Can we imagine being a people in such a unique position that the Creator God is teaching us how to live by His instructions? He was a Holy Guide to them. He loved them.

Leviticus 18 is God caring for their emotional, interpersonal relations. There is nothing more personal than sex. There is nothing more harmful when used in a wrong way.

As I was contemplating how to write this blog, I felt like I had come right up to a solid brick wall and could go no further. I felt like the blind leading the blind because we are all of us today a product of everything through generations and generations of people doing what is right in their own eyes and hurting for those actions. We can’t see the trenches we inhabit nor can we crawl out of them; we just keep bumping into the solid brick wall of our own making.

So our Holy Guide gave instructions to the people. “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” v. 24-25.

How did practices defile them and the land? Sex with close relatives, with the same sex, with their own children, with animals; even sacrificing their own children. Why did God care? Because the people doing these things were causing great harm. Did He love them? Absolutely. They were His people and He was teaching them how to follow Him. He sees the hurt that our sins cause us and others. He sees the wounded, shattered hearts, the guilt, the fear. Sin causes pain. Deep, sometimes hidden pain. I don’t know about you, but when I have sinned my first thought is God doesn’t love me, how could he? I don’t love myself. Our sins wound us deeply like trenches we can’t climb out of.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:24-25. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. Romans 7:14.

God is Spirit. We are not. He is our Holy Guide and He loves us. He knows what we are made of and He loves us still. Why? How could He? Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” Romans 8:1-2, 14-15.

We cry, Abba, Father…and He is there, our Holy Guide who leads us to Him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17.

We read about sin and it’s so easy to fall into the trap of condemning others because, obviously, their sins are so much worse. How frustrating it must be for God to know our hearts and see us pointing fingers at one another while we are all of us clamoring in those same trenches. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:1-2. So what do we do?

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26.

He is our Holy Guide and He understands our hearts and what it will take to climb out of those awful trenches into the glorious truth of His love for us. He knows the way…take His hand. Your walk with Him is time well spent as you learn from Him who knows your heart, your pain, your joy…all of it and loves you still…and welcomes you home.