The Warning of Death | Austin Loke | Leviticus 20:1–27:

Let's open up to Lividicus chapter 20. We have a we have a sobering message today, my friends. So please open up your bibles follow along. I'm gonna read the entire chapter from verse 1 to verse 27. Let's read together. Lividicus chapter 20 starting from verse 1. The Lord spoke to Moses saying "Speak to the people of Israel." "Anyone of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Molech, shall surely be put to death." "The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech. "To make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name, and if the people of the land "do it all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech and "do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people." "Him and all who follow him in hauring after Molech." "If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, hauring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people." "Consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them. "I am the Lord who sanctifies you. For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. "He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood is upon him." "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both adulterer and adulterer shall surely be put to death. "If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them shall surely be put to death. "Their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death. "They have committed perversion, their blood is upon them. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an "abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If a man takes a woman and her mother also, "it is depravity. He and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you. "If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death and you shall kill the animal. "If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal. "They shall surely be put to death. "If a man takes his sister a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother and sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, "it is a disgrace and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. "He has uncovered his sister's nakedness and he shall bear his iniquity. "If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period and uncovers her nakedness, "he has made naked her fountain and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from among their people. "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister or your father's sister. "For that is to make naked ones relative. They shall bear their iniquity. "If a man lies with his uncle's wife, he has uncovered his uncle's nakedness. "They shall bear their sin. They shall die, die, childless. "If a man takes his brother's wife, it is impurity. "He has uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be childless. "You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them. "That the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out "and you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you "for they did all these things and therefore I detested them. "But I have said to you, 'You shall inherit the land and I will give it to you to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. "I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the people. "You shall therefore separate the clean beasts from the unclean, the unclean bird from the clean. "You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything "with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. "You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord and holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine. "A man or woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. "They shall be stoned with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. "This is the holy and authoritative word of God, let us pray. "O Lord God, this is a sobering word that you have given to us this morning. "It is a sobering word, and Lord, I pray that you would help us to heed the warnings in this passage, "to hear the cry of your heart for us to not go down these parts. "O Lord, more than that, more than just heeding the warnings, I pray. "We pray, Lord, that we will see the horror of a life that has forsaken you. "There's forsaken the ways that you have given us to live. "We pray that you would help us see vividly the horror of a life. "There's a band in your ways so that we may run to you, that we may choose life, "that we may come to you and live in the ways that are pleasing to you, because it is a blessing for us. "In Christ's name, we pray that we may see these things." Amen. Amen. 1st of March, 1st of March, 2006, was a big day for public health in Australia. 1st of March, 2006 was a big day for public health in Australia. From this day, if you were to purchase a pack of cigarettes from the grosses, your experience of purchasing a pack of cigarettes would never be the same from the 1st of March, 2006 onwards. From the 1st of March, 2006, the government introduced packaging on cigarettes where 30% of the pack of cigarettes and 90% of the packaging on the front of a pack of cigarettes will, from that moment onwards, be covered in a ghastly, graphic warning about the risks of smoking. So the first thing that you now saw when you went in and you received your pack of cigarettes from the cashier will be perhaps the words in capital letters across the top of your cigarette packet, smoking causes throat cancer, smoking causes throat cancer, and you would see a graphic picture of a man's neck with a hole in it. Or perhaps when you receive your pack of cigarettes, you would see, again, in capital letters on the top of that, smoking causes lung cancer. And you would see the confronting image of the now famous picture of Brian. But rather not the picture of Brian, but the picture of the corpse of Brian, where he is seen to be gaunt and lost all his hair, perhaps from the chemotherapy and dead. And a smaller picture on the side of Brian embedded days before, where he was alive, and a small caption underneath simply saying, Brian died, aged 34. Or perhaps the image that you may see when you receive your pack of cigarettes was the one that grossed me out most when I was looking through these different pictures. You would see the words, smoking causes peripheral vascular disease. And you would see the picture of a deformed foot on the packet of your cigarettes, raw with wounds, with pus, with black toenails, with toenails falling off. And if you can look closely, you'll perhaps see one of the toes completely blackened and pretty much on the verge of falling off the foot. And the caption, just in case you hadn't figured it out at the bottom would simply be gangrene. You know, Australia was the seventh country that implemented these graphic warnings on cigarette packaging. But just imagine for a moment, it's 2006. And you are a foreign traveler coming to visit Australia. You can't read English, you don't really know much about tobacco, you don't know about the health risks around tobacco. And you definitely didn't come from one of the six other countries that had already implemented these graphic warnings on cigarette packages. You would be forgiven to think, what is wrong with this country? What is wrong with this country? You go to the counter at every supermarket, at every service station, at every corner store, and you would see pictures of removed organs. You see pictures of corpses. You see pictures of tumors. You see pictures of gangrenous feet, feet. You'd be forgiven to think, this country, it's so morbid. This country is obsessed with death. But you know, as we know, that's far from the case. If you look through, if you understand the context of why these pictures started to appear in supermarkets and grocery stores, and at service stations, you understand that this country was not a country that was obsessed morbidly with death rather as the very public policy statement that came out with this new initiative, you would understand that these warnings were a system of warnings to encourage the cessation of smoking and to discourage its uptake or relapse. Yes, yes, if you came into this country, the face of the campaign will be death and disease. That is the front image, that is the face of the campaign, but the hot, the underlying intention behind this public policy campaign was to preserve public health and to save life. That was the underlying hot, that was the underlying intention for this public policy initiative. And likewise for today's passage. You know, even as I was reading this passage, just cursory reading of the passage, you might have been thinking to yourself, wow, this is a morbid passage. Ten mentions of putting to death, two stonings, one burning with fire, and you have a God who sets his face against the man who commits these transgressions. You have a God who cuts off people from amongst his people. You have a God who says you would be childless if you transgress these laws. You know, it'd be easy to think from a cursory reading of this passage that we have a God, that this God is just intent on distinguishing out disease, death, and destruction. It's easy to think that from a cursory reading of today's passage, but far from it. Yes, the face of the campaign in this passage, the face of this passage is death. But I pray my friends that we would see through this passage, they would see through this passage that God paints to us this ugly morbid picture, not because he wishes to dish that out on us. But by contrast, he wants to give us a glimpse of the dangers, of the warnings, of the risks if we go down this path. I pray that you would see beyond and through this passage, the heart and the intention of God in this passage. You know, remember back in the days, and maybe for the younger ones of you in our midst, the days before digital photos, the days before when you would have to take out this cylinder from your camera of film, and you would have to take it to. I was asking Ivy, I think it was called a Photoshop. You would have to take it to a Photoshop, right? To get it developed. Do you remember those days? For those of you young enough, those days did exist. You couldn't preview the photos on your phone. You couldn't send them on WhatsApp to your family. You had to get them printed at the Photoshop. And I remember when you get these photos back from the Photoshop, you were excited because you didn't know what these photos looked like, right? You could be an awful photo and you get a print and you're like, "Oh, who took that one, right?" And I remember my sister and I when we were younger, you remember this kind of paper kind of pouch that would give you all these printout of photos from. And my sister and I would go through these. We were so excited to look at the family photos. But you know, at the front of the pouch, there was always this smaller pouch and they'll put all the photo negatives or the film. Do you guys remember? Put the film at the front. And my sister and I would take out the photo negatives and we'll laugh at them because the photos will be so weird. They'll be so absurd. They'll be so in one sense twisted, right? When you look at these pictures, when you look at these photo negatives and you look at the actual photo and you realize that they didn't look like the photo negatives. In the Vitticus 20, I want to say, we are looking at the photo negative. We are looking at the photo negative. Nigel, if you want to show the photo negative, this is what a photo negative looks like. I mean, look at it, it looks flip-sided. It's ugly. It looks sinister. It looks twisted. It doesn't represent what God desires for us. But this is the warning today's passage. It is a photo negative. It shows us what God desires, not for us. He's warning us against this. But I also want us to look through the photo negative. If you look through it and you re-invert the picture, you will see the heart of God in this passage, right? And if you put up the photo positive, this is actually what the photo looks like. I want you to see the heart of God that is hard for us in this passage, is to give us life, is to give us blessing, is for us to flourish. I want us to see the true color of today's passage. What God genuinely desires and yearns for his people. I want us to, in one sense, Nigel, you can take it down. I want us to clearly see both the photo negative of today's passage and the photo positive. I want us to see clearly both the dire warnings from this passage. But I also want us to be able to re-invert so we can see the true colors of God's heart towards us. And in order to do this, I have three points for today's message. Point number one, I want us to understand the paradigm of death. I want us to understand the paradigm of death. Secondly, I want us to understand the parameters of holiness, the parameters of holiness, and the third point, I want us to see the promise of life in this passage. The paradigm of death, the permits of holiness, the promise of life. But if there is one thing, and let me use photographic language again, if there's one thing that I want, imprinted upon your hearts this morning, is this, forsaking your relationship with God, or rejecting the designs of God, invite death into your life. Let's start with point number one, the paradigm of death. Do you know what a paradigm is? A paradigm is a model. It's archetype. It is the standard. It is the template. It is the epitome of a concept. In other words, a paradigm captures all the essential components of a given concept. It's able, through its very elements, to describe and to explain a given concept. And therefore I've named verses one to five the paradigm of death. Why have I named such? Because in these verses, in verses one to five, it gives you the very paradigm. It gives you the epitome. It gives you the model that explains the worst case scenario. It gives you the essential factors that explains how life decays into death, how life decays into death and destruction. And in order to do so, let me take you on a hypothetical journey. Let me take you on a journey. And I want you to imagine, just imagine. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has come out of excess and is living through the times of liver disease. I want you to imagine for a moment that your parents were slaves in Egypt back in the day. I want you to imagine that your parents told you stories about the mighty hand of God. I want you to imagine that your parents told you about the 10 plagues of Egypt. They were there. They saw it. I want you to imagine that they told you stories. They recounted to you how they feared for your very own life 'cause you were the first born son in the family. How they feared for your life, but they obeyed. They took the blood of the lamb and they painted it on the doorpost of their house. I want you to imagine that your parents carried you in their very own arms over dry ground through the red sea. I mean, I want you to imagine that you yourself when you were young, you saw the pillar of cloud by day. You saw the pillar of fire by night. You tasted the heavenly manner. You were refreshed by the waters that came from the rock. You saw when the mountains shook. You saw when Moses went up to receive the law. You even saw when the glory of the law came down into the tabernacle and you saw fire come down from heaven to consume that very first burnt offering that we covered at the beginning of Leviticus. I want you to imagine that this is your story. How does this story go all wrong? Well, I want you to also imagine that as part of the earlier generation, you are part of the people who enter into the land. As part of the younger generation, you are the ones who enter the land. And so you enter the land and you decide that you, with your possession of land, that you will become a farmer. And things will go well for you for a few number of years. But then after a few years, the hard years began to hit. And you started to see crop failure, after crop failure, after crop failure. And you started to get desperate. You started to get desperate. And so you talk to your cane and night neighbor. And you're sharing your woes with them. And your cane and night neighbor says to you, hey, maybe you should go talk to that fortune teller. Just down the road. Go maybe speak to that fortune teller down the road. And so you go and you speak to the fortune teller. You're sharing your burdens with this fortune teller. And you're crying out, how long? How long are these crop failures going to last? And the fortune teller turns and says, to you. Well, you know what, you know the piece of land that you've possessed. Ancient tradition tells us that piece of land that you possess actually belongs to the Ammonite God Mollek, to the Ammonite God Mollek, and then he suggests to you, "If you want these crop failures to stop, I suggest you make an offering." Make an offering to this foreign God Mollek, but make sure, and he says this to you quietly, "Make sure it's a appropriate offering. It's a costly offering." You know what I mean? Make it a costly offering, and see you go home to your wife, and you're in two minds about this, and you're thinking about, "What should I do?" But your wife's begging you. You've got to do something. Look at the children, they're famished. And so you look at your children, and you look at your youngest child, and you see how weak your youngest child already is, and then you decide that you're going to do the unthinkable. You take your youngest child, and according to the custom of the land, you offer, you sacrifice your youngest child to the foreign God Mollek, in the hopes that this will change your fortune. Yes, this is a hypothetical story. This story, actually, these stories actually did happen in Israel. This, my friends, versus one to five, gives us a picture. It gives us a vivid graphic depiction of how it all unravels. How life turns into death. This is the paradigm of death. And let me tell you exactly why this is the paradigm. It's a paradigm because it captures all the essential elements to explain how life turns into death. What are the essential elements? Write these three things down. If you're writing notes, jot these three things down. Number one, it begins with forsaking your relationship with God. That's the first essential element of this paradigm. This man, he turns. He turns from his relationship with God. He turns from the covenant Lord. He turns for the one who fed him manner in the wilderness. He turns from the one who quenched his thirst from the rock. He turns for the one who attuned for his sin, all of his sin, every year on the day of atonement. He turns, and he puts his trust. He puts his hope, and he gives his loyalty to this foreign God Mollek. This is the first essential element of the paradigm of death. The second essential element is rejecting God's designs. This man not only rejects God, but he rejects God's designs for life. This man in utter violence violates God's design. God's designed for family and specifically God's design for the parent-child relationship. He violates God's design for life. You know a child. A child looks to a parent. It depends upon a parent, for nurture, for care, for comfort, for safety, for security. But what this man does is he inverts it. He inverts it. He does not provide that. He violates God's design. And instead of sacrificial love that he should be showing to his child, what does he do? Out of selfishness and faithless ambition. And in the utter irony of what he then does, he offers up the blessing of a child to a foreign God. Can you see how this whole picture has been inverted? It's upside down. It is upside down. And you know, I read about sacrifices to Mollek. And I wish I didn't this week. Because what they would do back in ancient times is they would have a huge statue of this so-called God Mollek. And they would have these huge hands, right? Huge metal hands, right? And under these huge metal hands would be a huge fire pit. And parents would put their children into the burning hot hands of this foreign God. So much so that the child would wriggle around and pain and eventually fall into the fire pit. That's what happened. That's what child sacrifice to Mollek does. Can you see this is an utter inversion? It's an upside down picture of what life should be. And so this man number one, he foresakes his relationship with God. And number two, he rejects God's design for life and for family and specifically the parent child relationship. And therefore, this is the third element. He opens the door. This is what he's effectively done. He's opened the door for the inevitable effect, the inevitable outcome, the inevitable consequence or the results of his actions, which is judgment which should come through God's community. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. In other words, he has opened the door to death to himself and to his family. He has foresaken his relationship with God. He has rejected God's design and therefore death enters into his life. But this is an extreme example. Remember, this is a paradigm. So the Lord actually accounts for the social reality that he might have had a contagious effect on the people around him, right? He may have influenced his family members, his friends, his community, right? He might have convinced his friends and his family and his community, perhaps not to condone what he's done, but at the very least not to condemn what he's done, to turn a blind eye to it, but the door has already been open and that's why the Lord affirms in verse 5, "I myself will set my face against that man and against this clan and will cut them off from among their people him and all who follow him in hauring after Mollek." The door has been open. It cannot be reversed. There is no escape from this inevitable consequences. He has turned away from his relationship with God. He has rejected God's design and an inevitable result that is that he has opened the door to death in his life. Roman 623, "For the wages of sin is death." The wages of sin is death. These are the three elements that capture the paradigm of death. For saking our relationship with God, number two, rejecting the designs of God and number three, inviting, therefore inviting death into our lives. What's the lesson for us? There's a few lessons that I want to draw from this paradigm of death. Just in five verses, we are given such a powerful paradigm of how we could allow death into our lives. The first lesson that I hope you see is that this paradigm is a clear echo of Eden. Firstly, he allows other voices into his life. Other people to speak into his life authoritatively, apart from God's voice. He begins to doubt the goodness of God. He begins to doubt the reliability of God. He begins to doubt the trustworthy of God. You know what's swirling through his mind at this time? He's actually thinking to himself, "Did God actually say?" Which results ultimately in his rejection of God's design for life, which is exactly what Adam and Eve did. They took from the fruit that they ought not to have eaten. The second thing that I hope that you see is rejecting or forsaking your relationship with God is always connected ultimately with rejecting his design for life. The two are effectively two sides of the same coin. Rejecting relationship with God inevitably results in rejecting his way for us to live our lives. Also, the flip side is true. Vice versa, right? If you reject God's designs for life, you are functionally rejecting relationship with God. The two are two sides of the same coin. You can't say to God, "Oh, thank you God. Thank you God for life and my breath and for forgiveness and for salvation." But you know what all the things that you say about how I should live my life yet? No, no, thank you. You cannot do that. The two always go hand in hand. The third thing I hope you see is the deceitfulness of sin in this paradigm of death. There is a deceitfulness of sin. I tell you what this man was thinking. I tell you what this man was thinking throughout this whole process. He's thinking to yourself, "I can manage the situation. I can manage the situation. I can manage the consequences of this situation. Don't worry, honey. Don't worry. I've got to under control, you know? It starts just so innocuously, doesn't it? It starts so innocuously. Hey, sweetie. I'm just popping out for a second. I'm just going to go speak to Hany the Canaanite. Just hang out with Hany the Canaanite for a little bit. Hey, sweetie, I'm just popping out for a moment. I'm just popping out. I'm just going to go see the fortune teller down the road. Just, you know, no worries. I can manage it. It's all under control. I'm just going to take our youngest child out. I'm just going to sacrifice him to Molly. You know, it just goes down this path. Sin is deceitful. Sin is deceitful. And all the while, the lie of the serpent is swirling in this man's mind. You will not surely die. Don't worry. You You got this bro, you got this! He's convinced. He can manage his sin. He can manage the consequences until it's too late, until it's too far gone. The fourth thing that I hope you see from this paradigm of death is the communal responsibility to address sin. You know, we live in an age where we privatize sin so much. Privatize sin so much. You know, what goes on in another person's bedroom? None of my business. None of my business. We have a private view of sin. This is not what the text tells us, right? There was a community responsibility in this, right? There was a community responsibility where there is a corporate responsibility. We are to confront boldly. We are to act justly. We are to speak winsomely when we see sin, particularly in a church community. sin is never private. We've got to start thinking about sin like COVID-19. It is contagious. It has an outward effect. Yes, in the new covenant, right? We don't cast stones anymore. That's not our responsibility, but our responsibility remains. We must bring correction where we see sin. There is a corporate responsibility to that. What does James chapter 5 verse 19 to 20 say, "My brothers, if anyone wanders among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins." Yes, we are our brothers' keeper. In this paradigm, we should see that there is a corporate responsibility amongst us to watch one another's lives. Lastly, let me say this. You might think to yourself, "Wow, this is such an extreme example, Austin. Such a treacherous turning, such a barbaric example that you started us off with. Child sacrifice." This is not relevant. Come on, Austin. We are paralyzed. We are progressive society. This is beyond us. We have progressed beyond that. But let me tell you, this is us. This is us. This is 21st century Western culture. This is not just an isolated incident that happens in backwater, ancient Israel. We are a culture that has wholesale, rejected relationship with God that has wholesale, rejected even acknowledgement of God. And let me add this, we are a culture that has wholesale embraced child sacrifice. Not to Mollek, but to the God of convenience, the God of personal choice and personal freedom. You know, I saw estimates this week that 80,000 to 100,000 babies are aborted every single year in Australia. That's 10-hour, the 10 babies, every hour of every day of every week in a year. Estimates are that between one in four and one in three women in Australia have had abortions. And to add on top of that, every year there are 12,000 discarded frozen IVF embryos every year discarded for the sake of personal choice and lifestyle. Friends, this is the cultural water that we swim in. We haven't moved on. We haven't progressed. We've just made it more clinical. So that's the paradigm of my friends. The paradigm of death. This is the photonegative. It is sobering. It is morbid in one sense. It is a graphic warning. And I hope that you see through it. This is a divine warning. This is the Lord shouting out to us, I don't want this for you. I don't want this for you. But also point number two, the perimeter of holiness. You know, we've been talking about parameters. We've been talking about boundaries for several weeks now. Brandon started talking about boundaries two weeks ago. Boundaries that give us life last week. I talked about boundaries. And this is the same idea. There are parameters that God has established for us for which we must not cross in this section. Notice the first and the last boundary that kind of bookend this whole section versus six versus 27. This whole latter section is bookended by this interesting inclusion of laws against mediums and necromancers. What is this about? Well, think about it. What happens when you seek a necromancer or you go see a medium, right? What is effectively happening? A living person is going to seek advice from the dead. Can you see that? A living person is going to seek advice from the dead, right? And this points to a bigger theme in our passage, right? God has set a perimeter. God has set a boundary, right? On one side, you have life. On the other side, you have death. You don't want to merge those two. You don't want to cross those boundaries. God has deliberately set a boundary between life and death. We are not to cross that boundary. I mean, think about it in Genesis 1. When God was creating everything, when God was giving life to the universe, what did God do? God always spoke. We know that. God speaks and He creates. But every time after God speaks, what does He also do? God speaks and He separates. God speaks and He separates, right? He separates light from darkness. He separates day from night. He separates the heavens from the earth. He separates the waters from the dry land. Separation brings life. Think about it. What's the next major milestone in biblical history after creation? What's the next massive milestone, right? What's the next time where things that ought to be separated were suddenly merged back together? Where the waters and the dry land merged back together? When did that happen in the Great Flood? When did it happen? This is another example of where separation should have been there, but they merged back together between darkness and light. Do you remember? When night invaded the day? When night invaded the day, that's the ninth plague of Egypt. The ninth plague of Egypt in both those circumstances, when what should have been separated, water and dry land, night and day? What happened after that? Catastrophic death. What happened after the ninth plague? The tenth plague. Every firstborn of Egypt died. When God separates, He separates to give us life. When we merge those categories back together, it brings death. It brings death. Verses 10 to 16 cover these boundaries that He's given to Israel. If we cross those boundaries, if they cross those boundaries, it will bring death. The boundary of disrespect and cursing of one's parents. What does it bring? Death. The boundary of adultery with another man's wife. What does it bring? Death. The boundary of sexual relation with your father's wife. Death. What does that bring? Death. The boundary of homosexuality. Death. The boundary of sexual relations with an animal. Death. It highlights this principle again and again to us that if we cross these boundaries, it will bring death into our lives. It will bring death into our marriages. It will bring death into our family context. I mean, even Verses 17 to 21, even though there is no explicit death penalty in these situations, right? But the consequences, they cast the shadow of death as a consequence. You cut off from your people. That's social death. You have to bear your sin or you have to bear your iniquity. That's death in terms of your relationship and good standing with God. Childlessness. This is not death per se, but it is the death of a family line. The big theme that I hope that you see in this is that God's designs, God's primitives, God's boundaries keep death out. But if we breach those boundaries, if we breach those boundaries, we are opening the door and we are inviting death into our lives, into our marriages, into our families. Let me add, most of these commands are explicitly restated in the New Testament. Adultery restated in the New Testament. Homosexuality repeated in the New Testament. Taking a father's wife repeated in the New Testament. This was the shame of the, remember, the Corinthian church. If they're not explicitly covered, they're implicitly covered by the commands against sexual immorality. There's only one that isn't repeated, and that is sexual relations with your wife during her menstrual period, which is part of the ritual purity laws. It doesn't have a place in the New Covenant. Pretty much all the laws that we've seen in this chapter, bar one, are repeated in the New Testament. But I want to say this, God is not a cosmic He doesn't do this, could he? he's trying to stop us from having fun. He created sex. He created the family. Both are good. In fact, families are propagated because of sex, right? But when sexual desires are corrupted by sin, and we live out or we entertain these corrupted sexual desires, they don't build up families. They don't bring health to families. They destroy families. They tear families apart. You know, I was reading statistics this week. One in five divorces occur because of infidelity or lack of trust in the relationship. For marriages that are open to introducing pornography into their relationships, it doubles the probability of divorce. You open the door, and you introduce death into your life, into your marriage, into your family. This is what directed Bull Rights. As a powerful river needs banks to keep it on its course and prevent it from ruinously flooding what is around it, so our sexual drive needs strong boundaries if it is not to cause untold misery in the lives of those around us. Friends, can you see God's heart in this? God's heart in this is to protect families. It's to protect your marriage. And I would add to that, it's particularly in this context to protect women. In the ancient Near East context, especially where in one house, the whole extended family would often be living. God is providing boundaries here for safe families, for the safety of women and children in a family context, so that women and children back in those days and even in our days can live in their family context without the threat or the menace of sexual advances from other men in their extended family apart from their husbands. That was the design of these laws. These were the designs it's to give life, it's to protect marriages, it's to protect families. And so let me ask you to consider these questions, do you see these holy boundaries? Do you see these pyramids that God has established just as pure tanical rules that Brendan said a couple weeks ago, keeping you just from just a bit of fun? Do you see it as that? Or do you see it as deadly, serious boundaries keeping out death and destruction from your marriage and from your families? What is your mindset with regards to sexual sin? Do you have the mindset of this man? I can manage it. I can manage just a little, just a sneak peek, just a little bit of pornography. I've got this or do you see do you see it for what it is? The danger in this. I don't want to go anywhere near this. To repeat Brendan's question, great question from two weeks ago, are you in any way flirting with sexual sin in your life? Are you flirting with sexual sin? Are you skirting on the perimeters? You know, very rarely the sexual sin just pop out of nowhere. It always begins somewhere. It begins in the thought life. It begins in the heart. Maybe you've never visited a pornographic website. But are there thoughts? Are there fantasies that you entertain in the secrecy of your mind? Are you skirting on the perimeter? Are you just opening the door just a little bit of jar? The other question I want to ask you is, have you practically established a perimeter of holiness in your life? A perimeter of holiness? Have you established practical boundaries for holy living to keep death out? To keep death out? To protect your personal life? To protect your conscience? To protect your marriage? To protect your family? You know, if I know this sermon series, this last set of sermons, these three sermons, have maybe been awkward for you. But if these last few sermons just pulls one person back in our congregation, pulls just one person back from the brink. If it just saves one person, one family, from the destructive sexual sin, just saves one person from pornographic addiction. It's worth it. I don't mind the awkwardness. If it pulls one person back, it's worth it. A friend, don't toy around with this. Don't open the door even slightly. Let me finish with point number three, the promise of life. You know, here the photo begins to normalize for us. We begin to see the photo positive in this. It reverts back to normal. We can start to see the true colors of God in verses 22 to 26. I want you to see the heart of God in this passage. You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. I am bringing you to a land to live. This is the first time in this whole passage that is mention of life, mention of living that you may live. This is the heart of God. He's eager for the Israelites. Yes, you're going to be different. You're not going to walk according to the customs of the nations that I'm driving out, but it's going to be different, but it's going to be good different. It's going to be godly different and it's worth it. I want you to listen to the heart of God, but I have said to you, you shall inherit the land, and I will give it to you to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the peoples. He says, I have said, I have promised, God has promised, is it not a done deal? God has said this. You shall inherit the land. You have sojourned, you have wandered for 400 years without a home, but I'm going to give you a home. I'm going to give you a place of your own. Can you see the heart of God in this? And not just any place, not just any home. I'm not just going to give you water from the rock. I'm going to give you milk. I'm going to give you the fat of the land. I'm not just going to give you mana. I'm going to give you honey, and I'm not just going to give you some of it. I'm going to give it to you overflowing. All this to say, this is the promise of life for you, my friends, of abundant life, of overflowing life, a life of plenty. Not that we've earned it or we've merited it in any way, but he says, I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to graciously give you life. Can you see the heart of God for 21 verses? We've seen the photo negative, but I want you, my friends, to close your eyes for a moment. I want you to re-invert the picture with eyes of faith. I want you to see the preferred positive. I want you to see the true colors of the heart of God towards us. Can you hear the tone of God towards the end of this passage? He is tender. He is earnest with us. He is pleading to Israel. He's saying in verses 22 to 26, like a passionate, affectionate, protective husband. He declares over Israel, you shall be holy to me for I am the either Lord and holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine. Can you see the heart of God? He has hemmed you in. He has set you apart to give you life and life in abundance to keep death out for your sake. My friends, I hope you see the eagerness. I hope you see the zeal. I hope you see the passion. I hope you see the fervor, the passion of the Lord to keep us from death. But this is the even more amazing thing, my friends. If so for Israel, if so for ancient Israel, how much more so for Christ? For us in Christ. Yes, Leviticus 20 was a reality in its context and its time, but it is for us a shadow of the reality. The reality that we have in Christ, the Lord is eager, the Lord is zealous, the Lord is passionate to give us life so passionate, so passionate that he opened the door to death to his perfect righteous son in order to give us life. That's how eager he is to give you life. I mean, let's go through the list of consequences in this whole chapter. Listen to the list of consequences for transgressing the laws in Leviticus 20. Ten times in this passage, it says of the transgressor that they shall surely be put to death, but instead of us being put to death, it was Jesus who was delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God. It was Jesus who was crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men five times in this passage it says of transcripts. that they will be cut off from his people, but instead of us being cut off, this is how much he wants us to have life. What does he say in Daniel 9? What does he say in Isaiah 53? Daniel 9, it was not us that was cut off. It was the anointed one who was cut off. Isaiah 53, it was Jesus who was cut off out of the land of the living. Three times in this passage, it says that God would set his face against the transgressor, but instead of him setting his face against us, he turns his face away from his righteous, innocent son. He turns his face against his righteous, innocent son. So much so that in the agony, in the anguish of what the sun felt, he cried out in that moment, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Two times in this passage, it says of transgressors that they will bear their own iniquity but instead of us bearing our own iniquity for, bearing our own iniquity, "Oh, the mercies of God, can you see it?" Isaiah 53, verse 6, "The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." "Ladon him all our iniquities." Yes, my friends, you might be guilty of lust. You might be guilty of viewing pornography. You might be guilty of adultery. You might be guilty of gross sexual immorality. You may be guilty of involvement at one point in your life with their cult. You may be guilty of an abortion. But if you have felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you have turned in your sorrow for your sins. If you have repented, you have put your faith in your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has taken every one of those iniquities. He has borne every one of your sins. He has taken the penalty that you deserved. Oh, church, can you see the lengths that the Lord has gone to, the eagerness, the zeal, the passion of the Lord, to give you life? To give you life but the great and immeasurable cost to seal you in, to shut you in, to give you life, to hem you in, to give you the holy and the good life, the great and immeasurable cost of his only begotten son. Therefore, a question is how? How could we possibly forsake our relationship with God? How could we possibly reject the good and gracious designs of God for our lives? How could we possibly invite back death into our lives? For 45 minutes, I've stated it in the negative. Let me just once state it in the positive for you guys. Let's cherish. That's God, our relationship with God. Let us embrace the designs, the perimeters, the boundaries that He's given us for our lives. Let's keep that door shut to corruption our lives. Let's keep that door shut to sin. Let us live in the fullness of the holy life that He has blessed us with in Christ Jesus. Let me finish with these words from Joshua 24. Joshua 24 and from Deuteronomy 30. Choose you this day whom you will serve. Choose you this day whom you serve. Choose life that you and your offspring may live. Choose life by loving the Lord your God. Choose life my friends by obeying His voice and holding fast to Him for He is. He is your life.