Posted on June 12, 2025 Posted By: TJ Schultz Categories: Sermon Notes

I’d like to start today with some fun. And I’m hoping this doesn’t get me into trouble. I’m going to put an image on the screen. What do you see?

At first glance, it looked like one thing. But with a little more perspective, if you look at it from another angle, you realize it’s not what you were sure it was at first. That’s just a general life lesson. We experience that with all kinds of things, and we experience that with people. Our first impressions are often wrong.

It’s no different with the Bible. Will you grab a Bible and find this passage?

LEVITICUS 19:1-18

Leviticus is the third book in the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus. The Book of Leviticus can be a lot like that photo I just showed you. At first glance, our intuitive framework might react with shock. We can read it and intuitively, almost instantly, conclude that it’s backward and unintelligent. Maybe our intuitive framework tells us it’s toxic, cruel, and morally repugnant.

Leviticus is a book of laws or commands, guidelines for priests, and instructions for rituals. If you read it, and I hope you do, you will find some surprising things, and some of it will make you uncomfortable.

There are commands regarding:

Sacrifices
Slavery
Bodily fluids and sacrifices for when you release certain bodily fluids. It told you, it’s going to feel weird.

There are commands regarding:

Food
Farming
Clothing
Sex: There’s a long list of who and what to not have sex with.
Beards and Hair care

Today, we are going to read a section that I bet will intuitively and naturally feel good. It will feel like wind in your sails. But if you read beyond what we read today, and again, I hope you do, it will understandably feel strange. You might even ask yourself, how could a good God want people to do this?

It’s to our benefit to remember our series thesis.

SERIES THESIS: There’s a BACKSTORY to the story.

There’s a lot of stuff that makes up the backstory.

Previous events
Language
Culture and customs
Historical context

Do you remember this from week one?

2 TIMOTHY 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

What we read in Scripture is breathed out by God. Sometimes that means he dictated what’s written and sometimes didn’t. Leviticus contains quite a bit that appears to be dictated from God to Moses. God breathed it out and he it breathed it through a language that is very different from ours. He breathed it out through a culture that is very different from ours. Let’s don’t forget this when we are reading the Old Testament.

We are TOURISTS in ancient Hebrew culture.

We should expect to find things that don’t make sense to us. Not only should we expect not to understand, but we should also expect the things we encounter to be absurd to us. We should expect to have feelings and thoughts instinctively fire off, telling us that this is wrong. Expect that. And the reason that we should expect that is that we are tourists. We don’t naturally have the framework to interpret what we experience correctly. The way that you were raised and the way I was raised gave you and gave me the framework needed to understand our own culture and to misunderstand all other cultures. Does this make sense? Do you know what else we should expect?

We should expect to make mistakes. If we don’t have a framework to interpret a culture correctly, that means we don’t have a framework to help us engage the culture correctly.

Have you ever traveled to another country with someone who engaged everyone there as if they should act the same as we do here in the US? What did you feel? It’s awkward, maybe embarrassing. What do tourists need when navigating a new culture?

Tourists need TOUR GUIDES who are FLUENT in the culture.

bibleproject.com

On my first trip to Ghana, I approached a group of men standing in a semicircle. Wanting to be friendly and respectful, I greeted them each individually and shook their hands. The problem is that I went from right to left, when culturally, I was supposed to go from left to right. My host graciously but quickly corrected me. All my intentions were good, but my engagement was wrong because I didn’t naturally have the right framework. I needed someone who was fluent in the culture.

If you get to go on a mission trip to Ghana, and if you get to plant a church in a village, which is an incredible experience, you might be invited into the home of the chief. If so, keep your head lower than his head and when you sit on the floor, don’t show him the bottom of your feet. It’s a way to show you respect. But the only way that people from our culture would know that about their culture is if we have a kind of tour guide.

This is a high-level scholarship that is accessible to kids and adults from all education levels. And it’s free. This book is a treasure chest. It is a grand unified story that points us to Jesus so that we can know him and the life that he gives. I don’t want you to miss out on any part of it.

Let’s read Leviticus 19:1-8.

LEVITICUS 19:1-18 The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. “ ‘Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God. “ ‘Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the Lord your God. “ ‘When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the Lord, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up. If any of it is eaten on the third day, it is impure and will not be accepted. Whoever eats it will be held responsible because they have desecrated what is holy to the Lord; they must be cut off from their people. “ ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. “ ‘Do not steal. “ ‘Do not lie. “ ‘Do not deceive one another. “ ‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. “ ‘Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. “ ‘Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight. “ ‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord. “ ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. “ ‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people. “ ‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord. “ ‘Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. “ ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.

It's not just the words that speak us, how this is structured speaks loudly as well. When I read this, it looks like a house to me.

The foundation is holiness. It’s framed out with commands related to our relationships and commands related to our rest and work. It’s capped with the command to love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus talked about that command, he said being a neighbor wasn’t about proximity to a person. It wasn’t about us determining which people are our neighbors. He said it was about us being neighbors to all people.

The Apostle Paul wrote that the entire law, all 613 commands, can be summarized by this: “love your neighbor as yourself.” I’m suggesting to you that this structure right here is like a master key. It can unlock or decode so much of what you are going to read in Leviticus. Let’s test this out with something we just read.

LEVITICUS 19:5-7 “ ‘When you sacrifice a fellowship offering to the Lord, sacrifice it in such a way that it will be accepted on your behalf. It shall be eaten on the day you sacrifice it or on the next day; anything left over until the third day must be burned up.’ “

A fellowship offering, sometimes called a peace offering, was often made to show gratitude to God. It may have been offered after a person fulfilled a vow. The essence of it was about expressing gratitude and relational closeness to God.

It needed to be offered in a way that was acceptable. Hear this. We should be confident when we approach God. We shouldn’t be casual. Be confident, not casual. He is holy and we should revere him. There was a certain way that sacrifice was to be made. He is the authority. He sets the terms. We happily submit to his way.

After the animal was sacrificed, why should it be eaten on the first or second day but not on the third day? I don’t think it has anything to do with the lack of refrigeration or possible spoilage. Remember, this is about holiness and love intersecting to shape and form God’s people.

What should you do if it all had to be eaten on the first day, maybe the second, and you can’t eat it all by yourself? What do you do? Share it! Keep inviting and keep feeding people till it’s gone. What if I told you that God set up an entire religious system of worship so that when you worshiped God, it resulted in you putting food in someone else’s belly?

Well, that’s the Old Testament. Do you think it’s any different in the New Testament?

JAMES 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

What is that? It’s love towards people, specifically people who are vulnerable. And it’s holiness. It’s both, bundled together. This isn’t intended to be limited to widows and orphans exclusively. We should actively and intentionally care for folks who are vulnerable.

Now, here’s a question that some of us are probably asking.

QUESTION: How do I know which laws to follow and which laws to ignore?

You might have noticed that we don’t sacrifice animals and then have a feast. Unless hunting counts, we don’t do that. How do we figure this out? In Leviticus, you will find ceremonial laws and moral laws. But they’re not always neatly packaged so that we can tell the difference. In the section we read, there’s a mix of ceremonial laws and moral laws. It jumps back and forth from one category to the other.

I’ve got good news. This doesn’t have to be confusing.

QUESTION: How do I know which laws to follow and which laws to ignore?

DWINT (Do What’s In the New Testament)

Jesus fulfilled all the law, ceremonial law and moral law, with his life, death, and resurrection. And yet, the fact that Jesus fulfilled the requirements of all the law doesn’t mean that there aren’t things we ought to do or ought not to do morally. Let’s think of it like this.

Every command that God wants us to follow is an expression of his character. All the moral commands of God are like boundary markers. We experience goodness and love by staying inside them. We express love back to him by staying inside them.

Every moral command that God wants us to follow is expressed in the New Testament. There isn’t a single thing, a single command that he wants us to follow that is not communicated in the New Testament. Do we need to make sacrifices? No. Jesus is the final and perfect sacrifice. And those of who are followers of Jesus, our bodies, our entire selves, are a living sacrifice to him. Do we still need to be holy? Yes. That is theme that continues throughout the New Testament.

LEVITICUS 19:2 “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.’”

This is not only the foundational verse for understanding this chapter, the command to be holy is foundational to understanding the point of life itself. We need to get clear on what holiness means. It’s an expansive and deep. We can summarize it like this.

Holiness = LIFE, truth, goodness, beauty, and justice

This describes God himself and it’s the life for which we were designed. Do you know why sin is so serious.

Sin = DEATH

Somebody told me this when I was 12 years old. At 47 I believe more than I have before.

Sin will TAKE you further than you wanted to go, KEEP you longer than you wanted to stay, and COST you more than you wanted to pay.

Anybody in this room who has worn a little tread off your tires, you know this true. Even if you don’t like the word sin. Even if you aren’t a follower of Jesus. We all know there are choices that take us further, keep us longer, and cost us more than we wanted to pay. We know that. We all know that. And yet, from time to time any one of us will get grumpy and agitated about commands that are intended to give us life, truth, goodness, beauty, and justice.

This is a tell the truth time. How many of us sometimes have a grumpy relationship with things that we know are for our good? Why is that? It’s because the story isn’t the only one with a backstory. We all have our backstories too.

And there are things in your backstory and things in my backstory that have shaped and formed us in such a way that we are resistant to or dismissive of good commands from God.

Maybe it was the environment we were in.
Maybe it was our habits over a long period of time.
Maybe it was the stories we filled our minds with.
Maybe it was our relationships.

Probably, it was a combination of those things that caused us to bristle and stiffen our necks when we considered some of God’s good commands, which are intended to give us life, truth, goodness, beauty, and justice.

What we READ has a backstory, and WE have a backstory.

We owe it to ourselves to get honest about the backstory that is impacting how receive and relate to these words of life.

It’s Father’s Day weekend and this passage has some stuff to say about parent and child relationships. These words extend to the adult-child to parent relationship.

LEVITICUS 19:3 “ ‘Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.’ “

If you have a pain free, joy filled, easy relationship with your parents, I celebrate that for you. I have that with my father-in-law and mother-in-law. I didn’t have that with my own dad. In my 25+ years as a pastor, the vast majority of people carry hurts and disappointment in their relationships with their parents. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been asked this.

QUESTION: What does it mean to honor our parents?

I’ve lost track of the times I’ve had to ask this for myself. The only people who ask this question are people who were navigating difficulty or carrying hurts and disappointment. For those of you who have a joyful and easy relationship with your parents, you don’t ask this question. If you’re asking anything, it’s how can I give more honor? How can I live up to what they’ve done for me?

For those of us who are navigating challenges or carrying hurts and disappointment, I want to be helpful and hopeful. Can we consider this together?

Give respect even when you disagree with them.
Seek to understand before being understood.
Be kind, even when you maintain boundaries.
Overlook what you can.
When you must deliver hard truth, be humble and gentle.
Forgive them. (Unforgiveness is like eating rat poison, hoping the other person gets sick.)
Express gratitude (Gratitude isn’t gratitude until it’s expressed.)
When in doubt, aim at love. (What does love require of me?)

If you are navigating challenges and carrying hurst or disappointment, I want you to slowly and prayerfully meditate on this.

For those who are parents, and your kids are still at home, I’ve got a sincere question, that might be little bit jolting.

REALITY CHECK: Do we want our kids to honor us because of their ability to REMEMBER or their ability to FORGET?

When they are adults, do you want your kids' motivation for honoring you to be fueled by their good memories, or do you want them to have to forget, look past, and not think about what their experiences were? Of course, we all want our kids to want to honor us happily. Of course, we want them to look back on their childhood and consider it an honor to be able to honor us when they are adults.

So, let’s parent today with that future in mind. I’m not going to tell you what your goal as a parent should be. I will tell you what mine and Heather’s big goal was. Our big goal was that our kids would want to hang out us with when they didn’t have to. Believe it or not, that became a framework through which we made decisions.

Here’s an example. We listened to them talk about the most annoying, nonsensical things when they were young. And we asked follow-up questions. And we did our best to be interested. I was happy to talk about Barbie and Pokémon for hours because in the future, when they didn’t have to hang out with me and talk with me, my goal is that they would want to. My goal is that they would happily and voluntarily share their life with me. Right or wrong, Heather and I wanted our kids to remember that we were interested in them and what they were interested in.

I know that you’re working hard at work and you’re working hard and home and sometimes you’re digging deep. Just remember this.

The days are LONG, but the years are SHORT.

I don’t know who said this first, but it’s true. Now that my youngest is in the adult world, it breaks my brain trying to comprehend how quickly years will take by. Just a couple of more thoughts.

You are already devoting TIME and ENERGY to what you hope they will remember or to what you hope they will forget.

My encouragement to you is just to be intentional. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Don’t worry about if you’re doing enough. Most of the time, those are not helpful questions. Are you being intentional? That’s the question. What do you want your kids to remember? I want to prime the pump, getting you going with things I want my kids to remember.

I wanted them around and wanted to be around them
Fun and laughter
Lessons I taught
That I loved their mom
My joy in following Jesus
Repentance

As a dad, this isn’t the only way that I point them to Jesus. It may be the most powerful way that I point them to Jesus. Maybe the most profound way that I can demonstrate to my kids that they need a savior is to show them that I need one.

When we repent to our kids, when we apologize, when we own it and seek to make it right, when we elevate repentance over preserving our reputations—we become a living story of grace. Believe it or not, we are modeling holiness to them.

law, newsfeed

Message Notes: Holy Lit week 3: Law