God wanted the Israelites to do various things in the land, but let's be clear, he wanted them to live differently from the Canaanites. In the various practical ways that the instructions from Moses to the people are going to help them see what that would look like, there lurks behind that the idea that they're to go into the land of Canaan and the gods of that land were not to become the gods of Israel. The places of worship in Canaan were not to become worship sites for the Israelites. The immoral practices of the Canaanites were not to be imitated by the Israelites. God had set apart the nation of Israel to live holy lives before him and to live holy lives in the darkness of that land they were entering. Their true worship and their obedience to Yahweh would be like a shining light, bright and distinct for others to see. The Israelites, we could say, were to be in the world, but not of the world. They were to be in Canaan, but not of Canaan. One of the ways their distinct lives would be evident was the way they ate, their diet, An earlier chapter in the Torah, Leviticus chapter 11, was a detailed chapter on these regulations. Deuteronomy 14 does not give the regulations to that extent. It assumes a prior knowledge of Leviticus 11. But Deuteronomy 14 is gonna return to these teachings, summarize them a bit, especially for this new generation of Israel heading to the land. These are regulations that will call foods in one of two categories. Foods clean or foods that are unclean. When we think about something clean or unclean, we think about something that's been either washed thoroughly or is dirty. That is not what is primarily meant by clean and unclean. The terms clean and unclean in the Torah mean ritual things. It's about something that would ritually defile you if it's an unclean food. Or if something is considered clean, it would be in keeping with approaching the tabernacle for worship and you could eat these foods and you would not be rendered unfit to approach. If a food was clean, you could eat it and not be ritually defiled. But if a food was unclean and you ate of it, it would mean you could not participate in the tabernacle worship for a time. Temporarily, you were rendered unclean. So clean and unclean are worship approach words. If you were clean, you could approach. The rituals could be maintained. The ceremonies could be completed. If you were unclean, you could not approach. And this wasn't about dirt. and the washing of hands. It was about other things that these ceremonies and animal instructions symbolized. To approach the tabernacle you had to be ritually fit and we have to ask why does the Torah preoccupy itself with clean and unclean concerns. It has to do with the nature of who God is, what God is like. To approach the tabernacle, we were to be unblemished people without moral defect. Well, good luck finding anybody in the camp of Israel who meets that criteria to the uttermost. And so what you would have in the sacrificial system were a series of ceremonial and ritual instructions and symbols so that what you ate externally and what you participated in ceremonially could symbolize what you needed to be but weren't. So you needed to be without defect and unblemished and therefore you would approach the Lord with particular rituals and sacrifices that he had specified and he would receive that in your place. He would welcome you to come through these ceremonies to approach the Lord Most High who is holy and not corrupt. who is pure and not defiled. God is righteous and not wicked. He is light and he is not darkness. He is a God of life and not death. And therefore, if they come in contact within the camp or outside the camp with what seems to be associated in some way with corruption, decay, darkness, and death, you become for a time unfit to approach the God of life. The symbols and the regulations and the ceremonies don't want a mixing of light and dark and of pure and defilement and of life and death. Noticing those big ideas helps us read some of the more, let's call it, peculiar aspects of the ceremonial laws within Israel. They were practices required for the Israelites in order to symbolize the deeper truths about the kind of God they worshipped, the God who is, who was, and who always will be. What is this God like? And so here's the main idea behind these instructions this morning. And then I want to mention a practical reason why focusing on this will be helpful for us. The main idea is that the Israelites belong to God, so they need to live lives devoted to God. They belong to God, so they must live lives devoted to God. It would be out of sync with reality, that after redeeming the Israelites from Egypt, these Israelites would just go their own way. If God has redeemed them for himself, if they belong to God, then the most reasonable act of worship in their lives is to live devoted lives to God. So they belong to God, therefore they must live devoted lives to God. That's the main idea behind such laws as these food instructions. But what's a practical takeaway as a New Covenant community like ourselves thinking about this? Because we'll see in short order that these are not ceremonial instructions that abide into the New Covenant practices. We're not trying to use Deuteronomy 14 as a grid to govern our weekly menus. And that means something temporary was set aside, but not all of these laws and instructions from God are ceremonial. You'll notice in the Old Testament, a whole host and set, really, really summarized by the Ten Commandments, sets of moral instructions about how one ought to live before God from the heart, what allegiance and devotion to God look like. And these abide into the New Covenant. For God is perfect and righteous and his moral commands conform to that. So while certain ceremonial things go away and are fulfilled in the new covenant, the abiding moral instructions remain. And the practical value of thinking about this can play into some concerns our very culture will have about instructions from the Old and the New Testament. For example, if you were to show someone from the Scriptures God's template and pattern and design for human sexuality, You might hear someone say, but don't you eat shrimp and shellfish? And wasn't that prohibited in the Old Testament? Weren't certain ceremonial animals forbidden? So if you're now allowing those things, then why are you drawing hard and fast boundaries on certain moral issues? What I want you to realize is the very logic of the law recognizes certain commandments that were temporary and certain moral instructions that abide across generations and transcending covenants. So it's helpful for us to think about something like Deuteronomy 14, because there's an apologetic value in being able to know how to respond to someone who says, why would we take anything from the Old and New Testament seriously in these laws if you're still eating certain animals that are forbidden in Deuteronomy 14? How would you answer that? So let's think about these matters together, and we're gonna begin with verses one and two, reminders about Identity. Reminders about identity. You are the sons of the Lord your God. This is who they are. He is pronouncing over them, and not for the first time, who they must understand themselves to be, because everything they do flows from this. If they are children of God, if he has redeemed them for himself and he declares Israel to be his corporate firstborn son in Exodus 4, 22 and 23, then as an identity, being their children of God, as their identity here is clear in this reminder, Their behavior that they're called to conduct accordingly is behavior that flows from who they are. And the order matters. They're not trying to work themselves into the covenant and steadfast love of God. It's been poured out upon them and they've been summoned into communion and covenant with Him. And they are reminded that they're children of God. But you see, they're going into a land where there are plenty of non-Yahweh worshipers, okay? So people will worship all sorts of other gods and they will do all kinds of rituals that would be confusing if the Israelites imitated it. So he says in verse one, two prohibitions. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead. Funeral practices or ways to mourn had examples in the ancient world that would call upon the gods or seek to manipulate the gods through bodily infliction. And this infliction would involve cutting on one's body or even one's head. And this was absolutely tied to idolatrous activity in worship. So when he says, hey, you're the children of God. So therefore, don't go acting like you're the children of Baal. Because do you remember when the prophets of Baal and 1 Kings 18 were trying to call upon Baal, what they began to do at some point? Beyond just their vocal prayers, they began to cut themselves. They began to lacerate their bodies in order to get the attention of Baal. And Elijah said, well, I guess he just must be asleep. Maybe he's on vacation. You know, he can't seem to hear you with all of your cries and all of the cutting. It's met with a stark silence. He says, you're children of God. And that means you're gonna go into this land and you're not gonna do certain things because the doing of those things is done with some sort of allegiance to what's not God. That's not who you are. You're children of Yahweh. God is their father. And that means they must not do what will be spiritually confusing. And going in and adopting the idolatrous mourning rites and rituals would certainly be confusing when they want to show forth like light in the darkness true worship, and obedience to Yahweh. Now, in verse 2, he explains a bit more. I know he opened in verse 1 by saying, you're the children of God, but he's just going to surround those prohibitions in verses 1 and 2 with identity language. For you, he says in verse 2, are a people holy to the Lord your God. So if he tells them not to do these things, it must be that to commit those acts would be unholy. And that's not what they're called to do. They're a holy people to the Lord their God, and therefore set apart or consecrated for the name of Yahweh, there are things that would contradict a life of a holy person. And imitating the idolatrous actions of the Canaanites would not be holy activity. He says you're a holy people. That means something. That's not a vacant or vain claim. That means something. And the Lord, he says, has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. There is an election upon the Israelites that they are to acknowledge and to feel the implications of. They are a people chosen of God. They are a people who are his treasured possession. That's really strong language. Treasure that is, among other things, might be something a king would possess. A king might possess all sorts of authority and all sorts of influence. And then there's the storehouses of the king's treasures, where things immensely valuable and perhaps from previous ancestral rulers and to be given to further generations and successors. These special treasures are royal and valuable. And he says here, God considers you His treasured possession. So we belong to God and we are the delight of God. He delights in his people. We are precious to him. We are dear to him. And God's servant Moses says to them, you're a holy people, a chosen people, a treasured people. Therefore, don't go into the land and act like you don't belong to God. Act like your people who belong to God, because that's what's true. Now there are instructions about eating that take up the rest of our passage this morning from verses 3 to 21. And the main instruction is given in verse 3. You shall not eat any abomination. That's just unpacked in verses 4 to 21. All the rest of that. So you get this main heading here about the instructions for eating. You shall not eat any abomination. An abomination, that term, it's a strong term, isn't it? It's something to be loathed. Something to be despised. Something that is an abomination, that's something that God has evaluated as repugnant. You shall not eat what would therefore be dishonoring or disobedient to God in that it would make you unclean. You are to live distinctly in a land that would eat all sorts of different things, but the Israelites are to live in every realm of their life like they belong to God and not to the Canaanite gods. So here's something that might confuse some of the Canaanites, but that nevertheless was to be part of the daily life of Israel, eating in a distinct way. This principle of their food choices, it was to set apart the people of Israel in the eyes and lives of those who dwelled already in the land of Canaan, so that it looked like in every realm of life, these people live consecrated, set apart lives. They're devoted to Yahweh. So he says, you shall not eat any abomination, and he begins to explain these animals. The order works like this. Animals on the land, the sea, and the sky. It's a reflection of Genesis 1. So the order is not randomly put together and the animals are not randomly chosen. I'm gonna suggest some logic and some plausible ways to see these animals in a moment, but the animals on the land are in verses four to eight, they are first. These are the animals you may eat. And what he means by that is you may eat these and not become ritually defiled. You can eat these and you can still be considered ceremonially clean to approach the tabernacle. Because obviously, physically, bodily, they could eat, hypothetically, any of these animals as a human being and continue being sustained bodily. These animals that are unclean are animals that would still have calories and protein and fat. And you can imagine, it's not like there are animals that would lack those things among these land animals. Instead, the animals are in categories of what would be clean and unclean. And those categories are about the effect they have on the eater. So you may eat these, the ox, the sheep, the goat. Those are three very well-known animals. They include those animals in sacrificial procedures, don't they? And then in verse five, the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. Out of all of these animals, we might say, OK, here are the ones you could eat. What's significant about these animals? What's a common denominator? Verse six gives us two qualifications. Every animal that parts the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two, that's what it would mean to part the hoof. And second qualification, choose the cud among these animals you may eat. So the clean animals have two conditions that are met. They have a split hoof, or what you would say here, a cloven hoof, or an animal's hoof that is parted. The second condition that must be met is, and choose the cud. If both conditions are not met, the animal is unclean. You say, well, it has a split hook, but does it chew the cud? No. Well, then it's unclean. It chews the cud, but does it have a split hook? No. Well, then it's unclean. Both must be met. I don't know how often you think about the phrase chewing the cud. I would imagine maybe not often. So let's just remind ourselves what that is. This is an animal that engages in a practice of chewing food that begins to be partially digested. They regurgitate that back up. I know you want to think about this. Okay, I apologize. But they're bringing it back up and they're chewing it even more thoroughly. It's this picture here of thoroughly chewing food that gets partially digested, then brought back up and then later fully digested. This is an animal that chews the cud. It's a slow process and it's immensely thorough. And that's all we'll say about that, okay? We're not gonna get any more graphic than that. But in verse seven, yet of those that chew the cud or have the hoof cloven, you shall not eat these. So he's gonna give some examples here. He says the camel, the hare, the rock badger. He says you can't eat these because they chew the cud, but they don't part the hoof. See, both conditions aren't met, so therefore, he says, they are unclean for you. And then in verse eight, but then what about the pig? Well, the pig, he says, because it parts the hoof, but doesn't chew the cud, it's unclean for you. Their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch. So here's what we've noticed in verses four to eight. We got land animals that will be clean and that they're ritually appropriate to eat if they meet two conditions. They have to have a split hoof and they have to chew the cud. If both conditions aren't met, Can't eat. And if you come across those carcasses, you can't touch that. It seems the logic behind the carcasses is that an animal has died without its blood being properly drained. Here's what we know from the book of Leviticus. In the slaughtering of an animal for food, the animal has to have the blood drain, and an animal that dies a natural death, or even is in some way killed and partially eaten by a predator, That animal has not been properly treated unto death with that blood removed and you're not to eat the flesh with the blood in it. Because God is a source of life and the loss of that blood is unto death and to eat the flesh with the blood in it is a mixture of death and life symbolically. and therefore that is to be ceremonially off limits. It is for you to recognize, you say, well what if they eat flesh with blood in it, are they just gonna drop over and die? No, that's not what that means. It's to symbolize that God is the God of life, and that some sort of death of this animal has not occurred appropriately by your hands, and therefore you're to avoid those carcasses, or you'll be rendered unclean for a time. Moving from land animals, he moves to animals in water. Verses 9 and 10. Of all that are in the waters, you may eat these. Whatever has fins and scales, you may eat. Whatever doesn't have fins and scales, you shall not eat. It's unclean for you. Seems relatively straightforward. What two conditions have to be met? Fins and scales. Not one or the other, both. If not both, or if neither, then that animal is unclean for you. Leviticus 11 gives other examples, this was rather brief. And then the animals in the sky, verses 11 to 18. He says in animals in the sky, you may eat all clean birds, but these are the ones you shall not eat. the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, the falcon of any kind, every raven of any kind, the ostrich, the night hawk, the seagull, the hawk of any kind, the little owl and the short-eared owl, the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, and the cormorant, the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. Something that seems to be in common with these animals is that they are birds of prey, or they drink blood like a bat, or they are scavengers and they come across flesh and carcasses and so they're just taking, you know, think of vultures. And so it's activity that would lead to some sort of death through predation that doesn't involve the proper disposal of a body, the draining of the blood. And because these can be associated with death and darkness and blood, they are not ritually fit for people of life and light and purity. So these animals symbolize something. It's not because, you know, if somebody's dying of starvation and they eat an ostrich, that that's going to further their situation physically. It's just to say that these animals, among other birds, are set apart as something about them that makes them off limits for Israel's diet. And then in verses 19 and 20, it says, and all winged insects are unclean for you, they shall not be eaten, all clean winged things you may eat. He said, well, there's no list there of the unclean insects and the clean ones. Well, you'd have to go back again to Leviticus 11, just to mention one thing from Leviticus 11, since I think Deuteronomy 14 is assuming some earlier knowledge. Leviticus 11 says that the insects that crawl are forbidden. Those that can hop are permitted to eat. Now, I'm going to offer in just a bit some considerations about why these animals and why not other animals that I hope will bring a little more clarity to this that I think are plausible ways. We've got one final verse, don't we? And then we'll try to make some considerations and then zoom out and make some biblical connections across the Testaments. In verse 21, He says, you shall not eat anything that has died naturally. And the reason he doesn't have to further explain that is because in the book of Leviticus, animals that die a natural death, it's explained that the blood has not been properly removed. And if they take an animal that's died naturally and they just eat that, they are not engaging in a proper preparatory procedure. He says, however, you may give it to the sojourner who's within your towns. So this would be a non-Israelite who's a neighbor. This person is journeying in the town or through or living nearby. Or you may sell it to a foreigner, which would be someone who isn't even normally in the land. It's not even just an Israelite neighbor in the region, or a non-Israelite neighbor in the region, I should say. This foreigner would be like a merchant who's coming through, some sort of trader or businessman or businesswoman. and you can sell it to them. Does that surprise you at all that he would say, you can't eat it, but they can? You know, what he's saying is, I think that this is not a matter of your health or hygiene primarily. I think it's still maintaining the ceremonial covenant recognition that God is a God of life and that there are holy people to treasured possession. But the covenant they have with God It's not a universal covenant, is it? So these sojourners and these foreigners, if the Israelites have this carcass that's died naturally, they are not to eat it themselves, but they can sell it to those who do need food. Because those people are not in the Sinai covenant. This permissiveness in verse 21 so far, I think further confirms that it's not primarily health considerations that are driving the animals here. Other considerations instead. He does explain near the end of verse 21, you are a people holy to the Lord your God. So this is near the end of the section But at the beginning of chapter 14, we noted this kind of language as well. Who are you? You're the children of God, you're a holy people, you're treasured possession. It's interesting that our unit today seems to be framed in the first verse and in the last verse with a reminder of who they are. That's why they're doing this. They're not doing this because they say, how can we make things really difficult for ourselves? Every time we're trying to prepare meals and think about animals in weeks and months ahead, this is instead a larger set of biblical and theological concerns about God as the God of life and light and the source of vitality. And there are certain animals and certain ways of eating them that would be more associated with death and darkness. And they are a holy people, so therefore they have to, even in their eating, demonstrate that they're a consecrated people. So we come to the last part of verse 21. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Now prior to this, we've seen instructions about animals who are clean and unclean. Animals in the land, animals in the water, animals in the sky. Leviticus speaks to this. Deuteronomy 14 speaks to this. But this verse here, this is very specific. This isn't even about outlawing an animal. It's a very particular procedure that is being prohibited. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. It's not the first time it appears in the Torah either. It actually appears twice in the book of Exodus. Exodus 23-19, Exodus 34-26. What is this practice and why is it mentioned? I think the commentators are correct who argue that this specific procedure must be something practiced in Canaan that the Israelites are not to go in and imitate. And it may not only be something that's practiced in Canaan by those non-Yahweh worshippers, it may be something that seems to summarize the grotesque, idolatrous practices in the land. Let's think about the logic of verse 21 at the end here. A young goat would need its mother's milk to drink to live. So the milk of the mother is the source of life for the young goat. There seems to be something disturbing about the source of life being a means of death. Do you see here the life and death confusion that would be happening? A young goat would need the mother's milk to drink, to live. Don't boil a young goat in its mother's milk. So the boiling of the young goat, it's not because they couldn't eat a goat, it's to say that to eat a young goat in the mother's milk would be mixing life and death, and it's in the kind of way that communicates something wrong. So, mixing death and life are boundaries breached by the end of verse 21. That's the logic at work. God is a God of life, so don't take what should bring life, the mother's milk, and use that as the means by which you kill the young animal. Don't mix life and death. And if someone becomes ceremonially unclean, it's as if ceremonially they have the mark of death upon them, whether it's coming across a dead carcass. Whether it's eating one of these foods that are associated with scavengers and predators. Something that seems to have the symbolic aroma of death. When that is upon you, you're unclean. Because to approach the God of life, when you have the mark of death, is to mix life and death, and that ought not be. When you look at these food laws overall, let's zoom out and make some broad comments. These will also apply to the book of Leviticus chapter 11, where more detailed food laws are found. A comment about what's not mentioned. Commentators over the years who've written on these food laws have said, isn't it interesting that nowhere is a serpent mentioned in Leviticus 11 or in Deuteronomy 14. And in the ancient world, a serpent, especially among Egyptians and among others, was veered in such a way that even scepters and particular symbols on the headpiece of the pharaoh could have serpentine designs. It's strange on the face of it that such a well-known creature in the ancient world isn't there, but some commentators have suggested perhaps actually the serpent is the explanatory creature for why certain animals are prohibited or allowed. For instance, water creatures without fins and scales swim like serpents in the waters. Serpents do not chew the cud. Serpents are upon the ground and crawl like crawling insects would be forbidden. In other words, when you have something that can leave the ground, like a hopping insect, that seems to be in the category, perhaps, of what is clean. Other considerations, maybe. Like sky birds, okay? So birds that can fly. But if they're associated with death, or darkness, or scavenging, they have that predatory and evil connotation, if you will, symbolized by the serpent. Things that might be associated with the darkness like moles and owls. In Leviticus chapter 11 and with certain owls in Deuteronomy 14, these are prohibited because the ground is cursed in Genesis 3 and things that are tied to the ground and that move along the ground are forbidden. Things that crawl and creep and things that don't have hoofs to separate their skin from the ground. You see a cloven hoof give space between the skin of the animal and the cursed ground. And so one of the reasons suggested, I think, is very plausible, if not probable, to explain why a split hoof is necessary as a condition for a clean animal would be to further distance it from the creeping touching of the ground that the serpent would be characterized by. So yes, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 doesn't mention a serpent specifically. But could it be that the realities about the serpent are actually what inform all the other animal considerations in one degree or another? There's not a verse that states that so explicitly. I want to offer that, however, as a very plausible explanation I have found very intriguing that seems to have a lot of explanatory power for why certain things are allowed and certain things that aren't. Now, earlier in the message, we thought through the fact that we, as a New Covenant community, are not operating according to Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. God is a God of life. He is a God of order. He is the God of light, purity. And these food laws were a temporary dispensation of Israel's life. They would be fulfilled in the ministry of Christ. There is this language in Mark 7 about clean and unclean and defilement. And you've gotta hear this conversation in light of the categories of the Old Testament ceremonial laws, because the Pharisees are upset that the disciples of Jesus don't wash their hands. And they bring this to Jesus's attention. And while washing of the hands has a hygienic value, clean and unclean categories were about certain symbolic realities, about approaching the God of life, and about certain things ritually defiling or undefiling, bigger things were at play. And the Pharisees, were muddying the waters. Here the teachers of Israel were less than helpful, less than faithful interpreters of the law, and they were confusing the people. And so Jesus says, well don't you know, it's not what goes into a man that makes him unclean. Now that's an interesting thing when you regard Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 as a whole series of animals that if you were to come in contact with them and if you were to eat them, you were considered unclean. But I think what Jesus is showing in his next statement is where all of these laws were pointing all along. Because he says in Mark 7, it's what comes out of a man, out of his heart. That's where murder and adultery and where theft and lying and where all the immorality and anger and all that abides in the heart of man. He says that's what causes defilement. And isn't that the faithful way to read the law in the end anyway? That these ceremonial procedures and the clean, unclean concerns were meant to point more deeply to the kind of people we were supposed to be but aren't in a fallen world. We are supposed to be clean before God, supposed to be undefiled, supposed to be unblemished. God is light and life and we in this world walk upon a cursed ground and we have the marks of sin and death inwardly and outwardly. And therefore, Jesus is rightly reading the law of Moses when he is interpreting those external concerns about clean and unclean to point to something more deeply true about the human condition. We have an inner defilement. And Jesus came to make the unclean clean. And I want you to hear me. I don't just mean externally, though. In the case of a leper, for instance, in Mark 1, who was rendered externally unclean and comes to Jesus and says, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus says, be clean. And the leper was clean. Or to the woman with the issue of blood. In Mark, not only in Mark, but in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where you have this woman with an issue of blood rendered ceremonially unclean because the loss of blood symbolized the pouring out of life down the spectrum toward death. And for years she had issued blood. And Jesus says that she is clean. She had touched the hem of his garment. She by faith had trusted that here is someone who can make the unclean clean. That's different from the priests of the Old Testament. The priests of the Old Testament could say, this is clean, this is unclean. You know what they couldn't do? Make the unclean clean. They can't do that. They could recognize with the grid of the Torah who's clean and who's unclean and what animals are to be prohibited and what animals are to be eaten. But only Jesus is the son of David and the greater of all the priests who has come towards sinners and he can actually take the inner human condition and not just the external problems and he can reconcile people and he can pardon sin and he can make them clean in the deepest of ways. This is ministry in the Lord Jesus's earthly years that must be understood in light of these Old Testament concerns of boundaries and food and clean, unclean categories. In Mark 7, Jesus says in verse 15, there's nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him. The things that come out of a person are what defile him. And then Mark 7, 19 reports this from the narrator. Thus, he declared all foods clean. Whoa. We had a Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14 operating through all those centuries. Who can bring an end to ceremonial loss. Like, who in Israel is just gonna be like, everyone's not gonna do this anymore. I mean, what kind of person does that? Who has the authority to bring that to? The one to whom they would all point and be fulfilled in, that's who. He could bring an end to that temporal period of those laws of clean and unclean because here is the source of all life, light, and purity incarnate among sinners. The external foods fade away. In light of the redemptive concerns Jesus has come to address, He's come to make us new people. We don't just need certain foods. We need to be forgiven of our sins because we are defiled. We in our hearts are unclean and we need to come to Jesus and we need to say, if you are willing, you can make me clean. And Jesus takes the sinner and makes the sinner clean and pardons our sin. The apostles in the post ascension years of ministry in the book of Acts and onward, were thinking through all of the implications of the new covenant that Jesus had inaugurated. Peter is on a housetop when he has a vision in Acts chapter 10. In Acts 10, he has a vision of a sheet covered with all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds. Among these animals and reptiles and birds would be some of those forbidden in Deuteronomy 14 and forbidden in Leviticus 11. Okay, so here's this sheet of animals. And in Acts 10, here's what the Lord says to Peter in the vision. Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Peter's a Jew, Jewish Christian now, to be most specific. Peter responds, by no means, Lord, I've never eaten anything that is unclean. The voice in heaven says in Acts 10, 15, what God has made clean, do not call common. Now, what is the significance in the context of Acts with the food laws that Peter's concerned about, the sheet and the vision? What's happening in Acts 10? What's going on that will also wrap in the house of Cornelius and others? The spirit of God is being poured out on non-Jewish people. The spirit is coming to the Gentiles. Now I want you to make this connection with the Old Testament. The Israelites were to go into the promised land and they were to eat and not eat certain things. And that was so that they would live distinctly among the Gentiles. Because the land was unclean and the people were unclean. They were defiled immorally. They were idolatrous. They were immoral in their ethics. They needed to know the law of God, the redeeming power of God. They needed to trust Yahweh. They needed to join the covenant of the Israelites and be God-fearing Gentiles in the midst. In other words, they need to live distinctly before God. They need to join the Israelites in doing so. And the new covenant outpouring of the spirit is incorporating Gentiles. So in the Old Testament, if the food laws were associated in some way with the land and the people and distinct living, the spirit is being poured out on those Gentiles. And so the Lord says to Peter, rise and kill and eat these foods. It symbolizes the inclusion and not the alienation across those food boundaries of the Gentiles into the people of God by the Spirit and the Messiah. Because in Acts 10, 28, Peter says, God has shown me I should not call any person unclean. And by that he would be thinking of those Gentiles upon whom the Spirit of God has come and incorporated them. It would be wrong for Peter to think those ceremonial boundaries were maintained. Now this could be difficult for him. He wouldn't get this perfect. If you read in the book of Galatians chapter two, There were some Gentiles at a table and Peter was there and some Jews arrived and Peter distanced himself from the Gentiles to sit and eat elsewhere because it's so easy for those old former instincts to be in play and to be decisive. And Paul says, I had to confront Cephas to his face. And I had to say, these boundaries are gone, brother. That's a summary paraphrase. They're gone, man. They're gone. The law has been crucified. And therefore, we're not to live as Jew and Gentile together, as if these old ceremonial boundaries are still maintained. In Christ, there is one people. There is Jew and Gentile in Christ, in the Messiah, the one people of God, in the one shepherd of God, in unity and faith in the Messiah. Those older distinctions do not hold sway. Now when we read Deuteronomy 14, Before certain ceremonial things are explained, he says, you are the children of the Lord your God. In verse two, he says, you are people holy to the Lord your God. God has chosen you to be his treasured possession. I want you to know, my friends, those are not ceremonial announcements. Those are identity claims. That means we need to hear the overlap as the New Covenant community in language like 1 Peter 2. 1 Peter 2, 9, he says to Jew Gentiles in Christ Jesus, you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. A people for his own possession. Doesn't that sound like his own treasured possession from Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy? It's the same language. And it's so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who's called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you weren't a people, but now you're God's people. Once you had not received mercy, now you receive mercy. So therefore, beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles abstain from the passage of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. What remains the same? Not the menu laws, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. Those were designed in the Old Testament and clarified in the New to be true as well, as temporary laws. What has always been the case for the people God has redeemed, we are to be a holy people living for the glory of God in a land of darkness. We're to be the light for the world and salt to the earth. That is what has always been true. And the reason for that, friends, is you are the children of God. That's who you are. And in light of who you are, the ramifications and to tease out all of those things to cover every realm of life, we are devoting ourselves to God so that whether we eat or whether we drink, we do all for the glory of God. We are the true Israel. We are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are those who are to live in holiness. So he says in 1 Peter 1, 13, preparing your minds for action, being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, so you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it's written, you shall be holy for I am holy. Let's pray.