Scripture
"Since the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you." (Deuteronomy 23:14)
Observation
Deuteronomy, or the Law twice spoken, includes a sundry of rules and expectations ranging from our personal hygiene to our morality, from our familial relationships to homosexuality, from judicial law to common or horse sense.
But the bottom line of it all is found here in Deut. 23:14 ... and that is simply that God wants us to think holy, to live holy, and to court God’s presence as the greatest gift of all.
Light cannot dwell with darkness. They do not mix. You will have one or the other, but there cannot be a blend. The book of Revelation calls any occurrence of this as "lukewarm," something God will spew out of His mouth.
On thing that surprised me is that the Lord had to delineate this instructive to what would normally be called, the people of God. He felt He needed to write them down in clear terms for those He had delivered from Egypt. Why?
God would not address something unless He knew that it would be something believers might struggle with someday.
And we are.
Application
Today, believers as well as unbelievers wrestle with these issues, and it has become a confused blend of Christianity. On one hand, people are calling for the blend. It is a lifestyle of choice for many because it allows them to live without parameters, without guardrails to bother them. But when the blend takes place, the world is confused by this new theology because now, there is not a world of God or no God, but a world where there might be a third option, a world of a different god, a different gospel.
Paul in the book of Galatians, refers to this 6:1 ... "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ."
It is not only a historical comment. It is happening today.
We must make a commitment to return to God and the core of the Gospel without becoming legalistic. IT is not swinging the pendulum to the other side, but rather it is correcting it to Jesus.
2 Peter talks about a true knowledge of Jesus, not a spin of Him ... "Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence."
Prayer
Lord Jesus, please help us, as the remnant of the many, in these last days to correct back to Your heart without becoming anti-world. Of course, we do not blend in with them to adopt their practices or views, but at the same time, we cannot reach them in order to lead them to Christ if we shun them either. Please teach us the balance.
