The Christians Hour

Bob Russell: Welcome to The Christians Hour. Thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you with us. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we share the good news of Jesus Christ through radio and media all around the world.

Today, we continue our four-part series exploring one of the most overlooked books of the Bible: the book of Leviticus. In this message, we'll discover what it means that God is holy, why His people are called to be holy, and how all of it ultimately points us to Jesus. To be holy means to be set apart for God, to belong to Him, and to reflect His character.

Throughout Leviticus, God gave His people detailed instructions for approaching Him because He is perfectly holy. Many of those laws dealt with ceremonial cleanliness and uncleanness, serving as a constant reminder that sin separates us from God. Yet, those laws were always pointing forward to Jesus, the one who alone can truly cleanse us and make us right with God.

Sadly, by the time Jesus came, many religious leaders had become so focused on outward rituals that they lost sight of what God desired most: a heart devoted to Him. Instead of drawing people closer to God, their traditions often became barriers to a genuine relationship with Him. Join us now as Ben Cachiaras, lead pastor of Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Maryland, opens God's Word and shows us how the message of Leviticus comes into clear focus through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Here is Ben to share more.

Ben Cachiaras: This is a dive into the third book of our Bible. It's part of the Torah, we say, in the Old Testament. It's an Old Testament book called Leviticus. There are parts of this book that are wacky and wild to our modern ears. This is the book that has derailed a lot of people who were like, "I'm going to read through the Bible," and then they get here and they're like, "Whoa. I'm out." Leviticus may be, though, the most important book some of us have never read because so much of what Jesus teaches us, you can't really understand it and appreciate it fully until you know something about this book.

Which leads us to today, to the next chunk of chapters. We're going to call it chapters 11 through 20, which is all about holiness. Holiness is a really big central theme in Leviticus. If we were to pick a theme verse, it might be like chapter 19, verse 2, where God is speaking and He says, "You, my people, you must be holy. Why? Because I, your God, am holy." That's the way we have to relate to God, on His terms. So, the million-dollar question is, what does that mean? What does that look like? What does holy mean? That's what this whole next section is about.

When we think of the word "holy" or "holiness," it's really kind of about two big ideas. Number one, to say something was holy was to say it's whole, like it's complete, it's normal, it's healthy. It's the way it's supposed to be in God's intended creation. So, holy means, in other words, not damaged, not broken, not blemished. It's not out of place. It's not broken or crooked. It has no problems; it's healthy and it's whole. What kind of animals were we supposed to offer according to the sacrifices? An unblemished one, one without defect. Why? Because that makes it holy and it's a fitting offering for a holy God.

It's kind of like that today. When we advertise products, sometimes the manufacturer will brag about what's not in it. Have you ever noticed this? Like no artificial colors, no artificial flavors, no preservatives, there's no sugar added, no gluten, dairy-free, non-GMO, antibiotics none. We've got no hormones, no parabens, salt-free, sulfate-free, ammonia-free, no artificial anything, no animal anything. This product has nothing in it. We're like, "Oh, that's a good one. I want that." So, we still like our things 100% pure. I just read this week, maybe you saw this in the news, like there's an unnamed local grocery store chain that is recalling some frozen spinach because they found some rodent hairs in it. We still understand and appreciate the idea of wanting some purity, right? You can understand that concept of holiness. Holy means 100% pure.

The second idea wrapped up in holiness is this, that in the Old Testament, holy just meant set apart. Like, this is not the common, ordinary stuff. This thing is different; it's dedicated, it's consecrated for the purposes of God. It's holy. So, you could think of it this way: holy means whole and wholly devoted to God. Those two ideas. So when you think of the word holy, that's what we're thinking about.

So the next chapters are God's way of saying, well, here's what that means. Here's what I'm going to let qualify as being whole and holy. I had a friend many years ago who got an invitation to meet the president of the United States in the Oval Office. As he got ready to meet the then-president, he was very nervous, of course, excited. I remember him paying attention to every detail, like what he was going to wear, his haircut, his clothes. He was reading up on dignitary etiquette because he didn't want to mess it up. He didn't want to dishonor the president, right?

So when you read Leviticus, think of it like that. This is God calling out and saying, "I'm holy. Here's how you can be my holy people and approach me on my terms with preparation and respect." One of the ideas you're going to see as you read through something like this is the concept of cleanness. For the Hebrews, the idea of being 100% pure before God was all about cleanness. Now, this isn't about literal dirt. It was about ceremonial cleanness or ritual cleansing, spiritual cleansing. So, everything was either clean or unclean. Everything was either holy or unholy. And the important thing was to know the difference. Leviticus answers all those questions.

So, Leviticus 10 is God saying, "Hey, you must distinguish between holy and common, between what's clean and unclean, and make sure everyone understands and teach everyone all this stuff." If God said something was unclean and you touched it, you became unclean. Then you had to go through a series of rituals and washings in order to become clean again. So what you ate and didn't eat, what you touched and didn't touch, what you wore every day—every aspect of their life was either clean or unclean.

You hear that and you might think, "Gosh, it seems like they could never get away from it." It's like, exactly. That's exactly the point. Unlike some American Christians who think, "I'm just a Christian on the weekend. It's kind of my little religious thing over here," they were like, every dimension of every day life, all day long, every day wasn't relegated to a corner. Their relationship with God encompassed all of life, and that was exactly the point. And that's why every little detail mattered. They had to live via a cross, called out, separate, 100% pure.

So, if you do a run-through of some of these chapters, this is where some of the weirdest stuff in our ears, because it just seems weird to us. But chapter 11 is like, well, God says, "Here's how to be holy by what you eat and don't eat." So, He describes the animals they can eat and not eat. That's why to this day, pork is not kosher because pigs eat like pigs, and they're deemed unclean, along with camels and reptiles and bats and stuff like that. They were also told in that chapter not to touch any dead bodies because that represented death instead of God's life-giving ways. So, if you did get near a dead body, you had to go through a whole ritual thing to get purified again.

Chapter 12 is purification rites for a woman after childbirth. Because there was blood involved in that, there had to be a time of cleansing in their minds. Chapter 15 is about bodily discharges from sexual activity and menstruation. Every month a woman was impure for seven days until the bleeding stopped, and then she had to wait and then she could get cleansed, and then she was good again. Just because the blood represented death and they thought, well, we want to be honoring to God and all that.

Chapters 13 and 14, my personal favorite, is about skin diseases: fungus, contagious lesions, leprosy, infectious inflamed open sores, and seeping boils. You would then be banished from camp, cut off from God until you could make that right. You had to tear your clothes and walk around saying, "Unclean, unclean." It was a very big deal. Now, here's what's crazy. It's that they have all these laws that for us are like, "Wow, that's a lot." And then they added, on their own, many more regulations and traditions that they considered were so important, beyond what God even asked.

So, there's tons of these regulations. Their thinking was, if clean is good, super-clean is better. With all these additional regulations, literally thousands of extra rules and traditions that they had invented and imposed on the people, no one could keep up with it. So here's the interesting thing. The only ones who actually could keep up with it were these people called Pharisees, the religious experts of the day. And the way they did that is they just avoided everybody. They just stayed away from everybody. Isn't that ironic? So, these laws that were originally meant to help draw us to God and help us be a holy people together, now were driving everyone away from God and from each other.

So, here's what happens, and I bet some of you have actually experienced this in your own life. If you've got any kind of religious background where you kind of just walked away or something, it might have been because this same thing happened in your life. What begins as a beautiful and powerful symbol moves. So, like they had a symbol. What was the symbol? The priest goes in, and before you go in the Tabernacle to meet God, you wash your hands in that basin. Right? It's a beautiful way of saying, "I'm going to meet God, and I want to prepare myself and get my heart right." It's a beautiful symbol.

But then that symbol grows to this series of elaborate rituals. They added on thousands more rules. They said it's not just the priest; now everyone needs to wash their hands all the time, every day, a hundred times. And they had special rules and water and pots and the way you had to do it: dribble down your hand, "Oh, now that water's dirty, you gotta run it back this way." And they had all these things. So, what happens then is the ritual now becomes an end in itself. Like, it was supposed to be the symbolic way to get my heart right with God, but now we don't even remember God. We're just like, did I do the ritual right?

This is part of the point that Jesus is making when He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Do you know this story? Guy's going down the road; he gets mugged, jumped, robbed, left in the ditch for dead. Do you remember the people who walked by? Who were they? One was a priest, and who was the other guy? A Levite, a Leviticus priest, who's on his way to do the priestly things. And he sees this guy in the ditch. What's wrong with the guy in the ditch? Well, he's bloody and he's dying. He might be dead. Well, I know one thing: I'm going to be holy, so I'm not going to touch that guy. So he literally walks by on the other side so he doesn't get his hands dirty. And the saddest part is he thinks he's doing the right thing.

And that's why Jesus partly tells that story. He says, "Do you think that's what God really wants? Do you think that's what Leviticus was about? Obeying all these external rituals and forgetting about the God and what He sent you in the world for in the first place?" That's what rituals can become when you let them become legalistic. And Christians are still doing this sometimes all over the place. If you just do all these rituals, it covers... then the next step is it justifies my sinful behavior because I'm good. I went to church, I took communion. I'm good. I got baptized. I'm good. I did the thing, I did the ritual. So I'm good. Doesn't matter if I treat people like trash or however I live, doesn't matter because I did the thing.

And so Jesus called this out, and that's why He was so wildly unpopular with the religious leaders of His day and eventually they had to kill Him to shut His mouth. But He exposed their fraud. He says, "It's not about the regulations. It's about the relationship. It always was." So, I'm not going to read it for you, but if you go read Mark chapter 7, the first few verses, some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, they noticed that Jesus' disciples weren't following all their little rules. Jesus, I bet, just told them, "Guys, forget about it." But the Pharisees were like, "Hey, wait a second. All these hand-washing rituals that we have, Jesus, your disciples aren't doing it. You're doing it wrong. You're not doing all the things."

And Jesus goes off on them. He just says, "You hypocrites. The prophets were right when they said you act like you know God, but your hearts are a million miles from God. You don't know the first thing about it. Your worship's a farce." I mean, He was not exactly winning friends here. "Your traditions are more important than the God behind it," He says. And so Jesus begins to dismantle the way that the world understood the laws of Leviticus, and He challenged their concept of what really was holy and how we all get clean.

Because those guys, they kept all the laws perfectly. They washed more than anyone. He says, "Yeah, you're white-washed like a tomb. You look good on the outside, but look inside and it's a bunch of dead corpses. That's who you are." And He reminds them and us what Leviticus was always supposed to be about, like don't waste your time trying to do some religious ritual to impress, make yourself feel good about yourself, or impress God or someone else. It's not about that, what others see. Holiness, Jesus says, is what goes on in your heart. Are you wholly devoted to God? Are you 100% pure? So don't be mixed, like in your motives. Don't be mixed in your heart. Don't be double-minded, James would say later. Be dedicated to God.

So that's what holy is. In fact, there's a passage in the Old Testament, back to Leviticus now. Leviticus 19:19 says, God says to His people, "I don't want you to wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." So it's like God's saying even your shirt when you put it on, I want it to be 100% pure, not mixed, not diluted. So what about you? Are you 100% pure? It's a daunting question. Of course, who's going to say yes to that? But these clothing laws, these dietary restrictions, these sacrifices are no longer binding on us in Christ. If we believe in Christ, He's fulfilled and replaced and set aside those kinds of laws from Leviticus.

But everything we know about God and Jesus, even in our time, is that He's still very much interested in us being 100% dedicated to Him. So it's worth asking, what is different about you that would make you totally devoted to Christ, so that others could see it? Jesus sent us into the world, but He didn't ever intend for us to become like the world in certain ways. We're supposed to be in but not of the world.

Now, some Christians, they're like, they're so afraid, they're like the Pharisees. They just pull away. They're not even in the world, and they don't really have much influence on it. And other Christians, maybe too many of us, go so far in that we're of the world, and there's really no difference, really, between us and we have nothing distinct to offer the world. We don't have much Jesus left in us that's unique. Some Christians blend in so completely.

If there's nothing unique about us, if there's nothing different about your values, the way you look at politics or the way you go to work in the morning, if it's all shaped by the same stuff that's shaping everybody else, then we're just like a mixed shirt. If there's nothing different about what you believe, how you behave, how you treat people, how you show up to work, what your morals are, what your ethical framework is, how you think about marriage or finances or your daily life, then we're just the same old mixed shirt.

So, based on the teaching of Jesus, He says all foods are clean. There's no longer a special diet for Christians like in Leviticus. We're not told to pay attention to what goes into our mouths. But you know what? Jesus says we are supposed to pay special attention to what comes out of our mouths. Now we're getting closer to how we can be holy in our time. How we speak to one another, in person and in private and in public. The scriptures say that makes it clear whether you're just blending in like everybody else or whether you stand out as a follower of Christ, like how you speak. I just wonder how we're doing on that. The amount of encouragement, the amount of criticism, the amount of positive, the amount of negative. Is there anything about the way you speak that proves you're a Christian?

Philippians 2 says, "Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure." Yeah. "Children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you stand out, you shine like a star in the universe." And while we're not told to watch what goes into our mouths anymore, we are told to watch what goes into our minds. You want to be holy? Pay attention to what goes into your heart. Are you paying attention to what you watch, to what you read, to what you listen to? Without making a bunch of Leviticus legalistic rules, just what is shaping you? Who's the boss of what goes in your brain? You are.

So when's the last time you turned something off, or changed the channel, or said, "Kids, we're not going to watch that anymore," or deleted that, or swiped away from it, simply because you said, "I'm not going to invite that into my mind, or I don't want that in my home. I'm going to guard the gate of my soul." When's the last time you said, "You know what? I'm not going to tolerate trash or feed on garbage, just because everyone else seems to be comfortable with it. I'm going to take control of the gate of my mind." Like the Old Testament Israelites were told, "Don't eat that. It's unclean." You can say, "I'm not going to watch that. I'm not going to listen to that. I'm not going to feed on that because it doesn't help draw me closer to God." You can say it. It's okay. You don't have to be legalistic. You don't have to make a rule for anyone else. In fact, stop doing that. But for yourself you can say, "You know what? For me, that's too vulgar, too ugly, too base, too common, too much sexual innuendo or too much graphic nonsense. It's unhelpful, and I don't like who it's making me become. And I think I can be more devoted to God without it."

Watching what goes into your mind. We're to be the ones who are called out. Philippians 4 says this, "Fix your thoughts on what's true, honorable, right, and pure." You want to be pure? That's how. Guard the gate. And that list there looks a lot like Jesus. And if you see yourself making those kind of decisions, like I'm going to try to think about the good, it's so hard to do this in our culture, you guys. Like, there's a lot of other stuff to think about. But if you can make that list a little more like your brain, guess what the Bible calls that? Holy.

So how do we do all this? Well, you ready for another turn? Here we go. Here's the next turn. Here comes Jesus. Jesus is going to show us a radical new way of getting and staying clean before God, and it's a head-on collision with a lot of the Leviticus laws of the day. The best way to see how radical Jesus is in helping us with this is to simply follow Him around. And one of the main things you see is this: that when all the other religious leaders saw something or someone unclean, they ran the other way. They avoided them. And Jesus is the opposite. He's like, "Unclean? Hey, what's your name?"

The law in those times said if you touch something unclean, it rubbed off on you and you were now defiled. And Jesus reverses all that. He's so loving and powerful and awesome. When Jesus touches something, He doesn't get dirty; it gets clean. Take a look in your Bible, Mark chapter 5, verses 1 and 2. They arrived at the other side of the lake in the region of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out from the tombs to meet Him. Now right here, if you know anything about cleanliness laws in Leviticus and purity stuff, you know, based on what you've heard here, Jesus is about to step into a cesspool of uncleanness.

When this happened, Jesus goes to the Gerasenes, it's Gentile territory. On top of that, the guy has what? An unclean spirit, not a Holy Spirit. Remember what holy meant. Holy meant normal, healthy, the way it's supposed to be in God's design. And this guy, there's nothing more unlike what God intended than a man possessed by demons in Gentile territory. And if that weren't enough, where does he live? Out with dead bodies in the burial area. Leviticus is loaded with laws about don't get close or touch dead bodies. So I'm not going to read verses 3 to 5, but if we did, here's what it would say. It would say this guy was out of control. He was running around. They couldn't chain him up. He just busted loose. He's howling, he's cutting himself. He's out of control. No one could subdue him.

This broken, shame-filled, demon-possessed, tormented, out-of-control man comes. And what does he do? He falls on his knees before Jesus. And Jesus sends that legion of demons out of that man and sets him free right on the spot. And by the way, guess where the demons went? Guess where He sent them? Into a herd of pigs, the most ceremonially unclean animal. I think it's a way of Jesus saying, "Look, human beings and this man right here are mine, my territory, not yours, Satan. You can have the pigs."

Everyone was blown away, and they looked at this man, previously a mess, now sitting there right as rain, hair parted, smiling, back to himself. Because when Jesus touches you, it doesn't make Him dirty; it makes you clean. Whatever is unclean in your life—and we all have that, that impurity that's dragging us away from our best version of self, away from God—Jesus can make what's unclean clean. He can clean your heart. He can clean your mind. He can clean that mouth. He can clean your thoughts. He can clean your habits. Cleansing is what He does. Because when He touches you, He doesn't get dirty; you get clean. And He's calling out, because some part of each of us is not right, is not whole, is not perfect, is blemished, is broken, is hurting. We're not 100%.

And no laws of religion are going to fix that. I'm absolutely certain. I don't care who we are, we all need the same thing. We need a touch from Jesus. And we need it today. Some of us are a lot like that man who was unclean, who's just like, "Get away from me, Jesus, leave me alone." Maybe today you can admit, like him, that you're ready to just fall at His feet and be made new. Or maybe you're like that guy in another way, and that is that you're kind of out of control. There's some kind of inner demon that's got a hold of you, or you're feeling stuck or powerless because maybe you were abused and those messages have locked in. Or maybe it's an addiction that you've got or, more accurately, it's got you, using you up. And some of us have just resigned ourselves, maybe, to that stronghold. It's just the way it is. I'll always be this way. That porn, that drinking, that using, that yelling. You need a touch from Jesus, my friend.

And maybe some of us think, well, that's all good for you guys, but for me it's too late. That thing I needed help with, it's too late. That relationship, that issue, that problem, it's already dead and gone. Maybe today is the day you surrender that dead thing into the hands of Jesus. Let Him say, "Let me have a look-see," and then just trust Him whatever happens with it. We all, listen, guys, we all need a touch from Jesus. No matter how unclean or how dirty or sinful, when Jesus touches you, He doesn't get dirty. He can make you clean. Because God so loved the world that He gave His Son. And it does not say that whoever fulfills all the religious rules and expectations will have eternal life. No, what does it say? Whoever believes, whoever puts their trust in Jesus Christ, you can become whole again, clean, holy, devoted, set apart for Him.

A Cappella Ministries: Here I am

All my intention

All my obsession

I want to lay them all down

In Your hand

Only Your love is vital

Though I’m not entitled

Still You call me Your child

God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To take my hands off of my life

And the way it should go

Oh God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To open my hands up

And give You control

I give You control

I’ve had plans

Shattered and broken

Things I had hoped in

Fall through my hands

You have plans

To redeem and restore me

You’re behind and before me

Oh, help me believe

God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To take my hands off of my life

And the way it should go

Oh God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To open my hands up

And give You control

Oh God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To take my hands off of my life

And the way it should go

Oh God, You don't need me

But somehow You want me

Oh, how You love me

Somehow that frees me

To open my hands up

And give You control

I give You control

Bob Russell: How about you? Do you need to be made new? Maybe you've been trying to clean up your life on your own, only to find yourself falling into the same struggles again and again. Perhaps you're wrestling with sin, shame, or the weight of your past. Could I encourage you to come to Jesus? He invites you just as you are. He isn't waiting for you to get your life together before coming to Him. He is the one who makes us clean. He is the one who forgives us, restores us, and gives us the strength to live a new life.

Or perhaps you've been faithfully going through the religious motions, but somewhere along the way you've lost the joy of simply knowing Jesus. While traditions and spiritual disciplines can be wonderful gifts, they were never meant to replace a living relationship with Christ. God desires more than outward obedience. He desires your heart. Spend time with Him, walk with Him, and allow Him to renew you each day.

Our thanks to Ben Cachiaras for sharing that powerful word, and our thanks as well to A Cappella Ministries for their music of worship. If today's message has encouraged you or if there's a way we can be praying for you, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at thechristianshour@gmail.com. You can also hear today's message again, along with our previous programs, by visiting our website at thechristianshour.org. While you're there, you can also learn about our global ministry and how we use radio and media to share the hope of Jesus with people all around the world. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay connected with everything that's happening across all of our ministries. Well, thank you for listening today. We hope you join us again next week.