SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/21/2017
10:15 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Sins of Perverted Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
3:5b
Message of the
verse: “immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.”
We have gone over these words from the Greek language in
our last Spiritual Diaries on this subject and so today we will look at the
beginning of our SD on how Paul links sexual immorality, covetousness, and
idolatry in Ephesians 3:3-5 “3 But immorality or any impurity or greed must not
even be named among you, as is proper among saints; 4 and there must be no
filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather
giving of thanks. 5 For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure
person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom
of Christ and God.”
Perhaps of all the things that happened to the human race
once sin entered into it was the perversion of the sexual experience that the
Lord had originally made for mankind when He first created them. We find these sinful sexual experiences in
the Old Testament as well as what we have seen in the New Testament. What we find is that sexual sin associates
with idolatry. There were sexual orgies
that happened in the worship of idols. Let
us look at Numbers 25:1-3 as an example “1 While Israel remained at Shittim,
the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. 2 For they invited the people to the
sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their
gods. 3 So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry
against Israel.”
John MacArthur writes “The antidote for covetousness is
contentment. A contented person will not
desire to violate another person sexually, or covet anything that person
owns. A person who can say with Paul, ‘I
have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I am’ (Phil. 4:11), is not
likely to struggle with covetousness.
Contentment comes from trusting God.
The basis of that trust is our knowledge of Him and His purposes for His
people as revealed in Scripture.”
MacArthur quotes Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs who writes
about contentment being the opposite of covetousness. The covetousness persons worship himself,
while the contented persons worships God.
“You worship God more by
[contentment] than when you come to hear a sermon, or spend half an hour, or an
hour in prayer, or when you come to receive a sacrament. These are acts of God’s worship, but they are
only external acts of worship, to hear and pray and receive sacraments. But [contentment] is the soul’s worship, to subject itself thus
to God…in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by
passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God
does.”
4/21/2017 10:38 PM
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