It’s a different world than when many of us grew up. Unfortunately, this is the real world, and the future generations of the church are growing up in this unclean and immoral soil.
Let’s talk about soil, or the land as the Bible talks about—nations. I believe God is crying out for a clean nation to rise up and reclaim our unclean culture.
In Jeremiah 3:1, we read: “If a man divorces his wife, and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, shall he return to her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to Me, says the Lord.”
And in verse nine (NIV), we read, “Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.”
These verses allude to the fact that the immorality of the people affects God’s perspective of the land. I want to take you even further through this principle, and that is how our sexuality impacts God’s view of a land or a nation.
Leviticus probably isn’t a book you spend a lot of time in, but there are some real jewels in its pages. In Chapter 18, you will find all the sex acts that God disapproves of. In short, only have sex with your wife. Then in verse 24 and 25 (MEV), it says, “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for in these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves. And the land has become defiled; therefore I have punished its iniquity, and the land has vomited out her inhabitants.
God commands them not to be sexually immoral because this is how the land became defiled or unclean. The land becomes defiled or unclean by the sexual impurity of the people in the land. Then he says something really interesting. As the people are immoral, “the land” will vomit them out.
To reiterate His point to the Israelites that their sexuality determines whether a land is defiled or unclean, versus being clean to God, He says in verse 28 (NIV), “And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” Here God says if the Israelites practice sexual immorality. they will defile or cause their land to become unclean. The consequences of making a land unclean is that they would get kicked out of the land God wanted to give to them.
I love this teaching that our collective sexuality impacts our land in making it clean or unclean. Usually, as I am sharing this with men or pastors, and they have never heard that God looks at a land as clean or unclean based upon our sexuality. You can also verify God was telling the truth, because Israel was repeatedly kicked out of the land because of immorality.
Sometimes, as a Christian, I feel we are being kicked out of our American culture. Our God has been taken out of our schools, and His commandments taken out of our courthouses. Even His nativity scene is taken out of some places. I don’t know about you, but it feels like we are being kicked out of our own land.
I like to ask a few questions to those in the audience of my conferences, questions I will now ask you. Consider each question for a moment.
- If God were to look at America based upon its sexual immorality and its leadership in sexual immorality, what would God say? Unclean or clean?
- If God were to look at your state or your city based on its sexual morality, would He say clean or unclean?
- What if God were to look at your local church, remember He sees all, what would He have to conclude, clean or unclean?
- Let me ask you if He were to look at your life based upon your sexuality alone, what would He conclude, clean or unclean? You already know the answer.
I thank God for the blood of Jesus who paid for all my sins and because of Jesus, God can look at all of us as blood-bought men. I want God to be able to look at every man, church, city, state and nation and say, “clean, clean, clean,” and smile upon us all.
Doug Weiss, Ph.D., is a nationally known author, speaker and licensed psychologist. He is the executive director of Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the author of several books including, Clean. You may contact Dr. Weiss via his website, drdougweiss.com or on his Facebook, by phone at 719-278-3708 or through email at [email protected].