The priests went into the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and they brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the Lord into the court of the house of the Lord. And the Levites took it and carried it out to the brook Kidron. 2 Chronicles 29:16 (emphasis mine)
The name of our movie is unDEFILED. If you have been following this blog or our Facebook page for any length of time, you already know that. But maybe now is a good time to ask what everyone wants to know but was afraid to ask:
“What does that really mean?”
Fair question! Let’s start simple. After all, before you can be “undefiled,” you must glean the concept of defilement. Defilement in the Bible most often refers to someone or something that is impure, desecrated, made common, or dishonored. In the Old Testament, Israel was relentlessly called upon by the LORD to cleanse itself and the temple from uncleanness. The prophet Jeremiah tells us that the LORD was angry with Israel because, “they set up their vile images in the house that bears my Name and defiled it.” And, although this is a direct reference to idolatry, it is also fair to say that sexual sin also defiles a person (1 Cor. 5:11).
But does this same biblical command carry over into the New Testament? Oh, yes! It very much does. The Greek word “koinoo” (defile, defilement) can be found from Matthew (15:11) all the way to Revelation (21:27). So, it appears that God is just as concerned with a cleansing of the temple in our age as he was in ages past. The difference is that now the temple is our bodies. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19)
The question then becomes, “If our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and one out of every five men sitting in church are regularly defiling their hearts and minds by seeking out pornography, how does this affect the Church?” In his letter to the Galatian church, Paul told them that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough. In other words, those who are sitting in the pew whose minds are regularly saturated by the demonic filth of porn, dare not smugly think that it is not affecting their local assembly and, by extension, the Body of Christ.
After all, God will not use an unclean temple. When Jesus was in Jerusalem, and saw the Temple of God was being defiled, what did He do? He cleansed it! Only the blood of Christ can cleanse us from sin and make us clean. Perhaps we should stop quoting the words of Jesus from Matthew 16:18 in such a cavalier manner when we are, in fact, allowing those same obscene gates of hell to walk right into our assembly.
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Gal. 5:16)
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