In the sermon titled 'You are the Children of the Lord Your God,' Scott Brown explores Deuteronomy 14, which emphasizes the identity of believers as God's children and the implications of this identity on various aspects of life, including mourning, eating, and handling money. The sermon highlights how these practices are tied to the Third Commandment, which warns against taking God's name in vain. Brown explains that living in accordance with God's laws, such as the food laws, signifies holiness and distinguishes believers from pagans. The sermon underscores the theological significance of God's fatherhood and the childlike relationship of believers as adopted children. It also addresses the cultural pressures that challenge believers' adherence to God's laws and how these pressures can lead to living hypocritically. Furthermore, the sermon reflects on the broader biblical narrative of God's love and commandments, suggesting that they are ultimately about love and are fulfilled in Christ. The practical applications include understanding the ceremonial laws as historically significant but not binding today, and recognizing the broader message of holiness and love inherent in God's commandments.

Deuteronomy 14, you are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. You shall not eat any detestable thing. These are the animals which you may eat, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep.

And you may eat every animal with cloven hooves, having the hoofs split into two parts, and that chews the cud among the animals. Nevertheless, of those that chew the cud or have cloven hooves, you shall not eat such as these, the camel, the hare, the rock, hydrax, for they chew the cud, but do not have cloven hooves. They are unclean for you. Also, the swine is unclean for you because it has cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud. You shall not eat their flesh or touch their dead carcasses.

These you may eat of all that are in the waters. You may eat all that have fins and scales, and whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat. It is unclean for you. All clean birds you may eat, but these you shall not eat, the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, the red kite, the falcon, and the kite after their kinds. Every raven after its kind, the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the seagull, and the hawk, after their kinds.

The little owl, the screech owl, the white owl, the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the fisher owl, the stork, the heron after its kind, and the whoopee and the bat. Also, every creeping thing that flies is unclean for you. They shall not be eaten. You may eat all clean birds. You shall not eat anything that dies of itself.

You may give it to the alien who is within your gates, that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." Thank you Lord for your word, and we just praise you for your message to us today. Jesus name, Amen. The discipline of expository preaching is a good thing.

One reason is because you end up studying things that you wouldn't normally allocate time for. Food laws would be one of them on my list, not something I would necessarily want to bury an entire week of my life dealing with. But yet, God is wiser than I am and desires to take me and my household and our church further than we might go on our own if we just were able to just study whatever we wanted. So here we are really in a marvelous text of Scripture, Deuteronomy chapter 14, and of course this text appears in the midst of three sermons that really are intended to inflame the heart to obey God, to love Him, to love Him so much that you would appreciate what He says instead of trying to say, well, technically don't I have to really do that or not? Or, you know, does this really apply to me?

Or how, you know, this just doesn't make sense to me. I think I'll move on to some beautiful verse that warms my soul. But God is giving us a sermon here, actually three sermons of Deuteronomy, that detail dozens of areas of life to help us understand His heart on many matters. And so the first speech is contained in chapters one through four. It's historical.

It's the gospel. Its summary is, I carried you. The second speech from chapters five to 28 is didactic and its theme is, I taught you. And it's the law of God and its applications and then the third speech stretches from chapters 29 to 30 and they are really warnings they are eschatological in nature and in the sense that they give practical, forward-going implications. If you do this, then that will happen, you can guarantee it.

So there are three sermons here, and we're, of course, in this second sermon in which details are now given for how to love God. And they all have connections with the Ten Commandments. And so chapter 14 is really a commentary on the third commandment. And it's the commandment that thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. So what we've just read here in Deuteronomy 14 is an exposition, an explanation of some of the meanings of the Third Commandment.

Of course, we know what the Third Commandment is all about. It's about living hypocritically. It's about saying one thing, but living another way. And the commandment warns us not to bear the name or the character of God hypocritically, taking it lightly with no reverence or misrepresenting God by our lives or by our words. In other words, to empty the name of God by our lives by taking what he says lightly.

And so when we say that we are believers, then we are meant to act like believers. And here what we find is, if this is indeed an exposition of the Third Commandment, that we have found ourselves again having broken all of the laws of God. We have taken the name of the Lord our God in vain in many ways that are outlined right here in this text and we'll see that. I think you'll see many many aspects of your life flash before your eyes as I have as I've looked into this and seen my own sinfulness and my own gaps in my life. The message of Deuteronomy 14 is that in order to keep his people from taking his name in vain, he gives three specific instructions.

One, that they would not take his name in vain when they mourn for the dead. That's number one. And then all caught up in that is how they treat their body as well. You can take the name of the Lord your God in vain the way you mourn, the way you treat your body, and the way you eat, and the way you handle your money. Those are the three subjects in Deuteronomy 14.

And so we find each of them there. And so if we mourn like the pagans and eat like the pagans and handle our money like the pagans, we will have been taking the name of the Lord our God in vain. You understand the sense of this? And so if we would take his name in vain, that means we would be misrepresenting him by being like the common culture. He is holy and so ought we to be holy as well.

And if we would be like the surrounding people in our practices, then we would be taking his name in vain. And so this passage has lots of really interesting pressure points in it regarding the ways that we engage our normal life. And so it explains, in many ways, the pressures that there are upon us in the customs of the people and how there's an identification here of common, I'm just going to call them peer pressures to act and to function in a certain way in these three areas. How we mourn and how we eat and also how we handle our money. So chapter 14 is dealing with these areas.

Now let me just make an observation here. The prohibition in verse 1, do not cut, matches do not cook in verse 21. Do you see that? I hope you have your Bibles open or looking at this and see the connection here. Do not cut and do not cook.

Moses uses an identical literary construction. I believe he does this to make a connection, to speak of these various areas that he is dealing with. And he's identifying the principle that God cares about what you do with your body. So the first two of these areas, mourning and cutting your body and that kind of thing and then eating, have to do with your body. The last has to do with what you do with the labors of your body, the fruit of your labor, the income that God gives you.

What do you do with that? So it's really very personal in all of its ways. But the text begins with what I think is really kind of a summary statement of everything that he's saying and he's giving the reason right at the very upfront. I mean I love that about this passage because right at the very beginning he gives us the reason for it all. The interpretive key is right in the first two verses and you'll know why everything was written in the text if you just read the first two verses.

So when you read these and say I don't understand that, jam back to the first two verses and they'll tell you why. Why did he, now you might not understand exactly what it means or how to apply it, but at least you'll know for certain why he said this and he said it for the reasons that he displays in verses one and two. Now the first thing that we encounter here is this first reason really, the fatherhood of God in verse one. He says, you are the children of the Lord your God. You are the children of the Lord your God.

This is really the main interpretive key to this whole text. Because you are the children of the Lord your God, you don't live like the children of the pagans. You're not children of the devil, you're children of the Lord your God. So do you see how that fits? How there's this broad statement right at the beginning.

And this phrase is so worthy of reflection and just running over that and keep and move on might cause us to miss something of tremendous significance about this passage of Scripture and it's this it's it's the fatherhood of God and and also the child likeness of his people. God is a father and he has children and he has adopted children. All the children that God has are adopted children. We are orphans, we became sons. And this principle of the fatherhood of God and that we are his children runs all throughout scripture.

Many of you already know this, that the first appearance of the word love in the Bible in the Old Testament is the love of a father to his son. When God says to Abraham, take your son, your son whom you love. The first appearance of the word love in the New Testament is also the love of a father to a son. When God says, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. This whole idea of God the father loving his children is really the heart of the Bible.

The center of the universe is the love of a father toward his son and of course obviously as implied his daughters and so here we find this beautiful beautiful remember you know mark of remembrance of all of the Father heart of God. When God appeared to Abraham one night in Genesis 26, he said, I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake." Now the Lord, the Lord appears and says, I am your father. I am the father of your fathers.

Psalm 103 says, as a father pities his children so the Lord pities those who fear him, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust, as for man his days are like grass, as a flower of the field so he flourishes, for the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments and do them." We remember that we remember what Moses was to say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my firstborn, and I say to you, let my son go, that he may serve me." This whole idea of the fatherhood of God, that God is a father, that we are his sons, is the most important thing to think about in all of the commandments of God. Because all the commandments of God are summed up in the word love, it means that there's enormous significance to God being our Father. All of His commandments are out of love.

They are for love. And they are intended to produce love. The goal of our instruction is love, and it all comes from God our Father who begins in heaven. So all these commandments are really subrogated under the great heading of a father's love for his children. So that's the basic idea.

And so to be a child of the living God, to be a son, to be as it says here, you are the children of the Lord your God is the most important thing in the world. To know that you have the love of God to comfort you and the words of God to guide you and the spirit of God to teach you in the way that you should go. This is a wonderful thing that God has given. I was reading this week something that David Pallison wrote about on Psalm 23, and he calls it the anti-Psalm, And it shows the antithesis between the fatherhood of God and the submissive child-likeness of the people of God and those who are not children of God at all. And I'll read it to you, because I really want it to form for us the overwhelming backdrop of this whole text.

Because we have to understand the why of it. And the why of it is you are the children of the Lord your God. He does a retake on Psalm 23, the anti-Psalm. I'm on my own. No one looks out for me or protects me.

I experience a continual sense of need. Nothing is quite right. I'm always restless. I'm easily frustrated and often disappointed. It is a jungle.

I feel overwhelmed. It's a desert. I'm thirsty. My soul feels broken, twisted, and stuck. I can't fix myself.

I stumble down some dark paths. Still, I insist. I want to do what I want when I want how I want. But life is confusing. Why don't things ever really work out?

I'm haunted by emptiness and futility, the shadows of death. I fear the big hurt and final loss. Death is waiting for me at the end of every road. I'd rather not think about that. I spend my life protecting myself.

Bad things can happen. I find no lasting comfort. I'm alone, facing everything that could hurt me. Are my friends really my friends? Other people use me for their own ends.

I can't really trust anyone. No one has my back. No one is really for me, except me. It's so much all about me. Sometimes it's sickening.

I belong to no one except myself. My cup is never quite full enough. I'm left empty. Disappointment follows me all the days of my life. Will I just be obliterated into nothingness?

Will I be alone forever, homeless, free, falling into void? Sartre said, hell is other people. I have to add, hell is also myself. It's a living death and then I die. And, you know, Paulus says this is how a man feels when he doesn't know God.

The significance of the statement, you are the children of the Lord your God, is so great. It's so important that we know that the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and my staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." So here we find, I believe, a beautiful connection to this great Psalm in Deuteronomy 14.1. You are the children of the Lord your God. You are sons and daughters. You live in his house, and you have all the privileges that he has.

How tragic it is to drink and feed on the things of the world, to live the way that the world lives, and to be just like this man, to be like T.S. Eliot said, a lonely man in a world without meanings. Well, that's not us. And Moses is reminding us of that right at the beginning. This is the interpretive key to this text.

And we really can't go on until we understand that God is setting aside for Himself a holy people, a special treasure. Do you see the words that He uses here? It's astonishing what He's doing. He makes His people a treasure and he treats them better than anyone else would. He gives them the right mourning, he gives them the right food, he gives them the right use of their labors and God is so good because of that.

So he says, because you are my son, don't mourn like the Gentiles mourn. Don't eat like the Gentiles eat, and don't handle your money like the Gentiles handle their money. So this is the interpretive key to the whole text. Now, we begin right after he says, you are the children of the Lord your God, he says, you shall not cut yourselves. And now we move into these mourning customs, the way that people grieve for the dead.

That's the subject matter that he's dealing with here at the end of verse 1 and verse 2. And the first we notice that there's a prohibition. And by the way, each of these sections begins with a prohibition. And this prohibition is you shall not cut yourselves or shave the front of your head for the dead. Why?

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. So the first observation is that it's a prohibition against mourning in the same way that the pagans mourn. Because we are the children of God. We don't do what they do. Now everyone who has ever been born on the earth is born into a certain culture that has a way that they mourn for the dead.

You know how it is here in America. It's changing, by the way. But if you were born in India, in certain parts, it would be different than in other parts of India. If you were born in an Islamic country, it would be different there as well. But we're all born into nations in which there are practices for mourning.

And here, what God is saying is there's a way that you should reject the mourning of the pagans. And he tells us what's wrong with the way they mourn. He says they cut themselves and they shave between their eyes. And so it brings up this pressure of the antithesis, the contrast, the pressure, the pressure of living in a world where there are practices that contradict this. And so I don't know how many, if you've been to very many funerals, I've been to actually a lot of funerals.

And fortunately I've presided over most of the funerals that I've been to. And so we were not cutting ourselves like this. This is not what we did at the funerals. But I will just have to say very plainly, there is a way that pagans mourn that's different than a way that believers mourn. It's very, very different in every way, really.

But he speaks of cutting. And the pagans would cut themselves to deal with their mourning. Cutting For the dead was most likely a means to divert or to release the pain. Men and women would cut themselves in their grieving process. Archaeologists tell us that this is absolutely true.

They were cutting themselves and doing all kinds of things as a result of their mourning. In America, an American Indian woman would chop off her finger if her husband died to transfer the pain and to make a statement about that loss. And so when an unbeliever's father dies, then he knows that he has no other father. But when a believer's father dies, he knows that he has a father. Not only a father in heaven, but he has many fathers in the faith.

The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ gives him many, many fathers. And so we are not stolen from in this matter, even though we might lose one that we love dearly. God has replaced with so much more. And this actually is a common way of dealing with grief even today. It's a common practice among teens, even in our own high schools.

I don't know if you've read the news in the last 10 years, really. And you'll find that Princess Diana would chop herself in her arms because her life was so grievous. She did it because of self-hatred and loathing. Just read her biography, it's in there. Angelina Jolie.

Many famous women cut themselves and have scars on their legs and on their arms and in hidden places because of their grief. And they say why they're doing it. For their grief, they're doing it because of their pain. And this is what the pagans do. Remember the story of the Gadarene demoniac in Mark chapter 5, where this man was running around the countryside terrorizing everyone.

He was hiding in caves. He was cutting himself. He was breaking chains. And finally the Lord Jesus Christ put him in his right mind. He began to be clothed.

I don't believe he ever cut himself again after the Lord Jesus got a hold of him. Because the Lord Jesus does not call his children to cut themselves and destroy their bodies. And so this prohibition against cutting is very, very clear here. Now, this idea, if you read the commentators on this subject, they almost always also include in the discussion, the discussion about cutting and tattoos, making physical markings on the body and tattoos as well. In Leviticus chapter 19 verse 28, there's a very clear prohibition against tattoos.

This is a very common practice. In my lifetime, I've seen just an absolute upsurge of tattooing in the younger generation. When I was a boy, almost no one did it in my high school. Not so today. It's completely different.

And the numbers are really amazing. I read the other day that I believe it was something like 30% of the people who have tattoos want them removed for different reasons. But tattooing is implied in this whole thing, because it's something you do with the body. Leviticus 19.28 says, do not cut your bodies for the dead, or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I'm the Lord your God.

This is why many rabbis will not bury you if you're a Jew if you have a tattoo. Some will, particularly more modern ones. They're really loosening up. But there was a day in Judaism where they would not bury the dead if they had a tattoo on them because they just took this literally and they said no we won't do it. Now so the same rationale is here with cutting the body in mourning.

God is your Father and you do not harm your body. You do not re-figure and make marks on your body. We know what the apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians 6. He said, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.

You were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body. So here Moses is really saying the exact same thing that Paul was saying to the Corinthian Church. Your body is not your own. You can't present your body, you can't handle your body the same way the pagans do.

And when it comes to mourning especially, there your body, soul and spirit, or whatever we're made up of, is there. And we are there to present our bodies before the Lord our God. And he said in 1 Corinthians 3, Don't you know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him God shall destroy. For the temple of God is holy.

Which temple are ye? He's talking about the body, that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And it matters what you do with your body. And so he's making this point, and he talks about not only cutting, He also talks about shaving. So they were shaving themselves different ways to express their grief.

The King James says, don't make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. Do we know exactly how that looked? I don't know if we really do. Here's how one of the commentators explains it, Jameson Fawcett and Brown. You shall not round the corners of your heads.

It seems probable that this fashion had been learned by the Israelites in Egypt, for the ancient Egyptians had their dark locks cropped short or shaved with great nicety, so that what remained of the crown appeared in the form of a circle surrounding the head, while the beard was dressed into a square form. This type of corp had highly idolatrous meanings, and it was adopted with some slight variations by almost all idolaters in ancient times. You know, it should be no news to us that there is a certain idolatry in the way that we handle our hair and the way that we handle these things. You know, whenever you comb your hair, that little idol of self-love pops up. Now, if it overcomes you, then you're obsessed with what you look like, which is why I always tell my daughters don't marry a man who cares too much about his hair.

But that the point here really is that there was a way there was a very specific way that they were expressing a very decorative artistic way that they were expressing themselves in order to make a statement at the funeral. And so they were shaving in a particular manner. And so what he's saying here is that there's a way that Christians mourn. They don't mourn like the pagans. They don't adopt the practices of the pagans around them.

And in this case, pagans cut themselves with their mourning. Now this practice continued on. Even though there's a prohibition, We see it in the days of Jeremiah. When Gedaliah was assassinated, there's a scene the day after his assassination in Jeremiah 41. And it says, On the second day after he killed Gedaliah, and no one knew it, that certain men came from Shechem and Shiloh and from Samaria.

Eighty men with their beards shaved and their clothes torn, having cut themselves with offerings and incense in their hand to bring them to the house of the Lord. This was still going on. The people of God defied this. They said, no, we want to fit in like the pagans. And so they came to the house of the Lord, shaven, having cut themselves and done what the pagans have done and it was a sign of judgment against them because of that and we see this in Jeremiah chapter 47 as well so what do we learn what do we learn from all this first of all we need to avoid picking up the practices that are not allowed in the Bible.

And God does not want us to worship and serve Him by doing things that are forbidden. And that the body is important. And this whole matter of cutting and shaving and tattooing and disfiguring and harming the body in particular ways, especially as they're related to some idolatry are prohibited. Now, there are a number of things we have to consider about this. First of all, the offense that this must have been in Israel.

The offense of non-participation. When you do not participate in the way that the culture wants you to participate, It is an offense and it causes people to hate you and to spurn you. But we are the children of God. It does not matter if we offend. We stick out like sore thumbs.

But whenever you refuse to do something, you cause a tumult. And this is what reformations are all about. It's about people who finally say, I will not live like the Gentiles. I'm not any more righteous than the next guy, for sure. But I must live a certain way that God has defined.

And when you do, then you will find that you will be an offense to the world. You'll be an off scouring of the world as the apostle Paul called it. All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. And you can imagine the persecutions that took place in the promised land when they went in there, when some of the people said, sure, it's just in my body. It's just shaving a piece of hair.

It's nothing. And they fit in quite nicely, but it was not against, it was not in keeping with the word of God. So here's a question for you. How about wearing black at a funeral? Have you ever considered why people wear black at a funeral?

My guess is most people wear black at a funeral out of respect, but they probably haven't really thought it through that well. But why do we wear black at a funeral? And there are a number of answers to that question. Some say it goes back to Egyptian burial practices. And I'm not sure if that's true.

But I do know this. If you're at a Christian funeral, It's a time of hope. It's not a time of blackness. It's not a time of darkness at all. It's light.

It acknowledges the glory of God in all things. And it acknowledges the sweet sovereignty of God in all of his timing and all of his care for his people. So Christian funerals aren't black events at all. They are full of light. Now I'm not saying that you should never wear black to your funeral.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying Be careful how you mourn. And we are a holy people to the Lord our God. And we should be very careful to understand what Paul said to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4. He said, I don't want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you have sorrow as others who have no hope.

And This is the idea. We have hope. When someone dies, we have hope. And that's the difference. If you have hope, you don't need to cut yourself.

You don't need to swoon and throw yourself on the ground. You don't need to throw yourself into a plate glass window like Princess Diana when she's grieved about other things going on in her life. We don't have to live that way at all because we are a people of hope. And then also we honor our bodies, we don't destroy them. It's not lawful for Christians to destroy their bodies or color on them.

Now perhaps many have done that. Of course, the grace of God is there, absolutely. But we have to understand that there is the heart of God on a matter. And the heart of God on this matter is that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that we should not go about modifying it for our own glory or for our own personal preferences or because of some principle of coolness that has gripped our hearts because usually that's why it happens. So we honor our bodies and do not disfigure them, even though there are many pressures to do what the Gentiles do.

And why? Why all this? Because you are the children of the Lord your God. You are a holy people to the Lord your God, as the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth." So we've seen the interpretive key to this. You are the children of the Lord your God.

We've seen this first example of the pressure that the children of Israel would find themselves in, in mourning, and the compromises and the tensions that were going to happen when they were with these people who would mourn a certain way. Then we go to food. And again, this begins in verse 3 and stretches to verse 21, and it begins with a prohibition. You shall not eat any detestable thing. Now, the subject of food and diet is not only a fascinating and controversial subject, but if you want to get rich in America just publish a popular diet book I mean most Christians know more about South Beach and the makers diet in Atkins than they know what scripture says about food it's absolutely true that's true of me for sure And you know doesn't the Bible say buffet your body?

No, no, no, no. It's buffet your body. It's supposed to buffet. What are we supposed to do at the buffet table? Is our God our belly?

Are we gluttons? Do we let our bellies run our lives? Actually, I've been on a very strange diet this week, not even thinking of this text at all, but because a friend thought that I need to go through some strange diet that would cleanse my liver. And so I've been doing this diet. So I've been very much aware of the food that I eat.

And here's what I've realized. In many cases, my God is my belly. And I'm seeking pleasure often in it. And that's what I've learned this week. But here, we have this whole subject of food.

I don't doubt that between us and our church, we have thousands and thousands of dollars of diet books on our shelves. We should probably go sell them all at once on eBay and then have a great meal or something like that. I don't know. So I'll just have to be very honest with you on this text. I found myself in a very steep learning curve in this whole matter of the food laws.

In fact, I've been tapping many of you. What does this mean? I've been banging my head against the wall. I thank you so much for helping me. Many of you have sent me wonderful, very, very helpful, clarifying things to help me think this whole thing through for this sermon.

In fact, there's a book that just came out a while ago, What Would Jesus Eat? And the author says, you want to eat what Jesus ate? And that's the proposition of the book. Well, the main point here in Deuteronomy 14, We have to go back. What's the main point?

Okay? Remember what the main point is? You are the children of the Lord your God. And the prohibitions are about holiness and setting yourself apart for God. And God commands it because he wants a holy people.

And so here in Deuteronomy 14 and Leviticus 11 it's helpful to know that the other premier text on this subject isn't Leviticus 11 and the ceremonial laws are detailed that identified the people of God as holy. So God was revealing here that he wanted to distinguish his people from the rest of the people by the way that they ate and to be careful not to eat what was unclean. And so in Leviticus, for example, Leviticus 20 says, you shall therefore distinguish between clean and unclean animals, between unclean birds and clean. And you shall not make for yourselves abominable by beast or by bird or by any living thing that creeps on the ground which I have separated from you is unclean and you shall be holy to me for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples that you should be mine." So again we come back to this print you know be discerning about what you did understand why why It's because you are a holy people. The food laws were about holiness.

Were about the fact that God's people were going to eat differently in their time. And so it begins with a very strong prohibition and it says that something is detestable. Now whenever God says something is detestable, we really shouldn't blow it off and say, well I really, you know, I really think the Atkins diet has it right. I don't think we, that not, that should not be our thinking. It should not be thinking, well I think this is really better for me.

God has actually said here in this case, we should be... You know, anytime you see anything that goes contrary to all of your thinking in the Word of God. You shouldn't think, well, that's not for me. You should think, oh, Lord, how uninsightful I am, how sinful I must be that I don't embrace and understand this. And because many of the commands of God are like this.

They're so contrary to the way that we think about everything. And so what Moses does is he identifies the clean and the unclean. And by the way, the first reference to clean and unclean in the Bible is found in the flood account where God instructs Moses to take one pair of unclean animals aboard the ark, but seven pairs of clean animals. And this is an example of the clean and the unclean. The unclean not worthy of sacrifice.

Now they were worthy of eating because God had already said you can eat everything But they were not worthy for sacrifice at least the way I understand it and so Deuteronomy 7 Also comes in and speaks of this the relative value of these things now What he starts with our ten with ten good animals in verse 4 These are the animals which you may eat. The ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the mountain goat, the antelope, and the mountain sheep. And you may eat every animal with cloven hooves, having the hoof split into two parts, and that chews the cud among the animals. So these are the ten clean animals that he identifies that are here. And what is common about them is that they split the foot and they chew the cud, those two things.

In Moses' explanation of the ten good animals, that is the common denominator. Chewing the cud and splitting the hoof. Okay, got that? Then he goes to five detestable animals. Nevertheless, those that chew the cud, of those that chew the cud or have cloven hooves, you shall not eat such as these, the camel, the hare, the rock, the hyrax, for they chew the cud, but do not have clove and hooves." They are unclean.

You see the clarity that Moses is working with? He's giving examples. This is that, this is not that. He's being very detailed. Also, the swine is unclean for you because it has cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud.

You shall not eat their flesh, nor touch their dead carcasses." Interesting, One of you, I believe it was Dan, pointed me to John Bunyan, who makes a comment about this whole matter of chewing the cud and having the split hoof. I'll read the section to you in his book, Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners. In chapter 4 of this book, he talks about the lifestyles of the people in his town and how contrary it was to God, and then how God was taking him through a process of convicting him of his sins and beginning to understand that God really had called him to be different. And this is what Bunyan says, I was almost made about this time to see something concerning the beasts that Moses counted clean and unclean. I thought These beasts were types of men, the clean, the types of them that were the people of God, but the unclean, the types that were the children of the wicked one.

Now I read that the clean beasts chewed the cud. That is, thought I, They show us we must feed upon the word of God. They also parted the hoof. I thought that signified that we must, if we would be saved, with the ways of ungodly men." In other words, that we would be different. And also in further reading about them I found that though we did chew the cud as the hare, yet if we walk with claws like a dog or if we did part the hoof with the swine, yet if we did not chew the cut as the sheep, we are still all for that unclean.

For I thought the hare to be the type of those who walk of the Word, yet walk in the ways of sin, and that the swine was like him that parteth with his outward pollution, but still wanteth the Word of faith." In other words, a person who turns away from outward pollution but still wants it in his heart. That's what he's saying. Without which there will be no way of salvation, let a man be ever so devout. Deuteronomy chapter 14. After this I found by reading the word that those that must be glorified with Christ in another world must be called by him here.

Call to the partaking of a share of his Word and righteousness and to the comforts and firstfruits of his Spirit and to a peculiar interest in all those heavenly things which do prepare the soul for that rest and house of the glory which is in heaven above." So what Bunyan is saying, and I believe he's correct, this is a picture, this is a figure. The chewing of the cud and the splitting of the hoof has to do with clean and unclean. And it's an illustration of just like Bunyan says. You can be clean on the outside but not on the inside. You may chew the cud But you don't walk it out.

You may speak of it, but you don't do anything about it with your walking about it with your cloven hoof. That's what Bunyan is saying. That it's a picture. It's a picture of holiness. I would just like to suggest, Here's my understanding of this text.

It is everything that Bunyan just said it was. That it's a figure of the clean and the unclean. And also, it is a figure of this idea that you are the children of God. That God commands you to eat certain things and you don't know why, he just tells you to do it. And he told Israel to eat this way.

And their attitude ought to be, well God said it, I believe it, I'm gonna do it. That's their attitude. They don't have to understand all the medical reasons. You don't have to go do a study, a food study, to understand whether you should obey this or not, if you were in Israel at this time. Of course, I believe this is ceremonial law.

We'll get to that later. And it's not really binding today. But what I do understand with clarity, and what comes out in this text with crystal clarity, is that this is about holiness. It's about a people set apart for God, that they mourn differently and they eat differently because there are different but there are some who only chew the cud but they don't have a cloven hoof walking it out or vice versa and so so here here we find this this this amazing passage of Scripture so after these five detestable animals he talks about marine animals in verses 9 and 10. These you may eat of all that are in the waters that you may eat that have fins and scales.

That's it. Okay, Fins and scales. And whatever does not have fins and scales, you shall not eat. It's unclean. So the bottom fishers, you know what?

Sea life and fresh water life doesn't have fins and scales. That's what he's saying. And then he goes to birds in verses 11 to 18. All the clean birds you may eat, but those that you may not eat, the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, the red kite, the falcon, and the kite after their kinds, every raven after its kind, the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the seagull, and the hawk after their kind, the little owl, the screech owl, the white owl, the jackdaw, the carrion vulture, the fisher owl, the stork, the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat. Now, most of these seem to be scavenger animals.

But obviously, he's making a gradation here, and he's saying, don't eat those. And then he speaks of insects in verses 19 and 20. Now I don't know how many of you have eaten insects in the last couple of weeks. This probably isn't the law that is going to concern you that much. You just be as happy that God would restrict the eating of all insects.

But not God, he is smarter than you are and so he says you can eat every creeping thing that flies. No, I know, everything that flies is unclean for you. They shall not be eaten. You may eat all clean birds. Now, if you go to Leviticus 11, you'll get some more detail on that.

And then he says lastly, anything already dead you can't eat. He says verse 21, you shall not give anything that dies of itself, you may give it to the alien who is within your gates that he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." So he's saying don't eat animals that are already dead because they are unclean to you. But they must not be inherently unclean because you're able to give them to somebody else. You're able to give them to a foreigner.

If it was sin, do you think God would be commanding you to cause your brother to sin by giving him something sinful. I just don't believe so. But nothing that is already dead. Why? He doesn't tell us why.

He just, except for this, you are the children of the Lord your God. You don't eat the dead animal because you're different. You may not have 50 explanations for it when people ask you. You just have this explanation that God has said it. And there's probably a health element in all of these things.

I mean, you're like like Jonathan Seid said to me, you know, would you really want to eat a vulture? You want to eat the, you want to eat some of these carry-on scavengers? Is that what you want to do? Well, you know, I haven't, I haven't gone to anybody's house and been offered up vulture for dinner ever in my life. I think there's a reason for it.

People kind of shy away. There's something wrong with eating a vulture. Now, if you're lost on a desert island and one lands, I think you're going to try to tackle him and eat him as quick as you can. But at the same time, it's not the same kind. Of course, it's not as good as grass-fed beef.

We all know that. But there probably is a health element, because there are animals on the list that seem to be fairly safe and some that kind of don't seem safe at all right like the vulture types so so anything anything not dead now there are there are a number of what now that we've gotten through you know the text I just like to sort of try to sort some of this out, if we can. And I'd like to start by just popping up some texts that I don't think have anything to do with this, that I have often in the past thought they did, but I don't think they do now. Romans 14, Romans 14, 1 through 4, where he says that, let not him, Romans 14, 2, For one believes that he may eat all things, that he who is weak eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat.

OK. So what's that about? I don't believe that text is about this. Someone pointed this out a week or two ago. This is really about meat sacrifice to idols.

It's not about the ceremonial law of food laws. It was about meat sacrifice to idols. Actually, meat sacrifice to idols was clean meat. It was on the good list here, okay? So that's a different subject.

And then Matthew 15, when the disciples were not washing their hands and the Pharisees were chiding them for it. They rebuked the disciples for not washing their hands. And he talks about what is clean and what is not clean, he says, he says, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man. Then his disciples came to him and said, do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? But he answered and said, every plant which my heavenly father has not planted will be uprooted.

Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And then he goes and says, the things that defile a man are the things that are in the heart. I don't think this text has to do with the ceremonial food loss. Here's some text that I think do have to do with it though.

In Genesis 1 2, God says that all things are good. So God created great creatures and every living thing that moves, which the waters abounded according to their kind, every winged bird according to their kind, and God saw that it was good. In verse 25, and God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to their kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. So at the beginning of creation, here's what we learn about animals. They're all okay to eat.

Though they are not in the same category as these that we've just read about that God has declared all animals good for food in Genesis chapter 1. Then again in Genesis 9 we run into a very similar thought where God did not restrict Noah from any animal or plant in Genesis 9 through 3. He said, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth and all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things even as the green herbs." This is why I believe that what we just talked about in Deuteronomy 14 is the ceremonial law, and that it doesn't survive today.

That's my perspective. But there's more than that. Well, we know that Noah was a righteous man. He was perfect in his generation. He was not sinning when he ate all the things that came to him.

In Acts chapter 10, God declares the unclean to be clean. This is another text that I think helps us. When Peter has a vision, Peter actually was wrong on the matter of the law, and he had to be rebuked for it. But he had a vision, and this recorded in Acts 10, 13. And a voice came down to him, rise Peter, kill and eat.

But Peter said, no Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And he was talking about Deuteronomy 14. That's what he was talking about. And Leviticus 11. And a voice spoke to him again a second time, what God has cleansed you must not call common.

And this was done three times. Now what I believe that God was saying to Peter was this, the food is really not unclean and neither are the Gentiles, both. And so he's saying eat. And then we find that these people would eat with gentiles. And I believe they were eating unclean things from time to time.

Did they do it all the time? I don't know. I doubt it. I actually doubt it. But I believe their consciences were moved by this text, even though they understood that in their substance, those foods were not unclean, but they were ceremonially unclean.

In 1st Timothy chapter 4, we find again the same idea that food is clean for authorized use. So in the gospel, the ceremonial law is repealed and we read in 1st Timothy 4, for every creature of God is good, and nothing now to be refused, or called common and unclean. I don't know, I just think that's very clear and I know that there's debate and disagreement about this, but I think that the statement of 1 Timothy 4, 4 really summarizes at least how I understand all this. So we begin in Genesis where God says all things are good. We short circuit to Noah where God says eat everything and then we find the ceremonial law put in place here.

So how do we evaluate this? Here's one thing we need to ask regarding this thing. Are there sanctions? Are there punishments listed for this? We know the punishments for being a false prophet.

We know that there are various punishments for different sins. But what are the sanctions listed here? With murder, there's a very specific punishment. For the food laws, I see one punishment. And that is the punishment from the third commandment you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain that's just that's just maybe there are more maybe you can help help us with this but I don't see specific sanctions against this except perhaps that one.

Now here's some applications. These were ceremonial laws and not binding today. If you read the second line of Baptist confession, here's what you will get. Besides this law called only moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel ceremonial laws containing several typical ordinances. In other words, ordinances that were types, and this is one of them, I believe.

Partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, His actions, His sufferings, His benefits, and partly holding forth to diverse instructions of moral duties, all which the ceremonial laws being appointed only to the time of reformation are by Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, the only lawgiver who is furnished with power from the Father, for that end abrogated and taken away." So there are certain things in the ceremonial law that prefigure Christ, that tell something of the gospel. All of them are fulfilled in Christ. Think about how Christ fulfills all of the food laws that are there. I am the bread of life. You will have water that shall never stop flowing.

I mean, God, I believe that many of these are fulfilled in Christ. So the first, my understanding of this is that these are ceremonial laws not binding today. Secondly, don't despise God's laws. Don't make that mean, I care nothing about this. Don't make that mean, I just blow by this.

Did God say, God said these things for a reason and I don't think he said then that we should just totally disregard them and despise them at all. They may not make sense to us, They may limit the range of our behavior, but they are all good. And there's, you know, here's what one brother said to me, and I really want all of us to hear this. There is no harm at all in obeying every one of the food laws. There's no harm in it at all.

Does anyone lose anything by obeying the food laws? Well, only if they think it makes them more righteous. Then they would lose a lot. If they thought it made them holier before God, then that would be a terrible misunderstanding of it. But there is, I would just like to suggest, there is great value to the soul of man to look at that and say, Lord, you said that perhaps it's passed away.

But I desire to be a living picture of everything that you've said. And even though I don't understand all of it, I desire to have it shake me and make me and mold me. I think that we should look at these food laws that way. And first of all, they should remind us of the holiness aspect. You are the children of the Lord your God.

And the children of the Lord God eat differently. They don't just eat like everyone else. Have you ever been embarrassed because you didn't eat or drink something in someone's presence because you were a Christian? I have. I've been belittled at times for that.

But we have to understand the meaning of this is that we are the children of the Lord our God and we eat differently. We should eat differently. You know we shouldn't eat too much and be gluttonous like so many of those around us and we should not eat things that would harm us and our hearts should be tender to those things. And so we should not despise God's laws. That's the second application.

The first was, I believe these are ceremonial. Number two, don't despise them. Thirdly, Whenever you eat food, there is a reminder of the Gospel. Every time you eat food, there's a reminder of the Gospel. We could talk about this really for a long time.

I am the bread of life. There is much regarding food. We take a meal together. We take the Lord's table every week. There's food involved in the celebrations of the people of God.

They were breaking bread from house to house. We have feasts together. It's good for the people of God to eat. It reminds us of the abundance of salvation, the goodness of God, that He's given us these amazing things to sustain us and give us energy. But we shouldn't abuse it.

We should enjoy it. Absolutely we should enjoy it. We shouldn't just think, well, I'm going to make the drabbest, ugliest food I possibly can. No, not at all. But we should keep it in its proper context.

Is it possible that God has given us food to remind us of the gospel? That He is the bread of life. That every time we take a bite of food, we should give thanks to God for His being the bread of life. And He has told His people how to eat. They should eat a certain way.

They should chew the cud, yes, but they should walk it out as well. And there's, It's a wonderful way to see a picture of the Gospel and to really remind yourself of the Fatherhood of God, that you are the children of God. This is perhaps why we should always give thanks for our food, to remind ourselves of the fatherhood of God, that we are separated under the Lord our God, and that we are given the joy to eat. And we should enjoy it with all of our hearts, but why? Because we have a provider who's in heaven.

Food should remind us of the gospel. And when God told the children of Israel, don't eat this but eat that, I believe he was helping them to understand how differently they were to see themselves in the world and that they were actually to take it down to a minuscule level of actual eating. It goes down to the deepest parts of life, what you do every day. So that's the third application. Now, let me give you a way that one man in our church sees this.

And I just felt this was an appropriate way to apply this, even though you may not agree with it or feel a need to apply it this way. He said this, when given the opportunity to choose what I eat, I will to the best of my ability choose what God choose that God has beforehand declared clean. No hurt will be caused by this personal observance. If on the other hand I am not given the opportunity to choose what I will eat, I will be thankful to God and to my host for the meal which has been provided for me. My observance of the law is no longer binding, in no way makes me holier or more righteous than those who do not observe it." Now this brother is probably like many, you know, many, not sure if this is ceremonial or moral or binding or not, But at least if you don't know for sure in your heart and are not convinced, then at least do with all of your heart to see the beauty of it and the spirit of it.

And don't rail against it. And don't throw it off like a rebellious baby. But say, no, God has said this for a reason. And then, and then fifthly, And we've said this a number of times, but I want to just bring it down to this again. The food laws show us that there are clean and there are unclean.

That there is light and there is darkness. There are the sheep and there are the goats. And we're brought back to the binary view of the world that God has. That there are the saved and the unsaved. This text should help us.

This text should break our hearts for the lost in this world. This text should help us remember those who do not have God in this world. It should help us to remember those who mourn in a way that destroys them. It should remind us of those whose hearts are broken because they don't have the laws of God to protect them and care for them. It really, it should send us into the streets.

It should send us into our own neighborhood. It should help us pick up the phone. It should help us get in our car and drive somewhere and speak with someone who is unclean before God. Because maybe they chew the cud, but don't spread the hoof. Or maybe they are just completely lost in every way but this should send us this should send us into the world this this passage of scripture, because this law shows us who are the clean and the unclean.

And then finally, Christ fulfills everything written in this text. From the laws about mourning, he says, I will never leave you or forsake you to those who feel that they are without health and comfort in this world at the loss of a loved one. He becomes your provider. He becomes the one who feeds you, and He only feeds you good food. Christ fulfills everything written in this chapter of Scripture.

And so he's our only comforter in times of loss, and he is our only cleanness in our uncleanness. And he's the bread of life in the time of our impoverishment. And so we leave this text, I pray, with the same heart that David had, as the deer pants for the water brooks. So my soul pants for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

And as newborn babes long for the pure milk of the Word. God has given us food. And I believe he's given us this text to help us evaluate many things about our lives, all the way from our gluttony to the way that we what we feed into our souls by the word of God. Would you pray with me? Lord, I thank you for this reminder of your beauty, your goodness, your fatherhood, how you are a tender-hearted father who cares for his children so much better than the devil.

Oh Lord, I pray that you would give a great measure of understanding to all of us that we would find ourselves only under your care and obeying your laws. In Jesus' name, Amen.