Spewing Land

Leviticus 18 lists a range of sexual relationships that are forbidden for the people of God. They were dangerous for the Israelites because they gave the spiritual powers of evil access to their community.

The thing that struck me reading this passage is the reason that God gives for forbidding these practices.

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. The land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out the people living in it (Lev 18:24-25).

Sexual immorality harms families, but God reminds here that it also defiles the land. When the land is really defiled it will vomit the people out of it.

These days we have forgotten the link between morality and the productivity of the land, but it has not gone away. Immorality eventually affects the productivity of the land. If the people of a nation embrace evil, the land will eventually vomit them out. The land will be plagued with invasive weeds and destructive pests that will prevent grass and crops from growing.

More at Land and Spirit.