The LORD gave Moses some basic rules for operating a business in the Promised Land (Lev. 19:9-13):

1. Leave something for the poor.
2. Don't steal, cheat or lie.
3. Pay your workers on time. 
4. Don't take advantage of the weak.
5. Judge fairly; don't discriminate.
6. Treat everyone as you want to be treated.

The singular reason to do these things was not self-benefit nor the benefit of others but honoring the LORD (Lev. 19:10, 12, 14, 16, 18).

Contrary to this counsel, worldly business ethics teaches:

1. Get every cent out of every deal with little or no concern for others.
2. Steal, cheat or lie if the return is "worth" the risk.
3. Make sure your workers know who's boss.
4. Go after the weak first. They are easy prey because they don't know how to play the game.
5. Get close to those who will benefit you most.
6. If someone tries to to hit you, hit them harder.  

The singular reason to do these things is for self-benefit. 

The mores of worldly business ethics spring from a self-focused motive while the mores of biblical business ethics spring from a God-focused motive. Sometimes we have to look backward from our actions to our motive to discern from where our motive springs. 

I encourage all of us to do some self-examination. Worldly business ethics focus on self and the present world. Biblical ethics focus on God and the future kingdom. What do you hope for?

Leviticus 19:26

²⁶ “You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes.

I originally looked at this, in the esv, to explore “interpret omens” wanting to see if this supports a view to not seek God speaking to you in dreams. I am aware scripture tells many stories of God speaking through dreams. And yet, even into the New Testament we have a principle throughout that leaves scriptures, the revealed truth, as the arbitrator that lets us know if a dream is or is not of God – so we should test all spirits in light of what has been revealed by his written word.

Jude: ⁸ Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, (the word)

But rather… What I found is the idea that “interpret omens or tell fortunes” is akin to sorcery. To frame the ‘magic’ in a manner that is manageable for contemporary thinking, I understand this kind of idea to imply a ‘forcing.’ You would be guilty of sorcery if you manipulate or force conditions to achieve an outcome.

“Anan,” translated as Soothsayer/Sorcerer/observer of times, can also simply mean to “Bring.” (How messy would a literal interpretation of this be? – “don’t bring”) But it turns out a literal translation can give a nice idea - don’t bring about an end. Let God be the driver and stop trying to force things to be. I am all for setting up a vision statement for a company, group, or team – it is part of appropriate motivation. But I am leery of visions statements laid out by church groups. Leaders that start with sayings like “the lord told me” or “the lord revealed to me.”  Honestly, I am leery because if I could somehow know that a message was spoken from God as in a booming voice, or a fire calling prophet, I would expect myself to follow those words with life altering zeal; it would ‘force’ me to obey, a potentially dangerous situation if I don’t “test all things.”

I give them the benefit of the doubt and say, “surely what they mean to say is something like: I have been given this solid idea that appears so sound, perfect and good, that it could only be of God – let’s find out.” But because I hold the words to “Test all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) I am eager to explore the idea.

God is, to borrow from science, a God of evidence, he is evidence-based – he has left/revealed enough

We don’t follow the winds, we test the winds by what is written.

We don’t follow just any prophet only the ones who are 100% accurate 100% of the time.

We don’t follow just any messiah only the one who fulfills the prophecies

We don’t follow just any story only the one that has witnesses of a resurrection

We don’t follow just any God only the one that has manifest himself among people by signs, power, and wonders

We don’t follow just any book only one that has been challenged for centuries and has never been shown archeologically or historically inaccurate or in error

Perhaps what I am leery, has more to do with semantics, but semantics matter:

Matthew 12: 36 I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give an account for every careless word they speak,

To say, “God told me” is very explicit and is not the same as:

Acts 16: 10 And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach

Speak with precision, and not in idle words.

Friends, as you read these chapters, you will be tempted more than ever to selectively apply these commands to yourselves or others. Don't do it. Remember, we are no longer under the Old Covenant. We are no longer obligated to follow these laws. They have no direct application to us. Instead, I would encourage you to just read these commands to get a sense of how God used them to separate His people from the practices of the people that lived in the land of Canaan. 

However, the general principle of being holy as God is holy (Levitcus 19:2) is something that the writers of the New Testament also bring to bear on Christians (1 Peter 1:16), but the holiness defined in the NT is different from the holiness defined in the OT. It is in following the mandates of the NT, the Law of Christ, that a believer is holy to God, just as it was in following the mandates of the OT, the Law of Moses, that the people of Israel prior to Christ were holy to God.

Also, keep in mind that there are a lot of moral overlaps between the commands in the OT and the commands in the NT. For example, the commands against murder, adultery, and theft are in both testaments. Neither testament provides a comprehensive list of commands against all possible sins against God; however, they provide guidelines for discernment. The Bible is such a guideline as well, of which God says it is a sufficient guide for believers to live in a way that pleases Him (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

The Scriptures teach that laws are really for law-breakers (1 Timothy 1:9) and are not for the righteous. We know that, in general, rules don't produce righteousness (cf. Colossians 2:20-23), although they may to a degree control wickedness (Galatians 3:19). As Christians, righteousness is accomplished for us by Christ. His righteousness has been put to our account (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:3-4). Therefore, as ones already declared righteous, we are called to live in keeping with this declared righteousness. Paul puts it another way in Galatians:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other (Galatians 5:24-26).

Paul says that our sinful nature has been crucified in Christ. Now, it is dying a slow death because we are still living in our bodies. That is why sometimes our bodies are called a "body of death" (Romans 7:24). It represents the sinful nature, which is a force of death in us. It is a place of perpetual conflict between the Spirit, who is the guarantor of eternal life within us, and the sinful nature, the force for death that wars against the Spirit until the day we die:

For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want (Galatians 5:17).

We are commanded to "keep in step" with the "life" that the Spirit has accomplished in us through Christ.  In other words, since you have been saved, live like a saved person. Put another way, Paul writes in Philippians 2:12-13,

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

As God has worked in us and continues to work in us, we are commanded to work out this reality. The big theological word for this process is "sanctification," which simply means "making holy" and relates back to our text in Leviticus 19:2, where the people of Israel were commanded "You must be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy."

Since we don't ever earn anything with respect to our salvation, the good that we do only confirms it. Our good works show the reality of our faith (James 2:14-26) and assure us of our divine calling and election (2 Peter 1:3-11). And since we earned nothing, there is absolutely no room for boasting. That is why we read above in Galatians 5:26, "Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other." We have nothing to boast about. We live by the Spirit not because of our good works. 

This is also the basis for Paul's rebuke of the Corintians, who were boasting about human leaders:

Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (1 Corinthians 4:6-7).

Salvation by grace is the great equalizer. Everyone touched by it is the same and its blessings are freely given and not earned. To wrangle over the importance of human leaders, to be conceited, or to envy would be to completely misunderstand salvation by grace. We are all the same, whether pastor or layman, young or old, white or black, poor or rich. This is why Paul also writes in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23,

So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Again, we read in Galatians 3:28,

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If we all understand that we stand in our salvation purely by the grace of God, let us also recognize that the kind of hierarchialism in the church today, which may have been first instituted by the Roman Catholic Church, is stifling the Spirit. It is the same type of Pharisaical hierarchy that made the Jews remain silent about their faith in Jesus because they feared getting ostracized from their synagogues (cf. John 9:22). 

Someone once said to newly ordained deacons of a congregation, "Protect your pastor." While this is a sensible remark if by it the speaker meant prayer for the pastor, spiritual accountability for the pastor, etc., I fear that what was meant was that the pastor should be shielded from any and all criticism, even justifiable ones. The Bible gives no justification for such honor accorded to men, even men who devote themselves to "full-time" ministry. This is Paul's whole point. He writes,

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).

Paul begins with two rhetorical questions. What is Apollos? What is Paul? The understood answer is "Nothing special at all." Christian leaders are not anything more than any other believer. To elevate them to some hallowed place, to value one personality over another, or to shield them from just criticism would be to show them a kind of favoritism that the Bible here and elsewhere commands against. 

When the idea of "deacons" was first introduced in the Bible, their primary purpose was to take responsibility for the distribution of food so that the disciples could focus on the ministry of God's Word:

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:1-4).

The responsibility of deacons is not to "protect the pastor" but to help the pastor with menial tasks, so that the pastor can spend the time he needs to study the Bible and teach it correctly. In fact, these first deacons were no biblical neophytes. They were men "full of the Spirit and wisdom." These deacons were not new believers or uneducated in the Scriptures. They were well-versed in the Scriptures and powerful evangelists. We see this in the two examples of Stephen and Philip given in the following chapters (Acts 7-8). There is nothing in this or other texts calling on deacons to guard the pastor's "reputation."

Friends, I am writing this because well-meaning believers feel they must "protect" the reputation of this pastor or that leader, even when they are teaching the wrong things. I'm not talking about insignificant matters of taste or dress or speaking style or other non-doctrinal matters. I'm talking about the correct interpretation of the sacred Scriptures. Do not guard against criticism of wrong teaching!

What pains me is that this is just like what is happening today on the poltical front, with everyone defending their candidate of choice. They make them blind to their candidate's signficant faults. What is worse, they try to hide these faults from others as well. Thus, they are protecting their candidate's "reputation" at the expense of openneess, honesty, and the democratic process. While this may be excusable in the political arena, because it is still part of a world system that is passing away (1 Corinthians 2:6), it is certainly not excusable among believers. 

The one phrase repeated here is "I am the Lord your God!" In our coming in and going out, we are to present our lives a living sacrifice. 

The reasons the Israelites were not to become like the inhabitants of the land is that they were set apart by who their God is. "I have brought you out of the land of Egypt! I have set you apart as my own, and it pleases me when you are obedient to me., Your every action should declare who I AM! Not who you are, but who I AM!"

God tells the Israelites the way he wants to separate them from their pagan neighbors in their behavior, interaction with other people, their religious practices, and the way their lives were to be lived was above reproach, because who they belonged to was God.

I am going to cautiously take these one of these verses out and put it here for you.

²⁶ ‘You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor shall you practice divination or soothsaying. ²⁷ You shall not shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard. ²⁸ You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks on you: I am the Lord.

Verse 28 is pulled out of context by people against the practice of tattooing. It was a religious practice among Israel's pagan neighbors to mark their bodies in remembrance of their ancestors before and after death. People who tattooed their bodies also did that as part of their pagan religious practices. This is why the Lord cautions against it. In the NT, Paul never says anything about tattoos.  He says our temple is not to be profaned, but he is talking about the inner temple, not the exterior. If the outer temple was all God looked at, I know where I would be going, and I know I would definitely be crying out for water there.  I believe people who are against people who have tattoos should bear this in mind when they quote these verses to them.

This is why we should carefully study context as part of our study.

I have 3 questions about todays reading. #1, the mention of tattoos. Why is that and as has been mentioned before, does that rule still apply since it is part of mosiac law? Because how many of us with the never give up kanji tattooed on us are I'm trouble now? #2, who or what is molech? This is the third or fourth time I've read his name this week. Lastly, I thought Moses granted divorce, however, in the instructions to the priests, it appears that God is already aware of divorce, because priests aren't allowed to marry divorced women. But I thought divorce came later because mans heart was hardened? Could you clarify?

I might have missed something reading it on my phone, but thought I'd ask.

Yujin responds... Regarding tattoos, the rule does not apply to Christians. For that matter, nothing in the Law of Moses directly applies to Christians anymore, because we have died to the Law of Moses through Christ. And now, we are under a New Covenant in Christ, which has similarities to the Old Covenant Mosaic Law, but is also different. The provisions of this New Covenant Law of Christ is mainly found in the New Testament epistles. As you read about the different provisions in the Law, it is important that you don't give into the temptation to start arbitrarily applying some to yourself while rejecting others. Either you apply the whole law to yourself, wherein you put yourself under the curse of the Law, or else you apply none of it. I would encourage you toward the latter.

Regarding the question about "Molech" (Moloch, Milcom, etc.) this was likely an ancient Ammonite deity (cf. 1 Kings 11:7) that was primarily known in the Bible for receiving child sacrifices by fire (cf. Leviticus 18:21; 2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35). Remember, the Ammonites were from Ammon, who was the son of Lot, the nephew of Abraham. Ammon, along with Moab, arose out of the incestuous intercourse between Lot and his two daughter-in-laws, when they were delivered by angels from the destruction that came on Sodom. From Moab came the Moabites. The Ammonites and Moabites were neighboring peoples on the east side of the Jordan River. The Moabites worshipped the God Chemosh. These two are mentioned together in 1 Kings 11:7 as gods that Solomon sinfully made places of worship for. A more extensive description of this god can be found here at gotquestions.org.

Regarding the matter of divorce, divorce was not instituted by Moses or by God, but likely existed prior to the Law. God permitted it, just as he permitted things like polygamy and slavery. But this was not God's ideal, nor does He approve of it. In fact, God hates divorce (cf. Malachi 2:16). God gave certain laws to manage divorce (e.g. Deuteronomy 24:1-4), which went on even though God did not approve of it. This was the "hardness of your hearts" that Jesus was referring to wherein God permitted divorce. God would either have to permit it and manage it or else He would probably have had to destroy the whole lot of them.

I read several translations when dealing with the KJV. At times, I get frustrated with some interpretations in the NIV. So, I take stock in cross reference studies in scriptures to determine my understanding what the translator/translators and others opinions and studies try to convey. I try not to get stuck in an avenue that I got it right others got it wrong. I believe that this is why there are so many denominations and diverse teachings out there.

Maybe this is why I like the studies in the Old Testaments when dealing with the Book of the Law (Moses)...the Laws were precise and to the point, and the New Testament leaves you with a broad and general understanding of things. And makes it hard to judge ones behavior righteously at times, because Grace gets involved and there was actually no grace under the Law.

In the answer to Aaron #1, my opinion would be that all things maybe lawful but not all expedient.
 

Friends,

From time to time you may come across verses that help you to understand other passages of Scripture. Comparing Scripture to Scripture was a fundamental key to biblical interpretation of the Reformers in the Protestant Reformation. In fact, they even gave this practice a name. They called it "the analogy of faith." This key helped them to understand more obscure passages in Scripture by using clearer ones.

In Leviticus 18 and 20, we can employ this key. For example, if you are reading a more literal translation, you will find the expressions to uncover someone's nakedness and to see someone's nakedness used often in the text (e.g. NKJV).  Many modern translations, like the NIV, exchange the euphemism for the meaning, translating such expressions as "sexual relations." But in Genesis 9:22-23, in describing the seeing and covering of Noah's nakedness, the NIV does not make such an exchange, leading to some interpretive ambiguity.

Compare NKJV with the NIV in Leviticus 20:17,

So, the NIV interprets "takes" as "marries," "sees her/his nakedness" as "have sexual relations" and "uncovered his sister's nakedness" as "dishonored his sister."

Also, compare NKJV with the NIV in Leviticus 18:8,

Remarkably, here almost the same expression is taken in two separate senses: "sexual relations" and "dishonor your father."

How does the NIV decide what the meaning is of a given expression in a particular text? Can the same expression mean three different things? As you and I, the translators of the NIV use the context, both narrow (i.e. in the same passage) and broad (i.e. other biblical books) as their primary tool for translation. And every translation is an interpretation of the text.

As I read the various contexts, Genesis 9, Leviticus 18 and 20, I think the NIV has done a good job either rendering the meaning of a text (as in Leviticus 18 and 20) or else leaving a text ambiguous (as in Genesis 9). A case can be made that Moses intended the Genesis 9 account to remain ambiguous and scant on detail and not gratuitously graphic like Hollywood movies in our day. "Nakedness" generally expresses some kind of shame or indecency, whether it arises out of a sexual act, a dishonoring of a relative by such an act, or an exposure of some kind of discharge, etc. Here's a good article from Bob Deffinbaugh, a local pastor, on this issue: "The Nakedness of Noah and the Cursing of Canaan"