This is part 1 of 4 from my sermon on Leviticus 18. For the introduction to the series where I talk about homosexuality and the Reformed Church in America go here.
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The second half of Leviticus, from chapter 17 onwards, is sometimes called The Holiness Code because its all about how the Israelites were to live as God’s holy people. Leviticus 19:2 gives the theme for this whole section: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Chapter 18 in particular is about holiness as it relates to the family and sexual activity. The Bible actually has a lot of say about sex. Sex is among the greatest gifts God has given to us. It is also the source of more pain and temptation and destruction than almost any other force on the planet.
Sex is like a car. Cars make life better. They enable you to travel long distances and live in different places. You can visit your family more easily. Cars can go real fast. They look cool (some of them anyway). Most people will eventually drive a car. But there are rules. You need to be a certain age. You need to get training and take a test. You need a license. You have to follow traffic signs and stay in your lane and obey the speed limit. The rules are not to keep you from enjoying the car. The rules exist so you and everyone else can drive safely. If you don’t know how to handle the car, or you don’t follow any of the rules of the road you will get hurt. And likely, others will get hurt as well. The rules aren’t meant to confine you, but to help you.
Sex is like that too. Sex is fun and, no lie, makes life better. But only if you know the rules and enjoy sex in the right way, with the right person, in the right context.
I have three main questions to ask from this passage. 1) What does God require of us regarding sex and the family? 2) Why does God ask us to follow these rules? 3) How should we engage others with these rules in our day?
What does God require of us regarding sex and the family?
Leviticus 18 doesn’t tell us everything we need to know, but it gives us the basic rules.
First, God prohibits incest (6-17). The principle is pretty straightforward: a man may not marry a close blood relative or any woman who becomes a close relative through marriage. Specifically, a man may not marry his mother or step-mother, his sister, sister-in-law, half-sister, or step-sister, his granddaughter or step-granddaughter, his step-daughter or daughter-in-law, or his blood aunt or his aunt by marriage. Curiously, the one relationship missing from the list is daughter. This is because the surrounding cultures already prohibited marrying one’s own daughter, and the Israelites already knew sex with a daughter was wrong from the story of Lot’s two daughter having sex with their father in Genesis 19.
Marry close relatives is wrong because you are either uncovering your father’s nakedness, or your own nakedness, or the nakedness of your family. And when people marry into the family, they become your family. And uncovering the nakedness of your family is a perversion of God’s order for the family. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebuked the church for tolerating the sexual relationship (marriage?) a man had with his father’s wife. So incest is still depravity (Lev. 18:17) in God’s eyes.
Second, God prohibits taking a rival wife (18). Having two sisters for wives did not work out well for Jacob. It is against God’s law.
Third, God prohibits whatever makes you unclean (19). This is the one verse that people reference when they want to throw out the rest of the chapter. “How can you say homosexuality is a sin? What about the part about not having sex during menstruation? Clearly, these are just cultural laws and we don’t have to follow them anymore.”
The first thing to say in response is “maybe we shouldn’t ignore this command.” I don’t think this command is still binding, but I think you can make a much, much better case for following every law in this passage than for following none of them. Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. So we better have a good explanation for how Jesus fulfills a particular law before we decide not follow it anymore.
In this case, the key phrase in verse 19 is “menstrual uncleanness.” Husbands should not have sex with their wives in their menstrual uncleanness. So the question is whether menstruation still makes a woman unclean. Menstruation was not a sin. Rather, the loss of blood made a woman (and any man who touched her) ritually unclean. But with the coming of Christ, the sacrificial system is gone, the need for a temple/tabernacle is gone, and the priesthood is gone. The whole system which required ritual cleanness is gone. Therefore, menstruation doesn’t make a woman unclean anymore, because the whole system has been blown up.
Cleanness still matters in the New Testament, but it becomes a moral category instead of a ritual one. Cleanness refers to those acts that are morally pure in God’s eyes. So the abiding principle here is that whatever sexual activity makes you unclean is unfit for God’s people. But blood loss no longer makes one unclean.
Fourth, God prohibits adultery (20). Don’t get hung up on the word “unclean” in verse 20 and think that adultery doesn’t matter anymore. In the Old Testament, not all uncleanness was sin, but all sin made you unclean. So adultery wasn’t wrong because it was unclean. It made you unclean because it was wrong. This is obvious from its inclusion in the Ten Commandments and from Jesus’ own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus didn’t relax the law about adultery. He made it harder. Not only is intercourse a sin, but according to Jesus lust is also a sin.
Fifth, God prohibits killing our children (21). Molech was a pagan god and there is archeological evidence showing that people sometimes had their children pass through fire as a sacrifice to Molech. It may seem strange that this law is here when all the other laws are about sex. But remember the broader category has to do with the family. These rules about sex are rules to protect God’s design for the family. So this law is here to tell parents that their children are precious and not be used to further their own plans and desires.
