[0:00] Okay, Leviticus 19 and 20. This title, not very often, sometimes I title a message simply to catch attention.
[0:12] Sometimes I title a message to help remind myself of the direction the message is going. Tonight, the title is a little bit more intentional, and that we see a reality in this, even the title of what God is showing us in Leviticus 19 and 20.
[0:30] So tonight, I want you to see the sanctified holiness of his people. The sanctified holiness of his people. The theme in the book of Leviticus is, be holy as I am holy, says the Lord.
[0:43] We're going to read that. It's repeated often throughout scripture. But holiness is not necessarily an exercise. It is an exercise. We'll get to that in just a moment. But holiness is not just a choice. It is a sanctified holiness.
[0:57] Those are two words we don't use a whole lot. Sanctified kind of, I think at times we're a little hesitant to use it. Sanctified means what? To be set apart for his service. To be set apart for a specific object.
[1:09] To be set aside or to be set apart from the rest. So the sanctified holiness of his people. Leviticus 19, and you're sitting tonight. I'll take time if you can endure with me.
[1:21] And we'll read both of these chapters. And then hopefully we'll glean at least three truths from them. It says, Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
[1:36] 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 molten gods. I am the Lord your God.
[1:48] Now when you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. It shall be eaten the same day you offer it and the next day, but what remains until the third day shall be burned with fire.
[2:00] So if it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an offense. It will not be accepted. Everyone who eats it will bear his iniquity, for he has profaned the holy thing of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people.
[2:12] Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest, nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit from your vineyard.
[2:24] You shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. You shall not swear falsely by my name, so as to profane the name of your God.
[2:36] I am the Lord. You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning. You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God.
[2:50] I am the Lord. You shall do no injustice and judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor refer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor.
[3:05] I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart. You may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
[3:20] I am the Lord. You are to keep my statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together.
[3:32] Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed, nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment. They shall not, however, be put to death because she was not free.
[3:45] He shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord, to the doorway of the tent of meeting a ram for a guilt offering. The priest shall also make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord for his sin, which he has committed, and the sin which he has committed will be forgiven him.
[4:00] When you enter the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as forbidden. Three years it shall be forbidden to you. It shall not be eaten. But in the fourth year, all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord.
[4:13] In the fifth year, you are to eat of its fruit, that its yield may increase for you. I am the Lord your God. You should not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying. You should not round off the side growth of your heads, nor harm the edges of your beard.
[4:28] You should not make any cuts on your body for the dead, nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord. Do not profane your daughter by making her a harlot, so that the lamb will not fall to harlotry, and the lamb become full of lewdness.
[4:41] You shall keep my Sabbaths and revere my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Do not turn to the mediums or spiritists. Do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. You shall rise up before the gray-headed and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God.
[4:57] I am the Lord. When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
[5:10] I am the Lord your God. You shall not do wrong in judgment, in measurement, or of weight, or of capacity. You shall have just balances, just weights, as a just Ephah, and a just hen.
[5:21] I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt. You shall thus observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them. I am the Lord. Chapter 20. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, You shall also say to the sons of Israel, Any man from the sons or from the aliens sojourning in Israel who gives any of his offspring to Molech shall surely be put to death.
[5:42] The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I will also set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people because he has given some of his offspring to Molech. So as to defile my sanctuary and to profane my holy name, if the people of the land, however, should ever disregard that man when he gives any of his offspring to Molech, so as not to put him to death, then I myself will set my face against that man and against his family, and I will cut off from among their people, both him and all those who play the harlot after him by playing the harlot after Molech.
[6:13] As for the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to play the harlot after them, I will also set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. You shall consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.
[6:25] You shall keep my statutes and practice them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother.
[6:36] His blood guiltiness is upon him. If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife or who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.
[6:46] If there is a man who lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness, and both of them shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death.
[6:58] They have committed incest. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act. They shall surely be put to death.
[7:09] Their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality. Both he and they shall be burned with fire so that there will be no immorality in your midst.
[7:20] If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death. You shall also kill the animal. If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall surely kill the woman and the animal. They shall surely be put to death.
[7:31] Their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who takes his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, so that he sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the sons of their people, he has uncovered his sister's nakedness, he bears his guilt.
[7:47] If there is a man who lies with a mistress woman, and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow, and she has exposed the flow of her blood, thus both of them shall be cut off from among their people. You shall also not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, or of your father's sister, for such a one has made naked his blood relative, they will bear their guilt.
[8:04] If there is a man who lies with his uncle's wife, he has uncovered his uncle's nakedness, they will bear their sin, they will die childless. If there is a man who takes his brother's wife, it is abhorrent. He has uncovered his father's nakedness, they will be childless.
[8:17] Verse 22. You are therefore to keep all my statutes, and all my ordinances, and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out. Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nations, which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them.
[8:36] Hence I have said to you, you are to possess their land, and I myself will give it to you, to possess the land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You are therefore to make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, between the unclean bird and the clean, and you shall not make yourselves detestable by animal, or by bird, or by anything that creeps on the ground, which I have separated for you as unclean.
[9:00] Thus you are to be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy, and I have set you apart from the peoples to be mine. Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death.
[9:12] They shall be stoned with stones, and their blood guiltiness is upon them. Leviticus 19 and 20. Thank you for your patience. Here I want you to see tonight the sanctified holiness of his people.
[9:24] By the way, this scripture is so important. Again, let's go back to the reason why Old Testament is important. You remember the scene, John chapter 4, when Jesus is in the temple square, in John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, and Jesus gives, unless a man is born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.
[9:47] He's got this great, and you have John 3, 16, and we have all these great passages in John 4. We tend to remember what's in John 3, but John 4 is the woman caught in adultery. Remember that? When the leaders brought the woman that was caught in adultery and set her in the center and told Jesus what she had done and then said that the law commands that this woman be stoned, and what do you say?
[10:12] Now, how do we interpret that passage determines how we understand the law because what does the law say? The law says that the man and the woman were to be stoned.
[10:26] In all actuality, it was a trap because how do you catch people in adultery unless you are present when the adulterous act is going on, and how are you present unless you are a participant in it and therefore are intentionally trying to trap Christ?
[10:43] And that's why the answer astounds us even today where Jesus says, he who is without sin cast the first stone and knelt down and began writing on the ground. No one knows what he wrote on the ground. One interpretation could be he began writing Leviticus 20.
[10:57] You know, he started writing these truths out, and it says, from the oldest to the youngest, they began to leave, and Jesus forgave this woman. So again, understanding of this to help us have an interpretation or an accurate interpretation of those things.
[11:11] We are commanded in the New Testament to be holy. We are called to holiness, and that root is found here in Leviticus 19 and 20, and we see the sanctified holiness of his people.
[11:22] I just want you to see, but I'm going to take time to go through all these because when God is moving here and Moses is writing this, it seems as if he is so scattered. He goes from the peace offerings to how we deal with aliens, or not aliens like from our states, but aliens who are sojourners in our land.
[11:38] How do we deal with people who are not native to us, to what we eat, to how we measure out what we're selling, to how we do business, to how we harvest our crops. I remember my dad telling me even when he was a kid that they didn't even harvest the edges of their cornfields at that time because they wanted it to be available for people to come pick corn to get that, and this passage is the one that dictates these truths.
[12:02] So how we care for those around us and all these things, these passages going back and forth, how we respond to our mother and father. So we want to see it in its application. We want to look at these. Leviticus 20 is really a retelling of events that have already been recorded for us as sins in Leviticus 18.
[12:19] But it is a carrying on of that. It gives for us the consequences. In Leviticus 18, we have don't do these things. In Leviticus 19, we begin to get into more practical instead of don't do, do these things.
[12:33] And then Leviticus 20 gives for us, well, if you choose to do what you should not do, then these are the consequences you should expect. These are the punishments for these. And we look at, we are reminded in Leviticus, we have made a shift after Leviticus 16, so 17 and following, and now we're really in the heart of that.
[12:52] Now we are looking at everyday living because of the presence of God. We are looking at what our life looks like or what the nation of Israel's life would look like because God was present.
[13:04] Our faith, that's why I ask you, if you could tell a new believer what would be the most instrumental thing in his faith, our faith is lived out in a day-to-day basis.
[13:16] Our walk with Christ is lived out in a day-to-day basis. And what God was calling his people to was a daily living out of these truths. And this is why we see these chapters given to us as sanctified holiness of his people.
[13:29] Number one, the first application we get from these two chapters, and we have to start here because this is where all of scripture starts, is holiness, number one, holiness is derived from the very presence of God.
[13:45] Holiness is derived from the very presence of God. When we read chapter 19 especially, we read this repeated thing, this repeated phrase, I am the Lord, your God.
[14:01] I am the Lord, your God. Leviticus 19 starts with this, then the Lord, that is the fellowship in God, the relational God, Yahweh, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, right?
[14:14] That is the covenant God. I am the Lord. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
[14:30] Holiness is derived from the very presence of God. The whole reason God calls his people to holiness is because he is holy.
[14:43] And the only way his people can ever attain holiness is because he is holy. We are not like every other world religion that is seeking to work our way up to a God.
[14:59] Seeking to either attain Godhood ourselves or seeking to be so good in this life we find acceptance with a distant God or seeking to move and progress through different ranks and files in this life and the next life and the next life and the next life until we finally reach the level of perfection where we kind of become our own God.
[15:21] No, we are a people, Christianity is very unique in all world religions in which our God, our holy God, came to us and entered into a relationship with us and because he entered into a relationship with us through faith we have Christ's righteousness imputed to us that is given to us and he is dwelling inside of us.
[15:42] Paul reminds us we have the very presence of Christ, we have the mind of Christ and the heart of Christ. There's this great book Be Like Him or Like Christ which speaks of the Galatians 5 principle of being holy as he is holy and called to be like Christ and the whole reason we have that ability is because we have Christ inside of us.
[16:04] Holiness is something which is derived from his presence and the reason that is important is because you can't be holy on your own. God never gave a command to people to be holy until he entered into a relationship with those people.
[16:20] We cannot expect and it's a saying I've said before from the pulpit and it's a saying that quite often my wife will remind me of do not be surprised when sinners act like sinners.
[16:32] Those who do not know Christ and those who are away from the presence of a holy God are not going to be holy. They may do good things but they cannot be holy because man cannot be holy on his own.
[16:46] He can't. The best of people that we can ever think of the best of models that we can ever imagine will not lead us to holiness because God says I am holy therefore you are going to be holy and the book of Exodus shows us with the construction of the tabernacle and then we see it as we read scripture really this being played out I've talked to you about it before in the center of the tabernacle or actually it was on the you entered from the east so you were traveling in the tabernacle towards the west right and at the very furthest western wall there was this inner room called the holy of holies so let's walk with me if you will through the tabernacle because the tabernacle is so much more than just a picture of Christ the tabernacle is also a picture of God's holiness let's go to the temple let's go to the temple mount in the time of Christ because we're familiar with that so let's not even go to the tabernacle let's go to the temple mount the temple mount gives us a better picture even a fuller picture of God's holiness and what it is like to be in his presence on temple mount you had what was called when you walked up the great staircase the temple mount
[17:57] Herod had built this great complex and you came into this great building and maybe you've seen the passion of Christ or maybe you've seen maybe you've seen the nativity story and you get a good picture of this so you see even these other movies who portray this in an accurate way when you walk into temple mount you walk into what is called the court of the gentiles remember Paul got in trouble because they said that he took someone that was gentile into the Jewish area where there was the court of the gentiles so on the outer fringes well now let's back it up yeah yeah on the outer fringes the court of the gentiles that means everybody of every nationality was welcomed in on the outer fringes so you could get close it's kind of like if you were to go to the fence of the white house you can stand at the fence and look in okay there's the fence but the court of the gentiles was around then you entered into what was called the court of women so the Jewish ladies could go this far no gentiles but the Jewish men and women this would have been where a Zechariah's wife would have been waiting on Zechariah to come out of the temple she would have been in the court of women so Jewish women were allowed to go this far then you went into the court of the Jews the Jewish men so the Jewish men could go a little bit further then you would come into the holy temple so only the people from the nation or from the tribe of Levi the priest could enter into that then you would enter into finally the holy of holies and there one man one time a year could enter into what this portrays for us is that the closer because God's presence was manifested
[19:43] I don't want to say resided but it does not reside was manifested in the holy of holies even in the the outer courts there was a bronze laver so it was common the further you went in the more precious the furniture because the closer you got to the presence of God the fewer people that were there and the more holy everything was because the closer you draw to God the holier it gets holiness because holiness is derived from the presence of God and this is why God gives these commands be sure you're doing your sacrifices right be sure to keep the Sabbath this is a Jewish practice not us be sure you do not use my name in a blasphemous manner be sure you do I am the Lord your God remember your relationship with me because the command or the call and it's both it's a command and a call is a call to be holy and God is showing us you cannot be holy on your own the only way you will ever be holy is if you are in my presence his holiness becomes our holiness well what separates us from his presence?
[21:00] it's a three letter word sin so we cannot sin and be in the presence of a holy God therefore we cannot be holy now we're on the other side of the cross so we have what Job called out for we have that umpire between God and man who can put his hand on both of us and reconcile but still unconfessed sin or continuous sin separates us from the manifest presence of God which removes us from the ability to even obey this clear command be holy here is why it is so important to be in the fellowship of the saints we want to draw nearer to the manifested presence of God because only there do we have any hope of being holy it is derived from the very presence of God number two holiness holiness determines our treatment of other people holiness determines our treatment of other people this is why we have the bulk of Leviticus 19 the longer we hang out in the presence of God the more we become God like the more we become God like the more we begin to think
[22:20] God like and we begin to see others God like and the more we see others in a God like manner the different we treat them my own personal testimony testifies to this and it's not the time or place to get into it too far but there were manners of my past that I saw people in a different light maybe because of their background or because of their current situation that have been redeemed by being in the presence of God more and more which means I can no longer see people the way I used to see people because I begin to see people the way God sees people our holiness will always determine our treatment of other people this is why it says in Leviticus 19 you shall not steal you shall not deal falsely you shall not lie to one another you shall not operate in truthfulness you shall not swear falsely by my name so as to profane it you shall not oppress your neighbor nor rob him why you want to be concerned the wages of a hired man they were paid daily by the way back then so this isn't we don't have the right to go in the Bible says you got to pay me today they were paid days so the wages of a hired!
[23:42] man you are not to remain with you all night you are not to oppress those who needed the money you shall not curse a deaf man simply because he can't hear you nor place a stomach blot before the blind but you shall revere your God right the way you treat people now all of a sudden is a testimony to the reverence you have for God you shall do no injustice in judgment he doesn't say don't judge right he just says don't judge unjustly do no injustice in judgment you shall not be partial to the poor which means you can't have undue sympathy towards someone just because they're in poverty but you should also not defer to the great simply because they're in a greater position he says but you are to judge your neighbor fairly you should not go about as a slanderer among your people and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor I am the Lord how you treat people is determined by me you shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart you may surely reprove your neighbor!
[24:41] you don't have to be angry at them but you shall curse sin because of him you shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people you shall love your neighbor as yourself Jesus by the way says this is the second of the greatest commandments right love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself well how do you do that!
[25:02] he a practice it is a practical thing holiness isn't well I'm holy I'm accepted God has made me like him well if we're like him then we need to inform brother Kenneth swan he sang this song called smile a while we always did fellowship times and he sang this song smile a while will forever be ingrained in my head I'm not going to sing it to you because it's a song that you will always forget I never be able to forget so if he comes I'll have him sing it to you but we would always fellowship because brother Kenneth had this saying if you have the joy of the Lord in your heart maybe you need to notify your face right he said let your face know so even if we are holy if we're living in holiness then our lives need to be notified of that and we will begin to practice that holiness in our treatment of those around us and we will begin to love and it's not just our neighbor because there were people trying to find the loopholes in that and
[26:04] Jesus kind of closed that loophole but we are even told here that verse 33 says when a stranger resides with you in your land that's someone who's not from there right resides with you shall be to you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself you shall love him as yourself friends just to be quite honest with you this should remove any barriers to any believers thinking we should not bear the burden of whoever is with us it doesn't legal illegal it doesn't matter if they are among us and in our presence the clear command of scripture is to love them as ourselves simply as an act of holiness because God created all we'll let the legal system work all that out the judicial system and things of that nature our response as
[27:09] God's people is to behave in holiness and to behave in love and we see all of these issues I mean if we just would want to admit this freely if the world in which we lived in today lived out of practical holiness and let the holiness of God determine their treatment of one another the things that are going on in the world today simply would not be going on just would not be going on and I remember reading a testimony of a missionary who was traveling and I can't remember the exact location but it was one of those unreached areas kind of out in the jungle and he didn't have very long to stay and so he came across a native group of people and this native group of people really were just I mean they were just abhorrent in their actions and a lot of violence going on among them and just really just their mannerisms were just unacceptable by anybody's standards and he didn't have a lot of time so he stayed with them just a little while and he left them a copy of the scripture and he said
[28:16] I promise I'll come back and he just left them a copy of scripture in their language and he came back I think the story goes a couple of years later he finally made his way back but when he came back he found a totally different people there was no crime there was no animosity towards anyone everyone lived civilly I mean it was almost this complete change and it was almost like a perfect society of course keep in mind they were isolated people group right they were completely no outside influences coming in and he asked one of the leaders of the people he said what happened he said it was simple we read that book you gave us and we began to do everything that book told us to do it began to be a practical thing and therefore it removed everything that was causing problems before so we see here holiness determines our treatment of other people true holiness will always influence how we treat those we come into contact with always always number three and it's the final thing number three holiness distinguishes us from those we live among and this is probably one of the greatest hindrances to holiness holiness distinguishes us from those we live among most people most people have this great desire because God has created us as communal people that is to live in fellowship with other people that's why this isolation and separation has had such a hard time on so many people because God created man for fellowship most people just want to fit in they just want to be accepted
[29:57] I mean they want to belong they don't want to stand out some of us by nature don't mind standing out a little bit I'm more extrovert so it doesn't bother me some by nature are more introvert and they really don't want to stand out so they just want to blend in but even extroverts people like me and the reality is you just want to fit in and belong and this is the thing that God has called us from right and this is by the way why God in scripture very seldom calls soul individuals he calls individuals and connects them with other individuals called a corporate body we don't find any lone ranger Christians in scripture we don't find any stand alone believers they're always connected and they're always put together with someone else because God knows he created them for fellowship but holiness distinguishes us that is it separates us what was that title the sanctified holiness of God's people chapter 20 has really two verses that caught my attention even this afternoon as I was studying them again and it's something that
[31:06] I had missed over and over again but in studying it I was overwhelmed with it verse 7 chapter 20 says you shall consecrate yourself or really means the word consecrate is the same word as sanctify it means you should set aside yourself you shall consecrate yourself therefore and be holy for I am the Lord your God that's your responsibility your responsibility is to set yourself apart because he is your God I am called to consecrate myself set myself apart for a specific purpose and the motivation behind that is because he's my God verse 8 shows us how we can do that because it is against our nature to set ourselves apart from everyone else around us but verse 8 shows us how we can do that you shall keep my statutes and practice then why I am the Lord who sanctifies you what it says you shall sanctify yourself that's your responsibility because I am the Lord your God so your actions should look different from those around you and in verse 8 says and you can do that because I am the
[32:07] Lord who sanctifies you and I'm setting you apart therefore I'm empowering you to set yourself apart through your actions this distinguishes us verse 20 gives the consequences and again God is not just randomly choosing judgments here God is not randomly choosing things we saw this in chapter 18 he says there in verse 22 you are therefore to keep all my statutes and all my ordinances and do them so that the land to which I am bringing you to live in will not spew you out moreover you shall not follow the customs of the nations which I will drive out before you for they did all these things therefore I have abhorred them what God is telling them God is giving them conditions and restrictions of how they are to behave when everybody else around them is going to be doing these things God is showing them how to look different all of these relationships all of these immoral practices all of these activities these consulting the spirit even with the apples right or fruit trees for three years it's you know it's forbidden don't eat it for three years the first year that you could eat it the fourth year he says give it to the
[33:22] Lord why because the first fruits always belong to the Lord the first year fourth year apples are coming in I love apple trees and every place we've ever moved to until now I haven't done it but if you want to go to the biblical It says three years don't touch it it's not fit to eat and most apple trees it's not for three years because fruit will drop and it will rot and it's no good it says on year four when you finally can eat it give it to the Lord that goes contrary to everybody around them everybody around them when the apples were finally ready to eat they would gather them up and eat them they wouldn't give them to the Lord they saw this as the God of the fruit trees has blessed them with fruit but the first thing the people were to do were to praise
[34:23] God for providing the fruit and then your five enjoy what God is giving you and God will let the tree bear for you! an iron or metallic statue that had a fire pit in it lack of better term and what they would do is they would light a fire inside Molech and it had arms like this this was something the people around them would do and they would heat it up until the arms became red hot and they would put their children on and burn their children on to appease this God of Molech everybody around me was doing that this is the way of it so if we ever think that God was a mean God sending the nation of
[35:24] Israel in to drive out the people of Canaan God says all life is holy and precious God is the defender of life and God says don't do that the whole!
[35:38] reason he gave these! laws was to set his people aside sanctify them among the people they lived in God could have okay he's God God could have found this perfect place on earth created this perfect place on earth where no other outside influences were there and put them in the middle of it and now therefore be my people some of you should have caught that because God did do that he put Adam and Eve there and they still couldn't be his people God's call is to live in holiness that distinguishes!
[36:23] us from the people we live among if our manner of life even let's go to this one it seems and I'll never forget it's amazing as you preach these passages how things come to your mind I will never forget I heard a conversation between two men both of them believers so before we think that it was any kind of conflict one man was very clean shaven very legalistic in his mannerisms!
[37:02] I remember the clean shaved legalistic man he got real mad at the younger man because he had a tattoo he says the Bible says you shall not make any markings on your body and the younger guy knew the scriptures it also says in that same passage you shouldn't shave your beard and that argument stopped right there because that argument don't trim the edges of your hairs don't trim the edges of your beard don't make any cuttings on your body or make any markings does that have application today is it legalistic today no what was going on in that time the people of that land if you cut your hair or shaved your beard and you cut your skin and you made markings on all that was a form of idolatrous worship and in order for God's people to look different from everybody around them that was worshipping these idols he said grow your hair out grow your beard out don't make any markings on your skin and don't cut your skin because you're going to look different
[38:05] I'm going to distinguish my people now we live in a culture those things don't mean that but there are things going on in this world today that everybody around us may do and may be acceptable in the culture but God has called us to be holy and part of that holiness is it's going to distinguish by the way this is not me saying let's all grow long beards okay I already told me I need to trim mine up I will trim the edges of what we're saying is in our actions in our responses in our care and our concern for those around us holiness distinguishes us from the people among us people should know who it is we're spending our time around based on how we're treating those around us but we could correct that and say people do know because we're not spending much time in the presence of the
[39:11] Lord people will know but those who are much in his presence will live out his presence much among those around them here is the sanctified holiness of his people let's pray Lord I thank you so much for this day God I praise you for your call upon our lives I praise you for your love and concern for us and Lord we give you all the glory and the honor in Jesus name amen I had just seen that I took one of my so Thank you.
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