That You Should Be Mine
Back in early October, when we read the first five verses of Leviticus 18. This week we'll read Leviticus 20:1-8 and 22-26 together, and we'll spend time in back in chapter 18. These are some of the hardest chapters in the book to read out loud. God makes rules here about sex, about child sacrifice, and about not becoming like the cultures around Israel, because the people of Israel were either committing these sins already or soon would be.
Chapter 20 opens with this: "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" (20:2).
So who was Molech? The Bible tells us less than you might expect, and what it does tell us is enough. Solomon built a high place for him "on the mountain east of Jerusalem" (1 Kings 11:7). Later, two kings of Judah burned their own sons as offerings (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). It happened in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, at a place called Topheth (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 33:6). God's response through Jeremiah is striking. They built Topheth "to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind" (Jeremiah 7:31). Through Ezekiel, He calls those children "my children" (Ezekiel 16:21).
Why would anyone do it? Micah puts the question in the worshiper's own mouth. "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6:6-7). The price keeps rising because the worshiper is trying to buy something from God, and a child was the most a person could give. God's answer comes in the next verse: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (6:8).
Before Leviticus 20 says anything about anyone's sexuality, it guards a child. And it doesn't leave that child's protection to only the parent. The law covers everyone in the land, Israelite and foreigner alike, and then God holds the whole community responsible: "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, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan" (20:4-5). The community has a responsibility. Looking away is named as a sin of its own.
Some of you are already thinking about abortion as you read this. So am I, and I want to talk about it carefully on Sunday. If anything, Sunday wont be a call to political action, but rather, it is going to talk about the church's role in supporting one another to be holy as God is holy. If that's part of your story, please hear this first: this is not to condemn you.
Then the list. Most of chapter 18 names relationships God forbids, and the paragraph near its end (18:19-23) puts five things side by side: a man with a woman during her period, a man with his neighbor's wife, a parent giving a child to Molech, a man with a man, and anyone with an animal. Chapter 20 repeats most of the list and attaches penalties to it, many of them death.
Most of us already know that Christian sexual ethics are different from the world's. Fewer of us could explain why. And there's a fair question underneath. Is a sin like this detestable forever and always, or is it a culturally applied proposition? This chapter seems to give a very clear prohibition against gay sex, so how we read it matters. Two weeks ago, when we came to tattoos in Leviticus 19:28, I didn't treat them as permanently wrong, because the verse itself ties those marks to mourning "for the dead," a practice of Israel's neighbors. So why not read 18:22 the same way?
Leviticus helps us answer that, and it's worth reading slowly. Look at what it says about the nations who lived in Canaan before Israel: "by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants" (18:24-25). Those nations never stood at Sinai. They never received this law, and they were judged for these things anyway. The next verse applies the same lines to "either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you" (18:26), the foreigner living in Israel as well as the Israelite.
Now look at what chapter 20 does with food. "I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean" (20:24-25). The food laws were tied to Israel being set apart from the nations. That's why Deuteronomy lets an Israelite give an animal that died on its own, which he couldn't eat, to the foreigner living in his town (Deuteronomy 14:21). No nation in the Bible is ever judged for eating pork. Leviticus is already telling us which of its laws marked Israel off from the nations, and which ones every people answers for. The full answer reaches back further than Sinai.
If you hear 18:22 as a verdict on you, notice where it sits. It's in a paragraph with adultery. Every one of us is somewhere in this paragraph, and none of us gets to read it as a list of other people's sins.
Then there are the death sentences. I don't want anything hidden in this passage. These verses show the severity of the passage, how seriously God took these sins, and I'll be honest that I'm still working out everything I want to say about them. What I can say now is that Israel was a nation under God's covenant, and its penalties belonged to that nation. The New Testament never tells the church to stone anyone. When Paul faced a case in the church at Corinth that came straight out of Leviticus 18:8, a man living with his father's wife, he told the church to remove the man "so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:5).
On my first read through this chapter, I wasn't sure I saw mercy in it. It's mostly lines and penalties. But read the two places where God stops to explain Himself. The first comes right after Molech and the mediums: "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. Keep my statutes and do them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you" (20:7-8). The second closes the chapter's call to holiness: "You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine" (20:26).
The order matters. God is the one who sanctifies His people, and He set them apart "that you should be mine." Holiness in this chapter starts with belonging. These lines were given to people He had already claimed, and He gave them for their life. Chapter 18 opened with that promise: "if a person does them, he shall live by them" (18:5). God absolutely cares, and He has a plan for us regarding our sexuality and the way we handle these things. His plan is life.
Read Leviticus 20 this week, all of it, and the end of chapter 18 (18:19-30). Then read 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul's list there covers much of the same ground, and then he writes, "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" (6:11). Notice the past tense, and notice the word "sanctified." Come Sunday ready to hear why these lines exist, who they protect, and where the mercy in this chapter is.
Chapter 20 opens with this: "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" (20:2).
So who was Molech? The Bible tells us less than you might expect, and what it does tell us is enough. Solomon built a high place for him "on the mountain east of Jerusalem" (1 Kings 11:7). Later, two kings of Judah burned their own sons as offerings (2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). It happened in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, at a place called Topheth (2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 33:6). God's response through Jeremiah is striking. They built Topheth "to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind" (Jeremiah 7:31). Through Ezekiel, He calls those children "my children" (Ezekiel 16:21).
Why would anyone do it? Micah puts the question in the worshiper's own mouth. "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6:6-7). The price keeps rising because the worshiper is trying to buy something from God, and a child was the most a person could give. God's answer comes in the next verse: "He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (6:8).
Before Leviticus 20 says anything about anyone's sexuality, it guards a child. And it doesn't leave that child's protection to only the parent. The law covers everyone in the land, Israelite and foreigner alike, and then God holds the whole community responsible: "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, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan" (20:4-5). The community has a responsibility. Looking away is named as a sin of its own.
Some of you are already thinking about abortion as you read this. So am I, and I want to talk about it carefully on Sunday. If anything, Sunday wont be a call to political action, but rather, it is going to talk about the church's role in supporting one another to be holy as God is holy. If that's part of your story, please hear this first: this is not to condemn you.
Then the list. Most of chapter 18 names relationships God forbids, and the paragraph near its end (18:19-23) puts five things side by side: a man with a woman during her period, a man with his neighbor's wife, a parent giving a child to Molech, a man with a man, and anyone with an animal. Chapter 20 repeats most of the list and attaches penalties to it, many of them death.
Most of us already know that Christian sexual ethics are different from the world's. Fewer of us could explain why. And there's a fair question underneath. Is a sin like this detestable forever and always, or is it a culturally applied proposition? This chapter seems to give a very clear prohibition against gay sex, so how we read it matters. Two weeks ago, when we came to tattoos in Leviticus 19:28, I didn't treat them as permanently wrong, because the verse itself ties those marks to mourning "for the dead," a practice of Israel's neighbors. So why not read 18:22 the same way?
Leviticus helps us answer that, and it's worth reading slowly. Look at what it says about the nations who lived in Canaan before Israel: "by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants" (18:24-25). Those nations never stood at Sinai. They never received this law, and they were judged for these things anyway. The next verse applies the same lines to "either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you" (18:26), the foreigner living in Israel as well as the Israelite.
Now look at what chapter 20 does with food. "I am the LORD your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean" (20:24-25). The food laws were tied to Israel being set apart from the nations. That's why Deuteronomy lets an Israelite give an animal that died on its own, which he couldn't eat, to the foreigner living in his town (Deuteronomy 14:21). No nation in the Bible is ever judged for eating pork. Leviticus is already telling us which of its laws marked Israel off from the nations, and which ones every people answers for. The full answer reaches back further than Sinai.
If you hear 18:22 as a verdict on you, notice where it sits. It's in a paragraph with adultery. Every one of us is somewhere in this paragraph, and none of us gets to read it as a list of other people's sins.
Then there are the death sentences. I don't want anything hidden in this passage. These verses show the severity of the passage, how seriously God took these sins, and I'll be honest that I'm still working out everything I want to say about them. What I can say now is that Israel was a nation under God's covenant, and its penalties belonged to that nation. The New Testament never tells the church to stone anyone. When Paul faced a case in the church at Corinth that came straight out of Leviticus 18:8, a man living with his father's wife, he told the church to remove the man "so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:5).
On my first read through this chapter, I wasn't sure I saw mercy in it. It's mostly lines and penalties. But read the two places where God stops to explain Himself. The first comes right after Molech and the mediums: "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. Keep my statutes and do them; I am the LORD who sanctifies you" (20:7-8). The second closes the chapter's call to holiness: "You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine" (20:26).
The order matters. God is the one who sanctifies His people, and He set them apart "that you should be mine." Holiness in this chapter starts with belonging. These lines were given to people He had already claimed, and He gave them for their life. Chapter 18 opened with that promise: "if a person does them, he shall live by them" (18:5). God absolutely cares, and He has a plan for us regarding our sexuality and the way we handle these things. His plan is life.
Read Leviticus 20 this week, all of it, and the end of chapter 18 (18:19-30). Then read 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul's list there covers much of the same ground, and then he writes, "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" (6:11). Notice the past tense, and notice the word "sanctified." Come Sunday ready to hear why these lines exist, who they protect, and where the mercy in this chapter is.
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