Pornography: The Soul Defiled Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Since we all have sexual desires, it's tempting to satisfy those desires outside of God's will. Today, a probing look at the damage done by pornography in our culture, a flood most prevalent these days on the internet. Stay with us.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, this snare of the enemy is real hard to combat since anyone can indulge in it in complete privacy using their computer. Absolutely, or using their cell phone. You know, as I think about this, it is with a heavy heart because I think of my own grandchildren who are growing up in a world in which pornography is everywhere, instantly accessible. But we need to stand against this as parents and as grandparents. Therefore, this message again is preached with a very heavy heart and deep conviction. We need to stand against this impurity.

Jesus said, blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God. I've written a book entitled Seven Snares of the Enemy, which includes the material you're going to be listening to in just a moment. Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. Of course, that's all one word, rtwoffer, and then.com.

Or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. In an era in which we have surrendered so much ground to the enemy, we must take a stand. So now we go to the pulpit of Moody Church where we expose the dangers and of course also hope for those who are ensnared by pornography. Well friends, as you know, we are drowning in a river of sensuality.

It's a story that in principle has happened a million times. A young man discovers his father's pornography, gets hooked on it as a child. We should not be surprised at that because about 70% of all pornography falls into the hands of children.

Primary buyers today are teenagers. And he becomes hooked and even in college, the images and the sense of attachment is there. But this particular man became a Christian and even though he became a Christian, he still struggled though he loved it and hated it simultaneously. Later on when he was married, he did not tell his wife about his secret addiction. And when it was discovered, they had a very difficult time. She had a very difficult time and it took a long time before they could work through all of the problems that this revelation brought to light. To quote his words exactly, he said, I lived like a double agent for the CIA leading two different lives. His story could be multiplied many times.

As you know, this is a series of messages titled Seven Secret Snares. We've talked about alcoholism and greed and gambling and today it is pornography. You know, the time was when pornography was limited to magazines, oftentimes magazines behind the counter. Today it is everywhere. For example, you can rent movies. I was brought up at a time when Christians didn't even watch movies and that was at the time when they were very tame and often very family oriented.

Today, we can not only see those movies but contemporary ones with all of their risque behavior, with all of their violence and sensuality and all of that can now be brought into our homes. I think, for example, of the internet, a virtual pornography shop in your home. I need to tell you that a few years ago, we logged on to the internet and the night after the connection was made, I had a horrific demonic nightmare. In fact, even though I wrote it down the next day, I would not have had to because it is so incredibly vivid. Three evil spirits were pitting me against a wall and they were saying, we are going to destroy you in your own home.

Wow. I'll tell you, I woke up the next morning and I knew exactly that God in his grace had allowed this nightmare because what those spirits, I think, were trying to say and what God was letting them tell me through this experience was now that you're hooked up to the internet with a click of the mouse, you could be in that whole world of pornography. And I'll tell you that because of that dream, if I'm ever tempted to cross that line and to say, well, now, what is there really on the internet anyway? I'm reminded that evil spirits would like me to do that to destroy me.

And they are destroying some of you, aren't they? Young woman who did not have lesbian tendencies began to get into lesbian pornography on the internet and soon ended up having the experiences of lesbianism. Remember the basic principle, we're learning it here as we talk about addictions and snares, is that whatever it is that we give ourselves to, whatever it is that we commit ourselves to, we end up being the servant and the sin and the addiction becomes the master. So you have the internet. Now, telephone sex. You say, well, how in the world do you ever get into that?

Well, very easy, pick up the telephone and dial the right number. Spoke to a man who did it one time just out of curiosity, that terrible word, curiosity. Hooked. Because all of the euphoria that we've talked about in previous messages that accompany addiction was all there. And now the question is, how do I break the chains that bind me?

During the Middle Ages, there was a man who prided himself in making chains that could not be broken and one day he ended in prison and looked at the chains on his arms and on his wrists and he discovered that they had his seal, his sign. Then there are therapists. I remember counseling a woman who was told by the therapist, you know, you're hung up on this business of sexuality. What you really need to do is to get it all out of your system and he sent her to a movie that was so terrible, so vile that she vomited on the floor of the theater and it was there that she actually received some evil spirits that we needed to deal with. Remember, this is Satan's territory. Somebody told me on Wednesday that he went to even a supposed Christian counselor, I emphasized the word supposed, who told him, you have to get acquainted with that dark side and until you become acquainted with that dark side of your life and enter into these worlds, you can't really have that revelation of self-authentication.

Oh, mercy. That's like telling a mouse, you know, in order for you to really understand this business of snares and traps. What you need to do is you need to take some of the cheese from the trap and then when it snaps, you'll have a whole new vista of self-understanding at that moment. And then what do we say about television itself which is becoming more pornographic? A television writer who writes some of those sitcoms said you have to get people to laugh at adultery, homosexuality, and incest because it breaks down their resistance to it. Everybody agrees that the Jerry Springer show is trash. Actually, it's worse than trash. Trash is something you can deal with, at least we do where we live, week by week in a very systematic way.

This is worse. And it's not just that, we have someone perverse on radio such as Howard Stern and that's only the tip of an iceberg. There's so much sensuality out there, so much, what shall we say, perversion, so much destruction and it's being funneled right into our homes and somebody must be watching it according to the ratings or it wouldn't be on there.

Millions are. Why is it that we should be so concerned about these things? Do you know that there is a connection between pornography and other vices and crimes? There's no question about it because what you see, you want to act out and I could give you stories about that but I'll spare you. Because along with pornography, oftentimes there is a cluster of all kinds of other sins and it may include prostitution or peep shows or whatever.

I mean, it comes with a whole range of options and once you give yourself to that, it's not up to you to really decide where it's going to go, it's out of your hands because remember you are the servant and it becomes the master. Back in 1953 when Hefner began to make pornography mainstream at that time, you did not have somebody's wife and somebody's daughter being raped every six minutes in the United States. We have that today. It is not a victimless crime. And then another reason it's important is that for those who are occasional users, pornography is more common and it is more – we are more susceptible to it than any other addiction, I think. For example, we're not born with a desire for alcohol. That may be acquired, you may have a disposition to it but you're not necessarily born with that desire or a desire for gambling but sexuality is so much a part of who we are and today I'm going to be talking primarily about men and their struggles with pornography but let's not be naïve, women also have those struggles. According to Dobson, about 50% of Christian men and I emphasize the word Christian struggle in some sense at some level with pornography. Some of us have not had any acquaintance with addictions like drugs and alcohol and gambling. They hold no temptation to us but we know the temptations of the flesh, don't we?

All of us have seen things that we regret having seen. We know the power of these images and we struggle and may I remind you that you don't have to be a pornography user to have a pornographic mind because even within our own souls, those desires sometimes give way to those expressions. Peter in the New Testament said these words, he says, abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul and it is a war. I've entitled this message, pornography, the soul defiled and what a battle it is and you know that in a war there's always one side that seeks to win, one side that seeks to dominate and the intention is to fight to the death, to fight to the death. Remember that you'll never understand addictions unless you realize that they promise all the same things that God promises. We've learned that and take all that information that we gave on the addictive personality last time and you can put it right here with all of its trances and its euphoria and its bondage and its sickness and its sin.

Pornography promises like a god but it pays like the devil. I want you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the fifth chapter, to the fifth chapter of the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 5, Jesus is speaking on what we call the Sermon on the Mount and he is giving a deeper interpretation of the law because you know the Pharisees of his time, they recognized that it was wrong to commit adultery, that was one of the commandments but they limited it to acting out and Jesus here gives a remarkable statement and by the time we're finished I believe that he's going to help us, Jesus is, he's going to help us find our way out.

Jesus invites us to make three commitments and I wonder if you would be willing to make those commitments with me today, three commitments. The first commitment is purity in marriage, he says you have heard that it was said do not commit adultery. Now the reason that God gave that commandment in the Old Testament is first of all because of the stability of the family, the stability of the family. God put it in the heart of every little boy and every little girl to have a mommy and daddy who love each other and that's the way it is and so God says for the stability of the family but also for your own emotional stability because you see if you commit adultery, the Bible says in the book of Proverbs, it destroys the soul. I like to use the word defiles and it degrades but there's another reason also and it's the most important and that is that God hates immorality.

The marriage bed is honorable and all and it's undefiled but whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge and I need to say to those of us who are married that the emphasis here is on the stability of the family, thou shalt not commit adultery but I have a word also for you singles who have rationalized it and who have conned yourself into believing that you can have a sexual relationship outside of marriage that is meaningful, that is even necessary and that somehow life if not God at least life owes you but I say to you today from my heart to yours that no matter how you have rationalized it, no matter how you've tried to explain it, no matter how you've put the best face on it, no matter how you have lived to manage your guilt because that's what you have to do, you've learned to manage it, the scripture is very clear that the sexual relationship is within marriage and thou shalt not commit immorality. That's the first commitment. But now Jesus asks us to go on to make a second commitment that is even much more difficult.

Listen to his words. But I tell you, this is now verse 28 of Matthew chapter 5, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. To look lustfully at a woman is to commit adultery. Now of course I need to say that sometimes we may look at a woman and we may admire her beauty. There is such a thing as recognizing a beautiful woman. And that isn't lustful, that isn't adulterous.

But as all of us as men know that the transition from admiration to lust can oftentimes be very quickly made. And so what Jesus said is here, if you sexually covet a woman in your heart, you've committed adultery with her. Well what does this say about pornography? The whole point of pornography is to stimulate, it is to inflame all of the natural desires that we already struggle with.

It is to draw out from us all that which is exaggerated and with the latest methods of technology and photography to do all that we possibly can to violate the words of Jesus. That's the whole point. Now don't interpret this verse to mean that if you've lusted in your heart you might as well commit adultery.

I have a friend who did that. That's a major mistake that we'll take up in our message next time. That's not what Jesus is saying. But at the level of sin and the level of the need of forgiveness, Jesus is saying that if you lust after a woman you've committed adultery with her already in your heart. How is it that you have committed adultery with her?

She may not be a part of the experience. It's because the whole idea here is that we look at someone and we are lusting after him or her and that turns them into an object. I need to tell you that I've talked to people who've been in this world of pornography and it is a harsh, cruel, evil, demonically controlled world. It is a world where young women are sold into sexual slavery.

It is a world in which young women are conned and seduced into participating. And what it does is it simply makes them objects. You don't care about their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their desires. Nothing like that matters. All that matters is your own inflamed, irrational desire. Jesus said, you commit adultery already in your heart when you lust. Do you understand now, my friends, why pornography is a slap in the face of Jesus? Because Jesus is saying, you know, even if you look at a woman lustfully you've committed adultery and pornography says we're going to take Jesus on and our whole world of you is going to be one in which we lust and desire and covet and there's no end to it. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs it says, like Sheol, that nether underworld, like Sheol, the eyes of a man are never satisfied. Well, we all stand condemned with this verse, don't we?

There's no room here for self-righteousness, no room to say, well, you know, I am really someone righteous because I am not a user. Jesus said that it is really a matter of the heart and he went so deep, so deep. So the question, of course, is how in the world can we even possibly live in this pornography drenched world with any sense of living up to the words of Jesus?

When it's everywhere, when it's in billboards, when it's at work, when it's the stuff of television, how can we possibly manage? Well, characteristically, Jesus doesn't just leave us there. He tells us what to do. And notice his words. Now, we've talked about two commitments, commitment to purity in marriage, commitment to purity in thoughts. He's now saying, you'll never achieve this, folks, unless you have purity in all of your associations, purity in associations.

Look at what he says. Now, he says, if your eye, your right eye, he says right eye because what he means is your best eye. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And then as I already read, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it for you because it's much better for you that one part of the body perish than for your whole body to be tossed into hell. Now, I want you to notice that what Jesus does is he takes the two parts of the body that are often used in lusting and sexual desire. The first is the eye. Pornography, of course, depends upon our ability to see the eye. And even though we, as men, tell women how quickly we can be affected by what we see, I'm still not sure that they fully understand that. But Jesus talks about the eye and he says, if your eye is causing you to sin, now that's what my translation says.

I like the NASB at this point. If your eye causes you to stumble, because the Greek word actually the noun form is scandalon, from which we get scandalized. If it causes you to be scandalized and its root means to be caught in a trap. Jesus is saying that if you find yourself falling into the pit and your eye is causing it, gouge it out and cast it from you. If that's your problem, take care of your eye. And then he uses the hand, which is also used, particularly, I think, of women who are affected by tender caresses, usually coupled with sweet words, often lying words, but nonetheless. Jesus said, if that's your problem, cut it off. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutzer. I sincerely hope that you listen to Running to Win next time because I'm going to explain that Jesus is not speaking literally, but what he is saying is literally true. It would be better to arrive in heaven with one eye than to be in hell with two. Jesus is saying in the strongest possible way, do whatever you need to do to separate yourself from impurity. These messages are available, but I've also written a book entitled Seven Snares of the Enemy. It includes the message that you've just been listening to, Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip.

For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. And thanks in advance for standing with us in the ministry of Running to Win. Here's what you can do.

Go to rtwoffer.com, rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Ask for Seven Snares of the Enemy, Breaking Free from the Devil's Grip. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. With pornography available privately via computer, all too many Christians are now addicted in secret. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave some pointed teaching on morality, telling those in lust to pluck out their eyes. Could he have been serious? Next time on Running to Win, a look into Matthew chapter 5 at some really tough love from the Son of God and insights on breaking free from this epidemic scourge. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.