Leviticus 18:4&5 says, “Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein. I am the Lord your God…If a man do, he shall live in them…”
Two little boys were sitting in Sunday school class when the teacher asked, “What is grey, has a bushy tail, and runs through the woods gathering nuts?” One boy whispers to the other, “I know the answer is ‘Jesus,’ but it sounds like a squirrel to me.” (Very old joke.)
Many children never go to Sunday school. Often, those who do come home with misconceptions about God or the Bible. After telling my junior boys class that there was a real devil, I had an upset mother call me. Her son told her that I said there was a devil with horns, tail, and a pitchfork, running around after him. I didn’t say that. I wish I had.
What happens too often is that young people grow up and leave the church, remembering only the rules they were required to obey. As adults, they hate rules that have anything to do with God or religion. They hate religion. They like to sing the songs, but they find it hard to sit through the sermon. “Jesus paid it all,” they say, forgetting, “all to Him I owe.” They forget that Jesus said, “If you love me keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Love and obedience go hand in hand. The little word “if” is ignored so often.
When we look at obedience as an expression of love, rules become rewarding experiences. Walking in the ordinances (Lev. 18:4), we find true life. We have the wonderful blessing that the Lord is our God. Charles Sheldon captured this truth so beautifully in his classic book, In His Steps.
It is interesting at what time God gave this instruction to the Israelites. They were about to enter into a land defiled with sexual sin (Leviticus 18:24). God laid out very detailed rules concerning nakedness and sexual sin. Why did he go into such detail? Nakedness itself was not a sin. Adam and Eve were created naked and holy before God. Their relationship was man and wife. God made them to complement each other. All other naked relationships destroy the joy and beauty that God intended for man and wife.
After Adam and Eve sinned they entered the knowledge of good and evil. They hid their nakedness. We tend to see nakedness as sin. So often we miss God’s best plan for us, because we choose to disobey.
God did not create the sex drive to frustrate us with rules regarding it. He wanted to protect it. He wanted Adam and Eve to multiply. He planned for families, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. The rules of Leviticus 18 were meant for our joy.
When God dealt with man’s sin, nakedness was not the issue, it was disobedience. God, in mercy, cannot allow sin to continue. His final design is to eradicate it altogether. In this, His love is expressed. He chastens those He loves (Hebrews 12:5-10). Verse 10 says He does it for our profit “that we might be partakers of his holiness.”
God killed the first animal to clothe our nakedness, an act of love, pointing to the death of His own Son, to cover our sin.
We live in a defiled land today. When will the land finally vomit out her inhabitants? How wonderful are God’s life-giving rules. I love the hymn, “Stepping in the Light,” by Eliza Hewitt. “How wonderful to walk in the steps of the Saviour, led in paths of light.” Let’s be Light steppers!
