In this time, leading up to the feast of Shavuot, the Pentecost outpouring of the Holy Spirit, perhaps it's important for us to talk about holiness, preparing for that Holy Spirit. See, in the beginning, God separated. He separated light from darkness. He separated the Sabbath day from all the other days of the weak. He separated a tree in the garden. And he separated the clean from the unclean. But he also separated Israel from the nations. And he separated one man amongst all of Israel from all the other men. And that man, that Messiah, will separate the sheep from the goats. He will never stop separating because he is the God of holiness. But that holiness has become controversial, debated both in the world and even in Christianity. But perhaps this is no accident. When he separated the light from the darkness, did the world not say, was that not the big bang? And when he separated the Sabbath day from all others, did Christianity not say, we changed the day? When he separated one tree from the garden, didn't Satan say, you may eat? And when he separated the clean from the unclean, didn't Christianity say, it's not for us? And when he separated Israel from the nations, the world hated them ever since. And when he separated Yeshua from all the other men, humanity crucified him. He will separate the sheep from the goats, and the world will not like it. But the question is, will you put away what you think holiness and set apartness unto the Lord means for his definition? Or will you say what the world says? It's your truth. It's my truth. It's your separations. My separations, your holiness, mine. Or will you even go as far as to redefine what biblical holiness is, even pinning the New Testament against the Old? While Satan is attempting to destroy the definition of biblical holiness amongst believers believers, our father is calling us to return. What got us into this mess in the first place is that weve gone off our own preferences and definitions. Thats why in this teaching, in order to understand gods definition of holiness, we have to read more scripture than usual. First off, we have to define holiness. Holiness in its most simple term is set apartness. It's to set something that is clean apart from something that is not clean. Leviticus 2026 says, you shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine. We see an example of holiness in the Passover story where God comes and tells Israel, I want you to separate yourself by the blood of the lamb. Placing the blood on the doorposts caused the death angel to pass over Israel whilst Egypt faced the curse. This means that there is firstly, with regards to holiness, a call to follow the instruction of God to set ourselves apart in a certain way. And then, for that will be a set apart blessing, a blessing of holiness that comes upon us as our blessing for obedience. Whilst Egypt received the plagues and darkness, Israel did not and were in the light. Satan's objective is to therefore obscure the instructions of God, cause confusion, so that we miss his call to holiness for us. He also then asks of us to not only put faith in him, but to set ourselves apart in holiness, that we're not gonna be allowed to be available to the gods of this world anymore. Like in any marriage covenant, we are going to set ourselves apart for him and him alone. And so let's now read Leviticus, chapter 19 and 20, where God gives us his prescriptions of what it means to be holy. It may surprise you that these chapters are of the most quoted chapters in all of the New Testament. So often we think of these as archaic or not relevant, but yet Peter and Paul and other New Testament authors considered them very important. I want you to read Leviticus 19 and 20 in your own time as well. We're going to read some of it. We're not going to have time for every verse in this video, but let's dive in. Leviticus 19 two. Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy. For I, the Lord your God, am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and father, and you shall keep my sabbaths. I am the Lord, your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal. I am the Lord your God. Alright, so we're a few verses in and already what we're seeing is something interesting. He's saying, revere your mother and your father. And I think most people agree with that. And then he says, you shall keep my sabbaths. And there it becomes a little bit already controversial. And then he says, don't turn to idols or make yourselves any gods of cosmetal. And that's probably something most of us would agree with is common sense by now. But I want to submit that this pattern of, wow. Yeah, we agree with that. Oh, I'm not sure about this one and yeah, I agree with that. And I'm not sure about this one. This is what's going to be happening in these chapters. And when you find that happen in your heart, as I read, I want you to question, could it be that I am confused about some of these instructions from the mouth of God, because that is exactly what the enemy has wanted to do. Let's read on. He says in Leviticus, 1910. And you shall not strip your vineyard bearer, nor gather your fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the sojourner. I am the Lord, your God. You shall not steal. You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie. You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hard worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the Lord. You shall not do injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness. So you judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people. And you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbour. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor unless you incur sin because of him. And you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your people. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. So far so good. Right? Then he says in verse 30, you shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. And in Leviticus 2025, as we conclude, he says, you shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourself detestable by beast or by bird, or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy and have separated you from the people, that you should be mine. So he starts out with giving us these instructions about revering mother and father and then keeping the sabbaths of the Lord holy. And then he continues with all of these agreeable commandments, right of loving your neighbor in all these different ways. And then he ends it with, keep the sabbath again and eat clean, and not that which is detestable according to God. And he says, I am holy, and I ask of you to be holy. Man has come with a fine tooth comb throughout these instructions, and they have divided these up into ceremonial, moral, judicial, different kinds of laws, as they have decided to categorize them. And they have said, well, the moral laws are relevant to believers. The ceremonial laws as we define them, are abolished and the judicial laws are abolished. I believe that we have gone amiss because we have become confused about identity. And that is why we have been confused about God's instructions. If we understood who we were, we would understand better who our God is and what he expects of us. But when we say, well, these laws are written for Israel, they're not relevant to us, we make a grave mistake. We have to ask, who was the audience of Leviticus. Well, it tells us in Exodus 1238, a mixed multitude went up with Israel and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. See, when Israel came out of Egypt, there was the native born people who were native Israelites. And then there were other people in Egypt, pagans, Egyptians of all kinds, who saw the great wonders of God, right? Who saved the people who put the blood on the doorpost and saved the people who put their faith in God. And they said, I want to follow that God. And they came out with Israel. In other words, everyone who put their faith in God received his faithful instructions. Listen to this. In Exodus 1249, there shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you. So when they are listening to God giving instructions, he's saying, don't think that these are just for the native borns of Israel. Don't try and use who you think you are as a excuse for what you consider holy and what you consider not holy, what you consider applicable to you and what you consider not applicable to you. And one more. In Leviticus, 1934, the very chapter we just read, God said, you shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you. If we see God treating everyone the same, from Genesis to revelation. Really saying that? If you put faith in me, Adam, Eve, Abraham, Noah, Ezekiel, John the Baptist, Israel, the disciples, everyone, if you put your faith in me, then we can be in covenant. And so when God gives the levitical instructions, nothing has changed. His heart is for the native born of Israel. And his heart is for everyone who came out with them, who loves God and wants to serve him. The gospel was there from the beginning. God planned it from the beginning for all to be saved by Christ. Because Paul said in Romans 1117 that everyone who may have been gentiles before or pagans before, they receive a new identity, that they are now grafted into Israel through Christ and what he has done for them. So you're Israel, I'm Israel. We're all Israel if we believe God. I wanted to lay this basic foundation as we move along into deeper things. We have to ask, though, who has determined all of these categories of moral, ceremonial, and judicial laws in order to determine what is applicable to christians today and what is not? See, I want to submit. There is no such categorization given to us in the Bible. But there is a category given to us by God himself, and that category is what we have read. Be holy, as I am holy. God says, the way that I act is in holiness, and holiness is acted out by obeying these instructions I give you. In other words, God is saying, I obey these instructions myself. I am holy, therefore, you now be holy. He also, in saying this, connects these commandments to his eternal, unchanging character. Because we know God does not change. He does not change what he considers good and evil. He does not change himself. In fact, that is why God said both in the beginning of Leviticus 19 two, you shall be holy, for I'm holy. And in Leviticus 2026, at the end, and be holy, for I am holy. He wraps all of these commandments into his unchanging eternal nature. So if God has not changed, how applicable these commandments are, have not changed. And no man can come along and try and pick and choose. And God tells us what his motive is for giving us these commandments. In verse 23 of Leviticus 20, he says, you shall not walk in the customs of the nations that I am driving out before you. For they did all these things, things, and therefore I detested them. People often say that, well, God just gave Israel these commandments of holiness to make them different from the nations. But that's just for Israel. We don't need to do that anymore. But God is saying, I have given them to Israel because I detested the nations, because of the actions of the nations. So if what God detests has been and is, and will be always what he detests, then we can't say that they're no longer applicable to us. And notice that word that he says, I detested the nations. That's the same word he used when he described how he detests unclean animals be consumed by us. And that's why when Jesus Yeshua walked the earth, he walked in this holiness. He did not partake in detestable things, according to his father, because he walked out the nature of his father perfectly. And he was holy, as his father was holy. And so his disciples also continued in that. So are these commandments ceremonial or moral or whatever? Or are they walking in holiness? Walking as Jesus walked. I want to submit to you that, in fact, Leviticus 19 is one of the most quoted chapters in the entire New Testament. Peter quotes Leviticus 19 in one Peter 113, where he says, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. I love what he is saying, because he's saying, set your mind fully on the blood of Christ, the grace afforded to you, that we are saved by faith. We're not saved by our works. We're not saved by what we can do. Even our works of holiness is not going to save us. Hallelujah. He is going to save us is enough at all. The only one able to save us. But then he says, because you're obedient children, don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, the way that you used to think, the way of the nations, those detestable things of the nations that God outlined in Leviticus, chapter 19. And then Peter quotes Leviticus 19 when he says, God called you holy. Be holy in all your conduct. Where does he get that? Leviticus 2026. You shall be holy, for I am holy, and I have separated you from the nations, from the people, that you will be mine. So Peter quotes this verse of Leviticus 2026 of being holy. But look at what the verse right before it is. It says, you shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourself detestable by beast, bird, or anything. So Peter, when he is quoting from Leviticus to be holy, he is quoting in context of eating clean animals and not the detestable animals as God defined. You mean like, whoa, petey, hold up, hold up, hold up. Where are you going with this? What about Peter's vision? Didn't God let him come to Peter and tell him, you can eat whatever you want? Look at all these unclean animals falling out of the sky. If you're new to the channel, check out my teaching. What Peter's vision really meant, not about food. It was about people. Another example we can look at is how Paul quotes Leviticus 19 two corinthians 616. He says, what agreement has the temple of God with idols? And this is from Leviticus 19 four, where God said, do not turn to idols or make yourselves any gods of caste metal. Paul then says, therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing, then I will welcome you. That's from Leviticus 2025. You will separate the clean from the unclean, the clean bird from the clean, and so forth, as we have just read. Paul also writes in two corinthians seven one. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. Paul urges us, just like Leviticus does, to bring holiness to completion in our lives by getting away from defilements of the body and the spirit. And last example here, acts 15. The Jerusalem council quotes Leviticus when giving new instructions to the gentiles. And they say in verse 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, from blood and what has been strangled, and that is from Leviticus 1926. You will not eat any flesh with the blood in it. And if you want to learn more about that Jerusalem council, check out my teaching here, titled should christians only keep four laws? Those who argue for the categorization of the commandments often argue that the moral laws are those repeated from the Old Testament into the New Testament, and they are the only ones applicable to christians. However, we just saw New Testament authors quoting from Leviticus left and right. I want to argue that those that are relevant, those ways of holiness that we should walk in, it's really simple to determine that. Look at the life of Christ, look at the life of Jesus, imitate his life because his life was the perfect example of holiness. Nevertheless, it's not that these commandments aren't repeated in the New Testament. It's not that these commandments don't have anything to do with God's character of morality. They do. And it's not that we need to consider even pitting Moses against these New Testament authors. We don't, because they are in unity. Instead, what has happened is we have desire to redefine what holiness is according to our preferences. The Catholic Church, for example, has pretty buildings and sacred objects that they consider holy. My reformed brothers and sisters have their doctrines of categorizations of things that they consider as being holy or things that they consider as not being relevant to be holy anymore. My hebrew roots, brothers and sisters, or messianic brothers and sisters, have perhaps considered themselves to be holy and separated by separating into the countrysides. And we have used these preferences or traditions, and some of it has sometimes come at the cost of God's actual commandments of what it means to be holy. Pretty buildings are fine, but not when we come with defiled hearts. To them, being passionate about our doctrine is beautiful, but not when we use our doctrine to avoid commandments of holiness. Moving into the countryside can be beautiful, too, but not when we do so whilst avoiding the great commission to go out into the world. See, brothers and sisters, God is coming to us and saying, there's two issues here. Some believers have an inner heart focus. They have focused on making themselves holy on the inside, which is very important. But they have neglected to separate. They have neglected to separate God's sabbath days from the rest of the days. The foods, the animals that God has said is food for you, whilst not going to that which is defilement for you. And they have therefore neglected God's separations in this way. But other believers have an outer action focus. They have focused on what is holy on the outside while neglecting the inside. Consider this. God has separated the clean from the unclean animals. Indeed. But remember when Yeshua said, don't cast your pearls before swine? See, when he speaks about swine, he's talking about people there, people who are defined as being swine not because of what they've eaten, but rather because of how they've acted. They've acted unclean. He also said in mark seven that out of the heart comes what is unclean. Therefore, we can't think that we're doing all of these things that are so holy and good. We're obeying all these commandments. We're following all of these outward signs of holiness. Matthew 23 five. Yeshua says, they do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the places of honor at feast and the best seats in the synagogues. The mistakes that these men made was not because they kept the feasts or wear the zit seats as God commanded, but rather they did it to be seen by others. So what they thought was a holy commandment they were obeying unto the Lord became a defilement because of why they did it. And so therefore, it's not enough to just do these outward things. We must be changed from the inside. We are in the season of the counting of the Omer, the days leading up to Shavuot, Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. All of us, to some degree, have redefined holiness from our own perspectives in our lives through our actions, whether it's our motive for keeping God's laws or whether it's our lack of obedience to them. But it's time for introspection. As we prepare for the giving of the Holy Spirit at Shavuot, perhaps now is the opportune time for us to look to Yeshua. See, the way that we fix this is not by behavior modification. It's not by just saying, okay, I'm going to just start keeping a bunch of rules. No, it's by laying down our life and surrender before him and saying, yeshua, I want to obey you. Yeshua, I want to obey your commandments. Yeshua, I want to look like you. I want to do the things you did because you were holy and perfect. And I want to be an equal yoke bro to you. But, Yeshua, I know that I cannot do this on my own strength. See, that's why the Holy Spirit had to come. That's why he had to be poured out. So that you can be empowered from on high to actually walk in after the likeness of the Messiah. And so, therefore, we have to now come, repent of our sins and trust in Yeshua. And then we will fulfill this sign of what it means to have the spirit working in your life. He says in ezekiel 36 27, and I'll put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. So the Holy Spirit comes upon us not to abolish the laws of God, but as Yeshua said, to fulfill it in our lives. To write the law on our hearts, so that we walk in the spirit in the love of God and neighbour. And because of our love of God and neighbour, we keep his commandments. For as he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Which commandments? The Holy Spirit draws us to keep. All of them. All of them that can be kept by us, we keep so that we can look more like Yeshua. And so that when he comes back, he will not say, depart from me. Work with lawlessness. But rather, I know you. When we prepare for Shavuot, let us prepare ourselves in our hearts and in our deeds. But recognize that his spirit prepares us. Yeshua, I pray right now that you would come with your holy spirit upon every one of us. Lord, we need your spirit to change us, to change our motives, to change our hearts, to change our actions. To empower us. And I thank you, Lord, that you have saved us by the blood of the lamb and up our works. And that you, your spirit, has come to change us as the fruit of our salvation. Lord, that we can be a holy people. For you are holy. That we can be a people. That is so set apart from the nations in the world, that when the world looks at us, they see you and your holiness working in us. I pray that you would bless and keep everyone watching. Now shine your face upon them. Lift your countenance upon them. Give them your shalom and your mercy and your grace for all. This. Name? Yeshua. Amen. Thank you for joining me. Subscribe if you're new here and look at this video. If you want to figure out more about the Jerusalem council and whether the law of God is for gentiles as well, I'll see you there.