The reason the world is in all the chaos it’s in today is because it has violated one of the greatest spiritual principles of God.
I’m talking about the spiritual law of DIVISION, ELECTION and SEPARATION.
This single principle embodies the heart of all that YHVH is and reflects His very nature.
Thus to violate this principle is to reject peace with Him.
Those who love the Lord are NOT to mix those things set aside for life with those things destined for destruction.
Nor are we to even mix two things, that while they may be good and acceptable of themselves, the Lord for His own good reasons has deemed they should not be mixed.
The HOLY must not be mixed with the UNHOLY or even COMMON things.
Nor should the CLEAN be mixed with the UNCLEAN.
What God calls evil, we are not to call good or vice versa.
And we are definitely not to replace God’s HOLY laws with Greek philosophies or theological doctrines.
To do any of this is to cause TEVEL or confusion which goes completely against the Lord’s attributes of wholeness, harmony and order.
The Hebrew word for the improper mixing of things is KILAYIM.
KILAYIM (improper mixing) results in TEVEL (confusion).
Of course, Leviticus 19:19 is not the only place in the TORAH where you’ll find specific commands against KILAYIM.
Check out these verses from Deuteronomy.
“A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.-Deuteronomy 22:5
“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest all the produce of the seed which you have sown, and the increase of the vineyard become defiled. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear a material mixed of wool and linen together.”-Deuteronomy 22:9
The Rabbis actually spoke of three types of KILAYIM (improper mixing) as follows:
SOWING 2 TYPES OF SEED TOGETHER
To plant two kinds of seeds together is considered to be the same as interbreeding two different species of BEHEMAH (domesticated farm animals). When two species of plants are planted in super-close proximity to each other, their roots become enmeshed to the point where each derives some part of its source of nourishment from the other.
USING DIFFERENT ANIMALS TO PERFOM SOME SOME SORT OF WORK
This prohibition is represented by the prohibition against harnessing an ox and a donkey together for the purpose of pulling a cart or plowing a field. This type of mixing is not biological in nature but a mixing in the animal’s action and their function. The problem is using two different species for different purposes to do some type of common work that while suitable for one of the animals is not suitable for the other.
The attributes of either species of animal has not been altered but the functions each was created to perform were improperly altered by men.
WEAVING TWO DIFFERENT FIBERS TOGETHER
This 3rd category is illustrated via the prohibition against wearing clothing woven out of a mixture of wool and linen. Although the two fibers originate from totally different sources, they should not be mixed together to produce something of the same purpose.
Again, keep in mind that there is nothing inherently wrong about any of the species of plants or animals individually.
It is the improper mixing that is the problem.
We have discussed before that clean animals for example are not inherently superior or more godly than unclean animals.
The truth be told linen and wool woven together don’t necessarily produce a physically inferior piece of clothing.
And wine made from grapes produced from a variety of wheat or barley grown in the ground might actually taste quite good.
This leads us to that very uncomfortable point we’ve discussed many times before.
For some things, God hasn’t given us a reason and we just have to accept it has His sovereign decision.
We can search all day for the “why” behind why God prohibited the mixing of certain things and all we’re going to come up with are pure guesses or answers that are mostly allegorical in nature.
In many cases, God has chosen to not tell us the “why” behind many of his decisions and this just bothers the heck out of some folks.
Some people just have to have some kind of “rational/logical” reason why and if they can’t find one, they decide that they don’t have to obey that particular command.
Homosexuality is a perfect example of this.
People will say…
“What harm does homosexuality cause?”
“What people do in private is their business!”
“That was just an ancient taboo for ignorant people!”
“Some commands have no place in our modern 21st century world!”
The problem is that it’s not the secular world that is saying these things but the church which is supposed to be the one organization that represents God’s Word.
The church has no idea how to react to ungodliness because it has so mixed itself with the ways of the world and pronounced the “Old Testament” as dead and gone.
Once you throw out the TORAH, you throw out the morality that governs the whole Bible and the authority that is supposed to guide our lives.
I’ve said this before and I’ll saying it again, when you come across a difficult command in Scripture, forget the “why”!
Stop searching for the “why”!
Instead focus on discovering the patterns in God’s Word and how they’re connected with other patterns.
Once you do this, your understanding of who God is, how He operates in certain situations and what He expects of us will increase 10-fold.
Before closing, I want to share one New Testament verse that is a prime example of KILAYIM in action.
“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness
and what communion hath light with darkness?”
-2 Corinthians 6:14
This verse of Paul’s is one of his most quoted yet most misunderstood sayings.
The first thing you have to understand is that he was NOT making up some new theology here.
He was simply stating the TORAH principle that we just studied, the principle of KILAYIM or no improper mixing.
Specifically, he was referring directly to Deuteronomy 22:10 where it says that an ox and donkey are not to be put together to pull a plow.
You might be thinking, what in the world does this verse have to do with an ox and a donkey plowing together?
Here’s what you’ve got to understand, and as a student of Scripture, what you eventually have to learn how to do.
Paul is simply doing what Yeshua did in his time.
He was re-applying the Torah for his time.
Paul was basically taking the physical command to not unequally yoke an ox and a donkey and applying it in a spiritual manner.
He was equating the principal of unequal yoking of physical things (like donkeys and oxen) to the unequal yoking of spiritual things.
There are strictly defined boundaries between righteousness and unrighteousness and light and darkness and in our walk with the Lord, these boundaries are not to be blurred or crossed.
Great truth needs to be ad heard to by the church .
Amen!