last week, although we are studying in 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 13 through 16, speaking about the holiness of God, that God is holy, and because God is holy, His people should be holy. We have read that passage over and again several times. Let's go back to where we'll spend the bulk of our time today in Leviticus 19. Well, they both started with L's. Leviticus chapter 19, and we'll begin our reading in verse 19. Leviticus chapter 19 and verse 19, hear now the inerrant, infallible, and inspired word of God. Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed. Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon thee. And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman that is a bondmaid, betrothed to a husband and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her, she shall be scourged, They shall not be put to death, because she was not free. And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass offering. And the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering before the Lord for his sin which he hath done, and the sin which he hath done shall be forgiven him. And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised, three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you, it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year, all the fruit thereof shall be holy, to praise the Lord with all. And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof. I am the Lord your God. Ye shall not eat anything with the blood, neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times. Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard, Thou shalt not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you. I am the Lord. Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be a whore, lest the land fall to whoredom and the land become full of wickedness. Ye shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man, and fear thy God, I am the Lord. And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him, but the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meat yard, in weight, or in measure. just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hymn shall ye have, I am the Lord your God, which hath brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes and all my judgments, and do them, I am the Lord. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his most holy word. Our quotation to begin this morning's sermon is from the Reverend William Perkins. Some of you know who that is, the Cambridge professor. Thirdly, by this scope and end of scriptures, we must learn to carry in mind this plain difference between the books of God and the writings of men. God's word brings a man which keeps it to happiness. But man's writings of themselves cannot do so unless they have light from the Word of God. If this distinction were imprinted on our hearts, we should not be so delighted as many are to hear or speak the words of God mixed with the words of sinful men, especially in the public ministry. In former times, the Lord forbade his own people to sow their field with mingled seed or to make them garments of diverse things as of linen and wool, Leviticus 19.19. And no doubt the same God does dislike that the pure seed of his word should be mingled with the sayings of erroneous and sinful men when the same is sown upon the furrows of men's hearts." That's really good, isn't it? Very helpful to help us to see what we have been advertising out of Leviticus 19 for the last few weeks, and that is that there is a moral element to all these commands. There's something that belongs to the people of God of every age. And remember last week we said that we impoverish ourselves when we don't take up the Old Testament, Leviticus 19. Why Leviticus 19? You will remember. This is the passage that Peter quotes from in 1 Peter 1, 13 through 16. And so when Peter says you're gonna be a holy people because you have a holy God, Well, that's exactly what Moses says at the beginning of chapter 19, 19 two. So if you'll remember these last few weeks, we've looked at chapter 18 in its broad strokes. We've looked at chapter 19 in its broad strokes in the first 18 verses. Speaking of those things that pertain to the very commandments of God, the 10 commandments, And then in verse 19, Moses changes his tone. He says, you're gonna keep my statutes as well. And the statutes then that Moses brings to the people of God of his age are statutes that are in many cases very much circumstantial, having to do with particular cases in their own lives. And what we said was what our working thesis is. Our working thesis is that we will take a look at those and we will endeavor to ascertain from them the moral element in each of these circumstantial commandments that we will wring out of the law of God, that which belongs to us. We're looking for the marrow here. We're looking for that deep and rich understanding that stands behind the command. And so last week, We only look at the first of the three in verse 19, thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. Now the reason we only got to one of those last week was because we took some time, and I want to remind you of all of this so that we carry it with us, because it's all involved in the right understanding of this passage, that there is a difference between moral commandments and positive commandments. And what does that mean, positive? When I think of a positive commandment, Pastor, I think of something I'm being told to do rather than something I'm being told not to do. And that's our common parlance today. We think of things positively and negatively in that sense. So like a good rhetorician, I want to put the dictionary at the front of the book so every time I use the word, you'll know what I'm talking about. A positive command is a command that has a moral underpinning behind it. The circumstances of its obedience may change from age to age. And if you remember, for our example of that, we took a commandment that was both moral and positive and has caused great confusion among God's people because it has both moral and positive elements. And that was, anybody remember? The fourth commandment, right? The Sabbath day. Because there are positive elements pertaining to the Sabbath day. The Sabbath of years, the Sabbath of weeks, right? There were those Sabbaths of Sabbaths, if you will. There was the new moon and the blowing of the trumpet, those two silver trumpets that we read about in Numbers chapter 10, that Moses was told that he must construct. Those were all Sabbaths. And none of them are observed today, rightly so. But the moral element, the weekly Sabbath, the one day in seven, and even the change of the day, right? The particular day itself is positive, not moral. Because under the commandment of the apostles, the Sabbath in the New Testament, the Christian Sabbath, is now the first day of the week, commemorating the resurrection of Christ and his victory, rather than the last day of the week, commemorating what was yet coming. Okay? All right, so that's where we were last week. So let's go ahead and forge ahead now in this week. so that we can continue to see these moral principles. Last week, we saw that the children of Israel were not to mix their cattle, and by cattle, that doesn't simply mean bovines. It means all of their animals, their sheep, their goats, their donkeys, their horses, and then what the King James, what we would think quaintly calls the beaves, Beef, bovine, what we call cows today, and what we properly in our society call cattle. Very, very seldom do you hear someone driving by a field of goats and they'll say, look at the cattle out there. Although for the Israelite, that's what it was. Cattle, sheep, all of that. And so they're to keep those separate. And we saw that we are what? We are the flock of Jesus Christ. that Jesus Christ himself in John 10 said, I have another flock, sorry, I have other sheep and I'm gonna bring them in and they're gonna be one flock. There's no two flocks of Christ. One shepherd, one flock. And in that one shepherd and one flock, then we also want to make sure that we don't have other shepherds that rule over us. That we don't mingle that flock and so on. All right, well that's what we looked at last week. So we move to the second commandment, and this is concerning the planting of seed. The children of Israel were commanded that they should not mingle seed in their fields. It's an interesting thing to think about. It's sad, really. It's grievous. You take a look at modern commentaries on this. and suddenly theologians become agriculturalists. And they're going to tell you how it's not good if you plant seeds of different kinds in the field. You're going to defile the fruitfulness of them. Because you know, plants don't really grow the same. And so if you really wanna maximize your crop, you're gonna keep this field to this planting and this field to this planting and so on. And I just have to say, what an impoverished way to understand the passage. The Lord does not require his people, in order to understand his word, to become experts in horticulture, in farming. Because there's a much greater truth at stake here. First of all, let's look at Deuteronomy chapter 22. This would also work with regard to leprosy and so on. We see, oh well, the Lord set up quarantine laws. Well, be careful when you go down that road. Don't make the Bible a medical book. It's not designed to be that. It's designed to be a medical book with regard to your soul, right? So that the doctors of souls and the patients with their souls may know how to find cure for their souls. That's the kind of medicine the scripture advertises. So in Deuteronomy chapter 22, this is the parallel passage. And it's important that we look at it. Why? Because Moses is going to reiterate those same principles to the generation to come. Because that generation is the one that's going to take these laws into the land of Canaan. They're the ones going to have fields to plant. Right, cattle to raise, fields to place them in. And as we move on in the passage, the other kinds of things that Moses will describe. So in 22, verse nine, Deuteronomy 22, nine. Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with diverse seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled. Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together. Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts as of woolen and linen together. Okay, so that's interesting, isn't it? It's a little bit different and yet it maybe is an advancement of the thought or maybe just a wider understanding of the same things that Moses taught the children of Israel back in Leviticus chapter 19. So here we have sowing with diverse seeds, we have plowing with an ox and an ass together, we have wearing a garment of diverse sorts and so on. And then notice in the next verse, there's that universal statement, thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself. Interestingly, we think of that then as passe now. We're not looking for those fringes on each other's clothing. I didn't look for that when you came in. You probably didn't look for that on me when I came in, and that's fine. And yet there was something that was to draw the children of Israel together as a body. Right? Okay. So how do we interpret this? How do we make use of this? Turn with me to Matthew chapter 13 then. And again, like we said last week, it is our goal here in pursuing holiness through Leviticus 19 and these circumstantial commandments to wring out of them the marrow that belongs to God's people. And as we see, there will be a New Testament referent over and again. to these things. And as that New Testament referent comes up, then what do you think our Lord had in mind in Matthew 13 when he will speak in the verses that we talk about? Do you think he had Leviticus 19 in mind? Do you think he had Deuteronomy 22 in mind? My answer to that question is how could he not? How could he not have had those things in mind? And how shall we not, when we come to Leviticus 19 and read it, shall we simply move past it? Remember, we talked about that impoverishment last week? Shall we just move past it as passe? Or will we squeeze the marrow out of it, brothers and sisters? Because our Lord has something here for us that is encouraging and helpful as we walk after him. So we'll begin our reading first in Matthew chapter 13, verse 24. Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, Didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn. Now we skip down to verse 36. Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house, and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. the enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels as therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire so shall it be in the end of this world the son of man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and shall cast them into a furnace of fire and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father, who hath ears to hear, let him hear. All right. So now we come to this teaching of Moses. Moses says, don't you plant different kinds of seed in your field. In Psalm 92 verse 13, don't we hear from the psalmist there that we are the planting of the Lord? We are the Lord's planting. And as we saw before that we are the sheep of his pasture. And so we should not gender then with those that are not his sheep. We should remain a separate flock. unto him, so also we find that we are the planting of the Lord." We're the planting of the Lord, brothers and sisters. We are the good seed that the Son of Man has sown. We make the field of this world savory unto Him because we are the good seed that He has sown. Shall we then take up the part of the enemy? the results of the enemy, the practice of the enemy, the telos, the intention of the enemy, and take that good seed and mingle it with the seed of the enemy? And of course that word seed, doesn't that have wondrous theological implications? Don't we hear at the very beginning of the world, at the first fall of mankind in Genesis chapter 3? That there will be a seed of the woman and a seed of the devil? Oh, how does it get more explicit than that? What was Jesus' interpretation? Not only is it that an enemy has done this, but the devil himself has spread his seed throughout the field. Now, shall we reduplicate his efforts? Shall we mingle ourselves with the seed of this world according to its thoughts, according to its paradigms, according to its theories, according to its doctrines and commandments? Haven't we learned from Matthew 15 at the mouth of our Lord that the doctrines and commandments of men always push out the things of God, the commandments of God? Don't we learn from the Apostle Paul in Colossians chapter two that we are not to partake of the vain philosophies of this world? Instead, we are to partake of Christ and his teaching. From the beginning of the world, Jesus tells us here, from the beginning of the world, Satan has been sowing his seed. Shall we then piggyback on his efforts? Shall we then imbibe in those things that are the results of his planting? Or shall we be the pure planting of the Lord? This is what Moses is teaching the people of God. Turn with me for a moment to Numbers chapter 11. This was not unknown even in that day after the Lord drew his people out of Egypt. Verse one. Numbers 11 and verse one. And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord and the Lord heard it. And his anger was kindled and the fire of the Lord burnt among them and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp. And Moses and the people cried unto Moses when Moses prayed unto the Lord. And when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched and he called the name of the place Tabera. because of the fire, because the fire of the Lord burned among them. And the, listen, mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting. And the children of Israel also wept again and said, who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic, but now our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes. And the manna was as coriander seed, and the color thereof was as the color of bdellium. And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in the pans, and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of fresh oil. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it." You know what manna means. It means, what is it? I pray thee. Right? Ma means in Hebrew, What? And na means please or I pray thee. So ma, na means what is it I pray thee? That's what they said when they first found it. And what do they do? They begin hearkening to the mixed multitude. The mixed multitude who turned on their wanters, if you will, for the food that was back in Egypt, the spices, the savoriness of it, and so they turned away from the bread of life, which is what manna was designed to represent to them. My dear brothers and sisters, understand this, that if we mix ourselves with the seed of the enemy, so will our hearts be drawn away from the purity that is in Christ. and we will desire the leeks and the onions and the garlics of this world rather than the food that nourishes to eternal life. What an amazing contrast is set before us there in Numbers chapter 11. We also saw that and we used this illustration last week, so I don't want to use it. I don't want to overuse it, but it does work very well in this context when we see the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent in Genesis chapter 3 as a divided seed. In chapter 6, what happens? That seed comes back together, doesn't it? When the sons of men saw the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and that was the criteria for them choosing brides rather than choosing godly brides. You've heard that children, right? When you grow up seeking mates, You seek out godly mates. You seek out those that will advance your understanding of Christ. The Lord in his kindness will give you a mate that may stretch and try you for your holiness, that will instruct you and help you, that will be that intimate foil. that mirror, that advisor, that counselor, that helper that will strengthen you in all obedience toward the Lord. Oh, we must not choose mates out of the seat of the enemy. And when that took place in Genesis chapter six, what happened? The whole earth was filled with violence and the thoughts of men's hearts were only evil continually. No, we must, like the Israelites of old, hear the commandment of the Lord not to mingle our seeds, not to mix them up with that which is unholy, but to desire for our best and most intimate and most friendly companions, those who share our convictions of Scripture and will encourage us in them. Those who will keep us when our feet may be turned aside to stray. Those who will help us to understand that when that enemy seed looks tasty to us, that we will have those that will draw us back instead. Those that with us, whom we can encourage and by whom we can be encouraged, will remind us that manna is the best thing we can eat, that the bread of life is the best diet there is, and will turn us away from the niceties of this world that we may have Christ. One thing I heard from one of the prayers of the men this last week. This is something that I have believed for a long time. It's nice to hear other people say it. My dear brothers and sisters, let me remind you. We don't often recognize how close to apostasy we can be. And how just a little bit of tipping from the seat of the enemy. may turn our direction. Instead of that, we want the people of God around us who will strengthen our arms for obedience, who will even put their hand in our back and press us toward the kingdom rather than away from it. We want the people of God that will be of greatest service to Jesus Christ in our lives, strengthening our footing upon the rock, locked elbow to elbow with us, shoulder to shoulder with us, rather than those who will wander in slippery places to fall. There are those who love the society of Christians. They love the society of Christians. I think I told you this a while back. I was having dinner with a man one night and he said, oh, you know, I just love reformed people. I love reformed churches. I said, really? That's neat. Tell me why. Well, you know, it's a good place to raise your kids. We feel safe there. You know, safe from violence and worldly influence. but not a word of Christ, not a word of doctrine. You know, Jacob spent a lot of time in the land of Laban, didn't he? And Laban, for his part, he was very happy that Jacob should be there. He loved what Jacob did. He loved the fact that the Lord has blessed me because of you, Jacob. I'm a richer man because you've been here, Jacob. My dear brothers and sisters, don't make that the paradigm by which you love to be with the people of God. Rather, love to be with the people of God and to keep that seed unmixed because it is in the lack of mixture of that seed that you have someone's hand in your back pressing you toward Christ. That you have someone's voice in your ear saying, this is the way. Walk ye in it. That you have someone's hand to hold yours when you have fallen down and say, rise and let us go together to the house of the Lord. Don't let it be because it's comfortable. Because if it's holy, sometimes it's going to be very uncomfortable. your desire, not like Laban, because there's worldly advantage, but because there's a spiritual efficacy to choosing your friends rightly, to choosing your beloved rightly, to committing to them rightly, and they commit to you rightly, that you are in covenant together as the people of God, one step in front of another through these dark days until together, we reach the land. There are lots of reasons to choose Christians as your fellowship, as the basis of your fellowship. Some people choose Christians as the basis of their fellowship because they have the same hobbies. May I say that Christianity becomes secondary and not primary at that point. It's very important that we get these things straight. This is the moral principle that stands behind what Moses said, don't mingle your seeds. Jesus, in Matthew 13, tells us what happens when the seeds are mingled. Keep them separate, brothers and sisters. Keep them clear. All right, the next principle, then, is the garment. The garment. We turn back to Leviticus 19 for just a moment. and we hear Moses say, neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen, notice this next phrase, come upon thee. Now, had he said simply, I don't want you weaving separate cloths together, we would have had something very similar to what we just had with the seeds. But notice now he's telling us what to put on and what not to put on. Well, when we begin using that language, put on, we understand, don't we? Those myriad of passages in the scripture, especially in the New Testament, when we hear what we are to put on as the people of God, This is what Moses is teaching God's people, such that when we come to the New Testament and we hear that we are to put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth, and the Apostle Paul will add in Colossians 3, knowledge, that is knowledge of the truth, that when we begin to put on in the New Testament, that we are putting on those things that make for holiness. So we are to put off the old man with his deeds, Ephesians 4, 17 through 24, Colossians 3, 5 through 11, and we are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. Romans 13, 14, Galatians 3, 27. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as unmixed. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as full strength. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as undiluted. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as not weaved up with the doctrines and commandments and vain philosophies of men. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ in every way that your thinking may be pure toward him. Put those on. Stretch those over your body. Stretch those over your soul. Stretch them over your mind. Stretch the word and ways and commands and counsels of Jesus Christ over your thinking. And learn then to filter every other thing that comes in by him. by that stretching out, by that putting on. Let's look at a few passages in the New Testament together. In Romans chapter three, there are several things that we are told to put on in the New Testament, and all of them are indeed to be rightly informed through scripture, unmixed if you will, Okay, broken reference, we're gonna move on, I'm sorry, Ephesians 6. This one I know is good. Bad notation. Ephesians 6, 10, finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Now he's going to go on and describe several pieces of armor, and just by way of overview of this passage, what I want you to understand is that if you put on all the armor of God, there's not a space left for anything else. That's the point Paul's making. We want to put on just the armor of God and not other things. not things that will weaken, not things that will make us vulnerable. We are indeed vulnerable. You recognize that, right? The Apostle Paul, in Ephesians chapter four, speaking to God's people, says, you know why you need a ministry, people of God? Because you're vulnerable. Because there are those who lie in wait with craft to deceive. They lie in wait. They lay on their beds at night, the psalmist tells us, thinking about ways to do mischief. You need the armor of God and to pull that on unmixed, without any other fibers in it, without any other mixing of any other piece, so that you may be able to stand in the day of evil. Put on the armor of God in 1 Thessalonians, Chapter 5, but let us, I'm in verse 8, excuse me, verse 8, but let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and hope and helmet the hope of salvation, a parallel passage to our passage in Ephesians 6. But there are many other things that we are told to put on as the people of God. Flip over to Colossians chapter three, verse 12. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, and above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Notice what he had already said, put off, verse eight, All these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth, lie not to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. My dear brothers and sisters, Paul is saying put on the new man and get rid of the threads in that garment that are old man threads. Get rid of those. and put on instead the new man with all of that description there in verses 12 through 14. That's what those new threads look like. Meekness, long-suffering, humbleness of mind, kindness, and so on. Notice in Psalm 132 in verse nine, the people of God understood this from their Bibles, the Old Testament. Psalm 132 verse nine, let thy priests be clothed with righteousness and let thy saints shout for joy. Clothed with righteousness, not a mixed cloth. In Zephaniah chapter one in verse nine, oh, this was a horrible time in the history of Israel. You had guys that were priests. In the morning, they would go down to the Lord's house and minister, and in the afternoon, they would go over to the house of Malcom and minister. You know, they were very broad-minded and tolerant, is how we would say it in these days, and no doubt, like in these days, they were sinfully commended for their toleration and broad-mindedness. But listen to what it says here about the rest of them. especially the nobility in Zephaniah chapter one. So let's go ahead and start in verse four. I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the name of the Chemerims with the priests, and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops, and them that worship and swear by the Lord, and that swear by Malchom. In other words, they have a dual allegiance there. They're mixed. and them that are turned back from the Lord, and those that have not sought the Lord, nor inquire of him. Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is at hand, for the Lord hath prepared a sacrifice. He hath bid his guests, and it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes and the king's children, and such as are clothed with strange apparel. the foreign apparel of the nation's roundabout Israel. They had taken on the garment of unbelievers. My dear brothers and sisters, let us not put on the garments of unbelievers. Let us pull on those clothes that are unmixed. Let us adorn our thoughts with that which is unmixed. Let us be singular in that which we put on to the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 3, We begin in verse one, likewise ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives, while they behold your chaste conversation, coupled with fear, whose adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and wearing of gold or putting on apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart. in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. And so you notice there that while this is a principle in this context spoken for women, it is a principle that applies to us all. What are you dressing up your hearts with, brothers and sisters? Are you dressing up your hearts with a mixed garment or a singular, a pure garment? Is it the pure word, the pure, unadulterated, not watered down and not diluted word of God? Is it that, what we like to call around here, that true industrial strength religion that the Bible presents to us? Or is it something that's washed out? Something that's been out in the sun for years and is shot through, bleached out, has holes, wear spots that have been patched. like Jesus will say to the Pharisees, you don't put a new patch on an old garment. You can't mix the cloths. They will make a rend, not a patch. And if we fill up our minds with the pure thread of God and the thread of the world, it will be rent. The patch will not hold in our minds. will not be singular toward the Lord Jesus Christ. So then, in all of these things, we recognize the principle that ourselves, we ourselves, ought to be whole and entire and unmixed before the Lord. Turn with me to Luke chapter 11 as we draw to a close. Luke chapter 11. Verse 34, Luke 11, 34. The light of the body is the eye. Therefore, when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light. But when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. Wow, that's good stuff, isn't it? Our Lord Jesus sums up what we have learned in these two, three illustrations from Leviticus 19.19. It is an important principle then for us to ask, what are we sewing? What are we sewing? Are we sewing a mixed seed? What kind of garments are we putting on? I don't mind. The Lord doesn't mind that the clothing that you're wearing today may be part polyester, part cotton, part linen. That's not what's being said here. What's being said here is how singular are we toward God? Is our eye single is how Jesus puts it in Luke 11. Or are we beholding darkness? Are we letting darkness in so that the darkness replaces the light in such a way that Jesus says, if the light that is in you become darkness, how great is it? What do we listen to? What do we watch? What do we choose for entertainments, for recreation? How do we wind down? Now I can hear it, I can hear it already. Pastor, pastor, I have liberty in these things. Okay, let's talk about liberty for a moment. And because I'm out of time, I'll be forceful and brief. First of all, You have no liberty to defile God's field. No liberty. You have no liberty to defile others with your example and with the defilement of your own heart that comes from your pretended liberty. You have no liberty belonging to Christ to join yourself, as the scripture says, to Baal Peor, to a harlot, to be yoked with unbelievers, especially in your affections, especially in your hearts and your thoughts. You, beloved, are the people of God, the people of his own purchase. You are the sheep of his hand, of his pasture. You are the seed of his field. Pull on then the garments of singularity. Clothe yourselves with Jesus Christ. Clothe yourselves with his instruction, with his mercy, with his gospel grace. Clothe yourselves with that. rather than advancing the seed of the enemy in your own hearts. We will admit, won't we, that we are very poor at this. and we fail our Lord miserably. We mingle and mix ourselves with unbelievers. We take on their recreations, many of which are contrary to biblical morals. We believe that evil communications will not corrupt our manner, our ethic, and yet, Paul said, most certainly, they will in 1 Corinthians 15, 33. We believe that we can stand in the evil day without having pulled on the armor of God, And we cannot. We have believed we're not as vulnerable as we think we are because we're not often sensible of it and we make our sense the rule rather than God's word. No, we are very poor at this. If we look at the church generally, we see how poor actually we are. in that we have brought in worship forms, ungodly doctrine, practices that are rank evil, and we've brought them in and sanctified them in, if you will, pardon the expression, baptized them in the church. In places where there is greater purity than that, then we bring pride in and we baptize our pride and we excuse ourselves for that in all We must admit that we grieve our Lord who is merciful and gracious when we mingle ourselves with the theories and thoughts and practices of the world. What are we to do, right? Like they said to Peter at the end of his Pentecost sermon, men and brethren, what shall we do? What are we to do? for these things. The commandments of God are clear. From one end of the scriptures to the other, we hear about the mingled seed. We hear about what we are to put on. We hear about the mingled flock. From one end of scripture to the other. Let us then do the things that make for keeping our hearts in the love of God. Oh Lord, writes the psalmist, let my eyes behold thy word. and not vanity. Let us confess our duplicity to the Lord because he is of great mercy and compassion to poor and weak and even defiled sinners such as we are. He promises to forgive the penitent sinner. but let us not go on. It would be to presume upon the mercy of God to think that we can go on mingling and go on pulling on mixed threads and go on gendering with others that are not, that do not belong to Jesus Christ, that are not his, and come away unscathed, come away unsullied, come away unmixed ourselves. So then pray the Lord for humility, to hear him. Not to minimize his commandment to be a people utterly separated because that is utterly impossible for us. But instead, no matter how far we fall and how easy to fail it is, that we continue in the way of obedience by his mercy. and His grace. Beloved, then, my counsel to you and to me is, indeed, do not pull on those garments of mixed threads, and do not become an enemy by sowing a mixed seed in our own hearts, in our families, in our churches, in our acquaintances and friends. Instead, pray that we should be a pure seed of Christ. Let's stand and call upon the Lord in prayer. Our dear Heavenly Father, we have heard from thy word a hard word, a word that convicts us all. Forgive us, Father, for mingling ourselves, for being a mixed multitude, for seeking even in our own pleasures the things of this world. Help us to hear the counsel of the Apostle James, that friendship with the world is enmity against God. and would call those who would pursue friendship with the world, adulterers and adulteresses who are not single toward their head and husband, Jesus Christ. Oh Lord, we pray that our eye, our ear would be single, that we would hear the voice of our shepherd when he calls, when he calls away from danger and toward himself. when he leads out ahead that we would come in behind him, that we would not be those wayward sheep that require the shepherd to chase hither and yon. And yet, Father, even in praying these things, we thank thee that our Lord Jesus Christ is that good shepherd of the sheep who will go and get the one. even though it may appear that he is neglecting the 99 to get the one and to bring him back to the fold. Lord, we pray that we might be a people following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ and encouraging one another to singleness, singleness of eye, singleness of what we put on, singleness of what we believe, and then that we might bear good fruit. So very grateful, Father, that thou has not cast us off, although in our thoughts, in our minds, and in our pursuit of other things, we, in those ways, have, in a sense, cast thee off time after time. Father, we pray that thou wouldst disabuse us then of our ability to be single, to stay with thee, and to remain faithful all the days of our lives. But even in our stepping one step at a time toward that final day that we recognize that our feet rise and fall because of thy strength. We pray these things in Christ Jesus name. Amen.