Opening a Line to Hell Text: Leviticus 20:27
Introduction: Our Traffickers in Damnation
We live in a profoundly unserious age. It is an age that treats ultimate things as trivial, and trivial things as ultimate. Our culture will get into a moral lather over the carbon footprint of a hamburger, but will treat trafficking with demons as a harmless parlor game. We have men who think they are women, women who think they are men, and a whole host of people who think the spiritual realm is a playground for their therapeutic self-discovery. They want to "manifest" their desires, consult their horoscopes, talk to dead relatives, and generally treat the spiritual world like a cosmic vending machine.
But the spiritual world is not a playground; it is a battlefield. And when you open lines of communication into that world without God as your authorized mediator, you are not talking to your sweet Aunt Mildred who passed on. You are opening a direct line to the demonic, and you are inviting hell into your living room. The modern world thinks of mediums and spiritists, if it thinks of them at all, as either harmless kooks or outright frauds. But the Bible takes them with the utmost seriousness. Why? Because the Bible, unlike our secularist overlords, actually understands the nature of reality. It knows that there are real spiritual entities, principalities and powers, and that they hate God and hate His image-bearers.
The sin described in our text is not about being gullible. It is not about being scientifically naive. It is about high treason. It is about seeking counsel, wisdom, and power from the sworn enemies of the one true God. It is a profound act of cosmic rebellion. It is to go to the G.H.Q. of the adversary in order to get your marching orders. When Israel was established as a nation, it was established as a theocracy, with God as its direct king. Therefore, to consult a medium was to consult a foreign power, an enemy intelligence agency. It was an act of espionage against the throne of God itself. And in any sane kingdom, treason is a capital crime. Our text today is severe, and it is meant to be. It is a guardrail intended to keep God's people from driving their souls straight off a cliff into a demonic abyss.
We must understand this law not as some dusty, embarrassing artifact from a primitive culture, but as a revelation of God's unchanging hatred for this particular sin and His profound love for His people, whom He desires to protect from such traffickers in damnation.
The Text
‘Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.’
(Leviticus 20:27 LSB)
The Treason Defined (v. 27a)
We begin with the definition of the crime.
"‘Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist..." (Leviticus 20:27a)
Notice first that the law applies equally to men and women. The spiritual world is an equal opportunity employer when it comes to this sort of rebellion. The temptation to seize forbidden knowledge and power is not unique to one sex. This is not about sociology; it is about theology.
So what is a "medium" or a "spiritist"? A medium, in the Hebrew, is an 'ob, which refers to a pit or a wineskin, and by extension, the spirit of the dead that was supposedly summoned. It carries the idea of a hollow sound, like the voice of a ghost. A medium is someone who claims to have a "familiar spirit," a personal demon who acts as their control, their spiritual guide. A spiritist, or a necromancer, is one who directly seeks to inquire of the dead. These are two sides of the same counterfeit coin. One is a host for a demon guide, the other is a seeker of the dead. Both are attempting to bypass God's ordained channels of revelation.
God has spoken. He has given us His law, His prophets, and ultimately, His Son. He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. To turn from this vast ocean of divine wisdom to sip at the polluted puddles of demonic intelligence is an act of supreme contempt for God. It is saying to God, "Your word is not enough. Your wisdom is insufficient. Your guidance is lacking. I am going to the other team for advice." This is why King Saul's life ended in such ruin. Having rejected the word of the prophet Samuel, his final act of rebellion was to consult the witch of Endor, seeking counsel from a medium (1 Sam. 28). That was the final nail in his coffin. He was looking for a word from the spiritual world, having rejected the Word of God, and God gave him over to his sin and to his destruction.
This is not an innocent hobby. It is idolatry of the highest order. It is a lust for control, an attempt to manipulate reality and the future by tapping into forbidden power. This is the essence of what the Bible condemns as witchcraft or sorcery. It is an attempt to be as God, knowing good and evil on your own terms, which is precisely the lie the serpent told in the Garden.
The Judicial Sentence (v. 27b)
Given the gravity of the crime, the sentence is correspondingly severe.
"...shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones." (Leviticus 20:27b LSB)
Now, this is where modern Christians get squeamish. We have been catechized by the secular pieties of our age to believe that tolerance is the highest virtue. But God does not tolerate treason. In the civil framework of ancient Israel, a nation under the direct rule of God, this was a capital offense. To allow a medium to operate was to allow an enemy communications outpost to be set up within your borders. It was a threat to the life and health of the entire nation.
The method of execution was stoning. This was not arbitrary. Stoning was a communal act. The witnesses, those who brought the accusation, were required to cast the first stones (Deut. 17:7). This did two things. First, it ensured that accusations were not made lightly. You had to be certain enough of the crime to participate in the execution. This is the ultimate form of having skin in the game. Second, it was a corporate act of purging evil from their midst. The entire community was participating in upholding the holiness of God and protecting the nation from His judgment. They were saying with their actions, "We will not tolerate this rebellion in our camp."
Now, how do we apply this today? Are we to form posses and go stone the local palm reader? No, of course not. The civil and ceremonial laws of Israel were fulfilled in Christ. The specific civil penalties of the Mosaic code were for that nation, in that time. As the Westminster Confession says, those judicial laws expired along with the state of that people, except for the "general equity" thereof. So what is the general equity here? The principle is this: God hates this sin with a perfect hatred, and a truly Christian society would recognize it as a profound evil and a public danger. It would not be treated as a protected form of speech or religion. A Christian republic would suppress such practices, not because we are trying to coerce conversion at the point of a sword, but because we are protecting the public good from a manifest spiritual poison. But let me be clear: such laws can only be enacted by a people who are overwhelmingly Christian. You cannot have Christian laws without a Christian people. The cart does not go before the horse. Our first task is not to lobby for stoning, but to preach the gospel that can make a people righteous and sensible enough to once again hate what God hates.
The Moral Responsibility (v. 27c)
The verse concludes by assigning the ultimate responsibility for the punishment.
"Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.’" (Leviticus 20:27c LSB)
This is a crucial legal declaration. It means that the community, in executing the sentence, is not guilty of murder. The guilt for the death of the medium lies squarely on the medium himself. His own sin has brought this upon him. He chose to traffic with demons, he chose to commit treason against the King of Heaven, and the consequences of that choice are now his and his alone. The community is simply acting as the agent of God's justice.
This principle of bloodguiltiness is essential. When the state, acting rightly, executes a murderer, it is not committing murder. It is administering just retribution, and the blood of the murderer is upon his own head. In the same way here, the one who opens a portal to the demonic realm is responsible for the lethal consequences that follow. They have chosen death, and God, through His appointed means, gives them what they have chosen.
This is a terrifying thought, but it is also a just one. God does not take the death of anyone lightly, but He takes rebellion against His throne with ultimate seriousness. To choose to be a conduit for the demonic is to make yourself an enemy of all that is good and holy, and the responsibility for that choice is absolute.
The Gospel for Spiritists
This law, like all of God's law, is severe. And in its severity, it drives us to the gospel. For who among us has not, in some way, sought wisdom apart from God? Who has not listened to the serpent's whisper, wanting to be our own god, wanting to control our own destiny? In our rebellion, we have all opened lines of communication with the enemy. The wages of this sin is death. We are all under a capital sentence.
The law says, "shall surely be put to death." The law says, "their bloodguiltiness is upon them." And this is true for every sinner. Our bloodguiltiness is upon us.
But this is where the glory of the gospel shines brightest against the dark backdrop of the law. There was one who came and took our bloodguiltiness upon Himself. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, went to the cross. And on that cross, He who knew no sin became sin for us. He who never trafficked with demons was treated as the ultimate traitor, cast out of the camp, and executed. He bore the curse of the law for us (Gal. 3:13).
He was, in a sense, stoned for us. He was crushed under the weight of our iniquities. He took the capital sentence that we deserved. Why? So that anyone, even a medium or a spiritist, even a modern pagan dabbling with a Ouija board or tarot cards, could repent of their treason and find complete and utter forgiveness. The apostle Paul reminds us that some in the Corinthian church had been idolaters and involved in all sorts of wickedness, "And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11).
The line to hell has been opened by sin, but the way to heaven has been opened by the blood of Christ. The law shows us the deadliness of the disease. The gospel provides the only cure. Therefore, we must turn from all our pathetic attempts to get a word from the underworld and listen to the Word from Heaven, Jesus Christ the Lord. He is the only mediator we need, the only source of true wisdom, and the only one who can take our bloodguiltiness away.