Today, we’ll expand on last week’s blog. Here again is the scripture we’re teaching from:
“I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. These things happened as a warning to us, so that we would not crave evil things as they did, or worship idols as some of them did. As the Scriptures say, ‘The people celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry.’ And we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did, causing 23,000 of them to die in one day.”
Corinthians 10:1-8
Yesterday, I talked about the importance of limiting your time watching TV and on social media. I touched on how the values pretrade on TV and Social media platforms can begin to infiltrate out minds and slowly influence our beliefs. Today, I’m going to expand upon that.
In verse 7, they engaged in “pagan revelry”. This means that they copied what they saw the world doing. They turned their backs on Yahweh and did what the world around them was going.
So we see by this, that by keeping our eyes on the things the world thinks are important and what the world is doing, we start to be in danger of thinking that these things are okay for us to be doing. You’ll even start to think that Yahweh is okay with these things – that they may actually be His will for our lives.
For example, if we’re taking in all the graphic sexual content and story lines pretrade in most TV shows, movies and other social media platforms, we’ll find ourselves believing that it’s normal for spouses to sleep around on each other. That divorce is normal and that marriage is an archaic institution that is unnecessary and useless.
We’ll find ourselves believing that it’s expected for a single man to have multiple sexual partners at a time, that the more partners that he has, the more of a “man” he is. That it’s okay for a man to objectify women. Or that it’s normal and expected for a women to exploit her sexuality to get what she wants in life. That doing so is the only way she can get ahead in life.
We’ll find ourselves believing that it’s okay to belittle your spouse in front of your children, friends and family. Like we see happening in most sitcoms today.
And once we start believing that these behaviors are normal, we start to find ourselves doing these things in our own lives.
These things have already infiltrated the church. The divorce rate is higher among believers in Christ than it is in the world. Now I’m not saying all divorce is wrong – if your spouse is cheating on you, you got married for the wrong reasons and not for love, or your spouse is abusing you, you have the right to leave, even Jesus taught that much. But to divorce simply because you’re tired of being married or because your spouse isn’t who you want him to be, is selfish and destroys lives.
We also see a sky rocketing rate of teen pregnancy among believers in Christ. Because most have bought into the lie that says if you don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend, than you are not normal. That you can’t be happy and complete without a boy or girl hanging off your arm. That you can’t keep your boyfriend or girlfriend happy and with you unless you’re having sex with him/her.
Even the TV ad online ads us sex to sell things.
I could go on, but you get the point.
We need to see past these lies and see what Yahweh has to say about these things. We need to see were our true value is, what makes our lives really matter, what makes each of us special and unique. And the only way we’re going to be able to do that is to turn off the TV, Computer, etc and get back to reading the Bible. Spending time in prayer and find out Christ’s will for our lives are.
And by surrounding ourselves with like-minded people who see the true value within us and help us to nurture those things about us that make us special. People filled with the Holy Spirit like we are.
Stop selling yourselves short by believing the lies of this world. Come out from among then and be set apart for Christ. In fact, He has already set you apart for Himself. Just come into agreement with Him.
Set you sight on the author and perfecter (Finisher) of our faith.
The consequences are to dire not to.