Dennis Tuuri

We’ll be considering God’s law today, unashamedly. So, let us turn to the scripture text for today, which is from the book of Acts, chapter 15, and we’ll read what is, I believe, a confirmation of the abiding validity of God’s law in the life of the believer. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. This text is a somewhat arcane text. Most people don’t pay a lot of attention to it and those that do sort of write it off for reasons I’ll explain later, but it’s a very important text for us.

And I would urge, as you always should, to hear the word of the king with open ears, shama, big ears in Hebrew. Listen, attend to these things and practice them. Okay, we’ll be reading in Acts 15 then verses 19-32. And now this is picking it up, of course, in the middle of the account. This is James still speaking after he’s given his interpretation of what’s going on at the council of Jerusalem. And we read now his sentence or deliberation which is concurred to by the whole congregation.

Picking up in verse 19. Wherefore my sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God. But that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols and from fornication and from things strangled and from blood. For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogue every Sabbath day. Then pleased it the apostles and elders and the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, surnamed Barsabas and Silas, chief men among the brethren.

And they wrote letters by them after this manner. The apostles and elders and brethren, send greetings unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, in Syria, in Cilicia. For as much as we have learned that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, so converting your souls, saying, “You must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment.” It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you, with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things that ye abstain from meat offered to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well. Fare ye well. So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch and where when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle, which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.

And Judas and Silas being prophets also themselves exhorted the brethren with many words and confirmed them. We pray that God would illuminate this word to our understanding. Before we take anything in life and begin to work with it, think about it, digest it, or actually manipulate with our hands, we should always give thanks to God for all things, particularly for his holy word. And now we pray by way of singing that by his spirit he might illuminate that word to our understanding and as well the word which those children that will go to Sabbath school shortly will hear from their instruction in the word of God as well.

Let us pray then by way of this song that God would illuminate to our understanding. So if you’re a bit squeamish about adult themes, you may be somewhat wary. I’m not going to talk a lot about that. But there are things in the scriptures which clearly relate to the decision of the Jerusalem Council that we’re discussing today that have to do with matters that some people become a little bit uncomfortable with.

Okay. Now, again, what we’re doing here is this is the third Sunday, third Lord’s day in which we’re talking about the council of Jerusalem. And I want us to think about this a little bit today. I want us to maybe approach this in a little bit different light than just dealing directly with the text at first. So one of the things that the text reminds us of is the unity of the church. I’ve talked about this before—how attempts to divide the church lead to the actual further institutional unity of the church building upon the organic unity that God has given us in the Holy Spirit.

Not that we earn or have to work our way into God’s provision—God provides us with blessings of unity. And so that unity is fleshed out institutionally as the church matures. Now in 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul writes to the Corinthians, “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”

Now, we could preach in that text at least a couple of weeks probably, but suffice it to say that the unity that the church in Acts 15 is coming to is a unity where they speak the same thing. The church speaks with one voice in this decision that we’ve talked about. That’s because they think the same thing. Paul urged they might be of one mind, one talk, one mind. They think the same thing. And in that thinking and speaking, they are discerning and making judgments that you might discern. You might be one, the apostle writes, in the same judgment.

Discernment, I mention that because judgment and discernment is a major portion of what Acts 15 and a growing and maturing church is all about. Making judgments and discernments. This culture hates it. And you must realize that the winds of this culture will blow against you in terms of not making discernments and judgments. Everything’s okay. I am okay. You’re okay. We’re all okay. But what would you do if next week you came to church and found that there were several disciplinary cases going on in the church?

We talked about how Acts 15 is another example, a second witness following Ananias and Sapphira. Now the second round is the Gentiles are brought in with discipline being enacted. We’re not going to talk about it much today, but one of the things this council does is to denounce the Judaizers in strong terms. This may not be so apparent, but if you look at the language, they’re saying these men are liars and subverters and troublers of your soul. And Paul picks up on that theme. Paul was at the Jerusalem Council, in the book of Galatians. He tells them they’re cursed—a strong denunciation.

Well, we can understand that from men who were saying you had to be circumcised in order to be saved. What would we do if next week, for instance, you came here and we had a situation where there was discipline being enacted against a member because they had married their aunt about the same age, let’s say, and maybe it’s a distant aunt living in another state or something. You got to know him and like him. Or what if we had a church court action dealing with somebody who had married their aunt by marriage, not even a blood aunt, an aunt by marriage or their daughter-in-law, a sister-in-law, stepmother, maybe a step-grandchild—who knows where the ages might end up when we have large families, etc. And we had this person not repenting of that action and so being disciplined by the church, perhaps suspended from the table, and even being excommunicated.

What would you think of that? What would you think if next week there was a disciplinary case here at church where we were taking a man to task, calling him to repent based upon the scriptures because he was drinking blood? Actually, you know, cutting a cow’s throat, a glass of blood, drinking the blood. Or what if this person said, “Well, I like to eat goat meat, but I don’t like to bleed them first. I like to just throttle them first, strangle them to death, and then I eat the flesh.” And we said, “Well, you can’t do that. We have to discipline because of that. We have to if you don’t repent, then we have to treat you according to Matthew 18 first suspension and then excommunication potentially.” Or what if you had a person here who said, “Well, you know, last week I was on vacation, and I thought I’d like to see how those Hari Krishna guys did things, and you know, they came around offering a free meal to me and my family, went to this free meal, and it was at their little temple.”

I’ve done this, by the way, back in San Francisco back in the ’60s when I was there. I did this occasionally to get free food and you’d go into these temples and you’d be served, you know, not a real tasty meal, but anyway, you got a little bit of food and it was in the context of worship though, of course, and let’s say a member had done that on vacation and we had said, “Well, you can’t do that. You should repent. That’s sin.” And we’ll show you why in the scriptures, but if you don’t repent, we’re going to have to suspend you.

What would we do if that happened? Or let’s make it even something maybe that some of all of us have participated in. Perhaps let’s say we have a member who decides that while they’re away on vacation to have communion just with their family instead of going to church on the Lord’s day and we start to talk to that person, bring them under instruction, elders did. What would you think about that?

Well, what do people do in life? What do the pagans do to get blessing? We all want blessing. We all want long life. Nobody wants to die quickly unless they think they’re going to go to someplace better. What do people do when they want life, when they want long life on this earth, when they want blessings or they want to have eternal life as well. What are some of the means that people take to avoid the only true source of life, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Well, they engage usually in several very consistent things throughout the ages and millennia. They involve themselves in spiritual idolatry with demons. They may involve themselves with different gods, different forms of gods, so to speak, by entering into false worship. They may approach eternal life on the basis, or long life on this earth on the basis, of eating particular things. Cultures have done the sacred food. Or man also will frequently engage himself in sexual practices and through sexual practices seek to obtain vitality and energy, long life, and even eternal life in the case of some occultic practices.

Now I think that what these scriptures talk about in the prohibitions given to the church of the council of Jerusalem are these three aspects: false worship, and particularly demonism; food; and sex worship. Food and sex—that’s what these things are about. And those are the things that men will seek in an alternative to Jesus Christ to obtain blessing both in this life and the life beyond. We know this is true and I can give you music today from the pop culture scene and you know I’m not prone to exaggeration on this stuff, but I can play songs for you if you would like that talk about sex and worship of the sexual act itself. And through participation in various weird sexual practices, people think that somehow they then can append themselves to life and blessing.

That’s the basic thrust of these prohibitions. Now let’s move then into the book of Leviticus and see what these four things are. I want to spend some time here in the book of Leviticus, chapters 17 and 18. This is a important issue. What are they doing? I’ve actually had people tell me, a fellow who went to Multnomah School of the Bible, that what this means is when you go out and create Christians on the mission field, the only thing you command them to do are these four things. He thought they were binding, but they were the only things because it says “these are the only things we need to make binding upon the Christians.” Other people, as I said, the idea of strangulation here particularly—things strangled—has confounded commentators for thousands of years literally in the church. And yet I don’t think it should. And I don’t think these four things should really be mysterious at all if we simply take a whole Bible approach. And it’s an indication, by the way, of the immaturity of the church.

Well, I’m probably out there on a limb now, but the relative immaturity of the church that has not taken a whole Bible approach. Now, certain men certainly have much throughout the last 2,000 years, but as a whole, on the whole, the church of Jesus Christ has not taken a self-consciously whole Bible approach to very many of these sorts of texts. And so we see, one, the immaturity of the church still, and two, we see the growing maturity because there are now a growing group of people who do. Based upon originally the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til—his desire to say we don’t need to point to external evidence; our primary thrust to the non-believer we turn to the word of God—that whole Bible approach has now permeated a number of men’s lives and teachings and books and writings and now churches as well. And so there’s a tremendous thing happening in our generation.

These are dire times as we’ll see as we consider Leviticus 17 and 18 and its application to our world. But they’re also exciting times because God’s people are maturing. The way that most of us mature is through great tribulation, trial, and stress upon us. That’s how we grow up. The church is growing up. And let’s take, I think, a grown-up view of this text before us and not just try to write it off as some sort of subtle accommodation to those outside of the faith.

Leviticus, the book of Leviticus, of course, is the law of the Levites essentially, and it’s the law that regulates the worship and community life of Israel. Now, it is interesting to me that if I’m right, and we’ll see it here in a minute, what were the apostles and elders at Jerusalem considering? If it was the place of law—and this is another, of course, this is the main reason people use this text—is to say that this means that the law is of no importance in the life of the believer anymore. They give these four little things and said, “Well, you just got to appease those law-abiding Jews over there, but other than that, forget the law.” Is what some people say that the council of Jerusalem did.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. There is no indication they dealt with the Ten Commandments at all. I think that the idea of the Ten Commandments no longer being binding upon the life of the believer wouldn’t even been considered or thought of at this time in the church’s history. It’s only in our more modern times that such a radically unbiblical position could permeate the church. But instead, they turn to that portion of the scriptures, the Old Testament law, Leviticus, relating specifically—the book is primarily related to temple and tabernacle worship, the establishment of the priesthood, and all that stuff. And you see, what are they considering? They’re considering circumcision and the laws of Moses relative to temple worship as they relate to the Christian church. Their agenda is a narrow one. In other words, they’re not dealing with the whole issue of the believer’s sanctification, but they give us in this narrow consideration of sacrificial and sacramental laws of the Old Testament. They give us a hint to a much broader truth as well, which we’ll get to in a couple of minutes.

But in any case, they turn to Leviticus. And Leviticus is structured in a way that chapter 17 begins another section of Leviticus. Some people refer to it as the holiness code, where now relationships and essentially community life is being discussed or, not discovered, but explained. Chapters 1-16 deal primarily with the priesthood. It’s the laws of the priesthood and all the laws of sacrifice, the preparation of the altar, the preparation of the men that would be ministers or God’s priests at the tabernacle and later in the temple. All that stuff is talked about in Leviticus, and then it ends, it culminates all that sacrificial element in chapter 16. And chapter 16 is that chapter that deals with the great Day of Atonement.

Okay. And that culminates, of course, the sacrificial system. And by way of application to us, the whole sacrificial system culminates in the great Day of Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ—the literal day 2,000 years ago when he died on the cross and made atonement for the sins of his people, past, present, and future. Both the people past, present, and future, and their sins, past, present, and future. The great Day of Atonement.

In essence, James and the council here pick up the law of God, leaving behind all the sacrificial elements that culminate in the work of the Savior, which circumcision was a part of, showing the bloody requirement of Jesus Christ, his death, his blood once for all. And then he picks it up from there and begins then to talk about the application of the law to the believer in terms of the holiness code—the general principles that relate to all of Israel. So in chapters 17 and 18, these four things we talked about here are laid out for us in chapters 17 and 18.

And what is even more interesting by way of an indicator that they are specifically referring to Leviticus 17 and 18 here is that these four things we’re going to look at in Leviticus 17 and 18, and that are summarized in the council at Jerusalem, are the only four requirements of the book of Leviticus—not just for the Jews, but for the God-fearing Gentiles who dwell with the Jews in the promised land. You can do a search of the entire book of Leviticus. And these are the four specific sections that deal with requirements not just upon the people of God, the Israelites, but upon those who were God-fearing Gentiles brought into the covenant community.

And of course, that’s what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with those God-fearing Gentiles now brought totally into the context of the church, not through circumcision. And so, in this narrow focus of what applies from the book of Leviticus to believers, they summarize it with these four specific commandments, which Leviticus itself says applies to those in the context of the land.

Let me give you one other general truth about this progression in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus 1-16 deals primarily with uncleanness—things that make you ceremonially unclean. We’ll see one reference to that in chapter 17. Chapters 17 and 18 talk about things that kick you out of the land if unrepented of. Things that don’t just make you ceremonially unclean, but things that defile you and contaminate you and make you abominable in God’s sight. And that unless you repent from those things, the land itself will spew you out.

Okay? So there’s a transition in Leviticus from the first 16 chapters to 17 and 18 and then on into the rest of the book. And it’s at this point—it’s at the cusp, it’s at the division point between the priestly laws, the laws for the people, so to speak. That’s where the apostles, the elders, and the council of Jerusalem pick up the law of God and apply it to us today.

Let’s look at Leviticus chapter 17. “The Lord spake unto Moses, speak unto Aaron, unto his sons, unto the children of Israel. Say unto them, And now notice in verse four, if you I’ll go ahead and read it, I guess speak unto Aaron and say these things to him. This is the thing which the Lord has commanded, saying, What man whatsoever there be of the house of Israel that kills an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation to offer the offering unto the Lord, before the tabernacle of the Lord—blood shall be imputed unto that man. He shall shed blood and that man shall be cut off from among his people. He’s not ceremonially unclean.

See here, he’s to be cut off—excommunicated. “To the end the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices which they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation unto the priest. Offer them for peace offerings unto the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and burn the fat for a sweet savor unto the Lord.”

When I read fast like that, don’t let it worry you. I’m going to slow down when it gets to the place where we’re going to apply this. Okay? “And there shall no more, they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for them throughout their generations.” So what he’s talking about here is when you go kill an animal in the wilderness, you got to bring it to the tabernacle. You got to offer it up there. And verse seven says specifically, “They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils after whom they’ve gone a whoring.”

What he’s concerned about is people going out in the wilderness, killing an animal and offering it to devils out there. It’s devil worship is what he’s talking about. And earlier in the book of Leviticus, the same thing is pointed out in Leviticus chapter 17. This particular portion of Leviticus 17, the holiness code, warns against the pollutions of idolatry, to use the wording of James, or meat offered to idols, to use the wording of the formal declaration or letter at the council of Jerusalem sent out. These animals that are being sacrificed here to demons is food sacrificed to idols.

And then we read in verse eight, “Thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man be of the house of Israel, or of the stranger which sojourns among you, that offers a burnt offering or sacrifice and bringeth it not into the door of the tabernacle, even that man shall be cut off from his people.” See, that’s what he’s saying. This first requirement applies not just to Israel, but the text says explicitly, “Or the stranger which sojourn among you. You offer an offering someplace else other than the central sanctuary. You’re going to be cut off from the people, excommunicated—maybe executed. I’m not sure about that, but at least excommunicated. Cut off. That’s the first prohibition: pollution of idols or meat sacrificed to idols.

And we know, by the way, that this isn’t talking about meat sacrificed to an idol somewhere and then sold in the general marketplace. That’s what we read about in Corinthians. And that’s, you know, that is a matter of personal conscience and whether you’re offending somebody or not. But this isn’t talking about that. This prohibition against the pollution of idols—in James’s word, meat offered to idols; in the words of the apostolic letter from the council—refers, I believe, to this section of Leviticus which is talking about worshiping wherever you want to worship.

And as I said, you know, people do this a couple of different ways. If you take the low route, you go out there and you have a meal with the witch of Endor, which is what Saul did, and you say, “Call up for me Samuel here. I want to talk to him.” See, he had unholy communion with the witch at Endor. And people do that. Food is not some sort of neutral thing. It is a religious act.

And people take that lower route to go offer their meat and have a meal with devils or demons or witches or whatever it is. But you know, people take a little different route to that too. I believe we can make application of this to one of those cases I talked about in terms of discipline. What about the person who says, “I don’t want to go to the central sanctuary today. I want to go off in the woods and just commune with God in my heart. I want to go off and do that”? These guys are off in the woods and God said, “Get out of those woods. Get back to the people when you’re going to come to formal worship. Don’t go doing it out there by yourself.”

There’s a difference. See the difference? God commands us to worship in this way. Now, it’s good to walk in the woods during the other six days of the week or maybe in another portion of the Lord’s day to think about those things. That’s a great thing. The general revelation that God gives us through creation is a tremendous tool that he gives us to think of the beauty of himself and the wonderful things that he’s provided for us in the created order and his orderliness and all kinds of things you can think about in that way. It’s not wrong to do that. But to replace holy convocative worship with will worship—worshiping according to our will instead of the regulation of God—is, I think, according to these texts as well as many others, subject to—by necessity—the suspension, or even the excommunication of the church, discipline.

What’s the second case? Verse 10. “And whenever a man there be of the house of Israel, the stranger that sojourns among you”—see, the stranger again, not just the house of Israel, the stranger that the God-fearing Gentiles, in other words—”and eateth any manner of blood, I will even set my face against the soul that has eaten blood will cut him off from his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it unto you and upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls. It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Therefore, I said unto the children of Israel, no soul of you shall eat blood. Neither shall any stranger that sojourns among you eat blood.”

So there’s the second prescription. James said pollutions of idols. The council said food sacrificed to idols in this worshiping manner. The second thing they said was blood. The Gentiles are commanded not to eat blood. This verse is reinforced in the New Testament to believers this side of the cross of Christ, and the apostolic and the council of Jerusalem made it quite clear that this proscription—not a prescription is something you’re supposed to do; a proscription is something you can’t do. A circle is proscribed around a thing and you can’t do it. And what’s being proscribed here is the eating of blood.

Why? Well, you don’t have to know why. I mean, it’s good if you know why, but if God says don’t do this, you don’t want to say, “Well, I got to know why I’m not supposed to do that before I do it.” Some people say it’s because you got a lot of disease in blood. We’ll see in a couple of minutes here that we have laws here against marrying close relatives. And we know that from the history of the kings and the royal families in Europe and England that when people intermarry within bloodlines, genetic triggers go off and good things don’t happen—bad things happen. You get big problems, genetic problems and physical problems from inbreeding of bloodlines. Idiocy is one thing that can result. Failure to speak is another reason. There’s all kinds of bad results that happen from inbreeding.

But you know, you never want to look at these scriptures as God saying, “Gee, you know, if they intermarry, that genetic thing is going to happen and they’re going to get into trouble. So, I better keep them healthy by telling them not to intermarry.” You know, it’s kind of like people you might say, by way of analogy: “Well, God sees that there’s gravity and so he tells people, don’t jump off of tall hills because if you do, you’re going to get hurt.”

You know, we think that way so often. We think that God sort of looks at what’s here and accommodates himself to that reality and says don’t do it because you’re going to get hurt. The way to look at that though is that God has built in these judgments. And if he says don’t jump off the cliff, he’s done it. He’s put gravity in effect because he wants you to be judged if you disobey his law. And he’s put genetic triggers in bloodlines that go off when you disobey his law.

He’s not trying to keep you from something that would hurt you. He’s given you things to hurt you to make sure you know that judgment awaits you if you disobey him. He created all of this. You know, James concluded his little talk by saying, you know, what God does is known before all things. God knows what he’s done from eternity. God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass. He doesn’t find himself in a neutral place relative to his creation and then having to give his people a set of laws to protect him. No, he gives them judgments.

He does want to protect, of course, but the judgments are there because he wants them to be there. Why does he want us not to drink blood? I can give you some reasons. It’s a seeking after life apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some people want to eat the flesh, drink the blood of animals, thinking that somehow they can get the life force. I’ve used this illustration before. The juice man is an example of this. Couple of years ago, I gave a talk up in Seattle on this very subject, idolatry related to food. And you see, the guy with his juicer used to be on TV. You got to grind that juice up and the life forces are only still in effect for like 20 minutes after you juice that vegetable. So you got to juice the vegetable and drink that stuff real quick. Otherwise, the life forces dissipate and it isn’t healthy for you anymore.

See, that is analogous to this drinking of blood. God says the life of the flesh is in the blood. But he won’t let us drink that life. He says you cannot get life by ingesting—or drinking rather—the life through a substance, whether it’s blood or the juice of a carrot. See, if you rely upon that for life apart from the grace of God, you’ve lapsed into idolatry. This is real easy to teach our kids. I try to make a practice periodically when we pray for our food to pray that God keep us from being idolatrous relative to food. Thinking that somehow we can get food, we can get blessing, we can get long life just by eating food. No. God doesn’t want you thinking that way. He wants you thinking that you’re relying upon him for the grace to give you life from that dead food that sits on your plate.

God made him drain the life. The life of the flesh is in the blood out of the thing. And then he made him eat dead stuff devoid of the most nutritious part of the meat, the blood, which has been drained out. See, he points us to the true blood. Jesus said in John 6, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.” Okay. So, drinking of blood is an attempt to get life apart from the grace of God and particularly the application of the blood of Christ in our transgressions and as such it is prohibited for God’s people.

So, that’s one of the reasons. But don’t think that if you get the reason figured out, you can go ahead and drink blood as long as you’re not relying upon it because God says don’t do it. It’s a law of his. Don’t drink blood. Then he tells us in verse 13 that our food when we eat is also regulated, not just what we drink.

“Whatsoever man there be the children of Israel or the stranger that sojourns among you”—see, the stranger again, this applies to Gentiles, God-fearers—”which hunts and catches any fowl that may be eaten. He shall even pour out the blood thereof and cover it with dust, for it is the life of all flesh. The blood in it is for the life thereof. Therefore, I said unto the children of Israel, you shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh. For the life of all flesh is in the blood thereof. Whosoever eateth it shall be cut off. And every soul that eateth that which dieth of itself, or that which was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. Then shall he be unclean.”

Okay. Now, verses 13 and 14 posit the case where you’re going to eat flesh that has not been properly drained of the blood. Okay. And he says, “If you eat flesh that’s not properly drained of the blood, then you’re going to be cut off from the children of Israel.” Verse 15 posits a different case. However, there we read that if something dies of itself or is torn with beasts and you eat that, you’re simply unclean. You’re not cut off.

When James and the council at Jerusalem go to write the prescriptions based upon Leviticus 17, they give us idolatry. They give us drinking of blood. And they give us things strangled—not torn by other beasts, not killed in some other way, and yet still bled—things strangled. They’re talking about verses 13 and 14 where you eat flesh that is not properly drained of blood. And God says you can’t do it. It’s against the law.

Now, if you find a beast that’s been ripped open or something, killed in some other way, a violent attack from another beast, it has its blood somewhat drained out of it. So it’s a different case. In that case, in the Old Testament it’s only uncleanness. There’s no proscription that I know of—proscription, rather, that I know of in terms of our inclusion of the faith now that the laws of uncleanness have been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. So what he’s applying is verses 13 and 14. The things that would cause excommunication—being cut off from the people—are things strangled.

Now, as I said, things strangled have kind of baffled commentators for a long time. And in a way it’s simply a repetition, as the text makes clear, the prohibition against drinking blood. But he applies it to flesh. Why is that? Well, I don’t know all the reasons why he does it that way, but he does. One thing we can do by way of application is to say that both these two ingestion commandments—not to drink blood, not to eat flesh that has been strangled and so not drained of blood at all—both of those point to what? They point us to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and his body, his flesh given on the cross for our sins.

So we take communion. See, we’re eating and we’re drinking. And so in terms of the regulation of our food stuffs, God puts regulations both on drinking and on eating. And so he regulates all of that portion of our life and points us more importantly to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has completely paid for all of our sins and given us the imputed righteousness of his righteousness as well. So this food and drink relates to that.

There are the three first prohibitions. And now the fourth one is found in—