Lesson 29 - Leviticus 19 & 20

[Music] [Music] we began to touch on the subject of death and the afterlife at the end of last week's lesson because since about the 4th century AD see Christianity has worked kind of backwards by taking what was revealed in the New Testament and then trying to read it backwards into the Old Testament we tend then to read some of the Old Testament writings and say that the words they used were referring to heaven or to hell even though those actual words or an employed any good Jewish scholar can tell you that's not the case that what it says is what they meant and that the concept of a man going up to heaven to be with God or descending to a place where the devil resided was not envisioned to the inspired writers of the Hebrew Bible now certainly we see the concepts of death and the afterlife evolved as we progress through the Old Testament but we never will find an explicit thought of a man dwelling in heaven in God's presence now as scattered and as uneven as this subject is particularly in the Old Testament in general one could say that death revolved around chill and from an Old Testament perspective shale was not Hades it was not hell but it certainly wasn't a desirable place to be either even though it was inevitable for everybody rather it was the commonplace that every human could expect to visit the grave whether wicked or good Israelite or heathen chill was the end of physical existence and for the most part there was a very hazy undefined sense of an afterlife in an underworld that was thought to exist undoubtedly this was a holdover from Israel's for centuries in Egypt where there was a highly evolved and and practice doctrine of death and the underworld and the spirits of the Dead and even a kind of Resurrection that was similar to but not identical to the concept of reincarnation the entire purpose of those fabulous pyramids had to do with making the spirits or the afterlife of The Departed kings and queens or aristocrats very comfortable and safe ancestor worship played a significant role and practically every known culture of the world in the Bible hero ancestor worship isn't necessarily as it sounds it didn't always involve worship sometimes it was honoring spirits of the dead out of an obligation to do so that's because you wanted them to do it for you and you died in other cases there was a kind of worship in that it was thought that a dead person's spirit was in close contact with the god of the underworld and perhaps you could ask your ancestors spirit to get this underworld God to do something for you we know for sure that the ancient Hebrews incorporated ancestor worship in their death cult and in their afterlife beliefs we find reference to it and many passages in the Bible especially as it pertains to Jacob and to Joseph insisting that they be buried outside of Egypt with their ancestors so that they could continue to commune with them in the afterlife but by no means was the biblical literature on death and after in the mold of Egyptian theology death was a negative for the Hebrews whatever vague sense of life after death that was contemplated was negative physical life was the best it was the highest form of existence for a human death was just an unpleasant fact living a a long life a full lifespan that was the blessing going to the grave early was called in general being cut off particularly if one was seen as wicked or maybe having trespassed against God just as shale is the fulcrum of the Hebrews thoughts on death the term shades is the generic term for whatever form of it exists if any that a human assumes upon his death in general though the most pleasant prospect of death was to sleep with one's ancestors now that's a phrase that's been hotly debated the accepted thought is is that whatever happens in the grave to sleep with one's ancestors generally meant that somebody was in a peaceful state as opposed to being in a state of perpetual anxiety or torment now in Jesus day not only had the idea of a place where the spirits of the Dead existed come into vogue spirits waiting for something probably judgment but the concept of bodily resurrection was also a hot religious topic in his day some like the Sadducees said no to bodily resurrection while others like most sects of the Pharisee said yes then the possibility about a bodily resurrection but even the concept of bodily resurrection wasn't what we think now that is that our spirits are either either in hell or with God and then our physical bodies are resurrected and we go to a spiritual place heaven if we were believers for further existence instead the Jews of Jesus day for centuries before and in many cases it remained so for them resurrection of the Dead was most often only a metaphor for the restoration if you would of an apostate and a about an apostate Israel subjugated Israel at times it did not mean to literally have a dead person come back to life in a better body for some in that era it meant that after Israel had been purified by the Lord and made the dominant nation on earth as God's kingdom then perhaps those who died as righteous members of the great perpetual Kingdom were brought back to life a physical earthly life in this restored and purified kingdom of God Israel certainly they had never Denny been at any point up in God's heaven so the concept proposed by Yeshua and then expanded upon by Paul a believers living eternally in the presence of God in heaven and a higher spiritual plane this was new the Jews indeed believed in a world to come in Hebrew Olam haba but generally it looked a lot more like the widely accepted Christian view of the millennium the thousand year reign of Christ because that takes place physically on earth not in heaven though different Jewish sects believe differently the thought generally was new golden age for Israel was at hand the world to come the Olam haba in which Israel would be the preeminent world power and Israel governed by God would finally take its rightful place as a godly Kingdom that governed the whole earth the entire world would in essence convert to Judaism and follow the Torah perfectly that was what was in their minds but the thought that the spirit of a man could live in God's heavenly dwelling place was was not there till the advent of Yeshua in fact the idea that a man whom at best is so impure and unrighteous and sinful could be allowed into God's heaven and his very presence would be there was that anywhere from laughable to blasphemous they just couldn't accept that and of course that concept was forthrightly rejected by the bulk of the most learnin Jews the least learned Jews a peasant's now they were more open to this idea therefore it was the common folk came to Christ in droves and the highly educated who but for a handful shunned him the bottom line is concerns our study of Leviticus is that whether ghosts existed or not one was not trying to have contact one would rather take it back one was not to try to have contact with them most Israelites believed by the way that they did exist nor was one to have anything to do with someone who did the contacting of the dead as a paying profession that was a major nono my best take on this is that God was saying was not saying that the spirits of the dead of dead people could actually be conned rather it was an unclean unholy thing to be dealing with such matters and only unhea unholy people would even try it the dead are dead and death is an abomination to God the spirits of the Dead exists somewhere but in the scriptures it's only the heathen who try to consort with these spirits a living being communicating with a dead being but the attitude towards attempting to commune with the spirits of the dead is is a kindda idol worship the worshipping of false God first and foremost they're not real these gods don't exist in the first place the Bible will at times call them false gods lo Elohim non gods and really with the spirit mediums are sometimes consorting with or worshipping our demons that lie and they claim to be the spirit of a dead person that somebody's trying to contact because then they can influence that person they can deceive that person at the behest of their boss Satan there is utterly no doubt that anyone can hear me anybody can contact and consort with a demon and we get Old Testament and New Testament examples of that exact thing well back to Leviticus 19 in Leviticus 19 verse 32 God instructs that Israel should respect the elderly this is not ancestor worship nor does it mean that the oldest living member of the household is necessarily dominant in an authority it means to honor them usually by taking care of them and seeing to their needs because at this point in life they're not physically able to care for themselves but it also means that the wisdom that the elderly have gained ought to be put to good use it ought to be appreciated not ignored next we have another command that actually won't even have any meaning to the Hebrews for about four decades don't wrong a stranger dare a gear ger gear that lives with you in your land the land of course being the land of Canaan this theme of a duty to treat foreigners fairly and to even allow those foreigners who want to give up their heathen gods and make the God of Israel their God that they be welcome new members of the nation of Israel this is repeated time after time to join Israel in the time of Yeshua forward meant to join Israel more in a spiritual sense not a physical sense so there was a big change to join in the covenants made between God and Israel you had to accept Yeshua you had to be grafted in to join in the heavenly ideal of Israel a nation of people devoted to you hava we get the formula for it in Romans 11 and Paul explains how Gentiles who have faith in Christ are grafted in Israel term we talk about all the time is Greek but it's still in a spiritual not a physical sense alongside Israel not in place of Israel as the younger brother of Israel not suddenly Israel's elder not only that but the reason Israel is to do this to accept a foreigner who wants to accept the God of Israel is yet another ad buy admonition by God to love him that neighbor as you love yourself we've heard that before and Israel shouldn't have a hard time identifying with a foreigner who wants to be among them because as it says at the end of Leviticus 19 verse 34 because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt so you don't understand this and part of the reason for the Egyptian experience was to learn some valuable lessons and one of those lessons was these foreigners are valuable in God's eyes he loves them so you're to love them vs. 35 and 36 tell the Israelites they're not to cheat one another or or should they cheat foreigners and doing business that's a little bit different from what Islam says isn't it Islam says if you're not a Muslim take every advantage that you can deceive lie kill steal from them it's not really stealing matter of fact that'll earn you a trip to heaven so the next time somebody tells you Islam's just like judeo-christianity it's all the same walk away again as I mentioned over time more than once it remains even just the Middle Eastern culture to cheat and do bribe and whatever it takes to win in a business transaction the best and most revered businessmen in fact and the Middle East are the cleverest they can cheat the best get away with it God's people are to emulate God be fair and be just to everybody now this chapter ends with God's reminder to follow all of his laws and commandments not just the convenient ones so let's move on to Leviticus chapter 20 now that's gonna continue with God's lesson and holiness to the general population of Israel the thing we should notice is that in the previous chapters particularly chapters 18 and 19 God laid down a whole series of rules and ordinances that basically said don't do this as the pagans do instead do something else now in chapter 20 God backs up and says ah but if you do any of these forbidden things I've told you not to do then this is what's gonna happen to you in other words the penalty for violation of God's commandments is more the point of chapter 20 and just as in modern civil society where we can determine the level of seriousness that a particular culture assigns to a particular moral failure by means of the nature and severity of the punishment that's meted out for it so we can see which crimes against God that he sees as most offensive to him and we can see this according to the severity of penalties that he prescribes for each of these trespasses and as we read chapter 20 the general structure is going to be that we will move from the most serious trespasses against God which requires the violator to forfeit his life to the level just under that and which a person is cut off by some means now please keep in mind that every violation listed in chapter 20 is a very serious one even sins of the slightly lower level of violations in which one is cut off or at Times called aberrant the God in modern day legal thought then we would say every one of these moral failures are serious felonies the issue is analogous to whether a crime is gonna be a capital offense or maybe you'll just suffer in prison a long time maybe up to life that's the dividing line so pull out your Bibles open them to Leviticus chapter 20 and we're gonna read it all if you have a complete Jewish Bible as page 133 133 Leviticus chapter 20 I don't I said to Moshe a saved the people of Israel someone from the people of Israel or one of the foreigners living in Israel sacrifices one of his children to Molech he has to be put to death the people the lander to stone him to death I too will set myself against him and cut him off from his people because he has sacrificed his child to Molech defiling my sanctuary profaning my holy name if the people of the land looked the other way when that man sacrifices his child to Molech and failed to put him to death then I myself will set myself against him his family and everyone who follows him to go fornicating after Molech and cut them off from their people the person who turns to spirit mediums to sorcerers to go fornicating after them I will set myself against him and cut him off from his people therefore consecrate yourselves you people must be holy because I Adam and I am your God observe my regulations and obey them I am Adonai who set you apart to be holy a person who curses his mother or father must be put to death having cursed his father or mother his bloods on him if a man commits adultery with another man's wife that is with the wife of a fellow countryman both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death the man who goes to bed with his father's wife has disgraced his father sexually both of them must be put to death their bloods on them if a man goes to bed with his daughter-in-law both must be put to death they have committed a perversion their bloods on them if a man goes to bed with a man as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination they must be put to death their bloods on them if a man marries a woman and her mother its depravity they're to be put to death by fire both he and they so there will not be depravity among you if a man has sexual relations with an animal he must be put to death and you're to kill the animal if a woman approaches an animal has sexual relations with its you're to kill the woman in the animal their blood will be on them if a man takes his sister his father's daughter or his mother's daughter and have sexual relations with her and she consents it's a shameful thing they are to be cut off publicly he has had sexual relations with his sister and he will bear the consequences of their wrongdoing if a man goes to bed with a woman in her menstrual period and has sexual relations with her he has exposed the source of her blood she has exposed the source of her blood both of them that are be cut off from their people you're not to have sexual relations with your mother's mother's sister your father's sister a person who does this has had sexual relations with his close relative they will bear the consequences of their wrongdoing a man goes to bed with his uncle's wife he has disgraced his uncle sexually they will bear the consequences of their sin and die childless if a man takes his brother's wife its uncleanness he has disgraced his brother sexually they will be child you are to observe all my regulations and rulings and act on them so that the land to which I'm bringing you won't vomit you out do not live by the regulations of the nation which I'm expelling ahead of you because they did all these things which is why I detested them but to you I have said you will inherit their land I'll give it to you as a possession of land flowing with milk and honey I am Adonai your God who has set you apart from other peoples therefore you are to distinguish between clean and unclean animals between clean and unclean birds don't make yourself detestable with an animal a bird or a reptile that I've set apart for you to regard as unclean rather you people are to be holy for me because I add and I am holy I have set you apart from the other people so that you can belong to me a man or a woman who is a spirit medium or a sorcerer must be put to death there to stone them to death their blood will be on them now I'm gonna focus on some important principles brought up here in chapter 20 because if we've already thoroughly studied the meaning of most of these sinful acts discussed in these verses now I'm just probably gonna be on my soapbox a little bit more today than usual that's possible and the reason is that these principles are so visible and our modern lives so buckle up notice that between the in diverse one and the first part of verse two we get a solid definition of who these laws are addressed to and it is anyone from among the Israelites including any stranger living among them it's referring to any citizen of Israel who could be born who could be a natural-born Hebrew could be a foreigner who's given up their God in order to worship Jehovah and thereby has formally joined Israel and it also includes any gear living among Israel a gear is a foreigner who has not joined himself to Israel but he is living among Israel for the benefits that this relationship with Israel brings them I point this out because it is so often said well the laws of the Old Testament are just for Israel meaning of course those who are of Hebrew descent and therefore nothing of the Old Testament applies to modern Gentile Christians those not born as Hebrews or as we say today Jews well I hope by now I've demonstrated to you that nothing could be further from the truth but also noting that just as it's not obedience to God's laws that brings us Redemption neither was it for the Israelite the law is about teaching us what holiness is it's about teaching us what holiness looks like what's acceptable to God what's not acceptable what is good in God's eyes what's not the purpose of the Torah is to show a redeemed person how to live a holy life it's not to redeem an unredeemed person and here we find that if someone wants to live among God's people without formerly being one of God's people that's permissible but they're gonna be subject to the same rules and laws of Israeli society as is all the Israelis and law number one is no idolatry specifically no Molech worship now Molech worship was a particular concern to you Jose because it was practiced by a significant segment of the Canaanites the current inhabitants of the promised land and by some of the other cultures throughout the known world that the Israelites were going to encounter just as important many people would come to the promised land who wanted to join Israel or just stay with Israel for a while for economic reasons and they were the worshippers of other gods so what was necessary to lay out the law about this subject because God's laws were to apply throughout God's land this particular false god Molech was especially taboo because his chief attribute was he demanded human blood child sacrifice action now just as we've already seen the names of the people in the Bible varied from culture to culture for instance Nimrod was a Babylonian name Asher is that same name only it's an Assyrian so we see it with Molech what we've when we find a God with almost exactly the same attributes being worshiped by various far-flung cultures although he goes by different names we can be fairly certain that it is the same God that's being worshiped for instance Ashtaroth Ishtar Astarte and Oster are all the same goddess the fertility goddess just the language of the culture where she's worship is different and by the way this goddesses name eventually gained another name an anglo-saxon name in a different language it's very familiar to us Easter that's right that's exactly where we got the name for that Christian holiday now Molech was a high deity a chief god an L because the world's people worshiped many gods a hierarchy was developed gods were put into a pecking order some gods were subservient to her at the very least less powerful than other gods a fertility goddess a God of the rains a god of the underworld a God of the harvest these were lesser gods so invariably there had to be uh chief God the God above the other gods who said at the top of the hierarchy and Molech and all of his various names he was a chief god in fact this concept of one God preeminent over all the others appears in Hebrew culture the Hebrew L as an Elohim el shaddai simply means highest God chief God so such a term has no meaning if there's no other gods to compare them to and L yell is a language cognate of the Akkadian LLL il which also means highest God and when we see phrases phrases that we mouth in our Bibles like Lord of lords God above all gods we all say it King of Kings we ascribe these to Yoho way sometimes do you schewe these are all just cultural language holdovers from the days of multiple god worship among the Israelites because we find those terms in the Bible yes can Hebrew and even among the nation of Israel the thought of there being multiple gods was prevalent during the entire period of the Old Testament on and at the time of the new and we're gonna talk about that in a little bit more now in Moab which boarded the promised land the Moabites called Molech emotion emotion a moan which was another bordering nations the ammonites called this same god bale sometimes bale pay or sometimes bales they move but you know what that means Lord of the Flies we first heard molex name in Leviticus 18 to find it again now in Leviticus 20 but in one language or another his name's gonna be repeated all throughout the Tanakh the Old Testament and we're gonna see several terms and phrases about just what it was that mullet demanded of his followers especially as concerned their children we're gonna see that terms like handed over devoted to offered up rune see if few other terms like that and at one point it was thought that only one or two of those terms actually indicated the most extreme version of child involvement from Oleg Horace was killing the child hurting that child over to Moloch the idea was that the other forms of offering children to Molech simply meant that perhaps the child was dedicated to Molech you know like we have baby dedications in some churches today that is so it was it was kind of benign I mean it was heathen but it was benign general agreement now however is that all these terms every one of them are just various edited idioms representing the same exact thing the child is executed sometimes the child would become a burnt offering perhaps even more often a child would be killed buried in the foundation of a new building in order to dedicate that building to Molech or call for molex blessing upon that building or family or activity that took place there now very sadly Israel's history is replete with bowing down to the false god of this horrendous cult Israel at times mere accepted the worship of Molech by foreigners living among them obviously for the sake of tolerance diversity but Israel also established the worship of Molech for themselves in various eras turn your Bibles to first Kings chapter 11 we're gonna look at eight bursts first Kings chapter 11 you have a complete Jewish Bible as page 380 - this is gonna surprise some of you king King Solomon loved many foreign women besides the daughter of Pharaoh there were a woman from from the Moabites the ammonites the the Siddha Knights and the Hittites nations about which ad and I had said to the people of Israel you are not to go among them were they among you because they'll turn your hearts away towards their gods but Solomon was deeply attached to them by his love he had seven hundred wives all princesses 300 concubines and his wives turned his heart away for when Solomon became old his wives turned his heart away towards other gods so that he was not full hearted with Adonai is God as David his father had been her Solomon followed ashteroth the goddess of this of the Siddha Nights milcom the abomination of the ammonites the Solomon did what was evil and a denies view he did not fully follow at and I as David his father had done shalom will built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill in front of Jerusalem another for Moloch the abomination of the people of a moan this is what he did for all of his foreign wives who they offered and sacrificed who then offered in sacrifice to their gods King Solomon built high places altars of sacrifice to serve a whole litany of pagan gods including Molech he participated in the worship of a long list of the most detestable false gods and he allowed his family he encouraged his people to do the same thing it's not that he necessarily believed in all these gods but at least he thought it politically advantageous to show that he had great understanding towards those in his kingdom who didn't believe as he believed not only that he says he did it in love his motive was love now does that shock you a little bit Kannada I mean I've had more than one angry person come up to me after after a class after a meeting and say I'm so terribly wrong about my teaching the great King Solomon would would worship another god I mean how could a Bible hero who's credited with writing three inspired books of the Bible one of them proverbs which is likely the most rid of any of the Old Testament Scriptures at least by the church how could a man of God like this be accused of worshiping other gods well here it is straightforward and all of its ugly truth Solomon the builder of the first temple worship Jehovah all right but he also eventually honored other gods largely we're told to satisfy his many foreign wives now just so you understand the reason Solomon married all those women was to create political alliances that was the way an alliance with another nation was created in that era each wife represented another alliance with another nation what makes it doubly troubling is that it wasn't as though Solomon began his life as a pagan and then we have a happy ending of his disavowing those Heath and gods and worshipping only the God of Israel know he was raised under Levitical law he knew about all this the scriptures paint a picture of a man who lapsed in and out of his desire for these other gods undoubtedly he worship Jehovah at the same time he was worshipping these false gods thinking all the time he's doing such a good thing that's what it means when it says he committed idolatry in love he was deceiving himself what he was doing was to try to please others and can you imagine the image of Solomon worshiping those other gods making a mockery of everything that Israel stood for and how that must have hurt and angered and offended those citizens of Israel who had worked so diligently to stayed true to the God of Israel aren't you glad you don't ever have to witness that no not so fast come dying day I will never forget a sickening picture a President Bush shortly after 9/11 standing in a mosque in a ceremony transmitted around the world declaring that Allah was good Allah was God Allah was the same God as the Christians in the Jews and that Islam is a valid and true and wonderful peaceful religion to be favorably compared with the religion of the Bible after about 20 years King Solomon did essentially the same thing and his country fell into civil war and it disintegrated not to appear again for 3,000 years now I'm not in the business of making predictions the Lord has never seen fit to tell me of his plans beyond what's there in the scriptures but explain to me how it is that the elected leader of our nation who professes on the one hand that Jesus is Lord can on the other hand say that a false god is also Lord and there not be any reaction from God folks we've all felt were on some slippery precipice and and and I'm not sure that there can be a much more serious offense against the Lord made on behalf of a nation than the one I just reminded you of one that most of us witnessed as it happened this isn't conjecture I saw it many of you saw it seal all the shake and heads out there and to top it all off this nation's leaders are using their power currently to try to dislodge Israel from major portions of their promised land even from the Temple Mount and say it's being done in love and for the cause of peace most of Christianity's just blown it off as the political leader of a nation being political and it has nothing to do with anything more than that but it's okay to call on their nation to join with pagans to worship their God if it's done in the name of love and peace well I wasn't okay when Solomon did it I don't think it's okay now I mean have you ever done something in love that was completely against God's scriptures because you thought it was so compassionate and merciful at the time in honestly believing that that law of love overrides all of God's commands and ordinances even believing that Yeshua the author of the word the Torah has told us that were to disregard the very principles he's laid down in the Torah in exchange for moving in whatever directions our hearts lead us Bible says following our hearts is typically the wrong thing to do Jeremiah 17:9 through 10 the heart is more deceitful than anything else and mortally sick who can fathom it I had and I searched the heart I test inner motivations in order to give everyone what his actions and his conduct deserves but it eventually got even worse for Israel Kings monisha and then a moan kings of Judah and the years leading up to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians instituted Molech worship under pain of death for all those israelites who refused to worship even in Yeshua's day there was an altar in gaya Nome the Valley of Hinnom that surrounds the eastern and southern edges of the holy city where Molech was openly worshipped just under the Temple Mount children were burned to death in honor of this God is it any wonder that God made the promised land vomit Israel out of it on more than one occasion is it any wonder that God speaks so passionately against Moloch I mean I took you on this bit of a detour because I wanted you to understand the unbelievable abomination of tolerating the worship of other gods how cancerous the cult of Moloch was and that Israel became infected by it to one degree or another at all times because they refused to take the necessary action as prescribed by God to stamp it out I also took you on this detour because it demonstrates how easy it is to sincerely believe we are worshiping the one true God at the same moment we're blind to the idolatry that is rampant in our own lives because it serves some useful purpose for us how easy it is for the Church of Jesus Christ to honestly believe that we are true only to him when it is so corrupted by the desire for power and position and money and not wanting to be ostracized by the world that there's almost no limits how far we'll go in order to be inclusive how far will grow and or will go in order to grow our congregations and to prosper this is why the word tolerant needs to be eradicated from our vocabulary harmony and unity at any price tolerance and appeasement these have become virtues in our day they're not their cowardice their rebellion their sin against the Lord it's choosing to be against God but let's be clear Molech wasn't real no matter how sincere and how dedicated his believers were that they would take their toddlers and throw them into a burning fire for the sake of the Molech cult Moloch was just man's evil inclination being led by that wicked Pied Piper Satan there's no Molech Molech is really an ideal a brainchild of mankind's fallen nature and the idea was that if the worshippers of Moloch sacrificed some other children in return they'd be blessed with prosperity because that was almost always the point of those child sacrifices I think you know where I'm heading what kind of pastor would I be if I didn't tell you the truth for the most part part abortion is just modern-day child sacrifice why are the unborn sacrificed almost always for our personal well-being and prosperity and comfort the doctor says now maybe there's a defect here boy we better get rid of it cuz it'd be costly it can be troublesome it could be heartbreaking that little blue ring bottom of the test tube says there's new life growing in that mother's womb oh what a burden that would put on our already stretched family budget better stop that now the humans secularist and environmentalist cease new human life is a threat who are overpopulated in their eyes planet so in essence it's the kind and compassionate thing to do to get rid of it this is the essence of Molech worship there's no disguising it and the penalty for worshipping molap or better the ideal of Molech as verse 2 of Leviticus 20 says is death not the death of the victim are death all those who would commit the act all those who would tolerate it now verse 3 prescribes stoning as the means of execution for the person among Israel stranger or citizen who worships Molech and further it says just who is going to do the executing it's going to be the arm hurts the people of the land ordinary Israelite citizens this is not talking about vigilante justice it's talking about duly appointed people that have been designated for this task but they weren't the elders they weren't the tribal leaders they weren't the Chieftains they weren't the priests they weren't even members of the court they were just low-level leaders who had some kind of voice and ordinary a community affairs why stone these people why not shoot him with some arrows stab him with a knife cut their heads off it's hard to know for sure but most scholarly thought is that those other methods typically required only one or two executioner's let me taste them about stoning it required a lot of people the idea was of communal participation in the execution thereby communal acknowledgement of the wrongness of this crime that they didn't want it among them so they were actively participating to eradicate it that's the idea I agree with that the idea is frankly the execution shouldn't be quick and painless it ought to be brutal and bloody I would be pretty scary and from it Israel should learn that even if their hearts wanted to follow Molech and not gonna do it for fear the consequences of it then in verse three is laid down another principle death can be of a two-fold nature physical and spiritual this is one of those verses that the English kind of misses the mark because it's explaining that even beyond this dual aspect of death spiritual and physical there's also the matter that if the people will not do their duty and and prosecute a Molech worshipper the person still doesn't escape because God will cut them off in his way and his time now we've talked about the term cut off or in Hebrew correct and as a reminder it's really a complex term it can mean a whole range of things from dying short of a normal lifespan to being excommunicated from the nation of Israel and therefore from God it could mean a consequence that comes out and a later generation of that family it can mean out-and-out execution it could mean immediate death directly at the hand of God that happened to Nadav and Avihu sons of the high priest Aaron but underlying it all is that correct the penalty of being cut off is divine retribution its origination is not from a civil court we're gonna continue in this chapter next week so if you would please stand [Music] Oh [Music] [Music] you you see mission

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Length: 55min 31sec (3331 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2018