February 13 - Aversion to Perversion

 Read today’s texts first: Leviticus 20-22; Acts 20

MAXIMize YOUR DAY

God help us to hate the sin in our world as much
as we love the sinner. 

When God has a sex talk He holds nothing back.  Leviticus is not a bedtime story for children.  It seems like God wants to warn His people about every conceivable sexual sin, from threesomes with a mother and her daughter to orgies in the barnyard, with the livestock!  Where’s the parents’ advisory on these chapters?

The point of these details on immorality is to alert His people to the kind of perversion they will encounter among the pagan Canaanite nations:  you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them …. I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples (20:23, 24).

Satan cannot create – only God has that kind of power.  So the devil takes what God has designed for good and twists it, or “perverts” it, to be used outside of God’s intended purpose.  He has done just that with music, dance, and, most insidiously, sex.  The most sacred expression of loving intimacy between a husband and wife has been debased to animalistic lust.

God’s graphic descriptions should make us as angry as it does Him.  It’s that hatred of sin that will keep us from being sucked into the vortex of perversion that is as prevalent now as it was then. Unfortunately, the twisted thinking of the world has crept into our churches, our Bible colleges, and yes, at times, even my own life.  It’s what Paul warned his new converts about (20:30).  Sometimes we need to be shocked out of our complacency.

“God help us to hate the sin in our world as much as we love the sinner.  We live in an upside-down world, but You came to set things right-side-up.  What can I do to right things in my own life, and in the lives of those I can influence?”