Year 7, Day 107: Leviticus 18

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I think that there is a key to understanding this chapter, and that key is to be found in Leviticus 18:24-25.  The things that are listed in this chapter are an abomination to God.  For these actions, God is kicking out the Canaanites.  For these actions, God is replacing the Canaanites with the Hebrew people.  God finds these actions so abominable that he literally uses the word vomit to describe what the land is going to do to these people.

What are the detestable actions?  The first group deals with people having sex with their immediate family.  However, these aren’t the only ones that God lists.  Notice that God says we should have sex with people in the same family – even if it is not our own family.  Then God says that we shouldn’t have sex with a man as we have sex with a woman.  In other words, God is talking about homosexuality.  Then, God says that we shouldn’t have sex with animals.  In other words, bestiality.

God absolutely cares what we think about sex.  He absolutely cares about our sexual partners.  God goes so far as to kick the Canaanites out of the land because of their sexual practices!  That’s how much God cares about our sexual partnerships.

Often, I wonder if God cares about our sexual partners more than we do.  We live in a day and an age where “friends with benefits” seems to be the norm.  We live in an age where it is practically accepted that people will have multiple sexual partners throughout their life – and I’m not talking about multiple marriages after one spouse dies.  We live in a culture that has a growing interest in homosexuality.  In fact, I think there is even more growing interest in promoting homosexuality. 

Sometimes, I honestly think that we don’t care about our sexual partners at all.  We simply want to have sex and it doesn’t matter how we meet that end.  We give no thought to the long-term or communal dangers involved in the pursuit of our sexual needs.

In the end, I do believe that God cares about our sexuality for more than we do.  He cares about how it happens; we simply care that it happens.  Unfortunately, I think we are walking on a dangerous precipice.  How a society treats sexuality has much to say with how the rest of society functions.  To be honest, I am not impressed at all with the modern perspective on human sexuality.

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