Daily Devotion: Fornication and Idolatry

Bible Readings for Monday July 11th, 2011
– The Week of The 4th Sunday After Pentecost

*Click on each bible passage to expand the text.

Psalm 92

1. [A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.] It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2. to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,
3. to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.
4. For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.
5. How great are your works, O LORD! Your thoughts are very deep!
6. The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this:
7. though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever,
8. but you, O LORD, are on high forever.
9. For your enemies, O LORD, for your enemies shall perish; all evildoers shall be scattered.
10. But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.
11. My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies; my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.
12. The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
13. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God.
14. In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap,
15. showing that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

Leviticus 26:3-20

3. If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully,
4. I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5. Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land.
6. And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land.
7. You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.
8. Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.
9. I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you.
10. You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make way for the new.
11. I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you.
12. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
13. I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
14. But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments,
15. if you spurn my statutes, and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant,
16. I in turn will do this to you: I will bring terror on you; consumption and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
17. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down by your enemies; your foes shall rule over you, and you shall flee though no one pursues you.
18. And if in spite of this you will not obey me, I will continue to punish you sevenfold for your sins.
19. I will break your proud glory, and I will make your sky like iron and your earth like copper.
20. Your strength shall be spent to no purpose: your land shall not yield its produce, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

1. Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more.
2. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication;
4. that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor,
5. not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;
6. that no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
7. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness.
8. Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you.

• But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil. – Psalm 92:10
• If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. – Leviticus 26:3-4
• For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. – 1 Thessalonians 4:7

 Abstain From Fornication

1 Thessalonians 4

3. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication;
4. that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor,
5. not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God;

What is fornication?

The American Tract Society Bible Dictionary defines fornication as:

Fornication

This word is used in Scripture not only for the sin of impurity between unmarried persons, but for idolatry, and for all kinds of infidelity to God. In Ezekiel 16:1-63, the Jewish church is symbolized as a female infant, growing up to womanhood, and then wedded to Jehovah by covenant. When she breaks her covenant by going after idols, she is justly reproached as an adulteress and a harlot, Jeremiah 2:20 3:8-9 Hosea 3:1. Adultery and fornication are frequently confounded. Both the Old and New Testaments condemn all impurity and fornication, corporeal and spiritual-idolatry, apostasy, heresy, and infidelity.

Sexual Impurity

I have a pretty clear definition for this one, personally:

Don’t fuck around.

I am sorry to have to use such coarse language, but I can’t think of another word that conveys the ugliness, the aggression, and the destruction that is contained in the act of sex solely for pleasure without relationship or love.

Gay or straight, married or single, if you are not in a relationship of love, I would highly recommend not having sex. In my own life, I have only hurt, or been hurt by others when I have had sex without love present.

The one-night stands. The lopsided expectations. The broken promises. The objectification of the other person.

Sex is the single-most emotionally intimate act we humans can experience. We are literally naked and exposed, physically and emotionally vulnerable, and allowing the union of two separate human bodies for a brief period of time. God intended this experience to be spiritual, and to be the ecstatic culmination of the practice of selfless love.

Ecstasy

2. (n.) The state of being beside one’s self or rapt out of one’s self; a state in which the mind is elevated above the reach of ordinary impressions, as when under the influence of overpowering emotion; an extraordinary elevation of the spirit, as when the soul, unconscious of sensible objects, is supposed to contemplate heavenly mysteries.

Human sex is meant to be the ultimate physical, emotional, and ritualistic expression of the concept of union, or the concept of the “we”, and the destruction of the “self”. I can’t tell you how many times I actually lose the sense of where I begin and end when making love to my wife! (I hope this experience is common, because it is priceless).

But instead of celebrating sex as ritual, sex as spiritual rite and expression between two people in love, our culture denies the positive and spiritually affirming aspects of sex and inexplicably promotes only the objectified, soul-less and primal aspects of sex!

Christianity should not be prude. Christians should be “sex-fiends”, but within the confines of a committed, loving relationship. Once there’s love, go at it like rabbits, but only in love, and only with a sense of “sex as spiritual practice”, with only your one partner who you love and loves you in return.

Spiritual Impurity

And now we have a form of fornication that may, in fact, be more damaging to the human soul than sexual impurity: materialism and idolatry.

This form of fornication lies at the heart of the “American Way”. We love our useless stuff. We love our idols.

“What do you mean, Trig?”, you say, “I have no idols.”

Perhaps not, but I highly doubt it.

For example, I have been in Iowa for the last two weeks, and I have been wearing this shirt around for a couple of those days, and the reactions have been extraordinary:

“Why would you want to kill Jesus?”

“That’s offensive.”

“Cool shirt.”

The very first question I asked those who were offended was, “What makes you think this is Jesus?”

“Well, because that’s Jesus.”

And then I would remind them: it is not Jesus. It is a symbol of Jesus, but it is not actually Jesus. I can empirically state that that man pictured is not Jesus. He didn’t look like that. That’s a drawing of some dude, maybe even “made up” by the original artist.

Then they would usually say, “Huh?”

This is a really hard concept for American Christians to grasp because we have generally adopted the symbol as the object of worship and we have lost track of the concept as well as the man who was actually Yeshua (Jesus isn’t even his real name, ironically…).

For God’s sake! Smith’s Bible Dictionary defines idolatry as:

Idolatry

Idolatry, strictly speaking,  denotes the worship of deity in any visible form, whether the images to which homage is paid are symbolical representations of the true God or of the false divinities which have been made the objects of worship in his stead.

So, there,  right off the bat, most if us are guilty of spiritual fornication.

And there are so many more ways for us to be spiritual idolaters:

If you have ever thought that the purchase of an item would make you cool or a better person that others, that’s idolatry.

If you have ever hesitated to give or donate for thoughts of your own material wants and desires? That plasma, that boat, that new car? That’s idolatry.

Have you ever wanted to spend time on your own things and interests than with family or friends? That’s idolatry, bordering on “worship of self”.

And that brings us to the biggest idol of all: the person in the mirror.

That’s really the crux of it all. Since the dawn of religious history, God has been battling with us and our egos. We love ourselves instinctively, and we struggle to see the value inherent in selflessness.

Finally, God chose to show us how to live according to God’s will, and became fully human, lived, taught and died according to God’s Law of Love. As an example. As a savior…

… to help save us from our “self”.

*For further reading on this topic, please read my older devotion, “Gays, Eunuchs, Adultery and God’s Steadfast Love“.