Leviticus 19
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Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
Notice the family that God is speaking to
…speak to all the sons of Israel and make sure they know.
How do you define family? What are the adjectives or phrases you would use?
…I the King am Holy, and they should be Holy too
My expectation is that I want you to be my image bearers to the entire world. When they look at you, I want them to know what I look like!
With that thought hanging, I want you to kick around these two questions
How do you define family? What are the adjectives or phrases you would use?
What is the difference between calling yourself family and being a “family” that images Christ as a community?
s the difference between calling yourself family and being a “family” that images Christ as a community?
Let’s see what God has to say about properly loving your family and others
Read Leviticus 19:9-18
God’s people had to leave the corners of the field for the poor to glean (9-10)
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. And do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
God’s people had to be honest (11-12)
God’s people had to be honest (11-12)
no stealing, cheating or defrauding
could not bind themselves to a lie in God’s name
God’s people could not exploit others (13-14)
could not use their position to oppress or rob others
could not with hold wages from a laborer
could not curse a deaf person
could not place a stumbling block in front of a blind person
God’s people had to deal justly with others (15-16)
could not show partiality toward the rich or poor
could not be malicious gossips or secret revealers
could not scheme to testify against a neighbor on a capital charge
God’s people could not hate, but could confront they could not take revenge. They should love neighbors as themselves (17-18)
Every Israelite had to conform to God’s Holiness by treating neighbors with proper loving care
Holiness should look like:
Devout Worship
Honesty
Integrity
Justice
Charity
Love
“Holiness is thus not so much an abstract or a mystic idea, as a regulative principle in the everyday lives of men and women. .. . Holiness is thus attained not by flight from the world, nor by monk-like renunciation of human relationships of family or station, but by the spirit in which we fulfill the obligations of life in its simplest and commonest details: in this way-by doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God-is everyday life transfigured.”
Gordon Wenham
Outline of the basic responsibility of Love for and from the community
Part of our issue with struggling to loving people whether they be friends or strangers is our lack of empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and identify with the feelings of another person. We have our own stuff going on and reasons not to.
Empathy is the ability to understand and identify with the feelings of another person. We have our own stuff going on and reasons not to.
At the end of in verse 34, Moses tells the people that they are to love one another because they were also strangers in the land of Egypt - translation, love because you know what it means to be on the outside, Having no family.
remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
We were all orphans until someone felt empathy for us and brought us inside
I wanted to show you something that may help us understand the concept of empathy
Empathy Video
What would it be what is written by your head when you first tried to come on a Sunday Morning? Or to small groups?
Leviticus
“Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
“I really need some friends because I am really lonely”
“I have never been this nervous before, I really hope someone nice talks to me”
“I am really struggling with sin in my life, I wonder if the people here can help me”
“I need a Christian family to walk with me while I am in college”
But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
1 Peter
but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
Deuteronomy
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment.
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Matthew
“We often think that we become holy by keeping the commandments, but the way to keep the commandments is loving God and loving people.”
Alan Ross
Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.
James 2
This is similar to eating good because you are supposed to vs/ simply liking what was better for you and you would eat good. The rule of eating good is for the person that is prone to like nachos more than vegetables. Nachos “taste” good but are not in fact good.
Think if Love as being our Brother’s Keeper...
Devout Worship
Honesty
Integrity
Justice
Charity
Love
How do we keep our brothers/sisters?
We Love them
Love is beneficial action toward another over against action for one self
Love for others is putting one-self out to meet their needs
Love is leaving my comfort to make yours
We Often see the commands followed by “I am the Lord”
expressing the idea that we are to be like God - image bearers of a holy God
We are to imitate God - (Be holy for I am holy!)
How was He -
Loving, Forgiving, Reconciling, Friend of Sinners, Calling others to repentance, teaching God’s truth, loving God’s truth
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. “You are My friends if you do what I command you. “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. “This I command you, that you love one another.
When we don’t love - we hate, when we are not for - we are against
The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
1 john 2:9-19
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
God’s people had to leave the corners of the field for the poor to glean (9-10)
God’s people had to be honest (11-12)
no stealing, cheating or defrauding
could not bind themselves to a lie in God’s name
God’s people could not exploit others (13-14)
could not use their position to oppress or rob others
could not with hold wages from a laborer
could not curse a deaf person
could not place a stumbling block in front of a blind person
God’s people had to deal justly with others (15-16)
could not show partiality toward the rich or poor
could not be “talebearers”
could not scheme to testify against a neighbor on a capital charge
God’s people could not hate, but could confront they could not take revenge. They should love neighbors as themselves (17-18)
Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.
We are not only children - who want relationship with our heavenly father while ignoring our siblings.
If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
1 john 3:
But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?
Everyone of you in here needs Christian fellowship/community which involves the sharing of spiritual life. So often we share social space, we hang out together, we ask how we are doing, we participate in discussion, we may even pray in groups but we don’t spend as much time as we should pursuing one another for the purposes of ministry and reaching out for help to those who are spiritual (led by the spirit, spiritually mature).
Those of you who are spiritually mature should be pursuing those who are not.
Those who are not spiritually mature should be pursing those who are, so they can help you work out your salvation.
You know how helpful that is when students share what is going on in their lives with us on Thursday. You can do that to one another any day of the week or any time.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with a friend, as he shared with me his hurts, and his struggles, what he has been learning and what he needs help with. We were able to talk about how I was not there for him like I needed to be and I told Him I was sorry. Until we are open to seeing/hearing one another and being seen and heard, we won’t get to the place we need to be as a family.
You may say, but we aren’t a blood family - while the Lord would disagree…verse
We aren’t a family because we don’t have problems we are a family because we are willing to work through them no matter the struggle
Praying for one Another
“A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.”
Deitrich Bonhoeffer
What community will look like
“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Sin of those around me
“If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. … How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?”
Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Some of you are friends, some of you are brotherish, what you need is to be the brother or sister you want! In our selfishness we want the same thing from our church family that we think we have in God. Someone who is there for us all the way and who we don’t have to be for them to “love” us. We feel like we can engage with God in our leisure or our comfort and still get the benefit that we require at any given moment/
Our view of God and our part in his church are not in anyway based upon our selfish expectations. He dictates what it means to be His image bearer and He dictates what it means to love one another
“Holiness is thus not so much an abstract or a mystic idea, as a regulative principle in the everyday lives of men and women. .. . Holiness is thus attained not by flight from the world, nor by monk-like renunciation of human relationships of family or station, but by the spirit in which we fulfill the obligations of life in its simplest and commonest details: in this way-by doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God-is everyday life transfigured.”
Love
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 13
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7 abears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love is patient - How are you not patient? What did that look like yesterday? Who do you need to show patience with? No, be a patient person! How, by understanding that the world does not revolve around you and it will be ok if things do happen in the time-line that you would like. We can take into account that people are learning and it will take them longer to get it.
Love is Kind - When are you most “not kind?” What does it mean to be Kind when you have a right to not be. Is kindness only shown in words withheld or in other ways?
Love is humble in word and deed - When do you brag about your love or are arrogant about it? when we do something and seek to tell others about the good thing we did or have done, we have not done the thing for the good of the person, but more likely to get the feeling of being right or taking credit. Love says, you need this more than me, and is glad to give what someone else can’t get.
Love acts becomingly - what is acting unbecomingly? to be inappropriate in the situation. Love is always appropriate. When have you been inappropriate, and love was lost?
Love seeks the good of others - When is the last time that you honestly did that? What keeps you from seeking the good of others? What keeps you from thinking about others at all? We often feel bad for people but we why do our feelings never move us on their account? What does it take for you to act or think about others more than yourself?
Love is unprovokable - love is not looking to get mad, and is under control. What provokes you to anger? What provokes you to complaint? What causes you to question God?
Love will suffer the indignity of being wronged - because love wants for you over against itself. It is what allows Stephen and Jesus to declare that we do not know what we are doing as we kill those that love us
Love rejoices in righteousness and with the truth - Our amens need to be stronger. Take a cue from Cameron Johnson. You know what he likes. He tells you what represents righteousness and truth. Love joyously regards the good, what is right, and what is true. I rejoice when I see you guys pursuing one another
Love bears all things - we let the dogs bight because we know that they are learning. But love does not keep on biting the hand that feeds them. Bear with those you are seeking to love? Bear with all the ways they seek to push you away and bear with them when they are hard-headed and bear with them when they sin and hurt you unintentionally
Love believes all things - love believes that all things are possibly in God. Love trusts that God will make it ok eventually. Love understands that God must have the last word, and that he will judge. This means I don’t have to have the last word and I don’t get to judge
Love hopes all things - The father always hopes that the son will return, we hope that the people we spend time with will show up to gather with the body next week. We hope that they will not keep playing in the mud/sin that so easily entangles them tomorrow. Where have you lost hope in your life? Who have you lost hope in?
Many of us love in some of these ways, and struggle mightily in others. These are not things you are these are things that you do. See even though love here is a noun, and is personified in Christ. Love is a command. Love your neighbor as yourself, is an action. It is something that you understand and it is something that you should do because you can do it. You will have to die to yourself - and it will lead to someone else living as a result. When you love someone you are choosing life for them and death for yourself. That is what you would choose for you. That is why the verse is such a powerful turn of phrase. We understand the object, the intent, and the amount. My neighbor is anyone that is not me. Love is what God demonstrated is and does. As yourself is how much. Love them to their comfort, to the amount you want to meet their need, like they are the most important person in the world, like you made them, like you would die for them...
That is Calvary Love...
Chill on that!
…so that they may know that you sent me!
As the song sings might we be moved to repentance!!