“You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes.” Leviticus 18:3
As God continues providing Moses the Law that will rule His People, He brings them to a point where they can stop and consider their Worldview. Up until now, they had only known Life in Egypt. They had been born and raised in a foreign land, with a “knowledge” of God and that they were a “distinct” People. There wasn’t much more than this. They probably knew bits and pieces of their past, handed down to them generationally, but not much more. Remember, Moses was the one that wrote the Book of Genesis and they did not have it yet. So He begins by providing a Warning that we find in Today’s Verse.
He starts with their Past and says “You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived”. All that you have known growing up, displayed by the Culture around you, you are not to be like that! But He doesn’t stop there. He also supplies the Warning; “You shall not do…what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you”. There too, the people and their Culture lived at Enmity with God. As we saw in a previous Chapter, they were to be a Holy People, a People “set apart and distinct” from those around them. Moses then goes on to “explain” what that looked like in this Chapter. Because we live in a World in which much of our Culture still reflects Christian Values, it is quite shocking to read through this Chapter and see what Egypt and Canaan Life looked like back then. This is where we find ourselves in light of Today’s Verse. Israel had a Past Culture they were part of, and they were venturing to a Future One. God is warning them about both and that they are to live “differently” than those in it!
The same holds true for us! If we have been Born Again, God has delivered us from Darkness and translated us to the Kingdom of Light. Before we were saved, we only knew the Culture around us as Slaves in that World. We were blind to anything other than that. But where we lived was a Sodom and Gomorrah-like world. And now, God has delivered us from it, and its control over us! We were “children of wrath, even as the rest”. So we must be on guard that we don’t replace the past Evil World with a New One. Paul uses the phrase “present evil age” to warn the Galatians not to succumb to their Culture. May God deliver us from both, the Past, and the Present, “Evil Age”!!!