For All These Things

Leviticus 19:27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.

Have you ever wondered why your parents made the rules they did for you? Why was that out of bounds? Why couldn’t you run with scissors in your hands? Why was looking both ways so important before crossing the street? Why was hanging upside down from a tree branch off limits! It was fun!

Behind every one of those rules, if you dug for it, there was a story of hurt and tragedy. Some kid was just being a kid and they got hurt running with scissors, hit by a car, fell from the tree. And parents just want to keep their kids safe! Right?

Our text is near the end of a chapter that almost never is read out loud in the congregational setting. In fact, kids are not encouraged to read this chapter, if parents have anything to say about it, at least until they are older. It is a chapter about forbidden sexual relationships. Most of it would be considered incest today.

But why did these practices become forbidden for the Israelites? Were they practicing them, and being rebuked? Why spell out in such detail all the relationships that were forbidden in such detail?

Our text tells us plainly. These were practices done by the neighboring cultures of that day. The LORD was helping form a community that was different from those cultures. And one of the ways they were to be different was in their sexual practices.

You see, sexual intimacy was meant to be in one relationship only, husband and wife. All these other combinations were off limits. It isn’t about genetic abnormalities. It is about the damage that would be done to relationships, about breaking the familial bonds. The LORD wants to create a new kind of family where sex becomes sacred and families are preserved.

You might say that these types of hookups don’t happen these days. You would be wrong. Having sat in the chair as a Therapist and listened to the messes people make of their lives for many years, I can assure you, people are still doing these kinds of things.

The unsettling part is that our culture, or at least certain segments of our culture, is embracing some of these connections. And our text tells us that for the Israelites, these practices defiled the land itself, and the land vomited out the inhabitants. Is our land going to vomit us out because of these practices?