Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Made into an Abomination


Moved by the Spirit, David spoke of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God after He had brought them out of Egyptian slavery and given them Canaan’s land:

“They mixed themselves with the heathen and learned their works, and they served their idols.  They even sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons and shed innocent blood – the blood of their own sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was defiled with the blood.  Yea, they were defiled by their works, and they played the harlot by their deeds.  Then the anger of the Lord burned hot against His people, and He made His inheritance an abomination” (Ps. 106:35–40).

God made His own people, Israel, an abomination to people everywhere after they had, for a very long time, treated His law and His servants as though they were abominations.  Israel reaped from the nations of earth the scorn for God that they had sown.
Paul made mention of God cursing Israel in his letter to the saints in Rome.  In the first chapter of that epistle, Paul said that because Israel did not live the truth God had shown them, He turned them over to the demon of homosexuality.  Here is what Paul wrote:

Romans 1
21. For although they knew about God, they did not honor Him as God, nor were they thankful, but they were made vain in their thinking, and their senseless heart was darkened.
22. Claiming to be wise, they were turned over to foolishness,
23. and they traded the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
24. Therefore also, God turned them over in the lusts of their own hearts to uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves,
25. who traded the truth of God for a lie and began to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.  Amen.
26. That is why God turned them over to shameful passions.  Their females even exchanged the natural use of their bodies for what is contrary to nature,
27. and the males likewise, leaving the natural use of a female, burned in their desire for one another, males committing disgraceful acts with males, receiving in themselves a fitting recompense for their error.
28. And since they did not see fit to retain God in their knowledge, God turned them over to a depraved mind, to do things that should not be done,
29. being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, and full of envy, murder, strife, treachery, ungodliness.  They became gossipers,
30. slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, devisers of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31. undiscerning, unfaithful, unfeeling, implacable, unmerciful,
32. who, knowing very well the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but also approve of those who practice them.

May God not only give us knowledge of the truth, but with it, also bless us with a love for it, for it is love of the truth, not merely knowing it, that will save us.