Lord your God.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: We see this if you've been reading the book of Leviticus, you know that it gets brought up over and over and over and over again.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: God is drilling into the Israelites' minds that He is their Lord.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: He is the one they're supposed to be following, and that's so important because immediately where they're going to be heading is a place that is going to say that they do not care for God.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they're going to have to make a decision.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Make a decision between God or these idols.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Make a decision between good and evil.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Make a decision between righteousness or sin.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they're heading into.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is preparing them for this journey.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Preparing them by also letting them know what to look out for in the culture that they're about to encounter.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as we read on in Leviticus 18, we see that there are five main things that are listed, in particular, here in this chapter.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Also, as we go on to chapter 19, the list continues, though the ones that are mentioned in chapter 18 are the most severe.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that the somewhat sexual nature of the sins in Genesis 9 has continued through the descendants of Ham into the Canaanites here.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that Israel is going to have to watch out for.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as we go on through this list, accepting child sacrifice, which I'll get to later, as we go on through this list, we see that these things are growing in their distance from God's design for humanity, in particular, something that He made which is good, which is sex.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so the sexual ethic of God is revealed here in many ways by starting out with incest, is something that the Canaanites are practicing.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it does take up the bulk of chapter 18.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, Genesis 9 is connected here as well because the actual language used to describe incest in Leviticus 18 is uncovering the nakedness of your relative.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It might not be translated that way in your Bible because that's sort of a weird way to describe what's happening, but that's the connection that's being made back to Genesis 9.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Canaanites are fulfilling sort of the role that Ham set forth.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what they're doing.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: As we go on, we get even further away from God's sexual ethic, where incest between a man and a woman, and it would be a married relationship, even though that wasn't right, then goes outside of the married relationship.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: One of the Ten Commandments, and also the interesting thing about this, is that it seems, excuse me, it seems that the language that's being used to describe why uh adultery is not good, is that the seed is extended outside of the family line.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew is actually pretty explicit in that regard.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a problem with going outside of the marriage bounds as part of fulfilling God's end to be fruitful and multiply, that it's supposed to happen within marriage.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, we're gonna skip three for just a moment because we'll get to it later.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: But as we continue the sexual ethic, we get to homosexuality.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is something that our culture and a lot of people would say is not actually included in Leviticus 18, that the topic here is not what we would consider homosexuality in a modern sense, but it very much is.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are four different words that are used in Leviticus 18 to describe sex, okay?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is the one we've already talked about with incest, and it's to uncover one's nakedness.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: The other three are euphemisms.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: The same way somebody might say today they slept with someone else.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what is being said in Leviticus 18, just in different manners of speaking.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of them can be translated literally as to lay with them or to sleep with them, to lie down.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the arguments against homosexuality being prohibited in Leviticus 18 is that the phrase that is being said is that if a man is to lie with a man as with a woman, and we're like, well, that's not really what we're talking about.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Except if we use the context of the situation, all of Leviticus 18, except for child sacrifice, which part of the worship here includes cult prostitution and is sort of uh encompassing these items.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: The entire context of Leviticus 18 is about sexual sin.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so it makes sense that that's what we're talking about.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But even more than that, the specific word that's used here in verse 22 is one that's used earlier in Genesis to 100% talk about sex.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're expecting a child to come from the union in Genesis, where the same word happens.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing is that we see the author here, Moses, as he's writing in verse 22, he clarifies the statement by saying, Man lies with a man as with a woman.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's not really a way that you can get out of this being a part of Leviticus 18.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's important that we see that and that it is also moving down sort of this ladder.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But as we get to the last one in bestiality, um, it's a really disturbing concept that was most certainly a part of the Canaanite culture, but also a lot of the Middle Eastern culture.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Hittites, which were another enemy of the Israelites eventually in the Bible, they had a law that said that anybody who had sex with a pig or a dog was to be put to death, but if they had sex with a horse, it was okay.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've got this development here where bestiality is the furthest thing from God's sexual ethic for his people.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that's very dangerous for them to practice because it goes so far against nature.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: The word used in Hebrew is that it confuses what God is doing.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: The prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, who since passed away, said when later in the Bible the Israelites are commanded to kill all of the animals of the Canaanites when they go in and conquer the promised land.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What was the point of that?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that just pouring salt on the wound?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why did they need to kill all of the animals as well as the people in the community?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is why.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because these animals, as we read later in Leviticus 20, anybody who participates in these things was to be put to death, including the animals.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is what the Israelites were doing when they encountered the animals of Canaan.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even beyond that, and I'll quit laboring on this point in a moment, but even the gods that they worshiped, Baal, even if you go beyond the Old Testament into the Greek gods, they practiced this as well.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of these things ended up being a part of their greater worship of a god which we encountered last week named Molech.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Molech in particular was known for child sacrifice.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so Molech was this god we find out later in 1 Corinthians that it was a demon that the Israelites were worshiping, well, that the Canaanites were worshiping later, the Israelites worshiped them.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh part of the worship of this false god was both a sexual uh practice involving cult prostitutes with men and women, but also the sacrifice of children, that the Hebrew is literally that they were passed through the fire.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what Israel's encountering.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is what they're heading into, and God wants them to be aware of it because they're gonna have to make a decision.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have to make a decision about what they want to follow and who they want to worship.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And God is being positioned against this idol, this demon Molech, who is doing all of these different things and leading the people into greater depravity, and God is saying, You must choose.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very serious about this idea, as he says later on in Leviticus 20, because it will lead to consequences.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: You are to keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live will not vomit you out.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: You must not follow the statutes of the nations I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and I abhorred them.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I promised you, you will inherit their land, since I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord your God who set you apart from the peoples.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You are to be holy to me, because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be mine.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: If it was not clear already, the Israelites are supposed to have an identity that is tied directly to God's holiness.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So a holy God with a holy people, now about to live in a holy land.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about how the area within the tabernacle, and later the temple, that it was holy ground, that the tabernacle itself had to be cleansed of the sin that the Israelites were committing in the camp.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: The tabernacle itself had to be sprinkled with blood because it was a holy place where God's presence dwelled.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now extend that to 56,000 square miles.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: The holy land was about to be inhabited by the Israelites, but it had been inhabited by the Canaanites up to this point.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And just as the tabernacle, being a holy place, could not withstand sin, so too does that extend to the holy land.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is saying it will vomit out the Canaanites because of their sin, and Israel as you're heading in, I don't want that to be your future.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be able to celebrate the promise that I have given you, that you will go into this land filled with milk and honey, you will inherit their land that is already planted, all these wonderful things will happen to you because you're my people.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: But know that if you choose to rebel against me and you follow the ways of their God, that the land will vomit you out as well.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: God cares about this idea so much.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: He cares about protecting the identity of his people, he cares about their um their success, he cares about their ability to follow him, to not lose the promises that he has given them.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he ultimately says this in Leviticus 18 Any person who does any of these detestable practices is to be cut off from his people.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is the hard part.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Being cut off is not being kicked out of the camp.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Being cut off is not saying that you are being removed from sort of some kind of ability to thrive.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Being cut off means being killed.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about a foundational truth across all of humanity.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: All sin.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Every single sin that we've committed is deserving of death because we've rebelled against a holy God.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Foundational truth.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, God in the Old Testament, and occasionally in the New Testament, but God in the Old Testament brought premature death upon those who endangered the promises of Israel and prevented his will from being carried out for the Israelites.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So God, in rather, his love for his people was protecting them by removing sort of these cancerous people from the camp.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important that we see that this was not visited upon every type of sin.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this in Leviticus.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of sins that were covered by the Day of Atonement and by just the sacrifices that you would present in the camp.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: That those things were covered.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But there were certain sins, in particular Leviticus 18, the things that affected the family, the things that affected God's sexual ethic, and the things that affected idolatry.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Those were things that God saw as pervasive and spreading into the community, and those were things which ultimately he brought death to.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: He did this to protect his people.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And lest we think that those who did it were innocent, we see later on that God was only bringing death upon those who rebelled against him, as Hebrew says literally, with a high hand.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Numbers 15, verses 30 through 31, it says, But the person who acts defiantly, this is actually, but the person who acts with a high hand, they are raising their fist against God, whether native or resident alien, blasphemes the Lord.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: That person is to be cut off from his people.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: He will certainly be cut off because he has despised the Lord's word and broken his command.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: His guilt remains on him.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus 20 says, His blood is on his own head.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: That nobody who is affected by these things is innocent of what they have done.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the people who are rebelling against God and who are being present and experiencing the penalty of rebellion are those who are acting in such a brazen manner that you can look at their conduct and say nothing except that they are blaspheming the Lord.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: Everything about their society revolves around God.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Man, we've talked about that.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that is going on in the Israelite community is dedicating them to God.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so stepping outside of those boundaries is not just saying, ah, I don't really want to do that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, I don't like what you're doing, God.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to follow you.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to worship you because I don't want this for my life.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I don't think this removes from us, though, the weight of the concept that God visited a premature death upon those who were in severe rebellion against him, both individuals and entire nations, as later becomes true of the Canaanites.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there are three specific reasons why God brought death.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Israel would become defiled and experienced the same judgment as the Canaanites.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: We actually see throughout the history of Israel that once the idolatry reached the king, that all the nation of Israel became defiled.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: When we get to Solomon and his thousand wives who are worshiping a thousand gods and the high places and Israel began getting filled with all of these false temples, that that was ultimately the beginning of the end for Israel.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually, as you go on and you read through the Old Testament, the prophets are warning them about being vomited out of the Holy Land, and they don't listen, and so that's what happens.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: They go into captivity in Babylon.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites are vomited out of the promised land.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: They do abdicate their responsibility to maintain the covenant relationship, and they reject God.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is bringing death upon a scant few individuals within the Israelite community who threaten this possibility.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Only eventually it becomes too much that God in his mercy does not kill the entire Israelite community.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Second, their sin would display wickedness to the world, something which God stands against.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to me that when we look at the Old Testament, there are people who say that God is acting wicked there.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: See, wickedness is the opposite of righteousness.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way that God is acting wicked in the Old Testament is if what he is doing is punishing righteous people.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: That would be wickedness.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: That would be cruelty.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, what's happening is wickedness is happening in the Old Testament, and God in his righteousness is judging what is happening.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay if that is a heavy concept.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm saying is we cannot look to the Old Testament and say, God, what were you thinking?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you put people to death for what they were doing?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know they were going to die for their sin eventually in the rebellion against you, but God, you visited upon them 20 years early.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: What were you thinking?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God was being righteous, he was being holy, he was being the God that we want to worship.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: When the Israelites displayed wickedness to the world around them, it did not help people come to God.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: It did not help them become a part of the promise.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: It did not help them understand who he was.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: It gave the wrong image.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Their sin would display wickedness to the world.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Third and finally, the rebellion placed them against God and his plan for the salvation of the world.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: You do not want to play chicken with God.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: You do not want to be going head to head with him and seeing if he's going to flinch first.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: God has a plan that he's carrying out.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: If we know anything about the Bible, it is that is a grand narrative that tells, it's sort of God's love letter to humanity, that even though they have rebelled against him, he has saved them.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what we read in the Old Testament is the beginning stages of God carrying out that plan.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's not going to be the whole world who follows him, it's going to be a select few.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's going to be the Israelites, but they're going to be my people, my chosen people, and from Abraham's seed will come a savior.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so God bringing them into the promised land, carrying out his will, involves moving out those nations who are rebelling against him.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like the Canaanites are collateral damage here, okay?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like the nations that Israel fights in, who should easily beat them in terms of military power.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like the fact that the Israelites can take over these nations.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that they were in the way.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on is these nations were against God.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to kill his people.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to corrupt them and change them, and they were rejecting God.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that becomes really important when you realize that God's plan was ultimately the salvation of the world.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: That these individuals who were bringing depravity near to his people and infecting them, that they were threatening the future of a Savior.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: God is all powerful.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: He is not worried when people try and run against him, but that doesn't mean that they could be allowed to stay.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we look at these things, we have to understand that to protect his people and to preserve his will, God judged those in brazen rebellion with an early death.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one thing before we move on to the New Testament that I want to bring up, though.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's that when we look at the sin of the Canaanites, when we go through this list of things, there's a possibility that our reaction is one of self-righteousness.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where we look at what they're doing and say, well, that that doesn't affect me.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's not my life.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm better than they are.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, what it should be doing is reminding us that every single one of us is sexually broken in our own ways.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: That all five of those things on the list I had showed are in the Game of Thrones TV show.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that if the Israelites lived in modern day, there would have been a sixth item on the list that included pornography.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody is sexually broken.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And moreover, as we turn now to the New Testament, this is not about lobbing stones, well, quite literally lobbing stones at those who have sinned in Leviticus 18.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Rather, the purpose for us is understanding that we are all deserving of death.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are all deserving of God's judgment.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: That even though we are his people now, that does not mean that when we transgress against him and our culture transgresses against him, that that is okay.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: So our reaction should not be one of self-righteousness, but rather an appeal to God, a humility, saying, Lord, I know that I deserve death, and I thank you that you have given me mercy instead.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as we turn to the New Testament, though, this question that is often the criticism of Christianity that is often thrown will be answered deftly by Paul.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: When people say today that we worship a God who wants us to stone people, that's a false claim.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: It means they actually haven't read the Bible.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: God had a specific people and a specific purpose and a specific plan for the Israelites that he carried out unto completion.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And actually what is happening now is we live under a new covenant, not the old covenant, and this new covenant has a certain set of standards as well, though they are different.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Paul in 2 Corinthians 3, verses 7 through 11 says, Now if the ministry that brought death, which is what we've been talking about, chiseled in letters on stones, think Ten Commandments, came with glory, notice that, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison, because of the glory that surpasses it, for if what was set aside was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think he had a favorite word here?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what is he saying?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let me tell you what Paul's not saying.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is not saying that God was wrong in the Old Testament.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: What he is saying is that that served a purpose.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that purpose was ultimately to bring glory to God.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: That as his holiness was shown through what was happening, that as his people were preserved, that as his plan was carried out, his will was brought forth for a savior, and as he was doing all of these things, because of his nature and because of his righteousness, that it showed glory.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: It showed God's goodness.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: But now something greater has come along.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is not what we do any longer.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: God's people in the Old Testament were the Israelites, God's people now today, is everybody in this room, those who trust in Christ.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are God's people now.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as God's people now, we are no longer given the same commands as the Old Testament, though the morals remain.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of those things listed in Leviticus 18 is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as something to stay away from.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: It had nothing specifically to do with the Canaanites.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just those were the sort of habits that the Canaanites had chosen to live with, being descendants of Ham.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, now the morals have remained true, but the change has been what we do when we encounter sin.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says there's a ministry of the Holy Spirit that is far more glorious because it is not something that brings death, but it is something that brings life.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: By comparison, Paul is saying the new covenant is greater than the old covenant.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, that which was initiated with the blood of Christ, and that which we can take part in by believing in Jesus as our Savior, means that the promises of God now are not related to land and lineage, but the promises of God now are related to having eternal life with Him and avoiding eternal death, which is what we deserve.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so this situation, what is so interesting, is that we look at the Old Testament as being this extreme circumstance, as being life and death.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, under the new covenant, we still live with life and death circumstances.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: We still live with life and death circumstances.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: We deserve death and are given life because we trust in Jesus Christ.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's so amazing, but it's also important for us to understand that only those who trust in Christ as their Savior will be saved from eternal death.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the hard truth.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing that is so painful.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is that we have somehow convinced ourselves, right, that what happened in the Old Testament was worthy of more attention than our situation now, where people are dying every day in brazen rebellion to the Lord and are not receiving eternal life because they have rejected the Savior, they've rejected the new covenant.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we look at this narrative of Scripture, Genesis 9 comes back into play as we see there are still those who say that they do not care for the sin in this world, they do not have shame about the sin in their lives.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: They, in fact, use it as something that they should be excited about and they should tell other people about.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have those like Shem and Japheth who understand that living a holy life, being called to God's purposes, being holy as God is holy, is still something that we are being asked to do.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is still something that is supposed to be a part of our identity.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a whole section of this message that I had to cut out, which is actually how God is still preserving his will and people in the New Testament, sometimes even with a premature death.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to our TBC Extra podcast, that'll be in this week's uh episode, where I'll talk about all of those things.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: We just, for the sake of time, don't have to go into it today.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, my point this morning is this: that we do not look back at the Canaanites with sort of this superiority, but rather we recognize that in many ways, beyond that, we are all people who are deserving of death as well.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it is only because of Jesus Christ that we are exempted from that.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: What God was doing in the Old Testament, we can look at and say, he was righteous, and by God's grace, I'm really thankful that that's not what we live under now.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: That we have something different, as Paul says, a glorious new covenant ministry that is focused on life instead of death.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so for anybody who does not know Jesus, who does not know him, and thinks that, you know, this idea of living with freedom to do whatever we want in sinfulness is better than living in holiness with God.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to tell you, you're playing with life and death.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're playing with life and death.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And as John says, Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And no one comes to the Father except through him.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the message.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Leviticus is hard, but it's telling us an eternal truth that is greater, which is Jesus.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And God was carrying that truth forward and protecting it and preserving it so that we could have it today.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um Lord, it's it's hard to look at ourselves and see that we are people that are deserving of death.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: God, we we would really love the comfort of thinking of ourselves as righteous, Lord, apart from you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us feel better.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, it's not true.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: God, by the power of your spirit, would you help us to recognize the ways in which we have taken on our culture, taken on the ideas of Leviticus 18, but Lord, also just continued in our freedom, in our high-handed rebellion against you, brazenly walking against your commands because we choose ourselves over you.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we do not want to be against you.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be for the things that you are for.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we want to love the things that you love.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, God, I pray that you would change our hearts, that you would transform us, that we would not look at the Old Testament, God, as anything but you being holy and righteous and doing what was just, and that God, simply by your mercy and your grace, we are exempted from that now.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: God, that is a beautiful thing, and I pray that that stays with us as we remember now that those people who trust in Christ, Lord, as we have trusted in Jesus, that we get to have eternal life with you.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: We praise you for that, and we will praise you in eternity for that as well.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in your name we pray.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I do want to let you know the next two weeks are gonna be a lot of fun.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: So keep reading Leviticus as we've got two final weeks left.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.