It was a time when the pursuit of powered, piloted flight, everyone was kind of into it.
And Langley had all the ingredients of success.
He was given $50,000 by the United States War Department, another $20,000 by the Smith's
Odeon Institute to figure out how to get someone to fly in a flying machine thing.
And he was the guy to do it.
He held a seat at Harvard.
He was connected to all the great minds of the USA.
He employed the best people that money could buy to be on his team to build this flying
machine thing.
And the interest in his progress was so great that the New York Times followed him everywhere
and everything he did.
He was kind of a celebrity trying to build this flying machine thing.
A few hundred kilometres away in Dayton, Ohio, were Orville and Wilbur Wright.
They, on the other hand, paid for their dream of powered, piloted flight from the proceeds
of their bicycle shop.
Not a single member of their team had a college degree, including the Wright brothers.
And the New York Times virtually hardly knew they even existed and certainly didn't follow
them around.
Langley was driven by the results of success.
He wasn't as interested in the goal as he was in the product of the goal.
That is fame and fortune, personal fame and fortune.
The Wright brothers were driven by a purpose, a cause, a belief.
They were convinced that powered, piloted flight would change the course of the world.
It was the significant technology that needed to be nailed.
And their team that they managed to form around them believed in this cause too, not in the
paycheck that would arrive at the end of the week.
Each time they went out to do a test flight, they carried five sets of parts with them because
that's how many times they crashed each day trying to get this thing to work.
And still they kept on.
And eventually, the Wright brothers, if you know history at all, took flight on the 17th
of December, 1903.
And that very same day, Samuel Pierpont Langley quit the pursuit.
He didn't even offer his team or his resources to sharpen the technology of the Wright brothers.
He simply walked away.
That was it.
You see, motivation was the key to the Wright brothers' success.
They were able to answer the question, why?
Not how and what, but why?
Why do you do what you do?
Is it a paycheck?
Is it the honor of a memory?
Is it because I can't do what I want to do?
Why do you do what you do?
Why do anything at all?
In fact, you made a choice to be here tonight.
You make a choice every day.
You made a choice to be here tonight.
Why?
To be able to answer the why question will make all the difference in your ability to face what comes tomorrow,
whatever it is that you do.
And that's the question that's right in front of us.
As we come to the end of Leviticus.
Why would we follow this God?
Why?
Why would we want our lives to be conformed by this God, be conformed by his word and all these laws and regulations?
You see, it's not a popular option nowadays in the secular West,
especially when the Christian faith touches on anything to do with sexual ethics or any kind of morality,
and especially the stuff that we've seen here in Leviticus.
To be a proponent of the sexual ethics of Leviticus is to put your head on the chopping block in this society.
The English actor, Sir Ian McKellar, he's famous for playing Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.
He is an outspoken gay rights activist.
And he is on the record of saying that whenever he gets his hand on a Bible,
he turns to Leviticus chapters 18 to 20, grabs hold of them and rips them out and throws them in the bin.
Goes and stays in a hotel, pulls out the Gideon Bible out of the drawer,
turns to Leviticus 18 to 20, rips them out and throws them in the bin.
He is so offended by the historical Christian teaching on homosexual practice.
That's the mood of our society.
He might not literally do that every time, but that's the mood of our society.
Why would we want to follow this God?
Why would we want to live lives by his word with all its limitations and restrictions?
That's verse 3.
It's the chapter of Leviticus 26.
It's the one core issue of this chapter, the one core command.
And in fact, for all Leviticus, it's a summary here.
Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my commands.
Verses 1 and 2 talk about total loyalty to God.
Abandon all other loyalties and have total loyalty to this God.
Why would you do that in Australia in 2017?
You see, the highest value in our society is freedom.
You see this everywhere on social media.
I should be free to live life as I see fit, so long as I don't harm anyone else.
Who cares what anyone else thinks?
I should be allowed to do whatever I want to do as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.
Choice is seen as a good thing in life, even the ultimate thing.
And we have this view that the more choice we have, the happier we will ultimately be.
The greatest level of freedom, the happier we will be.
And that's true.
But in our society, all authority is regarded as inherently suspect.
Nobody should have the right to tell others what to think or behave.
In much of our society, Christianity is seen as the arch enemy of freedom.
It is seen as restricting and even enslaving people.
And so, is the choice that's before us today, as we get to the end of Leviticus,
a choice that we need to make between freedom or faith?
Faith, freedom.
Freedom, faith.
Is that the choice that's before us?
Now, don't get me wrong.
The idea of individual freedom in which society has done a great deal of good.
It has led to, I believe, a far more just and fair society,
and especially for minority groups.
But that shouldn't surprise us.
Because the concept of individual freedom is a byproduct of the Christian gospel.
It did not exist before Christianity existed.
Individual freedom didn't exist before Christianity.
However, freedom has become to be defined as the absence of any limitations.
Modern freedom is the freedom of self-assertion.
And it doesn't work.
It can't work.
If freedom is to be able to do whatever I want,
what happens when my personal wants are in conflict with each other?
What happens then?
For instance, imagine I'm a 75-year-old gentleman,
not quite there yet,
who has two major wants, desires, and passions in life.
The first is,
I want to spend the most amount of time possible with my grandchildren.
And the other second major passion in my life is to eat KFC three times a day.
I would either have to accept the limitations of my eating,
or the limitations of my health.
You can't have freedom in both directions.
You've got to choose a limitation.
At some point, my doctor is likely to mention to me
that my want, my desire, my passion for KFC
is going to get in the way of my want to spend time with my grandchildren.
Because of heart attacks and whatever else.
You've got to accept one limitation over against the other.
We all have to choose which freedoms we will sacrifice for others.
We all have to make that choice.
And the real question is,
which freedom is the most liberating freedom?
What we should be looking for are the right freedoms,
the most liberating constraints is another way to look at it,
the most liberating constraints that fit our design as human beings.
Christianity says that we're all created by God
so that absolutely everything that we have is a gift from Him.
Christianity says that the problem of this world,
every one of them is all linked to human beings' rejection of their creator God.
But this same God has come into His world
in order to rescue and redeem His rebellious creation.
And not just rescue, but someday He's planning to renew it all.
And Christianity says that this life, therefore, is not the only life.
It's only part of life.
It claims that this life is, in fact, a relatively small part of our entire existence.
And that story shapes everything for the Christian.
There is not an area of your life, not an area of your existence,
that that story does not touch, that does not shape, that does not inform.
And that's what we've seen right through Leviticus.
God gets right down the nitty-gritty details of His new people
as He forms a new community.
Right down the very, very nitty-gritty details.
God calls His people to live as He has called them to live.
And when you do, what you discover is life in abundance.
And Leviticus 26, if you've got your Bibles, turn to that now,
we have given three motivations here.
Three whys, three reasons as to why we would follow this God in Australia in 2017.
Verses 4 to 13 give us the first motivation.
It's the motivation of hope.
God doesn't promise some vague blessing.
He spells it out in detail.
It's important to understand that these blessings
were not blessings that were earned because of their obedience.
These are blessings that God was under no obligation whatsoever
to give His people as part of His adoption of them.
And in verses 11 to 12, God's own presence is promised amongst His people.
All aspects of God's blessings in these verses
echo the promises of God to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
right at the beginning of the Bible.
That is, there is one core key to all of God's blessings,
and it's in verse 12.
I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.
The land is abundant because God is there.
Where the source of life is, life flourishes.
That's the point.
God's not there.
It equals death.
You see, abundant life and peace is only possible with the presence of God.
God has rescued these people from slavery to be His people,
and He calls them to be distinct people,
and promises the ultimate blessing to His distinct people,
and that is His presence.
I will be there with you.
You see, hope shapes our lives.
Every one of us, whether you're Christian or not, hope shapes your life.
Whatever our hope is,
determines the particular constraints
that we are prepared to take on in our lives.
You can tell by what you do with your time,
what values you want to instill in your kids,
and what you do with your money,
and what you dream about,
and spend time talking about,
and what you think about your vocation,
and what you do with your leisure.
You can draw all of those lines out,
and make the connections,
and it all points to what your hope is.
In our secular West,
generally, our hope is a secure,
secure retirement.
Secure retirement until we die.
That's our hope.
Not the die bit,
but the secure retirement until we die.
Everything focuses on that.
The Christian hope shapes every aspect of our lives too.
Although, the Christian hope is a certain hope.
Too often, we associate the word hope with,
you know, I wish kind of thinking,
sort of like aspiration, you know.
I really hope so.
You know, as we're sort of doubtfully unsure
about what the outcome's going to be.
That's what we usually mean by hope.
And these words are meant to inspire
a different kind of hope for us.
Not a hope that is an uncertain wish,
but a kind of hope that is dependent
upon the reliances on the promises of God.
And that's why this section ends in verse 13,
saying,
That's what it's saying.
And this is a reminder to the people here,
that God's promises were no mere aspirations.
The hope that they have is no mere wish.
It's a certain expectation that God will act
towards his people as he promises.
He's as good as his word.
That's the first motive, hope.
Second motive is a motive of fear.
It begins with a six-point description
of disobedience in verses 14 and 15.
But if you will not listen to me
and carry out all these commands,
and if you reject my decrees
and abhor my laws
and fail to carry out all of my commands,
and so violate my covenant,
what's the result?
God's going to bring disaster upon the land.
Notice the description here.
Not listening, not carrying out,
rejecting, abhorring, failing, violating.
It all brings disaster.
There's disease in verse 16.
There's enemies in verse 17.
Their refusal to listen
means that God breaks their pride
through agricultural failure
in verses 19 and 20.
And the hostility towards God
brings disaster in land in verse 22
through the wild animals.
God unleashes the wild animals.
That's, you know, for us,
we're sitting here in Chatsworth,
that doesn't kind of mean a whole lot for us.
We're kind of more used in the Western society
to protecting the animals from us
than us being protected from the animals.
So that's generally the way, you know,
unless, of course,
there's some sort of rampant possum on the run
or something like that.
But that's about the worst
we could kind of hope for, I think,
you know, in our society.
But imagine, you know,
you're heading out this afternoon.
You've got to get some milk from here
to get down to the corner store.
And what you're doing the whole time
is dodging lions and hyenas
and every other thing
that wants to chew on your leg
and bite your head off.
I mean, imagine that.
That's the picture here.
The picture here is
you will not get to the corner store
and get back again with your milk.
Your kids get out in a play on the trampoline
and one's taken by a leopard sitting in the tree.
It's disaster.
It's fear everywhere in the land.
It says a little bit later,
there'll be a rustling of a leaf
because of a breeze that's come through
and you're off we go.
It's just fear everywhere.
Verses 25 and 26 go
in the terrible description of disaster in the land.
Verse 29 is shocking.
It says you will eat the flesh of your sons
and the flesh of your daughters.
If you think this is a veiled threat here by God
to see that, you know,
this actually happened in history.
2 Kings 6, Jeremiah 19, Lamentations 2, Lamentations 4, Ezekiel 5,
we see this wretchedness being worked out
in the history of Israel.
The real heart of their rebellions in verse 25,
the breaking of the covenant, as it says,
this is not a list of individual sins and infractions.
This is a sustained attitude towards God,
a deliberate choice to go against his word
and the consequence of their hostility toward God
is God meteering out his punishment towards his people.
So fear is the second motive here.
And in our day, fear is regarded as probably the lowest motivation for actions.
American writer H.A. Overstreet suggested
that to fear is to be psychologically ill.
It is in fact the consuming illness of our time, he suggested.
Franklin Roosevelt said that the only thing we need to fear
is fear itself.
Now, there are some fears that we want to work to overcome.
You know, the fear of flying.
You know, the Wright brothers sorted that one for us.
Closed spaces and ghosts and thunderstorms and darkness
or what others think of me or what others might do to me.
These are the kind of fears that are false
and they need to be overcome.
But what if the fear is something real?
What if it's a genuine and a true fear?
Are they not God-given guides for our good?
You see, I do not want an entirely fearless heart
any more than I want an entirely fearless child
that would be happy to play out there
on the traffic at Fuller's Road this afternoon.
I don't want that.
The judgment of God that he threatens to in this passage was real.
All you need to do is read the rest of the Old Testament to see that.
The very things that are threatened here
are what happened in space and time.
God was found to be good as his word.
He warned them and it happened.
Right fear can be an appropriate motive.
But we get a sense of what is behind these warnings
in Exodus 20-20 where it says,
Do not be afraid.
God, again speaking to Israel, do not be afraid.
God has come to test you
so that the fear of God will not be with you
to keep you from sinning.
In other words, my translation of Exodus 20-20,
fear God so that you don't have to fear God.
See, the fear of God does not sit by itself as a motivation.
The Bible tells us that his grace and his mercy
allows himself to be a place of refuge.
Proverbs 14-26 is, I think, quite remarkable.
It says,
Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress
and for their children it will be a refuge.
The fear of the Lord is a secure fortress
and a place of refuge.
Now, that might be a decision
that some of you need to make tonight.
You've heard this word of warning.
It might be time for you to hear it
as Israel was meant to hear it
and turn back to God,
to repent, to come back to him
and find refuge in him, in his love and his mercy.
You see, this is not just a word of warning to Israel
a few thousand years ago.
We see the same sort of stuff in the New Testament.
In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul gets up and says,
Now he commands all people everywhere to repent
for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice
by the man he has appointed.
He has given proof of this to everyone
by raising him from the dead.
Maybe that's a choice you need to make tonight
is to actually turn away from your rejection of God,
turn towards him,
repent and find refuge in him.
And if that is you, then please,
I would love to talk to you after the service.
So the second motive is fear,
but fear that's meant to drive us to him in refuge.
And that leads me to the third motive,
and that is the love of God.
His grace has the last word here.
Now the word punish in verses 18 and again in 28
can be understood to mean the word discipline.
You know, the discipline in the middle of this chapter
is not evidence that God has finally gotten fed up
with his people,
but in fact it's the exact opposite of that.
His discipline is part of his careful love of his people,
it's part of his covenant love.
His discipline is designed to bring his people to repentance.
Now every parent knows
that we don't stop loving our children
when we discipline them.
Our discipline of them
is another expression of our love for them.
It's one of the most difficult ways
that we love our children,
but it is still love for our children.
And if you look at verses 18, 21, 23, 24, 27, sorry,
you'd notice that the purpose of all of these punishments
was to get the people to finally turn back to God
and away from the road of destruction.
God sends them discipline
in the hope that they will turn around
and they ignore it
and he sends them another discipline
in the hope they'll turn around,
but they ignore it again and again and again.
The phrase that is used here over and over
is listen to God, listen to me.
See the same thing in the New Testament.
Jesus says in Luke 8
that those who are part of his family
are those who hear God's word and obey.
The difference between the wise man
who built his house on the rock
and the foolish man who builds his house on the sand
is the difference between those who hear the word of God
and those who hear the word of God and do it.
Jesus says,
if you love me,
this is how you show your love for me.
You keep my commandments.
So in verse 44,
we see God's response to those who finally turn back.
They've finally heeded God's warnings,
his discipline,
they've turned back
and these are the ones who have been humbled,
they're turned back in repentance
and he says,
yet in spite of all of this,
when they're in the land of their enemies,
I will not reject them or abhor them
so as to destroy them completely.
Why would God be so loving
and so long-suffering?
You see, the pressing question of Leviticus
is not how can a loving God
possibly send anyone to hell.
It's actually how can a holy God
possibly ever allow anyone into heaven.
That is the issue of Leviticus.
Why is this God so patient with rebellion?
There is no other answer but his love.
All the covenant language
of these last verses of Leviticus 26
is not the language of a detached,
cold negotiating table in a courtroom.
It is the heated language of love.
This God commits himself in love to his people
like a marriage relationship.
And the Old Testament is, if you like,
the panorama of God's patient,
gracious, merciful, long-suffering.
His passion to love his people.
Before she married media mogul Ted Turner,
Jane Fonda said,
for two people to live together
for the rest of their lives
is almost unnatural.
As it turns out,
that marriage didn't last long.
But there's a bucket of truth in that,
is it not?
I mean, it's one thing to say
that, you know,
love at first sight.
That's kind of understandable.
But how do you explain love
when you've been looking at each other
for 20 years?
Or 52 years,
as my parents celebrated this week.
this sense of the difficulty
of being faithful to someone else,
especially when that someone
has faults and failings,
let alone that someone
who is actively hostile towards you.
That's such an important aspect
of the love of God.
The tenacious love of God
is always the basis
of his relationship with his people.
As 1 John 4 says,
this is love.
Not that we loved God,
but that he loved us.
That's love.
And frankly,
you're not easy to love.
Neither am I,
but, you know,
I just want to drive the point home.
You're not easy to love.
As long as we think of ourselves
self-righteously,
as long as we think of ourselves
as people that are easy to love,
then we can never, ever
understand the good news
of Jesus Christ.
You might be the founding member
of the Pharisee Society,
but you cannot be a Christian
until you understand
that you are not easy to love.
only when we understand
how difficult we are to love
because of our sin
and our hostility towards God
can we begin to understand
what God has done for us.
And if you doubt
God's love for you
and you doubt
the consequence of your sin,
look at the cross,
you see them both collide there.
Why would we follow this God?
2 Corinthians 5 says,
for Christ's love compels us.
Christ's love compels us
because we are convinced
that one died,
talking about Jesus,
one died for all
and therefore all died
and he died for all
that those who live,
that's talking about us now,
should no longer live for themselves
but for him who died for them
and was raised again.
Why would we follow this God?
Because his love compels us.
The New Testament declares
that the creator God
came to earth
to die for our sins on the cross.
God says in the Bible,
cursed is anyone
who's hung on a tree
and here we have in Jesus,
God himself,
God placing himself,
willingly placing himself
under his own curse.
He forsakes his son,
he turns his back on his son
so that we might get the blessing
of being drawn close to him
and being in relationship with him.
You see, Jesus is the one Lord,
he's the one master,
he's the one boss
who when we fail him
will not punish us
but in fact forgive us.
You see, if you serve your career,
if you serve your family,
if you serve other relationships
and if you fail them,
it will crucify you internally
internally with self-loathing.
But Jesus was crucified for you.
Every single one of us,
the same as every single person
in this world,
every single one of us here tonight,
it lives for something.
And that something is your Lord,
it is your master,
it is your boss
and it constrains your behavior.
You are not free.
Whatever it is that you live for
puts constraints on your behavior.
If you live to be an Olympic gold medalist,
you don't eat KFC three times a day.
Three times a week,
you don't eat it probably.
If you live for Olympic gold,
if you live for a successful career
or art or politics
or a boyfriend or a spouse,
they all put limits on your choices.
There are things that you will not do.
You are not free.
Therefore, the question is not,
am I free?
But rather,
how do I know
if I'm taking on
liberating constraints
rather than the constraints
that will crush me
and abuse me?
That's the more appropriate question.
What constraints am I taking on?
And the answer of Christianity,
the answer of the Bible,
the answer of Leviticus
is that if we are living
for the one who both created us
and redeemed us
and loves us,
then by definition,
whatever he calls us to do
is a liberating constraint.
It's where true,
true freedom is found.
in the same way
that you get a boat
and put up its sail
and let it go
in the water,
providing it doesn't hit any rocks
or anything out,
it is truly free.
It's doing what it was designed to do.
Take that boat,
put it out in the desert
and plant it on a sand hill
and put the sail up,
wind comes along,
it's not truly free.
It's not doing what it was designed to do.
We were made to know,
to serve,
to love God
and if we try to live for anything else
it leads to slavery.
Anything else leads to slavery.
When we live for God
and follow his will,
we find that we are actually becoming
who we are meant to be.
You see,
the Christian offer
is not merely
complying with the regulations
of a creator
out of a mere duty.
It consists of
a new,
growing,
inward passion
to love
and be close
to our God and Saviour.
You see,
when a Christian
grasps
how Jesus
saves them
at infinite cost
to himself,
how he emptied himself
of his glory
and took a humble
form
to serve
our best interest,
what it does,
it creates
a grateful joy
and it would move
for us to please him
and to know him
and resemble him
to be holy
because he is holy.
Our happiness
gets put into his happiness
and serving him
becomes our perfect liberation.
That is why
we follow this God
even when it's not popular.
And the call
to God's people now,
if you're a Christian,
the call to God's people
right now
is still the same
as it was
to the first recipients
of Leviticus.
Be holy
because I am holy.
1 Peter 1
quotes that
call to holiness
from Leviticus
when he exhorts Christians
to look forward
to the hope
that they have
of Christ's return.
And in looking forward
to that hope,
he calls us
to be distinct now
no matter how difficult
it gets.
He calls us
not to be conformed
to the evil desires
we once had.
He calls us
to love one another deeply.
Why?
Because that's
the character of God.
That's who we're becoming.
Love one another deeply.
To be holy
as he is holy.
To get rid of everything
that is not characteristic
of a person who loves.
He says,
get rid of things
like malice
and deceit
and hypocrisy
and envy
and slander.
Christians are called
to be distinct
from everyone else.
And as a church,
we're going to set
a core value
just on the outside
of that wall
that you'll see them
over supper.
Turn to them,
have a look at them.
And those core values
show a number of ways
that we in this place
are looking to be distinct.
We hold a course.
We heard about it
just a moment ago,
Pathways.
And that course
is about membership
in this Christian community.
It's how our Christian
distinction gets worked
out here
at St. Paul's Chatswood.
I don't care how long
you've been here
in this church.
If you've never been
to Pathways,
get to Pathways.
There's one on
on the 19th of March.
Sign up for it
tonight
just out there
on the Connect Desk.
Why would we want
to do that?
Why would you want
to be distinct?
Why be constrained
by God's word?
Why go against
the tighter society
and be holy
because I am holy?
Hebrews 12, 14
says this,
make every effort,
every effort,
really work at it,
really, really work at it
to live at peace
with everyone
and to be holy
because without holiness
no one will see
the Lord.
Why does holiness matter?
Because we get God back.
We get to be
in his presence.
That's the goal of Leviticus.
That's the goal
of the whole Bible.
That's the goal
of history in fact.
Revelation 21,
this is the end of it.
This is our hope.
This is what Peter
calls us to look forward to.
Then I saw
a new heaven
and new earth
for the first heaven
and the first earth
had passed away
and there was no longer
any sea.
I saw the holy city,
the new Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven
from God,
prepared as a bride,
beautifully dressed
for her husband.
And then I heard
a loud voice
from the siren
saying,
look,
God is there.
it says something
like that.
It says,
God's dwelling place
is now amongst
his people
and he will dwell
with them.
They will be his people
and God himself
will be their God
and he will be with them.
He will wipe away
every tear.
There'll be no more death
or mourning
or crying or pain.
To the thirsty,
I will give water
without cost
from the spring
of the water of life
and those who are victorious
will inherit all of this
and they will be
with their God
and they will be
my children.
That's the goal.
But hear the warning.
But the cowardly,
the unbelieving,
the vile,
the murderers,
the sexually immoral,
those who practice
magic arts,
the idolaters
and all liars,
those who refuse
to listen,
they will be consigned
to the fiery lake
of burning sulfur.
That is the second death.
There is no coming back
from that.
And so hear
the warning of God
tonight
and find refuge
in his mercy.
If this is a decision
you need to make,
speak to me.
Please, please, please
speak to me
after this service.
Choose today
the blessing
of God's presence forever
or the curse
of being cast away
from him forever.
The 17th century
Puritan preacher
Thomas Goodwin
once said,
if I were to go
to heaven
and find that
Christ was not there,
I would leave
immediately
for heaven
would be hell
without Christ.
Goodwin understood
that the joy
of our salvation,
the joy
of our hope
is not the promise
of a certain place,
but in fact
a restoration
to a relationship
with our glorious
creator
through the self-sacrifice
for us
of our great
and glorious
redeemer.
The heart
of the Christian gospel
as expressed
throughout the Bible
and these closing
bits of Leviticus
is the promise
of eternal,
joy-filled,
totally free
communion
with God
our creator.
That is why
we are who we are
and we do
what we do.
you
or
you