Leviticus 18 September
21, 1997
"Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to spend the rest of one's life in an institution?" Without the lumps and bumps, woes and warts of marriage, stand-up comics would starve. It is the source of much humor, perhaps because marriage holds out so much promise, but yet is the source of so much pain. Marriage is all too often viewed with an odd mix of admiration and skepticism as the idea of remaining faithfully committed to one’s partner is seen by some as quaintly foolish, and by others as even marginally masochistic. The idea of sexual purity is odd when we live in a society where Wilt Chamberlain's non-basketball statistics (20,000-plus women) are considered as impressive and laudatory as his on-court performances. Marital fidelity is hard to uphold when 94% of sex on TV is among people who aren't married to each other, as researcher Marion Howard of Emory University found. Why preserve marriage? Why not break the sexual taboos firmly entrenched in our society which are based on God’s law? Leviticus 18 answers the question of the importance of our sexuality, the crucial nature of the marriage bond, the centrality of the family unit in society and the abhorrence of deviance in a fashion we do not often consider.
Why does God get so upset with misspent sex? What is so wrong, if no one gets hurt with a matter that is by its very nature private? The shallowness of our response is often indicated by the justification we often give for fidelity in marriage. We exacerbate the situation when we respond without a biblical framework to those questioning biblical morality. Without a clear view of the relationship of the marriage bond to God’s covenantal love, we often demonstrate the intellectual fortitude of jellyfish. Our explanations often betray a self-centered view of sin. We too often employ explanations without a biblical framework, such as: The first set of prohibitions in our passage deal with incest. One may not marry close relatives, it is said, because of the psychological nature of the relationships. Sex is a powerful tool and when used in a family, the family will cease to be a safe harbor and become a brothel as familial love has sudden sexual overtones. Or we may by-pass the psychological and identify the physical. One does not marry a close relative for fear of producing someone that looked like the banjo-playing kid in "Deliverance." We know what inbreeding does to animals; if not come to our house and see Misha. The gene-pool effect is touted as God’s reason. But these secondary issues miss the boat. If we could settle the psychological damage done, if we could manipulate the genetic concerns in the laboratory, would it then be fine? The central issue is not one of our psychology or our physiology, but rather our theology. We don’t promote a return to fidelity with a self-centered tactic, a "save yourself first" mentality. If we promote a sexual ethic which is virtuous for its own sake, if we consider it as an effective last-ditch effort to save our own hides by avoiding the AIDS epidemic, then we have little substance to say to ourselves, to our children, to our culture. We give temporary responses to an eternal question. Like trying to repair a broken zipper, you get the top fixed and the bottom comes undone. We need to see the theological undergirding to our sexuality. THE IMPORTANCE OF SEXUAL PURITY Our
sexual purity reflects the covenant-keeping God. "I am
the Lord your God." This phrase is woven throughout the
fabric of the text. This forms the warp and woof of our sexuality. The terseness of the phrase disguises the rich association of ideas that it evoked in Israel. First, it looks back to the redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt. When God revealed the full meaning of His name Yahweh to Moses, He linked this revelation to a promise that He would save His people from slavery in Egypt and bring them into the land of Canaan. This short phrase was a reminder of what God had done for Israel and how He had chosen to make them His people. Second, Israel, as the people of God, was expected to imitate God, to be holy. Third, this phrase often provides the motive for observing a particular law. Under the Covenant the people of God were expected to keep the law, not merely as a formal duty but as a loving response to God’s grace in redemption. In this very short formula the Israelites were reminded constantly who they were and Whom they served. This sets the parameters of the commands here. Our sexuality is seen in light of our covenantal identity, that God is a faithful husband to us. In light of that, God can say in verse 3 that Israel should not act like the Egyptians or the Canaanites. Rather, in verse 4, they are to obey His laws Our sexual purity reflects the covenant bond of marriage. With the preamble setting out the context here, the commands take on a fuller meaning. Verse 6 gives the overarching command: no sex with anyone but one’s spouse. For most of us in our culture, having been imprinted with biblical law, we shutter at these first set of commands. We wouldn’t think of engaging in this activity. But in the cultures with which Israel interacted this was an issue. This kind of intermarriage did occur. In Egypt in the west and Babylon in the east, these varieties were seen as something good. Yet, there is an important lesson we can learn from this still today. While not having to go into detail here, what we see is the constant reiteration that our sexuality is celebrated in the marriage bond, for marriage illustrates God’s Covenant with us. The basis of this unity of the family as a body, the reason behind these prohibitions, stems from Genesis 2:24. In this brief statement about marriage, we see the crucial elements of what is involved in the marriage bond, the marriage covenant. First there is the leaving, the forming of a new relationship, a new bond. Leaving is crucial because only by successfully separating from the childhood bonds of family can a shift in devotion and loyalty from parents to spouse take place. We all know families where this kind of separation never occurs, leaving the spouse perpetually on the outside, a stranger in a hostile environment. The Hebrew word for leave, azab, appropriately also translates as "cut loose" (Exodus 23:5). Parents must cut loose their children from their authority, enabling them to leave and establish their own bonds of fidelity. Only as this is done may a new marriage covenant take shape. Having left to form a new family unit, spouses pledge "to cleave" to each other only. The term dabaq is used to describe the kind of relationship individual clods of dirt have to one another as they "cleave together" to form a larger clump. The tenuous nature of such a relationship is obvious. This "cleaving" can only be maintained when conditions in the soil are just right. But it shows the intermingling, the coalescing of these two. But dabaq also has covenantal overtones. Repeatedly, Old Testament texts describe the need for the people to cleave close to their covenant with God. (Deuteronomy 10:20, 11:22, 13:4, also Joshua 22:5; Ruth 1:14-16.) A covenant requires a faithfulness that enables "cleaving" whether you feel like it or not, whether it makes sense or not on any given day. It means fidelity and intimate involvement, commitment to another, sometimes at personal cost. This results in a new entity. Both leaving and cleaving are to point to the fulfillment of the true Covenant in the consummation. The covenantal relationship is "to become one flesh." The faithfulness of a covenant is expressed in sexual fidelity. The Hebrew basar, flesh, points out the newness and solidarity of this relationship. Something altogether new is created. In light of that background, we see the reason for the importance of our sexuality to be celebrated in that one-flesh relationship. The family is not one of several alternative life-styles; it is not an arena in which rights are negotiated; it is not an old-fashioned barrier to a promiscuous sex life; it is not a set of cost-benefit calculations. In marriage, illustrated by the sexual union, we have a living illustration of the Covenant God has made with us as His people. The impropriety of incestuous relationships, of adultery, homosexuality, bestiality is their denial of this Covenant, where two different people come together and form not a new group of two, but a unit of one. What should frighten us the most with the break-down of marriage is not just the sociological destruction to the couple or even to the children, but the theological destruction, the repudiation of what God offers His people. When it occurs among God’s people, it is an attack on God’s Covenant with us. IMPOSSIBILITY OF SEXUAL PURITY Having said that, it would seem that the answer is as simple as trying harder. Sheer obedience is the key to success in the home, in the church and in the land. Far too often we read the commands in Leviticus as a checklist for the promotion of morality which can create a God-pleasing environment. As long as people don’t marry their sisters, stay away from homosexual activity and keep their distance from the sheep, we’ll all be fine. But that is not the answer. It is not just these commands, but His entire law that demands obedience. The commands here illustrate the nature of what our relationship should be with God. The focus on sexual purity here serves as a reminder that purity is not so easy. There is little else in the human psyche which so undermines the lie which tells us we really are pretty good people than when we deal with our sexuality and marital fidelity. Perhaps you were a virgin on your wedding night and have not strayed, but you know your mind, you know your heart. No, verse five at first seems like such a bargain until we try to put it into practice. What do we realize when we compare our marriages to God’s Covenant with us? How well do we fare when we consider our purity versus God’s? Our sexual impurity reflects that we are covenant breaking people. Verse 5 has a teasing promise here: You can obey and receive life. But if that is the case, if we are going to really try this avenue, we realize that we will come up short every time. The trouble is we can not pick and choose which laws we will keep to make God happy, and those we struggle with we’ll be able to put on the side. There are those who’ll love to point out verse 22 to show the wickedness of those he does not like, but refuse to allow the same accusing finger to pick at his own open wound of sin, his own thought life, his own callousness to his wife. If that is the game you wish to play, that based on your own purity, that God will accept you, then you’d better be ready for the guilty verdict. In fact, this verse serves as a great reminder of why there are the numerous sacrifices at the beginning of Leviticus. The promise of life here is an option that we cannot on our own fulfill. Paul in Galatians 3 quotes this to demonstrate that seeking to please God by your morality is diametrically opposed to faith which accepts the obedience of God’s Son in your stead. In Galatians 3:12 he makes it clear; the law is not based on faith. There is no hope, no help in this obedience. We are covenant-breakers. We are all unfaithful spouses. There is a great gulf which divides a life which seeks to be righteous before God by obedience to His laws and the person which seeks to be accepted by God through faith in Christ's work on our behalf. There is in the Old Testament a story which has often shaken me to the core at the God I serve, at His tolerance for my sin. It is the story of Hosea, a godly man whom God commanded that he marry a woman of questionable morals. In their marriage they produced children, but soon the woman demonstrated her character. She walked out on the man, began sleeping around. The whole town knew it; most of the men of the town had paid for a brief pleasure with her. But soon, after she was well-used and no longer wanted, she was dragged to the market place to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. There she stood on the block, her dignity stripped from her as she cowered naked before those bidding. Men made jeering comments about her many lovers, crudely commenting on their own pleasures with her. The bidding began. One man mockingly hurled an insult, “I’ll offer a shekel for the whore!” The others laughed. But a hush fell over the market place as the crowd parted and in from the back walked Hosea, her husband whom she had ran out on. He quietly upped the bidding to two shekels. The other men, in order to make a spectacle of Hosea’s shame, bidded against him; the bidding increased. Each time, Hosea went higher. Soon the bidding was far more than anyone would ever have thought, as at last, Hosea offered 15 shekels of silver and a bushel and a half of barley. With the bidding now closed, Hosea made his way through the crowd, removing his own cloak, and wrapping it around his one-time bride turned prostitute, and took her home. That is the covenant-keeping God. Hosea’s wife could do nothing to cover her shame, but Hosea could. He alone could pay the price to take her back; he alone was willing and able to cover her with his own clothes; he alone could love her. She would then live with him, not on the basis of her undying love for him, but based on the faith that he loved her. It was not her love that kept them together; it was his love for her. So also, it is not our faith which binds us to Christ, but that we place our faith in Christ’s unfailing love for us. |