Interpreting and Applying Ancient Rules in Our Current World

Well, madison Church, it is so exciting to be here with you.

I'm pumped and I'm really glad not that Stephen got COVID, because nobody is glad about that, but I am glad that it was an excuse for me to be able to come back and be with all of you today.

So, yay, this is my first time seeing you in your new space.

It's lovely, love it.

Okay.

So we all know, hopefully, if you're a Jesus follower, you believe that God is for you, right, and usually when there's somebody for you, there's always somebody against you.

And so I feel like this message today is so important that he who is against us has been trying really hard to make sure you don't get to hear this message.

And I don't say that lately, I'm not one to just throw the devil did it right.

But I mean, stephen got COVID this morning.

My car wouldn't start, my battery was dead, I had to call a friend and borrow a vehicle to get here, and you know what.

We're going to do it anyways.

So I feel like this message, if not for everybody, it's for somebody and it's important.

So I sped down here trying to avoid police.

Has anybody else ever done that?

Right, it's not just me.

I was praying the whole way, especially through Oasendale.

You know God, please don't let there be police looking, and if they are, let me see them before they see me.

And I think it worked.

I think it worked For those of you that do know me.

You know that when I was younger, in my teenage years, I was a teensy bit rebellious, and those that don't know me, you know that now.

But I frequently got in trouble with the police.

So I was glad to not have another encounter today.

First of all, but if you don't mind, I'd like to tell you a great story about that.

At one point I had gotten in trouble and I don't even remember what it was for, because there were a lot of things and the police were looking for me.

And when I was a teenager I had these very distinctive green braces.

They, like the actual brackets, were green.

So nobody else had those way.

Back in the olden days, everybody either had clear or silver.

That was the only choice.

Somehow my orthodontist was doing some sort of experiment, I don't know, but mine were green.

So it was very obvious that it was me if I opened my mouth and I was walking down the street and a police officer pulled over and I was like oh great.

And he rolled down the window and he says hey, do you know who?

Sarah Boses, that was my maiden name.

Do you know who, sarah Boses?

And I nodded my head and he's like do you know where she is?

No, if you see her, will you let her know I'm looking for her.

Yeah, I'll get on that.

Right, like I was like mm-hmm, never open my mouth, just nodding, pretending like I'm afraid of him, right?

So this was one of my encounters, and I think I'm probably not the only one in the room that has had very funny police encounters, and I'm not going to ask you to embarrass yourselves today, don't worry.

Some of them are funny, some of them are not right.

I've had plenty of encounters with a law that weren't quite as funny.

But I think most of the time, though, when we're getting in trouble with a law, when I'm speeding here this morning, I know what I'm doing is wrong.

Right, like I have some kind of clue.

I know the posted speed limit through Rosendale is 30, but I really want to keep going 55 or 70, whichever.

So we know, right, but sometimes, every once in a while, you don't know that you just broke a law.

Sometimes there are really weird laws out there, like if you honk your horn, your car horn, after 9 pm in front of a sandwich shop in Arkansas, why?

Or if you're letting your donkeys sleep in a bathtub in Arizona.

Donkeys should be able to sleep in the tub if they want to, but it's against the law.

It's against the law.

Does anybody here live in Sun Prairie, know someone from Sun Prairie?

You must know somebody from Sun Prairie, right, it's right over there.

Okay, At least two people said yes, you get out of the actual city a little bit.

Well, sun Prairie municipal code 103220 states no bicycle shall be allowed to proceed in any street in the city by inertia or momentum, with the feet of the rider removed from the bicycle pedals.

No rider of a bicycle shall remove both hands from the handlebars or practice any trick or fancy riding in any street in the city.

Nor shall the bicycle rider carry or ride any other person so that two persons are on the bicycle at one time, unless a seat is provided for the second person.

So, whatever you do, do not do fancy bike riding in Sun Prairie.

It is against the law.

Now you might do that and not even know there's just a ton of these kinds of laws all over the United States.

I personally think they're really funny.

I used to look them up in my spare time because I just get a kick out of that kind of stuff.

But as I was looking up one for you locally, I was trying to find something.

There was nothing, madison.

They're right on top of those weird thoughts here.

But Sun Prairie is close enough.

When I was looking them up I found an article that the mayor was quoted, and let's see where is it here.

He said some city ordinances may make people chuckle now but I suspect city elders had their reasons for approving the laws.

It has a great deal to do with times when they were passed and the circumstances.

If we aren't familiar with that, we may look at the ordinances and think they're crazy because they are.

But he's right If you don't have that context of why that law was developed and where it was going, what the intentions were, it just sounds insane.

I'm sure somebody got severely injured on a bicycle in Sun Prairie.

That's probably why that became a law.

Maybe it was multiple people, but if we're unfamiliar with those circumstances it just seems outright crazy.

I know that pastors aren't supposed to say this, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it anyway.

The Bible has a lot of weird laws in it, a lot of them.

If you've read it even just a teeny bit, you probably know what I'm talking about.

So what do we do when we come across these passages in the Old Testament?

There's a whole bunch of them, just a ton.

There's some that are weird, like when we're told in Leviticus that we're not supposed to eat shrimp, lobster or pork.

Did anybody have bacon for breakfast this morning?

Nobody.

Oh, look at you.

I thought about having bacon but I didn't have time and thankfully I wasn't trying to leave late.

Anybody going to Red Lobster after church?

I saw that was not too far from here.

How about the ban on getting tattoos or piercings?

I mean, I won't call anybody out, but you guys have seen Stephen, right, he's got a couple tattoos.

I don't know if I have any, but he's got a couple.

And speaking of Stephen, here's another law that he doesn't really have to worry about Getting a haircut.

Leviticus 1927.

Some of you, I can tell, have had haircuts recently, but Stephen doesn't really have to worry about that one.

And before you think I'm picking on Stephen too much.

He was originally planning on doing this message, this talk, and he did send me these jokes, so I felt obligated to use them.

And who doesn't want to tease Stephen when he's not even here to defend himself, right?

So even if you're tempted to just shrug off all the things that the Bible bans tattoos, haircuts, bacon it's difficult to ignore one of those things that one thing there is no ban.

There's nothing explicitly bans slavery.

I struggle with that one right.

I mean, before I planted Exchange Church in Green Bay, I founded and ran a ministry called More Precious Than Ruby's and we specifically reached out to human trafficking victims and tried to help in that scenario.

So this is something that's really close to me.

How do I believe so deeply that slavery is not right, yet stand up here and say I believe the Bible?

There are several laws, even on how to sell your children into slavery and how to punish your slaves.

Does this mean that God hates shrimp but likes slavery?

How do we make sense of all these laws and all these prohibitions?

So that's what we're talking about today.

Exciting topic, right?

That's what we're talking about today.

This is your second week in the study how Not to Read the Bible.

It's based on the book and teaching of Dan Kimball and, of course, also on the Bible.

Over the next month and a half I think you have a month left after this you're going to go through this and learn how not to read the Bible, which, believe it or not, is actually going to make it easier and more fulfilling to read the Bible.

To better understand the Bible, sometimes it's important to know what not to do.

Don't ride your bicycle fancy like in Sun Prairie.

Do ride with your feet on the pedals.

So I'm excited for you all to go through this series because it's really for everybody.

Everybody can get something from this series.

You might be a Jesus follower already, yet the more you study the Bible, the more you struggle with your faith.

You find those passages about slavery and how to sell your kids into slavery and you think what in the world?

I'm not following?

A God like that I didn't know.

My Bible said that.

Or maybe it's not so much the Bible that's causing you a difficult time with your faith, but maybe for somebody that you love.

We all, I think, have friends and family who are abandoning their faith and questioning their faith, questioning your faith.

How can you believe that because of their conflict with biblical texts.

Or maybe you're just starting to explore the Bible and maybe you're just starting to learn about Jesus and faith and spiritual things and of God and you've got questions while you're reading.

I certainly had a lot of questions when I was first reading my Bible.

I had the stack of post-it notes and I just question, slapped it in my Bible questions, slapped it in my Bible.

My Bible was full of post-it notes, full of questions, you know what.

It was a long journey to go through all of those, but it was 100% worth it 100%.

So I mean, do what you got to do, ask the questions, even if they're tough, there are answers.

But regardless of where you are on your journey, the Bible has become somewhat of a stumbling block for all sorts of people, for lots and lots of people.

But you've got great people here to help you with that.

That's one of the reasons Stephen found such great value in doing this sermon series.

You're going to learn what to do when you come across these crazy-sounding parts of the Old and the New Testament, because, let's be serious, there's weird laws in the New Testament too.

We like to blame them on the Old Testament and say, oh, that was before Jesus.

We have to worry.

But there's weird stuff in the New Testament too.

But you'll also study several of those passages together through this series.

So I'm really excited for you guys to go through all of that.

It's going to be challenging, right for everybody, as we try to better understand what the Bible says, what it really says.

I mean, the Bible is a collection of books.

It's not just one book, it's a collection of books and it's hard to understand because it was written in different languages over 1,500 years ago, in different countries, different cultures, by over 40 different people, and then, on top of all of that, it was then translated into English and that's what we're reading.

So it's difficult.

And in addition to that, we also bring ourselves when we read the Bible right.

We bring ourselves into the reading Our preconceived notions, the teachings that we've had in the past, our personal biases.

We bring those things with us each time we open the Bible.

If you grew up in or around church the kind of church you're familiar with or if you have no church experience at all, all of that is going to affect the way you read your Bible today.

It's important that we recognize that our preconceived notions that our biases and our attempt to understand the Bible can cause a problem, and it's important for us to come with an open mind to just say okay, maybe I was thinking over here, but really God was trying to say this.

It's important to have that open mind when you look at your Bible.

This isn't something that's new to us.

It's not new that people struggle with what was going on in the Bible.

Paul had an apprentice named Timothy and in 2 Timothy 15, paul told Timothy work so hard, you can present yourself to God and receive his approval.

Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth, one who correctly explains the word of truth.

Well, how can you explain it correctly?

You have to know it right.

That's why it's important that we come with an open mind as we study.

We have to work hard so that we can understand the Bible and that will lead us to having a closer relationship with God and with being able to help other people do that as well, because we want to bring other people with us on that journey.

Right, we don't want to just be standing there, we want to stand in there.

I love Jesus all by ourselves.

That's why we come here for community right.

We want to be on mission with other people.

We want other people to be on mission with us and we want to gather other people so that they can know it, they can know God, they can know Jesus and the freedom and all of the things that come along with that.

As a side note I forgot to mention, I'm allergic to spring.

I did test multiple times.

I don't have COVID.

This is all allergies.

So just in case anybody's worried, I feel like I needed to just give that disclaimer.

My voice might come in and out a little bit, but it's all allergies.

So what about slavery?

I brought that up earlier.

It's in the Bible.

What do we do with that?

It's not just in the Old Testament, like I wish it were.

It would be so much easier to just say that was in the Old Testament, I don't have to worry about it.

But Paul wrote to slaves in Ephesians Ephesians 6-5, slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.

Serve them sincerely, as you would serve Christ.

And then in Titus he brings it up again.

Slaves must always obey their masters and do their best to please them.

They must not talk back.

There's no doubt that those texts are actually in the Bible, and there's more.

What do we do with these passages that keep showing up throughout the Bible?

Well, let me start by reminding you last week, if you were here or you listened online, stephen was teaching about how you can't just read one verse.

You can't just take one verse and build a whole theology out of it, which some people do.

So you have to be careful for that.

Do not take just one verse out of context.

We need to look at the entire Bible from front to back.

You need to look at the entire book that was written front to back.

If you're looking at Titus, you need to read all of Titus to really understand what that one verse means.

And we need to remember that the Bible was not written for us.

It was written.

Let me back that up.

I said that.

All wrong.

The Bible was written for us.

The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us.

It wasn't a direct message to us.

It was written at a different time to a different people group, still valid for us, but not to us.

So, those Old Testament passages who were they even written to then?

Well, they were written to the ancient Israelites and they received these original instructions some 3,500 years ago, which is a long, stinking time ago, and these rules were answering questions that they had then, not necessarily questions we have now.

And also, you might remember, stephen talked about different acts or movements in the Bible and the law was given during act what he called act three, when redemption was being initiated, and that's important for us to get.

When the law was being written, god was leading the Israelites out of Egypt and into a different land, a new place, and there were people all around them that they frequently encountered that were other.

There were other people groups that worshiped other gods, and they did that in a variety of ways.

They practiced all kinds of different evil things degrading sexual rights, family members being forced into prostitution and offering children as sacrifices.

That was just common religion worship in those people groups around them, and God was leading them through that.

God did not want Israel to become like those other countries.

God wants his people to have a distinct identity.

God wants us to only worship him and he does not demand those things as Jews and piercings, for example.

They're not what we have today.

They were very different the Canaanites, which was one of the neighboring communities of the Israelites.

They would actually slash their bodies during ritual worship and during funeral processions and all that kind of thing, and then they would mark those slashes with ink.

And that was all related to worship and their gods Praying and piercing for them was about honoring God, their God, and honoring the dead, but God was prohibiting an act of worship to other gods.

Today's tattoos, all these thousands of years later, when redemption has already been provided, no-transcript.

We're on mission, we're fine, we're not worshiping other gods.

I mean, I guess if you're getting a tattoo and worshiping another God with that tattoo, that could be a problem.

The Lord is going to have a problem with that, but that's not generally the case.

Right Now we do it very differently.

We're not slashing big open wounds and it's more artistic and sterile and it's not a ritual, it's a form of expression.

What about shrimp and bacon?

What about bacon wrapped shrimp?

Maybe it was fried in some sort of pork, I don't know.

Other times, like with shrimp, it was probably to protect people.

They lived in a different era, right, and God was protecting them from sickness and harm.

These are kind of like the signs that you see in restrooms at food establishments that remind the employees to wash their hands Right.

It's like a don't forget, this is how you stay safe.

It's the warning at the bottom of your sushi menu that says eating raw shrimp could be hazardous to your health.

You could get sick.

You probably won't, but you could.

Well, if you got sick back then you couldn't just run to the ER.

They didn't know what to do, right, maybe they had some ideas, but it was tough.

I also heard one time that our digestive systems don't actually have the enzymes to dissolve.

Is not the right word?

Digest, thank you, to digest pork.

We just don't have it.

Like our body will process it, but we won't get all the nutrients that we would if we were eating beef or some other chicken or something like that Beans.

If you're a vegetarian, you know like we don't actually have enzymes to properly digest.

So it could cause sickness if you just tried to sustain your whole life on nothing but pork.

So these guidelines are things that God gave for health.

So the guidelines, the bathroom signs, right, the warning at the bottom of the sushi menu those guidelines are things that are similar to the things that we've developed here in the US in the past 100 years.

Right, those warnings are new in the US.

So I mean, if you think about it, leviticus was pretty progressive for 3,500 years ago.

That wouldn't have been a common thing that they would have seen back then.

So, yes, to us right here, right now, in 2022, god gave some pretty strange laws, but to the ancient Israelites they wouldn't have sounded so strange, it wouldn't have sounded so bizarre.

But what about slavery?

Remember, in Act 1, genesis 1 through 2, there is no slavery right.

Slavery was manmade.

It was after the fall.

Slavery is about ego, it's about power, it's about corruption, it's evil, no doubt about it.

So when God gave regulations to slavery, he was moving people not just away from slavery, but in making it more humane.

So check out Exodus 21, 16, which is in a chapter talking about slavery in other ways.

It says kidnappers must be put to death, whether they are caught in possession of their victims or have already sold them as slaves.

So if someone were to take someone against their will to enslave them, god says they are to be put to death.

End of story Dead.

That's a pretty strong command.

If you didn't want to be a slave in the Old Testament and someone tried to enslave you, god wanted them put to death.

Which leads us to the question why would anyone want to be a slave Right?

In ancient times, as hard as it is for us to understand today, it was actually pretty common to sell yourself into slavery to pay a debt that you owed or to escape poverty in some way.

A lot of ways, this was very similar to our employment.

Maybe some of you feel like you're slaves at your jobs, but today's employment is actually closer to the slavery we read about in the Old Testament.

It's closer to that than what happened here in the United States in the first bit of our country's ugly history.

It's closer to employment than modern day human trafficking.

When we think about slavery today, we think about race-based, violent slavery.

We think about modern day human trafficking, we think about sex trafficking.

That kind of slavery was punishable by death.

Okay, that kind of slavery was punishable by death in the Old Testament.

It certainly goes against the New Covenant that Jesus gave us, which is to love people.

You can't enslave people like that and love them, and we can't forget that Paul also wrote a letter to Philemon.

Ah, however you want to say it, nobody really knows right, we'll just make it up.

But he wrote that letter which he's urging a man to release his slave, to see him as a brother in Christ and to send him back to Paul to help him serve on mission.

The Bible begins with no slavery.

Sin enters the world and then we have it.

God puts forward very strict rules on how to treat people in slavery, which is more like our employment, and by the end of the New Testament, paul is telling people free your slaves, set them free.

This is part of God getting us back to where he wanted us to be to begin with.

So when people point to these single verses and they ask do you support slavery?

I mean, you're a Bible-believing Christian.

Do you support slavery?

Are you against tattoos?

You're a hypocrite.

You eat seafood.

I saw you.

You had that BLT.

You said it was good.

You posted it on Instagram.

I thought you were a Jesus follower.

It's important for us to help them understand all these things.

It's important for us to help them understand Biblical slavery is different than race-based slavery, violent slavery and human trafficking, which is unequivocally evil and horrific.

No doubt about it.

Enforcing and engaging in that kind of slavery was punishable by death in the Old Testament.

Biblical slavery was closer to employment, and so the rules in the Old Testament are more like union rules today.

It's important for us to be able to let people know that, because they may not know.

Maybe you didn't know, I know, I didn't know until I started digging around and trying to find out.

What in the world does this big old book say?

Tattoos and piercings were prohibited because the societies around them did so violently to worship and please their gods.

Today we're still not supposed to worship other gods.

We can agree on that, right.

We're still not supposed to worship other gods, but we can have tattoos and piercings.

Not eating shrimp or bacon was about food safety and about being healthy and not getting sick.

Consider the rules and the health measures that we have today.

Did you know that it's illegal to buy raw milk?

In the state of Wisconsin, where the dairy state can't buy raw milk, they've decided that's not healthy.

It hasn't been sanitized, basically.

So we have rules that are similar but different, same purpose.

So, as we wrap up today, I just want to remind you there are a few steps that you can take this week to actually apply it to your life, because, let's face it, we didn't just come here to listen to me talk.

You want to know how this, this big old book, and how all of these things can better your life right, and how you can.

It can help you stay on mission and bring other people to know Jesus.

You can join your Madison Church family here for the next few weeks four weeks, if I'm correct.

You guys are just getting started on this.

So make Sunday mornings a plan.

Make it something you can't get, you can't schedule over or miss for some reason.

Or if you're watching online and it's Thursday nights, that's your time to check in.

Make sure you check in on those Thursday nights.

Engage online.

Engage with one another.

Get a Bible.

If you don't have one, get a Bible.

I hear that there are some free ones around here if you like paper.

I personally like paper, but also I have an app too.

There are a lot of free apps out there.

One of them is the U version.

That's the one I tend to use.

It's free, it's easy and it, you know, can go with me everywhere without me hauling my big old Bible around.

I have, you know, 20 minutes somewhere I can sit and read if I want to, one of them that Stephen was talking about.

I don't know if I can find it here.

Yeah, he likes he's a really big fan of the Bible in one year with Nikki Gumbel.

I've never looked at it so I can't speak to it, but that's his recommendation.

There's all different kinds of plans out there you can read through.

You can even like mark online on the app that you've read it.

If you're reading it in your paper Bible, you know if you prefer to actually read it in paper, but the app can help you keep track of where you were.

That's always fun and then make sure that you're going on this journey together.

Community is important.

You're gonna have questions.

You have people here that can help answer those questions, and you know, I know, that Stephen seems like he might know everything in the whole wide world.

That was a joke, you guys.

Oh man.

Well, anyway, he may seem like he knows everything and he does know a lot.

He is a smart guy, but there are things that could stump him.

Don't be afraid to try to stump him.

In fact, you know what?

He didn't tell me to say this, but I'm gonna make it your personal mission to find something in the Bible that stumps him, that he says I gotta look that up?

I don't know.

That's my challenge to you Go on this journey together.

Read your Bible, and you know what?

Reading your Bible, it can be five minutes.

Sometimes we think we have to set outside this whole hour and do this in-depth study.

Five minutes, guys.

Five minutes before you go to bed.

Sometimes people say you're only a real Christian if you read it first thing in the morning.

Guess what?

I read my Bible at night, because that's when I'm more awake and alert.

So you do you.

You pick the time that works for you.

Maybe it's a lunch break, maybe it's sitting in.

You know a doctor's office waiting.

Just pick a time Five minutes.

Spend a little bit of time in there every day.

I promise you you will come upon some questions.

Bring them back here.

Talk to them.

Talk to other people here in your community about those questions.

Stump Steven, get them to have to look stuff up.

It'll be great.

So come back next week.

They're gonna be talking about gender and sexuality.

That sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Alright?