Feb 14 - Obedience - Leviticus 18-19

In chapters 18–20 we pass from the worship of the people to their behaviour. Chapter 18 prohibits unlawful marriage, unchastity, and Molech worship; but the last is dealt with more fully in 20:2–5.

The first reason Israel should not indulge in what God has prohibited was because they “shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. ” (18:3) A Christian should not live as a non Christian. He must remember that in Christ, he is a new creation, he has been given a new life.

The second reason for obedience is simply because of God’s authority. “I am the Lord your God...You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules;” (18:5) He has the right to reward obedience and punish disobedience. “if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.” True life is given by obedience to the word of God, for there is no goodness apart from Him.

Disobedience brings about punishment. “For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God.” (18:29-30)

Some people ask why is God so cruel command extermination of the Canaanites. Here the reason is clear, not because God is evil, but because of the sinfulness of the Canaanites themselves. “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (18:24-25)

Thanks and praise be to Christ, who bore this punishment on himself that we would not be punished. And which upon the most important reason of gratitude why we obey God, because we love Him. For He is, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And you shall observe all my statutes and all my rules, and do them: I am the Lord.” (19:36-37)