10. “When the LORD is Your God” (Leviticus 18)

 

                                                          When the LORD is Your God

                                                                 Leviticus 18: 1-8, 20-30

 

Okay, if this is your first time at Trinity and you might be thinking, “What is going on with that Scripture reading? Nakedness, homosexuality, child sacrifice. This is intense!” Welcome to the wild ride of Leviticus! In the past few weeks we’ve talked about what to do with the lobe of the liver in animal sacrifices, men dying for approaching God wrongly, laws about whether or not it was okay to eat the rock badger, and even different types of skin diseases. And believe it or not, it’s been amazing. Because Leviticus is not just a bunch of strange and archaic rules. Leviticus is a divinely given set of symbols meant to help mere human beings come to know some of the most important mysteries of the universe. Leviticus takes the stuff of human life and creates from them a system of practices and rituals that point beyond themselves to unfathomable truths about who God is and what it means to have a relationship with him.

The first 16 chapters were primarily occupied with one main question. How can human beings like us have a relationship with the eternal, holy God? On one hand, one of the most basic truths about us is that we were made to know God. And yet, there is a problem: we are selfish; we are corrupted; we do not love God in the way we should, and sin has no place in God’s presence. So how can sinful people draw near to a holy God?

And the mysterious answer Leviticus reveals is that there is a way, a way that God provides for us back to him, and that way is what is referred to as atonement from God. What everything about the sacrifices and the priests are meant to reveal is that though we have a sin debt toward God far too great for us ever to repay, God will repay it for us. Though we have permanently stained ourselves with our own sin, God will cleanse us. God, out of love, out of grace, makes a way back for us. He will atone for our sins.

This truth comes most clearly into focus in the central chapter of Leviticus, chapter 16, which we considered last week, describing the rituals that were to take place on the Day of Atonement. On that special day every year, God’s appointed priest would enter into the holiest place in the tabernacle, into God’s presence, and symbolically, with the blood of animals who died on the people’s behalf, he would wash away all of Israel’s sins. Through this symbolic ritual, God was providing his people with a picture of the full atonement God would one day provide for them: an annual sign pointing toward the day when Jesus, the true and greatest high priest would offer his own life to atone for our sins, creating for everyone who trusts him a way to God of complete forgiveness, the debt fully repaid, our sins completely washed away. In the Day of Atonement, we have the performance of an ancient gospel drama showing how God would graciously give everything to welcome people home, so that we could be his people and he could be our God.

So now in Leviticus, beginning in chapter 17, we come to a new focus, and it’s what I want us to consider this morning. When you enter into a relationship with God like this, that necessarily changes you. And not a small change, like a new haircut or trying out a new hobby. To enter into this relationship with God, where he is your God and you are his is a change in your fundamental identity. 

At a wedding, there’s an important moment when the person presiding will simply say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” And though the couple likely does not fully realize this, who they are at a fundamental level has shifted. You’re not single—you’re married. And not just generically “married”: you are this person’s husband or this person’s wife. It’s who you are. 

Something similar happens when a child is born. I remember when our first son was born how as I first held him in my hands I realized that everything had changed—that who I was had changed. I was now a dad who was responsible to take care of this young life and help him to grow into adulthood: it was now part of who I am. 

Important, lasting relationships change you at a fundamental level—they change your identity.

And that’s true at an even deeper level when you enter into a permanent, meaningful relationship with God, where he promises to be your God and you promise to be his people. Your identity changes at the depths of who you are. And so then also does your life.  

That’s why, beginning in chapter 17, God says to his people, “Here’s what’s happened to you. Here’s how things are different now that you belong to me. And so in this section of Leviticus we find more explicitly ethical teaching. Verses that get really quite practical. Perhaps the most famous verse in this instruction about what it means to be God’s people is found in the chapter for next week. It’s the verse Jesus himself quotes as the second great commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That is a central part of what it means to be God’s people. 

But perhaps you noticed that in this morning’s passage, instructions were more specific than the general principle to love. 

For example, verse 21 says, “You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, who was a Canaanite deity whom people believed could be swayed by child sacrifice. “Now that your identity has changed, now that you are my people,” God says, “You need to understand that your children are not yours to do whatever you want with them. They’re not a resource for you to use, to exploit or to kill for your own purposes. When you have children, you are meant to be their stewards, for they belong to me.”

However, the lion’s share of the attention of our passage relates to sexuality. To “uncover nakedness” here is referring to sexual intimacy. Simply because of length, we didn’t read the whole chapter, but if you do, you’ll see that 6-18 is all devoted to instructing against forms of incest. Then 19-23 speaks against other forms of sexual immorality, which includes perhaps the 2nd most famous verse in Leviticus, verse 22, which prohibits homosexual behavior.

What underpins all these instructions is the vision of sexuality that God sets forth at the beginning of creation in Genesis 2. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Two entirely different individuals, different sexes, man and woman, leave their own very different families and with their differences join together and form a new union, a new unity from which life can spring in the form of children. This, Genesis tells us, is how God designed marriage and sexuality and childbirth all to fit together in the context of love. 

And Leviticus here is saying, “Now that you have become my people, now that this is who you are, this is also how you live. Belonging to me changes even something as intimate as who you sleep with.  

If you’re wondering why in this chapter God focuses especially on sexuality, the opening verses answer that question for us. It seems that  especially here, in the realm of sexuality, God was saying that his people and his people’s ways were going to be noticeably different from those around them. So, verse 3, right before he gives these instructions, God says, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes.” 

The people among whom you have lived and with whom you will live, they have a way, they have their own standards of how to live and to love and to raise children. In Egypt, for example, it was common for Pharaoh’s family, in order to try to provide royal stability, to intermarry incestuously. Israel was to be different. Among the people of Canaan both religious prostitution and the practice of homosexuality were common. But now that you belong to me, God is saying, your way will be different. You must not let their way, their customs shape you.” In case we miss this point at the beginning, it’s also how our passage ends: “Keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you.”

God here is focusing so much on sex, not because that is somehow way more important than other things, but because it’s one of the areas in which the ways of his people will be most pronounced. 

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how little this has changed.

I imagine I don’t need to convince you that the standard God uses for sexuality is quite different also from today’s standards. In fact I imagine it might even be that for some of you here that this obvious difference is one of the things that you struggle with most about Christianity. If you’re like many people, it seems to you that requiring sex to happen only within the bonds of marriage is unnecessarily strict, even impractical. And perhaps even more troubling, it seems arbitrary and maybe even cruel, to forbid two people who love each other from coming together just because they’re both men or both women. Clearly I don’t need to demonstrate that what is described here is different from the standards of our society. Maybe it’s helpful to realize that the people of Israel who heard these things would likely have found them just as jarring and confusing as we do. They would have looked around and said, “Who else lives like this?”

Most likely they would have asked that most basic of questions: Why? Why is this how we should be?

Why?

And God answers this question—although it’s probably not the answer they or we are looking for.  

But before we look to see the reason he gives, let’s first consider two reasons God does not give for why his people should live differently like this. 

To begin with, the answer God gives here is not, “You have to obey me in order to get me to accept you. If you want to qualify to be my people, if you want me to be kind to you and to love you, you’re going to have to do what I say.”

This is often how deep down we think of our relationship with God. That his love for us is directly connected to our performance: we follow the instructions of what he wants so that he will let us live in his presence and enjoy the good things that he might give us.

But that clearly is not how it works, because of what we saw at the end of last week’s passage. I don’t know if you caught it, but there was something truly life-changingly profound that was said in the last part of the instructions about the Day of Atonement. During this whole once-a-year elaborate ritual where God’s appointed high priest follows God’s instructions to apply God’s atonement to his people so that they are forgiven, do you remember what the people are supposed to do on that day? Nothing. That’s the command: carefully choose to do nothing. “On this day you shall humble your souls and do no labor.” That is, you must be consciously, thoughtfully unproductive. All the important stuff that happened was to happen entirely apart from them doing anything. Why? Because atonement was a gift. Because cleansing, forgiveness, making a way for a relationship with God—it was all a gift. God rescues you and forgives you and brings you to himself, not because you somehow earn it or contribute to it, but simply because. Because he loves you. It’s a gift.  

And that doesn’t change once we get to chapter 18. These instructions are not, “This is how things need to be if you want me to love you.” No, these instructions are, “Now, because I love you, because we now have this relationship, this is how things change for you.” 

So the reason for these instructions is not, “You have to obey me if you want me to accept you.” And it’s also not, “Obey me, be different from all these other nations, because that way you will find greater fulfillment in life.” God doesn’t say, “You shall not commit adultery, and the reason you shouldn’t commit adultery is that way you will find true happiness.”  

I highlight this point because what we see here is very different from our modern morality. In our day, society’s golden rule: “Do what makes you truly happy” (with the asterisk: as long as you don’t hurt someone else). What makes us happy is really the ultimate standard for our morality.

Tim Keller puts it this way: “Why is it that sometimes you break your promises? Why is it that sometimes you have standards and yet you break them?  The normal and natural habit of our heart is to say, I believe in principles—I believe in purity. I believe in honesty and integrity—All these principles are very good, BUT sometimes you have to make an exception. Because there’s one principle that’s over all the other principles, and that is, I’ve got to be happy. Oh, I believe in telling the truth, but not if I’m going to have to lose my job over it.  I wouldn’t be happy. Oh, I believe in doing this, but not if I’m going to lose that girl over it. You see? The top priority I’m seeking is my happiness.”

I mean, consider this: say you are having a conversation with a person who starts talking about their children, and they at some point say, “All that I want for my child is—what: to be honorable? All that I want for my child is to be virtuous? Maybe rarely. But by far what people will say is, “All that I want for my child is to be happy.” And in saying that we reveal that this is what we think is most important. This is the guiding principle of our lives: “Do what makes you truly happy.”

And the fact that this is not the basis for God’s instructions in chapter 18 offers a clue as to why many people find the sexual ethic commanded in Leviticus so troubling. Because they seem to violate this modern golden rule? God is calling people to do things that at least in the moment won’t always make them happy. There will be times when following these instructions will feel very costly and painful.

I mean, isn’t this especially why the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual activity seems so, well, wrong? Because we know and love and even admire people whose happiness would seem to be taken away if they had to follow this command. How can it possibly be a good thing to deprive them of the ability to fulfill their desires of intimacy with another person? 

And what we’re sensing is a fundamental difference in standards, in moral frameworks. Our standard is what is good is what makes us happy. But that’s not the standard God uses. 

Why, according to him, are his people to be different from everyone around them in these things? He actually answers this question again and again in our passage. Did you notice it? Verse 3&4: “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them.” Why? “I am the Lord your God.” Verse 6, “None of you shall approach any one of his close relatives to uncover nakedness.” Why? “I am the Lord.” Jumping down to verse 21, “You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech.” Why? I am the Lord.” I am the Lord” And how does this chapter conclude: “Keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs,” why? “I am the Lord your God.” 

Why does God give these instructions? What is the basis for these commands? “I am the LORD.” I am Yahweh, the name which basically means, “I am who I am.” There is one basic reason for all that I do, all that I command, and it’s simple. This is who I am. 

And now, God is saying, “This is who you are.” Notice that half of the time it’s not just God saying, “I am the Lord.” He says, “I am the Lord Your God.” It’s a statement about us, if we are his people. 

Because some relationships, like marriage or parenting, fundamentally change who we are. And when our identity changes, so also does our way of life. A new parent changes diapers, wakes up in the middle of night; later that same parent will worry about their teenager when they’re out late at night. Why? Because that’s what parents do. That’s what they have become. It’s about identity.

That’s what God is saying here. Why are we to be different from the world around us? “I am your God,” which of course also means “you are my people.” It’s a shift in identity. If you enter into a relationship with God where he becomes your God and you become his, you are now different. And with that new identity comes a new way. To have God as our God means we belong to him and we do what he says.

By repeating “I am the Lord your God,” God is saying here, “It’s okay if you don’t understand; often you won’t understand me. What you need to know is just that, I am the standard for what is good. I am the tuning fork to which you conform all your thoughts; I am the north star by which you navigate your decisions; I am the plumbline by which you measure all of your actions—and I mean all. Even things as personal as parenting or money, or yes, even sex: in all of these things, I am the Lord your God. This is why you are to be different from this world. Because something has happened to you. You’re mine, and I am different from this world.

This is the reason for all that God says here.

Now the funny thing is that when we accept this, when we allow this to shape who we are and we make God the standard of all we do, we actually discover happiness along the way. This is part of what God means when he says in verse 5, “If a person does these things, he will live by them.” Even though in the short term these instructions often seem to take things away from us, in the end they always, always give us something better. Because the God we submit ourselves to is the one who loves us. His way is the way of joy.  

There is a remarkable paradox here: if we devote ourselves to getting happiness, we won’t achieve it. Isn’t that the obvious conclusion to draw from our culture? Never has a society been more devoted to pursuing individual happiness and yet nobody I know argues that we’re actually succeeding. Because it doesn’t work. We weren’t meant to just chase after our happiness in this way.

If we devote ourselves to getting happiness, we won’t achieve it. But when we devote ourselves to God, so that he is our God and we are his people, we are doing what we were made to do, what is right to do. And in that act of surrender and trust to the God of love, we begin to find true happiness. To quote Tim Keller again, the less you’re concerned  about your happiness and the more you’re concerned about him, the happier you get. Aim at heaven, get earth thrown in, aim at earth, you get neither.

This is why on many Sundays, one of the main things we confess together as a church is the simple phrase, “I am not my own.” This is on one hand an acknowledgement that something has happened to us. We have been changed, and now we no longer are free just to do whatever we think will make us happy. But these words are not a lament. They are the answer to the question, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” That I am not my own, but I belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.” This is our comfort; because of Jesus, this is now who we are. And then we go on to say “Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.” This is who we are, and this is what we do.