Now you may return to Leviticus
if you wish, but actually I chose that scripture not so much to
do an exposition of it as simply to show the pattern of God under
the law. That's why I called this message
Do or Die, Under the Law. You just might say that's the
summary of the law. Do this or die. In another place, it's written
in a somewhat more positive tone, but is just as deadly when it
says, the man that does these things shall live by them. Okay. Nobody can do them. Nobody can do them as the Lord
requires them. So nobody can live by them. And since we can't do them, that
leaves us with this only one option, since
the whole thing is do or die and we can't do, then what must
happen? We die. providential that our
brother should read the scripture that he did to us. By the sin
of one, sin entered the world and death
through sin. So those two options, if we approach
God through the law, since the options are do it and do it perfectly. Cursed is every man who does
not continue in every point of the law to do it. So do it perfectly,
fully, completely, without flaw. Do or die. We don't even come
close to do, which means we die. Several weeks
ago, I preached a message on the fear of the Lord. This lack
of the fear of the Lord comes from a failure to recognize a
particular attribute of His, a particular aspect of his beings. Now there are attributes of the
Lord that pertain to only some of his actions. There are some that are on all
his actions. For example, justice and righteousness. Now that applies to everything
God does. Justice and righteousness are
attributes of God. But so is love, and love The
love of God is not expressed in everything he does. Certainly
it's not being expressed to the one upon whom he does these actions. Now, people want to say that
God loves every individual. Well, hell can hardly be counted
as a loving action. Let's face it. Someone might say, well, we love
our children and punish them. In truth, we don't punish our
children and we shouldn't. Punishment, the first part of
that word, P-U-N, from punitive, it means to make someone pay
the price for the crime they have done. When it comes to raising children,
we're not trying to make them pay a price as though Their conduct
has cost us something, and we're making them pay it back. Rather,
as parents, we inflict pain of one sort or another on our children
for the purpose of discipline, for the purpose of teaching them.
What we may do to them that they count unpleasant, and certainly
it's our intention for it to be unpleasant, It's not because
we delight in unpleasantness or we're trying to make them
make up for some unpleasantness they caused us. We do that because
we know that it hurts them when they act the way they're acting,
so we're trying to get them to quit acting that way. That's
discipline, not punishment. Now, I know we use those words
almost as synonyms, but it's important when we talk about
God that we understand distinction between punishment and discipline.
We who are his children, he disciplines us but he never punishes us. He inflicts painful things on
us when we disregard him, but it's not for the purpose of destroying
us, it's for the purpose of rescuing us. But punishment has no intention
of good. Punishment's not an act of love.
It's an act of justice, but it's not an act of love. And God's love is not upon all
his creation. How do you know? Well, I don't
know of anybody who thinks God loves the devil. You say, well,
yeah, but he loves all humans. Why? Can you give me a reason
for God to love us? Well, he made us. Well, he made
the devil, too. Yeah, but when he made the devil, he wasn't
the devil. That's true. And when he made us, we weren't
sinful either. We should not wonder. We should
not be surprised that there are those God does not love. What
should shock us is to realize there are some whom God does
love. But His love, His mercy, and
His grace are particular. They do not accompany all His
activities. They are not upon all of His
creation. Though they are attributes of
His, they are not expressed in everything He does. But there is a quality of the
Lord. We might call it an attribute. that even rises above the attributes
that are always in force, no matter what he does. We say,
you know, like justice and righteousness, everything God does comes under
that category. But there's something even above
justice and righteousness, because it's something that does apply
to all that he is. and all that he does. Several
weeks ago, I preached a message on the fear of the Lord. It may
have been several months ago. The fear of the Lord, and I said
one of the things I noticed in modern religion, at least as
we see it on display here in the United States, seems there's
a great lack of fear of the Lord. There's very little fear of him,
even when it just comes down to our normal idea of fear, meaning
to be afraid of, nor is there any of that reverence, respect,
and awe that's also included in the biblical concept of the
fear of the Lord. Now, our Lord Jesus, it said
that he prayed and he was heard in that he feared. He feared
the Lord. Well, our Lord Jesus was not
afraid of his father. But he feared him. He had respect
for him. He knew who he was. He understood
his nature and character. After all, he was the express
image of his father. And he had high regard for him. But we see that fear missing
in most of religion being practiced. We certainly see it missing in
the way that they try to do what they call evangelize. Now evangelize,
evangelism, all the words with that evangel root in it, they
all come from the Greek word that's normally translated gospel.
It just means good news. And so evangelizing should be
a real simple concept. Preach the gospel. That's what
evangelizing is. But I know in my youth, evangelism
was considered something different from the sort of preaching that
we do here week after week. There's the gospel, and that's
for the lost. And then there's the rest of
the Bible, and that's for people who believe. You preach the gospel. to get people saved, and then
you preach other stuff, I guess. And that's how they approach
the scriptures. But all the scriptures are given as a revelation of
Jesus Christ, who is the gospel in person. To preach the gospel
is to declare Him, who He is and what He's done, why He did
it. the gospel. So evangelism should
not be hard to understand. It is to go out and declare the
gospel. But it's amazing the things that
they do instead. They put on some entertainment and gather a crowd. And once
the crowd has been gathered and you've given them the entertainment,
then you sneak in a little message at the end that'll say something
about Jesus dying on a cross. and talk about how God loves
them and all of this. And then they give an invitation
and tell people to make a decision for Jesus. Now that method shows
great disrespect for God. Because it says that the message
that he ordained to be preached is not indeed the power of God
unto salvation. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believes. And there's many ways that could
be applied, but one of the ways is this, that's all you need
in the work of evangelism is the gospel. You don't need to trick people
into making a decision for Jesus. You don't need to sell them heavenly
real estate and then tell them at the end, well, the price of
getting heavenly real estate is you've got to accept Jesus
as your Lord or something like that. Declaring God, declaring
Christ, declaring Christ's work, just doing that. It will accomplish
the salvation or bring about the salvation of everyone God
intends to save. They demonstrate their lack of
fear of the Lord in the way they will throw his name around as
though it's meaningless. The world in general does this.
I think it's interesting that there are vulgar words that if
you use them, more than two or three times in a movie. It's
an automatic R rating. But you can curse God and still
get a PG. You can throw the name Jesus
Christ around like it was trash. They don't seem to care. They have no regard for his name. But this lack of fear of the
Lord comes about by an attribute of the Lord that's
not much spoken of, and even when it's spoken of, it's often
not understood, and that is that God is holy. That is what we
might call the supreme definition of God. Because everything he
is and everything he does can be listed under the category
of holy. Now let's remember what this
word holy means. Because when we hear that word,
we normally think in terms of moral goodness. And sometimes
it is referring to that. But it's a much bigger word than
that. It means to be set apart, to
be different, to be unique or pure. What you're seeing in the
concept of the word, what you're seeing is that you are separating
something from something else. Now, the Bible says that God
is holy. You know what else? It says that
we are holy. But I don't think that you and
I would boast that we are morally pure. We recognize that we should
be. And we strive to be, but we're
not. So obviously holiness, being
holy, and in the Bible when you read of holiness, sanctification,
saint, particularly in the New Testament, it's all coming from
one word nearly every time. But God is holy. Now, how is
he holy? Well, first of all, he's holy
in his being. He is set apart from everything
else that is. He's unique. He says, I am God. Beside me, there is no other. You don't have to be great at
math to count how many gods there are. One. We're done counting. Only one God. Only one being
who is like he is. He's unique and set apart in
his being in that he's not even essentially part of this creation. This whole reality in which our
existence goes on. We say God is everywhere. And
I know what we mean by that. And it's true. But it's also
true he's nowhere. Because he exists where where
doesn't exist. Just as he exists at a time when
time doesn't exist. You, so long as you have an existence,
you will be within the framework of time and space. God isn't. He created all those things. When we say he is holy, one of
the results of that is he is unapproachable. In Isaiah chapter
6, where Isaiah said, in the year that King Uzziah died, I
saw the Lord high and lifted up and seated upon a throne.
It goes on to describe some things, and then it says there were three
seraphim. And that word seraphim, it's just the plural form of
seraph. And seraph means a burning one. And so right there you have
whatever kind of creatures they are, and I don't even know that
they're real. This was obviously a symbolic vision of God, because the Bible says God's
invisible. So this was a vision given to Isaiah to teach him about the
Lord. But these creatures, these three
seraphim, burning ones, now, Burning is always connected with
holiness because burning purifies. It separates one thing from another. Now these three seraphim, as
they, you know, their entire existence is taken up with calling
back and forth to one another, a characteristic of the Lord.
And it's not love. It's not justice. It's not mercy,
not any of these things that we speak of quite a bit, and
there's nothing wrong with speaking of those things quite a bit,
but the thing that completely consumes the existence of these
three seraphim is calling back one to another, holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is filled with
His glory. Now imagine that I say it's a symbolic vision,
you know, because, well, for one thing, you can't detect what
is not in time and space. So this was some way God represented
himself. But here's these creatures. And
their entire existence is wrapped up in a straightforward declaration
of the holiness of God. He made at least three of them. for that express purpose. We
never do hear of seraphs or any other kind of angels being assigned
a singular task of declaring a singular characteristic of
the Lord. Just this thing called holy. Holy. He's holy in his being. He is holy in the way he thinks. What do I mean by that? He doesn't
think like anybody else does. That is what he values, how his mind operates, and we
have to talk of him in human terms, because we don't have
any other terms to work with. But he is holy in that. The Lord
said in accusation against the Jews, you thought I was altogether
such a one as you. Now that's a rhetorical statement
because it carries with it some things so obviously implied you
don't even have to say it. You thought I was altogether
someone like you, but I'm not. I'm not like you. I don't think
like you. I don't act like you. I am the Lord. I change not.
You and I change all the time. He is the Lord. He does not fail.
We fail all the time. See, that's what it means. The
Lord is holy. He is set apart from us. And what that means, then, as
an application or as we think of our interactions with God,
since He's not like us, He's almost always surprising. He never does what we think He's
going to do. Why? Because we don't think like
He does, and He doesn't think like we do. We say, Lord, bless
me, and we're thinking, Send me more money. Lord says, I'm
gonna bless you, I'm gonna empty your bank. No, maybe not the whole bank,
but your bank account. Lord, bless me, I'm so sick.
Well, just wait. I'm about to bless you real good.
You're so sick right now, you think you're gonna die. I'm gonna
make you sick enough, you'll be afraid you won't die. John Newton wrote a song, and
I can't remember it in the nice poetic language he did, but he
said that he asked the Lord that he would grow in grace and all
these Christian virtues, and he said, but the answer he gave
was a surprise, and he answered me in such a way, I can't believe
I survived it. He said, I wanted to know more
sweet communion with him, and he hid his face. I wanted to
grow in my ability to pray, and my mouth was shut. I wanted to
grow in decency, and I found temptation just overwhelmed me.
Things like that. The Lord's a surprise. He's holy. He is holy in his being, in his thinking,
and in all his actions. Now the law demonstrates this.
I just read you a little portion of it after God had given the
law, and he says to them, if you don't do what I say, here's
what's going to happen to you. And this goes on from verse 14
all the way through verse 39. He said, if you won't listen,
I'm going to do this. And after all that, you won't
listen, I'll punish you for your sin seven times over. That's
just a phrase meaning, I'm really going to let you have it. And
he says, I'll break down your stubborn pride. And then he says,
if that doesn't work, then I'm going to do this. And it just
keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And when you read
through the law and read the commandments, and this is what
brought me to this, to think I would preach on this particular
scripture or this particular concept, I was reading about
setting up the tabernacle, setting up that old covenant worship.
And it was, you know, they'd say, do it this way. And if someone doesn't do it this
way, he's to be cut off from the people. That's pretty severe. If it's not done this way, Take
him outside the camp and stone him to death. There's no, okay, if they don't
obey, give them a time out. Go stand them in the corner of
the camp somewhere, make them be alone for three or four hours,
and maybe they'll come visit. No, you don't do it this way.
You're not part of Israel anymore. If you don't do it this way,
you aren't alive anymore. And this was for everybody. If
the priest did not offer, and I'm talking about the high priest,
if he went in there on the day of atonement with an insufficient
sacrifice, he died. The demands for the sacrifice,
it had to be without spot, without blemish. And he went through
some details. Can't have this, can't be this way. Any of this,
it's unacceptable if anybody tried to offer a defective animal
as a sin offering, they died. Do or die. The law demonstrates the holiness
of God in saying this, there is no other God. There's only
one. He says, I am Jehovah your God. You shall not have no gods before
me. Only one God. You may be an Israelite. You may be a descendant of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. You may have been among that
chosen nation. You worshiped another God. You
were out. His name was holy. And he said, I will not hold
him guiltless who takes my name in vain. And you know, that doesn't
mean just use it as a curse word. That just means to not give his
name the honor that it's due. But if, of course, under the
law as it applied to the Jews, it was pretty much limited to
what a person did outwardly, because you can't judge what's
going on in his heart. But a man did use the Lord's
name as a curse against someone else. And they took him outside
the camp, and the leaders For all those who heard him use the
Lord's name as a curse, they laid their hands on him. Then
the whole community, which would have meant all the representatives
of the community, they all stoned him to death. See, God's not
playing games. He didn't play games under the
law, and he didn't play games under the gospel either. No other
God, no other name, no other temple, As they were going into
the land, or about to go into the land, he said to them, when
you get there, I'm going to choose a place, and that's where my
temple will be put, or that's where my... Actually, they pitched
the tent there until the temple was later put. But he said, wherever
I put it, he said, that's the only place where sacrifices are
to be offered. Nowhere else. only one place to meet God. If
you tried to meet Him anywhere else, do or die. There was only one sacrifice
for sin. This was taught way back in the
days of Cain and Abel. God had told them what kind of
sacrifice to bring, to make an atonement It says that the blood
makes atonement for the soul. Well, Cain's thinking, oh, come
on now. I've done some bad things, but
listen, I'm doing the best I can, and I'm an all right guy. So I'm just going to bring some vegetables, some fruit. I'll get the nicest ones. I won't
cheat the Lord. I'm going to give them the best
tomatoes I've got. And I'm going to put some green beans in there,
and I'm going to use some corn that would put Iowans to shame.
This is going to be great. And he gathered that all together,
and he brought it before the Lord. Abel went out, and he found
the firstling of the flock, under a year old. Without any notable
flaw, you couldn't see anything wrong with it. And he killed
that thing and brought it as a burnt offering before the Lord.
And the Lord accepted Abel's offering, so he accepted Abel.
But the Lord rejected Cain's offering, and therefore he rejected
Cain. Well, there's only one sacrifice. And we don't have
the right to come by any other one than that. There was only
one priest. that is the high priest. There
were priests who did lesser jobs around the temple, but there
was only one man at any given time who was permitted to go
into the most holy place with a blood of atonement and make
atonement for the sins of the house of Israel on that day of
atonement. If someone else had gone in, That's what would happen to him.
And the sins of Israel would not have been forgiven. One priest. Holy. When we think of the Lord
being holy, one thing should strike us. We better do things his way.
He has no tolerance for not doing things His way. Well, how does that work for
you and me? I mean, it's not like we think
that we do meet any of God's demands perfectly. None of us live perfectly moral
lives. Certainly when you use God as
the standard, none of us would say, my faith is absolutely perfect. None of us would say that we
love others, love our enemies, even as God loved us. None of
us do that. How come? It is said of believers,
they shall never die. When the holiness of God says,
the soul that sins, it shall die. Well, because in the gospel,
someone else did everything that God required. In all those matters
that we spoke of in the old covenant, Jesus Christ fulfilled them completely. And we, in a sense, fulfill them
through Him when we trust in Him. I said under the old covenant,
there is no other God. Only one. Now, Paul said, and speaking
of covetousness, and all of us got some of that, The covetousness
is idolatry. However, the believer recognizes
and acknowledges there is one God and only one, and his name
is Jesus. And I know he's our God in human
flesh, but remember the first part of that is he is our God
and there is no other. Trying to connect with God outside
of time and space as though there's this communion between you and
him, that can't happen any more than Romeo communicating with
Shakespeare. But God has entered our world,
he has made himself manifest in this world, and we are connected
to him through that manifestation. God was manifest in the flesh,
Jesus Christ. And that's the only one we worship. And if God makes us aware in
our hearts that we have made an idol out of something else,
it will be our determination as much as possible to rid ourselves
of that idol. There's only one God, and our Lord Jesus Christ is
him. There's no other name. No other name, just one. Now,
we have our bulletins, and I put writings from others and myself,
and as accurately as I can, I identify who said it. But that's for information
purposes. Those names carry no authority. You won't be able to stand before
God, and if he It calls you to task for something you believed
or did or whatever you can. Well, but Reverend so-and-so
said that. Well, Reverend so-and-so doesn't
mean anything. Pastor so-and-so, his name carries
no weight in heaven. There's only one name. There's
no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. What name is that? Jesus. You shall call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sin. There's one God. All believers
recognize that and approach only that God. Only one name, Jesus. And all believers approach God through the one
who bears that name. There's only one sacrifice, only one. Spotless, flawless, like those lambs of the first
year in the prime of life. John the Baptist said, behold,
the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Abraham
had said, God will provide himself a lamb for the sacrifice. John
the Baptist said, and that's him right there. I like the way
the Greek language of the New Testament, when it says the lamb
of God, it can indicate possession. For
instance, if in Greek I wanted to say my house, I would say
the house of me. And so it's legitimate to say
that's the Lamb of God, that's God's Lamb, because Jesus Christ
was His. But the wording also means it
came from Him. This is the Lamb from God. This is the Lamb God sent. This is the Lamb God provided. And as I've heard several preachers
say, whatever God provides, God will accept. Now whatever we
provide, He wants nothing to do with it. So, if we would treat God as
holy, if we would demonstrate that fear of the Lord, it means
to recognize there's no God but Him. It means to come to him
through no other name but the name of Jesus Christ. It means
to bring to him no other sacrifice other than Jesus Christ. And
we really don't even bring that one, we just point to it. Jesus
Christ brought that sacrifice. But I don't come to him through
anything. I've told you stories before
about This was particularly in my teenage years, but, you know,
they tried to get us to give up stuff as a sacrifice to the
Lord. And, of course, these were things
that somehow or another they tainted with naughtiness. And
so twice I threw my collection of jazz albums into the river
that flowed behind our house. Did it once, regretted it the
next morning, started collecting them again. Then got all religious
again some Sunday night, went out, threw them in the Guyandot
River. Somebody dreads that river, they
might find some valuable albums out there that haven't been torn
up yet. Why? Like we're doing something
for God. God doesn't need or want anything
we have. What would he do with it? But there is one sacrifice with
which God is pleased. He shall see of the travail of
his soul and be satisfied. Now, I know that that primary
meaning is that Christ will see the results of the travail of
his soul, but you can't help but notice also it says that
the Lord shall make his soul an offering for sin. The Lord
shall see that offering and be satisfied. It's the only thing
that a man ever gave to God that God was satisfied with. Under the old covenant there's
only one priest and we show proper fear to the Lord and acknowledge His great holiness
when we come to Him through the only high priest there is, Jesus
Christ. You know, that's one of the things
that people don't like about the gospel. And I guess in some ways I can
understand it because so often it's preached in a rather self-righteous
way. But there is no way to experience
God's grace, no way to obtain His salvation, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, apart
from a knowledge of Him. People say, well, you Christians
think you're the only ones that's right. Well, not all Christians
are right. But everyone who's right is a
Christian. You can put it that way. And it's not that we're
boasting. It's not like we figured it out.
We say that because Christ himself said that. I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but
by me. So that means if you are a Hindu,
and I can't remember how many thousands of gods there are in
Hindu religion. I think everybody gets to make
up one or something. But you come, that's your god. You got the wrong god. Or if
you think he's some kind of mediator between you and God, it's a wrong
mediator. This business, it always bothers
me, these churches that have or address their clergy, and
you know I don't even care for that name, but their clergy as
priests, as though they're somehow connected to God in a way that
all other believers aren't connected to Him, that they have special
access to Him. And if you want his forgiveness,
you've got to come to one of those priests and go through
him to get to God. And some of them will even pray
to the so-called saints, who are not saints according to the
biblical definition of it. You know, they'll say, well,
yeah, Jesus Christ is our only mediator, but it helps to have someone
between you and him that'll go to him. Why? We don't need a
mediator between us and Christ. He is the mediator between us
and God. He's the only thing we need.
Anybody else who pretends to be a go-between between God and
sinners is what the Bible calls an antichrist. He's putting himself
in a place that belongs only to Christ. He's the only priest.
Now we are priests, the Bible calls us a royal priesthood,
but only in the sense that those lesser priests of the old covenant
were. You know, we sing praises, you know, we do the lesser deeds,
but when it comes to priests who offer blood offerings to
put away sin, there was one, and we have only one. One priest. We are to regard God as holy. That's what it means to fear
the Lord. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you tremble in your
shoes all the time. It means this. You recognize
He's the only God there is. You recognize that His name is
the only name to be held in high regard, and it must be held in
high regard. You don't come to Him by any
other priest than Jesus Christ, and you claim no right in His
presence by any other sacrifice than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And it is also a great respect
to His holiness if you not only do that but do it with confidence
and assurance. Somehow or another, people are
always showing a lack of respect to God. On the one hand, they
might think there's many roads to heaven. On the other hand,
you got those that'll say there's only one road and we control
the door. We don't think you should go
through. You say you went through, but we're not sure. You go back and sit down and
think about it a little while longer. Let us come boldly before the
throne of grace that we may find mercy to help us in our time
of need. Why? Because we come through
Christ. God said only Christ. So in fear
and reverence, in respect of his holiness, we won't come any
other way. But in as much as he has set
forth Christ as the way, that means we can come that way with
full assurance we will be accepted. You see, with God, it's all or
nothing. You don't have to try to sneak
into heaven. There's a great big open door. It's Jesus Christ. and you can come through it,
you may come through it with confidence knowing you won't
be rejected. You try to sneak around through
a back entrance somewhere, try to build your own building and
say that one's good enough, try to bring your own sacrifices,
do or die. So for us in the gospel, as well
as the law, it's do or die. Do it this way. Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Do it this way. Come
to God. He is able to save the uttermost
them that come to God by him. Now, the doing is not all that
hard. Well, it's impossible for those
who have not been born again, but what I'm saying is it's not
like it's complex. It's just a matter of trusting
Christ. So we are holiness preachers,
but that doesn't mean we think all the women should put their
hair up in a bun and wear long dresses. That doesn't mean that
we think you can't have a television in the household. Doesn't mean
that we think you can't enjoy entertainment. It means we worship
one God by one mediator through one sacrifice. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty. Be sure you come to Him in His
way.