THROUGH THE BIBLE - Leviticu..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Leviticus chapter 19. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word.

This is His perfect, inerrant, all-sufficient Word. Let's pay attention to each one of the words, beloved of Christ. Chapter 19, And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.

Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods or cast metal. I am the Lord your God. When you offer a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. You shall be eaten the same day you offer it or on the day after, and anything left over until the third day shall be burnt up with fire. If it's eaten at all on the third day, it is tainted.

It will not be accepted. And everyone who eats it shall bear his inequity, because he has profaned what is holy to the Lord, And that person shall be cut off from his people. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its age. Neither shall you gather the glenans after you harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare.

Neither shall you gather the falling grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God. You shall not steal. You shall not deal falsely.

You shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a high worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.

You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the Lord. You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great. But in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

You shall not go around slandering among your people. And you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. But you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. You shall keep my statues. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of clothes made of two kinds of material.

If a man lies sexually with a woman who is a slave assigned to another man and not yet ransomed or given her freedom, distinction shall be made. They shall not be put to death because she was not free. But he shall bring his compensation to the Lord, to the entrance of the tent of meeting, a ram for a guilt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him with a ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin that he has committed, and he shall be forgiven for the sin that he has committed. When you come into the land and plant any kind of tree for food, you shall regard its fruit as forbidden.

Three years shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. And in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of its fruit to increase its yield for you. I am the Lord your God. You shall not eat any flesh with a blood in it.

You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes. You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves. I am the Lord. Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute.

Lest the land fall into prostitution and the land become full of depravity. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Do not turn to mediums or necromancers. Do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them.

I am the Lord your God. You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God. I am the Lord. When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat this stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.

For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You shall do no wrong in judgment in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, just ifa, just hin. I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

And you shall observe all my statutes and all my rules and do them. I am the Lord. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Now, brothers and sisters, as I said last week and our brother said perhaps two or three weeks ago, now we're getting into a different section of this book.

And last week I tried to say to you that perhaps we can divide this book in these two sections. The first section that goes up to chapter number 16 and then from chapter 17 until the end. And I said to you last week that for us to understand those two sections, we need to understand this concept of holiness. Holiness, so I said what we have introduced in the past, this concept of positional holiness, which is that God set apart Israel as their people from the nations. They are set apart.

They are holy in that sense, different to all the other nations. but there's also an experiential sense of holiness in which the people of Israel are called to be holy, not only set apart, but also they are to obey the statutes and the commandments of the Lord and to be holy. The second half of the book of Leviticus from chapter 17 onwards until the end is going to be focused more on that type of holiness, the type of you shall be holy and all the things that are attached to practical holiness. Now we've said many times, Brother Bernie and myself, we've said many times that the core, the substance of this book is the concept of holiness. And it's important that as we progress through divine revelation, we add more nuances and more light to that concept of holiness.

So something that is very important for us as a congregation to understand up to this point is that when we speak about holiness biblically, we're speaking about that positional holiness, which I'm not going to be tired to repeat and to repeat because this is fundamental for understanding sanctification and holiness and covenants in the New Covenant. So positional holiness set apart by God and this other aspect of practical or experiential holiness, which is what we have here now very explicitly in the previous chapter and in chapter 19. Now, in chapter 19, we have even more detailed list of different type of commandments or instructions for that practical holiness. This is holiness that is attached to do or don't do, and you can see it very clearly in verse 2. The Lord says in the end of verse 2, it's in verse 2 better, speak to all the congregation, the Lord speaks to Moses, speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy.

For I, the Lord your God, am holy." This is this practical holiness that if you go to the end of the chapter, then it will be outlined in what it actually is. If you go to verse 37 and it says, "...and you shall observe all my statutes and my rules." and do them, I am the Lord."

This is the practical holiness under Leviticus. Not only that they had been set apart, but now that they were supposed to do all the statutes and all the rules of the Lord. That is practical holiness. One should ask themselves the question, you know, why all of these little details about these many things that we see here? There are so many elements that seem to be taken from one place of life to another type of thing of your life from even you can see here some remembrance of Exodus chapter 20 with the Ten Commandments, things like honor your parents or do not lie, do not slander or treat your brother justly or even laws about harvest and laws about sexual relationships and slaves and even how to present the offerings in a proper way.

Little details, specific rules that are given to the people as a very important aspect of Holiness, remember brothers and sisters, that the people of Israel were being removed from a world that they had belonged for hundreds of years. All the people of Israel had in and of themselves, in their hearts, in their ways, in their thoughts, in their mouth, they had the ways of Egypt. They were called people of Israel or from Israel, but when it comes to substance, to their thoughts, who they were, they were more trained in the ways of Egypt. So the Lord, knowing that His holy people were not only positionally set apart, but also they were to be practically holy, He comes in mercy and in His revelation of His character to tell them exactly what they were supposed to do and the things that they were not supposed to do, even to the minute detail of how to keep their beers or their clothing or their harvest. Why?

Because everything that ran through the thoughts and hearts of the people of Israel was according to the world. So God was going to define how they were supposed to behave and be according to the ways of God, even if that seemed to be a little bit too much and very detailed. The Lord was just simply showing to the people of Israel that they needed to be completely set apart and also be dedicated to the Lord. And now, this is the nuance that I want you to see in holiness, that the people of God are not only positionally set apart, but the people of God are to actively devote themselves to the Lord. I person, I people, cannot be holy only with the label of being the people of God.

But because they have the label of the people of God now, they are empowered and guided through the revelation of God to do the things that they are supposed to do to be called the people of God. But now there is another important component to holiness. Now, brothers and sisters, it is not only positionally that you are wholly set apart as the people of God, and also that you are to do those things so that you are to devote yourself to the commandments of God. All of them are rooted in a more profound and more powerful reality of holiness. And that is described in this chapter, in the previous chapter, in just three or four words.

I don't know if you saw how many times the Lord says, I, the Lord, am your God. I, the Lord, your God. I am the Lord, your God. More than 15 times in the chapter, 22 times including the previous chapter. And that is, brothers and sisters, if you're going to get something from this is this, that holiness is not only that you're set apart and that because you're set apart, now you're devoted to follow the standards of righteousness of your God.

It is that all of that is always established in a covenantal relationship with the God who has set you apart and that calls you to do something. It was in the Old Testament and it is in the New Testament. Because you can see even in the nature of the commandments that we have in chapter 19, that not all of them were external. There were some commandments that were speaking to the heart of the people of Israel. In verse 17, it says, "...

you shall not hate your brother in your heart." Sometimes we think about the mosaic law as just something external that deals with beers and harvest and clothing and places to do or things not to do. But he says the law here, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall reason frankly with your neighbor. And then in the end of that, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

All of these were the instructions of active, positive righteousness given to the people of Israel that could only be fulfilled if the individual Israelite was actually in a real covenantal relationship with the God of Israel, not through the community, but individual. That's why the Psalmist says in Psalm chapter 4, "...offer the sacrifices of righteousness and trust in the Lord." Because trust was that which established the personal, real relationship of the individual under the covenant of God. with all the external manifestations of it.

So brothers and sisters, these three principles of holiness are going to carry into the new covenant. We are set apart as the people of God, the church. Once we were not a people, but now we are a people by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been set apart from the world. Not only that, but God has also given us in His Spirit He has given us the power to follow the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ and all of that can only happen because He says, I am the Lord your God and that is a truth in our souls and in our hearts.

It is not only an external statement. positional holiness and practical holiness or sanctification, if you want to see it that way, it is rooted, established upon a real relationship with the God of the covenant. So then Paul can say, if you go to 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, if you quickly go in your Bibles to 2nd Corinthians chapter 5, So then Paul, with all authority, can say in Second Corinthians, chapter five, a couple of verses that you've read and that perhaps you've memorized. Second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 14. for the love of Christ controls us.

This is speaking to the previous context, because we have concluded this. This is the statement that I want you to pay attention to, which can be removed from the context. It says that one, that is the Lord, has died for all, that is the church, therefore all the church have died. That it is a covenantal relationship. The head of the covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ, have died for all who are in Him.

And because we are united to the Lord, we all have died. That is when the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to a person, Grace upon you. I am your Lord. I am your Savior. I am your Redeemer.

I died. Now you have died. That is union. Then comes verse 15, And he died for all that those who live now spiritually, have been set apart in Christ. Now those who are alive in Christ might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

set apart through death so that we may be alive in union with Christ to live for Him that is holiness. Set apart as a people in the Lord Jesus Christ in covenantal relationship for Him so that we may actively live for Him. So then the apostle can conclude in verse 17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, If anyone is in a relationship with Christ, if anyone has received the words from the divine court, I am your Lord, if anyone is in Christ, Then He is a new creation. He has been removed from Egypt. He has been given a new life.

It's a new creation. Egypt is not in you anymore. But now it is the Israel of God that is to govern your heart through the circumcision of the heart. New creation. The old has passed away.

It's left behind. And the new, behold, the new has come. The apostle, because of that union, can call us to that. Go quickly to chapter 6, verse 14. So he says, "...

do not be unequally yoked..." in chapter 6, verse 14, "...do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What fellowship has light with darkness?

practical separation from the things of the world, because we have already been set apart. What fellowship has light with darkness? 15. What accord has Christ with Belial? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God has said. The relationship, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, just because He is in us, because we have this relationship with Him, therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord in the Old Covenant. Do not cut your beard, do not do this, do not do that.

Therefore, go out from their midst and be separated from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean things. Then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." From that relationship comes the call to practical life in chapter 7, verse 1. Since, or therefore, or as a result, since we have these promises, these promises, Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear. of God, that is because you have this genuine divine relationship with the Savior.

And because by that relationship, you have been set apart from the scheme and the system of the world. Now you have been put in a path of righteousness that you are to walk in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit until glory comes. And then you're completely removed from any power or remaining of this world. All of that, it is reality for some of you and for some others is just simply words. Why?

Because the difference is that genuine salvation requires a genuine relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the most important question that we all need to answer. Where is my heart when it comes to my relationship to this man that is called Jesus Christ who said that upon the cross and that is calling me to repent of my sins and come to Him? And the answer to that is that you can come, that you can come to Christ, you can come freely, believe in Him and all the burdens of sin will be removed and not only you will be made innocent, but you will enter into a glorious, eternal relationship with Him in which He will make you and conform you to His image to then capture you into glory and to spend the rest of eternity with the soul that He has purchased by His blood. May the Lord Jesus Christ give us a clear glimpse of who He is so that He will be exalted in our lives, brothers and sisters.

Amen.