August 24
Overcoming Immorality, Pornography, and Lust – Part XVI – Critical Transformations – Seeing evil as God sees it
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight!…For they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts, And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. On this account the anger of the LORD has burned against His people, and He has stretched out His hand against them and struck them down..,” (Isaiah 5:20-21, 24, 25)
I think it would be helpful to spend some time looking into these critical transformations in more detail. We will take one or more each day and focus on what the problem area is and what the Biblical transformation looks like. Let’s start with a problem area that I think is a huge problem, an area in which if we could truly become transformed would solve a lot of our problems with immoral thinking behaviors, I believe, and that is viewing evil as God views it.
| FROM Conformed to the World | TO Transformed in Christ |
| 1. Viewing evil as unregenerate man views it: acceptable, healthy, exciting, justified | 1. Viewing evil as God views it: repulsive, a perversion, abhorrent, unjustified, sin |
A casual perusal of the use of the words “evil” and “falsehood” in a concordance reveals many convicting references. It is surprising how many times the phrase, “he did evil in the sight of the LORD” occurs in the Old Testament, usually in reference to a king or leader that forsook the Lord and His word and imitated the behavior of the surrounding pagan nations. These leaders stumbled because they listened to the ideas and counsel of men and chose to ignore the counsel of God. Why would one turn away from God’s ways? Well, man’s standard is certainly is an easier standard to follow. Little if any self-denial or self-control is necessary. Much fleshly indulgence is tolerated and encouraged. God’s way is much more exacting, much, much more narrow and difficult. How can I “find myself” and “express who I really am” if I am confined to God’s law and submission to Christ?
The problem is that we as Christians live in a world that has abandoned God’s laws and God’s ways. The message we are continually bombarded with is not only a message that immoral behavior is good and acceptable and something to be celebrated, but that God’s message is outdated, ignorant, and even harmful. We really are left with a choice: we either worship and serve a god of our own making, one that approves of and encourages immoral behavior, or we worship and serve the God of scripture, Who is HOLY and PURE in every aspect and Who is the One who has set very high and narrow standards for our sexuality and has communicated them to us in His Word, the Bible, both Old Testament and New. If we serve the former, then we will face the consequences if we are wrong. If we serve the latter, then we MUST conform our view of sexual behavior to His view of sexual behavior. We must view sin the way He views it, whether we understand it or not, whether we agree with it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or not. We can’t pick and choose and change scripture to our liking. We can’t hope God has somehow changed His opinion and that all the bad things He says in His word that will come those who practice immorality will somehow or another not apply to us.
More on this tomorrow.