Published: February 27, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Leviticus - The Parable of Leviticus 2 - Part 3 | Scripture: Mark 7:1-23; Acts 10:9-17
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and challenge us to to think deeply about what you have revealed and what it means to us and and what the Holy Spirit would have us do with that knowledge now that we are in Christ so we pray that
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you would guide our conversation tonight guide our understanding of your word for your glory for our good and edification we pray in Jesus name
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amen so looking at the Purity laws I want to spend uh just this week um talking about uh kind of introducing the hermeneutics of the Purity laws how we should um read them
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how we should study them and to do so I want to start actually in the New Testament because there is one fundamental hermeneutical
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fundamental hermeneutical fact concerning the Purity laws as we read them in Leviticus in the Old Testament and that is they have been
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abrogated so if we would look at a couple passages this evening to start Mark chapter 7 and Acts chapter
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10 what 10 what we're this is one of those situations where we where we can't we can't come up with an interpretation of the levitical Purity
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that then does not correspond with what happens to those laws in the New Testament so they can't have a particular reason and we're going to get into that tonight the different reasons
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that people think for these different Purity laws especially the dietary ones but not not only um but when you hold them up against what Jesus teaches what
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Peter learns in the Vision in Acts chap 10 what Paul teaches in his letters you realize that that Old Testament explanation that explanation
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of the Old Testament text it can't work because what you end up with is a new testament action that is pretty much nothing but
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nothing but arbitrary there has to be um a a looking back a retrospection here and so looking at Mark 7 to start
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um particularly it's pretty much the whole chapter 1 through 23 we're not going to look at the entire passage but it's it's the passage where the scribes and the Pharisees are
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uh upset because the Jesus's disciples do not properly wash their hands before a meal and um
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Jesus of course in his diplomatic way um calls them calls them Hypocrites they're actually wanting to hold the disciples to a law that isn't
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actually a Biblical law it's a rabbi one so one of the first things we we realize is that with the dietary laws
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and when we read about these in commentaries for example we we have to be careful now this is kind of analogous to what I mentioned um last week about the typical image that we have in our
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mind concerning the Tabernacle is really the image that we get from herod's Temple so in our mind and in the
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pictures that we have in our Bible and we can look up online there's a court of women there's a court of Israel there's a court of the Gentiles for Gentiles for example none of which are in the pattern
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that Moses received in Exodus so what we're looking at is a later development another analogy is is the Passover seder so I don't know if you've ever uh gone
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to a Seder or had one we did one here years and years ago and and you know if you go to a sad or even a Jewish one most of what they do is not in the
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Bible they have they have an egg in there now there's no egg in the biblical Passover okay so they they they have all
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these different things that now have meaning but they're not biblical meaning
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well the only thing that we can say about synagogues is that when a Jew in the scripture U especially I think it's in John when the man uh supported Jesus
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he was ex synagogue so the word is in there um and and then Paul's Journeys he did oh yeah no that's right there's no
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the the whole idea of the synagogue um later on you're going to have the the Torah is going to take the place of the temple um and and the law becomes the
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the place of worship when the temple is destroyed so the point is is that there have been a lot of traditional um evolution of of what we read in the scriptures and this is one
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of them and Jesus says you know you you are observing the traditions of man rather than the law of God and he goes on to to just talk about the kurban the
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um not helping your parents basically ignoring the fifth commandment because youve pledged your funds to be Corban which is basically a a sacrificial gift
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anyhow yeah we have to be careful that what we're reading um and and even in Christian writings um and even in Christian Jewish writings for example Alfred ershim very popular among
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Christians 19th century Jewish Jewish convert to Christianity normally very solid but also got some tradition kind
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of soaked in there and when you read your Bible you realize well that's not actually in there okay so one thing about hermeneutics is that we have to be careful that our source material has not
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deviated from the original Source material which is the scripture um so one of the problems in Mark 7 of course is that the the the Pharisees are completely off base uh concerning the
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ritual of washing before meals that was a rabbi not a not a Priestly ritual um not to say that they weren't supposed to wash their hands but the
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idea of washing all the way up past the elbow and and the way that you know the way they were supposed to do it ritually was added on and so what's happened here
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is as in as in Christianity as well there are uh religious accretions
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kind of like Barnacles on the hole of a ship that attach themselves to the basic structure of the Priestly Torah and they become so embedded that
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they're actually considered to be part of the of the whole and you'll have people arguing against things that aren't even actually biblical they've been added later by
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Jewish writers by rabbis or in the Christian tradition by the church and so you you have to be careful that you're not getting into an argument with somebody about the Egg of the Passover
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seder you basically say well I don't care it's not original you know it was something added whether you want to do it or not doesn't matter to me but um okay so the first thing about Mark 7 is
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that they're trying to they're they're not actually uh condemning the disciples for breaking the law so it's not like they were walking around eating ham
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sandwiches they just weren't washing their hands in the proper Priestly way or rinic way so you start out with a false premise but then jesus takes it as he often does he
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takes it beyond the matter at hand and what he has to say in Mark 7 is really rather um
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difficult to difficult to exed because he says
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let see which passage I want to verses 14- 16 he says when he had called all the multiple to himself multitude to himself he said to them hear me everyone and
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understand there is nothing that enters a man that from outside which can defile him but the things which come out of him these are the things that defile a
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man if anyone has ears to hear Let Him here so in verses so 714-
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out and as he often did did he left this statement hanging in the air he says anyone who has ears to hear Let Him hear that means stop and think about this what am what am I saying it means it's
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it may not be exactly what it appears on the surface and as he often did later on when he was alone with his disciples and as the disciples often did they asked
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Jesus what were you talking about we we didn't understand and so later on on in the chapter really right after this when he had entered a house away from the crowd his disciples asked him concerning
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the parable so he said to them are you thus without understanding also do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him because
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it does not enter his heart but his stomach and is eliminated now here's where the difficulty comes difficulty comes in the phrase that follows is
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eliminated is thus purifying all foods okay so if we look now at verses
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23 Jesus's explanation
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that's that phrase yeah yes per purifying all foods yeah um yeah this it's there's some marginal there's some textual variations on that and that's this is why we're going to we're going to talk about this so Jesus says is
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explaining to them that what what goes into a into a man so kind of point one what goes
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in goes to the stomach and then
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okay what goes in does not go to the heart that's basically what he's saying he's he's making a distinction here
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about food and food doesn't go to the heart now he's not speaking of the heart as the pump the muscle he's speaking of the heart as the seat of man's soul and
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of his volition and of his his um action his will and his action whereas the stomach is simply the the biological organ of processing
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food but there's this phrase at the end of it where it says and it's really right after the food is expelled it says thus purify
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foods and I don't know if your if your scripture if your Bibles have the any marginal notes but there is a textual variant actually
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several as to whether or not and so it is widely is widely considered that this is an Mund uh that that somebody added this later
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on it where it's put in the sentence syntactically also argues for it being a later addition because the way it
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reads is that the expelling of the food is what is purifying it does that make sense
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not as many conclude that Jesus is here purifying or declaring clean all foods but let's think of it
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theologically would Jesus have declared all foods clean at this point in his
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ministry when we begin to understand the next example or the next um uh Narrative of of Peter's vision where the Lord actually says what God has cleansed let do not
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call unclean I think we can look back on Mark 7 and realize that hadn't happened
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the with the servs or is he free of the answer is's free he's free but as a testimony to them go fish and take them yeah that's a very good point so there
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there's a there's an issue of um we're all foods clean to Jesus well yes they were is he obligated to pay the temple tax well no he's not he is the
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temple U but at the time he pays the tax
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a right yeah I was actually going there yeah that's not off track at this point in the ministry he is sent to the lost sheep of Israel right and immediately afterward we're going to have that
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Passage where he says it is is not proper to give the children's food to the dogs and by dogs he doesn't mean women means
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women means Gentiles okay that the feminists say you know Jesus called her a dog well first of all that's a modern insult for a woman not an old not a not an ancient one and secondly that is not
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what he's what he's saying you know he's saying the children are the Israelites that's who the Messiah has been sent to so we're not yet at the point where
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Jesus is declaring all foods clean he's doing here what he frequently does especially when dealing with the Pharisees and the
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scribes and the best description of what he's doing is what Paul says in Corinthians when he says it is the letter that kills it's the spirit that gives life Jesus says to the the Pharisees you
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you tithe of everything even your smallest ear smallest ear but you neglect the weightier matters of the law we made a distinction last week
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between ritual Purity and moral Purity well Jesus's teaching makes that distinction and he doesn't abgate the
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ritual Purity he simply reminds everybody that it's the moral Purity that matters that you can't simply be ritually clean if you are morally
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impure and that's what he's saying here he's not saying that that the Jews are free to Simply eat whatever they want keeping in mind again that what the what the Pharisees were condemning the
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disciples for was not even a Biblical ritual to begin with it was a tradition but he's not actually declaring all foods clean yet because of now now the fact
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that he's not doing that and the fact that immediately afterwards he he in the S up in the um what's her name up in zarafat the woman that I can't remember
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her name the name of the the Widow that he says it is not right to give the anyhow um pardon me she's unnamed cyop phenician woman I think I'm confusing it
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with Elisha or Elisha all right nonetheless he goes he's immediately confronting a a gentile and he's maintaining the distinction and yet her faith is starting to be like a a
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harbinger of what's coming just like the Gentiles who said to Philip we would we would see Jesus and he's not ready for that yet that's not yet time because he has not yet paid the the the
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price that would admit the Gentiles so I think we can say um reasonably that that's not quite yet and most likely was added by a
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Christian writer uh who by that time it
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correct no not necessarily what what he's no well no he didn't say that not in this passage the whole issue wasn't what they were eating it was whether they wash wash their hands talking about food right he's talking about food but
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he's he's not yet declaring all foods clean he's not abrogating the dietary laws yet what he's trying to show is what's really important is the matter of
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the heart not that you can stop doing the the law that's obedience and that's a matter of the heart to begin
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abrogating well that's kind of hard yeah but that's kind of hard to say with this side of the Cross what what we would actually hear him saying back then now first of all keep in mind that he says he who has ears to hear Let Him hear okay so so
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right away we we we gotta we got to make sure we're not uh jumping to conclusions which I think is what somebody did in adding that little phrase is jumping to
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a conclusion there are a number of examples that we'll encounter in parallels to what we're looking at in Leviticus where Jesus appears to be
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abrogating an Old Testament law when actually what he's doing is he's saying that's nothing compared to the heart and the attitude
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behind it so what he's saying here is that the Pharisees are all about making sure everything is outwardly clean well he's already condemned them and he will
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condemn them for that they're whitewash sepers full of dead men's bones they wash the outside of the cup and inside is full of wickedness so this is all in in in of a piece with Jesus's
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ministerial point and that is it's it's all show these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me that's a prophetic
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voice like Isaiah saying I I despise your new moon feasts and your sabbaths not because I didn't command you to do them but because you just do them out of
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blind ritual and think it's okay but then you oppress the poor you you uh you abuse the Widow you murder you steal and
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then you bring your sacrifice and you think this is all good what he says to the Pharisees and concerning their tithe he says you should do the former and not
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neglect the latter so he doesn't say oh no you don't need to tithe he doesn't say that so what I'm trying to say is you have to look at Jesus in his pattern of teaching and
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that is he's not he's he's you know it sounds like maybe he's abrogating an Old Testament law but but he said I did not come to abolish the law but rather to fulfill it he said not one jot nor tit
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of the law will pass away so he's not saying I'm declaring all foods clean that can't happen
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leer man after of the yes so Asar assing still later it could be and we have a number of those in the gospel for example when Jesus is talking about rivers of Living
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Water in John 7 he you know he was speaking of the Holy Spirit which had not yet been given well clearly that was written later by John okay it this one the problem with this one is it's it's
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syntactically awkward it makes it sound like that your your your um your digestive system is what purifies food it it it's not it's an
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emendation that is that really wasn't well done um with the way it's added um as opposed to just saying very simply thus declaring all Jesus declaring all
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foods clean that's not how it's written in the Greek it actually sounds like the ex the excretion of the food is what purifies
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it I I exactly I think what whoever wrote it meant to say that all foods are now clean I'm simply saying that that's not what Mark 7
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to cing all in in and of
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themselves this is a point that's going to come up in our in our next discussion and I'm going to move back to what you said eron in a moment um
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unclean in any food now I'm going to put that in with a question mark because that's a proposition and as a proposition what Jesus says in Mark 7
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would support would support it it's not the food that's the problem is what he what I'm trying to say what he's teaching is not that you don't follow the he's not telling them to stop
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following the Purity laws okay I I do not believe that he's doing that because they didn't do that and in fact it took it took a pretty massive effort to
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convince Peter to to do that later on okay so on the one thing the ritual is of no value if the moral is corrupt and
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this is this is uniformly Jesus's teaching is in the gospels and that does not mean you're abrogating the ritual again using the
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the example from 2 Corinthians 8 that God loves a cheerful Giver that does not mean you stop giving because you can't be cheerful doing it okay it's the same
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type of teaching and that is it is what the what the heart the heart is what matters you if you don't do the ritual you don't have a good heart
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because your heart is disobedient but if you do the ritual with an evil heart then it's of no value either it's as if you as Paul says is as if your
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circumcision has become uncircumcision okay so the basic teaching here in Mark 7 is that it's the heart that matters not the outward
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rituals but that is not the same is abating those outward rituals not yet but it does help us make that distinction I mentioned last week and
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that is there are two types of Purity ritual and ritual and moral the Pharisees were all about this one and so are many
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Christians right they're all about the look that doesn't matter at all if this is full of dead men's bones and all
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putri action and Corruption okay you can look as good as you want on the outside but God looks at the heart so that's that's all that's going on here in Mark
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7 that still shines a light back on Leviticus because of what the rabbis did okay what they did over the
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centuries following the Priestly code the Priestly law is they they embellished the embellished the ritual they made it all about the
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ritual which means it was not about the moral and that's why the prophets rail against this Isaiah especially is that
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the the the uh the teaching is all about what you do what you do do it right and in fact do even more than what you're required to do that shows how Sanctified
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you really are and in fact your heart is far from God okay so the I use this passage to highlight the distinction between ritual and
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moral that that that's a very important distinction that if we if we don't make that distinction we're going to see in the Purity uh for example the the woman in childbirth um or the treatment of
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lepers I mean we're going to see how far astray our our application of our interpretation can be if we confuse
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these two all right Acts chapter
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Peter's vision we learn something about Peter here the vision is given to him three times Peter seemed to need things repeated three times for good or for
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ill okay he's challenged as to his knowledge of Jesus three times after the resurrection Jesus asked Peter Peter do you love me three times and here when
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he's uh hungry and sleepy and he's offered a bunch of unclean animals for food it has to happen three times now I don't think that's speaking about Peter
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but it's it is telling us something about uh the the nature of what's being taught three being of course a number of completion of perfection that that this
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is not something that we should mistake okay and it is explicit here with no textual variations that God has declared these
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animals clean and he's doing it to a um what would have been considered a righteous Jew Peter says I have never nothing
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unclean has ever touched my lips and we really don't need to think that that's um hyperbola because the Jews were very
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fastidious about what P Paul will later call The Works of the law one of which being the dietary restrictions okay so um they they avoided I was kind of like today if you
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have a severe allergy to to gluten or something like something like that you can't even eat from a kitchen where gluten flour is
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is you know is used uh you you've got to avoid now that's a physiological which a lot of people think the dietary laws are and we'll talk about that in a in a few minutes um but the vision is given to
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him three him three times and I think we need to to
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does Peter's vision is actually um after a vision is given to Cornelius the Gentile telling him to send for Peter a
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man named man named Peter that happens and then we have Peter going up to the roof to pray and getting hungry while he's waiting for dinner he falls asleep and
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he has this vision and then the vision ends and the men show up and Peter is told go
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with them okay now the context I think is is unavoidable the animals on that sheet were Gentiles they represented
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is Peter going to cornelius's house and for a specific re reason of course and that was uh to preach the
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gospel to Cornelius and to his household in fulfillment of the of the um uh Vision that God had given
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Cornelius so this is not um a disassociated vision and it is really it's not directly about what Peter's
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eating it's about what Peter is about to be called upon to do that as a Jew Peter would have been very reluctant to do God is preparing him to accept the
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invitation to go to a gentile
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now God says in the passage that which God has cleansed do not call no longer call unclean the fact that the context has to do with
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do with Gentiles has led some to declare that this passage also does not cleanse
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Foods because the context isn't about what you eat the context is about Peter going to um preach the gospel to a gentile household
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that's a that's a not uncommon way of skirting an issue because it's being used in a figurative or metaphorical sense to say that the the underlying
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dietary laws remain but Peter's now allowed to go to a gentile house well some major problems with that
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hermeneutically and also logically but but also traditionally okay so let's look at that um does this
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laws I think Mo most of you would say yes I would certainly say yes but there are those um and in fact we we know many of us know one of them
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who would say no that this does not abgate the dietary laws and the argument in defense of that position is that is simply used to
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illustrate a different principle well here's the contention how do I say this um the objection
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so the the vision merely illustrates a principle regarding the preaching of the Gospel meaning the gospel is now free to be preached to
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Gentiles but that the actual dietary laws themselves because they are the this is the argument they are the law of God and the law of God is is like the law of the mes and the Persians it
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cannot be cannot be changed Jose that
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yes yes and what does that mean what does it mean to stay you you're you're anticipating me thank you but what does it mean to stay with somebody it means to have
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dinner right or did he just sit in the living room and watch Netflix while everyone else had dinner no it's quite obvious that Peter ate at cornelius's house I I
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think that I think you're I mean there's no way in my opinion that you can escape that which meant he ate what was put before him which a Jew of the second temple era would not even have gone into
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the house like the like the um the gluten intolerant not even going into that kitchen okay they would not even go into that house in case there had been some
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unclean animal and they would be defiled so yeah he stayed with Cornelius probably a couple days it doesn't I don't think it's explicit but at least overnight um
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and so this is the problem to this view well first of
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event almost maliciously
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confusing to to to show him this vision of all these unclean animals and say rise kill and eat that which the Lord has cleansed do no longer call unclean and they just say but but I wasn't talking about actual
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animals so I'm supposed to rise kill and eat Gentiles this is not how metaphors are used also struck me at the time he was
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staying he was what staying with a Tanner a Tanner yeah right and what do Tanners use yeah I mean that's a pretty unclean uh Tanners tend to use Pig urine
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to in the ancient world at least to to uh uh to condition and and basically ferment the leather so yeah it's that I don't I never thought that thought of
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that that's that's kind of an OD place to be staying I guess the Marriott was
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booked I mean Motel 6 is better than a Tanner okay I have to think about that more so um this kind of argument is often used where it says that it's okay this is figurative language and therefore we don't have to make it apply
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right yes and the only one in fact it's the distinction of no distinction because as Peter will later say in Acts 15 they received the Holy Spirit just as we had at the first okay so and and then
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James well Peter and then James will say who are we to argue against the Holy Spirit you know at that point it's it's it's a done deal they may not be comfortable with it okay this this is 1500 years of
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their identity that is now being swept good I get to have ham no or bacon no they were not happy about it it was very distressing and they had to work through
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it it even seems very humbling because he says now I yes yeah right now I really understand
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that God has has has done away uh it was never favoritism to begin with really that was one of the errors the Jews made was to think that they were somehow that
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they had somehow deserved the grace of God and the selection or election uh out of the nations of the world no Deuteronomy 7 makes it clear that that's
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not the case all right so first answer is you know the the whole whole thing is is then rendered confusing and even almost maliciously confusing if we if we
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somehow make a break between the metaphor the illustration and its
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application God then changes his approach is Abraham kill your son W but still he's about to do it and God inter so we could have had
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Peter no no way don't do
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that but and God says okay yeah and and Peter is arguing here right he is arguing and he's arguing according to the law he's saying I I never eaten anything unclean I can't do that Lord and and that's
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pretty bold you know to tell the lord I can't do something when he tells you to do it but I think you're making a good point that wherever else we see that um God is often just challenging them
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bringing them along and then he says okay um she made the point have any of you any of the rest of you seen that that brand of bread the Ezekiel what's
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it called 479 49 bread I mean we actually use it because I I need to reduce carbs um so we we actually have it but when you read the passage you
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think I don't want this bread I I wonder why did they pick that name I don't um how did you bake this
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bread I try not to think about it all right as Josiah pointed out it seems very evident that Peter actually ate at cornelius's house okay so Peter's
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understanding of of this passage uh was not oh oh oh this is just an illustration to tell me I can go to cornelius's house this is actually God declaring all foods clean later on Paul
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will simply say the kingdom of God is not a matter of food or drink okay now what we're dealing with here and this is this is more of a of a General theological consideration as I mentioned
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before we're dealing with now that phrase Paul uses uh has has been interpreted
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variously and I'm not going to be dogmatic uh in what I believe it means as it's used in as Paul uses it some people have thought it means you know
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actually obeying every principle of the law as it's used it seems to indicate three indicate three particular distinctives of the
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law that were intended to visibly separate the people of Israel from the rest of the world they would be the
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laws these had been um by the second temple definitely these had become pedigrees that distinguished a Jew from a gentile anywhere whether in um Israel
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or Palestine or in the diaspora and Orthodox Jews today still observe these three things these are
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these are identity markers for the children of God of the old Covenant which the reason I point that out is not so much that it applies to what we're studying in Leviticus directly but that
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you understand that what we're dealing with here was not trivial this was their fundamental identity and and even though we have to
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to acknowledge from the New Testament that in that in Christ these are done away I I know there especially among reformed Believers there's a great deal
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of argument about the Sabbath okay I'm not going to go there because that's not the topic um but as as a marker as a
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distinctive separating one class of nation from the rest these are no longer
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valid so when we go back to Leviticus 11 and begin the taxonomy of clean and unclean animals I think we have to remember there there is nothing inherently wrong with any of the animals
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themselves God created all of them it wasn't like God only created the clean ones and Satan created the other ones so we'll have that kind of
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principle that we have to kind of shine back the light from what Jesus says but then the vision that Peter has shows us that the fundamental purpose of all of
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these distinctions was to create a distinct people and and even make them peculiar now that word peculiar in the
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Hebrew means Hebrew means peculiar it means odd and they were okay and and
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so that that actually goes to application as well when we when we get to 2 Corinthians 6 where Paul tells us to to come out from among them and be separate there there is a sense and then
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Peter in his letter saying that you are a peculiar people there is that doesn't mean we're supposed to be weird but there there is a sense in which children of God in the midst of a corrupt world
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are odd but we're not odd in that way anymore our Oddity is is not that Visual and it's not that outfront what we eat
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what we won't eat because what we won't eat means where we won't go like a gentile's house okay so now going back to uh Leviticus does anybody have any
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other comments about the the New Testament testimony concerning the the food I don't know if this is valid or not but
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I was thinking back ining David's
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time he ate it yeah Jesus uses that point when they the disciples once again were being condemned for eating as they were walking through a field and Jesus says have you not read you know that
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that David went into the temple and ate to show bread and there was no condemnation of that why because David was hungry his men were hungry you know so again it goes back to this if you
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look at the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders especially the Pharisees it was all about this versus that it was all about you guys and this
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is again very iSonic this is very prophetic he's saying you guys are all about this and nothing about that he's not saying ignore that he's saying
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that's what really matters keep doing this keep tithing your mint and your cumin in your Dill but remember Justice and compassion
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the weightier matters of the law so again that's the principle in Mark 7 okay but then by the time we get to acts 10 Jesus is risen and the Holy Spirit
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has been poured out into our hearts the gospel is now the the the salvation of God is now broken forth from Israel to all the nations and therefore those
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works of the law those things that made a visible distinction between a Jew and a gentile are no longer valid
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same we uh right when we get in in Sunday school Lord willing if we get to the breaking of bread uh our culture has not completely lost the meaning of table
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Fellowship but it's not like it was not like in the ancient world um and and so the this fact right here is far more
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important to the whole context and understanding that that narrative than we give it credit for um it it pretty much is much is decisive so let's go back now to
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Leviticus um and what I want to talk about through the the rest of this evening's class um I'm going to skip a section just very very very briefly because I think we'll touch on it again we are
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dealing in the interpretation of these passages we are dealing with the age old continuity versus discontinuity debate between the old Covenant and the New
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Covenant one branch of the church predominantly reformed especially Presbyterian is all about continuity so we have circumcision
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becomes baptism Passover becomes communion there's that continuity dispensationalism on the opposite side of the spectrum is really all about about
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discontinuity and so these are simply rituals and laws that were given to the Jews and the reason they have nothing to do with the church is because the church
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has nothing to do with Israel and when we get to the Millennium all of these things will come back so it's complete discontinuity right um that's that's a
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factor in our interpretation of these Old Testament laws what is our basic Paradigm each one you know when you look at the scripture the Old Testament versus the New Testament do do you kind
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of separate the two so that you have room for the weights and measures and and other things in your Bible I think a lot of us in our minds
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we we do we separate them and that's the Old Testament it's kind of interesting maybe sometimes other times it's boring but it has nothing to do with us well that's the influence of
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dispensationalism okay we have to remember that 2 Timothy 3:16 is in the New Testament and the scripture of which it speaks is the Old Testament okay so we keep that in mind
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now that doesn't mean that everything in the Old Testament simply smoothly Segways into the New Testament and that's really the Presbyterian and you wonder why did
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Jesus come Jesus come anyhow okay why don't you just put away the knife and get out a bottle of water you know if you don't need circumcision you just need to be baptized what what is you know so 100% continuity
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isn't right but it's better than 100% discontinuity and so when we go back to these dietary laws it's very easy for us to look at acts 10 and say well what's the point well the point is it's
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scripture and all scripture is God breathe and profitable right so it's our challenge to figure out what's what's the profit here what is it that we're uh what what is what is retained in ter in
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terms of our instruction and our training in training in righteousness well the meaning of such things is clean and unclean holy separate which we are uh admonished to
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be so many times in the New Testament so there's got to be meaning back there but then how we approach it is pretty much determinative of what
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we're going to conclude and and this is you're going to find this in just about every commentary
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and I'll use another analogy within historical studies people who do history there are three basic hermeneutics there are some who think
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all all history is politics there are others who think all history is history is economics and then there are others who say all history is religious that's their
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Paradigm and so doesn't matter what they write it doesn't matter what happened in history they they use all the same documents and the same primary sources and whatever but it's all about
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economics because they're all about economics an excellent contemporary historian I think he's at Yale I think he's still contemporary I'm losing track uh Nile Ferguson I think he's still
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alive excellent writer excellent historian absolutely economic in his in his uh Paradigm in his is orientation so everything is about economics other
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people everything is about the religion it's all religious wars everything or it's Powers politics it's all about that well no it's never all about those things but if you go into it with a
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particular presupposition and and a framework it's amazing how you'll make everything fit that framework so what I want to present tonight are seven common Frameworks of a
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roaching the Purity laws in Leviticus all right so this will
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be all right some of these are going to be very common to you you you'll seen them some of them actually may resonate you may think well that's what I think um we'll get into the details as we get
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into chapter 11 chapter 12 I just want to set these out as I mean at the very least you might feel okay I'm not alone one of the most common uh
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throughout history both and this is both Jewish and Christian by the way and as you go through the notes you'll see quotes from quotes from mamones um you'll see quotes from from
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some of the patristic and and post-apostolic fathers early church men and then of course modern writers both Jewish and Christian because the these
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are these are Jewish laws so this is kind of kind of nice you can get a real broad perspective of commentary because these are laws out of the Old Testament and the Jews are still arguing about
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them the first one is the taboo or the
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Demonic this one argues that those things that were declared unclean or those things that like menstruation uh or seminal discharge or leprosy those things that were declared
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defiling were associated in the ancient world with the demonic or had simply traditionally developed as taboo something that you put away you
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don't talk about okay and this can resonate as well because certain topics that we'll read about particularly in chapters 12 and
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15 are not common topics in polite Society even Society even today you don't generally sit around the table drinking coffee and talking about a woman's cycle it just isn't
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done okay so there there there's some plausibility to this idea that that these were just well the word that the commentators use is
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disgusting now you can see a certain Prejudice there okay and and what's that they were all men well yeah they were men um although
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U not not entirely they they they were basically saying that the ancient societies cons considered things like that and also because it's also male seminal discharge in Leviticus 15 um but
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also again I mentioned last week pigs you know one of the most disrespected animal in animal in history uh despite Warner brother's attempt to reclaim pigs Porky uh but you
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know they're just disgusting well yeah I mean if you've seen a pig farm I remember um summer job I had was working on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and one of my jobs was to sweep