[0:00] found in Leviticus chapter 11. It says, The rabbit also, for though it chews cut, it does not divide the hoof, it is unclean to you.
[0:34] And the pig, for though it divides the hoof, thus making a split hoof, it does not chew cut, it is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their carcass, they are unclean to you. These you may eat, whatever is in the water, all that have fins and scales, those in the water, in the seas, and in the rivers, you may eat.
[0:50] But whatever is in the seas and in the river that does not have fins and scales, among all the teeming life of the water and among all the living creatures that are in the water, they are detestable things to you, and they shall be abhorrent to you.
[1:02] You may not eat of their flesh and their carcass, you shall detest. Whatever in the water does not have fins and scales is abhorrent to you. These, moreover, you shall detest among the birds, they are abhorrent, not to be eaten.
[1:15] The eagle, and the vulture, and the buzzard, and the kite, and the falcon, in its kind, every raven in its kind, and the ostrich, and the owl, and the seagull, and the hawk, in its kind, and the little owl, and the comorot, and the great owl, and the white owl, and the pelican, and the carry-on vulture, and the stork, and the heron, and its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bats.
[1:31] All the winged insects that walk on all fours are detestable to you. Yet these you may eat among all the winged insects which walk on all fours, those which have above their feet jointed legs with which to jump on the earth.
[1:45] These of them you may eat, the locusts in its kind, and the devastating locusts in its kind, and the cricket in its kind, and the grasshopper in its kind. But all other winged insects which are four-footed are detestable to you.
[1:56] By these, moreover, you will be made unclean. Whoever touches their carcasses becomes unclean until evening, and whoever picks up any of their carcasses shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.
[2:07] Concerning all the animals which divide the hoof but do not make a split hoof, or which do not you cut, they are unclean to you. Whoever touches them becomes unclean. And also, whatever walks on its paws among all the creatures that walk on all fours are unclean to you.
[2:21] Whoever touches their carcasses becomes unclean until evening, and the one who picks up their carcasses shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. They are unclean to you. Now these are to you the unclean among the swarming things which swarm on the earth, the mole and the mouse and the great lizard and its kind, the gecko and the crocodile and the lizard and the sand reptile and the chameleon.
[2:43] These are to you the unclean among all the swarming things. Whoever touches them when they are dead becomes unclean until evening. Also anything on which one of them may fall when they are dead becomes unclean, including any wooden article or clothing or a skin or a sack or any article of which use is made.
[3:00] It shall be put in the water and shall be unclean until evening. Then it becomes clean. As for any earthenware vessel into which one of them may fall, whatever it is in, whatever is in it becomes unclean and you shall break the vessel.
[3:13] Any of the food which you may eat or which water comes or on which water comes shall become unclean and any liquid which may be drunk in every vessel shall become unclean. Everything moreover on which part of their carcass may fall becomes unclean.
[3:27] An oven or a stove shall be smashed. They are unclean and shall continue as unclean to you. Nevertheless, a spring where a cistern collecting water shall be clean, though the one who touches their carcass shall be unclean.
[3:40] If a part of their carcass falls on any seed for sowing which is to be sown, it is clean. Though if water is put on the seed and a part of their carcass falls on it, it is unclean to you. Also, if one of the animals dies, which you have for food, the one who touches its carcass becomes unclean until evening.
[3:54] He too who eats some of its carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. And the one who picks up its carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. Now everything swarming that swarms on the earth is detestable not to be eaten.
[4:07] Whatever crawls on its belly and whatever walks on all fours, whatever has many feet in respect to every swarming thing that swarms on the earth, you shall not eat them for they are detestable. Do not render yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm, and you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean.
[4:26] Verse 44. For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourself therefore and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.
[4:38] For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. Thus you shall be holy, for I am holy. This is the law regarding the animal and the bird and every living creature that moves in the waters and everything that swarms on the earth, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean, between the edible creature and the creatures which is not to be eaten.
[5:00] Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this evening. We thank you for the opportunity you've given us to gather together, Lord, to read even passages such as this in our Old Testaments.
[5:11] Lord, we pray that by your presence and through your nearness to us, Lord, that you would help us to understand it, and God, that we would have a willingness to apply it. Lord, our heart cry would be, may we be your people for your glory and your honor.
[5:27] Lord, may we be set aside for your use. Lord, in all things be magnified and glorified, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Leviticus chapter 11.
[5:39] I told you it is that passage. That passage which we read most of the time, and we tend to skim over it because it doesn't have application to us, and we are exactly right. These laws, we need to understand, were first and foremost given to the Jewish nation.
[5:53] They were not intended for worldwide application, and they were never intended for worldwide assimilation. They were given to a very distinct people at a very distinct time. It was for the Jewish nation before they went into the Promised Land.
[6:05] We'll get to that in just a minute, a little bit further. But they came to an end with the cross of Christ because after his death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus pronounced all food clean.
[6:17] You remember first the vision that Peter had of the sheet being held by four corners, being lowered down before him. And Peter was told in the vision, what God has pronounced clean, you shall not pronounce unclean.
[6:29] And then later on, Paul would write to the church at Corinth that it is okay to eat whatever is set before you. And we praise God for that, right? Whatever is set before you in giving thanks for him, it is okay to eat it unless it causes the people you are with to stumble by your eating it.
[6:47] And he speaks of the reality that things are no longer dictated by these kosher laws that we find recorded for us in Leviticus 11. And when we come to Leviticus 11, we see these things as maybe obsolete truths, truths that do not have direct meaning to us or truths that may not have much application for us, but we need to be cautious because these are truths that are still recorded in the Word of God.
[7:11] And the Bible tells us that all of the Word of God is good for edification, for rebuking, reproving, and correcting, and sound doctrine. When we come to Leviticus 11, we begin to see the sanctification down to the smallest detail.
[7:25] It is a reality, and it is a very hard, not very hard, a very sure biblical assertion that God cares about every single detail of our life.
[7:39] God cares about even the smallest matter. This is why in Scripture we are told to pray about everything and to pray without ceasing. And everything, make your requests and your supplications known unto the Lord.
[7:52] That does not mean necessarily the big things. Some of the greatest answers to prayer we will ever receive are the prayers that may not matter much to anyone else. They may seem small or even obsolete to others, but they matter in our life.
[8:06] And we make this request, and when we see God answer that request, it moves us to a greater sense of worship and appreciation for the fact that God cares about every small detail of our life.
[8:18] not only does He care about every small detail of our life, God wants every small detail of our life to be set aside for His glory. God is not in the habit of segmenting our lives.
[8:32] He's not in the habit of separating pieces and portions of our life. As a matter of fact, He wants all of us, and He wants the entire person, every decision, every action we take.
[8:45] And we see this when He begins telling the Jewish people, His people, about their walk with Him. He starts out in the small details in what they should eat.
[8:57] Now, the other chapters that follow this have more application. Some have rightly said, I believe it was Warren Wearsby who said, from birth to burial, God demanded every portion and part of His people's life.
[9:10] Because what we see in Leviticus 12 is the process of birth. And then later on, we read about the process of burying the loved ones. And from birth to burial, God's people belonged to Him, and every part of their life belonged to Him, even what they ate.
[9:26] Now, if that is true in the Old Testament, we also read in Scriptures that God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Some of you are sitting there going, Oh no, pastor's about to tell me what I can and what I can't eat.
[9:40] I'm not going to do that. But I am going to tell you, God cares about what we do and we do not eat. He does have a concern in our life.
[9:51] And He has a reasoning for that concern. I want us to see three things that would lead us to be those who sanctify even the smallest details of our life.
[10:02] Because it's not just the big things. It's not just the big areas of our life that we need to give God. We need to give Him even the smallest, most minute details of our life.
[10:12] And we need to allow Him to have control. And three things that need to happen for God to sanctify the smallest detail. And it's the same three things that needed to happen for the people of Israel to accept Leviticus 11.
[10:25] Number one, it must be a life of surrender. There must be a life of surrender. When we read Leviticus 11, immediately, now I had bacon this morning, so I'm so thankful.
[10:37] There's just nothing like bacon, right? Now every now and then we eat taken. That's that turkey bacon. We call it taken at our house. It's just a meat flavored jerky is all it is. Or a fruit roll up. It's okay.
[10:49] It's not bad. But there's nothing like pork bacon. I love me some true bacon. There's nothing like it. When I read this passage, I'm like, man, I'm so glad that I wasn't there and He told me I couldn't eat pig.
[11:00] But we read these things and am I wrong for eating pig? Or is there something wrong here? Now we don't really concern ourselves much. Not many of us are eating vultures or ravens or geckos or lizards or rats or moles or any of those things.
[11:15] We're not really concerned. But there's some things in this list that make us scratch our head. As we look at it, we're like, why in the world did God say, eat this and don't eat that? And we could really beat ourselves senseless trying to figure it out.
[11:29] Okay? There's some feasible reasonings. I mean, like why would He have them break earthenware vessels if a rat fell on it when it was dead? Well, that's because they carry diseases so it makes sense.
[11:40] I mean, these are extreme measures. Even their stove, which by the way was just a clay burning pit, if you will. It's kind of like a homemade pizza oven if you've seen those. It's a fire pit. If a rat or a mole or a gecko or a lizard or any of these swarming creatures fell on that thing, they had to smash it.
[11:56] They had to rebuild it again. So it means God setting a standard for cleanliness. We will read later on, it's amazing, the application has even to today's time, in some of the chapters that follow this, how especially when it considers leprosy, how God said you need to set them aside for seven days and after seven days re-examine them.
[12:12] If they're still there, then set them aside another seven days. We call that quarantine nowadays, right? God is the first one to tell anyone to quarantine somebody and it was always the priest who made the decision, by the way.
[12:23] They would come to the priest and the priest's like, no, you need to go off by yourself. What's amazing is that when the black plague hit the European nations, the way they stopped it is they opened up the book of Leviticus and they found out that when God told his people when there was a problem, make those people isolate themselves for a few days.
[12:38] So rather than gathering everybody together, he started separating people and all of a sudden things got in check. Now, we're not trying to make an application in today's time. I'm just saying that God was ahead of his game or ahead of our game with a lot of these laws, right?
[12:51] He had a reasoning behind some of them. But yet there are some things in here that are not necessarily just unclean. Pig, for instance, or pork. It's not necessarily an unclean animal.
[13:02] It's not carrying a lot of diseases. He told them that they couldn't eat the fish that did not have scales and fins, which would exclude catfish. You couldn't eat catfish. You couldn't eat eel. You couldn't eat shrimp.
[13:13] You couldn't eat crabs. You couldn't eat oysters. You couldn't eat lobsters. It had to have, if it came out of water, it had to have scales and fins, right? There was a very specific list there of things that it had to have.
[13:25] So there are a number of things in the waters that they could not eat. And we're looking at a life of surrender because the question was not, why is it clean? The question is, did God say it is unclean?
[13:38] What we need to notice first, it says, and then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron. And that settles the matter. It doesn't matter if we believe it to be unclean.
[13:49] It doesn't matter if we believe, now I'm talking about from a Jewish perspective at this time. It doesn't matter if it makes sense to us. The question is, did God say I should or should not do it?
[14:02] That is, what does the word of the Lord say? And if the word of God said don't eat pork, then the life of surrender does what? Does not eat pork. If the word of God says don't eat this, then the life of surrender says I won't eat that.
[14:17] Many people have rightly said that learning to be a life of surrender was learning to love the things God loved and learning to hate the things God hated. There are some things in this list, the only reason they could not eat them is because God said don't eat them.
[14:31] And that is enough. Listen, there are some things that believers are not free to do. Paul says I am free from all men but I am a bondservant of Christ. There's a way Paul could say he was free from all men that he was free from judgment of all men because he had made himself a slave of Christ.
[14:47] Though he was free to all men and free towards all men and he would not be judged by any man, no man was Paul's judge, Paul could live his life at liberty because he knew he had surrendered his life to Christ.
[14:59] And being a slave of Christ there were some things that he could no longer do simply because Christ said you're not going to do that. It is a life of surrender. It is accepting that the word of God sets very clear guidelines and sets parameters for my life on how I should and should not behave.
[15:19] And whether or not I think it's a good idea, whether or not I agree with it, whether or not I think it's right or wrong, if the word of God says that I should or the word of God says that I shouldn't, then it is up to me to surrender my life to the point that I'm going to obey the word regardless of my thought.
[15:35] And this life of surrender was one that says God said, so I will do. In the believer's life we see that even now when we open up the word of God and we see how it is that God lays for us.
[15:46] God says that we need to bless those who persecute us. I don't know if you caught that in Revelation this morning, Revelation 13 as he was speaking of the death sentence.
[15:58] He says, he who has an ear let him hear. Remember that phrase, we did not say what the spirit says to the churches but prior to that he said that believers were not to defend themselves. What he was saying there to the people was if you think you're going to cut out wicked, you're going to swing the sword within to the sword you shall die.
[16:15] He almost said, okay, the corporal punishment has a right even in the tribulation time. The saints were to suffer and the saints were to go about things in a humble way of surrender.
[16:28] And what we see in Leviticus, especially in Leviticus 11, even down to the food they ate, their life was to be one of surrender saying, yes Lord, I will let you dictate my menu.
[16:40] I will let you dictate my meal. I will walk in absolute obedience. And the determining factor was not did it taste good, did it look good, did it make sense, it was what did God say.
[16:54] And this is the life of surrender of the believer. We have these applications in the New Testament when we open up the New Testament and we have freedoms in respect to food but we also have restrictions in respect to other things.
[17:06] Not only was it a life of surrender, number two, it is a life of separation. It is a life of separation because the life that has been wholly surrendered unto the Lord will be separated from others.
[17:17] Much of what God was doing with this, now when did he give them this? Prior to their entrance into the promised land, right? He had redeemed them, they were in the wilderness. The wilderness wanderings were their place of preparation and sanctification.
[17:31] He was setting them apart. We said that it took him a moment to get them out of Egypt, took them 40 years to get Egypt out of them. But before he brought them into the promised land, now he was bringing them into the promised land and inside the promised land were all the ites, the Canaanite, the Hivite, the Jebusite, all the ites, right?
[17:48] All those nations. And if you read your Old Testament, you will see that God had pronounced judgment on the inhabitants of Canaan. And the reason God pronounced judgment on the inhabitants of Canaan was because of their wicked practices.
[18:00] So, we need to be careful and read the book of Joshua and we have the nation of Israel coming into the promised land and they're going and they're fighting the battle of Jericho and fighting the battle of Ai and they're fighting all these other battles and people are following before them and we say, man, God is a big mean God because his people are just wiping out everyone.
[18:16] No, that's not what happened. God was using the nation of Israel as his instrument of judgment for that people's sins. read all of the Old Testament and you find out that God had pronounced judgment on them because of their wickedness, because they were offering their children up in idolatrous worship, because of all their false practices and they had had the opportunity to hear the word of God.
[18:37] We need to understand that because Abram had sojourned in that land. Remember when he called Abram from the land of the Urichaldeans? It says that he went and he called upon the name of the Lord. The book of Genesis tells us that.
[18:47] He built there an altar and called upon the name of the Lord. That phrase in Genesis called upon the name of the Lord doesn't necessarily mean he offered up a prayer.
[18:58] It literally means he proclaimed what God had shown him. So Abram journeyed around this land preaching and inhabitants of this land were the same people involved in false worship.
[19:10] God was patient and he gave them the opportunity to repent. He gave them the opportunity to repent for over 400 years when the nation of Israel was in captivity in Egypt and he finally said okay that's enough your wickedness has reached its end now I will judge you and he brought the nation of Israel in as his instruments of judgment.
[19:26] This is why in my daily reading I don't know how many of you are following the same reading program I am but I'm in the book of Judges and there's this problem at the end of the book of Joshua that goes into the book of Judges where the people of God failed to push out all the inhabitants of the land and then you get to and each man did what was right in his own eyes you know why it's because they did not God's final judgment was not brought out they intermingled one thing God did to prepare his people in entering a land in which they did not belong okay in the wilderness it's okay to be faithful in wilderness let's be honest in the wilderness it's easy to be faithful when every morning you get up and God has rained down manna and there's a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day and God's manifest presence and you're in the wilderness I mean there's nobody else there right if anybody else does show up God leads you in a battle and you win that battle and you're in the wilderness and when you need water the rock is split and there's water you're there it's easy to be faithful in the wilderness of sanctification it's hard to be faithful in the midst of people who don't believe like you do so one way
[20:32] God prepared them for that was he gave them different diets why because when you lived in a land there wasn't TV and there wasn't internet and there wasn't air conditioning and all these other conveniences that we have today so mealtime was important and it was at mealtime that you sat down with one another you sat down with your neighbors you sat down with the people around you and they told you about their life and you told them about your life and they told them they told you their beliefs and you told them your beliefs and all of a sudden you had this time of discipleship this time of maturity this time of influence and it all happened around the table most of the time they ate one meal a day and that one meal was an occasion and they would come together and here is where people were influencing one another well if your diet and my diet weren't the same and if the food I ate made you unclean simply by you being in the presence of it then you would not eat with me and I would not eat with you and therefore I would not be able to influence you God was separating his people he says I don't want you even fellowshipping around the table with those who are going to influence you to ungodliness and this is an act of grace and this is an act of mercy because God was giving his people a safeguard because he knew the land that he was taking them to was a land of people who had had judgment already pronounced on them and a land of wickedness and his desire was that his people would stay separate from them in their practice that's why a lot of these laws are there but they would also be separate even in the smallest detail in what they ate and if they weren't eating the same then they could not sit down together and it was a matter of separation today we do not have the separation of food right we have the separation of other things we are to separate ourselves in what we think what we read what we see how we do we are separate in the workplace we are separate in the recreational place we are separate in our daily living but God has always called his people to live a life of complete surrender which in turn will lead to a life of separation separation does not mean isolation because you are always separated from the majority with others it's not isolation
[22:37] Proverbs 18 says as a man who isolates himself is a fool he separates us with a community and today we call that the church if we are going to live lives of complete surrender and complete sanctification to the smallest detail then we need to live lives of separation we understand now that that time is not a meal time but rather that is a lifetime we are going to live in the world but we are not going to be like the world there will be some things and it is absolutely okay we will be like the nation of Israel living in a land that was given to us but we don't fit in with the inhabitants of that land and that is absolutely right now thanks be to God we have the redeemed food laws we have the fulfillment of these and Alan Mosley who wrote a commentary on the book of Leviticus rightly says that our meal time is no longer a time of separation but rather it is a time of ministry and fellowship now our meals have been redeemed we can use them for ministry that is have people around your table you are seeking to reach out to or you are seeking to encourage and you are seeking to influence now we have the opportunity to be the influencers at our meal time and it is also a place of fellowship where we are to encourage one another but we see that we must live a life of surrender we must live a life of separation and that leads us to the third thing that really brings this chapter to a close and it is it is a life of standard these laws give us laws that the nation of Israel could follow and they would be ceremonial clean ceremonial clean as a matter of fact the nation of Israel was very stringent in their keeping of laws to the point that in the times of Christ you had the Pharisees right that would have the missional or the oral law and they had over 634 laws that would command you how to live your daily life how much you could carry on the Sabbath how far you could walk on the Sabbath what you could and could not do here and they were very concerned about being ceremonial clean because God was in their presence and this is where we have the root of that because Leviticus 11 shows us that if you eat this food and stay away from this food you could be ceremonial clean you even had to be careful how you touch the dead animal of the food you could eat did you see that if the food you could eat that was clean to you fell over and died in your presence you couldn't just touch it because it still had the blood in it you had to kill it in the right way but God was saying you'd be unclean until evening you'll be clean the next day so there's always this grace but these laws would help us to be ceremonial clean but what they did not do is allow the individual to be morally clean it is absolutely possible to be ceremonial clean and to be morally unclean because the moral comes down to a choice it comes down to a mind frame it comes down to a personal decision if you will ceremonial is going through the rules and regulations is doing all these things as Jesus says you tie the mint and you tie these things but you neglect the weightier portions of the law like to love your lord your god with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind what Jesus was saying is you are doing everything on the outside but what's going on in the inside is completely wrong you're going through the motions you look clean you're fulfilling the letter of the law but you're missing the spirit of the law and one of the things we need to understand is that over and over again in
[25:54] Leviticus 11 there is the word unclean repeated it is unclean it is unclean it is unclean it is unclean and also detestable and abhorrent and what God is saying that which is unclean is detestable or abhorrent it is just and one way which an individual could be morally unclean is to not take it but not be detested or abhorred by it that is to look at it with pleasure to look at it with something that I wish I could have today we had that same thing in matters of sin we need to be careful how we look at what God clearly calls sin and detestable and abhorrent as acceptable we need to be careful when we begin to not detesting sin but really accepting sin because some things are still abhorrent in the sight of God and it is only through a life of standard that we will detest the things that he detests and we will abhor the things that he abhors and it says in verse 43 do not render yourselves again now it comes down to the personal choice right do not render yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm that you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean he says be careful in the decisions you make because I can give you the law and I can tell you what you should and should not do but it is up to you to make that decision it is a life of standard and we need to understand the standard is this twice it is repeated in verse 44 and again in verse 45 it is a theme through the whole book of Leviticus but the life of standard says this for I am the
[27:26] Lord your God consecrate yourselves therefore that is set yourself aside set yourself apart for holy use and be holy for I am holy a life of standard says I'm going to live a life of holiness will we fail absolutely but the standard we have set for ourselves must be to be holy as he is holy and you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth and look at verse 45 it is the great theme of how we are to have this standard and we need to notice the order in which I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God first we see I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt God sets us free to be your God that is he calls you into relationship and then he extends to you an expectation right I'm the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt I'm going to be your God thus you shall be holy for I am holy this is the whole process of salvation God does not expect us to be holy until he has first redeemed us and set us free from sin and then started a relationship with us that is him being our
[28:32] God and us being his people and then there is the standard of the expectation that we must live lives of holiness I am the Lord your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God thus you shall be holy for I am holy the life that is completely surrendered and willing to live separate will always have a high standard and that standard is since he has done his work I will follow his path he has redeemed us and called us to himself and therefore because of his work I will set a standard of holiness not because of what I am not because of what I've done really the standard that is set is always a standard of response he set me free he called me to himself so now I'm going to live to a higher standard and just in case we think we can walk away from this and there is no complete application to us I read this verse to you and we'll leave it be Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 31 whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do do all to the glory of
[29:44] God the life that is sanctified to the smallest detail says whatever it is I'm doing must be done to the glory of God I don't know about you but that's a convicting verse in light of Leviticus 11 if I'm eating it's to his glory if I'm drinking it's to his glory whatever I'm doing it's to the glory of God not for the pleasure of myself or the fulfillment of my own desires it is to the glory of God it is a sanctification to the smallest detail and God sets a high standard but it's because he calls us with a high love he longs for us to walk in holiness for his glory and his honor and he longs to have every Lord we thank you so much for this day God we thank you that you called us to yourself we thank you as your word says you've set us free you've called us your people and now
[30:48] Lord we want to live according to your standard Lord just be glorified and honored thank you amen what was that hymn number miss Lynn 275 so Thank you.
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