Bible Commentaries
Leviticus 18

Verses 1-30

Chapter 18

Here we find the term used over and over again, "For I am the Lord your God." So God wants a holy people. He tells them how they are to walk with them. "For I am the Lord your God", and actually laying out the importance of the fact that they are representing God to the world.

Now Paul the apostle speaks about how the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the way the Jews were living. God was stressing the importance, "For I am Jehovah your God". All through this chapter you'll find that emphasis as God deals with them in the way that they should live, and dealing with moral issues in chapter eighteen.

Now as God deals with these moral issues, He is dealing basically with incestuous relationships, first of all, and forbidding any type of incestuous relationship. I think that the movie industry has had the most corrupting influence upon the world, than any other single source. I think the minds of men have been polluted more through the movie industry than anything else. I think that they have introduced more filth and corruption into the world than any other single source. There seems to be within the movie industry, a desire to show bizarre kinds of relationships. First of all, adultery, seeking to make it an acceptable practice. Then having satiated people with adulterous relationships that no longer gets a tingle, they started showing incestuous relationships. Homosexual relationships, seeking to make them accepted practices, then began to show bestiality, the relationship with animals. Horrible, filthy, polluting things.

Now the Bible says, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" ( Galatians 6:7 ). If you sow to the flesh, you're gonna have the flesh reap corruption. You cannot look at those things without polluting yourself, without polluting your mind, because you are sowing into your mind these things. If these are the things you are sowing into your mind, sowing to your flesh, then of your flesh you're gonna reap corruption.

Paul tells us of the heathen world having forsaken God, "Not wishing to retain God in their minds, God gave them over to minds that were reprobate" ( Romans 1:28 ). Then he begins to speak of the reprobate practices, homosexuality, and goes on then and lists a whole, horrible list of the reprobate practices of men who no longer wanted to have God in their conscience. Of course they didn't want God in their conscience. Of course they'd like to think that we evolve from animals. They must get God out of their conscience because they could never live with a conscience with all of the horrible, filthy things that they have dreamed up in their minds and in their imaginations, and are portrayed on the film. Horrible acts.

As Paul lists for us in Romans, chapter one these horrible things that men did. He says something very startling at the end of the chapter, "Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful"( Romans 1:29-31 ).

Now go down that list again and just think of the movies. What kind of things do they depict in the movies? "Fornication, unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, murder, deceit, haters of God, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, without natural affection." Those are the things portrayed. They say, "Well this is life, this is realism. This is how people live. We have a right to show it, because this is, this is real. This is real life, realism." If that is so, God help us. We're living in a horrible world. But the last verse is the clincher. "Who knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do those things, but have pleasure in them that do them"( Romans 1:32 ). If you go to the show to find pleasure in watching murders, in watching fornication, in watching these things, if you go to the show to find pleasure watching other people do them, you are guilty taking pleasure in those that do them.

So God is speaking now, the moral laws, His people are to be a pure people. His people are to be a representative people before the world. You're not to be as the world. Everybody's doing it is no excuse for the child of God. You're to be separate. You're to be different from everybody. He is the Lord your God. Your life is to be separate and different. If it's not, then what do you really have? Surely not a true relationship with God.

So the first thing that God is forbidding here is any type of incestuous relationships. Things that are all of a sudden become a popular subject in the Hollywood movies. After the showing of a few movies where fathers, abusing their daughters and all, they've made it almost a common thing. The young girls that are abused by their fathers today, the numbers are staggering. It's horrible; it's unthinkable, but that whole horrible door was opened by Hollywood. Oh yes, I know that it existed earlier, but it's magnified through Hollywood.

Now they are coming out with a set of films on mothers having relationships with their sons. Horrible. Absolutely horrible. One of the shows on TV that we're missing tonight has that theme. Thank God you're missing it. What a corrupt, sinful world. But because Jehovah is your God, you're not to be polluted by these things. You're not to follow these practices; you're to be different. The theme all the way through chapter eighteen, "For I am Jehovah your God." You'll find that He says it some fourteen times, as He emphasizes this truth.

Now they're not to allow their children to pass through the fire, their seed to pass through the fires of Molech. Now God said, "The Egyptians did these things. The Canaanites are doing these things. I know that they're doing it. For this reason I'm driving the Canaanites out of the land. I'm destroying them. You're not to follow the practice of the Canaanites, the people in the land where you're going."

In verse twenty-seven, the prohibition of homosexual relationships.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, it is an abomination ( Leviticus 18:27 ).

Now these, I know where I am, I'm just trying to frame the word for these characters who are trying to pass themselves off as ministers, and so forth, who are advocating homosexual relationships. Cal State Long Beach has a "Gay for Christ" club. Governor Brown just appointed and avowed homosexuals to the Superior Court in Los Angeles. Governor Brown is gonna be one of the featured speakers at the gay community center's fund raising dinner in Los Angeles the end of this month. He's beginning to identify himself so much with that community that it's beginning to look like our governor needs to examine his own relationship with God. I think you got the message.

In verse twenty-three, bestiality forbidden.

Defile not yourselves [verse twenty-four] in any of these things: for in all of these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: The land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants ( Leviticus 18:24-25 ).

In other words the land itself is so sick of the corruption that is within, ultimately the land itself vomits out. I wonder, I wonder. Jesus, it was interesting said, when the Pharisees said, "Lord rebuke Your disciples", when he was making a triumphant entry. He said, "I'll tell you something, if these disciples were to all together hold their peace, these very rocks would cry out." I wonder how much the land really knows. God said to Abel, or to Cain, "The blood of thy brother, the ground crieth out unto Me, where your brother's blood was spilled." Now God says, "The land vomited out the inhabitants of the people." So sick were their practices.

You see there is a point of moral decay that once the nation reaches that point, it can no longer exist. It's gone beyond the point of return and the nation can no longer exist; it's gonna crumble, and fall. Let me tell you something. The United States is awfully close to that point. Now God in speaking of these things said to the nation of Israel, "If you will obey My commandments and do them, then I will make you great. But if you forsake them, then you're gonna be cursed in the city, cursed in the fields, cursed everywhere you go." God said, "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." God's cry against Israel and the reason why she had to fall was, "She had forsaken My laws, they have forsaken My commandments, and they've gone after their own ways." I'm sure that as God looks at the United States today, His cry is much the same. "They have forsaken My ways, they have forsaken My laws, they've forsaken My commandments." The land is about to vomit out its inhabitants because of the things that we have allowed, sitting back and doing nothing. So the land is defiled. "Therefore I visit the iniquity, and the land vomits out her inhabitants."

Now verse twenty-eight,

That the land spew not you out also, when you defile it, as it spewed out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep my ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: for I am Jehovah your God ( Leviticus 18:28-30 ).

The repetition again. "