THROUGH THE BIBLE - Deuteron..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. You are the sons of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any boldness on your forehead for the dead.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. You shall not eat anything abominable or any abomination. These are the animals that you may eat, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. Every animal that parts the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two and chews the cud among the animals you may eat. Yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven you shall not eat these, the camel, the hare, the rock badger, because they chew the cud but they don't part the hoof, are unclean for you.

And the pig, because he parts the hoop but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch. Of all that are in the waters you may eat these. Whatever has fins and scales you may eat, and whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat. It is unclean for you.

You may eat all the clean birds, But these are the ones you shall not eat. The eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, the falcon, and any kind of any kind, even raven of any kind, the ostrich, the night hawk, the seagull, the hawk of any kind, the little owl, and the short-eared owl, and the barn owl, and the tawny owl, the carrion vulture and the cormorant, the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe and the bat. And all winged insects are unclean for you, they shall not be eaten. All clean winged things you may eat. You shall not eat anything that has died naturally.

You may give it to the Sojourner who is within your towns, that he may eat it. Or you may sell it to the foreigner, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. You shall tithe all the yield of the seed that comes from the field year by year. And before the Lord your God in the place that he will choose to make his name dwell there you shall eat the tithe of your grain and your wine and your oil and the firstborn of your herd and flock that you may learn to fear the Lord your God always.

And if the way is too long for you so that you are not able to carry the tithe When the Lord your God blesses you because the place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses to set his name there, then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place of the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire, oxen or sheep or wine, strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household. And you shall not neglect the Levite who is within your towns, for he has no portion or inheritance with you. At the end of every three years, you should bring out all the tithes of your produce in the year, in the same year, and lay up within your towns. And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the Sojourner, The fatherless and the widow who are within your towns shall come and eat and be filled, and that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.

Amen. This is the word of our Lord. Our Lord Jesus said that heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will never pass away. Let's come to our Lord in a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you.

We open your word here, Lord, and we have the privilege of having, Lord, the words that have been spoken by you or from your very being. And your intention is that we understand and that we hear and that we obey and that we look to you as the glorious God of the universe with grateful and joyful hearts. Help us, Lord, to understand. Help us to hear. and empower us to be obedient to whatever you will.

We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. So brothers and sisters, we have a very interesting chapter that is before us that can be clearly divided into two sections. You can see them there with two separate titles in your chapter. The first runs 21 verses and it very much speaks about the food that is approved by God for the people of Israel to eat.

The food that is deemed clean by God and the other food, the other animals that are seen to be or are deemed to be unclean and are forbidden, they are prohibited from eating. The next section that starts from verse 22 and runs through 29 is a section that speaks to two different types of tithes that the people of Israel were commanded to tithe. in this day, and especially when they go into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land that the Lord God was about to give them only a few weeks away before they go into conquest into the land of Canaan. Now, it's interesting to us because we are a 21st century people. Quite often when we read passages like this, we are so far removed from them, some three and a half thousand years.

And we realize also that that is the old covenant. And we live now in a new covenant, a better covenant, covenant that is ratified in the blood of Jesus Christ. And sometimes we can read these texts and we're left scratching our heads asking, how is this applicable to me? How does this text that is before us, which is deemed to be the inerrant Word of God from beginning to end, how is this applicable to me? How do I learn the lessons that the Lord God ought me or has intended for me to learn as I read a text like this that is very much applicable in practical detail to the people of Israel?

Now some sections are easier than others because, for example, when we look at the second section, the section on tithes. We can see that although the details are different, the practical outworkings of the giving of a tithe, I mean, it's a tithe in the Old Testament. We know the New Testament speaks of offerings given from the heart of the Christian to the work of the Lord and so forth. We're far removed still, but we can still to some degree understand the principle of tithing in the Old and giving of offerings in the New. We can see the big picture still as we read through the tithe.

Because what we need to do really to see the big picture, in particular in the last section there, is to remind ourselves where these people are and what they have come from. And we say often, maybe every time we're up here and we're teaching through the Old Testament, we remind you that the people here are people who've been rescued from the land of Egypt, from a land under slavery, under Pharaoh. They knew nothing of freedom. They knew nothing of a land that they owned or possessed. They knew nothing of anything of blessing of that land.

Everything, all the work of their labor was given to another. And now the Lord God has rescued these people, has promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that He promised already to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And they're about on the brink of receiving that land and receiving the blessedness that God has promised off that land, that comes from that land. A land flowing with milk and honey. And these are stipulations that the Lord God is putting upon these people.

And here's the thing. As a people who have been rescued from the land of Egypt, they're not going to go into a land that is unoccupied to be given over to them as a possession, is it? Or as an inheritance. that this land is occupied. They will know that because they're going to be facing battles against these people that occupy the land.

And this land already has cities that have been built. They have vineyards and orchards in the land that have already been erected, matured, and producing fruit already. They belong to others that will one day belong to them. They'll have to fight for it, yes, but they will receive what was once belonging to another. But did it actually belong to another?

We know that others occupied the land. There is no doubt about it. These people did too, because they'll face them in battle, as I said earlier. But who is the ultimate owner of the land that will produce the crop and the produce and feed the cattle in order that the Lord will say, come back and give me a tithe? Asked another way, who is the ultimate owner of course, but asked another way, how is it that the Lord God will depose the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Hittites and the Jebusites and all the other ites, dispose them out of the occupied land that they were in and then give it over and hand it clean over to the people of Israel and yet remain just in doing so?

Beloved, it is because those who are occupying that land that will once be given, will be given to the people of Israel, were simply caretakers because that land, as well as everything else on this planet, belongs to the only true God. It is His to give and it is His to take away. The people of Israel standing before Moses as he preaches these sermons in the book of Deuteronomy have already only moments heard these words from the mouth of Moses. If you would remember back in chapter 10, the sermon still unbroken, where Moses says, Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and earth, sorry, heaven and the heavens of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Who does it belong to?

The Lord your God, he's saying. That land over the Jordan belongs to the Lord, your God. It never did belong to the Canaanites or the Jebusites or the Hitchites or the other ite. It always belonged to God. All the earth belongs to God.

It always has. So now he'll be giving Israel this land. and the tithes and the offerings that He is commanding this covenant people to offer to Him ought to be a token of gratitude and a joyful declaration of the heart of this people in recognition that it all belongs to God and all the good things that He's given us belong to Him. The land and the produce and the cattle and everything else is a gracious gift. from the hand of the God of the universe who owns all things.

Taking the journey down to the place of his choosing would be the requirement. that it take the tenth of everything that is produced of the land and the cattle and so forth. And they would take that those goods down with them to a place of God's choosing. We know that will be the temple in Jerusalem. And that would then offer it to the Lord if they live too far, God gives a provision, sell it for money.

And with that money, walk down with your family or whoever can, whoever's willing and physically able to and go there. And when you come to Jerusalem, the place of God's own choosing, the temple, which is the place that God has chosen to manifest His presence among His people, then you are to buy and then you are to offer and enjoy and eat before the presence of the Lord. You are to rejoice in the presence of God. Not that He wants your goods, but He wants you to enjoy and to acknowledge that all things come from Him and to rejoice in His presence as the giver of all things. This is a state of worship.

This is a physical manifestation of a heart that loves the Lord, a heart that is joyfully fully embracing the God of Israel. A heart that is overflowing with joy for what He has done. A heart that recognizes, I deserve nothing Yahweh. It is all yours. We are so thankful.

We are so joyful to do this. God has given a provision also for those who are less fortunate among them, especially those who have no inheritance. We're told that the Levites, for example, they had no allotment of land. We're told of the Sojourners as well. Of course, they're in there as strangers and they're among the Israelites.

They have no allotment. And those who are impoverished as well. We know of those, the orphans and the widows and so forth. Are they outside the joy of God? Are they outside the blessing that the land will produce?

the Lord God will give his people. No, they are to enjoy it because every third year the people of Israel, again out of gratitude and the declaration of the goodness of God upon them, are to gather their goods every three years and to bring it to a place close by in a town where there are local people, the Levites and the Sojourners and the widows and the orphans, and they are to engage. And this is the way they engage with and enjoy the goodness of God that he has blessed them with in the land of Egypt, that land that is full of milk and honey, that all his people are to enjoy, not just some. all his people are to enjoy. As I said, the detail of the tithes and the offerings have changed from the old to the new, but the principle, I believe, remains, and I hope and I pray that you're able to apply how that principle is applied to your life and mine as new covenant believers who still acknowledge all things belong to Him.

And anything good that comes our way is purely an act of grace, and we deserve none of it. Our joy for our worship ought to be that of joyful worship in joyful obedience. So we understand that section. But the other details in this passage are not so clear cut, are they? It's grey at best.

I mean, prohibition that we have in the beginning of our chapter here that speaks about one cutting him or herself or shaving one's head for the dead, that's quite foreign to our understanding or our experience in the 21st century. Now, these activities may have been evident in that day among the pagan worship practices of the Canaanites and the nations around these people. They may have been seeing these things, or at least they'll be confronted with them, but we We don't see it. Now it's true that cutting oneself is a way of, at least the pagans would do this, a way of trying to elicit the favour of the gods to look upon them with favour and to give them what they require. Now we don't have any examples of cutting oneself for the dead or in mourning for the dead, which is really specifically what this passage speaks to.

But we do have an example in Scripture of pagan worship that cuts oneself and pleads to the false gods in order to bestow some type of favor upon them or a request that they are asking. You may remember Elijah on Mount Carmel. You might remember the prophets of Baal cutting themselves, two offerings, one for God, Yahweh, and one for them. And they put the bulls and they say, they plead to their gods to send fire from heaven. They cut themselves, the Bible says, with swords and lances until blood gushes out.

That's the word that's used now, Yisra'el. Gushes out. But did their false god hear? No. So we know that cutting oneself is a pagan worship practice.

And God says, don't do it. But how is that relevant to us today in the 21st century? I'd hazard to guess that none of us have seen that sort of activity around us. At least I haven't, in my experience. So how does that help us?

What is the principle that is applied to us today? Well, let's take the food laws for instance. The stipulations about how to figure out what is clean and how to figure out what is unclean. What is clean can be eaten. What is unclean is prohibited.

But working those details out, how do they do that? It requires some examination, doesn't it? I mean, the text tells us it's pretty clear. If it's a beast of the field, then you need to assess. These people needed to assess.

Is the animal, is the hoof of the animal, is it cloven or is it parted in two? If it is, then you go to the next stage. Does that animal chew the cud? Some of us here probably don't even know what cud is because we're not farmers. We don't use that terminology.

But these people did. And then examples are given just in case they are confused. You can eat the ox. You can eat the gazelle. You can eat the sheep.

You can eat the goat. You can eat the ibex. They're okay. What's an ibex anyway? The camels.

Rock badgers. And good old porky is absolutely expressly prohibited. But why? Why? Now if it's a fish or an animal that exists in the sea...

We're told there's also stipulations to what makes it clean or unclean when you can eat it or you can't eat it because it's unclean. You are not to have anything unclean as God's people. So if the fish has scales and has fins, you're okay. Snapper's okay. Whiting, brim.

And for those salmon lovers, salmon is okay as well. That's on the approved list. But flake, that is shark. Prawns, lobsters, and octopus, forget about it. Why?

Why? How about the birds of the year? Well, something again. Some are clean and some are unclean. But why?

What makes a bird clean and what makes another bird unclean? Can you imagine an Israelite teaching his son how to throw a spear and to catch birds that are lying around and he sees a crow and says, Dad, this one. He says, no, son, not that one. We can't eat that one. But why, Daddy?

Why can't we eat that bird? Not that one. How come? Now many commentators over the last several 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 years have had a stab at why some are allowed and clean and some are not. They've all put their two cents worth.

Some of the explanations seem quite plausible, to be honest. Others quite just out there and outright strange, to be honest. They've given their two cents worth. One of the very popular ones that you probably may have remembered, one that you have in the back of your mind is, the Lord had commanded the clean and unclean for health and hygienic reasons, you know, to prevent food poisoning and the like for the people of Israel, because they were primitive people and they didn't know better. You've probably heard that one before.

But then we have this interesting stipulation in verse 21, when we're told that any animal, even if it is clean, even if it's a sheep or an ox or a goat, that is found dead from natural causes, then the children of Israel are forbidden to eat such animal. But it's okay to give it to a sojourner. It's okay to give it to their neighbor or the stranger that is among them. And beloved, it's hard to swallow, to swallow the reasoning that God had given these food laws for the health of the people so they wouldn't receive food poisoning when they're able to give this to the neighbor And they're told only moments earlier to love the Sojourner that is among you. I'm going to eat this because this will kill me.

You eat it. You think that's the... No. No way to add to that. In Mark chapter 7, the words of our Lord himself, you remember?

You remember what our Lord said? They were complaining that the disciples were clean, not washing their hands before they ate the food. And Jesus said, No! It's not what comes in that makes a person unclean, but what comes out, because it comes out from the heart. And then we're told, for Jesus declared, all foods clean.

The molecular structure of food hadn't changed over three and a half thousand years, that it was bad for you then, and all of a sudden it's good for you now. That's not it. That's not it. So it's not because the food was unhygienic, beloved. It's not because it caused poison.

It's not because these people were primitive people and God was trying to protect them from killing themselves with food poisoning. Now, beloved, I do believe there is some value Actually, there is a lot of value in diving deep into the text and exploring the intricate detail of what makes things, why the Lord had given the laws, and what period, and the time, and the epoch, and so forth. But in this case, what makes food clean and what makes it unclean? If that's all we're going to do when we read this passage, then I believe we've simply neglected to acknowledge the main purpose of these laws. would have neglected to acknowledge the main purpose of this passage that the Spirit of God has revealed for us and preserved for us.

We would have overlooked the main point that is before us. And that, beloved, is this. Actually, it's found in the first few words in our chapter. Let's put our eyes down and have a look at the first few words in our chapter. You are the sons of the Lord your God.

You are the sons of the Lord your God. You are the sons of the Lord your God. He has covenanted with you Israel and he has made you an unworthy people. Not that you were righteous or more in abundance to others or better or more worthy. He has made you an unworthy people.

He's children. You are the sons of the Lord your God. Covenantally He is your God and you are His people under this covenant. And as such you no longer are to be identified as individuals or simply identified by your physical image to your father and mother and so forth. But now you are to be identified with the name of Yahweh.

Just like my son carries my name and your son carries yours, these are the sons of Yahweh. They carry His name. And that's really important that we see in order to understand what's going on here. Yahweh's name is upon them. If a father says, this is my son, then the son is carrying the name of Yahweh.

I put my name upon you. Now act like my children. I said weeks ago, beloved, that as we work our way through the sermons in the book of Deuteronomy, I hope you recall, I said from chapter five, we have a divine exposition of the 10 words, the 10 commandments being fleshed out in the chapters that are before us. Do you remember me saying something like that? I hope you do.

Now, in the previous two chapters, the emphasis was getting rid of Israel, getting rid of when they enter into the land flowing with milk and honey, and they destroy the Canaanites and the Jebusites and the Hittites and all the others. When they go into that land, they were told to destroy with the people, what? shrines and the places of worship in high places, you are to have no metal images, no wooden images, no stone images. Get rid of what? All idols, because God is one and you shall have no idols before you, right?

What commandment is that? The second commandment. Beloved, now we enter into an exposition of the third commandment. What is the third commandment? You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Now, I said earlier, these people have received the name of God. You are my sons. I will associate with you. My name is upon you. That's what God says from the very beginning of this passage.

So now we are looking into the third commandment. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You shall not take, not use, take the name of the Lord your God in vain. That word take, beloved, is translated through the scripture as carry, bear. You shall not hold the name your God in vain.

You see, for the most part, Christians these days think that to take the Lord's name in vain is simply what you say with your mouth or what you write on a, I don't know what they call them, the tweets or whatever, the OMG. That is one of the ways you can take the name of the Lord your God in vain, but it encompasses so much more than what you say and what you write. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God, not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Because now you have become children of Yahweh, is what Moses is telling the people of Israel. Now you have been covenanted with him.

He's declaring you to be his sons, sons and daughters of Yahweh. Live like children of God. Because if you don't live like children of God, you dishonor the name of God. You take his name in vain. A literal rendering of that word, vain.

is to empty of its value. It's to make worthless. How do you make the name of God worthless? How does one's life take away the worth of the name of God? Of course, not objectively, you can't do that.

But how does one's life do that? And what is this warning against, beloved? Beloved, this is how one can make or take the name of God in vain and make His name worthless upon you. It's by declaring that you are a son or child of God. For you and I, brothers and sisters, it's Christians.

We carry the name of Jesus. We call ourselves Christians. And it's to allow others, the outsiders, to look upon our life, the way we live, the way we conduct ourselves, the way we treat our wives, our children, the way we treat our enemies. Our form of worship, whether what we say is consistent with what we do, is to allow people who look upon us, who say, who look upon a people who have now declared that the name of God is upon them, and for them not to see a distinction between your life and the life of those who are sons of the devil. That's how you take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

You carry His name on one arm. I'm a child of God, but if we live no different to those around us. Then we take his name in vain. We make it, we render it worthless in the eyes of others. Have you heard that before?

I know a few Christians, they say, but they're no better than my friends. I heard someone say to me as I was evangelizing, you know, in our office, we had seven people. We had seven people in this one office. And there was only one man there who keep preaching the gospel to me. And can I tell you something?

I said, what? He said he had the most filthy mouth out of all the seven. He kept telling me to believe in Jesus, but he's the one that I remember had the worst and the most filthy mouth out of all seven of the staff. Taking the Lord's name, carrying that name, and making or rendering it worthless. It's not about figuring out the benefit of eating clean food or the benefit of not eating the food that is prohibited.

This is not what it's about. God is telling His people, I put my name upon you. You're my people. You're going to be known as the children of Yahweh. You need to look different to the people of the world.

You need to be different than the people of the world. Of course, brothers and sisters, this doesn't stop at just the physical manifestations. We've told you time and time again, the scripture teaches us that the physical manifestations are always rooted in something far deeper, spiritual reality. So what is being said is that the reason why you look different, the reason why you eat different, the reason why you act different is because you have a heart that seeks to obey God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind you love him and you joyfully do so and then when these commands come you may ask the question what is the difference between a raven and a pigeon you can ask that question and not have the answer and still be okay with it because God said so and I love him and I want to obey him there's something beautiful in that Christian These people who are called by the name of God have been set apart, made holy, the Bible says. You and I have been set apart for the sake of the Lord.

In verse 2, listen to what's read, what's written. It says, For you are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. What a rich verse, if we only had time to pull it apart, but we don't. We see here that they are chosen, we see election. We see here that they were set apart, called to be holy.

And we see here that they become a treasured possession of the Lord God. I love that. Think about it. This king of the universe, the one who owns all things, the one who governs over all things, the one who has authority over all things, the king of kings says, you're my treasured possessions. What do they compare?

They can only compare with the kings of this world that they see around them. And the kings of this world have in their storehouses, silver and gold and artifacts. And the God Almighty, the God of the universe says in my storehouse, My treasured possessions is not gold and silver. It's people who are called by my name. People called by my name.

But the sad thing is, the glorious blessings that we see before us, the high and lofty truths that are here in this passage, are predicated or contingent upon one thing, and that is obedience. We are still in the old covenant, are we not? We are still a people who have declared from their mouth all that he has commanded we shall do. And the blood of oxen was sprinkled upon them because that covenant was ratified in the blood of oxen. And these people, we know, sadly, had broken the command.

And what happens when they break the command? We say they broke the third command. They brought disrepute upon the name of God. They rendered it worthless, of no value before the people around them, because they assimilated with the nations, worshipped the same gods as the nations, and therefore, covenant broken, and therefore, the blessings of the covenant also broken. Does that mean all hope is lost?

No, because brothers and sisters, Israel, Israel, true Israel, did not break the covenant. True Israel did obey all the stipulations, all the laws, all the precepts, all the commands of God, because true Israel is the only begotten of God. the true and only son of God. His life was one of absolute perfect obedience. Every one of God's laws perfectly obeyed.

Let's look at the third. He carried the name of his father. I have come. In the name of my father, I have come because my father has sent me to do my father's will. His will is my food.

He obeyed joyfully. His food was to obey the father. I have done nothing. He says, I only do that which is pleasing to the father. And he stood before the crowd.

You would remember in John chapter eight, who can convict me of a single sin? who can convict me of a single time I broke any of his laws Israel the physical Israel broke the covenant but the true Israel Jesus Christ he obeyed he fulfilled so that so that everyone who has come to trust in him Everyone who by faith embraces this Jesus, who bled and died on that cross, who was obedient to the will of the Father, even unto death, the cursed death upon that cross, so that everyone and anyone who is united in Him by faith is now deemed by God as a child of God, by adoption. Only one begotten of the Father. Many, many who are adopted. And that's why in the New Testament we see words and we see blessings that are eerily similar to what we have in the old 1 Peter chapter 2.

We see that the Christian becomes a chosen race, a holy nation, and a royal priesthood. in Christ. But the beauty of the new covenant is this, that when Jesus hung upon that cross, it was his blood that ratified that covenant. And when he hung upon that cross and cried out, it is finished, unlike the old covenant that could be broken and revoked, this covenant is fulfilled. And forevermore, those who have been united in Christ Jesus are in this new covenant.

Does that get us off the hook? No. Because as his adopted children, we too have been called to be holy, as he is holy. It is written, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, that as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.

Beloved, the pursuit of holiness for a Christian, the pursuit of holiness for those who have been now given the name of God through the Son of God. That pursuit of holiness is not one that renders salvation. It's not one that earns the favor of God. It's not one that can see us work our way out of the penalty of sin. No, not at all.

That has been accomplished by the one who cried out, it is finished. But rather the pursuit of holiness is because through the regeneration, through salvation, Through faith in Jesus, a new nature is being given, the heart of stone tossed away, a brand new heart of flesh that loves the Lord. And now the pursuit of wholeness is that one which seeks to obey and to be like Christ. It's a heart that ought to seek to be like the Lord Jesus Christ, because He's done it all. Let's pray.