Leviticus 19-22, 24, 25: Social Justice among God’s People… Love Your Neighbour As Youself

Introduction

“All you need is love”, sang the Beatles. “Love is all you need.”

If that is so, why do we have rules and laws? If all you need is love, why do we need ‘age of consent’ laws? Why do we need laws about minimum wages, about how you should drive your car, laws about work place health and safety, rules about safe ministry, standards, about how your house is built, qualifications for who is allowed to fix your car, or who can hang their shingle out as a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer? Moreover, as Christians, we are called to obey the laws of the land. Why do we have laws, if all your need is love?

There are two reasons. First, humans don’t always love. In fact, they rarely love. People don’t mostly love their neighbours as themselves. They are sinful and selfish. That of course is no surprise if you are a Bible reader. The Bible says, “No one righteous, not even one”. The Bible says that every inclination of the thoughts of human hearts is only evil all the time. The Bible says that we are deep down desperately wicked. And so our world needs to create laws. And we Christians must obey both the moral law of God, and the law of the land in everything not sinful.

In fact, God’s moral laws are simply just wise living. God’s moral laws are his commands to humans that we live in accordance with our created natures. For us to be commanded to love is to be commanded to be truly human, human as God intended us to be.

The second reason why love is not enough is related to this. If we have don’t always love, we’ve got a problem with our thinking. Human thinking is distorted and warped. Sometimes what we think is loving to our neighbour is really loving ourselves. Humans think they know what is loving, but really it is not. And so we need laws to tell us what is right and true.

As Christians, we are not under the law as a means of salvation or justification. The law of God is good, holy, and righteous. His commands are just, honest, and true. But Paul clearly states that no one will be justified by works of the law, because we have not and do not do and keep God’s good holy law. Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

But, if we become conscious of sin through the law, we should pay attention to it, because as Christians we don’t want to live in sin any longer. If God’s law teaches us what sin is, it tells us what to avoid and what to do.

Christians are not bound to the law as a method of justification. Our justification and salvation only comes to us through faith in Christ, who died and rose again for us. Our forgiveness and being credited righteousness is only based on Jesus’ work for us. But Christians are bound to obey God’s moral law as part of their life of good works. We are not saved by our works, but we are saved for our good works.

Context

Some people say loving God doesn’t matter, but doing good to other people is all that matters. But such a view is not Christian because Jesus says loving God with all your hearts, soul, mind, and strength is the most important command. You can’t love God, and say it doesn’t matter what you think about God. That is the vertical aspect of the law. How do you think about God and his Messiah, and only Son, Jesus Christ? You can’t love God, and dishonor his only beloved Son.

But today I want us to focus on the horizontal aspect of God’s law: love your neighbor as yourself. And this command is found in our passage, Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Jesus didn’t make up the two greatest commandments. He mined them from the law of Moses. As I said last week, we are not bound by the ceremonial or civil law of the Old Testament. But we will do well to pay attention to the laws about sacrifice and priests and tabernacle, because they point us to Christ. We also need to pay attention to the civil and criminal laws of Moses, because they embody important principles. But today I want to look at the Moral Law of God in Leviticus, as it relates to loving our neighbor.

The Anglo-Australian legal system recognizes this principle, “love your neighbor as yourself”. In the case of Donaghue v Stevenson, the famous snail in a ginger beer bottle, Lord Atkin quoted Leviticus 19:18 through Jesus.

The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbor. Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932 SC (HL) 31 (UKHL 26 May 1932), Per Lord Atkin J at http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1932/100.html accessed 21 June 2014.

In law school, this is the first case you study. It is the basis of the modern tort of negligence. It is applied in cases around Australia to this day.

And its basic principle comes from Leviticus 19:18, applied and interpreted by our Lord Jesus Christ. See also Leviticus 19 verse 16:

Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the LORD.

Put fences around your flat roof so no one falls off. Make sure a bull that gores is well secured in a paddock. The principle upon which these laws are based is right and good. Love your neighbour as yourself.

If that is the case, then why do we need all the other laws? Why must we read Leviticus 19 specifying all these different obligations? The short answer to this is, because we are sinful. Because we are sinful, we need to attend to love and law.

Let me use two images, the first from cars. Love is the engine, but Law is the steering wheel. Without love, the law goes nowhere. No matter how much you turn the steering wheel, there’s no movement without the engine. Without law, love is misdirected. A steering wheel controls forward motion. And the law channels and controls the impetus of love. And a car out of control is far more dangerous than a stationary one.

A second image is from the body. Love is the heart of the law, but law is love with eyes. I’ll say it again, love is the heart, it’s the ticker, but the law is love with eyes.

So Leviticus 19, interpreted through the New Testament, gives us both the engine and the steering wheel. It gives us both heart and eyes. Let’s look at some of the laws.

Respect Your Mother and Father

Leviticus 19:3:

Each of you must respect his mother and father

This is simply reflecting the 5^th commandment. Again, look at Leviticus 19:32:

Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.

Our disposable, throw-away society loves youth and pathetically tries to hang onto it. Our society will tend to cast off the aged as those who no longer contribute. Even old people see themselves as a burden on their children. But scripture is different. Proverbs 23:22:

Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.

So Paul says in 1 Timothy 5 verse 4:

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

Love for the elderly, and particularly our parents and grandparents, is a specifically Christian responsibility. It is not society out there’s job. It’s our job. In our society, there is a place for retirement villages and nursing homes, but we can’t delegate the job of being a child. Sometimes these relationships go bad, and that’s particularly painful. If you’re in that situation, I’m really sorry. But our job is to keep being as kind and respectful as we can. I know a number of you visit elderly mothers. Well done. Look at 1 Timothy 5:4. This is pleasing to God.

Industrial Relations

Leviticus also has principles to teach us about industrial relations, fair work condition,s and providing employees with what they need. Look at the second half of Leviticus chapter 19 verse 3:

You must observe my Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.

Giving servants and employees a day off is built into God’s moral will. It may surprise some of you to know that I agree with the Labor party about something. I agree about penalty rates for weekend work. If someone has to work on Saturday or Sunday, they should be remunerated extra. I think our society is not the better for the 24/7 convenience they have now trained us in.

Likewise, I declare open season on sport. After all, they’ve declared open season on us. I like sport. I love the cricket on the radio in January, and the NRL on Friday nights. I grew up playing cricket and soccer and hockey. But it was called ‘Saturday sport’ back then, and only the really good players who got into reps played on Sunday. But now sport has declared open season on church. Sport has effectively said, we will be a replacement church and take all of Sunday.

Then there are the basic responsibilities of employers. Leviticus 19 verse 13:

Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him. Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.

We need to be people who pay what we owe. The whole thing about keeping back money that someone is owed is just not in accord with God’s moral will. James applies this in his letter to the rich oppressors of his day. James 5:4:

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. (NIV)

We need to pay what we owe on time when we owe it. We need to do what we said what we were going to do.

Social Security

Moreover, Leviticus has some words to say about social security. Israel had a kind of a ‘work for the dole’ scheme. Leviticus chapter 18 verses 9 to 10:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

This, of course, was the law that provided for Ruth and Naomi, when they returned from Moab. Notice, it is not a law that says, ‘here is your food for nothing’. The poor and the foreigner still had something to do to get their food. They had to go and gather it. But God’s people were to make sure there was provision for the poor.

And in the New Testament, the principle is not entitlement, but work to eat. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 10 to 12, Paul gives this rule:

If a man will not work, he shall not eat. We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. (NIV)

Yes, God established for his Old Testament people a social welfare safety net. The poor must be looked after. But those who can, who are able, must contribute. We see this in the general command for honesty. Leviticus 19:11:

Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.

And Paul applies this command to the Ephesian Christians:

Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. (Eph 4:25)

He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. (Eph 4:28)

Justice

Now, you might think that this is all obvious. Of course, no one should steal or lie. We should speak the truth. We should share what you have.

But that’s because you are a Christian. It is obvious if you have been taught it from infancy. But why should you think someone who has no fear of God should share that view? In our society, we still live in the warm afterglow of Christianity. Christianity still influences and affects our laws and our society. Those who reject God and Christ and the supernatural still are reaping all the benefits of the Christian worldview they are seeking to overthrow.

But go to a country that has lived out several generations of Atheism or Islam, and see if the morality is the same. Look at Transparency International’s corruption perception index, and you will see those countries whose institutions were established as a result of protestant Christianity, biblical Christianity, with separation of powers and independent judiciary and media, tend to be the least corrupt. And those great Atheist states, Russia and China, do not fair nearly as well. And the worst are often Muslim countries. There might be some other reasons for these. But a correlation of protestant history and respect for the Bible and lack of corruption I don’t think is an accident. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/results/#myAnchor1

Leviticus 19 verse 15:

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

These principles are entrenched in our independent judiciary: a separation of the legislative and judicial function, a system of appeal courts and judicial review, and principles like the rule of law, that everyone is equal under the law. Is there perfect application of these principles. No. There is still bias and corruption. And you and I are part of the problem. And as you think of people walking into ICAC, our first thought should be “There but for the grace of God go I.” And ICAC and Royal Commissions and Police and Parliament are part of God’s kindness to us, to restrain sin in a fallen world. There are Federal, State and Local governments. There are elected governments and oppositions. There are unelected public servants who are separate, and unelected judicial officers who are also independent. There is the media, also independent. There are accountability standards and auditors and ombudsmen, an expensive system of people watching people watching people who watch people. It’s not efficient, but it is the best we can hope for in a sin-sick world. And all of this comes from a view that people are sinful, that they will take what they can when they can, and that our world tends toward entropy without liberty.

Care for the Disabled

Leviticus also calls us to care for the disabled, the blind and the deaf. Leviticus chapter 19 verse 14:

Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.

It’s not funny to tease disabled people. It’s not a joke. It’s sin. And so Christians are called to have mercy on the weak. They are not to be victims of natural selection and survival of the fittest. We are in the image of God. And one day, the deaf and the blind might be me or you. And when Jesus came, he brought healing to the blind and deaf and lame. And then he rose the dead. And what Christ was pointing to was a time when all of this suffering and disability would cease, not by science, but by God. Our broken world will be healed once and for all in the new heaven and the new earth.

But in the mean time, we must put bandaids and sticky tape on ourselves and others, and we look forward to Jesus fixing it up completely.

Watch Your Mouth

And the way we conduct debate will be different. We will know when to hold our tongues. Leviticus 19 verse 16:

Do not go about spreading slander among your people.

And Australian law protects reputation with the law of defamation. And we will know when to speak. Leviticus 19 verses 17 to 18:

¹⁷Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. ¹⁸Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Plain speaking is required. And this requires courage. Deal with the hatred by rebuking and speaking plainly. When Paul says that the man of God should teach, rebuke, correct, and train, he was only applying the Old Testament law. The way to deal with the grudge is talking it out, speaking clearly and plainly about a sin.

Jesus says, “If you brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over” (Matt 18:15).

There are many other things I could talk about. We need to be kind and compassionate to the foreigner, the alien, and refugee (Lev 18:33-34), not misuse them, not make them pick our fruit and pay them $7 a day. I haven’t explained about not sowing your field with two seeds, or wearing clothing of mixed fiber, or of not killing a cow or it’s calf on the same day, nor of not cooking a young goat in its mother’s milk. I haven’t talked about the death penalty, and an eye for an eye, nor Jesus saying “turn the other cheek”.

But I will talk about slavery. Slavery is said to be our weak underbelly, we who hold to the New Testament teachings of men teaching in the mixed congregation, we who continue to reject homosexual inclination or practice as God's intention for sexual expression. For the Bible permits, we are told, slavery, and it tells slaves to be obedient to masters, and Paul sends a runaway slave back to his master. As a former prime minister once said, the bible regards slavery as “a natural condition”. Well, let’s consider that one. Leviticus 25:39-46:

³⁹If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. ⁴⁰He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. ⁴¹Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. ⁴²Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. ⁴³Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God. ⁴⁴Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. ⁴⁵You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. ⁴⁶You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. (NIV)

In Israel, sometimes an Israelite became poor and sold himself or his children into slavery to pay debts. This was to be for a maximum of six years, and in the seventh year they were to be released. This was the equivalent of bankruptcy. And the slaves had to be treated well.

However, the nations around could be enslaved and forced to work. How is this fair and God’s will?

Well, firstly, let’s remember that when we get all uppity, let’s just think about where we get all our nice consumer durables and clothing from. Why is it that we Aussies don’t make anything any more? It is because we have slave labour off shore, isn’t it? Sure, it’s not called ‘slave labour’. They are called ‘developing economies’ and ‘cheap labour markets’. The workers get a plate of food for a days work. The only reason our DVDs and TVs and washing machines are as cheap as they are is because of cheap overseas labour, workers in China or Bangladesh or Indonesia are paid a pittance to make our stuff. I don’t hear Australian prime ministers putting a stop to this, do I? No, because we want all our nice cheap stuff.

Now, in the beginning, humans didn’t rule over other humans. Humans ruled the world. But with the spread of sin, humans misused and mistreated other humans. Marriages involved a fight for rule, and so does our world. And so our current world order is in slavery to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Our whole world is enslaved to the devil and greed and money.

And in our current world, both Old and New Testaments seek to regulate this fight for rule. They don’t give the ultimate answer for this world. They simply stick bandaids on the problem of sin in our world. Paul and Peter says that slaves are to obey their masters, and they say to masters, do not be harsh, because you too have one master in heaven. Paul speaks directly about slavery in 1 Corinthians 7:21ff:

Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord’s freedman, similarly, he was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to.

That is how we are called to live in this fallen world, to think differently about our situation in light of Christ’s redemption. Sure, if we can get a better temporal situation, do it. If you can get out of bankruptcy, do it. If you can pay your debts, down size, do it.

But we believe that this world is not all there is. We believe in the world to come. We believe that Christ died and rose again. And this freed us from our slavery to sin and death and hell and the devil. The Son has set us free. And we are heading to the place where there is no more slave or free. We are going to the place where the last will be first and the first will be last, where it is hard for the rich to enter.

So we really are no longer slaves but sons. We will inherit in Christ. And since we are now God’s sons and daughters, we will inherit. Only when Christ is seen to be the King and Lord that he really is will this slavery be finally dealt with. Did you realize that there are estimates that around 10% of China is Christian of some sort. They are fleeing Atheist materialism because they’ve seen it from the inside. 130 million Christians are estimated to live in China, more than all of Europe. http://www.ucobserver.org/features/2014/02/sleeping_giant/ It is the poor in this world who are rich in faith. The way to deal with slavery is to preach the gospel of Christ the emancipator.

Let’s pray.