None of you are to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the LORD. Sermons
I. THE FEARFUL LENGTH TO WHICH IMPURITY MAY PASS. God made man male and female that, related to one another thus, they might be happy in one another's fellowship; that husband, wife, and child might complete the harmony of human life. But for the confusing and disturbing element of sin, there would have been nothing but holy conjugal affection and happy human homes. How dark and sad a contrast to this does society present! How melancholy the thought that impurity should Dot only have tainted so many souls, but should have taken so may forms! that not only have the natural relations of the sexes been too unlimited, too unrestrained, but that sin of this description has taken unnatural, shocking, and abominable forms! that its dark and shameful manifestations are such as we hardly like to Dame, and do not dare to think of (verses 22, 23)! Only a holy compulsion will induce us even to make passing reference to such things. So low, to such dark depths, into such a "far country" of vileness does the sin of impurity extend. II. THAT GUILTY INDULGENCE IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION OF THIS EVIL PROGRESS. How can such things be? is the simple question of the pure heart. How by any possibility can human nature sink into such a gulf of depravity? How can we account for it that the soul which once knew the innocency of childhood finds an awful pleasure in such shameful deeds? The answer is undoubtedly here. The very possibility of it is a part of the penalty of the sins which have been committed. Sins of impurity leave a stain upon the soul; the seducer has not only to suffer the rebuke of God, the reproaches of the one he has wronged and ruined, and the stings of his own conscience - some day to be awakened, but he has to "bear his iniquity" in a depraved taste, in a stained and injured nature, in a lowered and baser appetite. In this, as in other matters, perhaps more fearfully than in most, "he that sinneth against God wrongeth his own soul" (Proverbs 8:36). Let the man who gives way to impurity remember that he is traveling on a downward course that ends in saddest depravation of soul, and that will leave him open to those more vile temptations which would disgrace and even disgust him now. III. THE TRUE TREATMENT OF THIS DESTROYING SIN. Trace the evil back from its worst developments to its mildest form; from its fullest crime to its source in the soul. Incest, adultery, fornication, seduction, indecency, indelicate conversation, the impure thought. This last is the source of all. It is that which must be assailed, which must be expelled. In this matter of the relation of the sexes, there are three main truths. 1. God gives to most of us the joy of conjugal love, and this is to be sanctified by being accepted as his gift (James 1:17). Where it is denied we must be well satisfied with other mercies so freely given. 2. Its lasting happiness is only assured to the pure of heart. With all others its excellency will soon fade and die. 3. Therefore let us, by all possible means, guard our purity: (1) by avoidance of temptation (evil company, wrong literature); (2) by energetic expulsion of unworthy thoughts; (3) by realization of the presence of the heart-searching Holy One; (4) by earnest prayer; let us "keep our heart beyond all keeping," etc. (Proverbs 4:23). - C.
None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him. 1. God the institutor of marriage (ver. 6).2. Faith in Christ not commanded in the law (ver. 5). 3. Of the several kinds of kindred by consanguinity or affinity. 4. Of the computation of the degrees of consanguinity.(1) Consanguinity is a communicating in blood, derived from one stock.(2) Affinity is a respective alliance and kindred which comes in by marriage.(3) A line is a collection of persons coming from the stock.(4) And it is threefold: the right line Ascending, as the father, grandfather; or descending, as the son, &c.; or collateral above, as the father's brother — or in the middle, as brother, sister, uncle's children — or below, as brother's son or daughter, and their sons and daughters.(5) A degree is the distance of persons from the stock.(6) In the right line ascending or descending, there are as many degrees as generations and persons.(7) In the collateral line there are as many degrees as persons.(8) In the collateral line the prohibition is extended to the fourth degree.(9) In the right line ascending and descending, the impediment is perpetual when they are alive or dead, as grounded upon the law of nature.(10) The same degrees are forbidden ascending and descending by the like analogy.(11) The same degrees are restrained by the like analogy in both sexes.(12) Where the degree further off is forbidden, the nearer are inclusively interdicted. 5. Of the computation of the degrees of affinity.(1) In what degree of consanguinity the husband is distant, in the same degree of affinity the wife is removed, because man and wife are one flesh.(2) One person added to another by carnal copulation changes the kind of affinity, not the degree: as the brother's wife is of affinity in the second degree, and first kind; if after she marry another husband, he is in the same degree of affinity, but in the second kind.(3) There are three kinds of affinity — the near, middle, and remote: as the brother's wife is in the first kind, the brother's wife's second husband in the second, the second husband's second wife in the third.(4) Affinity in the first kind is a perpetual impediment.(5) Between such as are of kindred in blood to the husband, and them that are of kin to the wife, there is no affinity to hinder marriage: as, two brothers may marry two sisters.(6) In the degrees of affinity ascending and descending in the right line, the prohibition is infinitely extended without any limitation: as, it is not lawful to marry the wife's daughter's daughter, and so downward, nor the wife's mother, or grandmother, and so upward.(7) In the collateral line, affinity is restrained to the third degree, as to uncle's wife, who is in the same degree of affinity that her husband is in consanguinity.(8) Of the agreements and differences between the degrees of consanguinity and affinity.(1) Agreement. (a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) 6. Marriage of divers wives successively, lawful, though not together (ver. 18). 7. The Scripture most pure, even when it makes mention of impure and obscene things. (A. Willet, D. D.) 2. Against the monstrous sin of adultery (ver. 20). 3. Against the unnatural and most abominable sin of bestiality (ver. 23). 4. To profit by other men's examples, and to be warned by their punishments (ver. 25). 5. God not partial in His judgments, and therefore no man should presume (ver. 28). (A. Willet, D. D.) (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.) As the chosen and covenant tribes of Israel were soon to take up their journey to the land of Canaan, the inhabitants of which were to be exterminated for their multifarious iniquities in the sight of God, a recital is here made of some of those aggravated forms of wickedness which were rife among them, and which God had determined signally to punish. This is done not only to illustrate the justice of the Divine proceedings in their excision, but also with a view to put the peculiar people themselves on their guard against yielding to the contagion of their pernicious example, and thus becoming obnoxious to the same fearful retributions which were now about to be visited upon the Canaanites. The particular class of abominations more especially pointed out in this chapter, and to which the brand-mark of the Divine reprobation is so conspicuously affixed, is that of incestuous connections. Not only had that abandoned race been guilty of a total apostacy from the worship of the true God, substituting in His room the sun, and moon, and host of heaven, and bowing down to stocks and stones and creeping things, but they had mingled with their idolatry every vice that could degrade human nature and pollute society. In the black catalogue of these the abominations of lust Stand pre-eminent; and whether in the form of adultery, fornication, incest, sodomy, or bestiality, they had now risen to a pitch of enormity which the forbearance of heaven could tolerate no longer, and of which a shuddering dread was to be begotten in the minds of the people of the covenant. And in order that no possible plea of ignorance or uncertainty might be left in their minds as to those connections which were lawful and those which were forbidden, the Most High proceeds in the present and in the 20th chapter to lay down a number of specific prohibitions on this subject, so framed, as not only to include the extra-nuptial pollutions, which had prevailed among the heathen, but also all those incestuous unions which were inconsistent with the purit and sanctity of the marriage relation. Both classes of crimes we think are in fact included; so that it is doing no violence to the spirit of the text to regard it as containing a system of marriage-laws by which the peculiar people were ever after to be governed. As this is the only passage in the compass of the whole Bible where any formal enactments are given on this subject, this and the connected chapters treating of this theme have always been deemed of peculiar importance in their relations to the question of the lawful degrees within which the marriage connection may now be formed by those who make the law of God the great standard of moral duty.(G. Bush.) The wilderness in which they now were was a very fit place for enjoining these laws upon the Israelites, as they were now removed from the snares and temptations of Egypt, and were not yet mingled with the people of Canaan.(Bp. Kidder.) The necessity for laws on this point at once discriminating, wise, and stringent, will be sufficiently obvious when we consider the strength of the passion to be controlled — constitutionally common to all ages of the world; the sacredness of the marriage relation and the inestimable value of moral purity in all human society — also common to all ages of the world's history; and (peculiar to the earlier ages) the necessity of defining the limits of consanguinity within which marriage should be prohibited. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that the race having sprung from a single pair and the world having been repeopled a second time from one family, those primitive examples may have sent down for many generations a certain looseness which called for special restraint and a carefully defining law. The crimes of Sodom, their polluting influence in so good a family as that of Lot; the low morals of Egyptian life; some sad manifestations in the early history of Jacob's family; the horrible contagion of Moab and Midian when the tribes of Israel came socially near them; these and kindred facts will be readily recalled as in point to show the necessity of vigorous legislation in the Mosaic code to counteract these untoward influences of their antecedent life and of surrounding society.(H. Cowles, D. D.). People Israelites, Molech, MosesPlaces Canaan, Egypt, TemanTopics Anyone, Approach, Blood, Close, Connection, Draw, Flesh, Kin, Nakedness, None, Relation, Relations, Relative, Relatives, Sex, Sexual, UncoverOutline 1. Unlawful marriages and unlawful lustsDictionary of Bible Themes Leviticus 18:68273 holiness, ethical aspects 5681 family, nature of 6189 immorality, examples Library General Character of Christians. "And they that are Christ's have crucified the Flesh, with the Affections and Lusts." St. Paul is supposed to have been the first herald of gospel grace to the Galatians; and they appear to have rejoiced at the glad tidings, and to have received the bearer with much respect. But after his departure, certain judaizing teachers went among them, and labored but too successfully, to alienate their affections from him, and turn them form the simplicity of the gospel. The malice and errors of those deceitful … Andrew Lee et al—Sermons on Various Important Subjects "They have Corrupted Themselves; their Spot is not the Spot of his Children; they are a Perverse and Crooked Generation. " The Doctrine of Arbitrary Scriptural Accommodation Considered. Epistle Lxiv. To Augustine, Bishop of the Angli . The Two Sabbath-Controversies - the Plucking of the Ears of Corn by the Disciples, and the Healing of the Man with the Withered Hand Obedience The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. ) Meditations for Household Piety. Appendix ii. Philo of Alexandria and Rabbinic Theology. Leviticus Links Leviticus 18:6 NIVLeviticus 18:6 NLT Leviticus 18:6 ESV Leviticus 18:6 NASB Leviticus 18:6 KJV Leviticus 18:6 Bible Apps Leviticus 18:6 Parallel Leviticus 18:6 Biblia Paralela Leviticus 18:6 Chinese Bible Leviticus 18:6 French Bible Leviticus 18:6 German Bible Leviticus 18:6 Commentaries Bible Hub |