I have had quite a few revelations while I was gone for a week. first and for most, following God is a call to live 100% pure. Not living in sin. But thats another sermon. What I want to focus on here, is the Old Testament. And all those strange laws. I will say again, especially to those who claim to follow Christ. Not one part of the Bible can be thrown out. None of it. This means the Old Testament. Now, I thought I did a decent job explaining all this before, not just once. But twice. And still people haven’t got it yet. Mark 7:6-7 says it best:
You hypocrites! Isaiah was prophesying about you when he said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. Their worship is a farce, for they replace God’s commands with their own man-made teachings.
These are the words of Christ. We do not get to throw out, or change, or “reinterpret” to match society, for if we do this. That means the Word of God is not True. Because Truth doesn’t change. Its either all true or none of it is. We as followers of Christ don’t get to change His word. Who are we to do so? To change His Word is basically saying we know better than God. Now do you understand why I keep reiterating that we don’t get to change Scripture?
Now onto the actual sermon.
If you read Leviticus, and I recommend everyone who claims to follow Christ to read it. You will see a lot of laws that seem pointless. So I ask you, instead of just reading what it says, look into the reason behind the laws. As an example, all the clean and unclean or purity laws. If you look into the animals that the Israelite’s were told they could and couldn’t eat, you will see a common underlying theme. They could only eat animals that had nothing to do with death. Death and God do not go together. God is the God of life, therefore something representing death cannot be in His presence. This is the underlying theme of the purity laws. Read them for yourself and you will see it. Their is even a whole chapter in Leviticus on skin care, and again it boils (no pun intended) down to that flaky skin, well its dead skin. Death. The entire point of these laws, were not what the laws literally said, for Christ himself says that. And I will get to that later. The entire point, was to show the people of Israel that they had to live in purity, they could not live in anything that did not come from God. For death is not good, therefore it did not come from God. God showed the people of Israel how much they needed Him, through the Law. The Law points to Christ. That is the basic point of the Law. To point us to Him. Its not about what we can and cannot do, its not just a list of rules and regulations. Its a call to live pure lives.
You are not defiled by what you eat; you are defiled by what you say and do!
Don’t you understand it either? He asked. Can’t you see that what you eat won’t defile you? Food doesn’t come in contact with the heart, but only the stomach and then comes out again. And then He added, It is the thought-life that defiles you. For from within, out of a persons heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, eagerness for lustful pleasure, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you and make you unacceptable to God.
So, the point of these laws were not to tell them what they could and could not eat. It had nothing to do with it. It had nothing to do with how pure you were compared to your neighbor. The whole point was that we are not to surround ourselves with evil things. Its a call to live for God in all we do. And this messages perfectly matches my next sermon on living in purity.
Comments by Rukh Whitefang