Leviticus 19

Yeah.

Can I just add, one of my favorite stories in the Bible is the book of Ruth, but not because of the love story and everything else, but because in the book of Ruth is practiced the gleaning law, which is found in Leviticus 19, and I think it's Leviticus 22 or 23, where God has a law, I call it the gleaning law, so that they would leave the edges.

of their fields for the fatherless, the strangers, and the widows.

And so because Ruth and Naomi, when they came back into the land, they were able to go and glean in Boaz's field because God had put that law in there for the Israelites like a few hundred years before that so that Ruth and Naomi could have something.

She had to go and do the work.

Do what she could.

Yeah, and so I always think of Leviticus 19 and Leviticus 23 and that law and how it plays out in the book of Ruth and how we should function as those that, the fatherless, the widowers, the strangers in the land, those that have something.

That's a beautiful example of how people of different financial statuses can help each other.

The Torah repeatedly commands us to love the stranger.

In Leviticus 19, verse 34, for example, we are told to love the stranger as ourselves, because we too know what it means to have been strangers in the land of Egypt.

This goes far beyond being polite to someone new or offering a guest a cup of tea.

It means recognizing the humanity of someone who is not one of our own and refusing to treat them as though they matter less because they are different.

Yeah, there's one passage in the Bible that is in Leviticus chapter 19 that talks about tattoos.

Leviticus 19 and 28, this is what it says.

You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you.

I am the Lord.

Okay, I'm going to read off a verse, and I want you thinking about where your brain goes.

Leviticus 19.28 says, "'Do not put tattoo marks on yourselves, for I am the Lord.'" Now, already I can see our audience starting to split on this one.

Some of you probably grew up in a conservative home that didn't allow tattoos, maybe because of this verse.

And you're having all the feels right now about how you believe this verse should be interpreted.

It says, do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves for I am the Lord.

Now, while we have a bias and assumption of how we think this verse is interpreted, how did the original audience hear this message? Well, back then, and if you read the verses and the context around this verse, we quickly realized that this was listed in a slew of Old Testament laws that was given by God to the Israelite people.

Leviticus 19, first verse starts off with the Lord saying to Moses, speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them, be holy because I, the Lord, your God, am holy.

Fast forward in those verses and it says, keep my decrees.

So that begs us to really dive into what these commandments actually mean.

The quote that Jesus is giving is from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Leviticus 19.

Let me just read those to you just for context here.

Hold

other laws that God gave through Moses had to do with community, organization, with justice.

And so, you had a plethora of 613 laws.

And so, of all of these 600 laws, when Jesus was asked, what are the most important? He quotes Deuteronomy chapter 6 in Leviticus 19.

I love Deuteronomy 6.

This proves that partiality is a sin against the Lord.

Then James says, "...if you fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you do well." This is a direct quote from the actual law of Moses from Leviticus 19 that says, You shall not hate your brother in your heart.

You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people.

This is something that all Jews understood.

And then he added to it Leviticus 19.

And this is a Hebraic way of talking about what it means to be human, loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

In other words, everything that it means to be human, love God.