Introduction
This chapter of Deuteronomy seems like a collection of random laws. You think, how does this all fit together? Why is this even in God’s law? In the book of Deuteronomy. Continuing our sermon series. But I think this idea ties everything we’re about to read together, that there are some areas of life where God encourages community and shared responsibility and helping others. And as Christians, we’ve got to go out into the community, we’ve got to be present in the community, we’ve got to love people around us. But there are other areas of life where God requires distinction and separation in order that we as Christians would be pure and holy in the way we live. That’s the Christian life, isn’t it? Loving people, whoever they are, being in the community, befriending people, building relationships, and staying pure in every single circumstance, in every single way. And I think that that that theme ties together what we’re about to read in Deuteronomy 22:1 12. But as I say, this is not an easy passage of Scripture to preach from, so you might go, what are you talking about, Duncan?
Bible Passage
But let’s read Deuteronomy 22, verses 1 to 12. You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep going astray, and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother, and if he does not live near you, and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him, and you shall do the same with his donkey, or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother’s which he loses and you find you may not ignore it. You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way, and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again. A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree, or on the ground with young ones or eggs, and the mother sitting on the young, or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother. With the young you shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long. When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it. You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited. The crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard, you shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together. You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself. So there we have it, a random collection of laws in the Old Testament.
Guiding Principles
Now, when you come to a seemingly random list of laws in the first five books of the Bible, which is called the Torah, when you come to a kind of random list of rules, I want to remind you of two things. The first thing to remind you of is that Christians are not under the Mosaic Law. Jesus fulfilled the law on our behalf. He came and he obeyed the law, and then he died in our place. He fulfilled everything that’s written in this book. He fulfilled it on our behalf. So we as Christians, we live by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. So when we read that list of laws, no one should say, well, it says in Deuteronomy this. Therefore we must obey that command. We shouldn’t speak like that because we’re not under the law. That doesn’t mean we ignore those commands either, though. We need to meditate on them and understand how the Holy Spirit might take God’s Word and use it in our lives. So the first thing to remember, Christians, are not under the Mosaic Law.
But the second thing to always remember is Psalm 1, verse 2, which says, Blessed is the man who meditates on the law day and night. There is a blessing for us when we meditate and consider God’s law. And I’m hoping that, as I preach this morning, the blessing of God would fall upon us as we meditate on this seeming random collection of God’s law. So we’re not going to sit under the commandments, but we are going to meditate on them. And when you’re meditating on law in the Old Testament, here are some of the questions that we should ask ourselves. What does this law tell us about who God is? What does God care about in this law? Why might this law be helpful for Israelites 4000 years ago? How does this law point to Jesus Christ? How does the death and resurrection and giving of the Holy Spirit change how a Christian might apply these laws in our daily life? And as we think through these questions together, we’re going to find and receive the blessing of God. I believe so.
Respecting and Caring For Your Neighbour
Firstly, in verses one to four, there’s a law here about respecting and caring for your brother’s property. Whether we’re speaking about oxes or sheep or donkeys or garments, any lost thing which belongs to somebody else, there’s a command here to make sure you return it. God wants Israel to have a collective responsibility for property. So the command in verse one is, if you find your brother’s ox, then take the ox and bring it back to him. Return what’s lost in verse one. But if your brother lives miles away or you’re unsure who owns the ox that’s wandered astray, then you have to look after the ox. You have to bring it to your house and feed it and look after it. It’s a costly way of caring for someone else’s property.
In verses three and four, if you see someone on the road and their donkey’s fallen in a hole, you can’t just go, I’m going to ignore that completely and carry on by. You’re supposed to stop and help your brother lift the donkey out of the hole. Johnny’s making a face like he digs holes in the road and waits for donkeys to just fall in them. I don’t know. But if you see that you’ve got to help your friend lift the donkey off the side of the road. Now, is this just an Old Testament idea that we should help each other, or is this a theme throughout the Bible that Christians ought to love other people? Well, obviously Jesus In Matthew 22, verses 36 to 39 says, the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, soul and strength. But the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbour as yourself. So the New Testament and the Old Testament share this in common.
Imagine that you lose something that’s important to you and then you are walking about Farim and you just see it lying on the street, it’s yours. And you go, that’s the thing I’ve lost. I found it. Amazing. You’re not just going to walk past and ignore it, are you? Just leave it where it is. No, you’re going to go, yes, I found it, and pick it up and bring it home. Well, what if you see something that belongs to somebody else? Well, the commands of the Old Testament and the New Testament is love your neighbour as yourself. What’s the loving and kind thing to do? It’s to take that thing and return it to them. If you needed help in a situation, perhaps, maybe your car was broken down on the side of the road, and if it was me, I’d have no idea what to do. I keep thinking I need to train myself to know what to do when my car breaks. So solar and orange. But you’d want someone to stop, wouldn’t you, and help you out in that moment. And the second greatest commandment from Jesus is to love others, love your neighbour as yourself. Are you the type of person who loves to love people when you see them in need or when you find something that they’ve lost?
Now, as I’m meditating on these verses about this lost animal, there’s two things that occur to me. The first is that when I see the word sheep going astray in verse one, I can’t help thinking about the Gospel and the work of Jesus Christ. You see, this is the gospel. This is the good news of Jesus Christ that we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Instead of following after the good shepherd, we’ve all turned our own way and wandered out into the land of Israel. In a metaphorical, spiritual sense, we’re not following Jesus, but we’ve wandered astray and we’re lost. But Christ the good shepherd, came from heaven to earth to find us, to save us. In fact, he even laid down his life for his sheep upon the cross that he would bring us back to the fold, the sheep pen of God the Father. That’s the gospel. If you’re not a believer here this morning, I urge you to believe in Christ. And he will, in a metaphorical sense, pick you up and bring you back into the Father’s sheep pen. You will be part of the family of God forever and ever. Because Jesus is the person who goes and finds people, finds lost sheep who’ve wandered astray and brings them back into relationship with God forever and ever.
Now, if that’s true, that means every time you work to return someone’s lost item, you’re in a smaller way, reflecting the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you find something that someone’s lost and you go, I’m going to return that, you’re being like Christ. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? It sounds very simple to return someone’s item. And yet that is being like Jesus, because that’s what Jesus does in the Gospel.
Sins Of Omission
The second thing that occurs to me as I meditate on these verses is the topic of sins of omission. Sins of omission. We tend to think of sin as doing something bad. Well, actually, biblically, sin is much broader than that. Sin is not just the things you do, it’s a heart which is rebellious or, or apathetic towards God. So sin isn’t just the things we do. But notice in the text in verse one, it says, you shall not see and ignore. You shall not ignore is the commandment in verse one. And verse four, the same. You shall not see and ignore. And so what this passage is teaching us is that, see, sin isn’t just doing bad things, it’s also failing to do good things. Sin isn’t just doing bad things. It’s also failing to do good things. It’s seeing an opportunity to help and ignoring it. I wonder how often do you see an opportunity to do good in your life and ignore it? Well, moments like that are called sins of omission. You’ve omitted to do what’s right and what’s good and they are included in our sin. Not just the things you do wrong, but also the good things that you had an opportunity to do, but you didn’t do. This is why Jesus needed to die for us on the cross, but because there’s not a single person in this room who’s going, well, I’ve always done the good thing. I’ve never ignored someone who needed. No one’s saying that. Every single one of us is saying, yeah, I’ve sinned against God. I’ve not only done bad things, I’ve also omitted to do good. And Jesus died on the cross that you could be forgiven. And then he poured out the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit dwells within us and helps us not only to stop doing bad things, but also to start doing good things.
Maybe today is a moment to pray, as I think Sophia prayed when she was in her car. Holy Spirit, lead me to opportunities to help others, to return lost items and to do good. May I not sin in those moments by ignoring people, but may I do what’s right? That’s a dangerous prayer, isn’t it? Give me opportunities to help others. Kind of want to pray it and hope that God says no, to be honest, but actually as Christians, we’ve got to pray prayers like that and believe that God’s going to answer those prayers and then be on the front foot ready to do good when those opportunities arise. So love your neighbour, respect and return their possessions. Help when you can. Believe in the community when it comes to doing righteous business.
Respect The Difference Between Males and Females
Okay, my second point this morning, verse five seems like a completely random addition. Almost the opposite in some ways. But my point in verse two is respect the difference between males and females. Respect. Respect the difference between male and female. So verses 1 to 4 is about real community, real unity, real caring for other people. Verse 5 is about a part of God’s Creation, which, where God brings both unity and distinction. The Command in verse 5 is, Women don’t wear men’s clothing and men don’t wear women’s clothing. In fact, the verse calls that an abomination to the Lord.
Now, that word abomination indicates to us that this is very serious. This is a serious thing for the Israelites. The word abomination is used for idolatry in the Old Testament. It’s also used for adultery. So idolatry, worshipping a foreign God, adultery, sleeping around, sleeping outside of marriage. It’s also used for the food laws in the Old Testament. So whenever the word abomination is used, it’s something that’s very serious and important. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a universal law that applies to all times, because we know that the food laws, when people broke the food laws in the Old Testament, that was an abomination to God. And yet in the New Testament, something changes. And we have a freedom to eat whatever. It’s not what we eat that makes us unclean. It’s what comes out of our mouth, what comes out of our heart that makes us unclean, says Jesus. So this is very serious, but we can’t necessarily go, it says in Deuteronomy, this, therefore, that’s universally always an abomination to the Lord. But rather, we need to think about this subject in a biblical context. Let’s take this command of God and put it in its biblical context.
And that Context is Genesis 1, verse 27. In Genesis 1, verse 27, it says this. God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him. Male and female, he created them. There’s a unity in that verse. So the first, when it says man in the start of the verse, that means mankind. Its humanity is created in the image of God. Mankind is created in the image of God. In the image of God. He created mankind. But then in the second part of the verse, there’s a distinction. Two different words, male and female. He created them. So there’s a unity. Male and female, all humanity are created in the image of God. Every single one of you has been made in the image of God. But there’s also a distinction in this verse as well, that God feels it’s necessary to mention that he creates males and he creates females. And they are both in the image of God. You see, unity. We’re all in the image of God. And yet there’s a distinction between men and women in this verse. In verse 31, God sees in Genesis 1 still, God sees his creation with men and women united with the image of God, but also distinct male and female. He sees that, and he says, this creation is very good, very good. It’s unsurprising if this is the way God created the world, that most of the Bible is written to men and women together, both created in the image of God. And yet there are also some verses in the Bible that speaks speak directly to men and directly to women. When you read the Bible, you see both. You know, most of the Bible written to us all because we’re all created in the image of God. But some verses specifically given to men and specifically given to women. Some of those verses are about clothing. In fact, not just this one here, where there’s a command for men and there’s a command for women, but there’s other verses throughout the Bible that speak about clothing.
In 1 Corinthians 11, a very complex passage to understand. But in 1 Corinthians 11, women are told to wear culturally appropriate clothes when they pray or prophesy in the church. There are other verses in 1 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2 that speak specifically to women about what they are to wear. Now, those verses are more about not showing off wealth, not flaunting wealth. And I actually think that when we dress, this is actually the most important thing we should be thinking about. Because in the New Testament it says, don’t clothe yourself with grand clothes and earrings and things like this to show off, but rather it’s about your heart. But there are verses throughout the Bible which are about the male and female distinction. God created us all in the image of God, but male and female to be distinct. I’m not going to go through all those verses. I don’t have time to do a biblical theology of men and women. But I will say this. I think it’s clear in the Bible that God cares about the distinction between being male and being female. That’s part of his good creation and the way he created us. And clothing can play a part in that. Now, this doesn’t mean that we should read Deuteronomy 22, verse 5 and say, well, women must wear dresses, and Scottish men wearing kilts are an abomination to the Lord. I don’t think that’s how we should read this verse. I don’t think we should be aggressive and specific. But I think we should read this verse and say, within each individual culture, there are different ways of dressing, and all those ways are okay. But nearly in every single culture that I know, there is a distinction between how men and women dress. And we should think about that because we don’t want to blur this distinction that God put into his very, very good creation. So we’re not being specific here, but we’re saying that God doesn’t want us to intentionally blur distinctions between men and women. And clothing is of course one way that you can do that. You might intentionally dress in order to blur the distinction between men and women. And I would suggest that that’s not a very good way to dress if you are a Christian. So don’t become super self conscious suddenly and think, oh, I didn’t think about my femininity this morning, or I didn’t think about being a man this morning. Don’t stress, but don’t wake up and go, I’m going to deliberately dress in a way that presents myself as the opposite sex because I think that that would be not pleasing to God. I think also more than that, more than just applying this to clothing, we ought to take seriously the idea that men and women are different by divine design. God created you to be a male or a female, and that’s a fantastic thing. So take seriously the sections of scripture which speak to men and speak to women and say, yeah, I want to obey this, I want to do what the Lord says to the different sexes.
It’s great that we have men’s and women’s events which are separate. And you know, I don’t want to press into stereotypes. I think the murder mystery that the women doing sounds absolutely brilliant. So it’s not about stereotypes and, but it is about men coming together and being friends together. And there’s something special about those events, I think, where we treat the two sexes differently. So don’t become obsessed with cultural stereotypes, but don’t intentionally blur or challenge distinctions between men and women unless there is a clear biblical reason to do so. I’ve rushed through that point, but I hope it makes some sense to you.
Care About Sustainability
My third point this morning, verse six. Care about sustainability. Care about sustainability. I love, I kind of love that this verse is in here, that this, this is part of God’s law. Verse 6. If you find a nest and you want to take the eggs to eat, or you want to take the young to raise them to eat, God says don’t take the mother. And it’s obvious the reason why God says this, it’s because foraging for food is good. And the Israelites are about to enter into a land where there’s food all over the place. And, and God says we care about sustainability. So don’t eat everything in the first month or you’ll kill everything and there’ll be no food left for future generations. Have a community spirit and understand that you can take the eggs but leave the mother.
In Deuteronomy 20 we read a similar law that was very close to this, which was about going to war and not cutting down the fruit trees. God cared that there were fruit trees still in the land of Israel that were bearing fruit. He cares about future generations and there being food to see sustainably in the land for generation after generation after generation. If God cares about sustainability, so should you. Christians should support renewable energy, should think about the way they eat and how that impacts the environment. Christians should fight against overuse of pesticides that deliver short term gains, but long term ruins land for growing food. I don’t want to set hard and fast rules here, but if God puts Deuteronomy 22:6 in the Bible, he obviously cares about sustainability and so should we.
Hospitality
The fourth thing that I want to draw your attention to is in verse eight, looking after people who visit your home is a good thing. Or alternatively, health and safety is sometimes good. See, if you lived in Israel, you would have a flat roof on your house. And actually it was kind of the biggest area where you would often socialize with your friends and family because you’d have rooms downstairs, but on the top you’d have a flat roof and you’d say, come out and we’ll hang out on the roof. It’s nice weather, it’s not Britain, it’s not miserable, it’s lovely. So you would spend a lot of time on your roof hanging out with other people, showing hospitality. And what verse 8 says is build a parapet, build a fence around the edge of your house. When you build a new house, make sure the roof is safe, because if someone falls off that roof and kills themselves, you’ll bring blood guilt upon your household.
That’s the language of last week, isn’t it? This idea of guilt falling upon the person who doesn’t take health and safety seriously. I think hospitality is just massively assumed in this verse. It doesn’t say anything about hospitality explicitly, but it does seem to imply to me that God thinks that Israeli homes should be full of people inviting people around. I therefore want to ask you, is your house set up for hospitality? If you have a roof where people hang out, is it set up safe to hang out on your roof?
Now, before I move on to verses 9 to 12, which I’m going to handle all together, I want to say so far in Deuteronomy 22, we have laws about helping neighbours. We have laws about what you wear. We have laws about foraging for food and looking after birds and sustainability. And we have laws about how your house is designed. Matthew Henry writes this on these verses. God’s providence extends itself to the smallest affairs. And his precepts also do this, so that even in the smallest things, we may still be in the fear of God. You know, sometimes I stand up here and preach to you. I preach to you about the big sins and the big things going on in life. And, you know, what direction are you headed in life? What’s your vision, what are you doing, how are you serving in church? But actually, God cares about every single element of our lives, the big things and some of the small things as well. There’s a real sense in Deuteronomy 22 that we can use all of our life to honour and glorify God. Can you lend a hand to a friend? Can you think about what it means to be a man or a woman in the Lord? When you get dressed, are you dressing in a way that honours God when you’re foraging or we tend to go shopping for food, Are you thinking about how you can shop in a way that honours the Lord? Even in the way you design and set up your house? Are you thinking about hospitality and looking after the people who enter it? These are areas where we worship God, the decisions that we make.
Don’t Mix What God Wants Separate
Okay, so fifthly and finally, potentially one of the most controversial sections of all the law, verses 9 to 12. And the point I want to make is, don’t mix things God wants to keep separate. Don’t mix things God wants to keep separate. So in verse nine, don’t plant two different kinds of seed in a vineyard. Plant grapes to grow grapes and have this amazing vineyard, but don’t add other plants and other species of grapes in to mix them all together.
Now, in studying this law, I cannot find in any commentaries any good economic reason for this law being given. I don’t think it’s a practical command that God is giving here. In fact, if you go to modern vineyards, they will often have the great. The. The vines and then have smaller plants, smaller crops growing around them. They often do that because it’s economically good for the land or a good way of using the land to make more money. So I think that this Command in verse 9 is a spiritual picture. I think God gives this command as a spiritual picture because In Isaiah chapter 5, God speaks about Israel as a vineyard. This is what God says about his vineyard. Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines. He built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it. And he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. Oh, now inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? That’s a metaphor that God uses multiple times in Scripture, this idea of vineyard. So I think the reason that God says, don’t mix plants in the vineyard is to provide a spiritual picture of what the land of Israel ought to look like. It ought to be a vineyard that’s pure and producing grapes purely and not mixed with anything else.
But actually what happens is that God looks at the land of Israel and says, this isn’t pure. This is something of me mixed in with lots of evil and disobedience. And he describes that as wild grapes. There’s wild plants growing up in this vineyard. This picture is about not mixing holiness with sin, holy living with sin. That fits with verse 10 as well, because an ox was a clean animal and a donkey was an unclean animal. And so God is saying, don’t you know, firstly, it’s not going to be a really great technique for plowing a field, but don’t yoke an ox with a donkey, because one’s clean and one’s unclean. Don’t mix that which is holy with that which is unclean. These pictures, then, in verses 9 and 10 are about purity and holiness, not mixing holiness with sin. And this, of course, is a New Testament subject that’s spoken about often. So I want to read to you 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1 to 8. And this should appear on the screen behind me, hopefully the next slide. Matthew, Next slide, please. Oh, never mind. I’ll just read it. This is what it says in 1 Thessalonians. Oh, there we go. Thank you. Thanks, Matthew.
Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing that, you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honour, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles, who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter. Because the Lord is an avenger in all things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you. When you became a Christian, there was a glorious transformation that happened in your life. You were going the wrong way, doing, doing things that were sinful and wrong. But God gave you the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, God Himself, to live within you. And when the Holy Spirit comes into your life, there’s a moment of utter transformation. You put your faith in Jesus and you repent of sin and you turn to him and then the Holy Spirit leads you in living good, holy lives.
And yet, even as we live holy lives, there’s these temptations, aren’t they, to mix in kind of sinful temptation to turn back and go to things that are wrong. The example in 1 Thessalonians 4 is of sexual immorality. And the warning is, you’re called to be sanctified, you’re called to be holy. Don’t mix sin with what is holy. Therefore live to please God in all things. Now, even as I’m saying this, I would pray that the Holy Spirit would be bringing conviction in some hearts. I believe there may well be people here who are thinking, actually I pretend to be holy on a Sunday, but most of my life is a huge mixture of actually some pretty, not good things. If my life was a vineyard, it wouldn’t just be grapes, it would be lots of other sinful crops as well. If I was a farmer ploughing a field, I’d be connecting my holy ox with my unholy donkey. I wonder whether you do life mixing that which is holy and that which is unholy. God’s calling us to be set apart and be different from the world, and to live for him in every area of our lives.
There’s the same idea in verse 11. So you shall not wear wool and linen mixed together, it says in verse 11. It’s a similar theme, but there’s a development here because in Israel, the priests would wear a linen ephod covered in a woollen colourful yarn mixed with fine linen. You can read about this in Exodus 28. If you’ve got. If you’ve got a massive fascination with what would priests wear in Israel, you can go to Exodus, Exodus 28 and go, yes, I love how much detail there is about what a priest would wear. But they would wear a linen ephod and then a colourful garment which had wool and linen mixed together. Therefore, the best guess from commentators about this verse is that this is a law about not dressing up as a priest. Don’t wear wool and linen mixed together, because that’s what the priests will. And the priests are set apart to do holy work in the temple. And therefore they dress in a particular way which honours the Lord. A special holy garment for the priests to use in temple sacrifices. It would be dishonoring to the holiness of God to wear it in daily life. And so this is another command about not mixing the holy and the common things in the world.
But then in verse 12, there’s another clothing law. You’re to wear a prayer shawl, and on the corners different wools sewn into it. And I want to read to you from numbers 15 where this rule came from. Numbers 15, verses 37 to 41. Let me read this to you. The Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord. To do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God. Do you see that? They were given these tassels to remind themselves to be holy. So it’s the same theme. But did you know that those blue yarns is the same wool that was actually used in the priest’s garment? So we almost have two verses that contradict each other. Don’t mix wool and linen in verse 11. But you are allowed to wear a prayer shawl. And on the corners you can have tassels where wool and linen are mixed together.
Now, how I understand this is that God was saying, priests are special in what they’re anointed to do in the temple. But you just, on the corners have these reminders that you also are holy, that you are also set apart to do what’s right and. And what’s good in your life. That you aren’t meant to mix holy obedience to the Lord with Impurity and sin. Now, I appreciate that some of these laws are quite complex and difficult, but if you understood this idea, we don’t mix the holiness of God, the Holy Spirit within us with getting things wrong and doing things evil and sinful. We want to be pure Christians for the Lord. So if you want to plant a vineyard with mixed seed in the New Covenant, that’s okay. If you want to plow a field with an ox and donkey, go for it, my friend. If you want to wear something with wool and linen combined in one garment, that’s okay. We’re not under the Old Testament law anymore. But if you want to mix the Holy Spirit who dwells within you with sin and impurity and dishonouring the Lord, then I cannot stand here and say, that’s okay, because it’s not. These pictures are designed to call us to holy living.
Conclusion
You see, God is holy, holy, holy. He is set apart above all things. He is blameless in every way. Everything that he does is good and perfect and awesome. He’s set apart in glory. He’s more glorious than anything else in all the world. He’s set apart in perfection because he does everything right and good. He’s set apart in his righteousness. He’s set apart in his love. God is holy, holy, holy. He’s set apart in every single way, and therefore his children. Those people who say, yeah, I’m a Christian, I believe in Christ, need to take living holy lives seriously as well. Living lives that are set apart from the rest of the world by not giving in to sin. And this is what I think Deuteronomy 22 is really about. There are some areas of life where it’s all about community. It’s all about being connected to people. It’s all about helping people. It’s all about thinking about sustainability and caring for the community around you, rather than being selfish. And there are other areas of life where it’s all about holiness. It’s all about purity. It’s all about doing what’s right and what’s good and not giving in to sin. And my instinct is that every single person in this room will be thinking, I care passionately about one of these things, but do I care about both of them? Do I care about both of them?
I think there’ll be some people who are like, I love being out in the community. I love doing evangelism. I love meeting with people. I love just being with friends. And all the time, I’m totally there. But in that place, there’s temptations to sin. And you’re a bit lax about it and you just give in. And there’ll be other people who are like, I really care about holiness. I spend all day, every day reading my Bible and praying. I never go outside the house because I want to be super holy. But actually God’s calling you to go and be salt and light in dark places in the world. And isn’t this what Jesus just did absolutely perfectly in his life?
He was a community man, always helping, always healing, feeding the crowds who followed him wherever he would go, having dinner with tax collectors, building his team of disciples. Jesus was a community guy who always did what he could to help others. But the crowds never, ever led him into sin. He was holy in all his conduct. He knew when it was time to withdraw and pray by himself. And when he went to the cross to die for us that he might save us from our sin, he went with a face like flint and his disciples all fell away and left him on that night. But Jesus stayed holy and did what the Lord had called him to. He was a man who loved the community, but he was a man who was holy in everything he ever did. Church, I want to ask you whether you’ve got this balance right in your life. Are you loving the community while staying pure? And that’s what Due to Omni is all about, in the big things and the small things as well. Shall we stand? Let’s stand and pray. And what I’m going to pray for is that the Holy Spirit would fall and change our hearts, helping us to live holy lives and evangelistic lives in the community. Loving and helping others. Does that sound good? If you’re in for that prayer, if you want to get involved, then I encourage you to stretch out your hands as though God is going to pour out the Holy Spirit and give you the gift of the Holy Spirit in this time now.
Closing Prayer
So let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we want to praise you and thank you for our Saviour Jesus, who was the community man who never sins and yet the man who died a sinner’s death on the cross, that we might be forgiven, that we might be restored into relationship with you through. Thank you, Jesus for what you did. But Lord, our prayer is that we would follow your example. And so, Heavenly Father, I pray you would pour out your Holy Spirit upon us now. Stir up a passion for the community, for loving people around us from crossing to the other side of the street in order to meet with someone and build a relationship. I pray we would be community people and the town of Fareham would say we love Christchurch Fareham because those people really care about, really care about our town and the people in this town. So make us a community church who loves to reach others. But Lord, we do not want to be tempted to sin in those places. So we pray as we reach out to the community, as we build relationships, as we spend time with unbelievers. Keep us pure and holy in every single way. Bring conviction in our hearts if there are areas where we’re not living holy lives. We want to be pure and holy like Jesus. I pray you would do that in our church. For your glory. Make us a community church and a holy church in everything we do, in the big stuff and in the small things. Pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
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