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.
9 comments:
I'd really appreciate if you could expound on the last paragraph...I think there's an important message there, but somehow it escapes me. Thanks, Jason.
Really enjoyed this, as I do all of your thoughtful wisdom. There is so much to be learned from these words. :) Keep writing! xxoo
Thanks viktor of course. First of all it should say "don't hide" not do, my apologies ha.
Next you have to ask yourself what is sexual impurity and is this a fleshly battle against myself or is this persistent behavior a spiritual battle manifesting itself in the weakness of my flesh? If you believe this is something you can defeat on your own then disregard the post.
I believe it has a spiritual origin (ephesians 6) and that was the inspiration behind this post. And because I believe it is spiritual that means only spirit can defeat the stronghold or persistent behavior. God is Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. This is crucial, the Spirit of the Lord brings liberty and has allowed us to walk in freedom. Read through Romans 6. This declares that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus we were set free from sin because God sent His Spirit to come and take residence within us! This is great news. I am no longer a slave to sin but choose to sin when I offer up my being to sinful desires. Big difference. Now the tricky thing about sexual sin is that the bible says it happens within the body. Yikes, this is where the Spirit of God came to dwell within us and like I said in the blog, this effects the indwelling presence of God (not salvation). It appears the enemy has still found a way back inside our "camp" even after we have accepted Jesus as our savior but can only remain there as long as you give permission, through repeated behavior or unconfessed sin. James 5:16 says "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." This verse shows a direct correlation between our sin and sickness, whether mind or health. So based on all of this, it's almost as if some type of separation occurs whenever we sin sexually ie the guilt and shame we feel and the lies that follow. We see in the garden of Eden that we want to hide from God and cover ourselves. This will not solve anything because it is spiritual. So we acknowledge our sin before God and say I don't want to do this anymore, forgive me Father and come and push this out of me. Help me to choose you instead of what I want in the moment. Thank you for your loving kindness and that you accept me as a son. I believe He responds instantly to that request and we can joyfully walk in obedience to Him after. hope that helps!
Thanks babe you're encouraging!
I want to share a recent crisis in my life vis-à-vis Jason’s insight in this post. I kept cutting text in my reply to be able to post it and had to split it in two parts. Sorry for the length….
Sexual sin is addictive and is a spiral downwards which will sink you for as long as the impure desire is not overcome by spiritual means. A few months ago I got lost in a spree of intense lust and promiscuity. This happened after a long time of spoon-feeding myself with porn, wrong sensual thoughts. The freedom God gave us is so precious and powerful that we can use it in the worst way too. But as sons of God we always have His sparkle at our hand’s reach. Even though I was in darkness I always felt Him around and inside me. Hence I felt more miserable as I was blatantly rejecting Him through my intentional actions. By the time my crisis loomed I had put my fear of God aside and rationalized that it was His plan for me to leave that way! How fool I had become. My sexual sins never made me feel good; instead of fulfilled physically and spiritually, they rendered me empty and lonely. Lack of satisfaction and more desire ensued turning into a vicious circle. I actually thought I had lost my fear of God. But it was acknowledging His presence what brought me back to my senses. After a sinful week I realized what I was becoming. I was turning into an insensitive being looking for frequent easy sex. It didn’t matter what I had to forego in my day to day life to fulfill my sexual desire. I was putting at risk my life and my family’s. My days got full of anguish, grief. I did not know what to do. I prayed a lot and asked God for guidance for I did not want to keep acting like that anymore. The burden was overwhelming and I was not sure how to fight it. I contacted the only one person I could confide my situation to. Not only because he is a good friend of mine but mainly because I know his moral character and his views and beliefs about God and living a Christian life. It was not easy to tell him my sins and fears, to cry and be seen as a vulnerable person. But I found the healing I was looking for. It was an intense conversation where the main instrument was prayer. I openly confessed my sins and repented. Every word I said came from the bottom of my heart. I genuinely wanted God back in me, or better said, I wanted myself accepting Him as my savior and the ultimate answer. What I experienced after our prayer was almost surreal after all the pain I had been going through. I felt at peace, clean, full of hope, loved. The sense of self destruction disappeared. I just wanted to go back to my family and give them a special hug to let them know their husband and father is there to protect them and take care of them without reservations. Since then I think of God everyday again, pray and stay clean. Temptation does not come frequently anymore and when it does I quickly get rid of it instead of embracing it like I used to do. Continued in next post…..
Continued from previous post…..
Sex sins are complicated indeed. You wonder why it plagues the world nowadays. In my opinion, we are collectively losing the fear of God and becoming more selfish and entitled. We live in a Hollywood pseudo-culture where all that matters is the looks, the special effects, how much money you can make or show off, how powerful you can pretend to be. How much power you can have over others, how many “sex partners” you can “possess” to boost your ego. The pursue of all those material things is driving people shallower every day. Only the physical dimension of a person is acknowledged. Why even politicians, former role models and beacons of inspiration, play gigolo over internet and cheat on their spouses? Why is the marketing industry so sexualized? Why are kids abused? Why are kids sexting? Our spiritual dimension is left in auto pilot. God is somewhere out there but we don’t care. We have more immediate issues at hand. You have to work only on your exterior appearance. How do people think their physical image (the oversimplified self) is “approved” by others? One way could be knowing others admire (or envy?) your body. Take it beyond several steps and you might find the need for intimacy which is what sex is all about. I think that there is a hole in our souls leading to a lack of genuine self-esteem, a sort of identity confusion that is offset by superficial things among them lewd behavior. As I witnessed it myself, equivocal sexual actions start small but grow over time in frequency and intensity if not avoided. Sex is intimate, it involves showing your true self to the person you share it with, understanding that giving yourself to the other makes you one stronger being. God made it good, for us to enjoy it. We have degraded it to a point of merely physical pleasure that’s not really pleasurable. The sense of intimacy is that of self-satisfaction rather than sharing true love. It used to be called “making love” for a reason. Now it’s called all series of demeaning things without any actual significance.
So, the snow ball keeps growing at every level. More people lose their fear of God. More people leave the spiritual life behind. More people forget that God is always around. I was fortunate to have found the courage to relight the sparkle of God still in me at the time I needed it the most and to have found the person who helped me in the process. God loves us all and wants the best for each one of His sons and daughters, but we definitely need to embrace the fact that we are tested every day for our loyalty to Him. Failure at it should not be an option.
One last thing about my crisis. That friend of mine who was there when I needed him so badly is Jason. To the guys who know him personally: do cherish his friendship, finding one like that is really hard.
Awesome post, Jason (and commenters)!
I really think you hit the nail on the head, J, when you mention that sexual sin is an especially powerful agent against our bodies. I believe that our society's plummet into sexual sin and addiction has a lot to do with separating the spiritual from the physical. The sexual act was meant to be the marriage act - a physical representation of the spiritual union before God. Now, cheapened in a 100 different ways, sex and the sex nature are "only" what we want/desire. I believe God meant it to be so much more, and the danger of sexual sin is that it is double-edged -physical and spiritual - sin against the body and the spirit.
Great post!
Thanks for expounding, Jason, I think I get the message more clearly now. And thank you to Charles for sharing his inspiring testimony and for honoring our brother, Jason. In fact, after reading both of you, I was inspired to write a new post on my blog. I only write about one blog post a year so I thought this is worth sharing with you. God bless you both! Here's the url: http://victoryinthecrossofchrist.blogspot.com/2013/07/jesus-is-end.html
Amen. Thanks for sharing. :)
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