The following is a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. We are studying the book of Leviticus as a church on Sunday mornings. Today we turn our attention to Leviticus 19 and 20. These two chapters are sometimes called a holiness code. They comprise an extended list of ethical instructions. prescribing the godly conduct that the Lord requires in the lives of His people as they respond to His grace in providing atonement for them, atonement that has been the subject of the first sixteen chapters. As we're going to see, these chapters are essentially an explanation and an application of God's moral law particularly as it is articulated in the Ten Commandments and reiterated in the New Testament. And so while a good deal of this material is specific to the ancient Near Eastern cultural context in which the Israelites lived, nevertheless, these instructions continue to teach us some vital principles about practical holiness. that we badly need to learn and live out today. We're going to think about seven things in particular. I promise each of these are going to go by real fast. Seven things. Let me list them for you. First, holiness is about bearing the family likeness. We are to be like God who is holy. Holiness is about bearing the family likeness. Secondly, holiness begins at home. Thirdly, holiness keeps God's law. Fourthly, holiness rests upon the gospel. Fifthly, holiness loves its neighbor. Sixthly, holiness trembles at God's judgments. And seventhly, holiness bears witness to the world. Let me repeat those for those of you taking notes. Holiness is about bearing the family likeness. Holiness begins at home. Holiness keeps God's law. Holiness rests upon the gospel. Holiness loves its neighbor. Holiness trembles at God's judgment. Holiness bears witness to the world. This is a long section of text. I won't read it all, but before we read portions of it together, let's bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray. O Lord our God, as we bow before You with Your Word open in our hands, we ask that You would give light, O Lord, by Your Holy Spirit that we may understand, believe, and obey Help us now to receive and rest upon Christ as He is offered in the gospel, and living in light of that gospel, be enabled to walk in new obedience for Your glory and praise. Do this by this portion of Your Word. We ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. Leviticus 19, beginning at verse 1. This is the Word of God. 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. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols. or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal. I am the Lord your God. When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, or on the day after, and anything left over until the third day shall be burned up with fire. If it is re-eaten at all on the third day, it is tainted. It will not be accepted, and everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned what is holy to the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people." 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. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and 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's. 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 no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall 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. 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's." And then beginning in verse 19, running through verse 37, there are various commands related to justice and equity and the proper love of neighbor. In chapter 20, 1 through 9, there is an express prohibition and a judgment threatened upon all who engage in the wickedness of child sacrifice in the pagan worship of the god Molech, and the prohibition of other forms of paganism and superstition. And then in 20 verse 10 through 21, there's another long list of sexual sins, much like the list we considered last week in chapter 18. And this time, however, as in the first part of chapter 20, the specific distinctiveness of this section of the chapter is that there are divine judgments, censures, and penalties appended to these prohibitions. And we conclude our reading looking at verses 22 through 27. You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them. And the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out, and you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you. For they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean. and the unclean bird from the clean, you shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine. A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones. Their blood shall be upon them." Amen. And we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word. Let's think in the first place about how holiness bears the family likeness. Holiness bears the family likeness. Look at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 19 with me. 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." Israel is to be holy because their God is holy. We've seen this idea of holiness in Leviticus already quite a lot. The meat of the sacrifices was holy. The vestments that the priests wore were holy. the altar and the tabernacle that housed it were holy. The high priest was holy, and now we learn that God's people as a whole were themselves also to be holy. And the model and the template of Israel's holiness wasn't to be Moses or the high priest, it's not the sanctity of the tabernacle or its altar or its sacrifices. The template of holiness, both then and still for us today, is Almighty God Himself. Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty. You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy." And as we saw as we began to read the chapter together sixteen times over in chapter 19, we hear the refrain that we began to hear last week in chapter 18, I am the Lord your God, or simply I am the Lord. The Lord our God is the Holy One. He is the touchstone and the template of all true holiness. And because God is holy, His people must be holy like Him. Holiness is the family likeness. Sometimes it's possible, isn't it, to tell which children belong to which parents. You can see the physical resemblance, the red hair or the the blue eyes or the freckles or the unusual heights. When my children were very young, pictures of them look uncannily like pictures of me at the same age. It's a beautiful thing, and we love it when we see it, the family characteristics showing up generation after generation. And that's how it's supposed to be for us as Christians. Children of God True children of God can never be content to be like the world. We must be like our Father. We must be holy, for our God is holy. And so the apostle Peter, quoting from our chapter, says, 1 Peter 1.14, as obedient children. Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who has called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written," here's Leviticus 19, you shall be holy, for I am holy, whose likeness can be seen in your moral life day by day. That is the question we ought to ask ourselves. Would anyone know I am a child of God? Because His character is reflected more and more in mine, in the daily details of my life. Holiness bears the family likeness. Could we see the family likeness in you? Holiness bears the family likeness. Then secondly, holiness begins at home. Holiness begins at home. Verses 1 through 4 of chapter 19 function as a sort of preface to this whole extended section. They provide a praisee of the holiness that God requires. What's fascinating is that it starts in verse 3—notice this carefully—it starts in verse 3 with mom and dad. Do you see that? Every one of you should revere his mother and his father. Now, that's instructive, I think, how you treat your parents, and actually by implication, how you as parents train and lead and serve and discipline and care for your children. The family, the home, is on the very front line of practical Christian holiness. There's no escaping the fact that the culture of the home largely shapes the culture of our lives. And so a Christian home ought to be a great help toward holiness for all who have the blessing of being raised in one. Some of you, I know, have a very difficult relationship with your parents. Like me, more than a few of you were not raised in a believing home. Let me simply remind you of the profound witness and challenge to your unbelieving parents the undeserved respect and love of a Christian son or daughter can be to them. When you don't give as good as you get, but speak kindly to parents who fail to speak kindly to you. When you go out of your way to bear with and forgive and show honor to parents who've sometimes wronged and dishonored you, when you do that, you show something of the supernatural sanctifying power of redeeming grace at work in your believing heart. When you love those who are unloving toward you, you put on display something of the likeness of Jesus Christ, who at the height of His agonies and sufferings, when He was reviled, reviled not in return. Practical holiness typically begins at home. Practice it there, in your own household, in the embrace of your own family. That's sometimes, let's be honest, the hardest place of all, to practice consistent Christian godliness, isn't it? No one can push your buttons like family. Sometimes that's the hardest place to practice Christian holiness. But listen, if you won't work at holiness at home, you won't likely make any progress in holiness in any other area of your life. Holiness bears the family likeness. We want to be holy like our Father in heaven, who is holy. and holiness begins at home. It starts honoring mother and father. Thirdly, holiness keeps God's law, as we've just seen. The fifth commandment is mentioned right there in verse 3 of chapter 19. Everyone shall revere his mother and father, but so also is the fourth commandment. You shall keep my Sabbaths. The first and second commandments are mentioned in verse 4. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal. I am the Lord your God." The third commandment is reflected in verse 12, you shall not swear by my name falsely, and in verse 11 before it, do not lie to one another. The sixth commandment, dealing with murder, is likely reflected in verse 16, you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor. The seventh commandment, dealing with sexual sin, is in verses 20 and 21, and again in verse 29. The eighth commandment in verse 11, you shall not steal. The ninth in verse 15, you shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. And the tenth, dealing with covetousness and greed, is found there in verse 13, 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. The point is really very simple. Holiness, explained and applied here, obeys the law. The law of God provides the shape and the contours of that holiness that God requires. And if you look over for a moment at verse 19 of chapter 19, verse 19, you'll see what, to our ears at least, appears rather… these are rather strange commands, aren't they? The Israelites were not to interbreed cattle or sow two different types of seed in the same field, or even wear garments made of cloth mixed from two different kinds of thread. Now, what is that all about? The other commands we have some grasp of, we see their ethical or religious implications, but what about verse 19? Frankly, it seems arbitrary. I'm kind of wondering, actually, if that's part of the point. After all, it is not for us to decide where the boundaries of our obedience to God lie. Taking care to keep His law, even in these apparently arbitrary details, drives the message home that obedience isn't obedience at all. unless it is obedience all the way through, right down to the details, whether we understand them or not. Our God wants us to obey Him, and His moral law is to be our standard, not our private judgment. The A9 is the main road north into the highlands of Scotland. It's a pretty drive, it's a nice drive. The scenery can be in spots, really very pretty indeed. But in the winter, the road gets treacherous, especially as it gets up into the higher reaches and the mountain passes. And there are a couple of spots along the way where you'll see these very tall poles on either side of the road at regular intervals with reflective decals at the top. These are the poles designed to mark the edges of the road in the event of a blizzard, or should snow completely cover the road entirely. And the law of God functions like those poles at the side of the road. God doesn't leave it to us to guess where the edges of the highway of holiness lies. His moral law demarcates the boundaries of a life that pleases Him. When last did you take moral inventory of your life under the scrutiny of the law of God? If it's been a while, may I suggest to you you go home this afternoon and dig out a copy of the Westminster Larger Catechism? or look it up online, and prayerfully read through it. You might do it in a number of sittings and take a little section at a time, and see this extraordinarily comprehensive exposition of the Ten Commandments. It is a really very insightful treatment of God's moral will for our lives, and it will search you and humble you and lead you to renewed repentance and fresh efforts and resolve to live for God's glory, His grace helping you. So, holiness bears the family likeness. Holiness begins at home. Holiness keeps God's law. Fourthly, holiness rests on the gospel. holiness rests on the gospel. Look at chapter 19, verses 5 through 8. I find it so helpful here. Right after summarizing God's law for us in these initial verses, Moses inserts a summary of the rules for the peace offering. You'll remember we studied the peace offering when it was expounded in much more detail back in Leviticus chapter 3. Here it is again. In summary, the ritual has two elements. There's an atoning sacrifice, removing the guilt of sin that disrupts fellowship between the worshiper and God and making peace between us. And then there is a sacred meal. using the meat of the sacrifice that the meal is designed to express fellowship with God, communion with Him, now that we are at peace. And you'll notice that these rules in verses 5 through 8 focus especially on the timing of when that sacred meal was to be consumed, either the very same day or the next day, but it was not to be kept until the third day. To leave it so long presumably implied that you felt no urgency in the provision, to make use of the provision that God has given you. It suggests that you are indifferent. The satisfaction that he gives, the nourishing grace he supplies? Meh. They can wait. I'll get around to it. How are things occupying my attention and my joys? No, no, this passage is saying don't wait. Don't delay. Let the dead bury their own dead. You follow me right now, Jesus would say. Or as he says to his ministers, Compel them to come in. Everything is ready. The feast is spread. The table is set. Come now, you come now. Come and eat without money and without price and be satisfied in the abundance of good things that God has provided for sinners in the sacrifice of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has made peace by His cross. And He sustains and keeps and nourishes and strengthens His people by His Son, who said that my body is true food and my blood is true drink. You eat Him, you receive Him when you trust in Him and turn from sin and self to the Savior. And don't delay, that's the message here, don't delay. Make use of the provision of God in the gospel to get right and live in joyful fellowship with the Lord your God. And whatever else that does, inserting this reminder of the peace offering right here near the beginning of this long summary of God's moral will for us reminds us that there is no true obedience that does not arise up out of fellowship with Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The rules of chapters 19 and 20 are not mere steps for moral reformation, as if the law of God was a ladder. Each command another rung meant to help you climb up under your own steam, by your own effort, into God's favor and God's good books. Not at all, not at all, no. God alone makes peace between us. Otherwise, we never could please Him, never could know Him, and never could have fellowship with Him, and all our attempts at obedience would be nothing but more of an offense before Him. He provides the sacrifice in the death of His dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He sustains and gives life to His people, nourishing them every day by His grace, so depend on Him. If you want to grow in obedience, yes, you must keep God's law. But the power of obedience comes from fellowship with Jesus Christ in the gospel. That is the symbolism of the peace offering. Get this wrong, and everything else will be wrong. This is the difference, you know, between legalism and real obedience. The real thing flows from a heart given new life by the grace of God's own Son and sustained every day by His wonderful love. Leviticus 19, 5 through 8 is really saying the same thing Colossians 2, 6 says, as you have received Christ, Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up and established in the faith. You received Him, now walk in Him. Obedience that pleases God, true evangelical holiness. comes from receiving and resting on and feasting by faith upon Jesus Christ the Lord as you find Him in the gospel. Is your religion all morality, all law-keeping, all duty, or have you come consciously to rest all your doing on Christ's done? All your effort for obedience to Him, on His obedience and blood before God. All your hard work on all His finished work. All your service on His sacrifice. Real holiness rests on the gospel. Are you resting on Christ today? You can never please God any other way. Rest on Him. He has done everything, everything to reconcile sinners to God. rest upon him." Holiness bears the family likeness. It begins at home. It keeps God's law. It rests on the gospel. Fifthly, holiness loves its neighbor. Holiness loves its neighbor. If you cast your eye over the commands of these chapters, you'll see that the holiness that God wants is not a mere feeling of piety in the heart. It isn't a spiritual serenity that makes us seem otherworldly to people. It isn't private and pious or abstract. The holiness that God calls for is practical and public, isn't it? Can you see that? We really don't have time to look at every command in these two chapters to demonstrate my point, but let me highlight a few of the commands. You'll notice, for example, that holiness makes provision for the poor at harvest time, verses 9 and 10. Holiness is concerned that businessmen not take advantage of their employees, so wages are to be paid promptly so as not to leave people unable to bridge a gap between paychecks, verses 13 and 14. Christians are to seek the highest possible standards of justice and to refuse to show partiality to the poor or to the powerful, verses 15 and 16. The elderly are to be honored, verse 32. Just weights and measures, fair business practices are always to be used, verses 35 through 37. Holiness, Leviticus wants us to understand, is a very practical and public thing indeed. We were just reading that same point in the epistle from James. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this. to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. And look again at chapter 19, verse 18, and also at verse 33, and notice the driving motive for all of this. What is this practical holiness? Where does it come from in the believing heart? What does the text say, verse 18 and verse 33? Leviticus says it is all love. It is a species of love. That's where it comes from. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, verse 18. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt, verse 33. Jesus quotes these verses, do you remember, when he was asked, which is the greatest commandment? He said, the whole law of God is summed up in these commands to love. You shall love the Lord your God. with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself," quoting Leviticus 19 in Mark 12, 13 and 31. So real holiness, it's not a cold, formal business, is it? Neither is it a private, personal affair. Real holiness loves other people well. It serves them in Jesus' name and in obedience to God's command. It cares about the poor. It upholds justice. It treats the stranger with the same welcome we extend to a neighbor. Holiness works in the schoolhouse, on the judges' bench, in the Capitol building, and on the street corner. It's meant to operate at a dinner party, at a job interview, at a wedding reception, and a football game. Holiness is about neighbor love in the real world. It's not a quote you put on on the way into church and then put off Monday through Saturday. Holiness is how you exist in the world every moment of every day as you seek faithfully to follow God and love others well. Holiness bears the family likeness. Holiness begins at home. Holiness keeps God's law. Holiness rests on the gospel. Holiness loves its neighbor. Sixthly, holiness trembles at God's judgments. In chapter 21 through 6, Child sacrifice and the use of mediums and necromancers is denounced in 10 through 21. A list of sexual sins, almost identical to the list we worked through last week in chapter 18, is repeated. What holds these sections together in chapter 20 is that they all contain a specific penalty, a censure, a word of judgment. In 1 through 5, people who participate in sacrificing children to Molech are to be stoned to death. The censure for the sexual sins of verses 10 through 16 is also death. The offenders in verses 17 and 18 are to be cut off from the people. And in 19 through 21, those found guilty were forbidden to have children, which meant that their family line would end with them and their inheritance in the land would be lost, which in ancient Israel was considered a calamity of the highest degree. Sin, the message is clear, sin incurs penalties. Holiness, therefore, trembles at the prospect. The gospel motivates Christian obedience. Love for God and love for neighbor motivates Christian obedience. But there ought also to be a recognition that all sin deserves the wrath and curse of God. Judgment is real. Have you forgotten that? Judgment is real. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Sin will destroy you. if left unaddressed and unrepented of. It is a loaded gun. Do not play with it." Real holiness hears the warnings and trembles at the very thought of the judgment of God. He is the Holy One. You've no doubt seen pictures of lava erupting from a mountain, Hawaii. pouring down the sides, down the slopes, and when it hits the cold water of the ocean, there's an explosion. It erupts. It's dramatic. You've seen these pictures? That's what these verses are teaching us happens when the holiness of God comes into contact with the unholiness of our sin. That's what the wrath of God really is. It is the molten-hot divine holiness making contact with the ice-cold rebellion of our sinful hearts. Tremble at the prospect of any of your long-indulged transgressions encountering the incandescent purity of God's presence. and determined today to root them out and tear them down and cut them off and crucify them. Holiness bears the family likeness, it begins at home, it keeps God's law, it rests on the gospel, it loves neighbor, it trembles at God's judgment, and finally holiness bears witness to the world. One of the great motives implied all the way through these chapters for the pursuit of practical holiness is that the people of God ought to stand out from the crowd. We should be noticeably different. people should see and sense and hear and feel that we live by different rules, animated by different principles, enabled by a different power. So look at chapter 20, 22 through 24. You shall therefore keep my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you may live, bringing you to live, may not vomit you out, and you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did these things, and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples." If you are a Christian, You have been separated from the world. You are therefore to be distinct and consecrated to God, devoted to Him. the hairstyles of the Israelites, their diets, their clothing, their agriculture, their religious practices, their treatment of the poor and the marginalized. It was all meant at every point of their lives to say to everyone who met them, we're not like you. We belong to the Lord our God, and that changes everything for us. Nothing is untouched by His grace in our lives. No one missed, no one could miss their distinctiveness when they kept the law of God. In Matthew 5, 16, Jesus taught His disciples a very similar point. He said to us, let your light shine before others. so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." We said at the beginning, our text repeats 16 times over, I am the Lord your God. And that is used to reinforce the point that we are to be holy with a reflection of His holiness. But it also makes the point that since we reflect His holiness, it is His holiness that others are to see in us. something of who He is shining from you. Live so that others will know, looking at you, listening to you, seeing how you treat people, how you conduct yourself. Live so that others will know that He is the Lord your God, that they will know whose you are, to whom you belong. live that the world might see in you the beauty of holiness, not the alleged drudgery of it, not its supposed joylessness, not its imagined impracticality. That's what the world thinks we mean when we talk about holiness. But those who walk in Christian obedience Have fellowship with God and enjoy His smile, and have every reason for joy. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Show Him to be beautiful by the beauty of your obedience." So, holiness is about bearing the family likeness. It's about living it out in the context of your home. That's where it starts. Holiness keeps the law of God. It's not up to us to figure this out for ourselves. There's a roadmap. Holiness rests on the gospel, not our own strength, but the grace of God in Christ enables us to obey. Holiness loves its neighbor, its real-world practicality that cares about one another. Holiness trembles at the judgment of God. It doesn't shrug and use the blood of Christ as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it quakes at the prospect of defying the thrice-holy Lord. And holiness bears joyous witness before a watching world. May God make us, all of us, as holy as redeemed sinners can be. Let us pray. Our God and Father, as we bow before You, we confess how short we all fall of that holiness without which no one shall see the Lord. We ask for Your pardon and Your cleansing because we fall short of the glory of God. We praise You that in the blood of Christ, You have secured not only our forgiveness but our holiness too. And so help us, all of us now, to receive and rest on Him, that by His enabling power we might begin to put our sin to death and live unto righteousness, that before the eyes of a watching world we might show them the beauty of holiness the beauty of your holiness reflected in our own growing likeness to you. Would you do it, please, for Jesus' sake? Amen.