“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9). We need a heart transplant!
You’ve heard the phrase, “from the frying pan into the fire.” That was the situation with the children of Israel, as described at the beginning of Leviticus 18. “According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do” (v 3). It may be that the moral conditions in Egypt from which they had been delivered were bad, but the situation in the land of Canaan to which they were traveling, if anything, was worse. The gods and goddesses of the Canaanites were hedonistic and bloodthirsty, in cahoots with the demons of hell. Their religions were full of idolatry, occult practices, divination, and necromancy. They offered their babies to Moloch, putting them into his fiery arms. They offered their young virgins to be abused in the worship of their deities. Their societies were so corrupt that nothing was salvageable from them, except those individuals like Rahab and the Gibeonites, who turned in repentance and faith to the God of Israel. Surely we have more in common today with the Israelites entering Canaan than at first we might think. Our world today is overrun with sexual licentiousness and perversion, filled with false worship and idolatry of every kind, as endemic as the conditions were in Old Testament Canaan or New Testament Corinth. What some call the New Morality is nothing but the old immorality dressed up. Thus the warnings to us fit right in with the forbidden practices outlined in Leviticus 18. “Flee sexual immorality” (1 Cor 6:18). “Flee from idolatry” (10:14). “Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim 2:22).