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NewCity Orlando Sermons
Leviticus Is For Lovers | Leviticus 3
Senior Pastor Damein Schitter continues our fall series, Leviticus is for Lovers, preaching from Leviticus 3. He revisits the theme of atonement, emphasizing its role in bridging the gap between us and God, and moves into the heart of the message: God's invitation to fellowship. The laws for peace offerings in Leviticus 3 are not just about legal satisfaction but signify a restored, dynamic relationship with God, epitomized by the symbolic shared meal. This chapter transitions us from forgiveness to communion, offering a vivid illustration of God's desire for a vibrant relationship with His people.
You can read more about Tim Keller's book, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?, that Pastor Damein mentioned in his sermon by clicking here.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damian. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:I'm a member of New City and part of the Conway Community Group. We're brand new and there's space available, so if you need a community group, please join us. All right, please pray these words of illumination. Excuse me, the prayer of illumination with me. Aloud Eternal God, in the reading of scripture, may your word be heard In the meditation of our hearts. May your word be heard In the meditation of our hearts. May your word be known and in the faithfulness of our lives. May your word be displayed through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. If you're able, please remain standing for today's scripture, which comes from Leviticus 3.
Speaker 2:If his offering is a sacrifice of peace offering, if he offers an animal from the herd, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the Lord and he shall lay his hands on the head of his offering and kill it. At the entrance of the tent of meeting and Aaron's sons, the priests shall throw the blood against the sides of the altar. And from the sacrifice of peace offering as a food offering to the Lord, he shall offer the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys, with the fat that is on them, at the loins and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys. Then Aaron's sons shall burn it on the altar on top of the burnt offering which is on the wood on the fire. It is a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
Speaker 2:If his offering for a sacrifice of peace offering to the Lord is an animal from the flock, male or female, he shall offer it without blemish. If he offers a lamb for his offering, then he shall offer it before the Lord, lay his hands on the head of the offering and kill it in front of the tent of meeting, and Aaron's sons shall throw its blood against the side of the altar. Then, from the sacrifice of the peace offering, he shall offer as a food offering to the Lord its fat. He shall remove the whole fat, tail cut off close to the backbone, and the fat that covers the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, at the loins and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove with the kidneys, and the priest shall burn it on the altar as a food offering to the lord. If his offering is a goat, then he shall offer it before the lord and lay his hands on its head and kill it in front of the tent of meeting, and the sons of aaron shall throw its blood against the sides of the altar. Then he shall offer from it as his offering for a food offering to the Lord the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them and at the loins and the long lobe of the liver. He shall remove with the kidneys and the priest shall burn them on the altar as a food offering with a pleasing aroma.
Speaker 2:All fat is the Lord's. It shall be a statute forever, throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places, that you shall eat neither fat nor blood. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You can be seated.
Speaker 1:Welcome back. If you saw my face during that scripture reading, I just kept breaking out into a smile uncontrollably. And if you weren't here last week last week we started a sermon series through the book of Leviticus and this is not a butcher's manual, this is God's Word. And if you came back, welcome. Good for you. That's great. And if you were here last week, my points I had three questions, and my three points this week are also going to be questions, because there's something powerful. I feel really loud. Am I loud? Yeah, whatever, you all think that's great.
Speaker 1:Questions are powerful because when someone asks us a question, something happens in our mind, and we know that the best question askers oftentimes are children, because they ask us a question about something that we totally think we should have the answer to, but they ask it in a way that's so simple, so profound, that we don't know how to answer it. I don't mean modern questions like what is a dongle To, which I constantly want to know why I need so many to make my Apple devices work in this world. I don't mean questions like that that you're like I don't know what that is. I've never heard that word. That's not what I mean. I mean basic questions. Basic questions the power of a simple question is remarkable. Kids have a superpower here. They stop us in our tracks.
Speaker 1:Recently, when I was driving actually it wasn't that recently and it may or may not be recently, but I need to cover the tracks of the child I'm about to tell a story about, so you know, you decide how recent it was One of my children asked me a question. They said dad, is it true that when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, it means that we go to heaven when we die? And I said yeah, that's true. And then they said well, how do I know if I love and trust Jesus? This is a direct quote. How do I know if I love and trust Jesus because I believe in him or because I don't want to go to hell? And I said that's a great question. Do you think it would be wrong to love and trust Jesus simply to not go to hell? And she said yes, and we had a great conversation.
Speaker 1:But these are the most important questions, aren't they the types of questions that just come out like that, where it requires explanation, not simply an answer, and when we think about all the information that we have day in and day out, coming at us in our world. A key function of God's word not the only function, but a key function is that God's word reshapes the questions that we ask in life. It reprioritizes questions, it reorders questions, and the benefit of books like Leviticus is that, as we said last week, the cultural difference and unfamiliarity slows us down. But it not only does that. As it slows us down, it fuels basic questions that we may have just skimmed over in the past. So today I have three questions. The first question is sort of a recap of last week, so it's the shortest answer in the sermon, okay. And the question is why do we need atonement?
Speaker 1:We sing about atonement, we read about atonement all throughout the Bible. It's very clear in the book of Leviticus lots of talk of atonement. But if you remember last week, chapter one was on the whole burnt offering, and the whole burnt offering was the complete burning of the animal that was brought to sacrifice, and what we said was the whole burnt offering represents complete and utter surrender to God, that we give everything to God, that it all belongs to him, not parts of it, not parts of life, but all of life, and here in our text today of it, not parts of life, but all of life. And here in our text today we'll talk about this in a moment atonement is not the offering's main purpose in chapter 3, but commentators point out that the fact that blood is involved suggests that it is still taking place and atonement was necessary when sinful worshipers are coming before the Lord. And so essentially what we have here is atonement.
Speaker 1:Like I said last week, we in our sin are separated from God, and God gives us the gift of sacrifice to bring us into fellowship with him again at onement or atonement. Atonement in the Hebrew word means at least two things. We said last week. It means to ransom and to purify, and so God ransoms us from our sin and he cleanses us of it, which includes a cluster of things like forgiveness, righteousness and we'll see today, fellowship, fellowship with him. Now I want to point out a word that was a phrase that was in chapter 1, but it's also in our chapter today, chapter 3. And let's go ahead and go to our chapter today, chapter 3.
Speaker 1:So you have the worshiper bringing an offering this time rather than a whole burnt offering. It is a sacrifice of peace, or we should say, could say and probably should say fellowship, just to make it clear If you have fellowship with someone, you have peace. But the purpose of this peace offering was to have a fellowship meal. We'll say more about that later, but what I want to point out is verse 2. And he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and kill it at the entrance of the tent of meeting. So this is the exact same instruction from last week, and I want to mention one thing and then elaborate on another. One thing I just want to mention is that do you know who is doing the killing? It is the offerer, and so last week, those who bring the offering, they kill it themselves, and this is what's happening here, and then the priests take the blood to perform the rite and ritual of blood at the altar. I just want to mention that, which is wild. The second thing I want to elaborate on is this phrase he shall lay his hand on the head.
Speaker 1:Multiple commentators trip over themselves trying to describe the picture that's actually happening here. Most translations translate this lay the hand on the head, but the word itself could be translated lean heavily on the head of the animal, lean heavily. So I want you to picture an animal that you've brought a cow or a lamb from the herd or the flock, and you bring this animal before the priest and before you kill it, you don't just lay your hand on it lightly, you don't just pet it, but you lean onto it as though without it you would fall over, as though you were on the ground, if you don't lean into this animal heavily and this is the picture of atonement, isn't it that when we trust God, jesus Christ, in his atoning work, we don't simply barely lay hold of the finished work of Jesus, but we lean heavily into it, we lean wholly into it? You see, what's happening here is the bringing of the animal isn't simply a fee, like Disney, where we bring our ticket or scan it or have our bracelet as a fee to entrance. No, this is a substitute. This animal is a vicarious substitute. So by leaning heavily on it, the worshiper is identifying with this, and then God is accepting this animal on behalf of the worshiper.
Speaker 1:And so, to answer my own question, why do we need atonement? It's because sin separates us from God and atonement is required to restore that relationship. That's the answer. But what's the principle? The principle is that we don't simply get to come to God however we want. God desires that we come to him, but he has provided the way. We don't choose, which way we would prefer, but rather God's gracious provision to his people brings us into fellowship with him. So why do we need atonement? Because we need a sacrifice. We need a vicarious sacrifice to take our place, because we are not without blemish, which is what God requires. We are not blameless, and that's what God requires. And so that's why we need atonement.
Speaker 1:And, as I said, this is a bit of a review from last week, but I wanted to bring it back to the front of our mind so that we can spend more time talking about the second question, which is what our passage today teaches us. And the second question is what does God really want from us? What is all this business about atonement and bringing animals for sacrifice? Or to ask it in question form what does God really want from us? What is all this business about atonement and bringing animals for sacrifice? Or to ask it in question form what does God really want from us? And to answer the question, we need to explore our text. So let's go back here to chapter three. We'll pick up again at verse two, and he shall lay his hand on the head of his offering and kill it at the entrance of the tent of meeting and Aaron's sons, the priests shall throw the blood against the sides of the.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this is the atonement piece. All right, what's next? Verse three and from the sacrifice of the peace offering again, we're gonna think fellowship offering, or even covenant fellowship offering. It's a food offering. Now, by the way, the psalmist points this out. It's not because God's hungry. That's not what points this out. It's not because God's hungry. That's not what's happening here. It's not that God is hungry like the other gods in the ancient Near East, and so this is the fee in order to come into God's presence, that you need to feed him. No, something else is happening. It's actually less about God and more about us. So we bring a food offering to the Lord.
Speaker 1:He shall offer the fat covering the entrails and all the fat that is on the entrails and the two kidneys, with the fat that is on them, at the loins and the long lobe of the liver that he shall remove from the kidneys. What are we removing? We're still removing fat, and we'll say more about why this is true in a moment. But this is amazingly gracious. This is incredibly gracious because God is specifying exactly what he wants. He's specifying exactly where all the fat that is to be offered is. He wants to communicate fully and clearly. And later, if you offer a sheep this particular, and later, if you offer a sheep, this particular sheep or goat would, they had a certain type of tail that was large and it was almost all fat. And later we won't go read there, I'm just pointing it out he says specifically don't forget to cut the tail off right at the backbone. That's what he says. So then you'll offer the whole tail because the whole tail is fat. So God is being incredibly gracious. What does God really want from us? He's being incredibly gracious and at first glance, when we read these, we might think well, this is basically a recapitulation of chapter one.
Speaker 1:It's just another sacrifice and more directions. But that's not what's happening. It is true, you have animals, you have sacrifice, you have priests and of course, you have lots of blood. But in our first point we explored all of those similarities with atonement. But in the heading of your Bible it probably distinguishes from chapter 1 by saying laws for peace offerings. And a couple times now I've said, let's think fellowship offerings, and the reason is is because chapter three is all about a shared meal, unlike chapter one, where the whole animal is burnt up. Chapter three is actually bringing an animal that will be divvied up between God, who gets all the fat, the priests who get the thighs, and then whatever else is left from the animal. Those, the family of the offer and the offer, get to eat.
Speaker 1:Now we skip chapter two, which is grain offerings. But the reason that grain offerings come between, come before the fellowship offering is because in the ancient Near East, when you ate food, you always ate bread, and so God's been preparing for a meal. God brings atonement and then cooks some bread and then you bring this food. All of this is leading to fellowship, all of this is leading to a meal. This is a huge deal. Why? Well, because what we learn in chapter three is that God does not want mere pardon but fellowship. God does not want merely legal satisfaction, but he wants a living, vibrant relationship with his people. He doesn't want mere compliance, he wants communion. You see, the fellowship offering in Leviticus 3 is communicating a restored relationship with God that leads to fellowship and peace. You see, chapter 3 moves us from atonement to fellowship. This is God's invitation to come eat at a table with him. He's the host. So God's instructions in Leviticus 1 through 3 have moved them from ransom, purification, forgiveness, to fellowship. This is amazing, this is beautiful.
Speaker 1:This week I was at RTS Reformed Theological Seminary and in the hallway I ran into one of the Old Testament professors who just came back from sabbatical and I asked him how was sabbatical? And I knew he was writing a commentary on Jonah. And so he told me oh, it was great, and I actually just finished, just turned it in. And so, as we're still walking, I said so what are you teaching now? And so he tells me what they had just taught today. He didn't know that we were preaching through Leviticus. And he says and you know where I ended class? I said go home and read the first seven chapters of Leviticus. It's so filled with grace, leviticus, it's so filled with grace. And I think probably three months ago I would have been like I'm glad I didn't have him, I'm glad I went to Covenant Seminary. But what Dr Futado was saying is exactly true. And, of course, now what we're exploring is the fact that the first seven chapters of Leviticus are filled with grace.
Speaker 1:God is not merely pleased with servants. He wants friends, he wants family, he wants fellowship, he wants communion. Atonement is not the goal. It is the means to the goal. Trusting Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins is not the goal. It's the means to the goal To have deep, rich fellowship with the God who loves you, who made you and stopped at nothing to save you. He will not leave you as orphans, but he's still with us by his presence. Even Jesus being raised and taken into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, doesn't leave us alone. The Father and the Son send the Spirit because the goal is rich communion, and so we already see that in Leviticus, chapters one through three.
Speaker 1:The other thing that we see what does God really want from us in fellowship is in the ancient Near East, a meal was a sign of covenant renewal, and I won't see all of Ben's thunder because he's leading communion today, but that's what this is too, and I will say a little bit more about this. This is a covenant renewal meal, and we see this already in Leviticus, that there is a covenant renewal meal. God is saying I haven't changed my mind about saving you from Egypt. I don't regret it. I did it for a purpose. I did it to bring you to myself that you would worship me and that we would be in fellowship. And meals were a sign of covenant renewal, and one aspect of this meal together was to show true fellowship and peace between the parties involved.
Speaker 1:Because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to sit down at a table and eat with someone, isn't it? I mean, think about this, think about a person that you have had a conflict with and you both speak forgiveness or I'm sorry. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, I was walking to pick one of my daughters up from dance this week and I walked into the venue and there was a mother talking to a teacher of her boy and the mother kept saying you need to ask for forgiveness. I don't know what happened, but clearly something happened while the mother was working out and the teacher's like hey, something bad happened. And this mother keeps saying you need to ask for forgiveness, you need to ask for forgiveness. And the son? He won't even look at her and then she keeps saying it more and more and louder and louder and finally he looks up, looks at her, looks at the boy and he says I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and all of that stuff, and walks away. Now listen, the mother didn't say thank you, she said that was not an apology, right? So imagine if you play this out.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about this text and I just thought they need to reconcile and then they need to bust out the goldfish and have a meal together to make this work right. So you know that when there's rupture in relationship, meals bond people. Now, we don't do that all the time now, but you can imagine what it would be like, and this is exactly what happened in the ancient Near East, but something closer I just thought about. There's something different between saying reconciling words you are forgiven, I love you and then inviting people to a meal. So as I was thinking this week, I thought about Nelson Mandela actually.
Speaker 1:So in 1994, nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa after 27 years of being in prison for his opposition to apartheid. And apartheid in South America was the legal system of racial segregation enforced by the national party government, the powers, the government in power, and they were doing this apartheid to maintain minority white power. Okay, so Nelson Mandela was part of the push to get rid of apartheid. Well, eventually apartheid falls, nelson Mandela is released from his life sentence, and then he's elected president. Now, what is he going to do with that power? What do you do to people who have wronged you? And now you have power? What do you do? Well, what Nelson Mandela did was he said we are going to bring reconciliation between all peoples in South Africa as we move to democracy. We are going to be one nation, and so he didn't just say that in his speeches, but at his inauguration he invited the prison guards from his time in prison, because he didn't want to just say he had forgiven them, but he invited them to display reconciliation.
Speaker 1:You see how that's a step further. Now, a step further. Even our God, who we were enemies with, pursues us, rescues us, provides the way of atonement or reconciliation, and then invites us to a meal and he says I love you. You're no longer strangers, but friends. So what does God want from us? He wants fellowship. He wants us. You see, the fellowship offering in chapter three celebrated restored communion with God. I'll say it again Atonement was never the end goal. It was always a means to the end goal, which was free worship of our God and fellowship with him.
Speaker 1:Now, what about all of the instructions, the detailed instructions about what to do with the fat? What's all this about? In the meal? Because, like I said, everyone gets to eat this meal. It's a fellowship offering, it's a meal, but only God gets to eat the fat. This is clear in verse 3, verse 4, verse 9, verse 10, and verse 14. So it's really clear. Which portion of this animal is God going to eat? It's the fat. Why the fat? Well, the fat was to be burned and then it would go up right to the Lord, this idea of God eating it or receiving it as something good. It's because the fat was the best part of the meat. And we know this for lots of reasons Culturally.
Speaker 1:Now, that may or may not be true, but in the ancient Near East it was certainly true. And it's really communicating something deeper, which is the Lord deserves the best of our offerings. Well, we know this because even the psalmist talks about wheat, and there's no fat in wheat like there is in animals. But in grain offerings, the people are to offer the fat of the grain. What do they mean? They mean the best part of it, the best part of the grain. So what does God really want from us. He wants our fellowship and he wants our best. He wants us to bring him our best.
Speaker 1:Commentators point out here that meat was a rarity in the ancient Near East and the fat was the best portion. And when we think about the story just a few weeks ago in 1 Samuel, chapter 2, now it's several weeks ago, I guess in our Bible reading plan, if you remember, samuel's sons, or Eli's wicked sons, demand to have the sacrificial meat before the fat was burned. Why is that? Because they were gonna take it from the Lord, and this is why it does not end well for them. And the point is here we present the best of ourselves to the Lord, and not just in worship, not just whenever they brought the animal to be sacrificed. In all of life we are to present the best of ourselves to the Lord. How do we know that? Go with me to verse 17 here at the end.
Speaker 1:It shall be a statute forever, throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places that is, all your houses or all the places you would eat that you eat neither fat nor blood. Why? Because what God wants is his people to live a life that will always remind them that he wants their best. That's the first thing with the fat. Why the blood? Because the blood represented life, and God wanted his people to know that they don't own life. They treat life the way that God tells them to treat life, and so whenever Israelites ate meat, they would refuse to eat the fat, otherwise it would dishonor God. And they refused to eat the blood because it would also dishonor God. And they refused to eat the blood because it would also dishonor God.
Speaker 1:Now, how do we think about this in our lives? I just have one question that I'd love for you to reflect on, and that is are you merely seeking forgiveness from God or are you enjoying fellowship with him? Or are you enjoying fellowship with him? Is the extent of your Christian faith that Jesus forgave your sins and that's it? So now you're pardoned, so you're free to go. Your sins have been forgiven. That's awesome, I can go on living my life. Is that the extent of your Christian faith? This is what my daughter was getting at. Was it okay if I just trust Jesus so he forgives my sins, or is there more to it? Well, the answer to the whole Bible, and right here in Leviticus 1 through 3, is that there's way more to it. God wants you, he wants you. There's way more to it. God wants you, he wants you. He wants you in relationship with him. He wants you to experience his fellowship. He wants to lead you by his spirit In decisions, not just life altering decisions.
Speaker 1:But, lord, I'm on the phone with this person. How do I respond, lord? My child just asked me this question. What do I say, lord? I feel tempted to numb out and check out, fill in the blank, with whatever I repent. I'm turning back to you. Will you fill me? Will you meet me, lord? You haven't just forgiven my sins, but I want to receive your love.
Speaker 1:When I ask that question constantly, do I have what it takes? Do you guys ever ask that question? Am I enough? Do I have what it takes? It's always there in my mind. Do I have what it takes to lead these people? Do I have what it takes to parent these children? Do I have what it takes, fill in the blank, in that moment, if the extent of your relationship with Jesus is that he has forgiven your sins, that's an impoverished experience of all that he has for you in those moments. He wants to meet you there. He wants to fellowship with you there. He wants to, he wants to be present with you.
Speaker 1:And so what does God want from us? He wants our hearts in life-giving fellowship with him, and he's provided the way. He's been so explicit, he's so unrelenting. He will never stop pursuing you, ever Stop pursuing you ever. So this fellowship offering invites us to a meal with God where we celebrate the peace that's been won for us and we sit, not as strangers, but as sons and daughters, enjoying fellowship with our God and Father. So the first point why do we need atonement? It's because we don't just get to come to God how we want, but he has provided a way to bring us back into fellowship with him. What does God really want from us? He wants us, he wants fellowship with us, and he will stop at nothing to make that possible. He will keep wooing you. And then, finally, my final question is how does peace with God shape our relationship with others? Because you see, this meal, this fellowship meal, like I said, it wasn't just between the offerer, the priest and God. It was the offerer and their family. This was a community meal and their family, this was a community meal.
Speaker 1:And so I've heard this a hundred times from one of my heroes, tim Keller, and he would say vertical reconciliation with God must lead to horizontal reconciliation with God. Now, of course, he's not the one that came up with that, but he's the one, the voice that's in my head. I suggest maybe you could read if in this point, if in this point, you struggle and you're thinking, yeah, but or only if you knew, or what about this person, or what about that person? I actually get that. I understand that, and there are a number of nuances that I think ideally I would have put in the sermon, but we don't have time for. So if that's you, at the end of this point you only feel objection. Two things One, you can come talk to me or Ben or Jason afterwards. Second, read Tim Keller's book on forgiveness that he released right before he died.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go here. What does this mean? If we have vertical peace with God, it must move us to horizontal peace with others. It must. Part of fully participating in our peace and fellowship with God is to pursue peace and fellowship with one another.
Speaker 1:Listen, asking for forgiveness feels like death. You ever done it? Of course you have. Forgiveness feels like death. You ever done it? Of course you have. It feels like death. You feel like something inside of you is going to rip open, and if you don't, I think it's common that people do. That's just all I'll say. We all know this experience of I'm dying to self to ask for forgiveness from this person. This is costing me something. To tell the truth, which is what confession is. It's to tell the truth, and you go to someone, you tell them the truth. I wanted to hurt you with these words. That's why I said them. It was wrong of me. I'm embarrassed, I'm ashamed. Will you please forgive me? That feels like death. Now, it's always been hard to ask for forgiveness. I think technology has made things worse because it's given us an out, it's given us a halfway way to do it. So I'm going to borrow this from a guy named Justin Early just this sentence here. So I'm gonna borrow this from a guy named Justin Early, just this sentence here.
Speaker 1:I'm asking that this church and in our families this family as a whole and our families, our nuclear families, parents and children that we commit ourselves to having all the meaningful conversations face-to-face or in person. Sometimes I mean sometimes, like I've been in a situation where I got short with Leah on the phone and I'm like not even in the state, so I didn't wait to call her back. I mean I guess I could FaceTime, but I'm just saying that the principle is I still can call her on the phone, but I didn't text her. I didn't text her and say I'm sorry and then give it three days until I saw her next time and be like man. I hope that passes. This is what we do and technology makes this possible. This is not the type of peace and fellowship that God is calling us, this horizontal reality of atonement to be.
Speaker 1:Sherry Turkle, I'm reading her book right now called Reclaiming Conversation, which is her famous. Probably she's an MIT professor, sociologist. Probably her most famous book is Alone Together, which comes maybe 2010, 2012, something like that. 2015, which is still old. That's why I'm giving you the year. That's a long time ago. It doesn't seem like a long time ago. You do the math and you're like cripes. It's a long time ago. Covid was four years ago, three years, depending on how you count. So time goes fast. So 2015,. This was already true then.
Speaker 1:Sherry Turkle's writing a book about the power of conversation and how technology has disrupted and is disrupting conversation. She tells a story of these college students that she's with, and they call it the rule of two. Here's the rule of two they all want to eat dinner together in the dorm cafeteria, but they also don't want to disconnect from their phones. So they have a rule of two that's spoken and yet unspoken that before you pick up your phone to look at it, you have to make sure that two other people at the table are not looking at their phone. Why? So that the conversation feels like it keeps moving forward and then, after you're done with your phone, you can say oh wait, what are we talking about? So you keep reading and she keeps telling us how real this is.
Speaker 1:And she says there's a section in the book called I'm sorry, colon. Then press send. And in that section she points out how all these alternatives to asking for forgiveness which is the point that she's making in this section of the book it's about forgiveness, saying you're sorry. She says we now have less stressful ways to do that. We can send a photo with an annotation. This was 2015.
Speaker 1:Now I'd say we send a gif or a jif, depending on if you're one of those people. So then I kid, I kid, I have no, I have. No, yeah, I appreciate that I have no dog in this fight, but some people do and I get it. I feel like this borders on like a Lord of the Rings type following If it is a GIF or is it GIF. So we can send a GIF, gif. And when we do that, or we can send a text or we can not send anything. But the key is she says we don't have to apologize to each other. We type I'm sorry and hit send. And she goes on to lament what this has done. Sorry, my iPad is freaking out right now.
Speaker 1:She goes on to lament that this lack of face-to-face apology has created an empathy gap, that people don't know how to experience empathy. They're flat in affect. They don't know how to connect. So she's going on about this and she talks about how it starts with young children, because young children's parents are constantly on their phones, always interrupted. Children do not they're, by and large, often not raised understanding what a continuous conversation is, because at some point somebody's going to pick up their phone and do this sort of deal, which, by the way, is why one of the practices in the common rhythm is one hour to listen, where we put our phones away just one hour, so that we're constantly here and we see people face to face.
Speaker 1:So she goes on and she says she's talking to a student in an interview and this graduate student talks about how apologizing over text is what she calls an artificial truce. And this is a quote from the graduate student Quote. The texted I'm sorry means, on the one hand, I no longer want to have tension with you, let's be okay. And at the same time says I'm not going to be next to you while you go through your feelings. Just let me know when our troubles are over. She says when I have a fight with my boyfriend and the fight ends with an I'm sorry text, it is 100% certain that that specific fight will come back again because it hasn't been resolved.
Speaker 1:So then later in the chapter she's talking about another interview with a girl that she names Gretchen, who says that she's been so distracted this semester that her grades are suffering, that she's not sleeping because she has transgressed something with her roommate and her roommate does not know it. So she's disclosing this to Sherry Turkle in this academic interview as though it's a confessional. Really, that's not what Dr Turkle says. That's what's happening, though she's saying that I've had inappropriate relationships with people close to my roommate and she's almost confessing to Sherry Turkle. And Dr Turkle realizes in this interview what's happening and she says she stops the interview and she invites her. She says do you think your roommate is in your dorm room now? And she said yeah. She said well, it's about 10 minutes from here. What if you walk over there and just get this off your chest now? Totally reasonable, this was her response. She said I told her less than a 10 minute walk from here and you could get this off your chest. And the woman looked at me confused and said oh, I'm going to text her. I would never do this face to face. It's too emotional.
Speaker 1:So listen, why this excurses? Where I started was it's always been hard to ask for forgiveness. It's always been hard. It always feels like a death. But the reality is is. I believe that many of us are being formed into the type of people who are more like these students than we'd like to admit that technology is actually disintegrating our relationships rather than making them more whole, especially when there's a rupture in those relationships and we need repair. Now listen, what am I saying? Well, in conclusion, I'm at least saying that forgiveness between us and God leads to forgiveness and fellowship, not only with God but with those around us. That is to say, vertical forgiveness and peace must overflow to horizontal forgiveness and peace.
Speaker 1:But what I haven't said yet is where can we access the power to pursue this type of reconciliation? Because you might be thinking I'm going to say listen, grow up, put your phone away and say you're sorry. Now, I'm not saying that that would be wrong or I would never do that to you, but I would never leave you there. I would never want to leave you there and candidly eventually that would run out for me too Just shaming myself, shitting all over myself. You should be able to call this person, you should be able to talk to them. You should be able to go ask forgiveness. You should be able to repent more quickly, rapid repentance, as we tell me first time.
Speaker 1:Obedience, listen to the power to forgive others and pursue reconciliation is not found in duty. It's found in gratitude. To be okay in that very awkward moment, when you see on that person's face how you have affected them and you ask forgiveness, to sit in that, how can we do that? We can know that we are forgiven in Jesus and in that gratitude that we sit in that we've ultimately sinned against God and he's already spoken forgiveness over us. It's from that gratitude that we can fuel these types of horizontal relationships and conversations. That's the place to go.
Speaker 1:So, in conclusion, god's goal, through this sacrificial system in Leviticus 1-7, is more than pardon. It's fellowship, it's communion with him, and the same is true in the people he's creating, vertically and horizontally. Let's pray together, vertically and horizontally. Let's pray together. Father, we come to you asking that you would fill us with gratitude, even in this moment, about what it means to be forgiven people, what it means that we have access to you through the work of Jesus on our behalf. Lord, even in the maybe nervousness at the end of this sermon of thinking about people that we are not reconciled with, people that we need to circle back with, large and small, maybe that nervousness, that anxiety that could have cropped up in this moment, would you move our hearts. To look at your face, would you be the lifter of our head and give us confidence in your love for us, in our fellowship with you, and that, from there, would you shape us into the type of people who would pursue fellowship with others, and it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.