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EVERYDAY HOLINESS EVERY DAY!
PART II
As noted in last weeks lesson, Leviticus 19
appears to be one long list of laws selected at random. As such, it
tells us that holiness is not attained by living in solitude. It is attained
by the spirit in which we meet the demands and obligations of life in its everyday
details. If it is packed with varied examples, and it is, it simply because
the days of our lives are filled with a variety of circumstances and opportunities
to display God's character to the watching world.
Despite the varied laws within the chapter it
is organized in a logical manner. It contains sixteen (16) paragraphs with
the words "I am the Lord (your God)" marking the end of each one. The
first eight paragraphs can be summarized as follows:
Paragraph # 1: No one is exempt from holiness!
Paragraph # 2: Holiness begins in the home. Children are obey their
parents, parents are to lean upon God and find their rest in Him.
Paragraph # 3: We are not to turn to the "weak" things in this world
for help.
Paragraph # 4: To offer the peace offering was to claim that we were
indeed at peace with God. If this claim doesn't reflect itself in making
provision for the poor among us, it is all for naught. We may as well
stop reading for our claim is hollow and our gratitude is superficial - we
shouldn't try to export what we don't possess ourselves!
Paragraph # 5: Between equals we are to show ourselves to be a good neighbor
by not stealing, lying, or deceiving one another.
Paragraph # 6: We are not to exploit those who don't have the means,
or know how, of seeking redress against a wrong.
Paragraph # 7: Should we find ourselves in court we are not to pervert
justice by letting our biases govern our words and actions.
Paragraph # 8: As far as it is within our ability we are to stay out
of court by keeping short accounts with others. Instead of bearing a
grudge and finding ways to get even with someone we are to love our neighbor
as we love ourselves.1
Admittedly some of the regulations aren't applicable
today in the same sense as they were to the nation of Israel. But all
of them reveal something of God's heart and can be adapted to our lives today. For
example, the law required Israelites to let the poor glean the leftovers and
what was left behind in their fields. Today, in our industrialized/service-oriented
society it means the same thing. The poor, the aliens among us, ought
to be allowed to take the jobs that are left after most of us apply ourselves
to what we really want to do for a living.2
We now turn to the remaining eight paragraphs
in vv. 19 - 37. We read:
"You must obey all my laws. "Do not
breed your cattle with other kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with
two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of fabric.
"If a man has sexual intercourse with a
slave girl who is committed to become someone else's wife, compensation must
be paid. But since she had not been freed at the time, the couple will not
be put to death. 21 The man, however, must bring a ram as a guilt offering
and present it to the LORD at the entrance of the Tabernacle. 22 The
priest will then make atonement for him before the LORD with the sacrificial
ram of the guilt offering, and the man will be forgiven.
"When you enter the land and plant fruit
trees, leave the fruit unharvested for the first three years and consider it
forbidden. 24 In the fourth year the entire crop will be devoted to the
LORD as an outburst of praise. 25 Finally, in the fifth year you may
eat the fruit. In this way, its yield will be increased. I, the LORD, am your
God.
"Never eat meat that has not been drained
of its blood. "Do not practice fortune-telling or witchcraft.
"Do not trim off the hair on your temples
or clip the edges of your beards.
"Never cut your bodies in mourning for
the dead or mark your skin with tattoos, for I am the LORD.
"Do not defile your daughter by making
her a prostitute, or the land will be filled with promiscuity and detestable
wickedness.
"Keep my Sabbath days of rest and show
reverence toward my sanctuary, for I am the LORD.
"Do not rely on mediums and psychics, for
you will be defiled by them. I, the LORD, am your God.
"Show your fear of God by standing up in
the presence of elderly people and showing respect for the aged. I am the LORD.
"Do not exploit the foreigners who live
in your land. 34 They should be treated like everyone else, and you must
love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners in the
land of Egypt. I, the LORD, am your God.
"Do not use dishonest standards when measuring
length, weight, or volume. 36 Your scales and weights must be accurate.
Your containers for measuring dry goods or liquids must be accurate. I, the
LORD, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
You must be careful to obey all of my laws and
regulations, for I am the LORD."
The first law told us no one was exempt. Laws
two through four have to do with our relationship with God, laws five through
eight have to do with our relationship with our neighbor, while laws nine through
fifteen have to do with our relationship with the world.
These laws tell us that holiness means we are
to be different from the world. This doesn't mean we are to be weird,
but we are to be different in the sense that we make appropriate decisions
on how to behave in the world in which we find ourselves. The final law,
v. 37, tells us no law is to be struck down as being out-of-date.
At the very foundation of these remaining laws
in Leviticus 19 is the belief that God created all things and in doing so he
separated the light from darkness, the dry land from the sea. In the
same dramatic fashion he separated Israel from Egypt. As such they had
an obligation to maintain their spiritual, moral, and social distinctiveness. In
practice, this meant not getting mixed up with the world!
In Israel this meant not taking your slave girl,
who may very well have been a foreigner, and who was undoubtedly seen as personal
property, to bed. The world, of course, wouldn't even classify this as
a misdemeanor. But God saw it differently and demanded that compensation
be made for damaged goods.
It meant not buying into the world's notion
that first fruits always meant first fruits regardless of the fact that for
the first three years it wasn't the best the fruit tree had to offer. In
other words, Israel was to obey the spirit of the law and not simply the letter
of the law.
It meant not behaving at funerals (see vv. 26
- 28) the way the world tends to behave at funerals. Let me explain by
sharing a recent e-mail from Joey and Brook Tartaglia in Papua New Guinea. It
was entitled "First to Heaven." It read, in part,:
Never has a funeral been such a joy to us! The
first Mibu believer has died and gone ahead of us to heaven! He was actually
from the village of Tereknan, where Bible teaching is going to begin in early
June. However, he faithfully made the weekly journey to Mibu for the
five months that the Good News was being taught, and became a believer less
than three months ago.
Joey attended the funeral in Tereknan, where
he saw a very definite difference among the attending believers and non-believers. Traditionally,
funerals are a desperate, hopeless affair, involving tearing down doors or
whole houses, long loud yelling and weeping, and beating on walls and occasionally
on other people in despair.
At first, many believers were concerned that
even though this man was a believer, God may still "have it in for him" because
he hadn't attended the last few meetings. They also wondered if maybe
his death was a punishment for some sin of his. However, the more they
talked and thought back to what they have been taught - they were able to see
that all death is because of the first sin, and God just chose to take this
man home now as opposed to later. Joey and Geoff had opportunities to
talk with people and remind them of how God looks at his own - that God loves
this man as his own child and is NOT waiting to dish out punishment, but waiting
with open arms to receive him.
This spurred on a wonderful discussion during
the hike to and from the funeral of what we know of heaven, and how wonderful
that it is. That this man no longer has problems, or sicknesses, or hunger
or pain! When they arrived at the funeral, the Mibu believers cried for
the loss of a friend (in some cases, relative), but without the hopelessness. As
they watched the people in Tereknan mourning heavily, including the man's unsaved
wife and young child, their consensus was that "They just haven't heard
God's talk yet. Soon, they will hear and understand."
Wow! It's not that mourning for the loss
of a family member or friend is discouraged, it's that the custom of
physical disfigurement that no longer applies to the believers in Papua New
Guinea. Then too, when God is silent mourners are not to turn to divination
to contact the dead (see v. 31) or to have their unseen future revealed to
them. They are to walk by faith in God's Word.
But at the tail end of this paragraph which
has to do with pagan mourning rites we are told not to get a tattoo! In
context, this disfigurement may very well have been part of a cultic activity
surrounding the dead. Meaning, that perhaps some got a tattoo of a pagan
deity in remembrance of a loved one. Or, it may be an addendum reminding
the Israelites not to disfigure the divine likeness implanted in them by scarring
their body with secular tattoos.
If the latter, it is a timely reminder to us. For "body
art" is no longer the domain of bikers, sailors, and parolees. In
fact, a 2003 online survey by Harris Interactive found that 16% of all U.S.
adults have at least one tattoo.
For Kathryn it happened on a typical family
vacation in Honolulu. She and two female companions visited many of the
usual attractions: Waikiki Beach, Pearl Harbor, & Diamond Head. Then
as they passed a tattoo parlor they decided to walk in and just look, several
hours later they walked out with a tattoo. In Kathryn's case, it was
a small rose on her right ankle, to symbolize her hometown of Portland, Oregon.
In today's culture, what used to be seen as "graffiti" is
now seen as "body art." This became very clear to me when I
asked my students at CHS to do me a personal favor by filling out the following
survey:
NO-NAME TATTOO SURVEY
1. Do you have a tattoo? YES or NO If so, what prompted
you to get a tattoo?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
2. If not, would you consider getting one in the future? Why or
why not?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
3. How would having a tattoo affect one's future?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________.
Most didn't have a tattoo, but at least half
of them were looking forward to the day they could afford to get one because
it would make them look "cool." They simply saw it as one more form
of self-expression; like wearing jewelry. Not a single participant saw
it as an act of defacing what God had created for his own glory.
Of course, you can argue that no one would expect
a high school kid to see getting a tattoo as an act of defacement. But
what about Kathryn? How old do you think she was when she, along with
her two female companions, got a tattoo? Well, at the time of her vacation
in Hawaii she was seventy-five years old! As you can see, the world has
done a good job of convincing us that it's not "graffiti" it's "body
art." But God, I suspect, sees it as "graffiti" on something
he has created for himself.3
In addition to not mutilating their bodies as
the pagans do, Israel was not to give their daughters over to prostitution
in the name of religion. Granted, v. 29, could be taken as a warning
not to push or sell daughters into prostitution. But in light of the
entire paragraph, vv. 29 & 30, I believe they are being told to avoid becoming
involved with any so-called worship service that involves temple-prostitutes. For
cult-prostitution profanes the girl; it makes her unholy and fills the land
with wickedness.
In contrast to what others do, we are to honor
God by finding our rest in him and by having respect for God's sanctuary. In
practice, this means our worship ought to be demonstrated in our respect for
others who are created in the image of God.
Finally, were to have respect for the elderly,
and to treat foreigners as our own. For these two groups, other than
children, are two of the most vulnerable in our society.
1 I concluded last weeks lesson with a quote I heard on
a show on PBS. The name of the show was My Family. A teenage boy
was talking to his dad about his girlfriend. The boy said, "I never
thought I could love another person as much as I love me!" Wow!
When I heard this I realized that by his mighty power God has given us the
ability to love others as much as we love ourselves.
2 If today's farmer left his gleanings for the poor this
would not be of much help to them. It wouldn't help because the majority
of the poor live where we live - in the city. So here is a regulation
where we need to understand the heart of God and apply it to our culture. Granted
not all of us are doing what we really want to do in life, but we have a better
chance of obtaining the job we desire than those who don't understand our language
or our culture. Hence, they get the leftover jobs.
3 In I Corinthians 6:20 Paul reminded his readers that God
redeemed them at a high cost to himself. In light of what God had done
he challenged them to honor God with their bodies.LEVITICUS - GOD'S GUIDEBOOK
TO WORSHIP 5/28/06 1
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