Holy Living

Ethics

How do you determine what is right and what is wrong?

It’s not always an easy question to answer.

For some matters, it might seem obvious. For example murder and rape are clearly wrong and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with that.

But what about telling a lie? We might be quick to say, no, lying is wrong… but then we come to the moral dilemma’s, like, what if telling a lie saved someone’s life. Was it right for the people hiding Jews in World War 2 to lie about the fact that a Jew was in there house, knowing that it almost certainly saved their life?

Ethics becomes full of these murky scenarios making it hard to navigate at times.

And so we might simplify it. One solution can be to make the legal system the basis of what is right and wrong. But then again, I suspect we’ll all be aware that you can follow the letter of the law and still be quite cruel and horrible to people.

And so at the end of the day, whether we care to admit it or not, the basis for our ethics is whether society in general considers it right or wrong.

A question that seems to becoming increasingly popular is: does it pass the pub test?

The idea of the pub test is that you take some ordinary everyday Australians and you pose a scenario to them. If they think it sounds acceptable, then we say it’s passed the pub test and so it must be okay.

I do sometimes wonder about this so-called test. For starters, it probably depends on which pub you go to.

But it’s also a standard that’s going to change. A question posed to an Austraklian pub in the early 1800’s would probably get a different answer to a pub in the 1950’s which would be different again to a pub today.

Is the culture of the day the best guide to form our ethics?

As Christians, you’re probably not going to be surprised to hear me say that culture is actually not the best bench mark for our ethics, rather it’s the Bible and what God has shown us.

But we’re going to see from our passage today, that when we open up the bible, it’s not alway straight forward what we should do.

You see, today we’re going to tackle Leviticus 18-20. These chapters start talking about ethical behaviour, and we’re going to find that some of the statements that are made, we’ll all be able to give a hearty amen. So when it says not to have sexual relations with your mother, even if you employ the pub test, you’ll get a strong agreement.

Some of the rules however, would get challenged with the current pub test, most notably when it talks about homosexuality.

But then thereare other parts of these chapters, particularly chapter 19, where even us in the church are going to say: ‘excuse me? what?’

Rules about not wearing clothes with two kinds of material… or not clipping off the edges of your beards.

These odd rules in this chapter actually present a challenge for us. You see, if we decide we can just ignore some of the rules because they’re old and archaic, then why do we choose some to ignore and not others.

This is actually an argument that people will make today regarding why we can ignore the bible on homosexuality - that is, these rules are placed right next to other rules that we’re happy to ignore, so why not ignore this one?

And so, we’re going to try and dig a bit deeper into these chapters and see what they have to say to us today.

Context

But first, let’s take a step back and have a look at what’s going on in this strange but beautiful book of Leviticus.

As I’ve been discussing throughout this series, the book of Leviticus is an invitation for the people of Israel who are wandering in the wilderness to draw close to God.

It’s easy for us to downplay the significance of this, because drawing close to God is what Christianity is all about. But putting ourselves in the time of these people, we can see how huge this is.

They recognised the power and might of God. The recognised how completely different he is and that you can’t just approach him.

And yet, the book of Leviticus provides a way. It opens the door and shows how one can enter while continuing to acknowledge the greatness and holiness of God.

The first seven chapters showed what an appropriate offering would be.

Chapters 8 to 10 introduced us to the priesthood.

Chapters 11 to 15 then described what it meant to be ritually clean, which was required for someone coming before God.

But we also saw the Day of Atonement when everyone in the community was made clean.

But all of this is spelling out what is required for those who want to come before God.

As we come to chapter 18, things shift towards the ethical requirements of those who want to come before God.

The Basis

Now, as I mentioned earlier, these chapters that follow are going to be full of rules, some of which we’ll agree, some where we might agree but not our current culture, and some which we’ll be happy to ignore. And we’re going to have to try and figure out what to make of it all.

But I’m going to suggest that the opening paragraph of chapter 18 is going to give us a bit of a clue as to how to interpret all of this.

So, let’s unpack this opening verses...

I am the Lord your God

It starts with the Lord telling Moses to remind the people he is Yahweh their God.

Just a reminder for those who might not be familiar… whenever you see the word “Lord” written in capital letters, it is actually the covenantal name of God being used. This goes back to Moses and the burning bush when God says “I am who I am”.

The great “I am”, who is above all, is the one that they serve. He is unchangeable.

This reminder make sure that God remains in the centre of the picture. As we start talking about ethics, it’s all going to be focussed on the character of God himself.

Don’t do as they do

This reminder of who God is, is closely followed by the command: “You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am brining you. Do not follow their practices”.

If we get this point, it’s really going to start to make a lot of sense of the rules that will follow.

You see, our natural human tendency is to follow the customs of those around us.

The problem is, particularly at this point in history, the cultural practices are so closely linked with religious practices.

If they start adopting the practices of the people around them, they will forget who their God really is.

Now, you need to remember that at this time, Israel was unique in beleiving that there was only one God. Practically everyone believed there were many gods, each with a specific area of focus. And so the various cultural practices would be to please that god. For example, various sexual practices revolved focused on the god of fertility.

Because of the natural human desire for sex, God knew how enticing many of the practices would be.

So, while we’re going to see a lot of specific rules, it’s helpful to recognise that behind these rules are specific practices of the lands aroudn them that need to be avoided.

Sexual rules

Well, there are a lot of rules in these chapters and so we’re not going to have the time to go through each one individually.

But we can make some general observations that will help us gain a better understanding of what is going on.

Well, chapter 18 mostly concerns rules around sex, or perhaps more specifically, who you can’t have sex with.

Actually, the interesting thing is, if I leave aside verse 22 which talks about homosexuality, most Australians would be more or less happy with Leviticus 18.

It basically says not to have sex with any of your relatives

Now the reason these requirement needed to be spelled out is because in these ancient times, it was encouraged to keep marriages within the clan to strengthen clan ties.

But God put limits on what was considered too close.

Now, an interesting observation to make in these chapters is that the rules are almost exclusively aimed at men.

This is not to suggest that women can do what they want.

Now, if you know how Australian law works, which is similar to many other nations, we have both statutory law and common law.

Common Law are the precendents that have been set by rulings in a court of law.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the legal system back then was just like what we have now, but in a sense you can think of the rules we get here a bit like common law. That is, the rules we get here are stated because it was addressing specific problems.

So perhaps women are not addressed specifically because in this time and culture they generally were not the instigator of sexual activity.

Various miscellaneous rules

Now, I’m going to jump to chapter 19 now.

I know this means I’m going to skip over the part about homosexuality, butI am going to come back to it, so if you’re wondering how I will address it, it is coming.

Chapter 19 is an interesting one because we get a whole bunch of miscellaneous rules and the order in which they come doesn’t seem to have any noticable logic to it.

The opening statement does however give it some framework, namely: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”.

Some of what follows is going to repeat parts of the Ten Commandments or at least something very similar. So we have things like do not steal, do not lie, do not deceive one another.

But we have some really quite strange ones in here as well.

Some of the stranger ones come in verse 19 where we’re told not to plant your field with two kinds of seed, or wear clothing woven with two kinds of material.

Now while the text doesn’t give us the rationale behind these rules, if we take the one about the clothing, when we dig a bit deeper we discover some interesting insights.

You see, while there is a command here to not wear clothing of two kinds of material, if you go back to Exodus 28:5, we actually find the priests there were instructed to wear garments made from woollen yarn and linen. So why this discrepancy?

Well, a good theory is that this rule about the two kinds of material is actually designed to prevent non-priestly Israelites from dressing like priests.

If we dig a little bit behind each of the rules that seem a bit strange, for the most part, we start to see it’s actually not just a random rule, but something designed to keep these Israelites on track.

This is important for us to understand as we read through these chapters and try to figure out how we apply it to us today. You see, our situation is very different to the situation they were in. If we take just the example of the clothing, if you were to wear a shirt which had a blend of cotton and wool, absolutely no one is going to accuse you of trying to imitate a priest.

Homosexuality

But this brings me to the topic of homosexuality.

One of the common arguments you might hear today about why we don’t need to listen to what the bible says about homsexuality is that it’s got all these other strange commands that we’re happy to ignore so why not ignore this one too?

Well, this is why we have to tread carefully through these chapters. We don’t just ignore them because there’s some strange things we don’t fully understand.

What we need to do is try to figure out what principle is being applied. This won’t always be easy because it isn’t always spelled out for us.

If we look at Leviticus 18:22 what seems to be in picture is something that is going against nature. That is to say, God designed sexual relations to be between a man and a woman, or more accurately a husband and a wife.

Now you might ask, given that the rationale isn’t made clear in these chapters of Leviticus, how can we be sure? This is where we allow the New Testament to be the lens through which we view this book. In Romans 1 we find Paul describing homosexual relations to be against nature.

Now, this of course is a huge topic, and I don’t want this to become the main issue of this message… it is after all only a few verses out of three chapters.

Love your neighbour as yourself

There is however a verse that is worth highlighting, partly because it is a verse that Jesus highlighted for us.

You see, you might recall Jesus being asked the question: what is the greatest commandment?

Jesus actually gives two… the first is to love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. That was a quote from Deuteronomy 6:4.

But he then the second is this: “love your neighbour as yourself”.

Well, this is a direct quote from our passage for today. It comes in Leviticus 19:18.

The problem of course is this can become a bit of a flash point in modern Christianity. While every Christian should agree it needs to be about love, sometimes the view of love becomes so watered down that we don’t want to tell someone that they are wrong because it might hurt their feelings.

If you want to know what Leviticus thinks it means to love your neighbour as yourself, you’d do well to read the verses that lead up to verse 18. It talks about acting fairly, keeping them safe, not bearing a grudge, but also in verse 17, rebuking them frankly.

How do we do we do this well? With a whole lot of care and wisdom.

I believe we need to maintain what God’s good design for us is, but also recognise that we live in a culture that has moved far away from God’s way.

We need to be people who live in this world, but not of this world.

We need to be careful that we don’t allow this world to start to shape us.

At times, the values God gives us will come in sharp contrast with the culture around us - and we’re starting to see this more and more today.

I believe we need to respond with gentleness and humility. We’re not living in ancient Israel with a community committed to God’s way. The harsh penalities we see in chapter 20 are not for us today. We need to look at the way Jesus responded to those around him. Not in an anything goes kind of way, but in a firm but loving way.

Conclusion

When we highlight some of the odd rules in these chapters before us, we can start to think that this is all so obscure that we should just skip over it. But actually, as we start to look at it, these chapters actually paint a beautiful picture of how God wants us to live.

Imagine if we did love people like it’s described in these chapters.

Imagine if people did take seriously God’s good design for this world.

The world around us might not get it, but yet if us as the people of God started to live like it, maybe we could start to be the salt and light of the world that we were called to be.

We have an opportunity to come before God and God has shown us what it is to live the way he wants - so with the help of the Holy Spirit, let’s start living like it.

let me pray...