July 20, 2025 • 35 mins
When we think about holiness, we often picture something distant—set apart, sacred, almost unreachable. But what if holiness was meant to be practiced in the everyday? What if it looked less like ritual perfection and more like walking faithfully with God, step by step?
In Leviticus 26, God outlines the blessings that come from obedience and the consequences of turning away. Yet embedded in this covenant is a relational call: to live with God, to walk in His ways, and to be His people.
God is still calling His people to walk with Him. Will we respond with obedience that reflects a life set apart? Join us as we explore practical holiness. Recorded July 20th, 2025 Message by Pastor Tim Ward Scripture: Leviticus 26:1-13, 40-45
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So we are in Leviticus. Yay! We're moving right along, as it says.
And so I believe Marty's reading from Leviticus chapter 26, verses 1 through 13 and 40 through 45.
Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves,
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or do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God.
Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary.
I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,
I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.
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Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will
continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid.
I will remove wild bees from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.
You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you.
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Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand,
and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers,
and I will keep my covenant with you.
You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.
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I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you.
I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer
be slaves to the Egyptians.
I broke the bars of your yoke, and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
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But if they will confess their sins, and the sins of their ancestors.
Their unfruitfulness, and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward
them, so that I sent them into the land of their enemies, then when their uncircumcised
hearts are humbled, and they pay for their sin.
I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac,
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and my covenant with Abraham.
And I will remember the land, for the land will be deserted by them and will
enjoy its Sabbath while it lies desolate without them.
They will pay for their sins and increase their rejected.
They rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees, Yet, in spite of this,
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when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor
them so as to destroy them completely,
breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God.
But for their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I
brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.
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So in this passage, we didn't read the entire chapter.
The first part of it is what is reward for obedience. The second part was punishment for disobedience.
And it talks about different things that if they wandered away and they did certain things.
And then in verse 40, it talks about God says, I will still be their God,
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and I will still be their people, and I will maybe punish them,
but yet they will have God as their father.
For Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel, life changed when God showed his
love for them and brought them out of Egypt, freeing them from slavery.
They were now in relationship with God, the God of the universe,
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the one who created them, who not only cared about them, but who had the power
to do something about their plight.
If you remember going back to the beginning of Exodus, the end of Genesis and
the beginning of Exodus.
The Israelites had gone into Egypt with Jacob and his family,
gone into Egypt as guests, in a sense, moving into Egypt.
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And then in the beginning of Exodus, we see that they had been there 430 years
to the day when they came out of Egypt, when God delivered them.
And then we see in all of that time that they fell into slavery.
Basically, they were apathetic about their faith, and they moved into slavery
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of the Egyptians as well as the Egyptian gods.
And it says in one point in there that God saw them and heard their cries.
And so he said, I'm going to come and do something about it.
My people are in distress.
And so he came to do something about it. And that's what he did.
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He came in and delivered them from their plight.
As Chris talked about earlier, we have giants that we face every day.
And God saw their distress and saw their cries for help. and he came to rescue them.
This God who had created the world, this God who had made a promise to their
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ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and that he would bring them into a new land, this God who had miraculously led them out of Egypt,
this God who has established a new covenant with them at Mount Sinai,
that they would be his people and he would be their God. So God made this.
Abraham in the beginning, and then now with Moses on Mount Sinai,
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this idea that God would be their God, he would be their leader,
and they would be his people.
Remember this idea of a chosen people?
God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself, and he chooses to use
us as chosen people to accomplish his mission.
So God was on this from the very beginning. That's the story of Genesis is Exodus in short.
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By the end of Exodus, the people not only remembered God's miraculous work among them in the past,
but they constructed a tent in the center of their camp that symbolized God's
presence with them now and in the present.
And you see a picture of that, this gathering of this rendition of what it was
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like for the Israelites to be in the wilderness,
encamped in the wilderness with this tent of meeting and tabernacle in the very center of their time.
If you read the instructions or if you read the history in the Old Testament,
he talks about three camps, three tribes being encamped on each side of this.
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Gathering in the wilderness where they were, and yet the tabernacle's in the center of it.
This tabernacle represented the presence of God.
This tent represented the presence of God. Not only did it represent the presence
of God in there, but it was also his very presence.
Jesus, God said, I will come and dwell among them.
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And every day there in the center of the camp, that tent served as a reminder
that they were not alone.
Every time they looked in the
direction of that tent, they were reminded that God was there with them.
Can you imagine what that would be like? And on special occasions,
they could see a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire to help them realize God's presence.
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Whenever they traveled, they would have a cloud of fire by night and a pillar
of cloud by day that would guide them.
And then at times, like he did with the Red Sea, would go between them and the
Pharaoh's armies to protect them.
I'm sure every one of you has experienced a time in your life when you had a
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special sense that God was standing right beside you.
Oftentimes, it's in our times of terrible need.
Now, I don't think I've told you this story, and you may not know this about
me, but I used to have some pretty crappy jobs.
And one of those was I used to drive a rendering truck. How many knows what a rendering truck is?
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The farmers among us would know what a rendering truck is.
A rendering truck is that truck that drives around to all the farms,
and when they have dead animals or diseased animals that had to be put down,
the rendering truck would drive around, pick those up,
oftentimes have to put the animals down before they took them with them,
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and those animals then would be rendered into pig feed and stuff like that.
And so I used to drive around to these farms to pick up.
Rendering in various stages of decay.
So it was not a nice job. And usually my wife would tell me when I'd come home
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at the end of the day with my coveralls on, she would make me undress outside,
before I came into the house because by now he stinketh.
But there was one time I was driving in the rendering truck,
and I usually had a regular truck that I drove.
The truck that I normally drove
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was in for repair, and so they loaned out another truck to me to drive,
and this one was an older truck, and I found out after this incident that it
had a little bit of a problem with the loose linkage in the steering.
Nice thought after the fact. So I was out driving on this country road, this gravel road.
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It was not a real wide road. They had just graveled it,
and so I was pulling over toward the right side as I go up over a hill in case
I could face any oncoming traffic, and as I did, the right side of my truck
kind of slipped in a little bit of gravel.
I'm looking out to the right side of my truck, and there's an embankment deep down into the bottom.
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And so, thanks be to God, somehow somebody took the wheel of that.
It wasn't me, and there was nobody riding with me, except you know who.
And I hung on to the edge of that until the ditch settled out a little bit,
and I was drawn off into the ditch.
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And as I did that, I hit a field drive.
You know what I mean by that, right?
Hit a field drive going in from the road into the field, and my truck went up
in the air and went head for heels over itself.
As I did, and then I landed on the driver's side of the vehicle,
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I watched in kind of horror as my logging chain,
my truck blocks, and my rifle raced past my head and busted out the side window by my head.
I know that the presence of the Lord was with me.
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I just thank God that I was protected in that.
But we also can know that direct presence of God in our times and in the good times as well.
How many times have you ever been witnessing to someone with words that you
did not know that you even spoke or were spoken through you by God?
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I think I've also, I don't know if I've shared this about this couple that I
counseled and was later, officiated their wedding.
The couple was not saved when they approached me about doing their wedding.
And as I do in the counseling of the sessions, I tell the couples that the main
thing that I want to know is that they are saved, that they are part of God's kingdom.
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And that's one of the things I'm going to do during times of counseling.
And so I told them ahead of time that. And our final counseling session was
scheduled for a Saturday evening.
I had been praying for this couple's salvation. They didn't seem to respond.
And on Friday night, actually it was about two o'clock in the morning Saturday,
God awoke me with a very vivid dream and desire to wake up and pray for the
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salvation of this couple.
God spoke to me and told me that he was answering my prayers and that this couple
would soon accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And I think hallelujah.
But I didn't know if it would be in counseling that day or in church on Sunday,
or even after that, but I was assured that this couple would accept Christ.
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Yet I don't know, didn't know how to prepare for what, how to lead them,
Lord, because I didn't know what would trigger their response.
This is evidence, folks, that God leads you and gives you the words to say.
God assured me that he would put the words in my mouth and he would lead me in this time.
So the next evening during our final session, I was talking with this couple
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about, asked if there was anything in their relationship that was causing problems
with their relationship that we talked about.
And they talked about how their living arrangements were causing them guilt.
And I had talked with them before about that.
And they said, it's really kind of causing a little bit of distress for us.
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And it's causing us guilt.
And it was as if God just said, hmm, that's the word. And this is the time.
And so I asked them, I said, what is it about guilt?
What do you think you can do about your guilt? And the groom said,
well, we have to quit doing what we've been doing.
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I said, yeah, you're right. And that'll cure all the guilt for everything that
you're going to do from now on, but you aren't now.
What about the guilt for what you've experienced in the past?
What about the pain? What about the suffering?
Scripture tells us that sin separates us from God. What about that?
And the groom looked at me and he says, we need to ask Jesus to forgive us and be in our life.
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Now, when I do counseling with couples, I will have a table and four chairs at it.
And I usually tell them at the beginning of the counseling session that that
chair, that empty chair is reserved for Jesus because he's going to be in the midst of us.
And so I asked, well, how do you do that? And they said, well,
I don't know. And I said, well, look at that chair.
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And imagine you are talking to Jesus, who is very present in this room,
and tell him your issues.
And so one by one, starting with the groom and then the bride,
they confessed to Jesus their sin, confessed to Jesus their fault,
and asked Jesus to forgive them and begin to lead them a new life.
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They both prayed and received Christ.
Brian and Nikki are in the kingdom of God right now because God was physically,
emotionally, and spiritually present in that pastor's office on Saturday evening.
Now, I still recall that experience as if it was yesterday because the Lord's
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presence is vibrant every time we experience it.
Tell me, how would your life change if, like the Israelites,
you were reminded every time you lifted your eyes that God is nearby and present?
How would that change the way you live if you knew that God is present with you wherever you are?
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My mom used to say, I know this, everybody's mom used to say this,
but would you want Jesus to be sitting there with you when you're doing that?
How many moms have said that? How many parents, kids, people's moms have said that?
Would you want Jesus to be present there and witnessing what you're doing when you're doing that?
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Would it change the way you think about God? Would it change the way you think about yourself?
Would it change the way you act, the things you say, and the way you live?
You probably didn't see a cloud of fire outside this building when you came this morning.
If you did, we're in trouble, or we may have been in trouble.
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It would have been kind of cool if there was, though, wouldn't it?
Maybe we would know God's presence is here.
I'm reminded of a story of a guy in Mexico who, and I don't know if I've told
this one before, there was a pastor in Mexico when we were down there on a mission
trip who had talked about.
A neighboring town where a church building caught on fire,
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and they'd been trying to reach the neighbor next door and talk to him about
God and all that guy had no desire to follow Jesus, know anything about him.
But the church caught on fire one night, and everybody, all the neighbors were
called in, and they were bucket brigading to try to put this fire out.
And this neighbor, who had never darkened the door of the church,
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was there at the head of the line throwing buckets of water on this church.
And this pastor came to him after they put the fire out, And he said,
he says, you have never been in this church before. Why did you come and help
us by putting out the fire?
And he said, well, he says, I've never seen this church on fire before. Kind of a thought.
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Can people say that about us? I hope not.
I hope they can say that they've seen the Richland Center Free Methodist Church on fire.
And if not, I hope that we get that way so that the community sees that.
The Bible says in Leviticus, when people worshiped, they brought their offerings to the Lord.
Their ceremonies took place before the Lord. They knew they were worshiping in the presence of God.
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And for them, it meant a specific place. It was this tabernacle.
Now, we don't have to gather at a specific place to experience God's presence.
Though I'm glad we have this nice place to come to. But this isn't the only
place we can experience the presence of God.
That changed when Jesus came. The Bible says in John chapter 14 in the King
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James Version that when Jesus came, he tabernacled among us and we have beheld his glory.
In the New International Version, it says he made his dwelling among us.
God came and lived and dwelt with us. So wherever God's people gather, God is there.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 that every Christian is a walking temple where God is present.
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The Holy Spirit of God dwells within us and makes us a tabernacle or a place where God resides.
Think about that. Every one of
us is a tabernacle, a place to house the presence of God where he resides.
I wonder how we treat the temple of God.
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So we need to ask what kind of portable temple for God are we?
Is it one where God is pleased to dwell? We've been examining Leviticus,
the third book of the Bible.
Leviticus used to be the first book that Jewish children would study.
If you're going to understand how to live a holy life in an unholy world,
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they needed to understand what a holy God expected and what a holy God looked like.
And just because Leviticus is way back in the Old Testament doesn't mean it's
not important for us today. as we, with all of Old Testament scripture,
it points back to what God has done.
Forward to what God is going to do through Christ.
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And one of the main things it says, especially as recorded in chapter 11,
is, you shall be holy for I am holy.
Now, just a brief recourse. The first seven books, our first seven chapters
of Leviticus deal specifically with worship.
Worship required offering one's
very best to God. Leviticus outlines five different types of offering.
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For each offering, the worshipers were expected to bring the very best,
whether it was fruit, grain, or animals.
It was not acceptable to bring leftovers, lame animals, or runts.
Worshippers were to give off the top, not what was left at the bottom.
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The tithe was to be the first 10% of what they produced.
Worshippers were to give willingly and to gather willingly.
A man once told his pastor, I wait all week for Sunday so I can go to church
and let out my praise to God.
So he anticipates and prepares for worship on Sunday morning.
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So is that the kind of worship we offer to God? Do we say with the psalmist,
I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord.
Can we say amen to the words of Paul that says, God loves a cheerful giver,
even more so, shouldn't we let out our praise every day of the week?
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Wouldn't it be awesome if our Sunday morning services were a time we came together
and said, you won't believe what God did this week.
A friend of mine who was in distress, gave his heart to Christ,
and I brought them here with me to celebrate the goodness of God.
Wouldn't that be awesome?
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So how many empty seats do we have?
Beneath if everyone brought one who they helped find and lead to the grace of God.
In chapters 8 through 10, we learn that it's not enough to just go through the motions of worship.
It's what's on the inside that counts. God's not concerned, or God is concerned
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about the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
We saw that when Aaron the priest did what the Lord commanded in preparation
for worship, God's glory appeared to all the people.
But when Aaron's sons did not take God's command seriously, God brought judgment
on them and killed them. They took shortcuts.
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They gave the second best. They took the glory for themselves,
and they were destroyed. If you're a follower of Christ, you're not living to please yourself.
If you're serving in the church in any way. This is not to please yourself.
This is not to glorify yourself. This is our sing our praises to Almighty God.
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The third part of Leviticus goes a step further with this thing called holiness.
Holiness, this describes what steps to take to become clean before God.
Years ago in one community, women used to plan a surprise breakfast and then
go in their cars to pick up people just as they were.
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Some were already working in their gardens.
Others still had bedhead and morning breath.
Were expected to pick up and go with these ladies to have breakfast together.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be called to a special meal with linen
tablecloth and fancy china without time to clean up and prepare or even put your teeth in?
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And if you think you'd be uncomfortable Bill there, what do you think it'd be
like to come before a holy God, unclean and unprepared?
Chapters 11 through 6 outline the steps toward physical and spiritual cleanliness.
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King David wrote in Psalm 51, wash me thoroughly from all my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.
Today, we're going to look at one of the final chapters. Earlier we read from chapter 26,
and as this crucial book comes to a close, it emphasizes the importance of doing
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what God asks, which is called practical holiness.
So what is holiness? Holiness is being like God or as God.
God doesn't want us to be him.
This is the first point. He wants us to become like him and act like him.
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One of the faults in the Garden of Eden was when Satan told Adam and Eve,
that God knows that if you eat of this fruit of the garden that he said you
can't, you will become equal to him.
And God doesn't want us to become equal to him or become him.
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He wants us to be like him and to look like him. Now, how many of you,
I was going to picture of here myself and my dad side by side,
but how many of you, when you had your kids...
Looked at the babies or even in a little older into there, and somebody looked
at your child and say, oh, that looks just like you when you're a baby.
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How many have heard that?
That's what God wants us. He wants people to be able to look at us and say,
he looks just like Jesus.
He acts just like Jesus.
As we took the look at the first two verses of chapter 26, some of those words
should look familiar to you.
Do you remember where you were when you heard them before?
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In Exodus chapter 20, verse 2, we read, I am the Lord your God who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
This is a repeat from Exodus chapter 20.
Here we see the same words in verse 2 of chapter 26, I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord.
And if you go to verse 13, you will see, I am the Lord your God who brought
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you out of the land of Egypt.
That phrase or part of it occurs 48 times in these last 10 chapters.
I think they're important. I am the Lord your God. I am he. I am the one who
brought you out of slavery.
I am the one who delivered you. I am who I say I am.
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These words are important because they remind us of who God is and what he's done.
God's actions are on our behalf, provide the basis for our obedience.
Keep that in mind, and keep in mind that the laws God gives in Exodus and Leviticus
and in other places have not been given as a way to become God's people.
They were given as a way because we are God's people.
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The Ten Commandments weren't given to us so we can earn salvation.
The Ten Commandments were given to us if we are God's chosen people.
This is how we will live.
If we are God's people, we will live in holiness.
Some people might say those laws in Leviticus are outdated. They don't make
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any sense for us today. Obviously, the world has changed.
Jesus has come, and his coming has changed a lot of things, but that doesn't
mean the laws in the Old Testament are irrelevant.
Some of them help us understand why Jesus came, why he had to come to redeem us.
For instance, you might notice in chapter 19 of Leviticus verses 9 and 10 that
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it instructs the farmers to leave some of the grain standing in the fields.
On the edges of the field, it said, leave some of the grain standing in the
edges of the fields for the poor and the widows to come and to eat.
You might say, well, I don't have a field, so that doesn't apply to me.
What was the purpose of leaving some grain in the field? It was to provide for
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the poor, and that same principle applies today.
Whether you own a field or not, God expects you to look out for those who do not have adequate food.
Holiness means that we dare not stand idly by when other people are in need,
whether it's physically, spiritually, or emotionally.
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If people aren't in need, we dare not cross by on the other side and not let help.
One of the ways we provide for such needs in this church is that we support
children through foreign ministries, through the International Child Care Mirrors.
Currently, this church sponsors two children through that, and some of you may
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sponsor some individually. We also support four missionaries.
Missionary families, and two Creative Access Countries missions.
We also support local ministries in some way or another. That's what this offering is up here.
We're supporting Lydia's House, so if you have not gotten a bank,
we encourage you to take a bank, put your change in it, bring it back,
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and put it into the jar there for Lydia's house here, the ministries here in the community.
At one time, now, our church in Peoria, Illinois, this is, I am bragging on
that church, those people, and I know it's not right to brag,
but it's not right to brag on yourself.
But the church in Peoria, Illinois had an average attendance of about 50 people
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in the kind of the heart of the city of Peoria.
At one time, between what the church and what the individual families in the church did.
They sponsored over 20 children through International Child Care Ministries.
Not to lay guilt on us, but to think of what we can do for the kingdom of God,
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providing food and clothing for children in need.
Another way we do this is through our regular missions offerings when we have potlucks downstairs.
So we need to do this. We need to be on mission with God.
We need to help those who are in need. I also want to note to you in chapter
26, God's promise, beginning in verse 3.
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It says, it begins with a strong statement about the importance of obedience.
It says, follow my statutes, keep my commandments, and observe them faithfully.
God says it three different ways. So what reward does God offer?
Rain, produce, grain, daily food, peace, safety, families.
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I think I've got a brother-in-law who's in farming, and you know,
always, and my father-in-law as well, they always talked about being at the
whim of the rain or the sun, whatever might happen.
And yet every year, doesn't matter what happened during the year,
they would end up at least with enough to break even.
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My father-in-law used to talk about that all the time. It doesn't matter what
God, what is sent on us, what rain, hail, all that stuff. It seems like every
year God provides what we need.
Isn't that amazing how God provides us? He provides what we have,
what we need when we are faithful.
God said to Moses, I will bless you, or excuse me, to Abraham,
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I will bless you and make you fruitful and increase in numbers.
Verse 12, he promises to walk with us. You'll have a relationship with us and we with him.
If we obey God, the land will be fruitful, we will experience peace,
and we will enjoy the presence of God.
Does that mean that if I obey God, I will never lack for anything? No.
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Does it mean I will never have trouble? No. But as you can tell,
I have never starved to death.
You can see that, right? You've noticed that. God will never let us bear anything
that we cannot bear with his presence.
And then third, God also sounds a warning about disobedience,
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and it's a lot longer than the description of obedience.
If you look at those verses from verse 14 through 39, there's a long passage
of what happens, the punishment for disobedience, what happens when we disobey. He sounds a warning.
If God's people do not take God seriously, God's wrath is going to rain down
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upon them like heavy hail on a tin roof.
Disobedience is described in five or six different ways.
The rewards for obedience are described in 13 verses, but the punishment for
disobedience covers 27 verses.
Disobedience leads to falling away from God, separation from God.
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It also leads to terrible things as the list increases in severity.
Disease, harvest, plague, famine, being scattered among the nations.
That's the last one that was listed, being scattered among the nations.
How horrible would that be to be lost from the presence of God?
Leviticus chapter 26 gives us two choices.
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Either we continue in our disobedience and risk destruction,
or we repent and do what God asks.
The wonderful thing is that change is possible.
If you look at verse 41 and 26,
it says, if their hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity,
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then I will remember my covenant with Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Moses, and I will revisit their people.
Though it may be difficult for
us to believe and perceive, there is still time for everyone to repent.
No one goes to the end without an opportunity to give everything to God.
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There's still time for our nation leaders to repent.
Let's hope. Let's pray. There's still time for you and me to ask God to purify our hearts.
There's still time for our civic leaders and for our neighbors to repent and turn to God.
God hasn't come back. Jesus hasn't come back the second time yet, so there's still time.
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Is the book of Leviticus irrelevant? No.
Holy God wants to know that holiness, wants us to know that holiness is what he longs for in us.
God wants to see holiness in us and through us. What is holiness?
It's practical holiness, living out the grace of God among those that need to see Jesus.
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Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship,
we give you thanks and praise.
Even as some of these teachings are really hard, and it's hard for us to imagine what holiness is.
You have spoken to us. Holiness is helping the widow and the orphans.
Holiness and righteousness is living for you and being like you.
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It's not becoming you, it's becoming like you and acting like you,
talking like you, serving like you.
Father, I pray that you will ignite in us a passion to be like Jesus so we can
go from here and serve a world that desperately needs Jesus. Amen.
So we are in Leviticus. Yay! We're moving right along, as it says.
And so I believe Marty's reading from Leviticus chapter 26, verses 1 through 13 and 40 through 45.
Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves,
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or do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God.
Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary.
I am the Lord. If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands,
I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit.
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Your threshing will continue until grape harvest, and the grape harvest will
continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid.
I will remove wild bees from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country.
You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you.
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Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand,
and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers,
and I will keep my covenant with you.
You will still be eating last year's harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new.
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I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you.
I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer
be slaves to the Egyptians.
I broke the bars of your yoke, and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
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But if they will confess their sins, and the sins of their ancestors.
Their unfruitfulness, and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward
them, so that I sent them into the land of their enemies, then when their uncircumcised
hearts are humbled, and they pay for their sin.
I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac,
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and my covenant with Abraham.
And I will remember the land, for the land will be deserted by them and will
enjoy its Sabbath while it lies desolate without them.
They will pay for their sins and increase their rejected.
They rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees, Yet, in spite of this,
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when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor
them so as to destroy them completely,
breaking my covenant with them. I am the Lord their God.
But for their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I
brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.
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So in this passage, we didn't read the entire chapter.
The first part of it is what is reward for obedience. The second part was punishment for disobedience.
And it talks about different things that if they wandered away and they did certain things.
And then in verse 40, it talks about God says, I will still be their God,
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and I will still be their people, and I will maybe punish them,
but yet they will have God as their father.
For Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel, life changed when God showed his
love for them and brought them out of Egypt, freeing them from slavery.
They were now in relationship with God, the God of the universe,
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the one who created them, who not only cared about them, but who had the power
to do something about their plight.
If you remember going back to the beginning of Exodus, the end of Genesis and
the beginning of Exodus.
The Israelites had gone into Egypt with Jacob and his family,
gone into Egypt as guests, in a sense, moving into Egypt.
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And then in the beginning of Exodus, we see that they had been there 430 years
to the day when they came out of Egypt, when God delivered them.
And then we see in all of that time that they fell into slavery.
Basically, they were apathetic about their faith, and they moved into slavery
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of the Egyptians as well as the Egyptian gods.
And it says in one point in there that God saw them and heard their cries.
And so he said, I'm going to come and do something about it.
My people are in distress.
And so he came to do something about it. And that's what he did.
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He came in and delivered them from their plight.
As Chris talked about earlier, we have giants that we face every day.
And God saw their distress and saw their cries for help. and he came to rescue them.
This God who had created the world, this God who had made a promise to their
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ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and that he would bring them into a new land, this God who had miraculously led them out of Egypt,
this God who has established a new covenant with them at Mount Sinai,
that they would be his people and he would be their God. So God made this.
Abraham in the beginning, and then now with Moses on Mount Sinai,
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this idea that God would be their God, he would be their leader,
and they would be his people.
Remember this idea of a chosen people?
God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself, and he chooses to use
us as chosen people to accomplish his mission.
So God was on this from the very beginning. That's the story of Genesis is Exodus in short.
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By the end of Exodus, the people not only remembered God's miraculous work among them in the past,
but they constructed a tent in the center of their camp that symbolized God's
presence with them now and in the present.
And you see a picture of that, this gathering of this rendition of what it was
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like for the Israelites to be in the wilderness,
encamped in the wilderness with this tent of meeting and tabernacle in the very center of their time.
If you read the instructions or if you read the history in the Old Testament,
he talks about three camps, three tribes being encamped on each side of this.
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Gathering in the wilderness where they were, and yet the tabernacle's in the center of it.
This tabernacle represented the presence of God.
This tent represented the presence of God. Not only did it represent the presence
of God in there, but it was also his very presence.
Jesus, God said, I will come and dwell among them.
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And every day there in the center of the camp, that tent served as a reminder
that they were not alone.
Every time they looked in the
direction of that tent, they were reminded that God was there with them.
Can you imagine what that would be like? And on special occasions,
they could see a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire to help them realize God's presence.
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Whenever they traveled, they would have a cloud of fire by night and a pillar
of cloud by day that would guide them.
And then at times, like he did with the Red Sea, would go between them and the
Pharaoh's armies to protect them.
I'm sure every one of you has experienced a time in your life when you had a
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special sense that God was standing right beside you.
Oftentimes, it's in our times of terrible need.
Now, I don't think I've told you this story, and you may not know this about
me, but I used to have some pretty crappy jobs.
And one of those was I used to drive a rendering truck. How many knows what a rendering truck is?
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The farmers among us would know what a rendering truck is.
A rendering truck is that truck that drives around to all the farms,
and when they have dead animals or diseased animals that had to be put down,
the rendering truck would drive around, pick those up,
oftentimes have to put the animals down before they took them with them,
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and those animals then would be rendered into pig feed and stuff like that.
And so I used to drive around to these farms to pick up.
Rendering in various stages of decay.
So it was not a nice job. And usually my wife would tell me when I'd come home
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at the end of the day with my coveralls on, she would make me undress outside,
before I came into the house because by now he stinketh.
But there was one time I was driving in the rendering truck,
and I usually had a regular truck that I drove.
The truck that I normally drove
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was in for repair, and so they loaned out another truck to me to drive,
and this one was an older truck, and I found out after this incident that it
had a little bit of a problem with the loose linkage in the steering.
Nice thought after the fact. So I was out driving on this country road, this gravel road.
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It was not a real wide road. They had just graveled it,
and so I was pulling over toward the right side as I go up over a hill in case
I could face any oncoming traffic, and as I did, the right side of my truck
kind of slipped in a little bit of gravel.
I'm looking out to the right side of my truck, and there's an embankment deep down into the bottom.
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And so, thanks be to God, somehow somebody took the wheel of that.
It wasn't me, and there was nobody riding with me, except you know who.
And I hung on to the edge of that until the ditch settled out a little bit,
and I was drawn off into the ditch.
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And as I did that, I hit a field drive.
You know what I mean by that, right?
Hit a field drive going in from the road into the field, and my truck went up
in the air and went head for heels over itself.
As I did, and then I landed on the driver's side of the vehicle,
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I watched in kind of horror as my logging chain,
my truck blocks, and my rifle raced past my head and busted out the side window by my head.
I know that the presence of the Lord was with me.
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I just thank God that I was protected in that.
But we also can know that direct presence of God in our times and in the good times as well.
How many times have you ever been witnessing to someone with words that you
did not know that you even spoke or were spoken through you by God?
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I think I've also, I don't know if I've shared this about this couple that I
counseled and was later, officiated their wedding.
The couple was not saved when they approached me about doing their wedding.
And as I do in the counseling of the sessions, I tell the couples that the main
thing that I want to know is that they are saved, that they are part of God's kingdom.
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And that's one of the things I'm going to do during times of counseling.
And so I told them ahead of time that. And our final counseling session was
scheduled for a Saturday evening.
I had been praying for this couple's salvation. They didn't seem to respond.
And on Friday night, actually it was about two o'clock in the morning Saturday,
God awoke me with a very vivid dream and desire to wake up and pray for the
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salvation of this couple.
God spoke to me and told me that he was answering my prayers and that this couple
would soon accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And I think hallelujah.
But I didn't know if it would be in counseling that day or in church on Sunday,
or even after that, but I was assured that this couple would accept Christ.
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Yet I don't know, didn't know how to prepare for what, how to lead them,
Lord, because I didn't know what would trigger their response.
This is evidence, folks, that God leads you and gives you the words to say.
God assured me that he would put the words in my mouth and he would lead me in this time.
So the next evening during our final session, I was talking with this couple
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about, asked if there was anything in their relationship that was causing problems
with their relationship that we talked about.
And they talked about how their living arrangements were causing them guilt.
And I had talked with them before about that.
And they said, it's really kind of causing a little bit of distress for us.
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And it's causing us guilt.
And it was as if God just said, hmm, that's the word. And this is the time.
And so I asked them, I said, what is it about guilt?
What do you think you can do about your guilt? And the groom said,
well, we have to quit doing what we've been doing.
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I said, yeah, you're right. And that'll cure all the guilt for everything that
you're going to do from now on, but you aren't now.
What about the guilt for what you've experienced in the past?
What about the pain? What about the suffering?
Scripture tells us that sin separates us from God. What about that?
And the groom looked at me and he says, we need to ask Jesus to forgive us and be in our life.
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Now, when I do counseling with couples, I will have a table and four chairs at it.
And I usually tell them at the beginning of the counseling session that that
chair, that empty chair is reserved for Jesus because he's going to be in the midst of us.
And so I asked, well, how do you do that? And they said, well,
I don't know. And I said, well, look at that chair.
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And imagine you are talking to Jesus, who is very present in this room,
and tell him your issues.
And so one by one, starting with the groom and then the bride,
they confessed to Jesus their sin, confessed to Jesus their fault,
and asked Jesus to forgive them and begin to lead them a new life.
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They both prayed and received Christ.
Brian and Nikki are in the kingdom of God right now because God was physically,
emotionally, and spiritually present in that pastor's office on Saturday evening.
Now, I still recall that experience as if it was yesterday because the Lord's
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presence is vibrant every time we experience it.
Tell me, how would your life change if, like the Israelites,
you were reminded every time you lifted your eyes that God is nearby and present?
How would that change the way you live if you knew that God is present with you wherever you are?
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My mom used to say, I know this, everybody's mom used to say this,
but would you want Jesus to be sitting there with you when you're doing that?
How many moms have said that? How many parents, kids, people's moms have said that?
Would you want Jesus to be present there and witnessing what you're doing when you're doing that?
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Would it change the way you think about God? Would it change the way you think about yourself?
Would it change the way you act, the things you say, and the way you live?
You probably didn't see a cloud of fire outside this building when you came this morning.
If you did, we're in trouble, or we may have been in trouble.
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It would have been kind of cool if there was, though, wouldn't it?
Maybe we would know God's presence is here.
I'm reminded of a story of a guy in Mexico who, and I don't know if I've told
this one before, there was a pastor in Mexico when we were down there on a mission
trip who had talked about.
A neighboring town where a church building caught on fire,
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and they'd been trying to reach the neighbor next door and talk to him about
God and all that guy had no desire to follow Jesus, know anything about him.
But the church caught on fire one night, and everybody, all the neighbors were
called in, and they were bucket brigading to try to put this fire out.
And this neighbor, who had never darkened the door of the church,
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was there at the head of the line throwing buckets of water on this church.
And this pastor came to him after they put the fire out, And he said,
he says, you have never been in this church before. Why did you come and help
us by putting out the fire?
And he said, well, he says, I've never seen this church on fire before. Kind of a thought.
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Can people say that about us? I hope not.
I hope they can say that they've seen the Richland Center Free Methodist Church on fire.
And if not, I hope that we get that way so that the community sees that.
The Bible says in Leviticus, when people worshiped, they brought their offerings to the Lord.
Their ceremonies took place before the Lord. They knew they were worshiping in the presence of God.
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And for them, it meant a specific place. It was this tabernacle.
Now, we don't have to gather at a specific place to experience God's presence.
Though I'm glad we have this nice place to come to. But this isn't the only
place we can experience the presence of God.
That changed when Jesus came. The Bible says in John chapter 14 in the King
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James Version that when Jesus came, he tabernacled among us and we have beheld his glory.
In the New International Version, it says he made his dwelling among us.
God came and lived and dwelt with us. So wherever God's people gather, God is there.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 that every Christian is a walking temple where God is present.
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The Holy Spirit of God dwells within us and makes us a tabernacle or a place where God resides.
Think about that. Every one of
us is a tabernacle, a place to house the presence of God where he resides.
I wonder how we treat the temple of God.
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So we need to ask what kind of portable temple for God are we?
Is it one where God is pleased to dwell? We've been examining Leviticus,
the third book of the Bible.
Leviticus used to be the first book that Jewish children would study.
If you're going to understand how to live a holy life in an unholy world,
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they needed to understand what a holy God expected and what a holy God looked like.
And just because Leviticus is way back in the Old Testament doesn't mean it's
not important for us today. as we, with all of Old Testament scripture,
it points back to what God has done.
Forward to what God is going to do through Christ.
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And one of the main things it says, especially as recorded in chapter 11,
is, you shall be holy for I am holy.
Now, just a brief recourse. The first seven books, our first seven chapters
of Leviticus deal specifically with worship.
Worship required offering one's
very best to God. Leviticus outlines five different types of offering.
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For each offering, the worshipers were expected to bring the very best,
whether it was fruit, grain, or animals.
It was not acceptable to bring leftovers, lame animals, or runts.
Worshippers were to give off the top, not what was left at the bottom.
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The tithe was to be the first 10% of what they produced.
Worshippers were to give willingly and to gather willingly.
A man once told his pastor, I wait all week for Sunday so I can go to church
and let out my praise to God.
So he anticipates and prepares for worship on Sunday morning.
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So is that the kind of worship we offer to God? Do we say with the psalmist,
I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord.
Can we say amen to the words of Paul that says, God loves a cheerful giver,
even more so, shouldn't we let out our praise every day of the week?
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Wouldn't it be awesome if our Sunday morning services were a time we came together
and said, you won't believe what God did this week.
A friend of mine who was in distress, gave his heart to Christ,
and I brought them here with me to celebrate the goodness of God.
Wouldn't that be awesome?
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So how many empty seats do we have?
Beneath if everyone brought one who they helped find and lead to the grace of God.
In chapters 8 through 10, we learn that it's not enough to just go through the motions of worship.
It's what's on the inside that counts. God's not concerned, or God is concerned
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about the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
We saw that when Aaron the priest did what the Lord commanded in preparation
for worship, God's glory appeared to all the people.
But when Aaron's sons did not take God's command seriously, God brought judgment
on them and killed them. They took shortcuts.
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They gave the second best. They took the glory for themselves,
and they were destroyed. If you're a follower of Christ, you're not living to please yourself.
If you're serving in the church in any way. This is not to please yourself.
This is not to glorify yourself. This is our sing our praises to Almighty God.
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The third part of Leviticus goes a step further with this thing called holiness.
Holiness, this describes what steps to take to become clean before God.
Years ago in one community, women used to plan a surprise breakfast and then
go in their cars to pick up people just as they were.
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Some were already working in their gardens.
Others still had bedhead and morning breath.
Were expected to pick up and go with these ladies to have breakfast together.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be called to a special meal with linen
tablecloth and fancy china without time to clean up and prepare or even put your teeth in?
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And if you think you'd be uncomfortable Bill there, what do you think it'd be
like to come before a holy God, unclean and unprepared?
Chapters 11 through 6 outline the steps toward physical and spiritual cleanliness.
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King David wrote in Psalm 51, wash me thoroughly from all my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.
Today, we're going to look at one of the final chapters. Earlier we read from chapter 26,
and as this crucial book comes to a close, it emphasizes the importance of doing
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what God asks, which is called practical holiness.
So what is holiness? Holiness is being like God or as God.
God doesn't want us to be him.
This is the first point. He wants us to become like him and act like him.
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One of the faults in the Garden of Eden was when Satan told Adam and Eve,
that God knows that if you eat of this fruit of the garden that he said you
can't, you will become equal to him.
And God doesn't want us to become equal to him or become him.
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He wants us to be like him and to look like him. Now, how many of you,
I was going to picture of here myself and my dad side by side,
but how many of you, when you had your kids...
Looked at the babies or even in a little older into there, and somebody looked
at your child and say, oh, that looks just like you when you're a baby.
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How many have heard that?
That's what God wants us. He wants people to be able to look at us and say,
he looks just like Jesus.
He acts just like Jesus.
As we took the look at the first two verses of chapter 26, some of those words
should look familiar to you.
Do you remember where you were when you heard them before?
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In Exodus chapter 20, verse 2, we read, I am the Lord your God who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
This is a repeat from Exodus chapter 20.
Here we see the same words in verse 2 of chapter 26, I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord.
And if you go to verse 13, you will see, I am the Lord your God who brought
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you out of the land of Egypt.
That phrase or part of it occurs 48 times in these last 10 chapters.
I think they're important. I am the Lord your God. I am he. I am the one who
brought you out of slavery.
I am the one who delivered you. I am who I say I am.
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These words are important because they remind us of who God is and what he's done.
God's actions are on our behalf, provide the basis for our obedience.
Keep that in mind, and keep in mind that the laws God gives in Exodus and Leviticus
and in other places have not been given as a way to become God's people.
They were given as a way because we are God's people.
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The Ten Commandments weren't given to us so we can earn salvation.
The Ten Commandments were given to us if we are God's chosen people.
This is how we will live.
If we are God's people, we will live in holiness.
Some people might say those laws in Leviticus are outdated. They don't make
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any sense for us today. Obviously, the world has changed.
Jesus has come, and his coming has changed a lot of things, but that doesn't
mean the laws in the Old Testament are irrelevant.
Some of them help us understand why Jesus came, why he had to come to redeem us.
For instance, you might notice in chapter 19 of Leviticus verses 9 and 10 that
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it instructs the farmers to leave some of the grain standing in the fields.
On the edges of the field, it said, leave some of the grain standing in the
edges of the fields for the poor and the widows to come and to eat.
You might say, well, I don't have a field, so that doesn't apply to me.
What was the purpose of leaving some grain in the field? It was to provide for
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the poor, and that same principle applies today.
Whether you own a field or not, God expects you to look out for those who do not have adequate food.
Holiness means that we dare not stand idly by when other people are in need,
whether it's physically, spiritually, or emotionally.
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If people aren't in need, we dare not cross by on the other side and not let help.
One of the ways we provide for such needs in this church is that we support
children through foreign ministries, through the International Child Care Mirrors.
Currently, this church sponsors two children through that, and some of you may
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sponsor some individually. We also support four missionaries.
Missionary families, and two Creative Access Countries missions.
We also support local ministries in some way or another. That's what this offering is up here.
We're supporting Lydia's House, so if you have not gotten a bank,
we encourage you to take a bank, put your change in it, bring it back,
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and put it into the jar there for Lydia's house here, the ministries here in the community.
At one time, now, our church in Peoria, Illinois, this is, I am bragging on
that church, those people, and I know it's not right to brag,
but it's not right to brag on yourself.
But the church in Peoria, Illinois had an average attendance of about 50 people
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in the kind of the heart of the city of Peoria.
At one time, between what the church and what the individual families in the church did.
They sponsored over 20 children through International Child Care Ministries.
Not to lay guilt on us, but to think of what we can do for the kingdom of God,
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providing food and clothing for children in need.
Another way we do this is through our regular missions offerings when we have potlucks downstairs.
So we need to do this. We need to be on mission with God.
We need to help those who are in need. I also want to note to you in chapter
26, God's promise, beginning in verse 3.
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It says, it begins with a strong statement about the importance of obedience.
It says, follow my statutes, keep my commandments, and observe them faithfully.
God says it three different ways. So what reward does God offer?
Rain, produce, grain, daily food, peace, safety, families.
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I think I've got a brother-in-law who's in farming, and you know,
always, and my father-in-law as well, they always talked about being at the
whim of the rain or the sun, whatever might happen.
And yet every year, doesn't matter what happened during the year,
they would end up at least with enough to break even.
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My father-in-law used to talk about that all the time. It doesn't matter what
God, what is sent on us, what rain, hail, all that stuff. It seems like every
year God provides what we need.
Isn't that amazing how God provides us? He provides what we have,
what we need when we are faithful.
God said to Moses, I will bless you, or excuse me, to Abraham,
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I will bless you and make you fruitful and increase in numbers.
Verse 12, he promises to walk with us. You'll have a relationship with us and we with him.
If we obey God, the land will be fruitful, we will experience peace,
and we will enjoy the presence of God.
Does that mean that if I obey God, I will never lack for anything? No.
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Does it mean I will never have trouble? No. But as you can tell,
I have never starved to death.
You can see that, right? You've noticed that. God will never let us bear anything
that we cannot bear with his presence.
And then third, God also sounds a warning about disobedience,
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and it's a lot longer than the description of obedience.
If you look at those verses from verse 14 through 39, there's a long passage
of what happens, the punishment for disobedience, what happens when we disobey. He sounds a warning.
If God's people do not take God seriously, God's wrath is going to rain down
(32:27):
upon them like heavy hail on a tin roof.
Disobedience is described in five or six different ways.
The rewards for obedience are described in 13 verses, but the punishment for
disobedience covers 27 verses.
Disobedience leads to falling away from God, separation from God.
(32:50):
It also leads to terrible things as the list increases in severity.
Disease, harvest, plague, famine, being scattered among the nations.
That's the last one that was listed, being scattered among the nations.
How horrible would that be to be lost from the presence of God?
Leviticus chapter 26 gives us two choices.
(33:14):
Either we continue in our disobedience and risk destruction,
or we repent and do what God asks.
The wonderful thing is that change is possible.
If you look at verse 41 and 26,
it says, if their hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity,
(33:37):
then I will remember my covenant with Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Moses, and I will revisit their people.
Though it may be difficult for
us to believe and perceive, there is still time for everyone to repent.
No one goes to the end without an opportunity to give everything to God.
(33:58):
There's still time for our nation leaders to repent.
Let's hope. Let's pray. There's still time for you and me to ask God to purify our hearts.
There's still time for our civic leaders and for our neighbors to repent and turn to God.
God hasn't come back. Jesus hasn't come back the second time yet, so there's still time.
(34:21):
Is the book of Leviticus irrelevant? No.
Holy God wants to know that holiness, wants us to know that holiness is what he longs for in us.
God wants to see holiness in us and through us. What is holiness?
It's practical holiness, living out the grace of God among those that need to see Jesus.
(34:43):
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship,
we give you thanks and praise.
Even as some of these teachings are really hard, and it's hard for us to imagine what holiness is.
You have spoken to us. Holiness is helping the widow and the orphans.
Holiness and righteousness is living for you and being like you.
(35:04):
It's not becoming you, it's becoming like you and acting like you,
talking like you, serving like you.
Father, I pray that you will ignite in us a passion to be like Jesus so we can
go from here and serve a world that desperately needs Jesus. Amen.
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