Year 7, Day 109: Leviticus 20

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Leviticus 20 is full of familiar themes about which I have spoken much lately.  We have the very familiar commendation to be holy in the world as the Lord is holy.  We have the very familiar - because it is repeated out of importance – passage about human beings taking their sexuality seriously.  We also have the familiar admonition against pursuing other gods.  In this chapter, it feels like God is largely repeating Himself.

Naturally, I wonder why God would repeat Himself so often.  Remember, throughout most of human history writing was an expensive and laborious process.  Things had to be copied by hand through most of human history.  It took much time to copy documents.  This means that ancient writers typically knew how to be concise without repeating themselves.  This should cause us to be more alert during repeated passages rather than tune the words out.

Why would we get these messages repeated again and again?  Of course, the obvious reason is that they are important to God.  God absolutely takes our worship and our sexuality very seriously.  God cares about from where we are looking for power.  These are topics that are near and dear to His heart.  All parents repeat themselves to their kids; God is no different in this respect.

I think there is more, though.  It is not just that these messages are so important.  It is also that the human condition is so bad at keeping them.  We struggle with keeping our heart devoted to God.  The passion of our hearts changes season after season.  We pursue almost anything that makes a promise towards our goals, whatever they truly are.

I do find it interesting that the things that appear to be most important to God are often the things with which human beings have the most difficult time.  I’m not trying to say that we are doomed to fail.  What I am trying to say is that this lifts up the holiness of God.  God is indeed separate and different from us because we have difficulty rising up to the things that are most important to Him!  There is a reason that holiness is so much work.  It is so much work because it is foreign enough to us that we must change to be like Him.

In the end, this is a great lesson to learn when we hit one of these chapters where it feels like God is repeating Himself so often.  Those chapters are a reminder to us to be holy.  They are a reminder to us to take notice of the holiness of God and ponder why it is necessary for us to hear these same messages again and again.

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