Leviticus 17-18 - That’s Not My Design

You have returned from a long journey of one day and have returned to the land of Tabernacle Talk, and we welcome you back. Today, we're gonna be looking, Lord willing, if we have the time for it, at Leviticus 17 and 18.

And kind of the overarching thought of these two chapters are that's not how it's supposed to work.

That God designed life and sacrifices and worship and how we conduct ourselves in a certain way, and we are instructed not to go counter to God's design. God's design is good.

It's made for our benefit and our blessing and so that we can enjoy the most out of our life that God intended for us to.

But when we go around God's design, there can be serious consequences, whether things that we inflict on ourselves or perhaps even God's judgment that is brought. And so I want to take some time and we're gonna look first.

So kind of the headings in my Bible for this, for these sections of scripture are forbidden sacrifices, eating blood and carcasses prohibited and prohibited pagan practices. So we're gonna look first at the forbidden sacrifices.

Leviticus 17.1, Yahweh spoke to Moses, speak to Aaron his sons and all the Israelites and tell them, this is what Yahweh has commanded.

Anyone from the house of Israel who slaughters an ox, sheep or goat in the camp or slaughters it outside the camp, instead of bringing it to the entrance to the tent of meeting to present it as an offering to Yahweh before his tabernacle, that person

will be considered guilty. Blood will be charged against that person. He has shed blood and is to be cut off from his people. So we may go, okay, so you can't kill any ox, sheep or goat other than to sacrifice it to God?

No, and verse five tells us what was happening. This is so the Israelites will bring to Yahweh the sacrifices they have been offering in the open country.

They are to bring them to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting and offer them as fellowship sacrifices to Yahweh.

The priest will then splatter the blood on Yahweh's altar at the entrance to the tent of meeting and burn the fad as a pleasing aroma to Yahweh. They must no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat demons that they have prostituted themselves with.

This will be a permanent statute for them throughout their generations.

Say to them, anyone from the house of Israel or from the aliens who reside among them, who offers a burnt offering or a sacrifice, but does not bring it to the entrance to the tent of meeting to sacrifice it to Yahweh, that person is to be cut off

from his people. So here there was this action that was taking place that people were worshiping false gods. They were worshiping here.

They're labeled goat demons, something that would be brought up later in 2 Chronicles 11 and verse 15 where the king Jeroboam, this is one of the things that he instituted like, hey, all the nations around us are doing this type of thing and they

seem to be doing all right. And so we're going to join in because we think that these goat deities are going to help us out.

It's kind of put right next to Leviticus 16 where we talk about the either spiritual being or place Azazel yesterday and how there was a goat that was sent to him to be like, hey, you know, here's all the sins of the people you want to accuse.

Good luck trying to accuse them now. All of their guilt and sin has been taken away. And instead of sacrificing a god, these people were sacrificing to false deities.

And God goes, all right, this is not how it works. You don't worship out on your own to whoever you want, wherever you want. He says, you need to follow the plan that I have set up for you.

Today, one application would be the only acceptable sacrifice is Jesus, the only acceptable way in which to sacrifice to God is through accepting Jesus' sacrifice. All of your good works do not atone for you.

You cannot rely on your good works or your charity or your kind-heartedness towards people to gain you a relationship and restoration with God. It comes only through Jesus.

One other thing that I would say here that is not specifically mentioned in the passage, but that is often a misunderstanding is some people say, I don't need church or I don't need other people in order to worship God.

But in the New Testament, God didn't just save us from the kingdom of darkness to God himself. He moved us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son that he loves, as it says in Colossians 1, that Christ's body is the church.

And you cannot love Christ and hate his body.

Matthew 25, I talked about this a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning, Matthew 25 talks about this fact that you cannot say that you love Jesus and ignore and hate and not want anything to do with the church that he set up, that he bought with his own

blood, the people that are his brothers and sisters, the ones that are identified with him. God has said, here is where the worship of God takes place. It is with God's people and you don't get really an option on whether or not to obey that.

Obviously, here I'm talking to those that have the ability to meet with God's people. If you are invalid, you are perhaps traveling for work, something like that, that's not what I'm talking about. You got to do these things.

But if you are completely able-bodied and you are voluntarily choosing to ignore Christ's body, can I encourage you from Leviticus 17, God has a place where he has worshiped. He has a way in which he's worshiped. Follow him in that way.

Then Leviticus 17 and verse 10. So this is now going into the eating blood and carcasses that is prohibited.

He says, Anyone from the house of Israel or from the aliens who reside among them who eats any blood, I will turn against that person who eats blood and cut him off from his people.

For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the life blood that makes atonement.

Just as we would know, it's Christ's blood that makes that ultimate atonement for us. He says, This is something that's sacred. This is something that belongs to God.

This isn't something that you take on yourself to say, I'm going to do these things. It was especially in this time period, something that was pagan and pagan worship practices.

Verse 12, Therefore I say to the Israelites, None of you and no alien who resides among you may eat blood. Any Israelite or alien residing among them who hunts down a wild animal or bird that may be eaten must drain its blood and cover it with dirt.

Since the life of every creature is its blood, I have told the Israelites you are not to eat the blood of any creature because the life of every creature is its blood. Whoever eats it must be cut off.

Every person, whether the native or the resident alien who eats an animal that died a natural death or was mauled by wild beasts is to wash his clothes and bathe with water and he will remain unclean until evening. Then he will be clean.

But if he does not wash his clothes and bathe himself, he will bear his iniquity. So here, if you come across like a carcass on the road, God wanted to say you. This is abnormal.

This is not something that reflects like a good healthy eating habit.

So if you randomly come across some dead animal or something that looks like you got mauled by a bear or a lion or a wolf or something, he says, yeah, if you eat it, you are ritually ceremonially unclean. You got to bathe with water like that.

That's a nasty thing to do. And I want you to realize that. So obviously, it's here not a sin, but it's one of those effects of sin, death in the world, especially death that wasn't done to, you know, benefit a person.

It's not food that he said, OK, I'm going to kill this healthy animal and it will go to feed my family or something like that, where he says this is just random death. Happening out in out in nature.

He says, I don't want you to make a habit of eating this. And so there's now a process for when you come across wild animals that have died. OK, then Chapter 18.

And this is the prohibited pagan practices. Says this in 18 and verse 1, When Yahweh spoke to Moses, speak to the Israelites and tell them, I am Yahweh your God.

Do not follow the practices of the land of Egypt, where you used to live, or follow the practices of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. You must not follow their customs.

You are to practice my ordinances, and you are to keep my statutes by following them. I am Yahweh your God. Keep my statutes and ordinances.

A person will live if he does them. I am Yahweh. He's basically saying here, don't follow these other nations that they are worshiping, demons, false spiritual beings.

He says, the way that I'm giving to you is life. If you follow these other things, you are inviting death on yourself and on your country. And then here's how he says, you are not to be like Egypt or Canaan.

Verse 6, you are not to come near any close relative for sexual intercourse. I am Yahweh. You are not to violate the intimacy that belongs to your father and mother.

She is your mother. You must not have sexual intercourse with her. You are not to have sex with your father's wife.

She is your father's family. The most literal way of phrasing this is do not uncover your father's nakedness and your mother's nakedness. And then he says again about the mother, it is your father's nakedness that they are one.

They are together in holy matrimony that God has set up. Again this was something that was not soundly condemned in Egypt and in Canaan. And God says this is unnatural.

This is not how I designed sex and family to work. He says so do not have any relations with any of your close relatives. This specific phrase is mentioned in the story of Noah and his son Ham that Ham, it says uncovered his father's nakedness.

And as a result, at least from all the context clues that we can see, Ham had a child with Noah's wife because they had gotten drunk in the tent.

You can read about that story in Genesis and the child that came from that was the child Canaan and the ancestor of here these Canaanite peoples. And God says this is not something that should be done.

Then in verse number nine, you are not to have sexual intercourse with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's, whether born at home or born elsewhere, you are not to have sex with her.

This was something that was really deified in Egypt, that there were brother and sister gods that would get together and their offspring would create another god. And God says this is not something that gods are the greatest do.

He says this is something that goes against my design of one man, one woman together for life. Verse number 10, You are not to have sexual intercourse with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter, for they are your family.

You're not to have sexual intercourse with your father's wife's daughter who is adopted by your father. She is your sister. You are not to have sexual intercourse with your father's sister.

She is your father's close relative. You are not to have sexual intercourse with your mother's sister, for she is your mother's close relative.

You are not to violate the intimacy that belongs to your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual intercourse. She is your aunt. You are not to have sexual intercourse with your daughter-in-law.

She is your son's wife. You are not to have sex with her. This is the exact thing that happened in the Book of Genesis.

So if you look at Genesis, it's kind of like all the things of Leviticus 18, or if you look at maybe the story in 2 Samuel, I think it's 14, God's saying, hey, all of these things that have taken place, these are bad.

These are not things that you go, oh, okay, I guess this is how God wants it, since it was, since it happened in the Book of Genesis, and maybe some good things came about as a result of it. God says, no, this is not the design. This is not the plan.

Do not do this. Verse number 16. You are not to have sexual intercourse with your brother's wife.

She is your brother's family. And we would know that even Herod that interacted with, King Herod that interacted with Jesus in the Gospels, that he did this and he took his brother Philip's wife for himself. Verse 17.

You are not to have sexual intercourse with a woman and her daughter. You are not to marry her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter and have sex with her. They are close relatives.

It is depraved. You are not to marry a woman as a rival to her sister and have sexual intercourse with her during her sister's lifetime.

So God says, hey, you remember the story of Jacob and Leah and Rachel and Bill Dad and whatever the other concubine's name was. He says, yeah, don't do that. That is a bad thing to do.

What happened there was not right, was not my plan. He says, so do not mimic this.

Basically, God in this whole chapter is going, hey, everything that happened in Genesis, this is to show you that the world is messed up and not the way it was designed. And I'm going to give you explicit instruction. Do not follow their example.

There are some people that condone polygamy because of some of the accounts in Genesis or seeing the lives of David or Solomon. But the point in all of those stories is that this is sin. This is wickedness.

This is not something to be emulated in your life. This is something to avoid. Verse number 19, you are not to approach a woman during her menstrual impurity to have sexual intercourse with her.

You are not to have sexual intercourse with your neighbor's wife, defiling yourself with her, which is exactly the sin that David did and took Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. Verse 21, you are not to sacrifice any of your children in the fire to Molech.

It's a false deity. He says, do not profane the name of your God. I am Yahweh.

So here sacrificing your children in the fire to Molech was something that happened again and again and again as you read through the books of Kings and Chronicles.

It was one of the things that God said like, hey, this is now why I am sending Assyria to destroy the nation and to take away the people. Why I'm sending Babylon to destroy the nation of Judah and to take away its people.

He says because I am giving you children and you are sacrificing them to false gods, to these spiritual beings that are demonic, that want death, that want the destruction of my people.

And this was something that God said in the New Testament, the word Gehenna, sometimes translated as hell. Jesus talks about it a lot in the Gospels. It was the Valley of Hinnom, which was where one of these worship places to Molech was set up.

And God says, hey, you are giving your children over, burning them as a sacrifice, as a burnt offering to this false deity.

So God says, all right, in that valley that's outside of Jerusalem, he says, I'm going to light a fire and I'm going to put your wicked bodies. You guys are going to burn in the valley that you burned your children.

I think I might have mentioned that before in the Book of Psalms as well. So he says, do not do this. He says, this is an insult to Yahweh, your God.

He says, it is profaning my name. It's sullying my reputation if you can't see it, but I've got air quotes here, audio people. If Yahweh's people are sacrificing their children, he says, that sullies my reputation because I did not command this.

So don't do it because I am Yahweh. I am your deity, your God. Molech is not.

Verse 22, you are not to sleep with a man as with a woman. It is detestable. So here is one of God's specific commands of why we would say, okay, why can't it just be people that love each other that get married?

It's because God has set aside in His Word. That's not how I designed it. That a homosexual relationship or homosexual sexual actions are not God's design.

There is absolutely forgiveness for everyone that has ever engaged in any of that. As you can read about in, I think it's 2 Corinthians 4 or 5. It might be 1 Corinthians 4 or 5.

There is absolutely forgiveness, but it is not God's design and the child of God should not pursue that. Verse 23, you are not to have sexual intercourse with any animal defiling yourself with it.

A woman is not to present herself to an animal to meet with it. It is a perversion. That bestiality is soundly condemned in Scripture.

This was something that was very common in the ancient world and even in some places in the world today.

It's so commonplace that it's often a joke that you could see referenced perhaps in racial insults or in maybe situational comedies where they'll mention a specific group as partaking in this type of thing.

And God's people are not to be associated with that in any way.

God's design, if you look at Genesis 2, that as Adam saw all of these animals, it says that there wasn't found one to be with him until God made Eve, and that was his partner, not any of the animals. And so God says, do not partake in any bestiality.

It is a perversion. Verse number 24, Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices. For the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves by all these things.

The land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its iniquity, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants. But you are to keep my statutes and my ordinances.

You must not commit any of these detestable acts, not the native or the alien who resides among you. For all the people who were in the land prior to you have committed all these detestable acts. And the land has become defiled.

If you defile the land, it will vomit you out, as it has vomited out the nations that were before you. Any person who does any of these detestable practices is to be cut off from his people.

You must keep my instruction to not do any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you, so that you do not defile yourselves by them. I am Yahweh, your God. So here we have God's design.

He has God's design for worship. He has God's design for sacrifice, for even what you eat and the way in which you do it, your reverence for even animal life.

And he says, then your reverence in how you worship God, how you behave sexually from this passage is a way in which you worship God.

Are you worshiping God in the way that he wants to be worshiped through purity, through holiness, that it's just one man and one woman together for life?

Not in any of these ways that are perversions that cause strife, as you would read so much about in Genesis, or these things that though our world embraces some of them and says, it's okay, love is love, everything is fine.

God says, it's not the way I designed it. And because I designed it, I'm the one that gets to say what happens. Today, maybe you have failed sexual in your past.

Can I encourage you? There is forgiveness with Christ. That day of atonement, that happened 2,000 years ago on Calvary, and Christ completely paid for your sin.

You do not have to be enslaved to it anymore. And God wants your consecration, your whole set apart, your whole soul set apart for Him. I encourage you, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which belong to God.

Again, thanks for tuning in. As we go through Leviticus, we'll continue to see some ways in which God says, yeah, other people might act in this way. Other people might think that these things are okay.

Egypt thinks this is okay. Canaan thinks this is okay. America thinks this is okay.

But you are my people, and you are called to something different. Will you be different? Set apart holy for God.

Thanks for tuning in, and tomorrow we'll look at the heading on the Bible.

I didn't get to read a bunch of the passage, but it said laws concerning holiness and some more ways in which we can reflect God's nature and how He designed our world to work. Thanks for tuning in.