Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work, I'm Patrick Miller. In Leviticus chapter 20 through 22,

Yaway is speaking to Moses. And throughout this speech, a single refrain is

repeated again and again and again, You shall be holy to me for I

Yawe am holy. Yawe speaks about holiness and the need to be holy 18 different times in these three chapters.

And this shouldn't surprise us. In many ways, Leviticus is a book about holiness.

Despite only being 27 chapters long, Yawe speaks about holiness. Despite only being 27 chapters long,

Yaway speaks about holiness 78 times,

and more often than not, the command to be holy

is rooted in the reality that God himself is holy, which should make us ask a question.

What is holiness?

Maybe that seems obvious to you.

Holiness is being a good person or a moral person and there's some truth to this often

holiness is connected to morality it's connected to how we treat our neighbors

foreigners and even our enemies it's connected to our sex lives, to how we treat our parents,

and to how we worship God alone.

But in many cases, holiness is connected to things

that really aren't quite related to morality. It's connected to the kind of clothing that we wear or the food that we eat.

It's connected to how we interact with the bodies of the dead, with the menstruation cycles of women, with how priests and ordinary people treated

food inside of the tabernacle. Holiness is connected to the special role of priests inside

of the tabernacle. We know that these aren't morality issues because Jesus was perfectly

righteous and yet he did many of the things that Leviticus calls unholy. He touched dead bodies,

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