Contrary to the notion that sin is pleasure, it distances us from God and His true abiding joy.
When the human race was in its infancy, obviously it was necessary for the first families to intermarry. But as the population grew, God placed restrictions on this. Today we know that inter-family marriage is unhealthy. But there were also social reasons to marry non-family members. Doing this produced new alliances and bonds of friendship, strengthening the nation. Thus the prohibitions in Leviticus 18. This was especially important when families lived in close quarters as they traveled through the wilderness. So we read: “You shall observe My judgments and keep My ordinances, to walk in them: I am the Lord your God” (v 4). Only a fool would think that God doesn’t know what is best for His own creatures. The list of forbidden acts is long, and includes behavior that one would think should go without saying. But as the world continues to deteriorate morally, these are the very acts being legalized in Western countries. So-called “open relationships,” homosexuality, even bestiality, what God calls “perversion” (v 23) and “abominable customs” (v 30), are now publicly endorsed and practiced in once-considered “Christian” countries. As T.S. Eliot opined, “The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms upturned in an age which advances progressively backwards?” God warned His people, if they practiced the same sins for which He judged the Canaanites, to beware, “lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you” (v 28). About a thousand years later, that is exactly what happened. How can we not understand the simple words of Numbers 32:23? “Be sure your sin will find you out.”