Part X8.1 - Purity in Marriage Relations

CHAPTER XVIII.

PURITY IN MARRIAGE RELATIONS.

THE. directions in this chapter are addressed to " the children of Israel." Moses is commanded first to say unto them, " I am the Lord your God," thus reminding them of the authority of Him Who addressed them, and of His claim to their submission and obedience. God was revealed to them as their God when He carae to deliver them from Egypt, as the God Who had made a covenant with their fathers. They had been brought into the wilderness to learn their privilege experimentally, and at the same time to be taught that God is a jealous God, that they must be entirely His, and know that He Himself is sufficient for all things. In the wilderness they had learnt concerning the tabernacle of His presence and the atoning sacrifices that were to be presented at the door, as well as the further value of the blood, of which even in Egypt they had experienced the saving power. They had beheld the consecration of the priesthood which was to stand between them and God, and had received a discerning power to distinguish things clean and unclean. They had been shown a way by which their high priest might obtain access on their behalf into the holiest of all; and had lastly been reminded that God’s sacrifices must be offered in the place and manner which He had directed. In the present chapter, the Lord, upon the ground of His relationship to them, gives them injunctions respecting their own " doings," especially with regard to the evil and temptation to which they would shortly be exposed, but which they were to avoid as a people who knew the Lord to be their God. For the great safeguard against evil, and power of obedience, is ever the remembrance of what God is, and that He is our God.

There is thus no room for uncertain reasonings as to the abstract fitness or propriety of things; but the declared mind of God is the standard of what is right or wrong for His own people. Now the great and avowed object of God with respect to those whom He has called is to purify them unto Himself to be a peculiar people. If there were any other standard of excellence than God Himself, which there is not. it would not be theirs to regard it. They are to be conformed to His image, to show forth His praises, to be perfect as He is perfect. And this must be manifested in their doings. He had brought them forth out of Egypt to be His people : they were not to be guided in their actions by what was done in the land of bondage. He was also leading them into Caanan to be His people there: they must not, therefore, imitate the doings of those who should be cast out before them. What they had to remember, to act upon, and to exemplify, in all circumstances and at all times, was that they were the people of God, that they had avouched the Lord to be their God, or rather, that God had made them to be His people. Therefore, before any details are given as to the things they were to do and to avoid, they are directed generally not to do as the Egyptians and Canaanites did, but to obey the ordinances of the Lord. Thus the whole contrariety between the two is involved in this command. The evils which they are then taught in detail to avoid are chiefly of one characteristic class. But they involve contrariety and disobedience to God, and so we find the prohibition, " Ye shall not do," followed by the words " I am the Lord." And further, there is something manifestly evil in the things themselves which are forbidden ; so that we find the declarations, " It is wickedness ; " it is abomination;" " it is confusion." These were the things for which the judgment of God fell upon the Canaanites, and for which the land spued them out- things equally contrary to all that in the works of nature might be known of God, and to the dictates of nature itself. The course by which they arrived at such a fearful climax of evil, and the judgment entailed thereby, are distinctly given in the first chapter of Romans. Their contrariety to God is shown by their departure from all that He had declared of Himself in the works of creation, and shows the fearful tendency of the corrupted nature of man to depart in everything farther and farther from his Creator. But in reference to His own ordinances the Lord says, -"Which if a man do he shall live in them." The Apostle Paul, after quoting this word in Romans 10:5-11, puts the righteousness of faith in the place of it. But the great deliverance out of Egypt had already set forth that truth to those who had " eyes to see or ears to hear." And to those who understood, the commandment was not only for the avoidance of evil, but also for the highest good ; for in the very next chapter it evolves that which the Lord Jesus declared to be the fulfilment of the law, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " (Leviticus 19:18). At present, however, the subject is the avoidance of those evils which are here presented in their revolting character. We do not need experience to confirm the word of our God, yet He graciously gives it, and we may easily find out by observation the truth of the saying, " All that is of the world .... is not of the Father." The evils here portrayed are those of the world, the course of corrupt human nature, when the hand of restraint is removed (Romans 1:1-32). But great and fearful as they are, it is needful that the people of God should be warned against them; and they are here exhibited in their most revolting climax, in order that Israel may avoid conformity to them in any the least respect. But the great motto, which stands in letters of light at the head of God’s charge to His people, is, " I am the Lord, the Lord your God." " Walk before

Me," said the Lord to His chosen servant and His friend, " and be thou perfect:" and He who was the perfect One replies by the Spirit in David, " I have set the Lord always before me .... I shall not be moved " (Psalms 16:8).

We have to watch against sin in its first approaches.

It is always the same in its character; and in its results breaks down every barrier between right and wrong, good and evil; it is " wickedness," " abomination," " confusion."

"And the land is defiled, therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants." The wages of sin is death, a just consequence which the righteous judgment of God confirms.