Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Deuteronomy, Chapters 21-23 … To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Highlight Chronological Passage : Deuteronomy, Chapters 22: 13-30 … To study this passage, go to this link -
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Highlight Reference Passage #2 : Colossians 3: 5-7 … 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.
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Highlight Reference Passage #3 : 1st Corinthians 6: 18-20 … 18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
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Highlight Reference Passage #4 : Ephesians 5: 3-6 … 3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
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Highlight Reading #5 : Proverbs, Chapters 1 - 9 … To study this passage, go to this link -
My Journal for Today: Today’s chronological Bible reading has me (us) in Deuteronomy, Chapters 21-23, linked above for your reading; but the passage which hit me hard today was in Chapter 22: 13-30. And studying it bubbled up several other Bible passages from the Apostle Paul’s teaching in the NT as well as from Solomon’s proverbs; and I have referenced them above for your review and my discussion below.
Today, in our primary highlight passage, Moses was going through a number of the laws and practices which God needed to relay to His chosen people to help keep them on His pure and righteous pathway, especially after they were to enter the promised-land. And the section I’ve highlighted today reminded me of a father sitting down with his young son and giving him “the sex talk,” … much as Solomon was doing with his son in the latter referenced Proverbs, Chapters 1-9.
It is of interest to me – especially in light of the ministry God has led me to found and lead (see http://www.battleplanministries.org) – to read the extent to which God’s word emphases the avoidance of sexual sin, both in the Old and New Testaments. God knows the sinful and disobedient nature of His fallen children; and He puts this much emphasis on the sins of the flesh, knowing how vulnerable we humans are to this particular stronghold of sin. And Satan knows it too; and God’s #1 enemy, who has been given a certain degree of reign over this world, has developed more and more sexually oriented weapons to come against God’s people, using sexual temptations and minefields to bring down the children who would desire to follow God’s way and His will.
So, God through Moses and Solomon under the Old Covenant and the Apostle Paul under the New Covenant, laid out strong warnings for God’s people, through God’s written laws and word , charging God’s children to exercise their free-will and to avoid letting the body be a vehicle of disobedience and desecration against God.
And the applications in today’s world, reading and mediating on the Scriptures I’ve highlighted above, speak, from God’s very own word, as to His purpose to have His children to do all they (we) can to avoid falling into Satan’s tarpit of sexual sin. And it would take a fool not to be able to see how strongly Satan and the world uses this strategy of sexual temptations to distract the attention of the unsaved away from God’s call and to discourage the saved from being able to live and witness with purity the life God desires for His children.
Today’s “triple-X industry,” as I call it, is a fortified cadre of sexualized super-weapons which attempts to lure people away from the purposes of God. And for 22 years of my own life, before I came to know Christ as my Lord/Savior, I was deeply bound up in my own habitual pursuit of selfish sexual pleasures. And even now, living in Christ and having been delivered from that past of habitual sexual sin, I have to arm myself EVERY DAY to do battle in a world which tries to distract me, especially as men are so visually and sexually driven, away from the empowering grace God, in Christ, provides for me to make Godly rather than ungodly choices. Every day is a battle in this hypersexual world; and that’s the reason we call our ministry Battle Plan Ministry; and we’ve been called and anointed by God to help Christians, especially men, walk strongly and with purity in Satan’s world … a world which is set up to bring them (us) down.
I hope I don’t need to give you, my beloved, God’s sex-talk. Because God’s word, highlighted above, does it with far more authority than I can write here warning you to DO WHAT GOD SAYS to live a life which shines God’s light of purity into a very darkened world.
So, … my last assignment – and one of God’s strongest sex-talks – is to study through Solomon’s warning to his son, linked above in Proverbs, Chapters 1-9, where Solomon, speaking for God, the Father, lays out one of God’s strongest warnings to walk circumspectly in this world, avoiding all of the pitfalls and temptations which Satan will use to lure us into his tarpits of sexual sin.
I am praying that we all take heed to God’s sex-talk and walk in a way which glorifies our Lord.
My Prayer Today: … Oh, Heavenly Father, empower me through Your grace this very day to walk Your walk of purity and to honor You with this Temple You have given me … my body. Amen
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
2010 – Mar. 2 – Sexual Taboos
Study from God’s Word… Deut 21 10-14; Deut 24: 5; Deut 22: 13-21; Deut 24: 1-4; Lev 18: 1-5; Deut 5: 18; Lev 18: 20; Lev 20: 10; Deut 22: 22-24; Lev 19: 20-22; Num 5: 11-31; Lev 19: 29; Deut 23: 17-18; Lev 18: 6-8; Deut 22: 30; Lev 20: 11; Lev 18: 9-14; Lev 20: 11; Lev 20: 19-20; Lev 18: 15-18; Lev 20: 12; 14, 21; Lev 18: 18-22; Lev 20: 13; Lev 18: 23; Ex 22: 19; Lev 20: 15-16; Lev 18: 24-30, 20: 22-24; Deut 22: 5 … Passage for Reflection: Leviticus 18: 24 … NIV 24 " '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.
My Journal for Today: Okay, … in these studies I’m undertaking from the Law of God through Moses to the ancient Hebrews, under the direction of F. LaGard Smith, it’s time to have “the sex talk.” And Dr. Smith puts it right out there when he writes for this date, ”Nothing is quite the barometer of a culture’s moral values like sex. … If one can throw off the shackles of sexual restraint with impunity, then there are no moral boundaries that cannot be safely traversed. That culture wars are fought mostly on the battle-grounds of sexual issues is not happenstance.”
And in saying this, I am very personally caught up in the playing out of such issues because of where my own sexual immorality led me for so many years of my life before I came to know Christ as my Lord and Savior. And all those years where I rejected the morays of God, calling myself an “agnostic,” but actually being an atheist, were moral attempts to justify my own personal immorality, saying that the so-called “Christian ways” were antiquated and meaningless for my life and for our world. And today we see many, like I once was, trying to excuse or redefine the sexual morals of our times, positing that the Biblical morals of the Old Testament are totally antiquated and meaningless for our generation and world.
We have kids who call themselves “christian,” who participate in oral sex outside of marriage; and they call such practices “christian sex” because there’s no “sexual intercourse” involved. We had a President a few years ago who tried to redefine “sex” to fit his own personal sexual practices, reshaping his so-called “Southern Baptist” past. We have people pursuing a sexual lifestyle called “gay,” who say that it’s a normal “christian” mode of behavior, given their post-modern definition of “christianity.”
So, … are there no taboos, … no limits, … no absolutes with regard to sexual morals in our world today? And here it’s interesting for us to observe that those who say that homosexuality is “normal,” do not want to compare themselves morally with those who claim that pedophilia should be considered within the realm of normalcy. But, there are few who would claim that bestiality is “normal,” … except maybe those who have a sexual fetish for animals. And so, it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to see why God, who was setting His Hebrew nation apart from the cultures surrounding them, would place some pretty definite limitations on sexual practices in God’s ancient Israelite nation.
Surrounding the Israelites in Moses’ times, were cultures who used prostitutes in their practices of worship. There were peoples and tribes where homosexuality and bestiality were openly and morally condoned. And hence, as it indicates in today’s highlight passage, God was going to separate His children from such immorality and make His chosen people different; and many of the laws, especially those involving sexual expression, became God’s vehicle to set His ways apart from those of the pagan lands surrounding the Israelites. And God’s desire to hold out moral standards even today shows us that there are sexual pursuits we, as believers in the truth of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments) should avoid; and there are moral absolutes, we should protect and pursue diligently.
Unfortunately, we live in times where many of the Christian sexual morays are breaking down; and it’s hard to lead our families into following the so-called “Biblical” ways of honoring God with sex only in the confines of how the Bible defines marriage and family. Today the definitions of these concepts of “marriage” and “family” are morphing rapidly; and the sexual practices involved in these definitions are also changing so that sexual pursuits which were TABOO 50 years ago are accepted and even promoted today.
And when I read a passage like Romans 1: 18-32 [linked here for your study], I can’t help but think that God, though He has been incredibly merciful for many years in our land, is now lifting the protective shield of His Spirit, and letting mankind pursue deviant practices which will ultimately lead us, as a people and culture, into an abyss of death and destruction. Unfortunately the rain of consequences from the sin of any nation will fall from God on the righteous as well as the unrighteous.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, have mercy on any of the remnant of Your family who hold fast to Your sexual principles of truth. Amen
My Journal for Today: Okay, … in these studies I’m undertaking from the Law of God through Moses to the ancient Hebrews, under the direction of F. LaGard Smith, it’s time to have “the sex talk.” And Dr. Smith puts it right out there when he writes for this date, ”Nothing is quite the barometer of a culture’s moral values like sex. … If one can throw off the shackles of sexual restraint with impunity, then there are no moral boundaries that cannot be safely traversed. That culture wars are fought mostly on the battle-grounds of sexual issues is not happenstance.”
And in saying this, I am very personally caught up in the playing out of such issues because of where my own sexual immorality led me for so many years of my life before I came to know Christ as my Lord and Savior. And all those years where I rejected the morays of God, calling myself an “agnostic,” but actually being an atheist, were moral attempts to justify my own personal immorality, saying that the so-called “Christian ways” were antiquated and meaningless for my life and for our world. And today we see many, like I once was, trying to excuse or redefine the sexual morals of our times, positing that the Biblical morals of the Old Testament are totally antiquated and meaningless for our generation and world.
We have kids who call themselves “christian,” who participate in oral sex outside of marriage; and they call such practices “christian sex” because there’s no “sexual intercourse” involved. We had a President a few years ago who tried to redefine “sex” to fit his own personal sexual practices, reshaping his so-called “Southern Baptist” past. We have people pursuing a sexual lifestyle called “gay,” who say that it’s a normal “christian” mode of behavior, given their post-modern definition of “christianity.”
So, … are there no taboos, … no limits, … no absolutes with regard to sexual morals in our world today? And here it’s interesting for us to observe that those who say that homosexuality is “normal,” do not want to compare themselves morally with those who claim that pedophilia should be considered within the realm of normalcy. But, there are few who would claim that bestiality is “normal,” … except maybe those who have a sexual fetish for animals. And so, it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to see why God, who was setting His Hebrew nation apart from the cultures surrounding them, would place some pretty definite limitations on sexual practices in God’s ancient Israelite nation.
Surrounding the Israelites in Moses’ times, were cultures who used prostitutes in their practices of worship. There were peoples and tribes where homosexuality and bestiality were openly and morally condoned. And hence, as it indicates in today’s highlight passage, God was going to separate His children from such immorality and make His chosen people different; and many of the laws, especially those involving sexual expression, became God’s vehicle to set His ways apart from those of the pagan lands surrounding the Israelites. And God’s desire to hold out moral standards even today shows us that there are sexual pursuits we, as believers in the truth of Scripture (both Old and New Testaments) should avoid; and there are moral absolutes, we should protect and pursue diligently.
Unfortunately, we live in times where many of the Christian sexual morays are breaking down; and it’s hard to lead our families into following the so-called “Biblical” ways of honoring God with sex only in the confines of how the Bible defines marriage and family. Today the definitions of these concepts of “marriage” and “family” are morphing rapidly; and the sexual practices involved in these definitions are also changing so that sexual pursuits which were TABOO 50 years ago are accepted and even promoted today.
And when I read a passage like Romans 1: 18-32 [linked here for your study], I can’t help but think that God, though He has been incredibly merciful for many years in our land, is now lifting the protective shield of His Spirit, and letting mankind pursue deviant practices which will ultimately lead us, as a people and culture, into an abyss of death and destruction. Unfortunately the rain of consequences from the sin of any nation will fall from God on the righteous as well as the unrighteous.
My Prayer for Today: Lord, have mercy on any of the remnant of Your family who hold fast to Your sexual principles of truth. Amen
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