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A Living Sacrifice - Immersed Series
31 Plays4 days ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron preached about the concept of holiness as outlined in the book of Leviticus and its pivotal place in the faith journey. He explored the meaning of holiness, emphasizing how God calls us to be set apart and live in a way that reflects His character. Through an engaging narrative, Ballard highlighted the Israelites' journey from Egypt, their interaction with God’s commands, and the establishment of their identity and practices of worship. He challenged listeners to embrace God's commands as guidelines for embodying holiness, underscoring the importance of moving closer to God to reflect His character. With practical insights into the application of Old Testament laws and principles, he encouraged the congregation to strive for holiness, honesty, generosity, and mercy in their relationships, and to recognize the timeless relevance of these teachings in a Christian's life.
Timestamps:
00:00 Leviticus: A Challenging Read
05:52 Understanding God in Exodus-Deuteronomy
07:30 "Holiness: No Excuses"
12:26 Understanding Holiness from Leviticus 19
15:27 Temple and Tabernacle Layout Explained
19:28 "Faith Rooted in Divine Love"
22:27 Seeing God in Everyday Life
27:04 Call to Holiness and Love
31:04 Understanding Generosity vs. Obligation
33:07 Demand for Unwavering Honesty
37:11 Self-Reliance and Accountability
39:44 "Leviticus: Key to God's Character"
43:39 "Daily Imitation and Spiritual Authority"
44:46 Call to Righteousness and Purity
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Transcript
Introduction to Leviticus: A Challenging Scripture
00:00:00
Speaker
So we have made it to that place in scripture where reading plans go to die. The book of Leviticus, if you're keeping up with us through the chronological reading, you know that it's one of those challenges, right, in scripture. I was talking with a friend of mine last week. He was saying, you know, Joe was kind of hard because of the cyclical stuff, you know, kind of kept coming back around that conversation. I said, oh, just get ready. Leviticus is gonna <unk> going to be a good challenge for you.
00:00:27
Speaker
um I want to take a second before we jump into today's message today because this is, I mean, I think helps helps us have an understanding a little bit better about why these sections of scripture are so critically important to our faith and where we are in our faith. But while we're in here doing chronological reading and working through these Bible studies, I want to take a second to show you what's going on with our children. So take a second and and watch this.
00:01:25
Speaker
that to be his attention. It wanted him to be his attention. What does that mean? It means that he wanted him to pay super just attention to just that. Okay, and what else did he, what else did was he told to do when he was told to pay
00:01:57
Speaker
Frogs everywhere. Just frogs? Ten stuff. Oh, ten stuff? Wow. What else happened?
00:02:51
Speaker
That is the scripture according to John Boy. and I southern slang going on there, I love it, I love it.
Role of Children's Ministry in Teaching Faith
00:02:58
Speaker
What I love most is that our kids are getting foundational teachings about God and about faith and about Jesus Christ. It's an opportunity for me just to say thank you not only to Lori and her leadership, but all of you who serve in our children's ministry, Sunday morning, Wednesday night, the Awana program, all of those things, you are doing a fantastic job and I know that scripture tells us this this truth, this promise, train up a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it.
00:03:25
Speaker
It's not a guarantee, but it is a principle that says, you know, if you get them started in the right direction, there's a real good chance they're gonna wind up where Jesus wants them. And so every child that we bring in, every child we expose to the gospel is an opportunity to see their lives change forever. So thank y'all very much for
Understanding Holiness and Sin
00:03:41
Speaker
doing that. Now, back to Leviticus. We've been ah talking about singing about this word holy this morning as a part of our worship.
00:03:51
Speaker
What does the word holy mean? we We use it a lot in church especially. The holy the word holy specifically means to be pulled out and set apart from every other thing. So it's uniquely set apart. God is holy in that he is set above all of humanity, all of creation. He is holy other, if you will. And so the scripture tells us that we have a problem. All the way over in the New Testament, Paul says in Ephesians chapter two, verse three,
00:04:20
Speaker
You and I are dead in our trespasses and sin. We are dead in our trespasses and sin. Now this isn't a trick question, but what do dead things do for themselves? Nothing.
00:04:32
Speaker
Dead things don't have the ability to do anything for themselves, so by the grace of God, as Ephesians 2.8 tells us, you and I have been given an opportunity to respond to a God who is holy, who doesn't need us, doesn't require us, doesn't have to have us, but out of his kindness and his love has reached out to us and engaged in a relationship with us motivated purely by his kindness.
00:04:57
Speaker
And so this morning we're gonna talk about what this looks like because the problem for many of us is we don't really know how to approach God.
Historical Context and Modern Application of Leviticus
00:05:07
Speaker
And this is exactly what's going on in Leviticus. The people of Egypt have been in slavery for 400 years, right?
00:05:15
Speaker
They have been basically exposed to mostly the cultural impact of a nation that has multiple false gods. They worship them in all kinds of weird ways. And yet they've been told about a god that's so supposedly uniquely theirs and that he loves them and he has a covenant established with them.
00:05:35
Speaker
But let's be honest, 400 years in slavery, 400 years of crying out to God, you don't have a Bible, you don't have really a track record of knowing much about God. They've been crying out to him and all they probably have heard are stories from their grandfathers and their fathers as they passed along this information. So this is a people who are really looking for some kind of clue as to who God is and what he's like and how do we interact with this God who declares himself to be holy.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that's the focus of our attention today because what happens in the latter part of Exodus and all the way through Deuteronomy is God establishing a relationship with the people who don't really know where that starts and what it looks like.
00:06:21
Speaker
If you will, the book of Exodus is the first 19 chapters, the story of the deliverance of a group of people. The last 21 chapters is the introduction of God's commands, the Ten Commandments. Then you flip the page to Leviticus and what we get is an expansion on those Ten Commandments. Let's talk more in depth about them. And so he goes through each one of them and he talks about how those things reveal his character.
00:06:46
Speaker
Then you get into Numbers and Deuteronomy and it's more of let's talk about who I am and how you relate to me. Why? Because as we heard this morning in 1 Peter, the reading of the scripture this morning, God's command throughout the ages has been something as simple as this. Be holy as I am holy. Now what does that look like? Truthfully we have a hard time answering that question because in the church today we've diminished that command. We we have more um
00:07:17
Speaker
interaction with comments like this in the church. Nobody's perfect. We're just human. Right? Oh, God's grace will cover that mistake. God's grace will cover that failure. Those are all true statements, but what they have become is excuses for not even trying. They become excuses with compromising with our sin or even looking away from our sin and hoping that God doesn't pay much attention to it.
00:07:43
Speaker
But the command of scripture all the way from where we are today to the very end of time is be holy as I am holy. How many of you there? How many of you have reached that point where you're just like God? Then sit down, hold on, because we got a lot of talk about this morning. There's a lot of commands coming at us, a lot of information being thrown at us, but they are encouragement in this. The law has a purpose.
00:08:11
Speaker
The law has meaning for us, and if you want to boil down what the purpose of the law it is, it is this one word, holiness. God wants us to look more like him so that we can reflect him to the world around us, those who have yet to discover who he is and what his character looks like.
00:08:30
Speaker
So let me kind of remind you where we are in the actual meta-narrative, the greater story. They have indeed been rescued from Egypt under Moses and Aaron's leadership. They have been led across the wilderness through the Red Sea and have arrived at the base of Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, whichever one you, there's the same mountain, different names.
00:08:49
Speaker
and they will spend a year there where Moses will go in this own continuing dialogue between he and God about what this nation is going to look like. The Ten Commandments are basically like the Constitution of Israel. It was the establishment of an official nation of people that would be God's people. And so this conversation that's going on is the establishment of how things will operate, what the government, the structure will look like,
00:09:14
Speaker
um It is an establishment of the tabernacle, which will be their place of worship. It's also the establishment of relationship rules for for how we go on with one another. Keep in mind, they've been slaves for 400 years. All they've operated by is the way Egypt told them to operate. And now that they're free, they need some guidelines, some rules about how to structure their life. They need boundaries, just like little kids who've been turned loose on their own.
00:09:41
Speaker
so
00:09:43
Speaker
It's easy to get to the Old Testament. It's easy to read books like Leviticus and Numbers and stuff like that and go, oh, that that's just ancient stuff. That's just old stuff that really doesn't apply to us today. But I think you're gonna find that nothing could be further from the truth and you don't have to go any further than the New Testament to see why.
Relevance of Old Testament Laws Today
00:10:04
Speaker
Paul, greatest apostle, greatest church planner in the history of the world writes this and encouragement to a young pastor by the name of Timothy. He says,
00:10:13
Speaker
All scripture. All scripture. Keep in mind Paul's scripture when he wrote this was the Old Testament. That's all he had.
00:10:25
Speaker
All scripture is inspired by God, so number one, it's God's rules, it's God's instructions, it's God coming in for life, and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness. In other words, the old law hasn't gone away, it hasn't disappeared, it's just taken on a different purpose in our relationship as Jesus Christ has entered the picture and become the sinner of our faith.
00:10:52
Speaker
So we're going to look at that a little bit today. We're going to talk about how holiness is in um impressed upon us, how we express that holiness, and what it looks like as we try to to create a relationship with a God that just seems a little bit um sometimes distant when we approach Him. An important principle for understanding Old Testament law is that all law is still relevant.
00:11:17
Speaker
All law is still relevant. How it's relevant is the the difference in way the way we approach these different books, okay? So it still serves its purpose, still teaches us about holiness and righteousness, which is our goal for living. And we have to em admit, we have to know righteousness is hard, right? It's hard. But just because it's hard doesn't mean we don't try. It doesn't mean that we excuse away our mistakes and our failures.
00:11:47
Speaker
People needed to know how to worship this God. And truthfully, when we get to Sinai and we see this account where the the people form while Moses is up on Mount Sinai, they form this false idol under Aaron's leadership. In their defense, again, they're just doing what they've seen practiced in Egypt.
00:12:05
Speaker
They're trying to figure out how do we worship this God who calls us his own. How do we worship this God who says he's the one true God and they've never seen anything else practiced except for the practice of idols and the establishment of idols.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so, God says here, let me give you some instruction, let me give you some guidelines, let me help you understand who I am and what I'm all about. So, Leviticus 19, we're gonna start in verse one, and we're gonna talk about holiness this morning and what it means to be holy. Verse one, it says, the Lord spoke to Moses,
00:12:41
Speaker
speak to the entire Israelite community and tell them be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. I wanna stop there for just a second because this is the only place that I can find in scripture where God said to Moses, tell the entire community.
00:12:59
Speaker
get the entire community together and make sure they hear this. I think the reason he did that was because he wanted to be sure to say to them, nobody's outside of this command. This isn't just for the priests. It's not just for the chief priests. It's not just for the Levite tribe or some other group of people. This is for everyone who chooses to follow after me. The command is, be holy as I am holy.
Practical Laws and Community Guidance in Leviticus
00:13:21
Speaker
He goes on, he says, each of you is to respect his mother and father. You are to keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to worthless idols or make cast images of God for yourselves. I am the Lord your God. When you offer a fellowship sacrifice to the Lord, sacrifice it so that you may be accepted. It is to be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day, but what remains on the third day must be burned.
00:13:47
Speaker
If any is eaten on the third day, it is a repulsive thing, it will not be accepted. Anyone who eats it will bear the inity his iniquity, for he has profaned what is holy to the Lord. That person is to be cut off from his people.
00:14:01
Speaker
When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes, leave them for the poor and the resident alien. I am the Lord your God." I'm gonna stop there because as we continue to go through this chapter, you're gonna see more of the same kinds of things. What it is is God's pulling each one of those 10 commands he gave us and he's extrapolating a little bit. He's pulling out more information about what does this look like in practical terms for a group of people who are living in relationship with one another. And I want to start by talking about this. Our holiness comes from our relationship with God. Remember I told you a minute ago as dead things we can't do anything for ourselves? Well the truth is we don't have it in us to be holy.
00:14:49
Speaker
We just don't have it in us. We don't have the capability of doing holy things. Everything that we do to honor God by our holiness comes because of our relationship with Him and His Holy Spirit working in and through us.
00:15:03
Speaker
We do not have it in us to be holy. And so the closer we get to God, the more holy we become. The more intimate in our relationship, the better we we practice the things that God has commanded us to do in obedience to Him.
00:15:19
Speaker
The tabernacle and later the temple were constructed so that they could literally be physical illustrations of what this looked like. If you remember the outer court of the temple in the tabernacle was the place where the bronze altar was for the sacrifices. This is where they would bring the rams and the bulls and the sheep and the goats and the priest would prepare them and those would be offered as the different kinds of sacrifices that were there.
00:15:44
Speaker
And then when you moved past that, you went into what was the Holy Place. The Holy Place was only for the priests. They were the only ones that were allowed in there. But as you walked in there, there was the table with the 12 pieces of the showbread that represented the presence of God with the 12 tribes of Israel. There was the lampstand that was kept lit overnight by the priest to represent the presence of God at all times with Israel. And then there was the incense box that was right before you walked into the Holy of Holies.
00:16:13
Speaker
That was of course to represent the prayers of the saints as they rose to heaven and God received the prayers of his people. And then you walked into the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was only entered into one time a year by the chief priest on the Day of Atonement and that was simply to make atonement for the sins of the entire nation of Israel.
00:16:34
Speaker
And it was there in the Holy of Holies where the Shekinah glory of God, the presence of God, would rest on the Ark of the Covenant. So as the as you can see in the physical representation, the closer you moved to God, the holier you got. And it's likewise in our relationship with God. The closer we moved to Him, the more we act like Him.
00:17:02
Speaker
So what does that look like? How do we express our holiness? Well, first we submit to the commands of God. We submit to the commands of God. Look at verse 37 in chapter 19. It says this, keep all my statutes and all my ordinances and do them. Pretty simple, right? Pretty simple. Keep how many of my statutes?
00:17:26
Speaker
And what do you do? You just do them. See, you thought Nike came up with that slogan years ago. God came up with it first. Just do it. just That's all I'm telling you to do. Just do it. Carry out my commands. And many of us will go, oh yeah, absolutely. I i think I got that. I think I've got God's commands down. Do you really?
00:17:49
Speaker
I've done this before in our church, but nobody took me up on it. I'll try it again today. I have $100 I'll lay up here. If somebody can tell me you haven't broken all 10 of God's commands.
00:18:02
Speaker
Anybody want to walk up here and tell me one command they haven't committed?
00:18:07
Speaker
And yet we have the audacity to stand before God and not ask for repentance and forgiveness and confession of our sin, to to just absolutely dismiss God's holiness. I think the problem is for most of us in the church, we've become too chummy with God.
00:18:27
Speaker
we've We've kind of tried to bring him down to our level and to feel more comfortable with, with oh, he wants to be our friend and he wants to be our pal and wants to be our buddy. Yeah, he wants to be our friend, but he's still wholly other. His character is still so far removed from us that if it weren't for his initiation, we wouldn't have a chance.
00:18:48
Speaker
And so these commands these commands were put there to remind us of how desperately we need him in order to be holy like him. Later in John chapter 14 verse 15, Jesus would keep keep it clear. He would say, if you love me, you will keep my commands. If you love me, you will keep my commands. What we see in the modern church, especially here in America, is we've moved away from the gospel of Jesus Christ to social justice.
Relationships and Right Living with God
00:19:16
Speaker
This past week, Pastor in Canada said, I think it's time we removed the words, I am the way, the truth, and the life because they are offensive. They're offensive. I'm sorry, but how loving is it to invite somebody to a faith that's based on nothing? You see, our faith is based first on a relationship with a holy God who has invited us into this relationship. If we don't get relationship with God right, we can't get relationship with one another right.
00:19:45
Speaker
The Bible says God is love and in him love is found. I can't love you well if I don't love God well. If I don't have the spirit of God working in me and working through me, I have an inability to love people the way they need to be loved. And yes, I'm a 10 commandment breaker just like you are. I need God's grace because I can't live out holiness unless I set myself aside and allow the spirit of God to work inside of me.
00:20:13
Speaker
The second way that we express our holiness is we celebrate communion with God. So Friday, my wife and I were reading scripture together at the dining room table on Friday morning. Guys, there's nothing sexier than your wife reading scripture in the morning. It's just really cool, okay? And I'm not just saying that because I forgot to give her a Valentine's card Friday. I'm saying that because it's really, really cool to watch your wife dig into God's word and love it.
00:20:42
Speaker
And so we're sitting there, and we're reading together, and she let out this deep sigh, which is Lisa's way of saying, you better ask me what's going on. And so I said, what's going on? but what What are you sighing about? She goes, oh my gosh, these sacrifices. There's so many of them, and I don't understand them all. There's the the burnt offering and the sin offering and the fellowship offering, the worship offering. You know, all these kinds of things. She said, how in the world did they remember all of these? I said, it was easy. They didn't have to remember their address, their phone number, their social security number, or their PIN numbers, right? They didn't have to remember any network passwords. they I mean, all of that, so their brain was free to think about all these things that really, really mattered. But she specifically said, so what's the deal with this fellowship offering? Well, the fellowship offering in ah in a kind of a simplified way was the precursor to the church fellowship.
00:21:30
Speaker
It was a way of a believer saying, I am at a good place with God and I am so grateful. I'm just here to celebrate that. To celebrate that I have a right relationship with the creator who has invited me into relationship. Later, I think Jesus alluded to this in his sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.8 when he said, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.
00:21:59
Speaker
How do you get to a place of being pure in heart? By being fully obedient to God. You see, pure in heart means I don't feel shame, I don't feel guilt because I haven't been disobedient. I have done my best to follow the commands of God by the power of the Spirit. But look at the promise, they will see God. What would you do if this morning I told you you could see God?
00:22:26
Speaker
Now, don't confuse it. Seeing God in Scripture doesn't mean you actually physically see God because he's not a physical being. But what we see is the effects of God. and The story of Moses being hidden in the cleft of the rock. God says, you can't look at me or you will die. But I will hide you in the cleft of the rock. I will go by and you will see the after effects of my being there.
00:22:49
Speaker
You and I, when we are a place of being pure in heart, our hearts are freed up. They are free to see and to comprehend the presence of God in a way we can't any other way. And so this morning, my question for you is, when's the last time you felt like you could see God's work in your life? That you could feel the presence of God doing something with you. One of the things that that Jesus was talking about was this idea that if you really love me,
00:23:19
Speaker
You will obey me. Now, if you'll remember the story, Jesus is challenged by one of the members of the Pharisees. He comes to him and he says, hey, what's the most important thing? What's the most important commandment? Jesus says to him, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus was intentional to put them in the right order. You and I cannot be good neighbors until we are good followers.
00:23:51
Speaker
We can't harbor sin in our lives and be okay with God. We can't compromise and excuse our sin and be okay with God. We can't be pure in heart if we are disobeying commands that God has given us. We don't hear much about holiness anymore in our churches. It's gone out of style. And with it have gone the ideas and the concepts of confession and repentance and restoration, even the idea of revival. Many of us pray for revival, we don't even know really truly what we're praying for. Are we praying for a good meeting under a tent with a bunch of people we know? Are we praying for some good singing? Are we praying for some really good preaching? but What are we praying for when we pray for revival? Well, in God's mind, revival means you've moved closer to me.
00:24:45
Speaker
Not that I've come to you, you have moved towards me. By the way, we were real hard to try to bring God down to our level, which is impossible, because we weren't the one who put him where he was in the first place. So you can try all you want to to bring God to your level, God's never gonna move, but you can move closer to him. And that's what holiness is all about.
00:25:06
Speaker
Because God is wholly different, because he is set apart, you and I should look different than the world. God's spirit should draw us into him, and in response, we should respond to what he has done. We should respond to his invitation. That's how holiness works. Let me give you an example. When I lived in South Georgia, growing up, between late September and middle of November, there was no doubt what the cash crop in South Georgia was.
00:25:35
Speaker
Peanut dust everywhere. Peanut trailers up and down the road. You could smell peanuts when you stepped out of your house in the morning. It literally occupies that town. But one of the things you know, one of the things you know to be absolutely true is those peanuts don't happen without God. Can God do those peanuts all by himself? Absolutely. God could speak and he'd have planners peanuts everywhere.
00:26:05
Speaker
but God invites us by saying, this is what I want you to do, the farmer comes along and joins him in that that process, okay? So holiness is this, it is God doing everything he has to do for us by giving his son and saying, okay, now come join me in this work, this move towards holiness, becoming more and more like,
00:26:31
Speaker
me James would later say this, he would say, you know what, you wanna talk about all your your your faith and what it really looks like, I'm gonna show you my faith by my works.
00:26:45
Speaker
because my works are my acts of obedience after the faith. When God comes and he enters into a relationship with us, he invites us, that's all by faith. It's all by the work of God. It's all because of the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross. But in response to that, our our works shows that our faith is genuine and it's real. And it moves us down this road towards holiness. Again, I remind you of Jesus' words, if you love me, obey my commands.
00:27:13
Speaker
Second thing I want to show you this morning is we we show God's character to others as we obey the law. So part of our call to holiness is that the more holy we are, the more set apart we are, the more different from the world we are, the more people are able to see who God is and are drawn towards that.
Reflection of God's Character in Behavior
00:27:33
Speaker
Leviticus 19 verse 18 says this,
00:27:38
Speaker
Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of the community, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Did you realize that the most quoted verse from the Old Testament by Jesus was that verse right there? Love the lord i mean love your neighbor as yourself.
00:27:57
Speaker
And so what he does is over the next verses of this chapter as we've been reading this, he begins to show us some of the characteristics of who he is that are shown in our relationship to others. In essence, if you're following me and you're becoming more holy like me, people are going to see these traits coming out in your life. We don't have time to go all over all over all of them this morning, but I want to highlight a couple of them. Number one, generosity.
00:28:22
Speaker
gen Generosity, gotta hit the right button. Generosity, verse nine through 10, he talks about this, he says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you're not to reap to the very edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor. You see, because God cares about those who are in need, we should care about those who are in need. We should have a generous heart. How does this apply? Well, think about your budget. Think about your budget.
00:28:52
Speaker
That's not rhetorical. Think about it, seriously, right now. Think about your budget, because I'm fixing to go into all your personal business right now. How much of your money is spent on you?
00:29:04
Speaker
For most of us, it's all of us. All of it, right? You're going, no, we pay utilities. That's you. That's for you. Oh, I have a car payment I've got to pay every month. Well, that's for you. Clothes for you, grocery for you, tickets to that concert for you.
00:29:21
Speaker
Furniture at your house, for you, for you, for you. How much of your money actually goes to benefit anybody else? Now, let's take this a little bit further, because this is the part where we really start to meddle this morning. Some of us, some of us go, well, I do tithe. I do tithe, and I'm gonna say some, not most. Less than half the people who are members of our church give regularly to our church.
00:29:50
Speaker
So for those of you who are not practicing the tithe, you do not have a right relationship with God because you are living in sin. Okay, that's not the part where I expect amens. Nobody gets excited about that news. But here's what you need to hear. A generous God asks us to be generous, right?
00:30:11
Speaker
Generous God says I want you to be generous because that's who I am. I want you to be like me. Now follow me on this. The tithe is a command. Generous is giving above the tithe. That's why we use the phrase tithes and offerings. When you give a tithe, if you give a tithe, you're giving the bare minimum to God.
00:30:31
Speaker
you're You're doing what He commanded you to do. The generous part when God really favors you is you say, hey, God's been so good to me, I want to do more than that. I want to go beyond the bare minimum requirement of a command. Let me give you an example. Let's say that this morning I owed my friend Hunter over here $20.
00:30:51
Speaker
He loaded it to me the other day so that I could buy ice cream or something. I don't know. He owns me $20. He comes walking up here this morning and and my friend Kevin over here knows that I owe him $20. I pull out the $20 and I hand it to Hunter. Kevin's not going to look at me and go, that's really generous of you. Why? Because I'm just meeting an obligation. I owed him the $20.
00:31:14
Speaker
If I reached in my pocket and pulled out another 20 and handed it to Hunter and said, you go buy your family some ice cream, Kevin would look at me and go, that's really generous of you. You tracking me here? God has given you everything you've got. I'll give you a thousand dollars if he can show me one thing that God hasn't given to you. That thousand dollars, by the way, came from him.
00:31:39
Speaker
All of it, every bit of it, did I do something wrong? Oh, sorry. oh Thank you for rescuing me back there, Susan. um So the whole point is that when God gives us a command, meeting that command is the minimum He expects from us. But generosity says, I want to go beyond. And I'm not saying it always has to come to the church. It could be your neighbor next door that's out of work. You want to go buy him dinner for the week.
00:32:11
Speaker
It could be somebody that's just had their fifth child and they're struggling for the week and you say, hey, let me come over and do your laundry. Did you hear that? That didn't even involve money. It's just about kindness. What was the illustration he just used there? Don't harvest your crops all the way up to the edge. Let the edges be left so that people who need something can come and just grab it from you. By the way, the story of Ruth that you're gonna read later on happens because a guy was obedient to that command and left it for her to come and glean.
00:32:44
Speaker
So, the question is, are we being generous or not being generous? Let's look at the next one. um Honesty. I am having troubles today. Honesty. You're going, well, of course I'm honest, Ridley. I am not, i man, I don't tell lies to people. Really? Well, here we go. Let's look at your income taxes from last year. Did you pay the government everything you owed the government? Because Jesus is very clear, render under Caesar, what is Caesar's?
00:33:16
Speaker
How about this? How about that annoying person that gets on your last nerve who came up to you after church last week and said, hey, why don't y'all come over for dinner tomorrow night? And you said, oh, we're busy. Busy doing what? Busy trying to find reasons not to come over to dinner with you.
00:33:36
Speaker
How about this one? How about this one? How do I look in this dress, baby?
00:33:44
Speaker
Now you're going, well pastor, how do I get honest and not die from answering that question? That's a sermon for another time. But here's the truth. We all have ability to stretch the truth just a little bit. We all have the ability to twist the facts in our favor. Our God says I demand honesty without exception. Sometimes the truth will hurt but the truth is always right. Sometimes the truth will hurt but if it comes from a loving heart, it feels better.
00:34:20
Speaker
Truth is hard, but it's who God is, and if you're gonna be holy, it's who you have to be. Thirdly, sympathy. Sympathy. Quite simply, people who are going through hard situations, they need our love, they need our kindness, they need our compassion. We as Americans are too busy most of the time to pay attention to what others are going through.
00:34:42
Speaker
Or we're very quick to be judgmental of what they're going through without understanding what they're actually feeling. How in the world could you act that way? Well, you don't know what's going on in his house. You don't know what she's been through at work this week. You don't know what terrors their children have been this week. You don't know what the in-laws have done to them this week. You don't know what's going on in their life. Be sympathetic, which means lend an ear or a heart or a hand to someone who's going through a difficult situation. Equity.
00:35:11
Speaker
Equity, and I want you to look at this one, because i'm fixing I'm fixing to approach another very unpopular subject. Do not act unjustly when deciding a case. Do not be partial to the poor or give preference to the rich. In our culture today, we hear a whole lot about being partial to the rich, right? We know that we are biased towards the rich. We have 600 congressmen who' all being imprisoned right now, but because they're rich, nobody punishes any of them, right?
00:35:38
Speaker
Right? and No, say I said 600. Republican, Democrat, independent, I don't care. There's a bunch of them. They're just, they're ripping us left and right. Okay? They're breaking the law and because they're important, self-important, self-established, they're arrogant, they get away with things and that's not right. But you can be equally partial to the poor. That's something we don't talk about so much. And here's where I want you to see it in our culture. The welfare system in America is partiality towards the poor, which is wrong.
00:36:09
Speaker
I'm not saying there isn't a place where families need support and need assistance, but today the American welfare system supports grown men who should have a job. It supports women who should be working to support their families. It supports people who are cheating the system, who are twisting the rules and fraud that's going on left and right. What should we do about it? We should start holding people accountable.
00:36:34
Speaker
We should start saying, hey, if you're healthy enough to sit on the front porch and watch TV all afternoon, you're healthy enough to go have a job. You can sit at the front door and be a Walmart greeter and earn a living. You can do something. Oh, by the way, the passage that we were just looking at where it says that you leave your fields, the edge of your field so that people can clean them, who was supposed to go pick that?
Economic Fairness and Immigration Issues
00:36:57
Speaker
The poor person. It didn't say glean it and hand it out to them. They were expected to come do their part to get their food to support their family. Again, I have no problem with taking care of people who have dis disabilities. I have no problem with people who can't take care of themselves. If anybody deserves our love and kind beneficence, it is people who are so old that they can't get out of a chair to go work.
00:37:23
Speaker
But if you're 30 years old and you're old enough to have babies left and right, you're old enough to be supporting those babies. That's a partiality that is wrong in God's eyes, and we don't talk about that enough in the church. We are guilted into thinking that we should do everything for everybody, and the Bible says that the man who doesn't work to take care of his family is worse than a sinner.
00:37:47
Speaker
Again, I didn't expect a whole lot of amens on that, but that's just the reality. All right, mercy, mercy. That's just gentle loving kindness towards people. But here's the part where it makes us a little uncomfortable in our country. Verse 33 and 34, it says, when an alien resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. An alien. We use the phrase illegal immigrant.
00:38:16
Speaker
Okay, I want you to hear something. Illegal immigrants are lawbreakers. That's the name, illegal immigrants. But when they make it into our country, they are human beings who deserve to be loved and cared for. Now, let's be real careful here. The Old Testament, as you're gonna continue to read Leviticus in Numbers, says that when an alien comes in your country, they should live the same way you do.
00:38:45
Speaker
So they should be expected to pay the same taxes. They should be expected to look for jobs just like you and I do. They should be expected to put their kids in school systems just like that to learn our way of life. If you chose to came here to come here, don't try to change this isnt into what you used to be.
00:38:59
Speaker
That's the whole point of it. But when they come, they are human beings who love deserve love, who deserve the basics of life, who deserve an opportunity to establish their family here. If we want to stop illegal immigration, we stop it at the border. We don't stop it after the fact. Mercy.
00:39:20
Speaker
Mercy. What does mercy look like? Jesus said, whatever you've done to the least of these, you have done unto me. They don't earn mercy. That's not, when you earn it, that's not mercy. Mercy's something that's given freely.
00:39:38
Speaker
Sorry, didn't mean to spend that much time on that. We're gonna have to stop and go on to the last part of this. um So here's the thing. Here's the question I want you to ask and then I wanna wrap up. um What if this book, this Leviticus that seems so strange and foreign to us, what if Leviticus is actually the key to reflecting God's character in our life?
00:39:59
Speaker
What if inside this book in Numbers and Deuteronomy are actually the instructions we need to look more like God, to be holy as He is holy?
00:40:13
Speaker
Ephesians chapter 5 verse 1, Paul gives us four words. Be imitators of God. Be imitators of God.
00:40:28
Speaker
Leviticus tells us what that looks like. How well are you and I following those instructions? Now, I wanna close by sharing something with you that's gonna help you through the rest of these books, these Old Testament passages we're in. Three questions to ask yourself about the Old Testament law, okay? Number one, is this Old Testament command directly emphasized in the New Testament? Quick example, Jesus said over and over again, love your neighbor as yourself. That's a law from the Old Testament that is clearly applied to today. He repeated it multiple times. Another command,
00:41:03
Speaker
Jesus affirmed the tithe in a conversation with Pharisees and the Gospels. He said, you tithe? That's great. Keep it up. Good job. You should go beyond that, okay? So that's a way of Jesus, Paul, some of these guys affirming the Old Testament laws that we know are still applicable to us today. The second thing, second question, has the New Testament shown that this law is no longer applicable? I don't know why it's not going over there. There it goes. Has it shown that this law is no longer applicable?
00:41:33
Speaker
The whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament, no longer necessary. Why? Because Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, paid the ultimate sacrifice once and for all so that no sacrifice is necessary anymore. Okay? So that's an example of one that has been fully if fulfilled. The obligation has been met. So what's required of us out of that law? Confession, repentance, and obedience.
00:41:59
Speaker
Confession, repentance, and obedience. We don't need just need Jesus when we get saved. We need Jesus every day of our lives. Confession, repentance, obedience. Third question and then I'm done.
00:42:11
Speaker
What are the principles behind this law that reflect God's values? What are the principles, like the ones we just did, those five that we just mentioned, that tell us who God is and what is behind that? You've heard this phrase, the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law tells you directions. The spirit of the law is what's behind those directions. In this particular instance, every one of these laws will have behind them the character and nature of God.
00:42:41
Speaker
And when we display these as Christians, we honor God. As you're reading through these and you come across different laws, ask yourself, what does this teach me about God? After all, this is his book, this is his story, and this is his command to you and I. Be holy as I am holy. And that command has not changed. The bar has not been lowered. This morning, if you wanna be a follower of God,
00:43:10
Speaker
you must draw near to the God who has commanded you. Will you join me in prayer?
00:43:22
Speaker
Father, you indeed are higher and greater than every other thing. All of life, every bit of it, is a reflection of you.
00:43:40
Speaker
And this morning the word has told us very clearly, our job is to repeat and imitate who you are daily in our lives to the best of our ability through your spirit. So would you teach us today how to set ourselves aside and allow you to have full authority in us?
00:44:00
Speaker
That's what you meant when you said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, to give all those areas over to you so that it is truly your life being lived in and through us so that the world may see. This morning, Father, some of us are fooling ourselves into believing we have a right relationship with you, and truth is, we have sin that has deeply embedded itself in us. It's it's gotten its its claws into us in such a way that we have we've learned to live with it.
00:44:31
Speaker
And Father, holiness says we can't live with sin. We can't tolerate sin. We can't allow sin to put its roots into us, Father. We've got to be intentional and diligent and aggressive in removing those things from our lives. And the only way to do that is to confess them to you, to repent of them, and to ask for your help in being obedient and living out your truths for us.
00:44:56
Speaker
So this morning, will you call us back to that? Will you call us back to that kind of true desire for righteousness? Help us not to sacrifice holiness for convenience. Help us not to compromise on righteousness just so we can be more comfortable. Help us to have the same standard for ourselves that you have set for us through your word.
00:45:23
Speaker
Because then and only then can we truly have fellowship with you and be at peace. The pure in heart will indeed see God. So this morning, Lord, will you teach us what purity looks like in our lives so that we may move towards it. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.