Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the sermon scripture.

The last hymn that we sang talks about Isaiah 6:28. If you have a handout for today, in your Bible, “Seal me as a seal on your heart.” My question is verses 26-28 comment about circumcision being a boundary. I’m a little confused about how that relates to “You shall not eat anything with the blood. Nor shall you practice divination.” Is there a boundary marker for us? What’s the relationship? On the basis of your head, nor shall you baptize—if no boundary markers exist anymore, how does the priestly nature of the church apply? Any mark on you? Boundary markers may your Holy Spirit open our hearts, transform us, and challenge us with real bodies in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

And so, in that boundary marker, please note that baptism is certainly a boundary. I’ll talk about tattooing if we get that far. With baptism, it is the single entrance into the solitary from—singing about 52 verses. And so baptism, you know, is inclusive of all the earth. So, and in fact, eventually I’m going to talk about Leviticus 19. Generally, we talk about that, and we’ll talk a little bit about it. It’s not a boundary that separates or differentiates between us. Then we’ll look at circumcision, and then specifically at verses 26-28 in the Old Testament. And at circumcision, I’m not trying to make anybody feel bad. About men and women, what I want us to think about is circumcision in this particular section of law, which I think is part of Leviticus. And what does Paul say at the end of his argument about the first commandment in Galatians? To integrity about this very issue—to our covenant God, we don’t do that anymore, including just that. He actually brings up baptism, you know, we ought to put this baptism into the single family that comes forth from Jesus. Sexual sin is really, you know, the climax of that argument. One chapter is the statement: “There are therefore now, Gentile, brandings—free or slave, male or female—can also become a really huge field in some churches.”

You know, that’s the place and that’s the conclusion of it. So markers in the sense amongst the church—the Lord hates male or female, Jew or Gentile. The Lord hates. Seven are abomination to listen to the things he really hates. Think of circumcision as a present boundary mark between those. Because I think that the way that I, and I think the heart is that the language in Genesis that are swift in running evil—verse 13, witness who speaks—you know, be part of God’s people, you got to be circumcised. And baptism—those are the two boundary markers between those, and those not, executing the covenant with God. To me, that’s what I’ve always thought. So you’re suggesting that’s not correct? That’s right. I’m suggesting those Old Testament really Gentile, God’s perspective—nations that got identified.

We’re going to look at tattoos. All over the world issue in the church. Of course, they couldn’t go to pastor. I mean, pastor was a localized function, and I think in the same way—so I want to talk about—it’s also clear that the idea. So yeah, I think the circumstance first commandment—first word. Next week we’ll go to the second word, and it’s relationship to keep in mind that we talked about the big issues of first commandment and relationship to other authorities that are proper in their place, dominant in our lives.

Playing off John’s question, very initially—integrity. What we want to say first of all is that this law—it applies to us, or not directly, or not at all, or with some application. God at one time was suggesting no—in terms of what you were doing—very specific commands about what you could do to your body, okay. So I think we can take away from this—to begin—whether you agree or not—specific prohibitions or not—God cares about your physical structure, your body. It’s his. And so I had a question—not a question, but sort of a role-play catechism question number one. Comes to you: “Dad, I’d really like to have a nice little rose tattooed on my ankle, discreetly. What sort of discussion are you going to have with Jesus Christ?” And the answer goes on. But the point is a recognition of that first Q&A from the Heidelberg Catechism. To everybody in this church and everybody who might be listening to this on tape. Or I’m having basically what I talked about—a statement. I’m not telling her there’s a prohibition.

It begins with our body and soul. We’re not in fact with other kids in my family to conclusions about what that means of the text. We’re not laying down the law here. As long as they’re underage, talk. And we’re going to talk about the people of Leviticus 19. Let’s turn there. There’s a couple of handouts out of Leviticus 19. So, you know, I’m just going to read the actual text, and I want to walk through this in a couple minutes with a little bit of stuff.

Why are we looking at it? Because it’s the center of Leviticus. It’s the very heart, the beating heart of Leviticus. And it’s 70 commandments that take the 10 words. It’s sort of like—if in that particular—if my 18-year-old son comes and wants to smoke, kind of discuss—like Moses’ sermon on Deuteronomy, okay. Howard L. is a summary statement. My understanding of God in 70 commandments, and it’s difficult to understand. Last week I honestly didn’t know what’s going on, but there is a flow, different ways, and I want you to see—I started really reading about what I’ve done in the handout before you read an outline that’s based upon the name that are repeated throughout the law. Any structure of Leviticus 19 can be seen—perspective. Interestingly, in studies, they get into civil law and all kinds of break—is this that you would put under—certainly ceremonial law versus moral law.

You have other ways of cutting these next. It’s a good example as to why categories with the Lord. I don’t think what we have in the next section, Exodus or Deuteronomy—there on your handout, or if you’re reading along in your Bible, verse 11 through 14—section the section. And this is why I refer to 10 words, right? “I am the Lord.” What we have is 10 words. That’s different. “I am the Lord thy God. I’m the Lord of God.”

So within the context of God—and now what we have is a series of ceremonial, judicial distinctions brought together. These four under the general statute of the general second half of you statute there. So it seems like if you wanted to break it into categories, you’d have included in the middle of category as a ceremony. “You shall think”—those categories don’t work well, separates the in the law of statutes frequently, which makes it half the first half, in the second half of Leviticus. These names of God are the other thing I would say is that in a law, take that to mean they were not under the law. The actual outline that I gave—but I take that to mean we just talked. This is the beast who representation: “I am the Lord your God.” A for, “I am Lord.” Galatians says, in the middle part, beginning at verse—the right says that we have an Israel: “I am the Lord. I am the Lord. I am the Lord your God.” And whether you buy that or not, point—and then after that, it goes off one time under it for salvation. That can’t be what’s going on. And I think because the law says the right way. So that can’t be structure. And I think what “under the law” means is what this shows—under the tutelage, oversight structure of this thing until faith seems to be faith has actually now. We’re no longer under the law, but we don’t. But Paul goes on, in Romans, to say we don’t over the problem was never the law. It’s obedience to Leviticus 19. So what we do now is a holy sense of blindly obeying it as holiness as a general head. Now that we’re over the law, we use the word related to application in a wide variety of cultural settings.

So now we’re sitting in the promised landing of the sea—specific law. Now we’re over here. People are not with their bodies for a lot of reasons. Internal holiness. But we still take internal—a confession of faith. Second, the general equity of things that are obvious and plain and seen by other principles and those in court and the underlying principle. So that’s kind of the idea of this thing. Particularly, it’s a kind of stress inward reality. Is that first of all we don’t, second—you know, if you want bodily integrity—but for the most part, integrity—whether you want in terms of holiness related to external. So that’s things that are more overtly lenient. You say we’re not in the salvation—things that are—some people were in stat. So that’s kind of the sentiment.

I agree. And in that movement, then verses 26 to 28. A lot of people say we’re not under the curse of the—so if you cut the sides of your—but I don’t think that’s really what’s going on either. In some kind of cutting on yourself. That’s all visible stuff, graduation day. Not necessarily visible, but visible stuff. That’s graduation day. And so, so this is found in that second section. Thank you. But again, the general thing—going graduate Christ—he comes the book of Second Peter. In many ways, it’s connected to Leviticus 19 of Peter. Now we use wisely. This isn’t just the spirit. Leviticus 19 has quotations in the New Testament. For the most part, involved in the summary of it is Second Peter. But it’s not just found there. There’s only so our interest in Leviticus 19. Sorry, I had—as we go through the 10 words—to see specific cases. Nature of the church play match up with particular violations of the 10 words. Or a royal priesthood. How does that work? By the way, I never want to talk about Leviticus 19 without pointing out that—as the question for years and years, the summary of holiness—you know, there is a family and in the church.

I think so. After it says “be holy,” I think that it says to reverence your parents. I think we want to keep my Sabbaths. Think of the church and the world. You know, those two are like Jews and Gentiles where Israel was a priestly nation—world. For eschatological when it gets down to tattooing, and this is where you get stuff going on that say that has already been developed. You know, where is seen as having sort of like this God-fearing gender of. So I discuss specifically the only other place that the first commandment explicitly ask question about the church people to the world says you got to identify church idols. I would avoid multiples. World lead that verse—general summary statement of commandments 1 and 2. And he said that in a minute we’re going to look at the point is in more detail. You know, there is a relation—big movements in scripture—things you can see. Stone, you make a totem out of those—are molded idols. But there are multiples. Verses 26 and 28. We try to bring more people into it. So that’s kind of the flow of the text. And we’re also kind of the nation in the sense of—you know, the discussion we do with our bodies of verses 26 to 28. That’s what I see—because they’re marked off. Each of these units is marked off by either one.

Last question. Maybe that gives us an identification of a specific, if not pericope or section of text within a broader section of text. Hi, Pastor Tuuri, this is a broader section. So verses 26 to 28 are a section. I was in a store yesterday within the whole check out through the line. The cashier before had a large tattoo on her neck. The integrity of God in our home—from a distance, it was a big blob. But I got up close, and it was simply but by the relationship of the first word—no other gods. And you know, I was kind of speechless. I’m still pondering because I wanted to say something. That’s Leviticus 19. We’ll be looking at this a lot over the next few words. I know. And I thought, you know, I needed some kind of faith that this lady had. Speechless.

I mentioned idols. I wonder, you know, in thinking through the reason why Leviticus 19 people get tattoos like that—particularly. Sometimes there’s maybe a lot of Christians out there who are coming to faith in their late teenage years, living in a very ungodly society where their families are really using biblical language. When we talk about statism and faithlessness, everyone is in my life. Idolatry? Or is that something I want this to me in something for those of you who have been out—death watch. You know, truly recognizing—resign office as energies are one—a work in us, not us. You can’t bury it deeper than that. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s okay. You know, there I think that one should use something like that because there is a lot of—you’re in the middle now.

Some people seem to be generating a belief that some people make arguments from the scriptures. Jesus has a name on his thigh. So people read between idol and molded idols, okay. You know, there are various idols in scripture. First, you want to look at it that way. You can sort of see as some kind of quasi justification for pictures, tattooing, and in those cases, whatever it is, what people do then is they try to glorify God in their bodies. They’re doing just what I said—that’s an idol in the sense. So in their body they’ll put a mark of ownership, of identification, whatever it is. Idol or molded idol does mean all those mean safety? I’m in the idols of labor. If we’re servants, do not, kind of like, you know, I think that’s probably the word idol here. It’s actually used in other places in the script, Old Testament specifically. That is, I think that in general our reaction. We think of this person who’s trying to basically—the meaning of the word idol is we may have a different way of doing it, and we may see some of the difficulties when the Bible talks about idolatry means things that people are looking at for strength. They’re trying to do worthless to glorify God with their bodies, at least in terms, and I’m trying to urge us not to have this world reaction, even if it’s not. We really don’t know what people are doing typically. But if people are marking themselves in Jeremiah 14, prophesied—that’s another point of engagement with people. “I have not sent, but who norph discussion.” But and the deity. The same word used for idols.

It’s not referring to a specific object, a physical, tangible evangelical hymn that people are worshiping. It’s their own words. It’s their own take on things. It’s their own philosophy. And the Bible can refer to that philosophy as an idol. And this word in Leviticus 19:4 is that word. The same word is used here in Jeremiah. Let’s go have our sees here. So let’s see another reference to this in Job 13:4. Job says, “But you forgers of lies, you are all worthless physicians.” The word worthless there is this same word for idol. You’re all idolatrous physicians. You’re all idol physicians. You have ideas on things. You have your ideologies, but they’re worthless. And you’re actually—they become an idol for you. And he refers to them by this same word of idolatry.

Zechariah 11:17, “Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock, a sword shall be against his arm and against his right eye.” So here, a shepherd who isn’t doing his job correctly, but lives for himself, is referred to as an idolatrous shepherd.

Okay. What’s the point? The point is that the scriptures give us validity, and in fact give us precept and example, of referring to things such as statism, force worship, forces of nature worshiping that above Yahweh, sexual worship. It is proper biblically to refer to those things as idols for destruction, because that’s what happens to these idols over and over again in the Bible: they’re good for nothing. They’re worthless, and God will absolutely destroy them. Okay, so the point is that idolatry includes more than just these physical images that people literally bow down to. It involves ideologies. It involves philosophies. It involves anything that we put ultimate authority in and trust in, but really is weak and deficient as a god of gods.

So statism is idolatry. Ash Roth worship would involve physical statues, but we can do it today without the statues. We’ve got sexuality worship in some people’s lives. That’s what the whole thing rotates around. Other people, the forces of nature apart from sexuality. These were all properly referred to as idolatries. Okay.

Now, let’s tighten the focus. That was the first reference to the two commandments. Then—idols, cast idols, no gods, no graven images. And now, let’s focus in on verses 26-28. And on your outline, I say there’s some cautions we have to apply.

We’re looking at the Old Testament law, the law that was given at Mount Sinai. And we have some problems before we rush to interpretations of things there. The first problem we have is the original meaning of individual terms in the specific verse. This is old language. The word for tattoo, for instance, in verse 28, is a word that’s used nowhere else in the Old Testament or in the New Testament in the Bible. So this is the only reference where this particular Hebrew word is used, and its meaning is somewhat obscure. And actually, in terms of tattoos, this same word means writing or stamping an image on yourself—words or pictures—and it could include things like painting.

Originally, tattoos are like permanent painting. But there’s really not much difference with this particular word between tattooing and painting. This verse seems—this particular word obscure—but it seems to allow for an interpretation that would include body painting. So it’s kind of funny in a way because, you know, we as Christians get all worked up about tattoos, and then we’re into face painting. It’s kind of, well, you know, really, the particular law here and the particular meaning of this word sort of relates to both. It doesn’t necessarily mean permanent.

Now, it is related in verses 26 to 28, and verse 28 to cuttings or piercings. And so, you know, there’s a relationship to that there. So it’s not improper to focus on tattoo as a translation. But what I’m saying is, when we interpret stuff from the Old Testament, and particularly stuff that only has one word attached to it, we’re not exactly sure a lot of times what that thing was, okay.

So that’s a caveat.

Secondly, the original meaning of group terms. So this particular verse, in verse 28, for instance: “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoos and marks on you.” What’s going on? That’s—you know, it’s talking about the body. And if you look at the particular Hebrew phrasing of it, the first word in the verse is “serats,” which can mean cutting or tattoo, okay. Again, these are old words, they’re hard to pin down, but the first word—John S. thinks that it’s really a word that refers to either cuttings or tattoos. So it’s like cuttings or tattoos, no, not in your body, and no tattoos. So the point is these two terms—cuttings and tattoos—seem to be linked. So whether it’s cutting, branding, tattooing, or even in some cases painting, it’s all kind of the same thing.

Now, what that means is that at the center of this—cuttings, tattooings, no, not in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo marks on your body—it seems at least a plausible argument that the prohibition against tattooing is tied to the prohibition against cuttings, and that they’re both tied together. And they’re bound by the qualifier of mourning. So it seems like the specific immediate text is not a prohibition of tattooing or cutting generally, but specifically it’s a prohibition of cut, tattooing, and cutting in relationship to the actually, the word is soul, not dead, but for the soul apparently by implication that has died.

So it’s a little difficult first of all to know what the word means. So be careful in what you’re going to tell people or yourself what you can and can’t do. Secondly, it’s difficult because we want to group these things together, and that means the tattoos could be modified by mourning, and it seems likely that it is. And third, the third caveat is this:

When we’re dealing in Leviticus 19, or with any of the specific so-called case laws of the law, a very important factor that we have to keep in mind is that one function of the law was to list specific boundary markers for Jews as opposed to Gentiles. Sin broke relationship to God, but it also fractured humanity. Right? Adam and Eve—immediately—referencing humanity—get divided. Two brothers get divided. Humanity is fractured. And God deals with this by keeping the world in bipolarity. In other words, Jew and Gentiles. Doesn’t mean Gentiles didn’t go to heaven. Doesn’t mean we won’t see Gentiles here in the resurrected earth. It meant that God had established a system where a particular people are marked off as the priestly nation, different from the Gentiles.

And we’ve been going through Galatians in my Sunday school class. This is the whole point of Paul’s argument. These guys are coming, telling you Gentile Christians that you’ve got to get circumcised. But circumcision was a law mark of the Abrahamic covenant that kept Jew and Gentile apart until the promise keeper comes, until Messiah arrives. And then humanity is knit together. Finally, the fracture of humanity comes together in one family in Christ.

This is a major theme of the New Testament. It’s a major theme of the book of Galatians, right? Peter breaks off table fellowship with the Gentiles. Dietary laws in the scriptures, in the law, in Mosaic law, Torah, were again boundary markers. It didn’t mean it was sin to eat a pig. Gentiles could have, you know, bacon and pork and all. In fact, maybe it’s because the priests couldn’t eat the tasty stuff—was the reason they were set apart from it. Don’t know. But what we do know is that the distinction for food, the food rituals, rights, laws were boundary markers that marked off Jews from Gentiles.

A Gentile could be a proselyte. Didn’t have to get circumcised. Didn’t have to stop eating pork. Didn’t have to wear a thread of blue on his garment. Didn’t have to do any of that stuff. Didn’t have to keep the Levitical calendar, right? Feast of booths, trumpets, all that stuff. Didn’t have to do any of that stuff. He’s still saved. So the law established a set of boundary markers that separated humanity, showing them that the coming together of humanity would happen, but only when Messiah arrives to be faithful. The new faithful Adam and our faith in him incorporates us into that one body.

So when we look at specific things dealing with bodies or clothing or food and the law, we have to be careful because some of these laws, you know, they have relevance to us to think about, to meditate on, their application. But if we start reenacting the laws that were boundary markers, it’s really a statement against Messiah and the single family in Messiah. This is what Paul told Galatians. It’s a different gospel, because the gospel is humankind has been fixed and healed in one family. And you go breaking that up again through the imposition of boundary markers. That’s a really big problem, Paul said.

So when we look at texts like this, we have to be careful. Original words are tough. We’ve got to see them in their correct context. And we have to say, well, was this to denote the priestly people? Could the Gentiles have tattoos? Were they prohibited from it? So those are some of the things that make it difficult, or that we have to be careful about, I should say, as we go to particular texts of the Old Testament.

All right. So let’s talk now about verses 26-28, given that background—the flow of Leviticus 19, where it’s at in it, and its relationship to the header of Leviticus 19, holiness.

Now, what we have here is, first of all, a prohibition. Let me move my notes along to where I’m at. An overview first of 26 to 28. Now, in verse 26, there’s three specific things that are prohibited. By the way, one other thing about the movement of Leviticus 19: the word “you,” and it doesn’t show this in our translation—it’d be nice if it did—but the word “you” is singular in the first in most of the first half of Leviticus 19, and it moves to corporate “y’all,” in other words, in the second half. Again, there’s a movement. And so the “you” here are actually plural.

“You all shall not eat anything with the blood, nor shall you practice divination or soothsay.”

See, we read those things. We don’t know: “Oh, what? Ouija boards, I guess.” Well, maybe eating with the blood is kind of obvious. The life of the flesh is in the blood. But again, there it’s a prohibition, a dietary prohibition, but the obvious truth going on there is not to try to get life from the universe unmediated, right? It’s like the juice man who wants to put the orange in there, and you drink it up before the vital life force is gone. That’s, in my mind, equivalent to eating the blood or drinking the blood. You’re trying to get life through something other than dead things. God wants us to eat, for the most part, dead things drained of all life, because he wants us to remind ourselves every time we eat that life comes from somebody else dying for us.

It comes by grace. What’s the logic of eating something dead and it gives us life? Doesn’t make sense. That’s because it’s the grace of God that takes dead things and makes it good for your physical life. And it’s all a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the other two, you know, we don’t know what they mean. Divination was an attempt to discern knowledge, and specifically knowledge of the future. You try to divine something. Lots of different mechanisms. “What’s going to happen tomorrow? Tomorrow”—and you’d read tea leaves or Ouija boards or whatever it was. So divination means you’re trying to know the future, okay, through practices other than what God allows. And soothsay was an attempt to control the future. It was like voodoo, right? So you say voodoo, and you try to change somebody’s future. You try to change the future of who we are, right?

Well, we are supposed to know the future and change it, right? I think I’m supposed to. I’m thinking that’s what God’s prophets did—as they foretold the future. So there’s nothing wrong with trying to figure out what happened. I watched—I was on that death watch to see if Van Jones would resign all week, because I knew he was going to, and he did. One in the morning, buried in the paper. Anyway, we’re supposed to know the future. We’re supposed to be able to see things from God’s perspective.

We go to heaven to get a knowledge of the world that will help us to see in general terms and some specific terms what the future will bring. So the problem isn’t trying to know the future. The problem is trying to discern it apart from God. See, it’s a first commandment issue. We’re trying to do what we’re putting other powers—Ouija boards, whatever it is—above God. Instead of going to God for a knowledge of how the future will work, we’re going to something else above him.

And the same thing’s true with soothsay. We’re supposed to try to control the future. We’re supposed to live good lives. We see those general blessings of health and fecundity and all that stuff that we talked about last week. And we’re supposed to control our futures by not doing something stupid. If I’m on the edge of a building, I’m going to control my future by backing away slowly. I’m controlling the future, but I’m doing it in a way that ultimately is an observance of God and his word. I’m applying his word to my situation to determine my future, or at least an element of it.

Soothsay was an attempt to control the future through voodoo or whatever it might be—magic spells, right? So you could summon the forces of nature through power words, and they would change things, reality around you, and change the future. Again, that’s idolatry. You don’t have an idol you’re actually bowing down to, but you’re using something to control nature apart from its submission to the God of all gods, King of Kings.

And so that’s what those three things are referring to.

Then it says, “Don’t shave around the sides of your head, nor shall you disfigure the edges of your beard.”

You know, some people say this is corner. “You can’t shave the corner of your beard, the corner of your head.” And you see these Hasidic Jews, and they got these long pieces of hair hanging down here. And that’s what they think it’s all about. But again, the Hebrew here, which might have been obscure in the past, is now quite clear. The word used here is edge. It’s not corner. And so the idea is that you see a lot of people here today; they have goatees. Well, that’s a violation of this law. You’re not supposed to shave the sides of your beard and leave this thing here. Or you might have a faux-hawk, right? And again, that’s a violation of this law, because you weren’t supposed to have the sides of your head shaved.

Now, don’t feel bad. You know, I don’t think it’s a law for us. I don’t think it is. But it means something. You know, there’s two ditches. One ditch is to say, “Who cares?” The other ditch is to rebound by particular ways of identifying ourselves as a priestly people, distinct from Gentiles. And we don’t want to go back to that route. But in terms of an overview of the text, that’s what’s going on here.

Now, you know, if you think this is still of abiding validity and actually is a law under which we’re to operate, then be consistent. Get as mad at guys with goatees as you do with guys with tattoos, because it’s all the same section here, right?

And then the third thing—it talks about your body. Now, see, in the Bible, in Leviticus, there’s distinctions made between leprosy on your head and leprosy on your body. The Bible represents this kind of duality of leprosy on head and body. And these case laws do the same thing. They address your head, and you’re supposed to have a degree of physical integrity to your head. And then it addresses your body, and it says on your body now. So this isn’t really about tattoos on your face so much. This is about tattoos on your arms, and this is about cuttings on your arms.

And specifically, I think as I said earlier, I think this is to be related to cuttings for the dead.

There are light prohibitions in terms of cuttings on your body for the dead that are spoken of in God’s word. So I think that’s what it’s talking about. For instance, there’s no other place for tattoo, but this cutting thing is also described in Deuteronomy 14:1. “You are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead.”

See, body, head, integrity. We’re to think of ourselves that way. Why? Because Jesus is the head, and we’re the body. And God’s kind of setting up that imagery for us. But the point is, you couldn’t cut your body or shave the front of your head for the dead. So here, it takes the prohibition against shaving the edges of your head, and it says this also is related to for the dead.

So it seems like—since the only other occurrences, well, not the only other occurrence, but this occurrence, this direct reference to what we can and can’t do in this particular period of redemptive history, is for mourning—then it seems likely that both prohibitions on the no goatee, no faux-hawks, no cuttings, no tattoos probably all are related to for the dead.

Now, that’s not the only thing people did, even in the Bible, in terms of cuttings. One other reference, though, in terms of the case law: Leviticus 21, “The Lord said to Moses, speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: none shall defile himself for the dead among his people except for his relatives who are nearest to him—his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother—also his virgin sister. Otherwise, he shall not defile himself, being a chief man among his people to profane himself. They shall not make any bald place on their heads, nor shall they shave the edges of their beards, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.”

So this is specific priestly legislation that picks up these verses from Leviticus 19 and actually makes the prohibition about mourning for the dead. But there is some warning that maybe this isn’t quite as applicable to—

So see, lots of qualifiers placed here. But in general, it seems like the statement “for the dead” in Leviticus 19:26-28 has to do with both the prohibitions in terms of head integrity and body integrity, okay.

Now, there are other cuttings. First Kings 18:28: “The prophets of Baal cry aloud. They cut themselves as was their custom with knives and lances until the blood gushed out of them.”

So there is a cutting of themselves. It’s referred to there by adherents of Baal. And they’re trying to work up his response to them. So—but generally, in terms of the laws for God’s people, the prohibitions on tattoos and cuttings and head shaving and beard shaving seems to be related to mourning.

Now, in our culture, there’s many and varied reasons why people get tattoos, cuttings, brandings. And in a way, it’s all the same thing, okay? There’s lots of different reasons.

First of all, there are tribal marks. Throughout history, one of the biggest uses of tattoos specifically, or cuttings or brandings, was for tribal designations, right? So I mean, we have the military, and they have tribal units in the military. They’ve got divisions or whatever, you know, brigade they’re in. They have markings, right, on their uniforms. And in tribes before you had that kind of you’d have actually marks on your skin to show which tribe you were from, right?

And uh—Eugene Rosen Saksky talks about this in relationship to hieroglyphs. Now, this is a little stretchy. You all awake doing okay? Yeah. Okay. Listen to this. Hieroglyphs, you know what those were? Writings on the Egyptian temples. Hieroglyphs were tattoos. They transferred the tattoo from the bodies of the warriors to the buildings of Horus and his followers. “The disappearance from the human body and from the cult of the body’s integrity and the introduction of hieroglyphs on the solid bricks of the cosmos are two aspects of this same step.”

So this is interesting, because tribes were regional. When Horus or the Egyptians attempt to move men away from regional identification, they want to move the Egyptian view of themselves. At their only significance is in relationship to the pyramid, the unity of the emperor himself, who is the pharaoh, who is the head of everything. Now, this isn’t always in Egyptian history. This is at a particular phase. But as history moved from becoming tribal for the Egyptians to being national or even worldwide, he’s like the sky world is represented in this pyramid. The tattoos or marks are removed from bodies. They stop tattooing themselves, and instead they start putting those tattoos, those writing pictures, on the temple.

So there’s a movement from tribalism to monarchy or empire by a transference of these marks, okay? And I mean, this was a lot of work. Horus would go all over Egypt and strengthen people’s the notion that tattoos are out and hieroglyphs are in on the temple, because he was trying to achieve this transition from individual identity or tribal identity with a corporate identity in terms of the pyramid.

So one purpose of tattoos in the past—you want to think of tattoos generally now, instead of just tattoos for mourning—one purpose was tribal identification. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing to identify with the tribe. Israel went through a period of tribalism. Now, they didn’t have tattoos, but that’s one reason why people get tattoos. And there’s a sense in which today, even there’s sort of a—you know—a small community of people that originally were into tattoos and body modification.

So a designation with an identity with a particular tribe is one reason. Depression is another reason for tattoos and/or cuttings. Cuttings, you know, tattoos are making a resurgence, and you may not know about it, but cuttings are, and other body modifications are as well. Johnny Depp is an example, for instance, of a guy who had cuttings on him. But he’s not an example of depression. He didn’t cut himself, take a razor blade to his skin, because he was depressed.

To him, it was essentially identical with a tattoo. You know, he knew that when sailors went to sea, they’d get a tattoo to remind themselves of that particular voyage, which, back in the old days, was a real traumatic deal. You’re at sea, right? In the sea, in the midst of—and so to mark that event in their lives, a tattoo would be issued. Well, Johnny Depp has marked several events in his life by slicing—I believe it’s his left arm—and in certain pictures of him, if his arm is bare, you can see these scars on him. And that wasn’t because he was hating himself or depressed. That’s because he had specific events that were important for him to identify with, and he cut himself and made a scar to do that identification. You know, that’s—it’s going to, you know, clearly go through that kind of pain and stuff. But to have—how do you understand what’s going on in our culture?

Uh—cuttings and tattoos are markers or can be. Another reason for them are markers of particular events. Also, cuttings, brandings, tattooings—they all kind of fall together. They also have been used historically for ownership. So, you know, slaves would be marked or branded as the owner’s property. And this isn’t just, you know, modern time. Throughout human history, in pagan cultures, when you would capture other people, you would mark them with a cutting, a tattoo, a brand, whatever it was. Just like you’d mark cows, it was a mark of ownership and a mark of humility so that person would be subservient to you.

Safety is another use of tattoos. There were certain cultures in which if you needed protection from the temple cult, you would go there, and they would give you a tattoo. And the tattoo would identify that they have dealt with you, and everybody else—you’re under their protection now. So it wasn’t just a mark of ownership; it was actually a mark of protection and safety.

And it’s interesting in terms of this to think about Cain. God put some kind of mark on Cain. And you actually read some commentators that think it was a tattoo. He tattooed it. Maybe ran into a big brick wall or I don’t know what he did, but Cain had some kind of mark. I remember seeing years ago when I was a little kid—they thought the mark of Cain was a certain head size, and they would use calipers to measure your head size. And this was supposed to be the mark of Cain—a particular head size. I don’t know. But God marked Cain somehow so that other men wouldn’t kill him.

So a tattoo or a cutting, whatever it is, a branding, can be used for safety purposes as well.

And of course, it can be used for fashion purposes. And this is what it has mostly become in America. Thirty years ago, tattooing, cuttings, and this sort of thing were associated with some of these other reasons. But increasingly, what’s happened in our country is it’s just a fashion statement. “I think it’s kind of cool.” And that’s about as far as it goes. And this is true not just of tattooing, but in some degree, and increasingly, people like Johnny Depp as role models—you’ll also see this in terms of cuttings, brandings, whatever it is. I guess NBA players—some of them at least now, maybe more—getting branded. They’ll actually brand themselves. So, you know, you look at somebody with a tattoo or a cutting, you got no idea what’s going on there, right?

I should have mentioned that—depression cuttings for depression are also, of course, part of the gig. And this is probably the normal right now in our culture. This is probably more normal than not. Angelina Jolie, when she was at Beverly Hills High School, apparently, Beverly Hills High was mocked for her physical appearance. Believe it or not, she was too skinny. And so she got depressed, and she cut herself. And people do that today.

I don’t know that this is necessarily true, but a good image of this sort of thing is the Nine Inch Nails song, done by Johnny Cash: “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel now.”

He then talks about the needle. And so maybe the hurting is the needle prick. But you know, songs usually are sort of multilevel, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that this line either was intended or began to be seen in terms of cuttings. “So I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.” You know, there are certain things going on in particular people’s lives, and it’s hard to associate with them. But there’s real brain difficulties in people that create this kind of radical depression and an attempt to feel through cuttings.

The song goes on: “The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything. What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end.”

We live in an increasingly fractured community. And in that fractured community, and with the particular way in which people find themselves, another common source for both tattoos and cuttings is severe depression. And our reaction to that—to any of this stuff, right? What is it? “Get away from us.” What? We’re the people that are trying to bring life. We’re trying to bring joy. We’re trying to bring people out of relationships that would have that kind of sorrow, depression, sadness related to them and minister to people, right? And that’s the kind of world in which we live.

You don’t know why people have done what they do. You don’t need to know why they’ve done what they do. If they have a tattoo or a cutting or body modification of some other sort, you don’t need to know. You know, it could be one of a lot of things. What you want to do is remember the six or seven things that the Lord hates and work on those things with people. You may want to see it and say, “Boy, I really need to help this person, you know, in case depression is part of the gig.” But for the most part, you don’t want to major on the minors.

You want to bring people into the doors of this church with acceptance. You don’t want to, you know, take the little thing here from an obscure verse that nobody understands—you know, nobody—all that the church of Christ is not united on what it means even—and put, as a result of this, all kind of barriers up to a world that we’re supposed to be conquering through the proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ. What kind of sense does that make? It doesn’t make any sense.

So, you know, there’s lots of reasons for what is described in these verses, but the primary one in the verse is mourning. So it does have to do with depression. It does have to do with some of the same reasons why people do it today, okay.

So what’s the point of all this? You know, what am I trying to say? Well, what I’m trying to say is that what we want to do is avoid a couple of ditches here.

And one ditch is the ditch where we’re going to bring back these specific laws when we don’t know necessarily what the tattoo was, when we don’t know if it’s associated with mourning, and we don’t necessarily know whether it’s a marking for a priestly nation or not. We don’t even know from this 3,000-year-old text what it meant then—in light of the Leviticus passage where the priest could defile himself, or particularly close relatives—we’re not really sure of what it meant then. And to kind of make that now the focal point of whether we’re going to interact or not interact with people, and whether we’re going to issue commands or not issue commands about body painting, body tattooing, etc., you know, that’s a ditch. If we end up trying to bring back specific laws that we don’t even know were there, okay? That’s a ditch. And even if we’re getting our interpretation of it correctly, it’s a very small part of an arcane text in the law that kept boundary markers. And if we’re going to make that now the major—well, we can see it. Yeah, you can’t see the gossip. You can’t see the pride. You can’t see, you know, people that sow contention. But those are the real things that God is concerned about.

So you may see it, but you know, don’t major on the minors.

But there’s a ditch on the other road, other side of the road. The point here is we’ve looked at idolatry in some massive, big, cultural, multi-perspectable ways. We’ve seen that our whole world seems to be drifting toward the idolatry of statism and forest worship, and specifically human humanism is the big idol where people themselves—now in their corporate entity of the state—becomes the means whereby everything’s going to be fixed in the world, including they’re going to give us health.

God told us last week: he’s the only one that’ll give you health. Health is in his hands. And when the state says we can make you more healthy, that’s idolatry. Without some kind of conditioning statements about praying to God, humbling before God, that’s gross idolatry, okay?

So we’ve looked at the big perspective. But now we look at the little perspective. And God’s commandments relative to the first word tell us that we should think about the proper use of our bodies. Now, we may not have specific commands that we can use. We don’t have the law. But, you know, Paul tells us in Romans that we’re not under that law anymore. It was a nanny to help us understand things and keep us in check. But now we’re to take that law and apply it in wisdom, right? And so we’ve got to take those laws, understand what God is getting at in them, and apply that in wisdom, not in a censorious way, but in a way that cultivates who we are. And the New Testament gives us clues on how to go about doing that.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Now, the context for that is being careful with our diet, that we don’t offend other people. But the statement is rather clear, and it’s rather obvious from the first word: everything that we do, including what we eat—whether it’s blood or not, right? In that particular law from Leviticus—our bodies—I mean, everything we do with our bodies, how we dress, what we’re going to do to them physically, how we’re going to adorn ourselves, every bit of that should be motivated by the glory of God. That’s an implication of the first word.

So the one ditch is falling into a kind of a legalistic censoriousness over here. But the other ditch is to say it doesn’t matter. It’s just fashion. It really doesn’t matter what I do with my body. What’s the big deal?

The macro and the micro. The macro perspective is—and I think this is quite clear, and if anybody wants to argue with me, go ahead. But I think this is true, and this isn’t from the scriptures; this is from historical observation. But I think over the last 6,000 years of human history, what we have generally seen is that when cultures are pagan or move away from Christ, they embrace body modifications. And when cultures—for instance, in Africa—you know, become Christian, they get rid of that stuff.

And what do we see in our country? Well, we see a movement away from Jesus Christ and toward forms of violations of the first word. And what we see along with that is an increase in tattoos, cuttings, piercings, face painting, whatever it is, okay?

I find it weird, by the way, that we—I mean, if you’re concerned—if you don’t want to see a culture that’s all tatted up, don’t have your kids put on those little stick-on tattoos. What is that? It’s okay for a while. I don’t—I don’t get it. I’m sorry. I don’t want to offend anybody. I already said this is not one of the six or seven things that God hates. And certainly tattoo stickers aren’t. But, you know, it’s really in the text. There’s not a whole lot of difference. And even if there was, aren’t you just sort of preparing your child to want that permanently? Face same thing. I don’t get it.

You know, there’s a movie 300. I don’t recommend it. Very, you know, non-Christian. Everybody looks—no, don’t mention that movie. But, you know, it’s a picture of this big—macro or micro—or macro perspective. And you know, it’s interesting for those of you who have seen it: think of it this way. God established an economic, right? A series of empires that were houses for his people. And the empires, you know, where there was a succession of them, and Persia was one, and the next to come along was Greece, and then the last was Rome.

What 300 shows pictorially is the transition from God judging the Persian house and setting it aside and establishing the Greek house as the part of the empire that would protect his people, and then the Roman house, which we see protecting Paul all over the place from the Jews.

Now, it portrayed the Persians—the society in decline—who are going to begin to get turned back by these Spartans at Thermopylae. But they’re a culture in decline, and they’re going downhill. And they’re all tatted up. They’re all pierced up. There’s sexual—all kinds of rampant sexual sin. And that was the way to visually portray the death of an empire. And the Spartans, on the other hand, in the movie, bodily integrity. They’re not pierced or tattooed, man. They’re whole. They’re holy, right? They’re holy Spartans.

Now, we know that Spartans were not good, and what their sexual practices were. But see, as a visual imagery, I think the movie worked that way to show what happens when a culture is in decline and when one is starting to go into ascendancy. Sexuality, the same thing. The movie contrasted the very perverse sexuality of the oracle at Delphi, which is probably pretty accurate, by the way, the portrayal, and then the marital sexuality of the Spartan commander and his wife—and a distinction there.

And so, what do we see in our culture in terms of its falling away from Christ? An increase, you know, of body modification, and, you know, sexuality outside of God’s word. And as a result, more perverse forms of sexuality.

So the big picture is rather clear. And again, I’m not trying to tell you to feel bad about anything you’ve done or that you shouldn’t go out and get a tattoo tomorrow. I’m just telling you the big picture is that as cultures become more Christian, they tend to get rid of that stuff. And they tend to get rid of that stuff because they begin to recognize—when we repent of our gross idolatries—that everything we do, including the little tiny affairs of our lives, our bodies, and what we do with them, these are part—these have to be done to the glory of God.

They’re a part of what we do in terms of our bodies to demonstrate the interior holiness of our commitment to God. That’s the way Leviticus 19 flowed. Holiness—with holy attitudes that can’t be seen—resulting in certain forms. And maybe they’re not the same forms for us. But certain forms of bodily integrity so that our bodies reflect the integrity of the holiness of God. And so that’s the big picture.

That’s the big picture, and that’s the relationship of the first word: to subject everything—all idols, all powers and forces—under the sovereignty of God. And what it means is we don’t subject statism only. We subject our personal views of what we should do with our bodies or not. Paul, when he wrote to “do everything to the glory of God with your body,” the immediate context is because you can offend people.

You know, part of the reason why people do things is they don’t think about the impact of how they dress, how they act, what they do to themselves, on their neighbor. And again, a Christian culture recognizes that our body—we’re to do things to it to the glory of God. And that includes thinking about what the impact of what we do with our body is to our neighbor, right?

So, you know, the question is: what should we ask? Is it permissible? Is there any law against tattooing? Well, that’s one question. Good question to ask. Nothing wrong with that. But then the second question is: is it a godly, glorifying thing? Is it really an accurate portrayal of a submission to the first word of God in terms not just of declaring his ownership over my body, but also how I relate to my fellow man?

Now, if you answer those questions, and you do it to the glory of God, and you’ve checked out, you know, with your community and stuff, and they’re going to be okay with all that, I don’t see any law against it. But that’s the point. The two ditches are: saying what I do with my body is irrelevant, or it’s just whatever I want to do, or just whatever is kind of cool today. No, that’s a ditch. It’s a sin.

The other ditch is to list out for you everything you can and can’t do with your body and then make you feel bad if you’ve ever done something with it that you shouldn’t have done.

So the scriptures are clear that these things are the proper purview of the word of God. As Christians, we’re called to be holy, set apart, different from the pagan world, consecrated to God. “Everybody’s doing it” is not a good argument to justify Christian involvement. The very fact that pagans practice body piercings, manipulations, etc., that’s no reason for us to go along with the fad. In fact, it’s reason to give us a little bit of pause and say, “What are we doing with that kind of inference?”

Our bodies matter. The integrity of our bodies is related to the integrity of who we are. God has a particular people. The first word defines all the other words. And what he calls us to do in the first word is: every day, when we eat and drink, when we get dressed, when we make decisions about how we’re going to cut our hair and do all this stuff—there’s no Greek big laws out there to give you direct guidance. But what you’re supposed to do is take the first word of being loyal ultimately to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. See that implication for the way you view yourself, even to the details of your body, and specifically what you do in the context of that body. That’s the implication for the body of the first word.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you, Father, for the wholeness of your command to us, because we see in that command blessing to us in the person and work of Jesus. We do pray, Lord God, that you would help us to major on the majors and not major on the minors. But help us also in the minor issues of life to think through the claims that you place upon us. You’ve bought our bodies. They’re not our own. Your scriptures tell us that. But our bodies are yours. Help us, Lord God, to glorify you in them, and thus declare that Jesus Christ is King, is King of Kings and King of our bodies. In his name we pray. Amen.