Leviticus: Be Holy, for I Am Holy | Student Pastor: Sam Rapp

Uh well, yeah, as Keel mentioned, my name is Sam.

I've been serving as a student pastor for about four years, and it's it's good to be with you this morning.

I'm honored to be here to bring God's word to you.

Well, this semester we've been studying through the ancient and often strange book of Leviticus, and people of Israel find themselves in this interesting point.

Depending on how you read the text in Leviticus and in the books of the law, there's somewhere between 600,000 to over 2 million Israelites at this point, which means this is no longer just a family of Abraham, but this has become a nation.

This group of people spent about 400 years in brutal enslavement to the Egyptians.

Generational trauma just scratches the surface of the type of wounds they've experienced.

This group saw the Lord their God send ten plagues on Egypt in judgment to set them free.

This group saw the Lord their God then open up a sea and have them pass through in safety while Egypt has the waters come down upon them.

This group then saw Moses come down from Mount Sinai with lightning and thunder, with the Ten Commandments handwritten by God on tablets of stone.

And now this group, still positioned at the base of Mount Sinai, has been receiving instructions for 18 interesting, weird chapters on how they, a sinful and unholy people, can dwell with the holy God who has called them to himself.

So we pick up this morning Leviticus 19, which is the chapter in Leviticus most quoted in the New Testament, and I think we'll see why.

So let's read again Leviticus 19, 1 through 2.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.

So point number one for us is this God's holiness is an invitation for his people's holiness.

Several months ago, I was walking to the Walgreens just down the road on the square to get a couple things, and I go to checkout.

I hand them my card, I try to swipe it, and the chip reader will not work.

Chip reader will not work, and first time it's a little funny, it's a little cute.

But the tenth time is much less funny and much less cute, especially for me, especially for the cashier, and especially for the seven people behind me.

So we keep trying over and over, we try different angles, we try different cards, and nothing's working, and the lady keeps saying loudly, your card has declined.

And I'm like, There's people here, I don't want them to know that, so don't say that so loud.

So I look back, the line's growing, there's a lot of people showing up.

I'm holding everyone up.

I'm the reason.

I start feeling nervous, my face gets hot, I get a little sweaty.

The whole time, I'm playing it pretty cool, I think.

I'm laughing with the girl, we're like, oh, you're this silly little chip reader, you know.

We're trying to hang out, have a good time.

And then truly, after about a dozen times trying to get the chip reader to work, she's like, Alright, sir, I'm gonna go grab my manager, we're gonna check it out, we're gonna get this thing fixed.

So our manager walks over, and I don't know what she said to him, I don't know how she said it to him, because he came and approached me as if I was Robert De Niro in Heat.

He came and approached me as if I had walked into Walgreens with a weapon and was demanding for money.

So he looks at me, gaping eyes, mouth open, arms like this, I'm not making this up, arms like this, and he looks to me and he says, This, I'm dead serious.

I'm gonna need you to back away from the chip reader.

And so what I did is what you did, I laughed.

And let me tell you, this was not funny to him.

And so he presses down harder.

He looks at me, eyes locked with me, louder.

I'm gonna need you to back away from the chip reader.

Let's pause.

Everyone take a good look at me, okay?

Take a good look at me.

Don't laugh too hard, but just hard enough.

I often get confused as a student pastor to look the same age as the students I'm pastoring.

And so, does anyone really think that I'm the type of guy to rob a Walgreens at gunpoint?

Probably not.

But the thing is, I once I finally checked out and got myself, the chip reader finally worked magically.

I walked out of the store half convinced that I had just committed a felony, because that's how convincing the accusation was.

Because I was just a young man trying to get my Coke Zero and toilet paper and instead get accused of committing a felony.

Reading a verse like we just read can feel like a deep accusation like that.

Hey, be holy, for I am holy.

Because if we're honest, we know that we aren't.

We know that, God, we're not the holiness that you are calling us to be.

So how on earth, Lord, can we do this?

So, with this in mind, there's two typical reactions that we might have reading a passage like this, and neither are very helpful.

The first, maybe some of us will feel this way, is to kind of puff our chest up in self-righteousness and say, oh, be holy?

Sure, God, I can do that.

I'm great at willpower, I'm great at discipline, I can crush a checklist of God.

Let me show you how holy I can be, or at least that I'm holier than that person.

And the other, maybe if you're more like me, is to feel shame, to feel exhaustion, because I know that I am not living up to the standard that God has set for me.

I've never measured up, I've never been able to be holy, whatever that means.

Maybe you had a youth pastor growing up who told you that holiness comes by following these two rules.

Hey, don't have sex before marriage and don't do drugs, and then, hey, you're magically holy.

Maybe you were taught that in middle school.

Maybe you grew up with an angry and distant father or a really harsh coach you never measured up for.

When you hear verses like this, you find yourself distancing from the God who speaks because this verse viscerally reminds you of them.

And so you shut down, you close off, not even able to hear the words that God speaks.

These two immediate reactions are unhelpful because they're driven by an end-on self.

Either, hey, I can do this, I got it, I'm strong enough, I've proven that time and time again, or the other side, there's no way, because I am a mess.

I am exhausted by myself, and this verse makes me cower away in fear from God who's probably mad at me.

So, what on earth is God up to here in Leviticus 19, if not those two?

A couple weeks ago, Pastor Matt walked us through Leviticus 16.

Leviticus 16 is the chapter where God gives instructions to the priests and the people about this major day that happens one day a year, Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement.

The Day of Atonement is the day where the high priest goes into the most holy place, and by the blood of a goat, he shows that the sins of the nation of Israel, all 600,000 of them, are forgiven.

This is a moment of vast cosmic forgiveness to the people of God.

And we've been looking at this chart.

We'll put up on the screen for you over the time in our Leviticus that we've been studying, and I think it'll be really helpful this morning.

So we see this movement towards this day here, the Day of Atonement in chapter 16, where the sins of Israel are paid for in full, where God in his grace makes a way for the people to have their sins wiped away.

That's the center point of the book of Leviticus.

It's the lens that we read all of the book as a whole.

I want to take it one step further, though.

If we can agree that Leviticus 16 is the center of the book of Leviticus, I want to argue that it is the center of the books of the law as well.

So let's I have another thing we're gonna show you guys from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

So not only is the Day of Atonement the center of the book of Leviticus, the book of Leviticus is the center of the books of Moses, meaning the Day of Atonement is the center point of all of God's law, God-forgiving sin.

And so that brings us to our big question: how on earth can we be holy like God is?

And the answer is by returning time and time again to the moment of our forgiveness, to return to the moment where God made atonement for our sin.

Where a holy God made a nation of unholy, messy, and beat up people, holy like He is.

So, in order for us to respond, not with condemnation or pride, but with gospel, I think we need to get our understanding of two Christian terms right that maybe you're familiar with and maybe not, and that's okay.

I want to define our terms, justification and sanctification.

And this is how the Westminster Confession of Faith defines it.

Justification is an act, notice that word, act, of God's free grace, wherein he pardoned all our sins and accepted us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed or given to us and received by faith alone.

Sanctification, on the other hand, is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness.

So, in other words, justification is the once and for all declaration over you that you, a sinner, have been made innocent in God's sight, freed of all charges, and by nothing you did.

It's by your sin placed upon Jesus and his righteousness given to you, and you get it by faith.

And sanctification, on the other hand, is the Holy Spirit empowered work.

Notice that word work, on and on throughout the rest of our Christian lives, which is freeing because that means that we're free to be a mess.

We're free to be a work in progress, because even God has understood that.

We are fully forgiven and fully beloved, but we are not quite put together.

I love how Dane Ortland in his book Deeper, a book about growing in Christ, a book about sanctification, explains this.

He says sanctification is a lifelong, gradual growth and grace.

Justification, however, is not a process but an event, a moment and time, the verdict of legal acquittal once and for all.

So why then are we thinking about justification in a book about sanctification?

Here's why.

The process of sanctification is in large part fed by constant returning ever more deeply to the event of justification.

Now, what does any of this have to do with Leviticus 19?

As we read these verses in Leviticus 19, these verses, what we could say, are part of the process of sanctification.

And we read them always in light of the moment of justification of Leviticus 16.

In other words, Christian Israelite, God has by his grace declared you to be holy by his forgiving and redeeming grace.

So the invitation is to walk in that.

Why will it lead to joy?

It's because of the one who speaks.

Be holy, why?

Because I am holy.

And if God is holy, to use the words of Jackie Hill Perry, that means God is the most trustworthy being there is.

If God is holy, that means he can't sin.

If he can't sin, he can't sin against you.

And if he can't sin against you, that means that we can be fully confident that his way is the best way.

And that's good news.

So we see these words, be holy, not as a condemnation word to you, but as an invitation to walk with the one who is and the one who has made a way for you to be holy.

Let's continue on.

Pick up with me in verse 9.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest.

You shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard.

You shall leave them for the poor, for the sojourner.

I am the Lord your God.

You shall not steal, you shall not deal falsely, you shall not lie to one another.

You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God.

I am the Lord.

You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him.

The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.

You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God.

I am the Lord.

You shall do you shall do no injustice in court.

You shall not be partial to the poor, defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor, I am the Lord.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.

And listen to this you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

So point number two for us is this holiness leads to human flourishing in love.

Holiness leads to human flourishing in love.

In the year 125 AD, which came about a hundred years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, there was this Greek philosopher named Aristides.

He gave a very famous defense or apology to the Caesar of the time, Hadrian.

There's this little sect of people that had become pretty famous in the Roman world.

They were called Christians.

And Aristides' entire goal was to convince Caesar Hadrian that the Christians need to not be persecuted anymore.

The Roman world was brutal to the Christians.

So he's saying, Hey, stop persecuting them.

And this is his argument about why.

It's a little bit of a read, but bear with me.

He says this, but the Christians, O king, while they went about and made search, have found the truth.

For they know and trust in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, from whom they received commandments, which they engraved upon their minds, and observe in hope and expectation of the world which is to come.

They honor father and mother, they show kindness to those near to them, and whenever they are judges, they judge uprightly, and their oppressors they comfort and make them their friends.

They do good to their enemies.

Falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another, and from widows they do not turn away their esteem, and they and they deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly, and he who has gives to him who has not, without boasting.

And when they see a stranger, take him into their homes and rejoice over him as a very brother.

And if there is any among them that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply the needy their lack of food.

For great indeed and wonderful is their doctrine or belief, and truly this is a new people, and there is something divine in the midst of them.

So in this world of the Roman Empire, not yet even a hundred years after Jesus had raised from the dead, these Christians were being rejected, being harassed and persecuted, thought of as some crazy cult, and this philosopher Aristides is defending them to the Caesar of Rome.

In his defense, they make the world a better place.

They create love in a world where there is not love.

Hadrian, the Caesar, is hearing pretty much Leviticus 19, almost exactly quoted, which is an explanation of God's calling his people to be holy.

Israelites, hey, be holy.

But how?

By loving one another.

That is the summary of this passage.

They could show themselves as holy by loving one another.

To show the boundless love of God to one another.

They're so rich, they're beautiful, they're super abundant.

And they all, summarized and concluded with love, cause human beings and human societies to flourish.

In these laws, the poor and the sojourner are cared for.

The blind and deaf are treated with kindness.

The legal system is imputed with justice.

The wages to laborers require fairness, and all of it, it creates flourishing in societies, especially to those who are marginalized.

We often think about God's law as something that limits and does not create life.

We think that we know better.

We think that we can create the best way.

And then we come face to face with passages like Leviticus 19, where we see a God not uninvolved, but with a lot of specific ways to make the marginalized and the poor cared for.

It's rich.

Several weeks ago, as those students just talked about, we took a group down to Guatemala.

The eight of us flew into Guatemala City and drove about five hours through the mountains and to what Keel talked about is the little village of San Juan, which is this beautiful village right on the lake.

And like they mentioned, we worked with a ministry called Impacto, and one of the things we did was called Abuitos, which Faith noticed, his little grandparents, which I think is awesome.

I was talking with one of the leaders that was hosting us on the trip, and he said that in this culture, the elderly are almost completely abandoned, sometimes left out in the street to die because the families can't afford to take care of them.

So abolitos, this ministry to them, is a way to combat that, a way to create life in a place where there isn't.

So, like we talked about, these elderly people show up Monday through Friday, they're fed a nutritious meal.

Not only that, Impacto brings the doctor once a month for a health check.

Not only that, Impacto leads crafts and games and shares the love of Jesus with them, and not only that, Abolitos loves each and every one of them by name.

When our team left about a week ago or so, the people in Impacto keep doing this week in and week out.

The superabundant love that Impacto shares with these Abolitos is the kind of thing God has in mind here in Leviticus 19.

Love one another.

And the good news is even the best human love is still just a shadow of the love we find in Jesus.

Flip with me to Leviticus 20.

We're gonna close out reading verse 26 together.

Says this, You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine.

This verse is Moses summarizing the entirety of Leviticus 19 and 20, and I love how it lands.

You shall be holy, for I am holy, and have separated you from the peoples.

For what reason?

That you should be mine.

The invitation to be holy, the commandment, it's not an accusation.

It's not an accusation from an angry father pointing a finger in condemnation.

It's by a holy God overflowing with love, inviting a messy, broken, and sinful people to be his.

We know this because we can look at Jesus, who fulfilled the law perfectly.

What did Jesus, the Son of God, and His Holiness, do?

It did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, because that's what true holiness does.

That's what it looks like.

It's not self-serving, but it's self-giving.

I love in the book of Revelation, chapter 5, the Apostle John has this vision of the heavens, and he finds this scroll.

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

I don't know how big it was, but he finds a scroll, and in this scroll are God's big plans for how God's gonna make everything right.

And when John sees it, he starts weeping loudly, and he starts crying out, Who is worthy to open this scroll?

Because he knows he can't.

And then one of the elders comes up and says to him, Hey, don't weep anymore.

The lion of the tribe of Judah is worthy.

He has conquered.

He can open the scroll.

So then John looks and he sees a lamb.

And it's not just any lamb, it's a lamb that was slain.

His attention is immediately taken off of himself and his own weeping and onto this lamb slain for him, which is a very Leviticous picture, isn't it?

Let's pick up here in Revelation 5, 8 through 14.

This is the response to the slain lamb.

When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.

And then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads, and thousands and thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, saying to him who sits on the throne and the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

And the four living creatures said, Amen.

And the elders fell down and worshipped.

Beloved, each time you look at yourself in shame, pouring over your faults and your shortcomings, look ten more times at the slain Lamb.

Look ten more times at the Lamb who upon that Roman cross had you in mind.

Return time and time again to that cross where you, even you in your mess, are welcomed and invited by a holy God who has made you holy.

Return time and time again to the moment where your sins were atoned for, to the day when the blood of the Lamb wiped you free, where God offered you pardon, and the day where God looks at you and because of the obedience of his son, says, innocent.

We're gonna close with reading the second verse of the hymn, Before the throne of God above, because it looks a lot like Revelation 5.

Beloved, this is your reality.

If you don't know Jesus this morning, that's the plea.

To find that a holy God does not look at you in condemnation, but actually welcomes you in to be his.

So here are the words, beloved, of this amazing hymn.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there, who made an end to all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul, even mine, is counted free.

For God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me.

To look on him and pardon me.

Be holy, for I am holy.

Or we could say, Be holy, for I have made you holy, in Jesus.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Father, um, when you saw the brokenness of the world that you had created because of our father Adam, you did not shy away.

And the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, taking flesh upon himself and becoming a man.

Lord, you have made a clear way for your creation to become right.

And it's not in a religious checklist, it's not in staring at ourselves in shame, it's by looking at the Lamb who has won the battle.

So Lord, I pray for each of us this morning that whatever moment we might find ourselves in, whether shame or addicted, grieving, joyful, in all seasons, Lord, would we, even we, this morning, find ourselves freed to stare at the Lamb that's laying for us.

And in that, to find ourselves set free.

Amen.