And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying… The text before us is a portion of God’s holy Scriptures, and as 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable…” The Bible is God-breathed; it is the very Word of God. But it is also profitable, useful, or beneficial (Greek, ωφελιμος). Paul uses this same Greek word in 1 Timothy 4:7-8 when he says: “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” Physical exercise and discipline are profitable and worth pursuing, but godliness is profitable in every way. So are the Scriptures profitable. They are of surpassing benefit to us, for through these words the Creator still speaks to us today.
I have said it before, but it is worth repeating: Marx had a point. Karl Marx famously defined economics as a power struggle between the upper class and the lower class. This struggle was inevitable and would eventually result in the revolt of the lower class and overthrow of the upper.
More recently, cultural Marxism has applied that principle to all of life. There are power struggles between ethnicities, between the sexes, and between any other social group you can think of.
And there is truth to that view. In Mark 10, James and John ask to sit beside Jesus in His kingdom, which was a position of honor and greatness. This then led the disciples to argue about which of them was the greatest. Gathering them together, Jesus said this:
You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)
Power struggles are the ordinary way of life for the Gentiles, for the unbelieving world. People are always trying to dominate, use, and control one another. In that sense, Marx was right about power dynamics (though he was very wrong in his conclusions and especially his solutions).
We saw this in Leviticus 18, which listed the practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites, practices that exploited and used others for pleasure and power. But last week in Leviticus 19, we saw how God’s kingdom operates. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” God’s people are not to lord over one another, but to love one another.
Now we come to Leviticus 20, which parallels chapter 18 but still serves a distinct purpose. Chapter 18 told us what not to do, chapter 20 focuses on the punishment for those sins. So, as we walk through this chapter, let us highlight three aspects: 1) the sins themselves, 2) the punishments for those sins, and 3) the call of holiness. After that, we will turn to Romans to see how Paul mirrors this structure.
THE SINS
Let us begin with the sins listed in this chapter. In verses 2-5, we have the sin of worshiping Molech:
Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.
Notice that language “whoring after Molech.” Even though this was not technically sexual sin, it is still described in those terms. This is spiritual adultery against Yahweh. Of course, we mentioned Molech back in chapter 18, but more time is spent here. Again, some argue that giving a child to Molech meant dedicating the child to serve in Molech’s temple, likely a prostitute. More likely, it refers to actual child sacrifice. Andrew Bonar gives us this description:
Molech was worshipped with revolting cruelties, the cries of the sufferers being drowned in loud noise. An image of red-hot glowing brass was the form in which he was adored, and his arms received the children offered to him, forthwith consuming them by their red-hot touch. The was put (“εις το χυσμα πληρες πυρος”) “into the gaping hole, full of fire,” says a historian. Everything was savage and demoniacal; fiendish tyranny and hellish hate.
If that is indeed what the practice entailed, then it is certainly nothing less than a picture of hell itself. And we should naturally ask: why? Why would anyone do something so horrific to their own child?
The answer is control. The people who sacrificed their children to Molech did it because they wanted control over their lives. They wanted Molech to protect them, to give them prosperity, and to grant them favor. In order to secure that favor, they gave him the precious thing they had: their children.
Lest we shake our heads and think, “How could they do that?”, we should consider that our society does this same thing through abortion. Indeed, people are fed the same lie. In order to have control over your life, your future, and your body, a child must die. A child was given to Molech to secure the family’s future security and prosperity. Today, abortion is promoted as the solution for securing personal autonomy and economic freedom. It is still Molech, just with better PR management.
Verse 6 turns to mediums and necromancy. Mediums are those who communicate with the spiritual realm, while necromancers are those who claim to speak to the dead. In reality, I would argue that they are the same thing, since no one can really speak to the dead. In all of Scripture, there is only one example of a necromancer actually speaking to the spirit of a dead person. Saul asked the witch of Endor to summon Samuel’s spirit. Tellingly, she was as shocked as Saul when Samuel actually appeared. Of course, that was not because of her occultic power but by the providence of God, allowing Samuel to give one final prophetic message to wicked king.
In our own day, most mediums and necromancers are simply con artists, using body language, vague words, and emotional manipulation. But it would be a mistake to assume that is always the case. Of course, the text itself is entirely unconcerned with whether the magic actually works or not. Turning to magic is itself a sin. Again, the heart of the matter is control, self-sovereignty. Indeed, that is the essence of all occult practices: trying to manipulate the spiritual world to control the physical world.
Is there not a tendency to this same sin in us when we refuse to sit still under apprehended evils—when we run backward and forward seeking intelligence—when we stop hastily in our prayer or meditation to rush away to some new sources of information that have occurred to us? Is all this running to and fro, this restless, unbelieving haste, this diving into every deep, this pulling at the veil over the future as if we could thus force it aside,–is not all this going after wizards? “He that believeth shall not make haste.”
I read that and wondered what he might of said of us today. If he believed that people in the 1800s were too hasty, unwilling to wait for God’s answer in prayer, what would he say of us? Why pray when you can just Google an answer? Why wait on God when ChatGPT responds instantly?
Now, using technology is not the exact same thing as going to see a witch. But if we are not careful, we can use technology with the same spirit. Replacing prayer and cultivated wisdom with reaching for knowledge that we do not need to possess.
Verse 9 addresses cursing father and mother. The word curse here refers to a serious, willful attempt to discredit, destroy, or dishonor one’s parents. It is very opposite of honor, which means to hold as weighty and glorious. Allen Ross notes that “This is a serious attempt to discredit or destroy their parents. In that sense, this is another way that some abandoned their natural affection for selfish reasons. A nation whose family breaks down like this could not endure long.
In the ESV, verses 9 is separated from verse 10, which begins the sexual sins. But I think that separation can be misleading because this verse is not disconnected from what follows. Because our relationship with our parents profoundly shapes the rest of our lives, the way we relate to father and mother sets the tone for how we relate to all authority, to other family, to our spouse, and even to God Himself. We know this intuitively and observation keeps confirming it: the stability and affection of the parent-child relationship is foundational for emotional and relational health.
Take, for example, a daughter’s relationship with her father. If she grows up with a father who is attentive, affectionate, and loving, who gives her attention without demanding anything in return, then she has a concept for understanding true, godly masculinity. She grows up knowing that she is valuable, not because of how she looks or what she does, but because of who she is. That becomes the baseline by which she measures all future relationships with men.
But if that foundation of affection and attention is missing, if the daughter is ignored, mistreated, or dishonored, she may spend her life searching for that validation elsewhere, often in quite destructive ways.
Indeed, this is why a societal rebellion against the 5th Commandment necessarily preceded the sexual revolution. Once that foundation was gone, how could the morality of our culture not collapse? As Ross commented earlier, a nation cannot long endure the destruction of the household unit. And this remains true, even when individual fathers and mothers are not honorable. We still honor the office, so to speak, or salute the uniform, even if the person wearing it fails. To destroy the honor of the family was to destroy the nation as a whole.
Verses 10-21 cover much of the same sins that we covered more extensively in chapter 18, so we will not go into detail here. One key observation is the shift in language and tone between 18 and 20. In Leviticus 18, the focus was on men “uncovering the nakedness” of others, which a phrase that could easily imply exploitation and coercion. Here the language switches to a more neutral “lie with”, which Ross says indicates mutual participation. That is why the punishments here are dealt to both parties. Here we find consensual corruption.
Of course, consent is our culture’s one rule regarding intimacy. Here Leviticus 20 says, “No, consent does not sanctify sin.” Consent just means that both parties share the guilt when committing sexual immorality.
THE PUNISHMENTS
Now that we have covered the sins addressed in this chapter, let us turn to the punishments listed. Palmer helps clarify some of the terms that we should know for this chapter:
Technical legal terms are threaded throughout this chapter. The language of “Their blood is upon them” is analogous to the guilty verdict (Lev. 20:9, 11, 12, 13, 16). It means that the offender deserves the punishment he has brought upon himself and that those who execute him are not held liable for his blood. Similarly, “They shall bear their iniquity” means there is not atonement for the wrongdoing; the guilty will bear the consequence of his sin. “They shall surely be put to death” (vv. 2, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 27) is a technical term for the death penalty, handed down by a court and carried out by the community.
That last phrase is important to note. God is not endorsing a chaotic system of private vengeance here. Every town and tribe in Israel had appointed judges, usually elders, who heard the cases and rendered a verdict. Once a sentence was passed, the execution was carried out by the community as a whole. That was the civil process for judgment and justice.
Even though these sins are still sins recognized by the Christians today, the church has no ground for enforcing these punishments. Civil penalties are given to civil magistrates, as Paul notes in Romans 13. The church can exercise church discipline, but that is quite different from civil penalties. When someone walks in repeated and unrepentant sin, the church excommunicates that person. But doing so was not an act of vengeance but one last call for repentance. We should be profoundly thankful for the Reformation because it recovered that vital distinction. The church’s weapon is the gospel.
There are three punishments that we will consider here. Let us begin with barrenness or childlessness, which is a punishment that God Himself brought upon the guilty. Because of passages like this, it was commonly believed that being childless was divine punishment. Perhaps that is why Scripture gives us so many examples of faithful women who were barren, such as Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth. Each of these women walked faithfully before the Lord, yet God still withheld children from them for a time. Thus, they serve as reminders that not all barrenness is the result of sin. Indeed, we can also apply the principle more broadly to sickness in general.
At the same time, we must take care not to jump over to the other extreme. In the past, people were quick to assume that sickness was a sign of God’s judgment. Today, we are quick to assume the opposite: that sickness is never related to sin, that it is purely physical or environmental. But the truth is, Scripture gives examples of both. Each week we read Paul’s warning about God striking some of the Corinthians with sickness and even death because they dishonored the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:30). That is meant to be a sobering warning, and we rob ourselves from this usefulness if we attempt to blunt its meaning. If we find ourselves suffering, we should not immediately assume that it is divine discipline, but neither should we refuse to ask ourselves: Have a dishonored the Lord? Is there unrepentant sin in my life?
The second type of punishment is being cut off from the people. Allen Ross notes that this could mean banishment from the community or the sanctuary, but ultimately, it points to God Himself acting in judgment, often through premature death. Ross also suggests that some of these offenses may have been more difficult to prove in court, so the guilty were handed over to God for judgment. The community would simply separate from them, and God would deal with them. Indeed, this is still an important and sobering reminder: while there are many sins that will never be detected or at least proved by others, God sees all.
The third and most severe punishment was death, often by stoning, carried out by the community as a whole. By acting together, the people bore witness that they agreed with God’s verdict.
THE CALL TO HOLINESS
Verses 7-8 and 22-26 again summon Israel to holiness. Again, God is calling His people to separate from the Canaanites around them. God’s people were to be different. Distinct in how they lived, how they worshiped, in how they treated one another. They were to discern what is right and wrong, clean and unclean, holy and unholy. They were not to offer their children to Molech as a bribe for protection. They were not to seek guidance from necromancers instead of trusting the wisdom and providence of God. They were not to dishonor father and mother. They were not to chase pleasure and passion at the expense of holiness. They were to be governed by love, love of God and love of neighbor.
SIN, PUNISHMENT, AND HOLINESS IN ROMANS
In Leviticus 20, we have seen the sin, punishment, and call to holiness that marks the chapter. We find these themes abundant in the New Testament as well, especially in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Like Leviticus, Romans has two main movements: chapters 1-11, which unfold the gospel of salvation and justification by faith, and chapters 12-16, which call us to lives of holiness in response to the gospel.
Now, in our text, there were two kinds of sin presented: idolatry and adultery. But as we said in chapter 18, the two are not entirely separate, for all sin is idolatry, and idolatry is spiritual adultery. Romans 1 establishes that point quite clearly. In Romans 1:18-23, Paul writes:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Every human being knows that God exists. They see His power and glory in creation. They know, deep down, that there is a Creator and that they are His creatures. But what do they do in response to that knowledge? “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…” That is the great sin that lies behind all other sins: the failure to honor God and give thanks to Him. In verse 25, Paul says that they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man…” That is idolatry, exchanging the Creator for the creature. And those are the only two religions in the entire cosmos. We must inevitably worship something, and if it is not God, then it is idolatry.
Notice, therefore, that it is not sins like sexual immorality that lead to idolatry; instead, sexual sin is the consequence of idolatry. Verse 24: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies…” This is the effect. Failing to honor and give thanks to God is the cause. They rejected God; therefore, He gave them over to their own desires.
And that phrase is repeated three times in Romans 1 (vv. 24, 26, 28). Lewis once wrote that “there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says in the end, ‘Thy will be done.'” That is essentially what Paul is describing here. God says, “Do whatever you want.” That is the opposite of the painful but loving discipline of God.
Verses 26-27 show the result: unnatural passions, passions that violate God’s good design. Then verse 28 continues the plunge:
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Does that list sound familiar? It sounds like the world that we live in. We need to understand this clearly: the sexual revolution did not cause our society to turn from God; our society turned from God, and He gave us over to the sexual revolution. Every moral collapse that we see around us, from abortion and the celebration of sexual depravity to the resurgence of witchcraft and paganism, all of it flows from this same root, which is the refusal to honor God and give thanks to Him.
Indeed, the heart of every sin is unbelief, doubting the goodness of God, that His way is not best, and believing that we can find a better path for ourselves. Indeed, that is exactly what happened in the Garden. Before they disobeyed, they questioned God’s goodness. That is where sin always begins.
Sin is never just a deed; it is always idolatry. And when people persist in idolatry, God eventually gives them up.
If we keep reading through Romans, in chapter 3 Paul tells us who all ids guilty of breaking God’s law. How many of us have turned from God? How many of us were in danger of being handed over to our sins because we do not acknowledge God as God or give thanks to Him? All of us.
as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
Then we read in 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And in Romans 6:23, we learn what exactly that means: “The wages of sin is death.” A wage, of course, is what is earned through work. Sin earns death. And the blood is on our own heads. God is not unjust for punishing sinners. Each person gets what they have justly earned, and every one of us deserves to bear our own iniquity. WE each deserve to be cut off from God’s presence.
And because God is eternal, the consequence of sinning against Him is eternal. After all, a sin’s punishment is also determined by who has been sinned against. If I lie to a stranger, I can probably get away with it. If I lie to my wife or children, it is a deep betrayal. If I lie in court, I’ve committed perjury. But if I lie to God, that is damnable offense. And that is what we all deserve.
And yet, Christ steps into the picture. Christ takes our punishment onto Himself. Christ bore our iniquity upon Himself, taking the penalty that belonged to us. The only that death does not come to us eternally is because Christ took it on Himself.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
That is the good news. Christ died for the ungodly, for you and me. And notice how all the imagery from Leviticus comes to fulfillment in Him. He was cut off from His people. He taken outside the camp, outside the gates of Jerusalem, to die. He bore the curse and iniquity of His people upon Himself. And He was put to death by both Jew and Gentile, meaning that all of humanity had a hand in His crucifixion. We all put Christ to death.
Of course, as Peter said, the grave could not contain Him. He burst back to life on the third day. Now He is gathering to Himself a new people, the true Israel. From every tribe, tongue, and nation, He is bringing many sons to glory.
And just as Leviticus called Israel to holiness after atonement was made, so Romans ends with that same call. Christ has dealt with our sin; now, by the Holy Spirit, He calls us to walk in holiness, to be holy as He is holy.
Romans 12:1 begins that call: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
“By the mercies of God” is a phrase that captures the gospel that Paul just expounded. By that mercy, do not bring to God a bull, goat, or grain as your offering; bring your body to Him. You are the sacrifice to God. Your body, your life, your thoughts, your actions, they all belong to God. You are now a living sacrifice, laid upon the heavenly altar.
Then verse 2 continues: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you mya discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The ESV footnote tells us that the Greek word (αἰών) for world in this verse can also mean age, and that is usually how that word is translated. The Greeks and Romans both spoke of the world in both space and time. We usually think of the world only in spatial terms, but they would consider what we call a lifetime or an age to be world within time. We retain that thought whenever we speak of the past as being another world. So, when Paul says not be conformed to this world. He is warning us not to conform ourselves to this lifetime, this age, in which we live, for we belong to the age to come.
Instead, we must be transformed. In Greek, this is where our word metamorphosis comes from. So, think of the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Without being informed or observing yourself, we would all assume that they were two entirely different species, like a spider and an earthworm. Even so, we are to be radically changed from what we were. But the transformation begins with the mind, with reshaping our desires, and orienting our lives around the will of God.
This is important because today’s path of obedience is not always black and white. We are citizens of heaven, but we remain citizens of earthly nations as well. We are not of this world, but we still live within it. We must be transformed. Let your mind be continually renewed by the Word and Spirit of God. Let discernment be your daily habit, testing what is good, acceptable, and perfect. Only then can we live distinct lives that are set apart for Christ our Lord.
And so, as we come to the Table before us, let us look upon what is truly good, acceptable, and perfect. Here we see the greatest display of God’s kingdom. This bread and cup summon us to look upon the sacrifice of our Savior, who gave Himself as our ransom. So, let us come to the Table humbly, knowing that apart from Christ, we are all guilty and unworthy. If God had not placed our iniquities onto Christ, He would have been completely just to let us bear them ourselves. But praise God, He has given us Another in our place. As we taste and see the goodness of our God in this bread and cup, let us rejoice in the life forgiveness that our Savior has given us.
B. C. Newton 