Family Life in Canaan: Don't Imitate Your Neighbors to God, Imitate God to Your Neighbors
Tracing the Promise Through the Torah • Sermon • Submitted
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And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Introduction
Introduction
Pressure from the world to live like our neighbors
Darwinism/evolution - see the pressure on scientists who believe in creationism/intelligent design
Sexuality is a particularly hot button issue in our country right now.
Pressure to not speak against adultery, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.
If you think it is wrong, you are labeled homophobic, transphobic, and the like.
ELCA District Youth Gathering in 2003/4 that was teaching that the Bible does not oppose homosexuality. They taught that the sin of Sodom was a lack of hospitality. If the mob had allowed for the sex to be consensual with the visiting men (who were actually angels) everything would have been fine.
I predict that we will here more promoting, defending, and openly practicing polygamy, incest, bestiality, and pedophilia.
So is any opposition to these actions based on fear (phobia) or hatred? What does the Bible have to say? And is there any reason for what it says?
Outline: Part 1. Don’t Imitate Your Neighbors to God (Leviticus 18) Part 2. Imitate God to Your Neighbors (Leviticus 19)
Outline: Part 1. Don’t Imitate Your Neighbors to God (Leviticus 18) Part 2. Imitate God to Your Neighbors (Leviticus 19)
Context:
Context:
Chapter 17 (last week): Not supposed to worship the false gods (goat demons) like their neighbors by eating blood or offering it to those gods but worship the LORD in the Tabernacle.
Chapters 18-20
This may seem like a bunch of random, arbitrary rules on uncomfortable subjects, but this is actually a passage about love, purity, and family.
18: Don’t imitate your neighbors and their sexual practices which tear apart the family, hurt and defile individuals. The end of this is separation or death.
19: Be Holy as God is Holy and Love your neighbor as yourself. God calls people to live in His way, which protects people, provides for them, and loves them.
20: punishments for child sacrifice and sexual immorality.
Notice all of the statements “I AM the LORD (your God).” All of these statements stem from on God’s love, His redemption, and the people’s identity in Him.
1. Don’t Imitate Your Neighbors to God (Leviticus 18)
1. Don’t Imitate Your Neighbors to God (Leviticus 18)
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. 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. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.
*Outside pressure* from neighbors
God reminds them of who He is and that they are His.
They are not to live like the Egyptians - Where they lived
They are not to live like the Canaanites - Where God was bringing them, the Promised Land
Whose statutes & rules should they follow? The LORD’s and not these pagan nations whom God had defeated/would later defeat
If you do them, you will live. (true and impossible)
And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
This is a right and true standard that we must keep, but one that we cannot keep. Thankfully God has provided redemption from our sins and has made us His own by grace and not by our works.
This was the life of faith and gratitude for God’s redemption from slavery and for graciously choosing them.
Taboo #1: Incest (vv.6-17)
The Egyptians and Canaanites openly practiced incest, most famously the Pharaoh’s family.
They believed they were preserving a godly bloodline
They had severe genetic problems to show for it. Interestingly, this chapter does not argue against incest because of the biological problems it creates, though that is a legitimate concern.
Addressed to men
this will all be listed from their perspective, but all involved in these actions are participating in something wicked
women are included in the promise of v.5 (“a person”), the general law in v.6 (“none of you”), and in the other statements about ALL Israel avoiding & protecting against defilement.
Women and children are NOT treated here as the property of men as if incest was a problem because of the economic strain it would put on a man.
This is not taught in order to protect the honor of the men as the head of the family
The men represented the family, were held responsible for the protection and preservation of the family
These rules about incest were for the protection of the extended family
The husband and wife become one flesh through marriage and its consummation. So now they are a family, though not previously related.
By extension (the “extended family”) the rest of the family members became one unit, one flesh. Even the in-laws, step-sisters, and half-brothers, became family. So even children from previous marriages became part of the family.
Incest was forbidden because:
the family was one flesh and incest threatened to destroy the family unit
It uncovered someone’s nakedness
The Nakedness of the family members was supposed “to be respected; it is to be neither flaunted nor violated” (Kleinig)
Kleinig also explains that “The sexual nakedness of another person in the family is associated with each person’s own nakedness. It is, in some sense, shared by that person.” (see vv. 7, 10, 14, 17)
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.
A person’s modesty and privacy was to be respected and protected.
To protect the person’s sexual identity
To keep intimacy in the proper place (within marriage)
To protect from shame
Taboo #2: Various prohibitions - The Improper Use of “Seed” (vv. 18-23)
(v.18) Not taking a rival wife to her sister
because it uncovers her nakedness
(v. 19) Not approaching a woman during her menstrual uncleanness
because it uncovers her nakedness
(v. 20) Not with your neighbors wife (an affair)
makes you unclean with her
(v. 21) Child sacrifice - WHOA! Why is this here?
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.
Obviously wrong because it is MURDER and IDOLATRY
Murder of children is not loving your neighbor
Offering human sacrifices to a false god, particularly one of God’s own people, desecrates the Holy Name of God
But why here? because the seed/offspring belongs to the Lord.
God is protecting the family. Killing your children is wrong. Sacrificing your children to false god is wrong. It is a horrifying image to think of killing a child. Today the false god we offer our children to with abortion may be called “convenience” instead of Molech.
God is protecting the Seed of Abraham
Homosexuality
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
An abomination - it goes against the the created order and the distinction God made between men & women
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
It does not breaks down the intended function of the family
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Bestiality
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.
If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal. 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.
A perversion - also goes against the natural, created order.
And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
The Main reasons avoid these sexual sins (incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality)
God associates Himself with us “I AM the LORD your God”
God’s statutes protect the land from pollution
God gave these statutes to bless us with life
procreation
family & community
peace & prosperity
health & happiness
BUT “Sexual disorder curtails and disrupts the flow of life from God to His people and through people to each other.” (Kleinig)
Conclusion: The horrible hurt that comes from incest, rape, extramarital sex.
God is against such harmful and evil behavior.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
but God also offers Healing for the victims, and forgiveness the participants, and the victimizers. He wants to heal all of the hurts from these sins.
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
2. Imitate God to Your Neighbors (Leviticus 19)
2. Imitate God to Your Neighbors (Leviticus 19)
*Inside problem*
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.