The title of my message today
is A Severed People. A Severed People. In verse 26
of Leviticus 20, the Lord God declares that we who are His
are His because He has severed us from all other people. What a marvelous description
of God's work of grace. In his sovereign election before
the world began, he severed us from Adam's fallen race. By the
mark of redemption, when he set the blood of Christ upon us at
Calvary, when he inscribed our names in the Book of Life of
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the Lord God, by
putting away our sins, by satisfying the justice of God for us, Removing
every blot written in the books of God against us, he has severed
us from all the race of Adam's fallen, condemned people. And
by God's effectual sovereign mercy, in the time of his love,
he came to us when we would not and could not come to him. and
separated, severed us from family and friend, from brother and
sister, from mother and father, from all the world around us.
And he severs us continually from the world around us by preserving
us in his marvelous grace. Our text will be Leviticus chapter
20, verses 1 through 27. But when we read our text a little
bit ago, I began by reading the first five verses of chapter
18, because this section of Leviticus really begins back in chapter
18. Here the Lord God calls for us
to live in this world for the honor of his name. He calls you
and I to make whatever sacrifices we must make. to do whatever
we must do, to separate ourselves from whomever we must separate
ourselves, that we might live in this world for his honor. That's quite a demand. That's
quite a demand. That's asking a lot if it were
anybody but God requiring it. I think nothing, honestly, I
think nothing of expecting my wife to devote herself to me. No matter who, that means she
may alienate. No matter who, that means she
may offend. No matter who might object to
it. I think nothing of it. She's my wife. But it would be more reasonable
that she should become a common prostitute, giving herself to
every bidder, then that I should fail to live in this world for
the glory of my God. That's exactly right. Well, what's
the basis of God's appeal? He says, I'm the Lord your God. I'm your God. And I've made you
my people. His demands are most reasonable.
What could be more reasonable than that a man should live his
life in this world with a constantly renewing consecration to God
his Savior? His authority is unquestionable. He's God. That means he has the
right to demand whatever he will. That means he's the boss. That
means he's in charge. That means that he is unquestionable
in his authority. He has given us his word, and
his word is absolutely, totally authoritative in his house. Now,
I stress this. His word is absolutely, totally
authoritative in his house. It is not expected that the Egyptians
should live according to his word. It was never expected that
the Egyptians should come worship in his tabernacle. It was never
expected that the Egyptians should come and honor his name. It was
never expected that the Canaanites should bow down and worship in
his altar. It is never expected that the
Canaanites should obey his word. But in his house, his word is
authoritative. The whole religious world around
us would, if they could, compel unbelieving, unregenerate, pagan
men and women in state and in state government, in the nation
and in the nation's government, to bow to and heed the written
word of God while they themselves despise the word. We do not expect
the world around us to live in accordance with Holy Scripture.
But it is only reasonable that we should live in accordance
with this book. Read it again. God never gave
his law to the Egyptians. God never gave his law to the
Canaanites. He gave his law to Israel. And God has given his word to
you and I. And in his house, his word is
authoritative. I know that we live in an age
of such ignorance and degradation that the whole world denies that
there is any such thing as authority, really. The whole world will
tell you that there is really no basis by which we can determine
that which is right and that which is wrong, except our own
judgment, our own feeling, our own experience in what really
makes us feel good. That's wonderful authority. Live by it if you can. But the
fact is, there is truth. Unmoved, unmovable. Unchanged, unchangeable. truth that is absolute, truth
that never varies. And the truth of God revealed
in Holy Scripture does not vary from one generation to another,
from one age to another, from one society to another. That
which is revealed in Holy Scripture stands authoritative and true. Children of God, we must never
endeavor. And we must never be persuaded
to compromise God's truth, no matter what age we find ourselves
living in, no matter what the opinion of society is around
us, no matter what the opinion of the world is around us, no
matter what the opinions of our dearest friends might be. We
bow to the authority of Holy Scripture alone. We find no authority
in history. We find no authority in the creeds
of religion. We find no authority in the best
books written by men. We find no authority in any man.
Our authority is thus saith the Lord, that and that alone. Now with those things in mind,
let's look at chapter 20 and see what God here reveals. In these 27 verses, The Lord
our God tells us precisely how we must live in this world if
we would live for his glory. Let me call your attention to
four or five things here. First, in verses 1 through 6,
our God begins with an unmistakable, clear warning to idolaters. He speaks of the worship of Mulloch, of men and women taking their
sons and daughters and giving them to Mulloch. He speaks of
his people going a-whoring after Mulloch. He speaks of them as
defiling his sanctuary. and profaning his name in the
worship of Moloch. How thoroughly God knows the
perverseness of our imaginations, the evil of our hearts, the vileness
of our wicked minds, and the readiness of our souls to every
evil. Perceiving that which his people
would soon face when he brought them into the land of Canaan,
he forewarns them of the evil to which they would be most prone
and most tempted. He begins with idolatry, and
he does so with the most startling words of condemnation. When he
speaks of these things, he speaks of punishing the idolater in
the most distinct public manner imaginable. He declares that
he will use the people of the land to punish the idolater. And yet he himself, all the while,
is executing the punishment. He says, they shall stone him,
and I will cut him off, setting my face against him. Well, preachers,
surely, that's a little extreme, isn't it? Just because a man
bows down and worships Moloch. You mean God would have the nation,
the nation of Israel, a man and a woman to take up stones against
their own son and pelt him to death with rocks? You mean God
would have a son to take up stones against his own idolatrous father
and beat him to death with rocks? That's cruel. That's barbaric.
Oh, no. Not if you understand what the
crime is. What was the crime that demanded such a sentence
from the judge of all the earth who must do right? You see, when
men and women set themselves in judgment against God, when
we are so crassly brazen and base as to question what God
Almighty reveals, We set ourselves up and declared ourselves to
be wiser, better, more compassionate than the Almighty. What fools. What fools. Well, why on earth
did God require such punishment of these people? What was their
crime? The crime was idolatry. The worship of Moloch, the fire
god of the Canaanites, by which men and women in pretending to
worship God, destroyed the souls of their children, profaning God's sanctuary and
profaning God's name. You see, Moloch was an image
of red, hot, glowing brass. Now, obviously, he didn't have
any heat inside him. It was just brass. He was a god
invented by the Canaanites. And they would take their god
and build fire around him. And there the brass would glow,
heated, and heated, and heated, until at last it seems to have
a life of its own. But it's a life fueled by the
fire, by the determination, by the work of his worshipers. Moloch was nothing. He's called
a fire god. Men and women, to appease this
worthless idol, whom they considered to be the god of wrath and judgment,
the god who controls the fire, the god who must be appeased,
they would take their sons and daughters and lay them live in his red
hot arms. and watch them be consumed in
the wrath of their God, in his fire, the fire that they fueled,
the fire that they had ignited. It was savage, demonic to the
extreme. The Canaanites invented this
God, and the Jews accepted him and pretended all the while to
be worshiping God. what a contrast Bullock is to
the Lord our God. God is love. If you care to entertain yourself
with such stuff, sometime get you an encyclopedia that has
got good graphic pictures, that will give you pictures of the
gods of the heathen mythology of our forefathers. And watch
the pictures. They are gods frowning, snarling,
ugly, hideous, monstrous, gods who somehow must be appeased,
gods of whom we must be terrified. But God is love. Instead of taking our babies into his arms to destroy them,
He stretches out His everlasting arms of omnipotent mercy and
takes up the little children He has chosen to bless them and
save them. His heart, the heart of Him who
truly is God, is never satisfied until the objects of His love
know His love for them. Rather than casting us as we
deserve into the fiery pit of hell, our God, Jehovah Jesus,
stretched out his arms on the curse, the cursed tree, bore
the wrath of God for us, opening his side to the spear, and took
all of God's holy wrath into his own soul until he had consumed
it away. Rather than requiring satisfaction
from us, our God has made satisfaction for us. That in its essence is
the difference between the Lord our God and Moloch, the Lord
our God and all imaginary gods. You see, Moloch is nothing. Christ
is everything. I go to these different places
where I've observed the worship, the idolatrous superstitions
of men and women. Other folks walk in, you know,
people who don't know any better, and they kind of tip their hats,
rich politicians and wealthy men, businessmen that don't dare
want to offend anybody, say, oh, we must reverence this place
of worship. Place of worship? Place of hell? I'd come nearer reverencing a
brothel. Moloch is nothing. Christ is everything. Moloch
does nothing for his worshipers without their contribution. Christ
has done everything for us. Moloch makes his worshipers pay
and pay and pay and pay. Christ has paid. That's the difference. That's the difference between
the worship of God and all false religion. Just in case you've
missed my point. Just in case you're wondering,
well, how does all this talk about Moloch apply to anyone
today? I lay this charge at every representation of God, at every
representation of Jesus, at every representation of the Holy Spirit
that in any way requires satisfaction from the sinner. that in any
way requires satisfaction by the work of a man, or whose work
in any way depends upon or is conditioned upon that which man
may do. Such a God is as worthless as
he is cruel, as useless as he is insignificant. Such a God
is worse than Mullick. At least Mullick could have been
melted down and sold for bread. But the God of man's imagination
whom they call Jesus, the God of man's imagination whom they
may call Jehovah, the God of man's imagination whom they set
up is nothing but mullic and pretend to worship God is utterly
useless and worthless. Like Elijah, as he stood upon
Mount Carmel, I stand here to mock the gods of Baal and all
who worship him. I'm telling you, my friends,
don't give your seed to Moloch. Don't do it. Don't allow the
religion of this world to influence your sons and daughters. Don't
contribute to the idolatry of this age. Don't in any way tip
your hat toward it. Do not in any way give any consent
to it. Do not in any way support it.
If you do, you are as guilty as they who build the idol. Those
who choose Moloch in preference to Jehovah prove themselves to
be in a state of utter enmity against God. The Lord says, while
you are worshiping, you're defiling my sanctuary. You're profaning
my name. You stand in the house of God.
You claim to be God's people. But all the while, you're really
worshiping that which is no God. Your worship, then, is nothing
but an expression of utter contempt for God. You see, their choice
of Molech as their God is the constant defilement of God, rather
than worship God in His true character, rather than bow into
God's revelation of Himself. How many times have you heard
folks say, well, you talk about God's sovereignty
and predestination and election. You talk about effectual redemption.
You talk about limited atonement. That makes God a monster, and
I won't worship that God. I know. I know. You worship Moloch. You say, I'll take me a God who's
useless. I'll take me a God who can't do anything. I'll take
me a God who's helpless. I'll take me a God whose love
is insignificant, whose grace is meaningless, whose power is
nothing, whose blood is virtually of no value, whose persuasion
does nothing. I'll take that God because him
I'll hold in my hand and move him where I will. and I'll do
whatever it takes to appease my God. But Jehovah, I will not
worship that monster of a God. Man prefers the frowns of a God
he's invented. He prefers paying, paying by
cruel religious practices, paying by cruel religious sacrifices,
paying by religious duties that he despises. He prefers paying,
constantly paying Moloch, to receiving free grace through
Christ to substitute. The phrase whoredom with Moloch
is intended to show man's utter contempt for God's mercy and
grace in Christ. Throughout the scriptures, the
believer's union with Christ, this free grace union of God
with our souls, is spoken of as a marriage union to our God.
A marriage union by the intervention of God himself. But it is a union
that freewill works religion despises, so much so that the
Lord God declares in Malachi 2.11, Judah hath married the
daughter of a strange God. In other words, in the language
of the New Testament, those who refuse to worship the Lord God
as he's revealed in Christ, as he has revealed himself in this
book, make God a liar, and declare that he is nothing at all desirable,
nothing at all trustworthy, nothing at all believable, nothing at
all to be received, nothing at all to be reverenced, and prefer
their imaginations of God. Now look at verse 6. He continues
this description of idolatry and the condemnation of it. In verse 6, we read, the soul
that turneth after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards. Oh, we don't have any of those. You don't. Don't raise your hand. How many of you read your horoscope
occasionally? Wizards and familiar spirits. Mr. Reagan's wife, when he was
in office, I guess she still does, consulted with wizards
and folks with familiar spirits. Oh, but I wouldn't do that. The
Lord says, them that turn after such as have familiar spirits
and after wizards to go a-whoring after them. Unless you're not
speaking very politely of another man's religion. I'm glad you
heard that. I will even set my face against
that soul and will cut him off from among his people. Pastor, how on earth does this
apply to us? These are evils to which believing
men and women have a horrible tendency. turning aside to those who have
familiar spirits. Turning aside after wizards is
something far, far more inclusive than just going to psychics,
reading your horoscope, going to a palm reader, consulting
with some mystic, consulting with some dirty Hindu who sits and moans
and groans, you think he's some great spiritual leader. More
than that. We must never seek any counselor but our God, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who is wonderful counselor. Never seek another,
not his people. You see, his wisdom is enough
to direct me when I can't see my way. His grace is sufficient
to sustain me when I have no other help. His love revealed
in Christ is sufficient to make me perfectly content to have
that which I do not know left entirely in His hands. That means
I don't need to go like Saul running off to the witch of Endor
when I perceive some things that make me a little uncomfortable.
Oh, what will happen? Let's go to Endor's witch and
find out. It is written, he that believeth
shall not make haste. But we hastily run off to the
witches of Endor seeking peace. I need to go see my therapist
today. I need to go see my psychologist. He'll help me. He'll give me
some help. He'll give me something. If he
can't tell me something to make me feel good, he'll give me something
to make me feel dopey. I'll go see my spiritual guide. Try finding peace. Go ahead. You won't find it from him. You
won't find it from him. You won't even find it come and
talk to your pastor or someone else. You're not going to find
it. When your heart's heavy and your soul is burdened, believers
cast their care on the omnipotent strength of our Almighty Savior
and trust Him. He that believeth shall not make
haste. I was talking to Brother Larry
the other day. I don't understand, folks. When
you've got trouble, you can either whine or you can worship. One
of the two. Most of us choose to whine. You
can either snivel or you can snuggle up in the arms of God
Almighty. Pace the floor and bite your
nails or prostrate yourself and bury yourself in God Almighty. For me, I'd heaps I'd rather
worship than whine. I'd heaps I'd rather snuggle
up in His omnipotent arms than snivel before men who are weak
as I am. I would heaps I'd rather bow
and prostrate myself to God on His throne and find rest in Him
than pace the floor and bite my nails. Men, when I was growing up, men,
and you boys need to learn this. I know the age in which we live,
and you'll get this free, it won't cost anything extra. The
age in which we live teaches boys to find their feminine side.
Please don't. Please don't. Learn to be men. Men, when they're faced with
trouble, they just suck it up and go on. What are you going
to do? Well, I can sit and worry about
it. Go ahead. I can sit and cry about it. Go
ahead. I believe I'll just live with
it. There you go. There you go. But believers, regardless of
what physical, earthly, material things are, believers bow and
worship. The way we find peace is to cast
our troubles on Him who is our peace. The way we walk in this
world and find strength is to look to Him who is our strength.
All right, now second, and I won't be but a betting on these others.
In verses 7 and 8, the Lord God calls us to sanctification. He
calls for us to sanctify ourselves and be holy. But this holiness
and sanctification, as we'll see in just a minute, is not
a work by which we make ourselves holy before God. Rather, it is
the separation of ourselves from the ways and worship of the world
around us. The motive is the fact that he
who is God is the Lord our God. He's made us his own and made
himself ours. The way we are to sanctify ourselves
is to set ourselves apart from the world around us, not set
ourselves apart from the clothes they wear, not by dressing funny,
not set ourselves apart from the way they cut their hair,
not set ourselves apart from the way they walk in this world
in a physical way at all. not set ourselves apart from
their society where they live. That's not going to do any good.
That's not what God calls. He calls for us to live in this
world among men, worshiping Him. Well, what does He mean? Set
yourself apart from the religious ways of this world and obey God's
word. And He assures us that it is
He who sanctifies us. who has himself already set us
apart and will continue to do so. Then in verse 9, a dark,
dark scene. Oh, how dark the scene of dismal
corruption begins. A scene by which the Lord God
sets before us a display of depravity. A display of human depravity. A display of your depravity and
mine, Bobby Estes, that is as chilling as it is true. It goes from verse 9 through
verse 21. And it begins, For everyone that curseth his
father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He hath cursed
his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him. Now, that's the root from which
everything described in verses 10 through 21 is the fruit. Here is a people who have lost
all natural affection, Romans 131. You see, when the strongest
tie of respect friendship, authority, responsibility, and duty is broken,
then all ties are broken. When the first, most important
representation of divine authority is despised and cast off, all
authority is despised and cast off. And when authority is gone,
when affection turns only inward, Chaos and corruption run rampant. He hath despised, he hath cursed
his father. He hath despised, he hath cursed
his mother. Those words more perfectly describe
Adam's fallen race and everyone in our generation than any of
us can imagine. They mark a crime that is imminently
heinous. They describe the utter renunciation
of all ties to God. The utter renunciation of all
ties to our Father, who has nourished and brought up children. The
son has become a particle. He's gone into a far country.
The son wishes to erase the very memory of his father's house. He wishes to erase from his mind
the very memory that God is. He wishes to erase from his mind
every thought of God. And thus, he curses that which
most nearly represents God, father and mother. Be astonished, O
ye heavens, at this. and be very desolate. You read this 20th chapter, beginning
at verse 10, and read the crimes described. When you first read
it, you have to ask, are these things so? Are these horrible crimes of
shame? Shame, so shameful that it is
a shame to even speak of them in public. Are these crimes of
which Israel, God's Israel, God's severed people must be warned? Horrible as it is to face the
fact, we need the warning just like everyone else. These things, I remind you, were
not written to the Canaanites. They were not written to be posted
on the halls of public schools so that the Canaanites might
learn them. They were written to Israel, God's covenant people. Amazing, oh, truly amazing is
the grace of our God. He has chosen for his sons and
daughters, for a people to dwell forever in his bosom throughout
eternity in his fellowship, a people whose nature he knows are capable
of the foulest, filthiest, darkest profligacy imaginable. When I read these crimes, perhaps you asked yourself, or
thought to yourself, as that Syrian pagan did, God's
servant, when he described the sins that he would commit in
2 Kings 8. Am I a dog? Do you really think I'm such
a dog that I would do such things as this?" And the prophet said,
the Lord has revealed it to me. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, this is what
we are. What depth of meaning there is
then in the fact that the Son of God saves His people from their sins. in the fact that God, for Christ's
sake, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. God says concerning these who have abandoned every semblance
of respect for anything, to these who take father and mother, or
son and daughter, or mother-in-law, or stepmother, or daughter-in-law,
or stepdaughter, or go as a man to a man, and the man takes the
women, mother and sister together, or woman to woman, and taking
father and brother together, or goes to the beast of the field
to gratify their lust. who use everything in society
and every creature on earth for the gratifying of their lust. The Lord God says, burn them.
Cut them off. I'll cut them off. And those
who are not cut off manifestly, I will make them childless until
they die so that the world may see that they stand as monuments
like a tree hit by God's lightning, leafless and barren and fruitless. God's judgment is there. I'll
cut them off because they defile my name and my people. Canaan's land was a land of enormous
guilt. Enormous guilt. Lesser things, lesser things
were found in Sodom and Gomorrah, and God burned those cities with
fire. Lesser things were found in Noah's generation, and God
destroyed the whole world. Why has God preserved Canaan? That abominable, wicked, horribly
evil place. Why? Because rather than destroy
the city, rather than destroy the land and the cities in it,
the Lord God said, what I'll do is I'll drive out the inhabitants. And I will people that land with
another people. and purge away the iniquity of
the land. That's exactly what He does,
Larry, for this world. Rather than destroy the world,
He will purge it with fire and make of it a new heaven and a
new earth and put in it a people of righteousness made righteous
by His grace. Oh, sinner, hear me. That's exactly
what God does. with such things as we are when
He saves them by His grace. He takes the soul that He loves,
defiled with every abominable evil, and purges it, washes it
in the blood of His darling Son, and makes it a new creature,
putting in us a new nature, and preserves us as monuments of
His free grace. And then God calls us in verses
22 through 26 to holiness. And that which is written here
is precisely what Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians, where he
speaks of perfecting holiness in the fear of God. The Lord
says in verse 23, you shall not walk in the manners of the nation
which I cast out before you. For they committed all these
things, and therefore I abhorred them. But I have said unto you,
you shall inherit their land. I'll give it you to possess it,
a land that flows with abundance of grace, with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God, which
has separated you from other people. Verse 25. He shall therefore
put a difference between clean beast and unclean. Put a difference
between the worship of God and the worship of Moloch. Put a
difference between the way of faith and the way of works. Put
a difference between my ways and the ways of the heathen.
And then he ends the passage demanding A very deserved reference. Verse 27, a man also or a woman
that has a familiar spirit or that is a wizard shall surely
be put to death. They shall stone them with stones.
Their blood shall be upon them. Now this is not a repetition
of verse 6. In verse 6 he speaks of those who go to the wizards.
Here he speaks of the wizards. In verse 6 he speaks of those
who go to men and women with familiar spirits. Here he speaks
of the familiar spirits. And certainly, this is not in
any way an indication that we should in our day burn witches
at the stake and kill false prophets. It might be a good idea, but
it's not the indication here. It's not what it's suggesting.
What it's telling us is something far, far, far more difficult. We must look upon the whole religion
of this world with utter contempt, with utter contempt. Make no
compromise with it. Give no place to it. Seek no
terms of peace with it. Accept no peace that it offers. We must declare it to be nothing
but abomination and death. We must plainly and forcibly
assault the very gates of hell. We must trample upon the adder
and the dragon in his den. We must worship God alone as
God, giving ourselves wholly to him. Let me give you one passage to
follow, and we'll go home. Ephesians chapter 5. Paul tells
us, from those who deny sound doctrine to turn away and withdraw
ourselves. John tells us that if men deny
the doctrine of Christ, don't receive them into your house,
don't feed them, and don't pray for them. But rather, we must
live as worshipers of God, pushing aside all that would rob God
of His glory. Ephesians 5, verse 11. have no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but reprove
them. For it is a shame even to speak
of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things
are reproved and made manifest by the light, for whatsoever
doth make manifest is light. Wherefore, he saith, awake thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
thee light. Arise from the deadness around
you and walk in the light of God's free grace. And God promises,
I'll give you their land. This whole thing's for you. For
Christ is yours, and you are Christ. Amen.