Open with me in your copy of the Word of God to the book of Leviticus. The book of Leviticus, chapter 20 this morning. The ocean. The ocean. It's beautiful. It's teeming with life. And it's attractive. It's also dangerous. And the ocean is bigger than any of us. And you can't understand the first thing about the ocean if you don't understand that last thing that I just mentioned, that the ocean is bigger than you. And in so many ways, the ocean is like sex. So let's read Leviticus chapter 20 and ponder how that is the case. And we'll hear a sermon from this chapter. Leviticus chapter 20, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, say to the people of Israel, any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people because he has given one of his children to Molech. to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do not at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech." If a person turns to mediums and necromancers whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. Consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood is upon him. If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death, they have committed perversion, their blood is upon them. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity. He and they shall be burned with fire that there may be no depravity among you. If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister's nakedness and he shall bear his iniquity. If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from among their people. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister or of your father's sister for that is to make naked one's relative. They shall bear their iniquity. If a man lies with his uncle's wife, he's uncovered his uncle's nakedness. They shall bear their sin. They shall die childless. If a man takes his brother's wife, it's impurity. He's uncovered his brother's nakedness. They shall be childless. You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them that 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." Well, if you've been with us the last number of weeks and we just read this chapter, you may wonder if we're reviewing a chapter we've already read together. This sounds awfully familiar, and as we've been learning, as we've worked through the book of Leviticus, maybe we didn't need to be taught this, but there's a lot of repetition in the book of Leviticus. There's repetition within chapters, we've heard repetition in this chapter, and there's also repetition between chapters. Sometimes chapters sound a whole lot like each other. An example of this, in the first half of the book, we had verse chapters one through seven, we had instructions concerning five sacrifices to be given, and we worked through those five sacrifices. But you'll remember, chapters later, all five of those sacrifices get more material, but the material is slightly tuned in the direction of the priests, the instructions for the priests. Well, we integrated some of that material into the earlier sermons and didn't work chapter by chapter exactly. And it's worth noting that the Bible was given to us and is to be preached. Christ from all of scripture is to be preached, but the Bible books are not given to us in preaching units specifically. There's discretion as to how this is done to faithfully preach Christ from a book, the whole Christ from a whole book. And so we've exercised some of that as we've went. Nothing to hide when we skip a chapter or two. Often enough, I'm integrating it one way or another in a way that's useful in a different sermon. We have a similar case here. Chapter 20 is a lot like Chapter 18. In fact, if you read the two of them, as I said, you may think you've just read the same chapter twice. There's similarity of subject matter. The commands are largely similar in a sort of different order, though. The rationales are similar for these commands. These commands which are united by Life and family and marriage and the marital bed a marital bed Cluing you in with my opening comments on the ocean gets a gets a body of material in this Chapter as it consumed the chapter 18 in this chapter. We have a little more on sacrificing babies to the false god of Molech and which is abhorrent to God, and he circles back around to it here, now puts it at the beginning of chapter 20, perhaps to emphasize it. Similar rationales for keeping these commands. Who God is as the holy God, who God is for us. He's our covenant Lord who has given himself to us in grace to redeem us. I am the Lord your God, he says. And where he is leading us into the land, And remember that the tabernacle is the hot spot of his presence in the world, that holy of holies, that central spot, the brightest spot of his blazing glory on earth. And as the tabernacle would travel with them, eventually they would go move into the land of Canaan and a temple would be built eventually. News of that is to come in centuries later. But where his presence goes, his people go, and so his presence was to expand and fill the land. And so the land into which he is leading them is like a big version of the tabernacle that they have just set up. And so the tabernacle is a holy place, and so the land of Canaan promised to Abraham is to be a holy place. They were booted from Eden because Eden is where God is and God is holy and they are not holy, but God is rescuing and redeeming a people that can be in his presence again. And so this land is, it's like, it's like a foretaste of that. And on this earth and in the context of this part of God's plan, that is where God will bring them into his presence. So similar commands, similar reasons, but some differences as well. If you were to read the first chapter, or chapter 18, you would notice a series of prohibitions. This is largely prohibitions, but actually this chapter is different in that We're not just to negatively not do things, but positively we are to do some things. We are to respond to a failure of obedience to chapter 18 with these very serious, shocking punishments. And they appear to be progressive in nature and in seriousness and working from most serious to least. You have the punishment of death, that paragraph from chapter verse 10 to 16, the adulterer and adulteress put to death. The man lies with his father's wife, he's uncovered his father's nakedness, both of them put to death. And there's texture in the old covenant law to consider consent so when we see the language of both of them, we may assume that both had given themselves to sin together, put to death, put to death, put to death, put to death, put to death. We have here the language of perversion, something twisted and bent, of abomination, something that provokes hatred, and disgust, and the language of depravity, something that is corrupted. Strong language and strong punishments to match these sins. But you'll notice in verse 17 and following, we have slightly different consequences of the Lord cutting people off from His people. the language of put to death mirrors what we get in, for example, Deuteronomy chapter 17. I'll turn there, you don't need to turn there, but I want to read for you a few verses there. We'll get a handle on how capital punishment worked in Israel. This will be useful to us later. So just listen here as we consider how one was put to death. you shall not sacrifice to the Lord your God an ox or a sheep in which is a blemish or defect of any kind for that's an abomination to the Lord if there is found among you within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you when they move into the land a man or a woman who does what is evil in the sight of your God in transgressing his covenant and he has gone and served other gods and worshipped them, or worshipped the moon, or the sun, or any of the hosts of heaven which I have forbidden, and it is told you, and you hear of it, then you shall inquire diligently, so here's the process, you shall inquire diligently having heard of it, and if it is true and certain that such an abomination has been done in Israel, which is to say there may be instances in which it was done and it was not validated by witnesses, not certain, Then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing, and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones." Capital punishment. On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death, and not less than that. A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness, to be clear. hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the people so you shall purge the evil from your midst so in the land in particular uh while sinners will sin high-handed sin egregious sins got this kind of punishment in israel's theocracy it wasn't just a religious club as they lived among another nation, they were themselves a nation unto themselves under the authority and rule of God. So there are differences between chapter 18 and chapter 20 of Leviticus, specifically the consequences, and we move from those who are put to death by a process we've just read, to those who are cut off, verses 17 through 21, And often it's the Lord who cuts them off. And it may be one or a couple things going on here. It may be that the matter was not as serious. I think it's the case. The matter is not as serious, at least in some of the cases here. Or it may be that the matter is very difficult and unlikely to validate with witnesses. It's the kind of thing that you'll know if it happened and you were engaged in it, but you wouldn't self-report. and no one else would likely know. And so in those cases, when that human process God had given to his people isn't practical to bring about a clear conclusion, the Lord says, I will cut you off. In other words, you can't get away with it just because no one saw it. The judgment of God still hangs over you. And what precisely that led to is not exactly clear either. Whether that's the Lord striking them dead, ending their life prematurely? Possibly. Whether that's a kind of a permanent cutting off from their people after death, whenever death happens? Possibly. In any case, it's bad, and the Lord does it, and yet it seems like it's short of being put to death. And then at the end of this list, actually here in verses 20 through 21, we have the consequence of being Childless, dying childless. By inference, a reminder that children are a great blessing, and especially in a time when children were the means by which you were not only cared for emotionally and socially and in all the blessings of family, but physically. To be childless was and is, but was in then, that time, in a unique way, a certain kind of curse. And so we have a kind of cascading or a progress of consequences. And they all seem to do with the ending of life. So the ending of physical life, ending of life in some fashion being cut off, and then childlessness. A list that is largely given to the meddling with the mechanism of the gift of life now ending in the consequence of death. So 18 and 20, what's in between? Chapter 19 is in between. You'll remember chapter 18 and 20 bookend chapter 19. Chapter 18 and 20 have to do with the prohibitions against largely sexual immorality. But chapter 19 is largely positive, what we should do, anchored and centered by that verse that we all know, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And so here we have what Israel understood as their holiness code, a package of commands bookended by prohibitions and boundaries for the community. at the heart of their life, even the marriage bed here, in the center of which are these commands to love one another as yourself. So beautiful how God has put this together. Now it wasn't my plan to preach initially on this chapter for reasons I've kind of explained, but I've decided to. And today I want to address the temptation to diminish God's wrath and God's judgment on the page of Scripture when we find it. The unique thing about this chapter is the thing that I want to draw our attention to and to set our attention on this morning, to make us reckon with it, to see that we learned from it what God intends to teach us, so that we see God for who He is, and so that we are strong not to diminish His wrath and His holiness and His judgment wherever we find it on the page of Scripture. And so I trust it will strengthen us and our church in the process. That's what I want to address today. There is the temptation to skip a chapter like this, and that wasn't my temptation initially, but there could be the temptation to just brush by this Because we're confused by it and so I want to clarify what's happening here Or there could be the temptation to brush by or breeze by a chapter like this Because we don't want our religion our beliefs our God to be confused for example with the God of Islam Allah because capital punishment carried out not through some legal state process but person-on-person is a part of their actual religion and And so when we had the slaughter of men and women at a nightclub participating in, or at least identified with the practice of homosexuality so many years ago, I believe it was in Florida, and in that case, somebody killing in the name of Islam, that's not us, but why? We have passages like this, couldn't we be pointed to? This isn't merely in defense of Christianity, but we all ought to be able to read our Bibles and understand what exactly is and is not going going on here so that we're not tempted to diminish, this is my great concern, not tempted to diminish the wrath and justice and holiness and judgment of God wherever we find it on the page of Scripture on the part of our confusion or from a desire not to be confused with another God. The sermon was shaped a bit differently today. Three lessons, we were gonna look underneath or behind the judgments on this page, and then we're going to look through these judgments to the cross, and then we're going to consider what this passage looks like for us today. And there are a couple New Testament passages that clearly have this as background that we will turn to when we get there that should be instructive. So, let's begin. First, by looking behind this passage. A lesson in God's goodness from Israel's holy law. A lesson in God's goodness from Israel's holy law. Israel's holy law and these shocking judgments flow from the sheer goodness of God. And the reason why we are shocked with judgments like this, stoning, I mean, they didn't have lethal injection. It had to be done some fashion. the burning is likely after they were killed. Nevertheless, put to death, put to death, shocking judgments. And the reason Why we are shocked with these kinds of judgments is because we are not well enough acquainted with the goodness of God. We are too used to sin. And even if we ourselves are not practicing these things on the page, we are surrounded by the practice of these. Things the ancient near east was characterized by these very behaviors. He has said it. These are the things that customized Those who lived in the land into which the lord was delivering his people and he waited so many hundreds of years to deliver them Until their sin is it was in full Bloom and so it was the things that are on this page and you might ask like why does he have to command them? Not to sleep with animals leave humans alone without all of the restraints that the Lord gives to us, and we end up in bed with animals. And if that's shocking to you, well, your sins and your perversions sexually are shocking to God, since it's proximity. God is great. And he is spectacular in his goodness. And if you could taste it, so all of our sins one day will be with Him and see Him as He is, and sin will taste as it does, as gross as it is. Oh, but to God these things are all detestable. We all have a profile of sexual perversion, wanting more partners than we should. Wanting partners or a partner at the wrong time, before marriage or outside of marriage, or the wrong kind of partner in incest and bestiality is addressed here. A woman, not your wife, is addressed here. A man, not your husband, is addressed here. These commands, these judgments reflect the goodness of God. Carl Truman has said that we are a culture, a society is defined by what it prohibits. A society is defined by what it prohibits. We had a horrifying school shooting in Texas in the last days. And we have had a number of school shootings over the last months and certainly years. One of my closer friends today and in college was leading a Christian club at Columbine High School and was on TV and made something of a young high school Christian spokesperson preaching the gospel here and everywhere, confident, and gone to for interviews and such. name's Josh Wideman, when the Columbine school shooting happened, that was in my high school years. And there's all kinds of disagreement among Americans, and I have my own thoughts on this, as a citizen, but there's all kinds of disagreement over what to do about it. The role of guns, the second amendment, gun control. And there are more and less becoming ways of engaging that conversation and the timing with which to engage that conversation relative to an event. Everyone seems to agree on this, that we can't tolerate this. And the bad sportsmanship in American conversation on it is to accuse the other team who has an understanding of guns and gun law and gun rights, of being for school shootings. So weigh your arguments, but it's a little below the belt to accuse the opposing team of being positively for school shootings. My point is simply, even in a point of great contention in our own country, on that specific topic, everyone agrees We're as good as what we tolerate, and that's why we've even leveraged that kind of an argument. You would tolerate this. Well, these are things that God does not tolerate in his kingdom. We can be glad in heaven, none of these things will be there, or our temptations to these kinds of things will be there. We are defined by what we prohibit. God is defined by what He prohibits. And in Israel's law, in its prescriptions, in its prohibitions, what it rules out, and in its punishments, this chapter is filled with them, we see the goodness of God. We see His good nature that is from all eternity. I am holy, be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. And the whole purpose of these commands wasn't merely to incentivize against these behaviors, although it did that. Children were to be stoned if they cursed their parents. This was not likely. Little children and the kind of thing little children sinners will do and defying their parents in various ways. But older children and an outright cursing and rejection of mom and dad. And it is highly likely that that rarely ever happened because of commands like this. Commands like this incentivized against these kinds of behaviors. But in the first place, these commands reflect and teach us about the nature of God. They aren't just for our flourishing merely. God is good. He is holy. And so we are to be holy. And every person in every culture will have its own understanding of goodness. And it will either be fixed and outside of us against which we measure ourselves in our society. God and what he has revealed about himself, or it will be flexible and floating and ever-changing based on the society or the people or the person and what we feel. And sometimes a society may act like morality is fixed but deny the foundation of morality, God himself. Now we believe that from the word of God that the reason why we have a moral impulse to say guilty and wrong is that the blood really does cry out from the ground. Their blood is upon them. Their blood is upon them. Their blood is upon them. There really is a such thing as guilt. And God's prohibitions and these punishments reflect his eternal, good, pure nature. They also reflect Israel's law does God's creation design. These commands are not in chapters 18 through 20, a comprehensive rule book for life. We have more from God in the book of Exodus and in Deuteronomy. These are largely instructions as you head into the land has to do with the specific challenges they were going to face around them. We don't have commands in here about things like inheritance laws or divorce. And we get those kinds of things elsewhere in the first five books of the Bible. So they're conditioned by the context and yet the most important context for these verses is the first few verses of the Bible, first few chapters of the Bible, Genesis one and two. Clearly these punishments are a match to the preciousness of the gifts of God in marriage, in the marriage bed, in the gift of children. And so his goodness reflected in the good creation that he made is reflected in these punishments. And so he's delivering them from the realm of death into the realm of his presence and life in the land. So in the land, he's not going to put up with the kinds of things that Adam and Eve were headed to in the garden and did in their essence in defying him and obeying their own impulses, Adam's own impulses. and reflect God's creation design. And Israel's law reflects God's purposes for His people in redemption. Now, His law was not a means to capital R, righteousness, which would earn a right standing before the presence of God. And any Israelite who put his trust in his obedience, his or her obedience to these things, in order to stand right before God missed the point for God's promise to Abraham and commendation of his faith as credited as righteousness comes before this law. Nevertheless, in faith Israelites obeyed. But there are ways in which God's goodness is reflected in his plan of redemption even through his law. He intended for his people to be with him. Verse 22, you shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules and do them that the land where I'm bringing you to live may not vomit you out because I want you in the land that the people would be like Him. Verse 26, You shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you out from the peoples. Praise the Lord He separated them out from the peoples. Praise His grace and His love that He would do that. For look at where the peoples had gone in their sin. And He also, in redeeming them, intended them to be personally His. Verse 26, at the very end, Be holy, as I am holy, that you should be Mine. Mine. Verse 24, 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. For I am the Lord your God. Here, God's purpose for His people was to be like Him in order that they may know Him more deeply and relate with Him more intimately. The purpose is you should be mine. And yet, He's giving them a land flowing with milk and honey. All of the nourishment that they would need, the land would flow with. It would be sweet. Life with God is to be sweet. And His purpose for them in redeeming them is good, and His law for them to keep is good. It is bad in that it cannot bring us all the way to Him, as we've heard even this morning. And so an answer for that problem is needed. Which brings us now to our second division of the sermon. a lesson in God's love from Christ's death, propitiating God's holy wrath. There is a temptation to diminish God's wrath and judgment, but we must not do so lest we also diminish His goodness. So don't read chapter 20 and skip right along. The question of chapter 20 isn't, how can God not be like this? It's, what does it mean that God is like this? And what does it mean for us? But let us not diminish His wrath and judgment against sin, lest we diminish His goodness. But it raises the question, how then can we be saved? Because if the law is not a means, because we are not perfectly obedient here to righteousness, then how may we be saved? How may our sins be entirely taken away? The day of atonement only worked For a time, it was repeated day in and day out, and it could only get one man into the presence of God. Can God do better than this? Is there something held out better for us than this? And yes, there is. And so we have a lesson in God's love from Christ's death. Christ's death, which propitiates God's wrath. We have chapter 20 here and punishments for sins. And yet we have passages in our Bible, even this passage, which promises that they will make it into the land. And God has promised Abraham unilaterally that he will have children and descendants and families of the earthly blessed from him and his children will be in the land. And yet the entrance into the land and the staying in the land is conditioned upon this obedience. There's unconditionality, God's unilateral, unconditional promise. I will give you the land to possess. And yet there is this condition that obedience must be kept by the covenant partner, Israel. And yet they do not keep it. And we see ourselves in Israel, this mirror, for we do not keep God's commands. And yet God loves his enemies and Jesus lays his life down for his enemies. How does all of this hang together? Well, there is no understanding how to get from this passage to you and to me and us to heaven with the Lord safely apart from the cross. And so we ponder the cross now and there is no pondering and understanding the cross and how it works to save us from this. God's holy judgment against our sin, apart from this word, propitiation. So I've put it in the point, propitiation. What is that? Well, near the end of your Bibles, we have the book of 1 John. I'd like you to turn there with me. You can stick your finger in Leviticus 20, because we'll be back. John writes this letter It seems right that he writes it to assure his readers that they belong to God, and to help them understand what has happened, that some have gone out from them, and to show them that in going out from them, they never belonged to them, for they would have stayed otherwise, and to help his readers examine their own lives and conclude, as he believes, that they do belong to God. And it doesn't mean that they are without sin. That's important to say. And so in the first chapter, he says, if we say we have fellowship with him, but we walk in darkness, we lie. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. But if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Well, some walk outside of fellowship with God, denying they have sinned or denying that they have sinned. And so they are deceived. And eventually it shows itself for what it is. and answering an important question after beginning a letter like this, that is, well, what of my sin? My little children, chapter two, I'm writing these things so that you may not sin. He writes to assure them, but also to see that they are walking faithfully with Jesus and so growing in their assurance in that way. But if anyone does sin, because he knows his readers as he knows himself, Oh, what then? We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. Don't get too caught up with that whole world part. It doesn't mean every person in the same way. It doesn't mean every person in the world without exception. It means that every kind of sinner and every kind of people out there So Jesus did not come just for Israel, the descendants ethnically of Abraham and those grafted in into that nation, but to anyone who would come to Jesus by faith. But the emphasis here that I'm pressing is in the first part of verse two, he is the propitiation for our sins. What does that even mean? Well, it means at least this, if he's not the propitiation for our sins, then we don't have an advocate with the father. And if we don't have an advocate with the father, then what happens when we sin? Well, then we stand under the father's judgment, Leviticus chapter 20, but we don't because we have an advocate and we have an advocate who's qualified to advocate for us because Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. That is, Jesus absorbs the wrath, the just judgment of God that rightly falls on you because of your sin. He takes it in your stead. He dies in your place. Christian, if your faith is in Jesus, your faith is in the one who has taken the wrath of God for you. So do not take that temptation to diminish His judgment and His wrath on a page of the Bible like Leviticus chapter 20, because in so doing you diminish His love for you. Not just His goodness, but His love. Turn to chapter 4 with me. In verse 10, In this is love. Not that we have loved God. We always think in mere human terms when we hear love. What kind of love that I have? We begin with God here. In this is love. Let me point you away from yourself but to God. Not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So, how do you know that God loves you? Maybe you've recently got a cancer diagnosis. Maybe recently a loved one has died. Maybe recently you've lost your job. You know as a pastor, Christian member of our church, you come to mind or someone you know comes to mind here. Maybe some other tragedy has befallen you. How do you know that God loves you? Because your circumstances won't always give it away. Here's how you know God loves you. look to the cross where Jesus gave his life in love himself gave himself for you and the father gave his son for you that the son would be a propitiation for your sins and if you needed a new word to remember this we'll write it down God gave it to us He has absorbed the wrath of God against you, for you, in love, and this is love. And so you can put up with, even forgive, your spouse today. You can put up with, even forgive, your sibling, your brother, your sister today. They really do sin against you. They really do. you can put up with and forgive your fellow church member today. And if we're doing church right, we'll know one another well enough to really not like each other sometimes. And that's not okay, but in this age, it is okay so long as we bear with one another in love. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. And our love for one another flows from His love for us. We love because He first loved us. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God. And so we are. And that is not love because of anything intrinsic within us, but because of something intrinsic within God. And that's why God can love us while at the same time have just wrath against us and our sin. How does this doctrine of the love of God and the judgment and the wrath of God hang together? There is a tension here, but it is resolved in the cross. Let me let D.A. Carson help us here. He's written such a helpful book. In fact, Christie gave it to me when we were dating. And I've got a little inscription in the beginning of it from her. It's called The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Praise God, a relationship begins there with God's love. And that was a good gift from her to me. So if I ever let you borrow it and you find that inscription in there, you give it back. I'll probably tell you, I'll probably tell you to buy it yourself. The difficult doctrine of the love of God, D.A. Carson on the difference between wrath and love. Wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God's holiness against sin. Where there's no sin, there's no wrath. But there will always be love in God. Where God and His holiness confront His image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath. Or God is not the jealous God He claims to be, and His holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God's wrath is diminishing God's holiness. He continues on the compatibility of God's wrath and His love focused on the same person. us. How can it be? God's wrath is not an implacable blind rage, however emotional it may be. It is an entirely reasonable and willed response to the offenses against His holiness. But His love wells up amidst His perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at the same time. God and his perfections must be wrathful against his rebel image-bearers, for they have offended him. God and his perfections must be loving toward his rebel image-bearers, for that is the kind of God that he is." Now he continues on how God's love redirects God's wrath to save sinners. Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the Old Covenant to the New. From the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history unresolved until they come to a resounding climax in the cross. Do you wish to see God's love? Look at the cross. Do you wish to see His wrath? Look at the cross. And this resolves, the cross does, resolves the tension we find in the whole Old Testament story where God makes unilateral promises that in steadfast love he promises to keep as sure as he is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. Nevertheless, the entrance into the blessing and the full enjoyment of those promises is contingent upon the obedience of the covenant partner, God in love, sends one to represent us to fulfill all obedience. So that Jesus on the cross takes away our sins, propitiating the wrath of God, and offers up his whole life himself as that perfectly and completely obedient covenant partner for you. So that in Adam I'll die, and if you're in Christ, you are not dead but made alive. and made alive to him, which leads us now to our third point here. A lesson in the sanctifying, in the goodness of God through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the church. Back in Leviticus chapter 20, we saw this really important line in verse seven, consecrate yourselves therefore and be holy for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you. We're going to hear this again in the book of Leviticus. I am the Lord. What kind of Lord is he who sanctifies you, who sets you apart for me? I am the Lord who makes you holy. And remember the first 16 chapters of the book of Leviticus were focused on our approach to God through blood so that God might take our sin away so that we might stand in his presence and survive. Day of Atonement is the height of that where our sins are taken into the wilderness and then one goat goes into the presence of God in our place. The second half of the book, chapters 17 through 27, are about our growth in holiness in order that we might enter into more intimate and deep fellowship with God. For he intends more than merely to take our sins away, but having redeemed us and forgiven us of our sins, he intends us now to transform us away from sin to be like him so that we might live in the land and enjoy his presence forever. Two applications here that I want to make. one individually and then one corporately. Turn with me to the book. If you're comfortable doing this first Thessalonians, it's tucked into the middle of your new Testament. Your index will help you get there or you are welcome to just listen in first Thessalonians chapter four versus one through eight. Listen for the themes that we have heard in Leviticus chapter 20. Paul has written in chapter one and given the thanks to God for these people. He knows they're loved by God and that God has chosen them for the gospel has come to them in power and in the Holy Spirit. They've received the gospel and the word in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Their faith has gone out everywhere and they have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God. A beautiful portrait of conversion. And now they wait for the son from heaven who delivers us from the wrath to come. That was chapter one. We get to chapter four and we have some commands. Finally then brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God. Just as you're doing. that you do so more and more for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God. Here it is. Your sanctification that you abstain from here. It is again, sexual immorality that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles. And what about them who do not know God? that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the Lord is an avenger in all these matters as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you for God has not called us for impurity but holiness and therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. Let each one control his own body. So some comments for you Christians. There are some similarities here between chapter 20. Your sanctification. I am the God who sanctifies. In the New Testament, Jesus is presented as the one who sanctifies. One of the special things about God, the one true and living God, Yahweh, the Lord in the Old Testament, is that He's the one who sanctifies. In the New Testament, Jesus sanctifies. Here, God's will for your sanctification abstained from sexual immorality. If there was a hyperlink on that, double-click, click, it'd take you to Leviticus chapter 20. And why? To control your body in holiness and honor for you're called to holiness. In other words, the Lord is holy. So be holy as he is. Similarities, but there are also differences. And what is the difference? The difference is important because your story doesn't have to be Israel's story because you have a different mediator. You have the Lord Jesus who stands in the presence of God advocating for you through whom you have the full forgiveness of sins. What an empowering thought and encouragement that there is nothing between you and God right now. And you have a different relationship with God. Conduct yourself with holiness and honor. Control your bodies. And you can. Not in the passion and lust like the Gentiles. Like those who were in the land. What was it about them? who do not know God. Well, what is it about the new covenant? But that everyone knows the Lord who comes to the Lord through Jesus. And none of us, Jeremiah 31, will look at each other and say, know the Lord. No, you know the Lord. On the basis of your knowledge of the Lord, we appeal to one another to walk in holiness and not in these old passions and patterns. You have a different mediator and a different relationship with God and you have a different A different transforming presence. That recurring refrain concerning the Holy Spirit in chapter 1. And here the Lord who gives the Holy Spirit to you. And remember in Ezekiel the difference between Israel and the people of God. Dead like a dry valley of bones. Unable to obey from a hardness of heart and then obeying and keeping his rules and statutes and keeping his will and pleasing him. The difference is the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so friend, your story doesn't have to be Israel's story. If your faith is in Jesus and you have received all that he has purchased for you by faith and you have the Holy Spirit, he began this work in you as it is. And so he is not finished and he's transforming you. so that you can read chapter 20 and not lie with an animal, and not lie with a relative, and not lie with a woman, not your wife. And you can resist and beat the temptation to imagine lying with a woman, not your wife. And you don't have to give your baby over to Molech, no matter how hard your circumstances, because the Lord is good. And the Lord loves you, and he is sanctifying you by his greater presence of the Holy Spirit. And so we can love one another as he has first loved us. Turn with me now to the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter five. Had an application concerning the individual to you Christians. Of course, it's for us, the church as well, for we speak these things to each other. But now in 1 Corinthians chapter five, we have another text addressed to a church with Leviticus chapter 20 in the background. I'll read verses one through 13. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans. For a man has his father's wife, Worse, you're arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in the body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, when the church is together and my spirit is present, With the power of the Lord Jesus, you are to deliver the man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the last day, in the day of the Lord. You're boasting, it's not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival. We'll get to that in Leviticus in the coming weeks, or in July. Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy or swindlers or idolaters since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater or reviler or drunkard or swindler. Not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? It is, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Now, quote, purge the evil person from among you. And that's a quote from Deuteronomy chapter 17, whose application in the context of the old covenant was capital punishment. There's more to say, but a few comments by way of summary. Incest is what he's addressing here, the same as addressed in Leviticus chapter 20. Under the old covenant, incest resulted in the punishment of death. Under the new covenant, the punishment is the putting out of the church, the treating as an unbeliever. And he says, shouldn't you ought also to mourn the kind of language, the description of what you do at a funeral when one dies. It is a big deal to be put out of the church. Under the old covenant, obedience was a condition on the part of Israel, the covenant partner, for entrance into the blessing of fellowship with God. Obedience has to do with our fellowship now, but obedience in the Christian life is evidence that we have encountered the blessing of true life with God. A healthy church will go about this kind of thing from time to time, because we will get it wrong in identifying someone as a Christian. A healthy church will obey Matthew 18. This is an application of that. In Matthew 18, we have a description of how to address a brother or sister who is in sin. You go privately, then with two or three witnesses, Then you tell it to the church if they continue in unrepentance of clear sin. And then if they refuse to repent after it's told to the church, we put them out of the church and treat them as an unbeliever. This is the application of Leviticus chapter 20 for us. The language here is very strong, handed over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. And yet it's still restorative with the idea and the hope and the prayer that they may be saved in the last day, in other words, turn. And in the second book of Corinthians, we actually think it's possible. We have a description of the man who has returned and a command to receive him back having repented of his sin. A healthy church will do this very kind of thing. And a healthy Christian will embrace this process. Don't make your elders nervous to obey this passage because you might get very upset because you like the person. We will not tell you everything that has gone on. We will obey the word of God and we will be circumspect and tell you enough. And you will have to trust those whom you and we in the Holy Spirit have appointed to go about this kind of thing. There's no pleasure in it. But if your church and your elders never shock you by bringing someone before you who has an arrogance, refuse to repent and turn to God, having been caught in a sin, then something is wrong with your leadership. Chapter 20 verse four of Leviticus warns those within the Israelite community against closing their eyes and not going forward with the stoning in the context. And the reason that's there is because it would be very tempting when a family member or a friend is guilty of incest or adultery to turn your eyes and not obey the Lord. And in application of that passage through 1 Corinthians 5 and in light of the goodness and the love of God and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the church, in this clear passage, sometimes we must purge the evil among us. And it is restorative in order that they may return to the Lord. So let us not deny them that opportunity and that grace. And there is a particular temptation for parents who believed that their children in younger years turned to the Lord, but who have left the Lord and who walk in immorality and have denied the Lord Jesus, to deny what is before their eyes and before your eyes, to feel better about them. And my simple exhortation to you, simply, is to honor and magnify the goodness and the love and the grace of God in salvation, in the cross, and in His church, and as the church, by being willing to do this hard thing, even as the Israelites in the Old Covenant had to be willing to do that hard thing. in order that the Lord might save. So yes, much of this passage had to do with sex. And it is a lot like the ocean. It's beautiful and teeming with life, but it is also dangerous. And you won't understand it unless you understand that it is bigger than you. For the reason He addresses these commands at such length and with such punishments is because sex is precious, because marriage is precious, because family is precious, and precisely because He is good, and because He loves us, and because in grace He has saved us through His Son. Let's pray. Father, we have prayed to you this morning and confessed that you are the great and the awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love you and keep your commandments. And we have confessed that we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled and turned aside from those commandments. So what hope is there for sinners like us? but that You are the God who sent Your Son, the Israelites born under the law, who kept the law, who fulfilled the law, who gave Himself in righteousness to You, our great High Priest and our great and greater sacrifice given for us to propitiate our sins and to represent us as one who is Christ the righteous. so that your love might fall to us and not your wrath. And so we, with the readers of that letter to the Thessalonian church, turn to you in repentance and in faith and in the joy of the Holy Spirit to serve you and not idols, you, the living God, and to wait for your son from heaven who delivers us from the wrath to come. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.