In the 23rd day of the 6 month the Word of the Lord came to me(just being silly here) via the bible application on my smart phone. I downloaded the bible application that allows you to listen to the Word instead of having to read it and I took advantage of this opportunity on my long drive from Dallas to Ft Worth each morning. I started in genesis and progressed through each chapter. At this particular time I was in Deuteronomy and since I had not had my morning coffee, I was asking the Lord for wisdom to understand these books. A lot of the things in there were hard to swallow and I really wanted to know the importance of why God set up the laws the way He did. On this particular morning I was listening to Deuteronomy chapter 23 and these verses stood out to me:
9"When you are encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep yourself from every evil thing.
10"If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp. He shall not come inside the camp, 11but when evening comes, he shall bathe himself in water, and as the sun sets, he may come inside the camp.
12"You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it. 13And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. 14Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.
God lines up the divine order in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy showing how things should function socially and communally in order for His people to have favor and a relationship with Him. All these things are a shadow of what’s to be fulfilled in the New Testament. When someone became impure or unclean they were to leave camp for a period of time and not return until they were cleansed. Was it to isolate them to make them feel ashamed and unwanted? "Look Phillips leaving the camp again, must have had another wet dream" No! I don’t think that’s the case but rather for the very reason we see in vs 14 because God would walk among them and cannot be around anything impure and man's seed carries with it the curse inherited from the fall. It’s about Him and His glory.
I’ve been wrestling with the idea of sexual immorality lately and why this particular sin seems to plague many men and women with extreme strongholds and consequences. How you hear devastating stories about failed marriages, pastors falling into child molestation, sex trafficking and the dark stories go on and on… but when caught they always say “I never thought I would be where I am now”….. what happened?
I’ve heard and believe that sexual sin takes you down a path you don’t want to go and keeps you there longer than you want to stay. But why sexual sin vs other types of sin? Well I believe the old testament reference here and our boy Paul answers this question for us in 1 Corinthians 6:
15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." 17But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
So this issue here is not as much about the sin but where it takes place! God does not walk among the camp like He did in the Old Testament because now as a Saint in Christ His Spirit dwells within us! However He is the same God and cannot be in the presence of what is impure and defiled. I believe, sexual sin done in the body where His Spirit is to dwell within us, is so devastating b/c it removes us from His presence (fellowship not Presence for He is everywhere and David says where can I flee from your presence). Am I saying we lose our salvation? Of course not, but we lose His presence, power and that nearness we need to overcome, “14Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy” God is our deliverer. He lives within us to defeat our enemies before us and we must be filled with the Spirit daily. Is sexual sin so destructive and one of the enemies best weapons because it removes the power we need in order to be delivered from the very thing we are striving to defeat? If you don’t have any money and continue to spend, you will continue to get into more and more debt. The same principle can be applied here. If we overcome sin through Jesus and if sexual sin against our body removes His presence, then do you see how this will quickly become a long dark road?
How did they get to enter back into the camp? By cleansing themselves through the washing of the water.
We’ve had that in baptism but it takes a lifelong process of confession and repentance to walk in victory and freedom. We plea the blood of the cross in humility as our Father accepts us with open arms… Don't hide from confession and repentance under the deception that “you can handle it” outside of the camp…Jesus is your sympathetic High Priest.
