“Sexual Holiness” (Leviticus 18 & 20) | 3/10/24
Leviticus 18 & 20 | 3/10/24 | Will DuVal
“Why does God care who I sleep with?” Ask an unbeliever about their faith these days, and that is a question you better be prepared to ANSWER. The conversation often goes something like this:
Believer: “I’d love to hear more about your faith…”
Unbeliever: “Oh, I believe in God. I just don’t like all the OTHER churchy stuff?”
Believer: “What kinds of ‘churchy stuff’?”
Unbeliever: “Oh, you know, all the extra RULES they pile on. Like you gotta go to CHURCH every Sunday, or “if you’re GAY you’re going to HELL” - I don’t believe that. Why would God care who we sleep with? I think he’s got BIGGER problems to deal with…”
Now, perhaps the most EFFECTIVE way for a Christian to respond to such a sentiment is to point out that one reason God cares about who we sleep with is that God cares about EVERY aspect of our lives! According to Jesus, God even numbers the hairs on our HEADS (Lk 12:7), so of COURSE he cares about something as significant as our SEX lives!”
But another, perhaps even more biblical response is that God cares who we sleep with because God desires our holiness in every aspect of our lives, so of course He cares about our sexual holiness!”
That is the focus of Leviticus chs18 & 20 for this morning: sexual holiness. Specifically, God is gonna lay out for us not just the WHAT, but the WHY of sexual holiness; he will give us not just the BOUNDARIES here, but the BASIS for sexual holiness; 5 reasons or motivations for pursuing sexual holiness.
LOTS to get to, so without further ado, to quote Salt-n-Pepa: “Let’s Talk About SEX”!
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Would you STAND… Leviticus 18, 20:
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. 4 You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. 5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.
6 “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. 7 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness. 8 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness. 9 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether brought up in the family or in another home. 10 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter or of your daughter's daughter, for their nakedness is your own nakedness. 11 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, brought up in your father's family, since she is your sister. 12 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister; she is your father's relative. 13 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, for she is your mother's relative. 14 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother, that is, you shall not approach his wife; she is your aunt. 15 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife, you shall not uncover her nakedness. 16 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife; it is your brother's nakedness. 17 You shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter, and you shall not take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness; they are relatives; it is depravity. 18 And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive.
19 “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. 20 And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her. 21 You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.
24 “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, 25 and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations… lest the land vomit you out… [let’s skip ahead to ch20 now…]
20:1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, 5 then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.
6 “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. 8 Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 9 For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.
10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 12 If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. 13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 14 If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity; he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you. 15 If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal. 16 If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
17 “If a man takes his sister, a daughter of his father or a daughter of his mother, and sees her nakedness, and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace, and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people. He has uncovered his sister's nakedness, and he shall bear his iniquity. 18 If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual period and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 19 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister or of your father's sister, for that is to make naked one's relative; they shall bear their iniquity. 20 If a man lies with his uncle's wife, he has uncovered his uncle's nakedness; they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21 If a man takes his brother's wife, it is impurity. He has uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.
22 “You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. 24 But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. 25 You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. 26 You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.”
[This is the word of the Lord…]
God desires and DEMANDS our sexual holiness. WHY?
#1 - For starters, because We are GOD’S. (18:1-5)
Not “gods” plural, but “God’s” possessive, “apostrophe S”; we BELONG to GOD.
This is the FIRST and the BIGGEST and really the ONLY reason that we should need to pursue HOLINESS: because we belong to GOD.
v2: “the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “REMIND the people of Israel that I am YHWH your God.” 6x here in ch18 God reminds them of that (he’ll do so another 18x in chs 19 & 20!), such that there can be no doubt who is in charge around here; GOD rules the roost!
NOW let me tell you why that is such GOOD NEWS for us, friends, that God is the AUTHORITY when it comes to sex: TWO reasons.
#1- Because He CREATED us, so he knows what’s BEST for us. If my kids were in charge, they would eat CANDY for every meal, they’d NEVER shower or go to the doctor, and they’d watch movies like 18 hours a day (and then fight and try and KILL each other the remaining SIX!). It is GOOD for them that they have loving PARENTS, who are much WISER than them, in authority OVER them. And you and I are blessed with the BEST, and WISEST parent of all, in God our heavenly Father.
He says, “I don’t CARE how they do things in OTHER families - the EGYPTIANS, the CANAANITES - they might eat sugar and stare at screens all day LONG, cuz THEIR gods, their “parents”, aren’t GOOD like I am. But in THIS family, we have RULES. Because I LOVE you, and I know what’s best for you.”
By the way, I think it is TELLING that God highlights BOTH where Israel had BEEN - Egypt - as well as where they were HEADED - Canaan. “I know you USED to watch PORN, you USED to masturbate, you USED to sleep around and have “casual sex” (as if THAT were even possible!) - but all that was before I set you FREE! Remember?! I brought you OUT of Egypt. You don’t belong to Pharaoh; you belong to ME, YHWH! I am your God. Follow MY rules for sex… and LIVE! “if a person does them, he shall live”, v5 says.
Don’t follow the rules of CANAAN, the land where you’re heading. You want to know where the land AROUND us is HEADING, sexually? The “PLUS” in LGBTQ+ is there for a reason; it doesn’t stop HERE, Church. 20 years ago it was the “LGB”: mission accomplished; today it’s the “TQ”, and Polyamory. But they’re just the current trends of the day; just wait: there’s more to come.
But God says: “I CREATED you; I know what’s BEST for you. Follow my rules and LIVE.”
Because #2 - Not only did He create US; God ALSO created SEX, so he knows what’s best for IT.
Listen: It is good that God makes the rules when it comes to sex, because it means we don’t HAVE to! What a BURDEN to be FREED from!
The “sexual revolution” that promised us FREEDOM has brought us nothing but SLAVERY. It’s a FREE-for-all out there! Sexual ANARCHY.
Sex is kinda like a CAR. Cars are GREAT… when you know how to DRIVE. But imagine there were no rules - no OBJECTIVE rules - of the ROAD, everyone just driving however they FELT like it, following their OWN personal “rules”, preferences. That’s what we’ve made of SEX today: it’s a DEMOLITION DERBY out there. With UNTOLD carnage, collateral damage.
Friends: you don’t have to try and develop or decipher the “RULES” when it comes to sex; God has GRACIOUSLY GIVEN them to us. And his rules are GOOD - 1 Jn 5:3 says “his commandments are NOT burdensome” - God is not the FUN police, trying to make sure no one’s having a good time down here; he wouldn’t have INVENTED sex if that were the case… he wouldn’t have devoted a whole book of the BIBLE to sex - Song of Solomon - if that were the case. God wants “life to the FULLEST” for us, and He alone knows best how to ACHIEVE it - the good life - the BEST life - for us, sexually.
I LOVE driving through the mountains - the twists & turns, the breath-taking views around every corner. But I don’t get ANGRY about the speed limit signs, or the GUARDRAILS that help make sure I don’t go skidding off a CLIFF - I am GRATEFUL for those BOUNDARIES that allow me to SAFELY enjoy driving.
We ought to PRAISE GOD for his LIFE-giving, life-SAVING guardrails.
And praise God that we now BELONG to him. 1 Corinthians 6 puts it this way, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord… your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (vv13,19-20)
IF we belong to God, IF we have been adopted, PURCHASED by Christ’s blood, then Church: we are NOT our own; we belong to GOD. May we GLORIFY him in our bodies, in our SEX.
#2 - We’ve touched on it now already, but we pursue sexual holiness because It is GOOD. (18:6-23)
God’s best for sex really is THE best for sex. And now God outlines it for us, he shows us the BOUNDARIES, His GUARDRAILS for sex, in vv6-23 - SOME of them anyway; this list of sexual “DON’T” is not meant to be exhaustive.
But in v6 God says, “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness.”
To “uncover nakedness” is a euphemism for SEX, but think with me about what that metaphor. Imagine a newly married couple on their wedding night, disrobing and seeing one another NAKED for the very first time. That is a GOOD and BEAUTIFUL thing - it takes us back to the GARDEN, where Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed”, a picture of PARADISE!
But NOW imagine - I’m about to RUIN someone’s wedding night; we’ve got a few engaged couples here that are gonna have a good laugh together on their wedding nights about this - but imagine INTO that picture walks HER NAKED FATHER… HIS NAKED MOTHER. All of a sudden what WAS a good and beautiful picture has become grotesque and PERVERTED.
That’s the IDEA here: interpersonal nakedness - that degree of EXPOSURE, vulnerability, INTIMACY, with another person - is reserved for SEXUAL relationships, and SEX is reserved for the covenant of MARRIAGE.
It would be short-sighted of us to read this passage as just a list of “close relatives” we’re not allowed to SLEEP with. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, fortunately I’ve never been particularly TEMPTED to approach my mother (v7), my stepmom (v8), my sister (v9), my granddaughter (10), stepsister (11), aunt (12-13), aunt-in-law (14), daughter-in-law (15), sister-in-law (16), a woman and her daughter or granddaughter (17), a woman and her sister (18); I’m not tempted by menstruating women (v19), or other MEN (v22), or ANIMALS (v23). And you think: “Gosh! Were these laws really even NECESSARY?!”
And the answer is: YES! They bring to mind previous biblical examples - the incest of Lot with his daughters (Gen 19:30-38), Reuben’s illicit sex with his stepmother Bilhah (Gen 35:22), or Judah’s with his daughter in law, Tamar (Gen 38), or the sibling rivalry between Jacob’s sister wives, Leah and Rachel (Gen 29-30). By the way, quick note on that one: there is a strong textual case to be made that v18 here ought to be interpreted as prohibiting ALL forms of polygamy. Some people will ask, “Why didn’t God forbid POLYGAMY?” I think He DOES, right HERE. But even if it WASN’T expressly forbidden, polygamy didn’t work out so great for really ANYONE who practiced it in the Bible, did it? Jacob, Esau, David, Solomon… ALL got burned.
But 3,500 years ago, the ancient Israelites would have been around their close relatives CONSTANTLY. Extended families LIVED together, they WORKED together… they were CLOSE in a way that you and I can’t even really understand. And notice: ALL of these laws target MEN, specifically: they protect the women closest to him, most vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
But while this list specifically prohibits sex with the most likely but most out-of-bounds candidates for an ancient Israelite - a modernized version might forbid a man from sleeping with his coworker, his secretary, his friend’s wife - but the scope of the prohibition here really is universal: because sex is meant for MARRIAGE.
That is WHY v7 says, “the nakedness of your father… IS the nakedness of your mother”; because in marriage, Genesis 2:24 says, a husband and wife become “one flesh”. 1 Corinthians 7:4 goes so far as to say that a wife’s body belongs to her husband, and vice versa.
So to GIVE your body sexually to someone - to ANYONE! - who is NOT your spouse, is to give them not JUST your body, but YOURSELF - the very DEEPEST part of yourself. 1 Corinthians 6:18 says “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” - there is something DEEPER, more PERSONAL, more INTIMATE about this sin. That’s why it’s the ONLY sin, according to Jesus, that can justify DIVORCE (Mt 19:9). Because sexual immorality violates the marriage covenant in a way that no other sin does.
But that is precisely BECAUSE sexual HOLINESS - sex enjoyed within the context God DESIGNED it for - THAT kind of sex STRENGTHENS the marriage covenant in a way that no other act CAN. However sinful our sexual IMMORALITY may be in God’s eyes, our sexual HOLINESS is equally GOOD and PLEASING to Him!
Now, vv19-23 deserve special attention. They mention 5 uniquely “abominable” sexual practices; v23 uses the word “perversion”. Allan Moseley notes (168): “The Hebrew word (in v23) conveys the… figurative sense of being mixed up or confused. [The same word] appears in Genesis 11:7 in the Tower of Babel incident when God confused the people’s language so they could not understand one another. So Leviticus [here] refers to being sexually CONFUSED, mixed up,” PERVERTED.
It is a distortion of God’s creation order to have sex with a woman on her period, v19. Life and death - semen and blood - don’t mix.
It is morally “unclean”, it is SINFUL, v20, to “lie sexually with your neighbor's wife” - ADULTERY; it’s on God’s top 10 list!
So too is profaning God’s holy NAME, which Israel DID by offering their children to Molech; I’ll explain that in ch20.
V23: It is perverted, a distortion of God’s creation order, to have sex with an ANIMAL.
Which brings us to v22, perhaps the most well-known verse in all of Leviticus, at least by those OUTSIDE the church: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
The fact that I considered camping out on this verse for the rest of the sermon - that I had to wonder, “Perhaps the church NEEDS that? Could a born-again BELIEVER walk out of here today, still convinced that God smiles upon, blesses, homosexual relationships?” - that is evidence of just how THOROUGHLY “confused, mixed up” our world - our CHURCHES - have become.
I’m NOT gonna camp out. Because God’s word is NOT confusing, or complicated; it is very straightforward. The only question is: will we TRUST it? That God knows best, as our Creator. According to HIM, homosexuality violates his creation order; Romans 1 says it “exchanges natural relations for those that are contrary to nature”. We don’t NEED Leviticus to know homosexuality is WRONG; we don’t even need Romans 1, or 1 Corinthians 6, or 1 Timothy 1, or Jude 7, or ANY of the NEW Testament condemnations; we know it’s wrong simply from CREATION. Just look at the hardware involved here; God says: it is OBVIOUS that I created men and women to FIT.
That’s why, in vv24-30, God says he held the Canaanites responsible - and VOMITED them out of the land - for their sexual perversions even though God never revealed his LAW to them, in WRITING, like he did with Israel; He nevertheless said, “Y’all should’ve KNOWN better; simply from CREATION.”
But here’s the LAST thing that needs to be said about it: homosexuality is NOT the unforgivable sin, and shame on US - the CHURCH - for sometimes characterizing it that way. Homosexuality has become a convenient SCAPEGOAT for us (we just learned about SCAPEGOATS last week) - like, as long as we are anti-GAY, and we can keep the focus THERE, then we don’t have to deal with our OWN sexual sins; shame on US! That’s the OTHER reason I’m not gonna spend half a sermon on it - because while God is clear about homosexuality, he is also clear about heterosexual LUST, and God is an equal opportunity OFFENDER. There are LOTS of ways to be sexually UN-holy. So if statistically speaking, only 7% of folks here struggle with same-sex attraction, then we oughta spend 93% of our time calling out the REST of our sexual sins. Removing the LOGS from our OWN eyes, so we can see clearly to help our HURTING LGBTQ neighbors.
I got a call from a congregant this week, of ALL weeks; she said, “I’m so excited - I got to share my faith with one of my coworkers this week at work, and invite him to church. But…” she said, “I want to make sure if he shows UP that he will be WELCOMED. See, he was born a man, but he transitioned a few years ago. So he’s a bigger, kind of muscular guy but he would be wearing a dress and breast implants if he attended with me.”
Let me just ASK y’all: WOULD he be welcomed here?
I sure HOPE so, I PRAY so, and I do BELIEVE so. I told her, on the phone: “Bring him ON! This church LOVES hurting, LOST people.” Why? Because JESUS did. Jesus EARNED his nickname: “friend of sinners”; cuz he LOVED welcoming sinners to himself.
God loves people RIGHT where they’re at… AND he loves us TOO much to let us STAY there. BOTH are true, friends. God does not say to us, “Show me your sexual holiness THEN I’ll love you,” but NEITHER does he say, “I love you, so your sexual sin doesn’t really MATTER to me.” NO - BECAUSE he loves us, it matters a GREAT DEAL to Him! And he KNOWS what’s best for us: pursuing holiness - it is GOOD.
#3 - We pursue sexual holiness “That it may go WELL with us”. (18:24-30; 20:10-21)
That’s a phrase used often throughout the Bible, when God promises BLESSINGS for obeying his commands, he’ll say: “That it may go WELL with you” (Eph 6:3; Dt 12:28; et al).
BECAUSE God knows best, and because sexual holiness is GOOD - it’s not just objectively, morally good; it is also good FOR US. It’s in our own best, self-interest to respect God’s boundaries. If you don’t respect the BOUNDARIES while driving through that mountain pass, things will not go WELL for you. And sexual immorality is more dangerous than that!
Just listen to God’s warnings here: v26 - “you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations”, v28, “lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.” – God tells Israel, “I was PATIENT with the Canaanites for 430 YEARS while I made y’all wait in slavery in Egypt, to give them every possible chance to REPENT of their sexual perversions, but EVENTUALLY my patience wears out, and my JUSTICE kicks in. So I will be JUSTIFIED in annihilating the Canaanites, and giving the land back to YOU. BUT…” God says, “WATCH OUT! Cuz if you’re not careful, and you fall into the SAME temptations, I will vomit YOU out as WELL!” And God DID, some 800 years after Israel moved in, they too got EVICTED, exiled to Babylon. See, this is the HOLY Land, and God is the LANDLORD. They broke His lease agreement, so they got evicted.
Let’s don’t miss the PLURAL nature of God’s address here, either: Israel, collectively, THEY, plural, were called to holiness. And THEY, collectively, were JUDGED for THEIR sexual unholiness. How are WE doing, Church? I hope YOU are doing well, personally, pursuing holiness. But did you know you really ARE your brother’s keeper? Did you know that HIS sexual sin really can affect - it can INFECT - YOU? That’s why 1 Corinthians 5 says if someone is guilty of blatant, unrepentant sexual sin, the REST of us are supposed to REMOVE that person from the church, lest the whole CHURCH get infected.
“Surveys suggest that as many as ⅔ of Christian men watch pornography regularly” (https://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/how-porn-affects-church-attendance/)
Now I HOPE that’s not us. I PRAY that is not true, of ⅔ of the men - of ANY men - here at West Hills. But statistically speaking, it is almost ASSUREDLY true… of SOME of us. Don’t let it become blatant, calloused, unrepentant sin - WE, collectively, are here to help. To “spur one another on to love and GOOD deeds”. I’ve been there, so no judgment from me. Let’s talk, let’s pray, let’s HEAL.
Because the alternative is DEADLY. We flip to ch20 now, and vv10-21 remind us just how SERIOUSLY God takes our sin, ESPECIALLY our sexual sin. All sins are NOT equal; the Bible already told us that “every other sin {affects} us OUTSIDE the body,” but sexual sin is DIFFERENT. God takes ALL sin seriously, but ESPECIALLY in the case of sexual sin, he takes it DEATHLY serious. That is the PUNISHMENT for most of the sexual sins we read back in ch18, now relisted here: “put [the sinners] to death”, God commands 6 times here; v14: “burn them with fire”. Even the “lesser” punishments in vv17-21, for the lesser sins, are still severe. Jay Sklar calls (562): “Exile… a LIVING death [for the ancient Israelite], it was the community’s way of saying, ‘Though you live, you are now dead to us’... This was not simply a physical removal from the promised land, but a SPIRITUAL removal from the covenant people of God.” Excommunication.
So too with “childlessness”: “their genealogy comes to an END. This was a SEVERE threat to ancient Israelites” (Sklar, 564), who relied on children not only to pass on the family name, but to help run the family business, to CARE for them in their old age.
Sexual sin KILLS!
I’m doing premarital counseling right now with a couple who were sort of nominally Christians until pretty recently, they started attending church together; they were already LIVING together, but when they started getting SERIOUS about their FAITH, they realized: “We can’t keep having SEX, violating God’s boundaries, and then ask and expect him to BLESS our upcoming marriage; we want it to go WELL with us; we want BLESSINGS, not CURSES.” So they STOPPED. Actually they stopped MONTHS ago, but last week they told me one of them is gonna move OUT, so there’s not even the TEMPTATION anymore. So public service announcement: if you’d like to help out a young, poor couple who can’t afford 2 separate rents for the next couple months, but is trying to pursue sexual holiness, let me know. 🙂
#4 - It is okay and RIGHT for us to pursue sexual purity out of holy FEAR of the unintended consequences of our disobedience. (20:1-9)
You might have wondered what these verses about “Molech” and “mediums and necromancers” and “cursing your father and mother” are doing in the middle of a couple of chapters about SEX. First of all, who IS Molech? He was the god of the Ammonites. And in their pagan worship rituals, to appease Molech, they would heat his metal idol up red hot and then place their little children in his arms and burn them to death (Warren Wiersbe, 231).
You think, “How could ANYONE…?!”, but then you realize that it’s still legal in 36 states today to burn a baby to death inside the womb with chemical saline. We still practice child sacrifice; we just do it at the altar of SELF - “I’m not ready for a baby… I can’t AFFORD a baby… I don’t WANT a baby…what about my CAREER… adoption is just too HARD…”
But here’s the bigger point: God wants us to see the connection, the DIRECT connection, between our SEXUAL sin, and these deeper, even more insidious iniquities.
In the case of ABORTION, it’s pretty obvious - abortions shot through the ROOF with the sexual revolution of the ‘60s. But how about SORCERY, v6, or the dishonoring of PARENTS, v9?
While it may be tougher to connect the dots quite as directly, the same principle applies: that over time, sexual infidelity (vv5 and 6 use the verb “whoring” for a reason; whoring after Molech, after mediums…) because sexual immorality will ultimately lead us to spiritual infidelity to God.
Just ask ISRAEL. Over time, these kinds of practices - that when they first HEARD about them here in the WILDERNESS, before they had entered the Promised Land and WITNESSED the rituals for themselves, I’m sure Israel was APPALLED - but over time, their disgust turned to apathy (they became desensitized); then their apathy turned to acceptance (“well I certainly wouldn’t do it, but who am I to judge…”); then eventually their acceptance turned to approval (“Well, it hasn’t rained on MY crops lately, but the Ammonite farms the next village over seem to be doing alright; maybe there’s something TO this MOLECH god…”). And before they knew it, the Israelites were sacrificing their OWN children (see 2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chr 33:6; Jer 32:35).
But we don’t have to ask them; just look around us. The sexual revolution in this country has given birth to an even more pervasive and pernicious SPIRITUAL revolution. Carl Trueman does a great job of highlighting this in his recent book “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self”; if you haven’t read that you NEED to, or at LEAST read the abridged version, “Strange New World”.
But let’s bring this down to the PERSONAL level now: the easiest way to make SHIPWRECK of your entire FAITH is down the path of sexual immorality. What starts out as “just a little sin” can more quickly than we realize end with “no more SAVIOR”. Sexual sin is not to be TRIFLED with. Jesus said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away… if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell!” (Matt 5:29-30)
Lastly, #5 - we pursue sexual holiness because as His PEOPLE, we want to please & to represent God WELL. (20:22-27)
We talked at LENGTH back in chs8-10 with the priesthood about God calling us to be his AMBASSADORS, so I’ll be BRIEF here. But that is God’s closing exhortation here again, at the end of ch20: he reiterates, “I am the Lord your God”, then he adds “who has separated you from the peoples”. You’re not LIKE them; I called you to be HOLY; that’s what holy MEANS - DIFFERENT, set APART.
So God says, “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.”
You want to represent Christ WELL? You want to prove you BELONG to him, and stick out like a sore thumb, a beacon of LIGHT in a dark world? Pursue sexual HOLINESS.
CONCLUSION: Now - that is ALL well and good… We SHOULD strive for sexual holiness, because we BELONG to the Lord and we want to please him. Because it is GOOD and RIGHT and TRUE. Because if for no other reason, we want to be BLESSED and not CURSED. But that all leaves us with one MASSIVE, as of yet unaddressed QUESTION: what about when we FAIL?!
I mean, ch18, v5 said “keep my rules… IF a person does them, he shall LIVE” – that’s good news… WHEN we keep them. But anyone in here batting 1,000? NO sexual sin, EVER? No one? Well, what do we do NOW, with our sexual BROKENNESS?
Here is GOD’S answer: give it to JESUS. Lay it down at the foot of the CROSS. And find HEALING, and FORGIVENESS, MERCY and REDEMPTION. The cross is God’s proof that he can take even the WORST of the brokenness of this world and transform it, and USE it for GOOD - bring beauty from ashes. If God can do that with Jesus’ DEATH, he can do it with your sexual sin.
“the sexually immoral… will NOT inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 6:9-11) Will you come to him and be WASHED today?