Welcome
Prayer
Song
Silence
6 Leviticus 18.6 – end
June 9th 2024
So, we left off with God reiterating Him being the One that they obey, and no other.
Remember, God was establishing them and all that He wanted them to be in direct opposition to where they came from (Egypt) AND where they were going – which was into the land promised them that was filled with pagan cultures forbidden to them.
The rest of chapter 18 beginning at verse 19 speaks of nakedness. Just to let you know the word nakedness is used over half the times that it is used in the whole Bible right here in these next twenty-four verses!
Leviticus 18 is, literally, the nakedness chapter.
And within it YAHAHAH gives all sorts of ways He does not want the Nation to get, go or become naked.
Not within families at all – he says – in a dozen different ways – fathers, mothers, daughters sons, sisters, sisters in law, in-laws, grandchildren and on and on and on.
The way He generally assigns the rules is often those “near of kin” to them.
Isn’t it interesting that the first couple were created by God to be naked and He had no problem with it but once they fell, they found themselves ashamed of that state and sought to hide.
Now God is instructing them to keep themselves hidden from other family members – which are specifically addressed in verse 6-18.
At verse 19 God starts in on some situations and it’s important to read them and I’ll explain why in a moment. But let’s read verses 19-
So, in addition to all the no nakedness rules, God adds
Leviticus 18:19 Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.
20 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbor’s wife, to defile thyself with her.
21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.
24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:
25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.
26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you:
27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)
Pay particular attention and relisten to those things that were present among the seven nations that occupied the Promised Land?
Men were lying with their neighbors wives.
Children were being sacrificed into the burning arms of Molech.
Men were lying with men like they lied with women
Men were lying with beasts
Women were lying with beasts
And for this God tells the Nation, do not follow suit for their actions have defiled the land and they were being cast out from it as a result.
Now remember, all of this was before there was any sacrifice for sin for the world. So, there was no real covering or payment for sin, and from this setting we begin to see how and why God would justify some of the following things that are an affront to our humanist brothers and sisters.
For instance, we are going to read places in the future where God is going to say some really cold sterile things, like
1st Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
We will encounter a number of places where these sorts of directives are given by the living God toward human beings made in His image – women children, infants and of course, animals.
So, let’s talk about this for a moment. To begin with, there are some situations where God will tell the Nation to go in and destroy a people but offers the people a chance to escape.
This is the situation in Deuteronomy 20 where God gives instructions on how to engage in warfare with people-groups that were NOT of the Seven Nations.
Listen to verse 10
De 20:10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.
11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. (In other words, don’t kill them)
12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it:
13 And when YAHAVAH thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:
14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. (meaning the seven forbidden Nations).
Now jump to verse 17 where YAHAVAH says,
Deuteronomy 20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
WHY DO THIS TO THESE NATIONS?
18 (so that) they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the YAHAVAH your God.
We have a similar command given concerning the Amalekites in 1st Samual 15 where we will read YAHAVAH say through His prophet Samuel unto Saul,
“I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.
3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Going back to Noah, there was a time when God wiped out all the inhabitants of the established world and looking to Sodom and Gomorrah, we have a similar picture occurring to those specific people.
What can we say?
Why would God have the Israelites exterminate entire groups of people, women and children included, like the Amalekites and all of the members of the Seven Nations?
Before we look at the reasons given in Scripture, it’s important to realize that the Israelites were not given free rein to slaughter everyone they met.
In this they operated in the same way other countries operated when engaged in warfare and the standard procedure for such warfare is seen in the first passages of Deuteronomy 20.
Remember too, that Sodom and the people in the days of Noah had plenty of time to turn – but they only got more ripe in their iniquity.
Another point to remember is that the wars sanctioned by God beyond the time of Joshua were defensive in nature as there were a number of the battles that Israel had to fight on the way to and within Canaan as described in
Exodus 17:8 with Amalek;
Numbers 21:21–32 with the Amorites;
But the scripture explains why the total extermination of the Seven Nations (called the Canaanites collectively) along with a few others.
First, it was God’s judgment upon them. The Canaanites were a brutal and wicked people/culture that frequently engaged in incredibly decadent behavior.
This chapter has God say, at verses 24-27
“This is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. . . . All these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled”.
According to Genesis 15 God had given the Canaanite people over 400 years to repent. And remember, the wages of sin is? Death.
Instead of seeing the human race as individuated souls of wonder, perhaps from Our Creators point of view human beings are like skin cells, and once they go bad, they need to be removed before they invade and ultimately overtake the health of the whole.
And in this God is frankly merciful and wise and seeing the long-game is more than willing to wipe out entire people groups (Flood/Sodom/Canaanites) as a picture of His cosmic operations.
Can human beings become irreparable? If angels in His presence can then it seems so.
And once that status of existence – especially before the incarnational victory of Christ has completely invaded the collective human consciousness of a people or age or culture perhaps the only way to mercifully deal with such is total annihilation?
We have some historical evidences of entire people-groups, cities, cultures and societies allowing themselves to fully embrace what might be seen as human corruption and them being wiped out.
We certainly have cautionary tale cities for reference –
Tower of Babel
Pre-flood
Sodom
We have samples of wholesale corruption found far more in history through the practices of slavery, domination of women, torture, rape, and cruelty to children were a part of daily life and anciently nobody batted an eye at such.
Nobody in the ancient world condemned the practice of slavery, which was universally accepted, even by slaves themselves!
And not all slavery was done by one respective race against another as all races practices slavery.
Along the way some civilizations ritually committed certain immoral acts that others didn’t—with the most prominent example being human sacrifice, something that the Aztecs practiced but the Romans claimed to abhor.
But the Romans were fine with slaughtering slaves in the public arena for pure entertainment!
At the same time, some of the most “evil” cultures that are full of crime, murder, and savagery would protect their families and seek to care for their women and children.
Human cultures and societies (SEEM) to become corrupt beyond measure when a few deviant standards become the norm, including but generally speaking
Failing to not only protect and provide for the innocent and weaker citizens but instead encourage preying on them.
Sexual depredations of every kind being encouraged (including with beasts) a
Human sacrifice and ubiquitous violence
Civic authority becoming utterly corrupt and unreliable.
Entertainments replacing the honor of earning ones own living
And the statement, “Every man is truly out for him or her self,” being operational.
The first response by responsible cultures is typically LAW but the ultimate solutions seem very obvious over the grand scheme of things – more selfless, sacrificial insufferable love.
What is so fascinating to me is that while certain people groups and certain specific gatherings of like-minded souls can certainly propagate corruption, I see, since the dawning of Man and all that human beings have been capable of, that since the advent of Christ, we are getting better – not perfect, still spiritually defective and bent on self-will, but better in certain areas like
Improved standards of reasonable living for all in the works.
Less drive for human sacrifice (though abortion remains active and accepted)
More effort to protect children, women and the elderly
And more resistance to corruption and violence.
Steven Pinker, a sociologist and author of “Better Angels of our Nature,” citing Lincoln, claims that society has actually improved from a moral standpoint especially with reference to violence.
In chapter 8 of his book he specifically describes what he calls, “Five inner demons” which he maintains are the main drivers for violence, including
violence deployed as a practical means to an end.[3]:?613?
violence as the urge for authority,
violence to enact revenge
violence via the enjoyment to inflict suffering and?
violence as a shared belief system which usually involves a vision of a utopia that justifies unlimited violence in pursuit of unlimited good.
Interestingly, his solution and response to such things, what he calls, “Four better angels in Chapter 9
Are motives that orient human beings away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism (which is another word for selflessness) and he suggests:
Empathy:
Self-Control:
(What he calls), “The Moral Sense: (and finally),
Reason
All of which directly reflect the overall biblical teachings of Christ and the power and influence of the Spirit.
The reality is sort of plain – like a basket for fruit left to its own responses to external conditions, human beings, left to their own devices, were very capable of devolving into piles of cancerous moral mush
In my estimation it was only through the last Adam (Christ) who removed the sin once and for all, spun humanity back into its proper alignment with a reconciled God with every individual who chooses, acting as salt and light in the world around them.
Such have and will continue to help right or repair the world around them and to keep world-wide corruption from taking hold – even when the majority of the masses have no direct interest in Him.
This is a mindset valuable to the notion of fulfillment because if Yeshua has returned and taken His Holy Bride and if this world is never going to end (as the scripture directly states) and if God has become “all in all,” and has been “reconciled,” to us “because the Sin has been paid for,” then the need to wipe out people or people-groups from the earth – especially at the hands of people who follow Him – is over forevermore.
But we can readily see why it was happening in that day – at least I can, and I personally have zero qualms with accepting His actions then and now.
God could have used any means to destroy the Canaanites, right? I mean, He could have had fire come down from heaven like He did with Sodom.
But He instead chose to use the Israelites as the instrument of judgment. Why? This was His Nation, His people, Who were given and who were supposed to walk according to His Law and represented HIM on earth.
If Yeshua was God with us in His day, the Nation of Israel was God with them in that – and this was perfect masculine God operating by Law.
There was no escaping their hand – if they would have done what God commanded.
His law was given to address sin until the Messiah came to pay for it for the world.
The wages of Sin was death. The Law was life to them. They were given that Law to govern them and anyone that sought to insert their polluted ways into their lives.
The Canaanites knew what was coming and had heard of God’s awesome power among the Nation, but they did not turn them from their ways.
But there were exceptions. Like the Canaanite Rahab who was spared for choosing to protect two members of of that Nation selflessly.
But the rest of them, polluted by the adults (meaning the infants and the animals) were pure cancer and had to be routed or else their very presence would serve, in that day, to infect the Nation.
Should we live according to the same principles and rules today that were present then?
Some believers suggest that we should. They believe, literally, that certain bastions of sinful people deserve to have God come in and wipe them out.
The mindset denies the payment for sin given by Christ.
But think about this mindset in the face of the fact that God sent His only human Son to come and pay for sin because He loves us so much!
God’s desire even in the un-justified world of that day was He would rather the wicked turn from their sin than perish (Ezekiel 18:31–32; 33:11) but when those seven Nations refused and threatened to pollute His law-bearing Nation.
Recently, in Arizona, Calvinist Pastor Jeff Durbin publicly stated that women who have had abortions deserve the death penalty. The statement burns in the ears and hearts of people who love children.
While certainly biblically derived from evidences like what we have read, this logic is not only frightening today but utterly anachronistic in the world of fulfillment and what God has done for the women who choose to take that course.
Through His Son He has rightly created a better way to live, to govern and see one another. Through His Son, this world has made advances and through His Son it is incumbent on those in whom He lives to share the light and share the unconditional love for all all the time to bring in spiritual victory in His name.
Another reason God had the Nation wipe out the Canaanites was to keep them from embracing their ways.
That is why He says, in Deuteronomy 20:18
“Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God”
While possible still today for the young, and impressionable, those who have the indwelling of God via His Spirit are fortified from against these influences – not inoculated, but fortified – and need not worry about the influence of worldly forces nor the need to wipe them out off the face of the earth.
According to the book of Joshua and Judges, the Israelites failed in their mission and directives and left many Canaanites alive.
What God said would happen occurred and she was forever compromised by idolatry as a result (Judges 2:1–3; 1 Kings 11:5; 14:24; 2 Kings 16:3–4).
Another rational for exterminating these polluted people groups was when they would rise back up to trouble the Nation in the future.
Again, not a justification in this day and age but God knew the future and what was best for His Nation.
For instance, while the Amalekites were not actually Canaanites, but King Saul was given the responsibility to exterminate them in 1st Samuel 15:2 but Saul dropped that ball and lied about it to boot.
Just a couple of decades later, according to 1st Samuel 30 there were enough Amalekites left to take David and his men’s families captive.
And then several hundred years later a descendant of the Amalekites, Haman, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated according to the Book of Esther.
So, Saul’s failure to obey the Living God almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. If Saul had obeyed the voice of the Lord, it would have saved David’s men and the Jews of Esther’s day a lot of trouble.
Finally, with regard to some of the seeming brutality of God upon some specific people groups, it also seems to fulfil the prophetic curse that Noah put on His Son, Canaan.
Remember that centuries before Moses’ was given the command to eradicate the Canaanites, Noah said to his Son,
“Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers” (Genesis 9:25).
According to Genesis 10 Canaan, the curse son of Noah was the ancestor of the Canaanites and these descendants of Canaan include the Sidonians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Noah’s curse/prophecy came true during the time of Joshua. The Canaanites were conquered by the Israelites, who were descendants of one of Ham’s brothers, Shem.
We cannot help but remember why Noah cursed his one son (remember, he went into his drunk father and did something while he was naked) and that here in this chapter nakedness is spoken of more than any other subject and more here than anywhere else in the scripture.
We’ve talked about the draw to idolatry with the Nation – and how subject their flesh was to seeking out other Gods.
The first time the term nakedness is found in scripture (not naked, but nakedness) hearkens back to when Ham, the Son of Noah, saw his father in the raw.
Now we have this chapter where nakedness is said more than anywhere else and the command to not uncover the nakedness of kin and family members.
And we read that this is what the Canaanites were “all about,” and such might have lead them into . . .
Adultery
Bestiality
Homosexuality
And the like.
The connection is obvious – God was helping to create and carve out a culture of people who would turn from all the former pagan ways of the world, which included idolatry and wandering about naked (which combined, seems to have contributed to the specific sins listed) and gave them orders to not be that way with each other.
These laws were materially based –outward restrictions as
There was no permanent propitiation for sin, therefore there was no indwelling of the Spirit, and therefore the carnal flesh of all souls was subject to all sorts of traps and seductions which would lead to utter pollution.
The Law was always outward in application to helped to mitigate inward desires,
And the flesh was in power – therefore the flesh had to be governed externally – until the time would come when God would govern the flesh of human beings from the HEART.
What a glorious day Pentecost was, when the Holy Spirit was given to humanity, enabling all who possess it’s power inwardly and to personally choose to reject the carnal drives of flesh and walk according to the Spirit.
Because sin was paid in full and the world justified by the life, death and resurrection of the Son, and since God is now ALL AND ALL, and because all of the world is now a blank slate morally, possessing some of the spirit (similar to our first parents) and are collectively far more aware of actions that are anathematic to Him and His will, I suggest that the collective soul, while still misled, selfish and defective, is at a better place than its ever been and all we are reading about in the text is in reference to a time when it wasn’t.
Take it for what it is worth.
Is land or are lands still being defiled by sin? I would suggest that sin, again, has been paid in full.
However, with that beings said, it seems that Darkness, while still and always the antithesis to God, is able to infect some people, some groups of people and in my opinion even some cities or states, perhaps, to the point that little light remains.
So, yes, there continues to be bastions of evil in the world since the victory – I suppose the existence of freewill among creations made in the image of God will forever allow this places like Epstein’s Island, Vegas or some polygamous compounds on earth – but this does not mean, in my book, that they are beyond the scope of Him and His light.
Surely, the salt and light in some can permeate the Dark.
Mary and I were in San Diego checking out an area right downtown as she is going to assume a supervisory role in that community this week. It is a big scary move as she is literally moving there without me and we have been in a state of uncertainty about it all.
It’s a community that we know pretty well because Delaney attended school there and Mary would visit her frequently over four years.
Well, were driving through part of that area that is pretty run down. It is spiritually Dark and strewn with pawn shops, porn shops, massage parlors and liquor stores on every corner.
Homeless people drag themselves over its stained concrete. We drove soberly through the area sensing the Dark power and seeing it in the lives of the people on the street.
I could not help but think of the Ministry, and what we are trying to bring out to people in the world reconciled; that we are not about condemning the Dark, but we are shining His victorious Light to all in chains and all who seek Him in their lives.
Hand to God as we approached a freeway overpass, that rose at least 30 feet over the freeway, we were stunned as a man out of nowhere ran up the ramp of the sidewalk, grabbed the railing, swiftly climb over it, and looking down prepared to dive headlong into the oncoming freeway traffic.
We were simultaneously shocked and rendered motionless in our seats as he were going about 50 miles and hour and could do NOTHING to stop him.
Out of the blue another man sprinted toward him, and right when we arrived at were they were, he tackled the jumper with incredible force, throwing him face first onto the sidewalk where they both landed with violence.
We passed them as that happened.
And as we drove around to the onramp to the freeway we looked back at the scene and then both broke out in tears watching the rescuer put his arms around the man to lovinging guide him away.
Through tears I said to Mary, “that is why we are doing what we are doing.”
To bring light, help, encouragement, love, and most importantly Him to all who really aren’t sure how to live, how to rejoice in God, how to allow Him to govern and guide.
Yes, we have a history before us where the Living God makes no bones about what He was willing to do in the face of the actions of our ancient fellow human beings.
No, looking back some of these things do not, in our day and age, make perfect sense.
But all of it, from the creation, to the fall, to Abraham and Isaac through the Nation and on out to His Victorious Son, serves as wonder evidence of His overall victorious plan, His love.
Instead of cursing the Dark, walk in the Light of His victorious love, and shine.
Questions/Comments
PROMOTE GRADY’s ZOOM
Prayer.
