What Not To Leave Behind

Leviticus 25:35-38

October 26, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Several years ago, popular preacher Andy Stanley took a lot of heat for something he didn’t really say. I know, it’s hard to believe that in this world of viral social media posts that anything a preacher says could be taken out of context and pressed to mean something it didn’t mean. But it happened to Stanley and his book Irresistible. In that book, he challenges Christians to stop claiming the Old Testament as their own book. He believes far too often people “hitch” their faith to the Old Testament, at least when it suits their desires. Stanley’s contention is that we need to attach our hope and our faith to what Jesus has done for us rather than the ancient promises made to the people of Israel. But of course what got reported is that he was in favor of getting rid of the Old Testament.

Can you imagine what we would lose if we didn’t read the Old Testament? We wouldn’t be able to do any funerals because pretty much every funeral I’ve ever had asked to have the Twenty-third Psalm read. We would lose the origin of the commandments to love God and love neighbor, we would lose Isaiah’s beautiful description of the suffering servant and we would lose Micah’s summary of what the Lord requires: “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Not to mention all the stories of Abraham, Moses, Jonah and David, just to mention a few! To jettison the Old Testament would be like taking all the things your parents leave behind, tossing them into a dumpster and setting them on fire. The Bible Jesus read was what we call the Old Testament and he was even praying it while he was on the cross. Those who say we have nothing to do with the Old Testament are sadly missing the point and the whole story of the Scriptures (cf. Kalas, The Gospel According to Leviticus, pgs. 23-24).

Some Christians want to separate the stories of the Old and New Testaments, and will talk about how the Old Testament is all about law and the New Testament is all about grace. That the Old Testament God is a God of wrath and the New Testament God is a God of love. I’ve got news for you: it’s the same God and that’s a false division. So the question becomes (and we’ve talked about this in Bible Breakdown class), “What do you do with the Old Testament?” I mean, we don’t have animal sacrifices and we don’t live in the desert and we don’t have a king. We’re not Hebrews, so what do we do with these stories and especially what do we do with these laws? I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but there are a lot of laws in the Old Testament, especially in those first five books! What about that? Well, as the video said, sometimes hope comes from unexpected places. Sometimes you can even find hope in the midst of religious law; we just may need a little help to see it. So for the next few weeks we’re going to look at some of the passages and stories in the Hebrew Scriptures and see if they really do have anything to say to us, 21st century Christians living far from the Holy Land. We’re going to be looking for the “Roots of Hope” in these ancient words.

So we start today with the book that has the most law passages in it, the book of Leviticus. Up to today, I have preached a little over 1,200 sermons and this is only my second sermon ever from the book of Leviticus. So this is something of a rare treat! Leviticus is that book that most people get bogged down in when they try to read through the Bible in a year. It’s full of laws and legislation and directions on how to perform various offerings. And most people get to the point of “who cares” about all the detail and give up. I mean there is such exciting reading in this book as how to handle skin diseases, how to get purified after childbirth, what to do about mold, how eating blood is forbidden (which is why I always get my steak well done), and who you can and cannot have sexual relations with. There are rules for priests and guidelines for various festivals. And there’s a whole section on the year of Jubilee when slaves would be set free and debts would be cancelled—something that Israel seems to have never practiced even though it’s right there in the book. Leviticus, of all of the Old Testament, seems to focus on things we don’t care about anymore.

The passage we read this morning is just one of those laws, one that is concerned with slavery and debt—things we think don’t have anything to do with us anymore. Or maybe it does. Let’s first remember the setting of these laws, mainly that they were given a long time before they were needed. Remember in Leviticus, the Hebrews are still in the wilderness, still at Mount Sinai (25:1), still receiving the law, and it’s going to be forty years or so before they are in a land where most of these laws will apply. So obviously in the right then and there it’s not so much about the law itself. In time they will get the chance to live this out, but telling them this right now must have a different purpose initially. This law is given to them now to teach them about the God who rescued them.

This small section of the law is focused on those who are poor, the ones who, for whatever reason, end up with little or no resources of their own. Actually, it talks about those who “become” poor, which means they once had resources but now they don’t. The context of the passage seems to indicate they overextended themselves. They spent more than they made. They got too many things on credit. Thank goodness we no longer have that problem in our world! You know I’m not being serious. Currently, the credit card debt in the United States alone is $1.21 trillion. Look at how many zeros are in that number! $1.21 trillion. And that’s just credit card debt. That doesn’t include mortgage debt, student loan debt, auto payments or anything else. Just what we have charged on our credit cards. Let me say it again: $1.21 trillion. So the solution in ancient times when you overextended yourself was that the creditor would come and take you as his slave. You would go to work for the creditor until your debt was paid. The phrase in the NIV is “help them as you would a foreigner and stranger,” but the original Hebrew there literally says “you shall seize him” (25:35; Harris, “Leviticus,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 2, pg. 639). So you “help” him by letting his work off his debt in your employ.

That wasn’t unusual in that world; that was standard practice, whether the person was a foreigner or native-born. But here’s the kicker. Here’s what made the Hebrews different. God tells them, “Do not take interest or any profit from them” (25:36). Whereas in most cultures (including our own), interest is added on a regular basis for a loan, God tells the Hebrews they are not to do that once the debtor has been taken into service. The man himself was to be the promise that payment would be made. Besides, if further interest was charged, “the poor man could never work off his debt” (Harris 639). In other words, you could phrase what God says to the people this way: don’t make it impossible for the poor to pay off their debt and get back on their feet. “The poor were to be protected” (Harris 639). It doesn't mean you shouldn’t loan to a poor man; it does mean you should make it possible for the loan to be paid back either with money or with work. Additional interest made it difficult, maybe even impossible. And here’s another interesting tidbit: in the Hebrew language, the word for interest comes from the word that means “to bite” (Harris 639). Interest bites. Interest does damage to the borrower, which is why, later in the Bible, King Solomon would write this: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7).

Okay, I pretend to hear you say, this is all very interesting and maybe more than a little uncomfortable. Why are you telling us all of this, pastor? I’m glad you asked. There’s a couple of reasons I share all of this; maybe more than a couple. For one, this is in the Bible, and even though it’s in the Old Testament, there is still value here for us. Remember, Jesus said not the slightest bit of the law would ever disappear, that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). If Jesus believes it’s still useful, then it is. Second, I always tell people the point of the law is not the law itself. To understand what’s going on, we need to look behind the law itself and find out why it was given. There’s a principle behind every law that is still what God wants to do in and through us. And that brings me to the big reason we should still read and study and understand the law. It’s right there in verse 38: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God” (25:38). Ultimately, the law is about God.

In this section of Leviticus, a section of law and guidelines that stretches from chapters 18 through 26, the phrase, “I am the Lord” is repeated fifty times. 50 times in 9 chapters (cf. Kalas 32). When something is repeated that often, you begin to think it might be important. All the things the Hebrews are told to do is because God is the Lord. Is God concerned about all the little details of your life? Does God care about idolatry, sex, honoring parents, observing holidays, taking care of our elders, business practices, loving neighbors and all the rest? Yes, he does, because God is ultimately relational. God isn’t sitting on high, handing out laws and striking evildoers with lightning bolts like the ancient Greek or Roman gods. This God is not impersonal and cold, and neither is his law. He is not detached. He cares for his creation, especially the crowning achievement of his creation, humanity. As Pastor David Kalas says, “You cannot understand the Law unless we appreciate where it begins and it begins with a who. The Law is deliberately located within the context of a relationship” (26).

When God called Moses to begin this journey with these people, he introduced himself by describing his relationships. Among the very first things he says to Moses is, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). God is known by who he associates with. Even the Ten Commandments, as we’ve talked about recently in Bible Breakdown, begins with God and his relationship with us. The first three commands are directly about God’s relationship with his people, about his priority, about how we are the ones who represent him on earth, and how we about treat his name (Exodus 20:3-7). I mean, when someone knows your name, it means you are connected in some way, and you would’t expect them to speak poorly of you or to represent you badly. God expects the same of those who are connected to him. All of the laws begin with God, the one who is, as he says repeatedly, “The Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). This law all begins with and is centered on the one who is our Lord, so how could we leave any of it behind?

So that leads to the question underlying all of these laws, really. What does it mean that God is Lord? We say it, we sing it, we might even read and write about it, but what do we mean when we call God, “Lord”? What does it mean in this passage and in others when he tells us he is Lord? “Lord” is not just a nice-sounding title and it’s not part of God’s name. To recognize God as Lord has several implications for us yet today, the first of which is that he is personal. He knows us and we can know him. From the beginning of time, the invitation was to walk with God as a friend walks with another friend. In the Garden of Eden, God walked daily with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8). When God called Abraham, his invitation was for Abraham to walk with him (Genesis 17:1). Jesus, God in the flesh, invited his disciples to be with him and they walked together throughout his ministry (Mark 3:14). God is personal.

And we’re told God would speak to Moses face to face as a friend speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11). Because he is personal, he not only walks with us, he speaks to us. He has given us his word to speak to us, and sometimes he speaks directly to our spirit. I’m not one who has ever heard an audible voice that I knew was the voice of God, but I have had many occasions where I had this strong inner prompting that, honestly once I responded to it, I came to understand as the voice of God. One time I felt like I should go see John, who lived just a couple of miles north of me, but I had no reason to go see John. So I put it off, or tried to put it off. I had other things to do that day. But the feeling persisted, so I finally got in my car and drove the two miles. I rang the doorbell and no one answered. John wasn’t home. See, God, you were wrong and I was right! And just as I was writing a note to leave in the door, John and his wife pulled in the driveway. They had just come home from a doctor’s appointment and learned that John had cancer. Very aggressive cancer. 37 years old, two young daughters, now facing a disease with little hope of surviving. In fact, John did die shortly after that, but I was able to pray with him and encourage him that particular day because I (reluctantly) listened to God’s voice. As always, He was right and I was not.

God is personal, God speaks to us. And the big thing calling him “Lord” means is that he is the one who gets to direct how our life is to be lived. In ancient times, a Lord was one who ruled over a particular area or a particular group of people. If someone was your “Lord,” then you looked to them to determine the way you were to live. And you wanted to live in that particular way in order to please your Lord, or in some cases at least to not make him angry with you. So it is with God—sort of. The invitation I mentioned that God gave to Abraham was, “Walk before me faithfully and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). Faithfully. Blameless. So many of the times when God makes promises to his people, it’s conditional. If. If you live the way I tell you to. If you are faithful. If you walk with me. It’s not hard; Jesus says his “yoke” (being connected to him) is easy and, in fact, what he wants to give us is rest (cf. Matthew 11:28-30). It’s just that we humans don’t want to follow what he says. We don’t like to have a “Lord” over us, and so from the very beginning we have been rebelling against God’s instructions. If God has told us to go one way, we tend to go the other way. If God says don’t eat from that tree that’s the only one we want to eat from. And then we claim we don’t know what God’s will is. Scores of books have been written on finding God’s will because we claim we don’t know what it is. The fact is, we do. God’s will is for us to live holy lives. In this book, in Leviticus, he says, “Be holy, because I am holy” (cf. Leviticus 11:44). That means we are called to live a life that follows the directives he has given us in his word. If we claim to follow him, then we must allow him to be our Lord, the one who sets our course. That, friends, is God’s will for you and for me: be holy. Because he is the Lord your God.

For the early church, saying “Jesus is Lord” was a dangerous thing. The firm belief of the Roman Empire, etched even into their coins, was that Caesar was Lord. “To declare that Jesus is Lord was to imply that Caesar is not” (Bird & Wright, Jesus and the Powers, Kindle edition, pg. 21). And to “worship Jesus as Lord instead was to put oneself at odds with the Roman Empire, refusing to worship the emperor or his sponsoring deities” (Imes, Becoming God’s Family, eBook edition, pg. 138). Such a thing could result in arrest or worse. When we were in Ephesus a few weeks ago, we saw the remains of statues and altars not only to the goddess Athena (patron goddess of Ephesus) but also to the emperor who began to be worshipped as a god or at least a son of a god. We saw the same thing in sites across Greece as well. And into these cities came this new religion, this new faith in a Lord who was not Caesar, who had a different way of life in mind and who called for loyalty to a kingdom other than Rome. To say “Jesus is Lord” was dangerous then. And, if we not only say the words but also live them out, it can also be dangerous today. To follow the one who says, “I am the Lord your God,” to really follow him, can put us on the wrong side of society. Are we willing to follow this Lord in everything? In our finances? In our employment? In our families? In our politics? To say “Jesus is Lord” and to live it out will upend everything. That’s what the Hebrews found out at Sinai. The Lord changes everything.

I want to ask one more question as we wrap up this morning. Can you call Jesus “savior” and not “Lord”? I’ve known people who do—or try to. They say they have asked Jesus to save them from hell and they are convinced they are going to heaven, but they’re not really interested in changing their lives, in allowing Jesus to shape their whole being. I had one person tell me a very particular way they planned to not follow God’s desire for them and then asked, “But even if I do this thing, God will have to forgive me, right?” Can you call Jesus savior and not Lord? There is a scene that takes place during the Last Supper in Matthew’s Gospel that I never noticed until recently. In all of the Gospels, Jesus tells the disciples that someone is going to betray him and all of them are surprised. Well, most of them. One of them already knows because he’s the betrayer. Anyway, in Matthew’s Gospel (and remember, Matthew is an eyewitness; he was in the room), each of the disciples are “very sad” and they ask Jesus, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” They call him “Lord.” All except Judas. When Judas asks the question, he says, “Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?” (Matthew 26:20-25). He doesn’t call Jesus “Lord” like the rest of the disciples do because at that moment, Judas’ heart is not fully submitted to Jesus. He wanted Jesus to do what he had in mind, not what God the Father had in mind. It’s a shocking contrast, but I believe it’s also lived out by people every day as they attempt to claim salvation without allowing Jesus to be Lord. As we say in the Wesleyan covenant prayer every New Year’s, “Christ will be all in all, or he will be nothing” (BOW 292). And we learn that in Leviticus.

So can we or should we leave the Old Testament behind? As we grow in our faith, there might be a lot of things we leave behind, old attitudes and old ideas, but leaving behind this part of God’s word would leave us with an impoverished view of who God is. He is, Leviticus says, Lord of all. He is Lord of you and Lord of me. Let’s not leave him behind. And let’s pray.