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Leviticus 18
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Good morning. Welcome to Commons. My name is Jeremy, and I'm one of the people who hang out around here. And we are closing in on the home stretch of an extended series in the book of Leviticus. However, before we can talk about priests and purity part two today, we need to go back and recapture some of our conversation from last week.
Speaker 1:Because I recognize that a conversation about the day of atonement in Leviticus and perhaps even more importantly, about atonement in general in Christian theology, is both very complex but also incredibly important for us. And so it is worth spending at least some of our time today expanding on that conversation from last Sunday. However, let me say this going in, your atonement theology is not your salvation. Perhaps the irony of Christian theology is that it says your theology is secondary. It's important.
Speaker 1:It's central to how we gather together and we need to continue to work on our thinking about God throughout our lives. But salvation is about who you trust. So it's not about thinking the right way. It's not even about doing the right things. It's about who you choose to trust with your life.
Speaker 1:Jesus says that the kingdom is simple enough for a child. In fact, he says that simplicity is central to the kingdom of Jesus according to God. And so historically, there have been many different ways that the church has talked about atonement. Different theories and models and scaffolds that we use to make sense of this incredible idea that we can be made at one with God. But what the church has always held as dogma.
Speaker 1:So if doctrine is the teachings of various churches and dominations, then dogma is what all Christians affirm together. And that dogma is that somehow in the mystery of Christ we are made at one with God. As the eminent atonement scholar Leon Morris says, Christ's atoning work is so complex and our minds so small that we cannot take it all in. And yet we can still thankfully accept so great a salvation. So what's important here is that even as we talk about heavy atonement theology, we have to maintain some element of mystery in our faith.
Speaker 1:A child can probably not wrap their mind around atonement theory, But they certainly can trust that God loves them. And according to Jesus, that is enough. Now that said, I do still love theology and I'm kind of a nerd. And atonement in particular sits at the center of our Christian theology. And so looking back at Leviticus 16, it's interesting because I think a lot of people had a general sense of the Levitical code going into this series.
Speaker 1:Sacrifices, blood, forgiveness, rinse and repeat ad nauseam. And certainly, there are a lot of sacrifices, and there is a lot a lot of blood in Leviticus. But sacrifices were simply part of how ancient cultures thought about communication with the gods. However, at the center of Leviticus, amidst all these sacrifices, at the climax of the book, the day of atonement throws us a curveball. More accurately, a goat.
Speaker 1:A literal scapegoat that takes on itself all of the confession for the sin in Israel. And then that goat is driven out away from the community. And so when Jesus shows up, the writer of the Gospel of John immediately makes all of these connections. He says, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And then near the end of Jesus life nearing his execution, the angry mob chants, take him away, send him away, crucify him.
Speaker 1:In these passages, the Gospel of John, the writer here is making a deep and direct connection to the scapegoat of Leviticus. Except now, it's a person. And it's God in human form who we drive away. And we push out, and we put the blame and frustration for all of our sin on, and we scapegoat Jesus just like they did in Leviticus. But the incredible thing, the thing that changes everything is that now Jesus returns to us.
Speaker 1:And instead of being angry, instead of being full of retribution the way that we might be if we had been treated that way, he comes and he forgives and he welcomes and he offers his grace to us. He shows us that we don't need to scapegoat anymore. Not in religious rituals, but perhaps, maybe even more importantly, not in our personal interactions with each other anymore. I don't need a scapegoat. I don't need to find someone else to blame for my brokenness and my sin anymore because I can come directly to God.
Speaker 1:And I can name my sin, I can ask for forgiveness, and I can trust like a child that I am loved deeply and embraced by my father. Now this is one of the ways that we think about atonement. There are actually many different ways that the church has thought about atonement throughout our history. Jesus paid the penalty for sin. It's very common in evangelical circles.
Speaker 1:We call that penal substitution. Jesus was a ransom to buy your salvation. The apostle Paul is very fond of that language. We call that ransom theory. Jesus' resurrection is what overturns death and makes real life, eternal life, the life of God now possible for us.
Speaker 1:We call this Christus Victor. And it's a bit of what I was hinting at last week when I talked about how resurrection is almost the eighth day of creation. It's like a new beginning of a new week where God is now recreating his world. We have a perspective that we call moral influence. This is where Jesus shows us what goodness truly looks like.
Speaker 1:And it's not that he's a good example. That's not the idea here. It's that he is the divine image who spiritually awakens us to God's truth and beauty. And then finally, sometimes we talk about Jesus as the new Adam, The one who restarts the human story. It's like he turns the computer off and back on.
Speaker 1:But this time, it's in the right foot pointed toward God. We call that recapitulation theory. The point is, all of these different theories and language and theology that we have bring something beautiful to the table. In the same way that the scapegoat at the center of Leviticus and the day of atonement does for us. Because at onement with God is too big and too beautiful to be contained by any particular language or theology.
Speaker 1:We need all of these different ways to look at it. It's a mystery and that's part of what makes it faith. And so however you choose to speak of God, if Jesus is where you land, then that is good news. Alright. We're gonna pray.
Speaker 1:And then today, we have some very difficult passages to make sense of. Let's pray. God, as we draw near to you this day, might we be overcome by the grace and mercy that you extend to us in Jesus. Might we begin to count the cost of this forgiveness that you have offered to us. Might we try to imagine the expansiveness of your plan and your purpose for this world?
Speaker 1:That you want to save not only me, and not only us, but your world, everything that you have poured your creative energy into. And so when we are overwhelmed or confused, when we struggle to make sense of this incredible story, would you help us and guide us by your spirit always back to the core of your message in Jesus? Your love and grace and atoning work through Christ. Might we trust ourselves to you like a child to a parent knowing that we are loved. Would you continue to teach us all that this means in all of these different ways?
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. We find ourselves back in those purity and priesthood sections of Leviticus, which this book is famous for, at least in part because of the monotony. However, there is another reason this section is infamous.
Speaker 1:Leviticus chapter 18 verse 21, do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman. That is detestable. Now, we need to talk about this because I think that we can use this to illuminate the larger point behind chapters 18 to 22. But first, let me say this. This will not be a sermon about same sex relationships because this is not a passage about same sex relationships.
Speaker 1:Now what am I talking about here? Clearly this is talking about homosexuality. That's true in a sense. But there has been a lot of work done on the sexuality of the ancient world. And in particular, the very ancient world of ancient Semitic cultures like this one.
Speaker 1:And what we understand is that same sex relationships just simply did not exist in the framework we understand them today. Now same sex encounters absolutely did happen. And this is why you get references like the passages in Leviticus. But what is being described here is absolutely not a monogamous, committed, consensual relationship between two men or two women. And so even before we can begin to talk about what this passage might mean for us today, we need to do some hard work to uncover exactly what it meant in its original setting.
Speaker 1:So Leviticus chapter 18 verse one. The Lord said to Moses, speak to the Israelites and say to them, I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt where you used to live. You must not do as they do in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices.
Speaker 1:You must obey my laws. Now this is where we get a list of laws that we call the morality code. So verse six, no one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. Verse seven, do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. Verse eight, do not have sexual relations with your father's wife.
Speaker 1:Now hold on here. Didn't verse seven just say, don't sleep with your mom? Why do we need a rule saying, don't sleep with your father's wife? Well, the reason is because this is a culture that practiced polygamy. And so your father's wife does not necessarily mean your mother.
Speaker 1:If we think that we are going to take our sexual ethics directly from Leviticus, we already have a pretty big problem here. Now, I happen to believe that God has an imagination for our sexuality as human beings. And I think we can find that in the scriptures to see where God is pointing us. But we have to acknowledge that throughout the scriptures sexual ethics are being shaped by the cultures that are hearing and interpreting God in and through their worlds. Our God is present in the milieu and he is shaping certain things in his grace.
Speaker 1:He is allowing other things. But I don't think any of us here would say that polygamy was ever part of God's intended imagination for human sexuality. Leviticus is simply as much a reflection of its cultural context as it was of God's heart. Polygamy devalued women. It put them at a systematic disadvantage economically.
Speaker 1:It was part of what reinforced the unjust idea that women were the property of men in these ancient cultures. And none of this is a reflection of the God that we see revealed in Jesus. This is a reflection of the brokenness we see in this ancient culture. Now everything we read in the Bible is part of the story of God, but that does not mean that everything is an untouched image or reflection of God. God is revealed in the totality of scripture, but God is revealed only perfectly as the story comes together and reaches its culmination in Jesus.
Speaker 1:All through the scriptures we are getting these glimpses of God. As Paul says, it's like looking through a glass darkly. First Corinthians 13. In Jesus however, he says, the fullness of God actually dwells, Colossians two. And so what we are reading in the purity code of Leviticus is not a perfect sexual ethic.
Speaker 1:It is not a sexual ethic that God would want to see us adopt in our world today. It is a fleeting glimpse of something that would unfold throughout history. So verse nine says, don't sleep with your sister. Verse 10 says, don't sleep with your grandchildren. Verse 11 says, do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife born to your father, and I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1:But if we keep going through all of these various prohibitions, we eventually get down to verse 21. I'm gonna read a few verses here for context. It says, do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Moloch for you must not profane the name of your Lord God, I am your Lord. Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, that is detestable. Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it.
Speaker 1:A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations, that is a perversion. Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways because this is how the nations I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Now, you can see here there's a bit of a strange shift that happens in verse 21. The stage was set back in verse one. Right?
Speaker 1:You must not do as they do in Egypt where you used to live. You must not do as they do in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. But what follows in chapter 18 are two separate but related sections. And the first is a list of forbidden sexual encounters, largely focusing on intra family relations. And if you study anything about the Egyptian gods, one of the first things that you will notice, and it might surprise you, is just how much incest was part of their worship.
Speaker 1:Now, the stories of the Egyptian gods are a notoriously convoluted mess. One quick example here. The gods Isis and Osiris may have heard of them. They have a son together named Horus. Horus later gets associated with the sun god Amun Ra, who you might remember from the Mummy movies.
Speaker 1:Well, Isis and Osiris are actually brother and sister. But their parents, the lesser known Geb and Nut, and just those really were their names, Geb and Nut are also siblings. And so that's the culture that the Israelites are coming out of immediately as the book of Leviticus starts. An Egyptian culture that is fascinated with all of these incestuous relationships between their gods. And Yahweh says, don't be like that.
Speaker 1:It's not good. It's not healthy. I don't want that to be your model. I want something different for you. But what's interesting is that in the introduction, God mentions the Egyptians and the Canaanite cultures.
Speaker 1:And as far as we can tell, this incestuous model was far less prevalent in Canaanite cultic religions. And so we get this strange shift in verse 21 where a long list of forbidden sexual encounters, all of a sudden the text now says, do not give your children to be sacrificed to Moloch. And so we might ask, well, what is a Moloch? Why is that here? Well, this is a reference to Canaanite religion.
Speaker 1:Two weeks ago, I talked about the various explanations for why God may have banned pork Israel. And I gave you a couple of the major theories. But one of the ones I left out for time, and because I knew we could get to it today, was the idea that the banned animals in Israel may have had something to do with ceremonial functions in other religious cults. For pigs, that might make some sense. Now it's gonna be hard to see here, but in Spain, there was a crematorium that was uncovered, and it went back to the Punic Phoenician peoples.
Speaker 1:So that's about as early as 1,500 BCE, which by the way is where a lot of people want to date the Exodus. But on the walls of this ancient room, religious scenes had been carved. This is an image of some of that relief artwork. And what you can see here is a god. Potentially even the god Molech who is specifically mentioned in Leviticus, although that identity is debated by archaeologists.
Speaker 1:I'll circle him here so you can see him a bit easier. And what he is doing is he's accepting a sacrifice. Now if you notice, upside down on the table in front of him, there is a pig that has already been killed. So it's possible that this is part of why pigs were banned in Israel. They had this association with these cultic practices in Canaan.
Speaker 1:But the key here, I know it's a bit hard to see, I'll highlight it. This is actually a child in a basket. It's the head and the feet that are sticking up out of this. I'll give you an inset here so it's a little easier to see. But this is an image depicting, celebrating even, the child's sacrifices that were part of these ancient Canaanite cults.
Speaker 1:Now the thing is, we know that both homosexuality and bestiality were also part of these cultic practices. Deuteronomy twenty three seventeen says that no Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute. You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God. Now that is specifically talking about Canaanite shrines. These practices weren't happening in the nation of Israel.
Speaker 1:The Israelites were getting caught up in these practices. But when it says the earnings of a male prostitute, what it actually says in Hebrew is the earnings of a dog. And that is very specifically a reference to male prostitutes who slept with men. The reason being, again, we are talking about a very ancient culture, but women were considered lesser than men. They were property.
Speaker 1:And so as a man, if you allowed another man to pay you for sex, it's like you had degraded yourself to the level of property, even to the level of a woman. I know that's offensive, but this is how ancient cultures thought. When it comes to bestiality, we have references to the Canaanite god, Baal, in the Old Testament. The story of Baal or Baal is that he is the Canaanite storm god who came down and had sex with a cow in order to escape the heavens. And so this trio of references, child sacrifices, men who sleep with men, and bestiality, these are references to participation in Canaanite worship practices.
Speaker 1:Quote the scholar John Hartley here, who by the way is a very conservative scholar who actually lands in a very conservative position when it comes to homosexuality. But about this passage in Leviticus, what he says is, these ritualistic uses show that these laws were designed to fulfill the exhortation against following the practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites. That's what's going on here. Now, what does that mean in terms of modern day consensual monogamous same sex relationships? Well, not much.
Speaker 1:You just simply can't make a coherent argument for same sex relationships in Leviticus, but neither can you honestly make an argument opposing that just from this text. You simply have to dig deeper into the larger narrative that the Bible builds around human sexuality. Now, we are part of a larger body of churches that affirms what we understand as the biblical image of marriage between a man and a woman. Procreation, companionship, fidelity, and imaging of Christ's love in the world. All of this and more is present in the scriptures imagination for sexuality and marriage.
Speaker 1:We want to affirm and celebrate all of that. And yet, as I have said before and I am happy to say again, my marriage simply does not live up to all of that. In one very important way, Rachel and I are not able to procreate. We don't have biological children and we likely won't ever. But maybe even more importantly, we are selfish at times.
Speaker 1:We are unfaithful to each other in all kinds of ways. We fall short all the time of presenting an image of God's grace and peace to the world through our marriage. And I am under no illusions about that. I know that Rachel is under no illusions about that because she has to live with me. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1:As a community, we have chosen to affirm God's imagination and at the same time celebrate what is good and reflective of God's love wherever we find it. Even in less than perfect relationships like the one between my wife and I. Because in a broken world, love needs to be pointed out and celebrated wherever it is found. So where there is love, where there is commitment, where there is monogamy, where there is fidelity, there is God. And we should point to that and celebrate it because it's an image of the divine.
Speaker 1:And considering the scarcity of passages that deal with this situation, homosexuality is an issue that has consumed bizarrely large portions of the church's mental bandwidth. And there are good and reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. There are good and faithful people who are trying to do their best on both sides. But at the end of the day, Jesus says that we will be known as his by how we love each other, not by how consistently we agree with each other all the time. And the truth is how we love is best shown towards those who we might be tempted to imagine are different from us.
Speaker 1:Because in Christ, what we learn is no one is different from us. We are all on this journey. God is birthing and creating love in each of us. And where that comes to the surface, it needs to be celebrated. And so what's really captivating to me is that when we take this ethic of separation that really sits at the heart of these passages in Leviticus.
Speaker 1:Don't be like the Egyptians. Don't be like the Canaanites. Live in my story. And we follow that thread all the way to Jesus. We find this fascinating but famous passage where Jesus actually brings us back to Leviticus.
Speaker 1:There's this ancient story. It's probably apocryphal. But just before the time of Jesus, there were these two immensely influential rabbis. And their respective teachings came to be known as the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai. But there's this famous story that gets told where a Gentile went to each of these great teachers.
Speaker 1:And he said, if you can explain to me Torah while I stand on one foot, I will convert on the spot. So he goes to Shammai. And he says, explain to me Torah while I stand on one foot. And Shammai says, you fool. Not one word can be dropped from Torah.
Speaker 1:The 613 rules must be learned and followed exactly to the letter, and he chased him off his doorstep. So the man went to Hillel and he said, explain to me Torah while I stand on one foot. The teacher thought for a moment, and then he said to the man, What is distasteful to you, do not do to another. The story goes that the man converted and followed Hillel from that day forward. What's interesting about this is that the question, do you follow the house of Shema or the house of Hillel became a sort of litmus test in first century Judaism.
Speaker 1:And so we get this story in Matthew 22 where a man comes to Jesus and he says, teacher, what's the greatest commandment? If you were gonna summarize the law for me, what would you say? And it could be that this is sort of an attempt to put Jesus in a box. Are you part of the house of Shammai? Or are you part of the house of Hillel?
Speaker 1:So what's fascinating is that when Jesus replies, he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. That's Deuteronomy six five. He says, first the issue is about your heart. So doing the right things is always going to be secondary to doing them out of the right type of love.
Speaker 1:But then he says, the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's Leviticus nineteen eighteen. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments, Jesus says. And so in one sense, Jesus is clearly aligning himself with Hillel here.
Speaker 1:Right? Torah, the law, can be condensed. There's a spirit behind it that's more important. Rules must always give way to relationship. But what's different between Hillel and Jesus in this comparison?
Speaker 1:Hillel says, What is distasteful to you do not do to another. Jesus says, Love your neighbor as yourself. See, Hillel looks at this long list of Levitical laws and he reads, Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And it's almost like he can see, like he like he can sense that there's something deeper behind it, that God is somewhere embedded in that code. But what he takes away from it is this, God doesn't want you to be a bad person.
Speaker 1:And there's truth to that. Right? Of course there is. But when Jesus comes and Jesus looks back, when God himself interprets the law for us, what He sees in Leviticus is not prohibition. What He sees is a mission to actually love the world.
Speaker 1:You can't follow God by not sinning. It doesn't work that way. You can only ever follow God by living and loving and allowing him to transform you as you move through his world. So you are meant to be different. That's what Leviticus got right.
Speaker 1:And you are meant to be a light in this world. That's what Leviticus was shooting for. You are meant to inspire and motivate and help people remember the God that they have forgotten Because God has brought you somewhere and God is taking you somewhere new. But the way that you get there according to Jesus will not be through what you avoid. It will be through surprising acts of love directed toward people you never imagined you would find yourself caring about.
Speaker 1:Those who did not seem to be your neighbor at first glance. And when you learn to love them, you will find yourself on the path toward God. And so as you reflect on the Levitical code today, may you hear these ancient words now filtered and interpreted and fulfilled in Jesus. For I am the Lord your God. You must not do as they did where you came from, and you must not do as they do where I am taking you.
Speaker 1:Do not follow their practices for you were meant to be special. You must obey my law and my law is love. If Leviticus seems overbearing at times, then trust me. Jesus is harder and more complex, and following him will always be messier. But this is what the law with the training wheels taken off looks like, with Jesus now firmly in our sights leading us forward.
Speaker 1:May your God empowered capacity for love surprise even you with who you might fall in love with this week. Let's pray. God, help us as we continue to walk our way through these ancient texts that come from a very different world, a very different mindset, a very different culture, and a very different time. To realize that the same God that we see revealed in Jesus was still somewhere in there behind the text moving your people one step at a time until they, until we would be ready to have you fully revealed in the Christ. And so God, as we reach in and through, as we find Jesus in these texts, would you help us to be different?
Speaker 1:The kind of people that people look at and notice there is something unique about that person. The way they love, the way they move, the way they act in the world is surprising and it's captivating. God help us to be the kind of people that pull people towards you. That orient people around your divine story. And that help the world see the grace and peace that is revealed to us.
Speaker 1:God, we love you and you are an amazing God for all that you invite us into. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.