When God Gives You Up To Your Desires

There comes a time when after people insist on not following God's path, even though the evidence of his calling is irrefutable, God gives them up to that which they want. This happened with Israel. It happened when they insisted on a king thus rejected God: "And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them." (1 Samuel 8:7) KJV

God gave them what they desired and it wasn't great.
Then it happened when they continually followed other gods in spite of seeing the power of God manifested in their lives.

In Exodus 32:1-6, they made Aaron make an idol that would replace God. They worshiped something they had made after seeing the power of God. How foolish! They worshiped something they made instead of the God who made them and saved them. This happened over and over again until God gave them up to their desire.

God turned them over to their sinful desire, their desire to worship someone other than God.  He let them have what they wanted and thus worshiped and sacrificed to the gods of other nations (read here about Moloch one of the gods they worshiped). See Acts 7:42-43.

God let them go their way. Psalms 106:36-39 reads:

They served their idols,
    which became a snare to them.
³⁷ They sacrificed their sons
    and their daughters to the demons;
³⁸ they poured out innocent blood,
    the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
    and the land was polluted with blood.
³⁹ Thus they became unclean by their acts,    and played the whore in their deeds. (ESV)
 
This is happening now as well. Lest we think that we are not idolaters as Israel read Romans 1:21-26, 28:

²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 
 ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
²⁶ For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; ²⁷ and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. ²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. (ESV)

The god of our generation may not be made of gold or in form of an animal but it is a more sophisticated one. It is the god of pleasure and the god of sex. Our pleasure-driven, sex-driven generation bows down to these gods and refuses to worship God the Creator even as the evidence of His Divine goodness is evident.

The words "God gave them up" applies today.

See/hear/read this titled "When God Abandons a Nation"