The Sin of Shellfish-ness
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · August 20, 2023 · Twisted Scriptures series
Jeremy MacDonald looks at Leviticus 11 and the Old Testament laws on shellfish and mixed fabric, using Acts 15 and Matthew 5 to show how Jesus fulfills the law. He invites us to ask what shapes our decisions and to follow God's wisdom.
More from Jeremy MacDonald · The Twisted Scriptures series
Topics: Faith, Identity, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:01] Is the Bible true? And should you do what it says? Is the Bible true? And should you do what it says? It's a reasonable question, in fact. And when I was growing up, I grew up attending church with my family. And so in a lot of ways it was kind of the Sunday school question, the Sunday school question that you would propose to children and that you would kind of teach them ways to respond to it. Is the Bible true? And should you do what it says? But what's going on in that particular question is maybe just a little bit bigger than even the question kind of sounds like. Like when I was growing up, the reason that you might ask that question or that you might wrestle through the implications of it is perhaps a little bit more like this. And that's that, that's who or what is shaping your decisions and your opinions. And so this is a level playing field for all of us.
[0:56] No matter where you're at in your journey, no matter what you believe about the Bible or about church or about faith, who or what is shaping your decisions and opinions is a question that you should wrestle with throughout your life at different stages as your life changes. But this big question, and again, for me it was, it was real because it was the one growing up that I would wrestle with. And then as I grew into different stages of development as an adolescent, as a young adult, you know, going off to school and being in different environments, moving, all that kind of stuff, trying to wrestle with this bigger question that I think as Christians, if you call yourself a Christian, you should think about: is the Bible true and should you do what it says? And when you ask that question, in terms of like that Sunday school type of question, and again, Sunday school, if you didn't realize, again, when I was growing up, that was what we described. You know, you go together with all the kids and you have a Sunday school experience.
[1:49] It's usually at a church, you know, building on a Sunday. And so there would be Sunday school answers that sometimes try to articulate a response or at least a framework for understanding. And this is what it would kind of look like. For example, the Bible, first off, is the best book there is. And maybe for you, especially if you've been a person of faith for any length of time, this kind of rings true in your mind. The Bible is the absolute best book that there is. So you kinda hold onto that. Number two is this, that the Bible gives you instructions for life. And for a lot of people that has been something that they would carry with them. And you know, there is this old, and it's a little bit cheesy, but this is what we are wrestling with and dealing with. But the Bible is an acronym, you know, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. There's a lot of problems with that acronym, but the principle is that the Bible is this book full of instructions for our lives.
[2:42] So there's kind of the sense that that maybe is an answer. And that may is something that we wrestle with. The third thing that often we hear is that every Bible verse is true. Every Bible verse, no matter where you open up in the Scriptures, every single one is true. And then the last thing that oftentimes, and that for me growing up, this was something that I kind of internalized, is that the Bible of course is God's Word. And so for each and every one of those statements, as I would internalize those, this is my story. It doesn't have to be your story. As I internalized those, I would then reach different points in my life where I'd begin to ask questions about the Scriptures and about my faith at times, even try to deconstruct a little bit about what I believed. And usually it came to a head around, like, really maybe not hot button topics, but around particular things that became really challenging. For example, the one that we want to talk about here today and this morning is the sin of shell. The sin of shell. It's found in Leviticus.
[3:40] And in case you hadn't heard, and in case you hadn't seen, this is a fascinating one, one that I think is worth kind of digging in and to understand a little bit more. We find it in Leviticus 11: "But you must never eat animals from the sea or from rivers that do not have both fins and scales. They are detestable to you." That is the sin of shellfishness. That is the mediocre amount of laughs I was expecting. Thank you. For anybody that wasn't born an English speaker, it is a bit, it is shellfish is what it's talking about, shellfishness. So anyways, this might be the only laugh I get today, so I'm just gonna rest in it. I appreciate it. But with all honesty, The sin of eating shellfish, this idea that in Leviticus there's this clear instruction not to eat shellfish. What do we do with that? Like, legitimately, I have two frozen lobster in my freezer right now.
[4:41] Is that sin waiting to happen? And if you didn't know, if you cook lobster, boil it, and then freeze it, it's really nice, you thaw it and then you can still crack it open. Great tip. If you don't learn anything today, just learn that you can freeze cooked lobster in that way. It works out wonderfully. Keep it in the shell. Okay, but the point being, what do we do with that particular passage of Scripture? Like, in all honesty, this is serious. We don't actually follow through on that one. In fact, there's all sorts of these things that we find in the Christian Scriptures that Christians don't actually follow through on. For example, in Leviticus, again, Leviticus 19, this one, "Do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of thread." What do we do with that? Like, are we gonna check out the door and check tags? Like, I don't know.
[5:27] What's the responsibility in light of the fact that that's an honest to goodness commandment? And in some ways you think, well, maybe it's, maybe it's just a suggestion. Maybe it's an idea, maybe it's a, well, to be honest, in Leviticus 19, in that same chapter, in the Bible, we read this about these commandments, the voice of the Lord, "You must be careful to keep all of My decrees and regulations by putting them into practice. I am the Lord." What do we do with that? You know, these laws, they come from this section of the Bible, the Old Testament, in which we find that there's like 613 different laws. Actually, maybe not different, 'cause some of them are repeats or some of them are explanations, but there's 613 laws.
[6:13] And so for people that are wondering, like, man, what is this whole thing about the faith of Christians? You know, you open into parts of the Bible and it's very confusing, and obviously we don't actually follow many of them, but to just throw them all out. Like, some people are like, well, we just throw out some. And you're like, okay, well, which ones do you throw out? Because in that same section, like there's, there's parts of the law that are actually really kind of, at least from our perspective here in the, you know, this century, probably pretty helpful. In fact, this one, you know, "Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God." Like, that's a pretty good commandment. You would think we shouldn't throw that one out and we should apply it. And then there's even, you know, another one, and then kind of this bigger one that we often reference as being like formational for society today, the 10 Commandments, this section of the Old Testament that, you know, sometimes people actually put on display in, like, courthouses, usually in the US. This idea that this law code, these 10 in particular, were foundational for society.
[7:24] And so we read, I mean, if we did a quiz, this is the funny part, if we did a quiz on the 10 Commandments, although lots of people would say, "Yeah, those are really important, we should do them," hardly anybody can actually rhyme off all 10 of the commandments. But the one that you would probably get if I said, "Hey, do you know some of the 10 Commandments?" You might say, from Deuteronomy 5, this one, "You must not steal." Seems like a good law. But what do we do with all of them? And how do we rectify and connect the dots? You know? And when we started into this series, I actually emailed a number of you from the church here, and I wanted to know, like, "Hey, what do you wrestle with when you think about the Scriptures? What's confusing, what's difficult to interpret and understand?" And for some of you, this kind of very thing is something that you let me know about. You said this idea of the Old Testament is seemingly so different than the New Testament.
[8:10] Like, it's almost like there's two different stories that we get in this one particular book. And so the Old Testament God seems so different and challenging to understand, and yet the New Testament one seems so much more familiar. And so maybe there's just this sense that one is completely different than the other, and we follow the one and we avoid the other. But the problem for all of us with that, for anybody that wants to follow the New Testament God, is that in the New Testament we have this clarification about Jesus Christ of Nazareth and His connection to the God of the Old Testament. In fact, the writer of Hebrews, right at the very beginning, explains it this way, in a really succinct kinda way. It says, the Son Jesus radiates God's own glory. The God of the Old Testament, the same God that the New Testament writers would understand and believe in and follow, radiate God's own glory and expresses the very character of God. Well, if that's the case, then we've got this challenge because we've got 613 very unique and different laws to contend with that are a part of our book.
[9:19] And so it's no wonder that we end up with people and maybe this is your story, like maybe you're like, yeah, that's the ridiculous part of this space. That's why I don't believe it. I'm here because I have to be, somebody dragged me here, it's how I get free rent or free lunch, whatever the reason that you're here, the cute girl is here, it doesn't matter, you're here, but you've got a sense of like, this thing doesn't quite match up. Like there's a lot of hypocrisy about what Christians follow. And so you're here and that's part of the reason why, is this very issue. Or maybe for some of you, you know, you've actually had a challenge with this for years, but you've not told anybody because you just come and you do this faith thing and do the church thing and it works. But like deep down inside, if somebody ever pressed you, it'd be like, yeah, this doesn't make a lot of sense. And so you would resonate with the words of A. A. Milne, who last century wrote basically an idea of, like, encompassing this whole struggle.
[10:05] And A. A. Milne you would know from his other writings, the Winnie, Winnie the Pooh. Some of you know Winnie the Pooh. Okay, very good. So this is what A. A. Milne said, a little different tone than writing about Winnie the Pooh. But you know, people are complex. So, the Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief, call it what you will, than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter attractions of cinema, motor, bicycle and golf course. If it was today, it'd be like TikTok accounts or, you know, other things, but, you know, last century. And so, you know, makes sense. That was what we would assume would be the moral things that are drawing people away from church. But in lots of ways, like that's the truth. This idea of the Old Testament, like what do we do with it?
[10:52] And so at least throughout my journey, I don't know about yours, but throughout my journey as somebody that grew up in church, this has become like an honest wrestle and an issue of questioning and wondering because it seems like it doesn't all line up. But the fortunate thing is that if we would be so willing to actually step out and be a little bit concerned, if we'd be willing to step out and be a little bit curious about why, if we might actually take our disbelief and turn it into action and exploration and action, we might actually arrive at an answer or at least a response or at least maybe a bit more of an understanding. But oftentimes what happens, and this is the challenge that you face, this is the issue that you will ultimately wrestle with, is that when you have a crisis of faith or when you have concerns about this faith, or when you have things that you don't fully understand about this particular faith, if you just let that be the thing that dismantles everything and you walk away without ever weighing the validity of your wrestling, I think you're gonna miss out on so much. And so instead, we should have doubts, we should have questions, but we should use those to inspire us to take action.
[12:09] And so also last century, another children's book author, C.S. Lewis, wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and had a faith that he spoke at length about, and he articulates kind of exactly what I think should be the idea for each and every one of us, the action that we might all take. And this is what C.S. Lewis wrote. And again, what might actually be the thing that inspires all of us. He says this, he says theology, theology being the study of God, the study of this God, the understanding. And if we can expand the definition a little bit just to understand what Christians actually believe, what I actually believe, what you might actually believe, the understanding and digging in about our faith, the theology is actually really practical, really, really practical.
[12:55] Because when you think about the idea of the Old Testament law and that the Old Testament might be the thing that causes people to exit, that's a pretty practical thing. In fact, these laws are exceptionally practical. That's part of the challenge. But I think perhaps for each and every one of us, the thing that has happened is less about us reading the Old Testament and it being confusing, but instead us bringing our own challenges and misconceptions. And maybe it's actually us, maybe it's actually you or the talker that you follow that twists the scriptures, that the scriptures themselves aren't actually twisted.
[13:41] But that as readers when we approach some of these texts, we are the ones that twist them and our understanding, and to untwist them and understand what's actually going on is gonna require us to take a step back and realize that theology is intensely practical. The understanding of what we actually believe is importantly practical, especially now. C.S. Lewis says in the old days, I mean this is even last century, which is wild to think about, but he would say in the old days when there was less education and discussion, perhaps it was possible to get on with a very few simple ideas about God. But it is not so now. And even less so now. Here's why, he goes on, everyone reads, which I mean now is maybe not exactly the case, but everyone watches reels on Instagram.
[14:28] Everyone hears things discussed, which is honestly sometimes where, you know, the ideas get formulated in the midst of social media. For lots of you, consequentially, if you do not listen to a theology, a deepening and understanding of reading and wrestling with things, if you don't listen to that, that will not mean that you have no ideas about God. But instead it's much different. It means that you'll have a lot, lot of wrong ones, bad, muddled, out-of-date ideas for a great, many of the ideas about God, which are trotted out as novelties today and even to this day. Big questions, important questions, significant ones, but trotted out as if there are novelties today. The actual issue is that this simply the ones that real theologians tried centuries ago and rejected.
[15:16] And that's not to belittle the challenges or the questions or the things that you wrestle about and wonder about when it comes to faith. It's not to belittle it at all. It's to actually just give you a sense of perhaps hopefulness that other people have thought about this very thing. Why do bad things happen to good people? That's not a new question. Why is there evil and suffering in the world? That's not a new question. For centuries, folks have thought about this, written hundreds of books on it. And the upside is that if we are honest to goodness able to bring our questions and our doubts and our wrestlings into community, we can discover those conversations in the way that people have been thinking about these things for hundreds and even thousands of years. And so for us and for our time today, we want to take a few moments to think thoughtfully about this Old Testament law. Now when I'm wrestling with things like this, I don't just go in myself and think, well, what do I think about it? Because here's the truth, I'm not that smart.
[16:18] I'm not that wise. I don't really know a lot of things. I know that might be a little bit awkward to say, 'cause here I am trying to tell you things, but the point is that I don't actually know inherently a lot of the answers to the questions that we'll wrestle with together. But I know how to find people who have. And so what I hope to do is actually bring to you the wisdom of others and understanding and wrestling with some of these big questions. But the great news is that that means you don't always have to wait for somebody on this platform to wrestle with a question out loud for everybody in the room. You can actually discover the many people, real theologians who have tried and wrestled with these very questions. Now, one of the groups that I would love to highlight for you, if you've not heard of them before, is a group called the Bible Project.
[17:03] The Bible Project are fascinating. There's this organization that tries to help make the Bible as accessible as possible for modern readers. They've got a free YouTube channel, they got podcasts. In fact, my small group that I'm in, we wrestle with one of their podcasts each week when we gather together. And when you have big questions, you can go to their resources and actually find, oftentimes they've taken from the ideas of other theologians and invited a wide range of people who do the deep dives on this. I know one of their theologians, he's a good friend of mine and it's fascinating the amount of work that goes into each and every one of their resources. And so I wanna show you just a two and a half minute video clip where they are going to talk a little bit about what we do with all of these Old Testament laws that are in the Christian Bible. Why are they there? What's the point of them and what does it mean for us? And it's gonna spark the rest of our conversation today.
[17:52] So it's two and a half minutes. We're gonna watch the screen. Take a look right now, looking a look at and seeing more of their resources for sure. I wanna draw out a couple of lines from that video 'cause there's a lot certainly packed into it. So take a look at this. So they, you know, if I could quote them just from what you just watched, the Bible is not a behavioral manual with a complete list of what to do and not to do to make God happy. The Bible's an epic narrative, but in the story, God does actually tell people what to do. And so, even just as a conceptual idea to recognize and realize everything in our culture, every idea, behavior, decision that you can make, it's not always gonna be explicitly articulated one way or the other in the Scripture. It's not a complete list, but it does give us a sense of God's wisdom and that we can take God's wisdom and we can apply that into our lives today. And that's actually been the work of many folks from the time of the original law, the rabbis for the Jewish people. You know, Christians over the centuries have tried to find ways to bring God's law into our world each and every single day. The friends of the Bible Project, they go on to say this, they say many of these laws are ancient ritual symbols that set Israel apart.
[18:54] That is that they made them holy. So some laws made Israel actually distinct from neighboring nations. And this is kind of the explanation that's gonna be helpful to kind of articulating and understanding some of these laws, not all of them, but some of them, that the intentionality was that God wanted to actually create a people group that was distinct from other nations so that His people could become a blessing to others, but that folks would understand and know who those people are by the things that made them distinct. But other laws, other laws kept them away from things that in their culture perhaps symbolize death, disease and moral corruption. So there's this law about not getting tattoos. And some people, I know that are Christians have gotten a tattoo with that law from the Old Testament that says, "Don't get tattoos." But it's because the actual interpretation of that law is to recognize that tattoos in those days were actually dramatically different than tattoos today.
[19:42] And so the law itself explicitly about that is about something perhaps different than we necessarily realize on first pass. And so for the, these folks that are making these videos, what they're trying to do is explain that when we read law, there's different categories. And for them, here's a few that they would put, they would say like, there's holiness laws, there's sacrificial laws, justice laws, sacred time laws. Other people have categorized those 613 laws in a couple of different ways. They would say that, for example, that there's ceremonial laws, laws to do with the nation of Israel and their sacrificial systems. So that's a lot of them in the temple. For others it's about the civil law, about being the nation and actually ruling as a nation, what are their laws. We have laws about, you know, wearing your seatbelt and not speeding. They had to have laws as a nation. And so there's some of those baked in. And then there's also these moral laws. The moral laws being things that perhaps are easy to understand and carry through to today because of the morality that it's inviting us to understand.
[20:35] Now, the categories don't necessarily matter as much as the idea behind them, and this is what we should carry forward. And this is what they'll say later on in that video, that each category expresses a core ideal of God's wisdom. And the laws show how those ideals should be applied in the culture of ancient Israel. So they're actually really specific. When we read the Old Testament laws, we're reading a group of commandments given to a particular people at a particular time. And so for what they would say, and what I think is very true. So when followers of Jesus, those of us who are, you know, today wanting to follow Jesus, we're not Jews. Maybe some of you are, but I'm not a Jew, but I'm a follower of Jesus. And so when I read these scriptures, I'm a follower of Jesus and I read them today, I have to remember that they were given to Israel in their ancient cultural setting. You couldn't follow many of them if you tried.
[21:28] But that doesn't mean that they're not applicable. Instead, what you can do is see God's wisdom in the laws and trust that God's Spirit can guide you to follow that wisdom as you learn to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. And the reason that they write about that is because for the very beginning of the Jesus movement was when Jesus was on the earth giving instruction as a rabbi to His followers. It was a very common thing to wrestle with. Even in those days, there's all of these laws, what is the heart behind them? Can you sum them up? And so rabbis for centuries, even since then, and certainly back then, rabbis would would take the law and all of them and try to help people understand the heart behind them. If you could boil them down, how would you articulate the law of God to people?
[22:19] And so Jesus Himself, as a first century rabbi, was asked, "Teacher," by, this is by a Pharisee actually. And he was trying to trap Jesus a little bit. So the heart behind the question wasn't necessarily as hopefully open as we might ask today, "Which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses," the law of Moses being what we're reading from. And Jesus would give an answer, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind." Now the person asking the question was looking for like, "Hey, can you sum it all up?" And Jesus does this odd thing where He gives two answers to the, you know, the single question. And for some reason for Jesus, these things are intricately tied together that our love for God is actually completely tied to our love for our neighbor. 'Cause He says, "This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important.
[23:10] Love your neighbor as yourself." And if there was any confusion as to what Jesus was doing here, He actually explains it right after. He says, "The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments." Everything from God's wisdom is based around these two commandments. Now it doesn't answer the question yet, why or why not shellfish, we're gonna get there, but it's setting up and helping you understand a little bit of the heart behind all of these things. Now, I'm not gonna take a lot of time on this next slide, but I want you to know that even when you look at some of the other 613, there's a lot that are really challenging to understand and why God would've allowed some things to happen in the Old Testament. And so again, just to kind of maybe answer for a few of you this idea of what was going on in the Old Testament, I wanna make a few suggestions on what this ancient covenant that God had made with the Israelites, what it actually did for the people of that day.
[24:09] Because if you read some of the other laws, you might wonder what was actually going on back then. And this law was actually one of the most progressive things that was for the benefit of people. And so this is just to lob this out here, there's a few things for you before we get back to, you know, what we're actually talking about. So this ancient covenant, if you look at this ancient law, I just wanna let you know, just these four things represented this moral and civil code that described inherent dignity to every person. And that wasn't the case for every culture. And there was something spectacular going on that the Israelites, the Jews, they were meant to be a blessing to the people that they were meant to bring this idea, to bless the nations and to change the world. The covenant included a sexual ethic that protected the weak and the vulnerable and a culture in an area where that wasn't the case. Thirdly, the covenant viewed humanity as the pinnacle of creation because every person is made in God's image. And that was, again, something so odd in a culture that often would just assume beyond the Israelites that might is right, if you are the strongest, you get to rule and control.
[25:12] And there was something different going on with this ancient rule and this ancient covenant: women, servants, foreigners, children, all fared better under the Hebrew law than did their counterparts in the surrounding nations. Take those four ideas as it may as you wrestle and feel free to dig a little bit deeper. But our big question for today is, why no shellfish or mixed fabric for them, the Israelites? And then does it apply today? Those are the two big questions we're wrestling with. So why did God add those two particular laws? Why was that a part of the story of ancient Israel? Here's a couple possibilities, but the truth is we don't fully know and understand and that's okay. We have some ideas on what it might've meant. But to be honest, ultimately it was a different culture in a different season, in a different time. And God was doing something with those people, with that ancient law code. But there could be an idea number one, that at least in terms of the shellfish, there was some health reasons and some of the ideas, I know we talked about bacon today, I like bacon.
[26:10] But there was also this law about pork and, And for pork and for shellfish there, there's potentially something there where for those meats versus others, it was, it's incredibly important that you cook them really, really well, lest you, you know, inherit some bacterial infection. I don't fully understand how it all works, but that there is, you know, things that can make you sick if you're not careful in terms of your preparations for some of these foods. So there's a possibility, I'm not saying that's exactly it, but there's a possibility that God was actually offering some ideas on how to keep people healthy with refraining from, because you can't eat raw shrimp is the idea, in raw lobster. You shouldn't if you do. Okay? So, health reasons, possibility, but probably a little bit more realistic. And certainly for the mixed fabric idea is this idea that there's distinction and separation. That for, again, like we kind of said that there was a sense that the Israelites were meant to be distinct from the other nations. And so there, there are idea of their culture to separate out so people could understand, this is the people of the God of Israel.
[27:07] These are things that would help make that distinction. And then ultimately it kind of became their Jewish identity. Now that's perhaps the reason for that in the Old Testament. The question on, okay, what does that mean for us today? It's actually answered by the early church. In fact, what happened was, is a group of Christians, just like we gather here today, a group of Christians were gathering together in the first century after Jesus's resurrection. And they were like, what are we supposed to do with all these things? And they legitimately were asking that question. We have it all recorded in the book of Acts. And this interaction is really helpful for us 'cause it answers our very question. So in Acts 15, some of the believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and in the group setting because they were Jews themselves and because they believed so strongly in that old law and had followed that old law as Jews for so long in this mixed group category where there were now people that were born a Jew and Israelite, and then these folks that had come from other cultures and had chosen to put their faith and trust in Jesus.
[28:04] They were mixing around and these particular people from the sect of the Pharisees stood up and they said, "Hey, the Gentile converts, of which most of us are Gentile converts, were not born of, you know, the line of Israel. And for if you, if that's your case, you are in a different setting, but most of us would be affiliated as Gentiles. The Gentile converts must be circumcised and required to follow the law of Moses." Now if you didn't realize, this is a very big question with a very significant implications hanging on the balance of how they would wrestle with that for each and every one of you. And I'm sure every Gentile guy sitting in the room thought, "Oh, I hope this goes the way I want it to go because I'm committed. But that's a big commitment at this point in my life."
[28:53] But even beyond that, the fact that there were all of these extra laws, it's a big commitment. So what happened was the apostles and the elders met together to resolve this very issue. The people that launched the church, Peter and Paul, and even the brother of Jesus Himself, James, they stood up and they shared stories of what God was doing amongst the Gentiles. They probably talked and they knew about the words of Jesus and they recognized that this was a massive question. And so together in that room, in that very, that council at Jerusalem, they decided based on their understanding of their risen Savior Jesus and what He had commanded them to do, they decided and articulated what the responsibility of us today would need to care about when it came to the law of Moses.
[29:44] And it was mostly the words of James, the brother of Jesus, that got transcribed onto a letter and sent out to make sure that everybody understood what we would commit to. And this is what was written for, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you Gentiles." Church here at Moncton Wesleyan, people, wherever you're watching from, "Then these few requirements, you must abstain from eating food offered to idols, from consuming blood or the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. If you do this, you'll do well. Farewell." 613 laws not fully thrown out because the teachings of Jesus, which we'll get to in just a second for, for a couple of moments.
[30:32] The teachings of Jesus actually expanded those 613 in really profound ways, but where it became unclear from the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament authors and the Old Testament law, what do we need to pay attention to? This was the list. But not only was that the list, it was actually intentional in the heart behind the list of why those things were chosen. And so, 'cause you know, even this idea of strangled animals and blood and offered to idols, obviously that doesn't really affect us too much today. And so one of the commentators, a Sri Lankan commentator actually, writes this about this particular passage to help us understand. It says, "James brings up an important issue that impacts fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. See, too many Jews maintain, or too many Jews, sorry, not too many, too many Jews, maintaining their purity was an extremely important aspect of their survival and identity."
[31:20] This gives us a sense of why this was so important to them and maybe even what God was doing in setting them apart as a particular people. They had this Jewish identity that was marked by some of these laws and some of these decisions that they would make, especially when they were under foreign rule and had dispersed, far and wide into Gentile territory because they didn't always have their own space. And so to make themselves distinct, some of these things helped create their Jewish identity. "Thus, the issue of table fellowship with Gentiles and the consumption of non-kosher food was a serious issue. But in the early church, eating together was also so important." And so there was this sense of how are we gonna be able to gather together if your identity and the way that you cook food and what you actually eat kind of precludes us from being able to sit together at a mealtime. And for the church, they said, "Well, okay, well let's make sure that we can do this well together."
[32:09] And so there is space for that. But over time, even those particular laws were given up because of what Jesus said around all food being clean and available to us. "And so if there's gonna be open-hearted fellowship between the Jewish and Gentile Christians, there'd have to be some sensitivity. Thus, James proposes these three prohibitions relating to food. But also, and this is important, the last thing, the issue of sexual immorality had to be brought up because the society in which the Gentile Christians lived was so pervaded with sexual immorality that the church had also been influenced by it." And so likely even today. That's a pretty significant issue for our culture. And the sexual ethic that we discover in the New Testament and God's wisdom that was sparked through the Old Testament is probably really important for each and every one of us to pay attention to.
[33:02] Now the idea, of course, that there's all of these laws and so are those only the four that we were meant to pay attention to? No, no, no, no, no. Because Jesus, when He was preaching His most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, He actually spent a considerable amount of time taking some of these laws, describing the wisdom behind them, and then actually even elevating them and making them more difficult to follow. And so when we read in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus Himself giving instructions and explanations about all these things, He said, "Don't misunderstand why I have come. I didn't come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose." There was greater purpose happening with the law and Jesus was going to accomplish it. And for lots of the laws, the law of Christ is much more intense than the Old Testament version of it.
[33:48] Jesus talks at length about how to treat people that don't treat you well. He talks at length about human sexuality and our identity. And He talks at length about anger and about addiction and about all sorts of things that call all of us who would say Jesus is the one we're following. It calls us to repentance because we can't live up to it. And yet here we are with the power of Christ to become a different kinds of people that reflect our risen Savior. So going from here, I wanna offer you a couple of general principles and then a specific call to action when you get to places in the Scriptures that are a little bit difficult to wrestle with. So, so if we go back to those early Sunday school answers, you remember those, the Bible's the best book, all this stuff, this is fair. But at some point, as your own faith grows and as you move into different stages of life, you kind of can come and realize that if you're not careful, some of these understandings can actually twist the Scriptures to mean things that they don't actually mean. And instead, we should learn what it means to change our own perspective, to actually help us follow the wisdom of God in more specific ways.
[35:02] And so let me suggest a few ideas, and these aren't mine. These are actually from a book on how not to read the Bible that I would suggest that you could get and read. It's perhaps really helpful. The first thing is that the Bible is actually a library. It's not a book. And if you're new to faith or if you know you don't believe, like, this is a really helpful distinction. There's a lot of different genres in there. They're written at different times. And to the idea that it's a cohesive book as we typically see books, it's just not the case. You know, when you pick up a book that has one author and that, you know, they decided themselves how to write the story. There's much more complexity in our Bible. So you just have to realize it's a library, it's not a book. Second thing, the Bible was written for us and not to us. The Bible actually has specific people in mind when the authors were penning the words. But it is still for us.
[35:48] And you're gonna get to hear a bit more about that in a couple of weeks with Jordan Day as he unpacks another particular passage that often gets twisted. Thirdly, never read a Bible verse on its own. You should always read the context of where it's placed and what's happening. And so sometimes if we just pull out a verse and put it on a meme and then share it on Reddit, there's a good chance that we could easily misunderstand and twist what the scripture actually means. And then lastly, the Bible's a unified story. It is unified across all of the Old and New Testament and it all points to Jesus. And this is what we believe in and we care deeply about. And so I wanna suggest, if you want to dive in a little bit deeper, there's a few resources you could think about. You know, there's, depending on your journey, but also you can just send me a note.
[36:34] I would love to tee you up with some places. Bible Project. Great place to start. I quoted How Not to Read the Bible by Dan Kimball. That's a great place to go. Is God a Moral Monster is a big question a lot of people wrestle with when they look at the Old Testament. You could check that out. That's gonna answer, I think, a lot of the questions. But let's go back to the core thing that we wanna leave with today. And that's the words of Jesus. "Don't misunderstand why I've come. I did not come to abolish the law or the writings of the prophets. I came to accomplish their purpose." You see, Jesus has in His line of sight you and me and people throughout the centuries because He wants us to live by God's wisdom, and that's for our good. But that will sometimes seemingly cost us something.
[37:23] There may be times when God's wisdom is a bit of a struggle with our own internal wants and needs and thoughts and desires. And so we have to ask ourselves the big question. This is the question that we started with, and the one that you should, no matter where you're at in your journey, no matter what you believe about faith, I want you to wrestle with this: who or what is shaping your decisions and your opinions? Not just your decisions and opinions around faith, around church, but your decisions about how you treat your family, about how you live out your life Monday to Friday, about your work. How do you undergird your entire life? Do you look to your own authority, or do you try to look to an authority outside yourself? And Jesus would say, Jesus would invite you into this life that He has very articulated, claimed, would be the kind of life that would be a blessing for all people and a blessing for you if you would choose to follow Him. And yet, sometimes it's gonna be uncomfortable and it's gonna require for you to dig a little bit beyond just the first reading or the first thing that you see.
[38:31] And certainly beyond the TikTok account that you follow that might end up being the place that twists the scriptures a little bit too much. So lemme pray for each and every one of us, and then that's it. You're gonna go and apply Jesus' words, at least I hope so. Heavenly Father, we are grateful that throughout history, Your wisdom has been good. Your wisdom has been good for us. Your wisdom has been good for all people. And so I pray that in my life Your wisdom would be the thing that I look to when I make all decisions. And yet, I'm sorry, Father, that that's not always the case.
[39:17] And where I fall short, I pray for Your clarity. I pray for accountability around me, and I pray for understanding and somebody to help reset my direction. And I pray for grace in the midst of it all, and mercy certainly. But God, I pray that when it's difficult to follow Your wisdom, that I wouldn't stray away. But instead I would lean in, and I pray that that would be for all of us. I pray that even those that don't fully understand and know who You are, that they would wonder if maybe Your wisdom is greater than their own. And maybe that the words of Jesus would ring true in our lives each and every day. And that by following Him, that we might be able to do what we can't do on our own. Heavenly Father, it's easy to say these words. It's hard to live by them.
[40:02] And so strengthen us by Your Spirit, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And that's it. There is no response except for you to go and to do these things.