Sunday, March 15, 2009

Leviticus 17-20 Laws of Holiness

CHAPTER 17: The Sacredness of Life and The Shedding of Blood.


Sacrificial Blood: Living with a holy God requires that the blood of sacrifice be for the altar representing the life given for atonement.


The blood is the life of the flesh (17:11) and it is through the atoning blood of Christ that the believer receives redemption (I Peter 1:18-19), forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7), justification (Romans 5:9), spiritual peace (Colossians 1:20), and sanctification (Hebrews 13:12).



  • 1 Peter 1:18-19: For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.

  • Ephesians 1:7: He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

  • Romans 5:9: And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation.

  • Colossians 1:20: and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

  • Hebrews 13:12: So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood.


Do not sacrifice anywhere inside or outside the camp without bringing it to the entrance of the Tabernacle to present it as an offering to the Lord. The penalty is death! Why? So the priest can sprinkle the blood and burn the fat on the altar. Also, so the people would be less likely to slip into idol worship. Do not offer sacrifices to evil spirits in the fields. There is only one place where God meets with the sinners - at the altar at the door of the Tabernacle and later at the Cross.


In the pagan world at that time, it was customary to offer sacrifice wherever one pleased. Altars were customarily built on high hills, in forested areas, or at other special places.


1 Corinthians 10:19-20: What am I trying to say? Am I saying that food offered to idols has some significance, or that idols are real gods? No, not at all. I am saying that these sacrifices are offered to demons, not to God. And I don’t want you to participate with demons.


Do not eat or drink blood because the life is in the blood. Genesis 9:4 (to Noah): But you must never eat any meat that still has the lifeblood in it.

If you kill an animal or blood when hunting, you must pour the blood on the ground and cover it with dirt.


CHAPTER 18: Forbidden Pagan Sexual Practices


Morality in Life and Ritual: Living with a holy God requires an established cultural pattern of morality in life and ritual for one to continue in the community and for Israel to continue in the land.


All through the Scriptures we are taught that sex is to be a total union of a man and his wife, expressing physical, emotional, and spiritual oneness. That is what sex is supposed to be about. Therefore, marriage is its only possible expression.


(1-5) Then the Lord said to Moses, “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. I am the Lord your God. So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you. You must not imitate their way of life. You must obey all my regulations and be careful to obey my decrees, for I am the Lord your God. If you obey my decrees and my regulations, you will find life through them. I am the Lord.


No sex with:



  • Your mother.

  • Any of your father's wives.

  • Your sister or half sister (Abraham married his half-sister).

  • Your granddaughter.

  • Your aunt.

  • Your daughter-in-law.

  • Your sister-in-law.

  • Both a woman and her daughter.

  • A woman and her granddaughter.

  • A woman and her sister (Jacob married Rachel and Leah).

  • While the woman is having her menstrual period. You are not even to touch her or you'll be ceremonially unclean. Note how the woman with an issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus' robe and was healed, which would have made Jesus ceremonially unclean.

  • Your neighbor's wife.

  • No homosexuality. God calls homosexual sex an abomination, even as He does in Romans 1:24-32.

  • No bestiality.

  • Also, do not sacrifice your child to Molech as practiced by the Canaanites.


(27-30) “All these detestable activities are practiced by the people of the land where I am taking you, and this is how the land has become defiled. So do not defile the land and give it a reason to vomit you out, as it will vomit out the people who live there now. Whoever commits any of these detestable sins will be cut off from the community of Israel. So obey my instructions, and do not defile yourselves by committing any of these detestable practices that were committed by the people who lived in the land before you. I am the Lord your God.”


The phrase "I am the Lord" is sprinkled throughout this chapter for emphasis. This is the focal point of Leviticus.


CHAPTER 19: Holiness in Personal Conduct


Leviticus chapter 19 outlines how an Israelite is to live a holy life. The Mosaic Covenant is established so that Israel would be a holy nation (Exodus 19:6). While there are hints at how holiness is to be practiced by the people of God earlier in the Pentateuch, it is in the 19th chapter of the Book of Leviticus that holiness is defined in great detail. Exodus 19:6: And you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation.’ This is the message you must give to the people of Israel.”


Holiness involved sacrifice, in that it is costly. Holiness was more than a matter of observing religious rituals - it involved a wide variety of actions as a part of one’s everyday life. Holiness is the imitation of God. Holiness was here to be revealed positively, rather than negatively. Finally, holiness is practiced by loving one’s neighbor as one’s self (verse 18).


DO NOT:



  • Do not put your trust in idols or make metal images of gods for yourselves.

    The word for idols literally means "nothings". Idols represent gods that are not real and do not really exist. Israel had a major problem idol worship until the Babylonian captivity (some 800 years from the time of Leviticus). After the Babylonian captivity, Israel was cured of gross idolatry of molded gods and began a more insidious form of idolatry - idolatry of the nation itself, idolatry of the temple and its ceremonies, and an idolatry of tradition - much as with some religions today - Catholicism and Islam for example.

    Molech was a fertility god, represented by a great iron or stone statue which was heated until white-hot by a fire built within it. People would take their infants and lay them in the outstretched arms of this idol and stand by as the children screamed in agony, cremated alive as an offering to Molech. Why would parents do a thing like that? -- because they believed that this would increase the yield of their crops, and therefore their own prosperity. God was not only intent upon ending this cruel practice, with its insane sacrifice of human life in this horrendous manner, but what he really wants to convey is the evil of the principle involved: parents sacrificing their children for their own benefit.

  • When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop.

  • Same with your grape crop—do not strip every last bunch of grapes from the vines, and do not pick up the grapes that fall to the ground. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners living among you. See Ruth chapter 2.

  • Do not steal.

  • Do not deceive or cheat one another.


  • Do not bring shame on the name of your God by using it to swear falsely.

  • Do not defraud or rob your neighbor.

  • Do not insult the deaf or cause the blind to stumble.

  • Do not twist justice in legal matters by favoring the poor or being partial to the rich and powerful.

  • Do not spread slanderous gossip among your people.

  • Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s life is threatened.

  • Do not nurse hatred in your heart for any of your relatives.

  • Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite.

  • Do not mate two different kinds of animals.

  • Do not plant your field with two different kinds of seed.

  • Do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of thread.

  • Do not eat meat that has not been drained of its blood.

  • Do not practice fortune-telling or witchcraft. 1 Chronicles 10:13: So Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He failed to obey the Lord’s command, and he even consulted a medium.

  • Do not trim off the hair on your temples or trim your beards. To do this was to imitate pagan customs of that day. Jewish orthodox men are conspicuous by their untrimmed beards and long, curly locks on the sides of their heads. The phrase "round the corners of your heads" refers to a practice in ancient idolatry where priests shaved around their head leaving a tuft of hair on top. "Mar the corners of thy beard" refers to an Egyptian custom forbidding beards. Read Genesis 41:14 that documents Joseph being imprisoned and called before Pharaoh, and before they met he hastily "shaved himself and changed his rainment" to avoid criticism due to their custom.

  • Do not cut your bodies for the dead.

  • Do not mark your skin with tattoos.

  • Do not defile your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will be filled with prostitution and wickedness.

  • Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt.


  • Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight, or volume. Your scales and weights must be accurate.


DO:



  • You must be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy. The idea behind the word holy is "separate." As it is applied to God, it describes God's "apartness". It means that God is different than man in the greatness and majesty of His attributes. He has a righteousness unlike any other; a justice unlike any other; a purity unlike any other - and love, grace, and mercy unlike any other. Being holy means being like God, separating ourselves unto Him and His truth - and naturally, separating ourselves from those things that are not like Him and not according to His truth.

  • Respect your mother and father.

  • Observe my Sabbath days of rest.

  • Offer your peace offering to the Lord properly so you will be accepted by God.

  • The sacrifice must be eaten on the same day you offer it or on the next day.

  • Pay your hired workers the same day they work.

  • Always judge people fairly.

  • Confront people directly so you will not be held guilty for their sin.

  • Love your neighbor as yourself. Unfortunately, many ancient Jews had a narrow definition of who their neighbor was and only considered their friends and countrymen their neighbors. Jesus commanded us to love your enemies (Luke 6:27), and showed our neighbor was the one in need, even if a traditional enemy (Luke 10:25-37).

    Mark 12:30-31: And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

  • Obey all my decrees.

  • If a man has sex with a slave girl whose freedom has never been purchased but who is committed to become another man’s wife, he must pay full compensation to her master. But since she is not a free woman, neither the man nor the woman will be put to death. The man, however, must bring a ram as a guilt offering and present it to the Lord at the entrance of the Tabernacle. The priest will then purify him before the Lord with the ram of the guilt offering, and the man’s sin will be forgiven.

  • When you enter the land and plant fruit trees, leave the fruit unharvested for the first three years and consider it forbidden. Do not eat it. In the fourth year the entire crop must be consecrated to the Lord as a celebration of praise. Finally, in the fifth year you may eat the fruit. If you follow this pattern, your harvest will increase.

  • Keep my Sabbath days of rest, and show reverence toward my sanctuary.

  • Do not defile yourselves by turning to mediums or to those who consult the spirits of the dead

  • Stand up in the presence of the elderly, and show respect for the aged.

  • Keep all of my decrees and regulations by putting them into practice.

    • Constantly repeated in this chapter: I am the Lord. 15 times in this chapter, God declared that He is the Lord - and the one with the right to tell us what to do. This is something that God expected ancient Israel to respect, and expects His modern day followers to also respect.



CHAPTER 20: Punishments for Disobedience (both to native Israelites and to the foreigners living in Israel):


The structure of the chapter can be seen as outlined below:



  • Prohibition: Molech and Mediums (vv. 1-6)


  • Exhortation to be holy: Obey God’s Statutes (vv. 7-8)

  • Prohibition: Sins against the Family (vv. 9-21)

  • Exhortation to holiness: Keep God’s Ordinances (vv. 22-26)

  • Prohibition of Mediums: Must be executed (v. 27)



The Bible portrays every sin as worthy of death. The wages of sin, we are told, is death (Romans 6:23). There is no such thing as a small sin in God’s sight. God looks upon sin not only in terms of the action and its consequences, but also in terms of the attitude which is evidenced. At the bottom line, sin is an act of rebellion against God. It matters little what form our rebellion takes, for any act of rebellion against the sovereign God is worthy of death. Since all sins are capital sins, worthy of death, all men desperately need to experience God’s provision for sinners - forgiveness through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, bearing the punishment which we deserve. The sins listed in Leviticus 20 are those sins which the Canaanites would not have considered sins at all.



  • If any of them offer their children as a sacrifice to Molech, they must be put to death. The people of the community must stone them to death.

    The Ammonites made child sacrifice to Molech (their national god). Molech was worshipped by heating a metal statue representing the god until it was red hot, then by placing a living infant on the outstretched hands of the statue, while beating drums drowned out the screams of the child until it burned to death. The penalty for Molech worship was death and if the sentence was not carried out by Israel, God declared He would set My face against that man and against his family. Even Solomon at least sanctioned the worship of Molech and built a temple to this idol (1 Kings 11:7). King Ahaz of Judah dedicated his own son to Molech (2 Kings 16:3). One of the great crimes of the northern tribes of Israel was their worship of Molech, leading to the Assyrian captivity (2 Kings 17:17). King Manasseh of Judah dedicated his son to Molech (2 Kings 21:6). Up to the days of King Josiah of Judah, Molech worship continued, because he destroyed a place of worship to that idol (2 Kings 23:10).

  • Commit spiritual prostitution by putting their trust in mediums or in those who consult the spirits of the dead. I will cut them off from the community.

  • Anyone who dishonors father or mother must be put to death. Virtually all commentators agree this is not the outburst of a small child - or even an adolescent - against their parent, but the settled heart of an adult child against their parent. According to Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the parent did not have the right to carry out this punishment, but they had to bring the accused child before the elders and judges of the city. As a practical matter, the judges of Israel rarely if ever administered the death penalty in such cases, yet the child was held accountable.

  • If a man commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the man and the woman who have committed adultery must be put to death. This also helps us to understand what Jesus was doing when confronting the crowd who brought to Him the woman taken in adultery. By their presence and words, they claimed to have caught the woman in the act - but why then did they not bring the guilty man as well? And who was willing to cast the first stone - that is, initiate the execution? (John 8:1-12)

  • If a man violates his father by having sex with one of his father’s wives, both the man and the woman must be put to death.

  • If a man has sex with his daughter-in-law, both must be put to death.

  • If a man practices homosexuality. They must both be put to death.

  • If a man marries both a woman and her mother, he has committed a wicked act. The man and both women must be burned to death.

  • If a man has sex with an animal, he must be put to death, and the animal must be killed.

  • If a woman has sex with an animal, she and the animal must both be put to death.

  • If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a shameful disgrace. They must be publicly cut off from the community.

  • If a man has sexual relations with a woman during her menstrual period, both of them must be cut off from the community.

  • Do not have sexual relations with your aunt. Both parties are guilty and will be punished for their sin.

  • If a man has sex with his uncle’s wife - they will die childless.

  • If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity. The guilty couple will remain childless.

  • Men and women among you who act as mediums or who consult the spirits of the dead must be put to death by stoning.


(7-8,22-26) So set yourselves apart to be holy, for I am the Lord your God. Keep all my decrees by putting them into practice, for I am the Lord who makes you holy. “You must keep all my decrees and regulations by putting them into practice; otherwise the land to which I am bringing you as your new home will vomit you out. Do not live according to the customs of the people I am driving out before you. It is because they do these shameful things that I detest them. But I have promised you, ‘You will possess their land because I will give it to you as your possession—a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from all other people. “You must therefore make a distinction between ceremonially clean and unclean animals, and between clean and unclean birds. You must not defile yourselves by eating any unclean animal or bird or creature that scurries along the ground. I have identified them as being unclean for you. You must be holy because I, the Lord, am holy. I have set you apart from all other people to be my very own.


These verses are another reminder that God's laws to the Israelites were given to set them apart from the pagans surrounding them and in Canaan. God's laws were given to differentiate what is right and wrong, in comparison to the pagan immoral customs. If someone examined your life, would they see that you are set apart from the customs of our modern world?



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