Tools to Guard Against Pornography

Tools to guard against pornography. So, the first thing I want you to see about this well, let’s let’s just take a moment and and and just ask the lord’s blessing upon the word here. Our father, thank you for the chance again to study your word and to exhort one another and encourage one another and provoke into love and to good works and lord, you said that you want your people to be a people that is zealous to maintain good works and part of that means avoiding the evil and part of that means actively doing the good and lord, we pray that you would help us as we look at these things to do both and lord that you would preserve us both the men and the women, the children, as well as the adults from this tendency, this temptation for secret sin in our lives, especially as it relates to fornication and uncleanness in the heart.

And but also lord, definitely that which comes out in the outside as well and god help us, protect us, lord. You said in the model prayer and lead us not into temptation and so we ask you not to lead us not into temptation but keep us from it that we might be preserved holy and upright in your sight. And Lord, especially that we might lead and guide our families in a way that’s pleasing to you and that is effective, that glorifies the Lord. And so lord help us as we study your word tonight. We ask in Jesus name, amen.

I said this morning how that one of the one of the key things that that wears away spiritual leadership is the problem of secret sins. In other words, the the leader who is the person who is supposed to set the example, when the leader is compromised, then so is compromised his leadership. And so, it is important that the spiritual leader, and again, when I say spiritual leader, I am not just referring to like the pastor and deacons, although that definitely applies, but I’m referring to any any spiritual leader that might exist especially in a family which is what we’re talking about here and and so if the leader is compromised like we saw with David, David was a man who himself was compromised and that affected his leadership because he wasn’t doing, he wasn’t being the example by doing the thing that he required of those under him to do.

And and so, when we look at spiritual leadership, the first thing I want you to see and kind of the the takeaway from this introduction is this, that secret sins always destroy spiritual leadership. Secret sins always destroy spiritual leadership. It whatever, whatever place of spiritual leadership that you have, be it a a husband, be it a father, a mother, be it a grandmother, be it in a church setting, in a in the in the roles in a church, or whatever it is, your spiritual leadership will be absolutely hobbled and handicapped by secret sins that come into your life.

Now, here’s here’s why that’s that’s true and here’s why it’s important. In a family in particular, the proper order in a family, and we know there’s a biblical order in the family and the naysayers notwithstanding, there is a biblical order in the family and that biblical order begins with the leader. That doesn’t mean that those who are who are in a follower role are are less important that has nothing to do with that, but it I say it begins with the leader because a spiritual leader if he is anything is an example. As I said this morning and he is to do or she is to do that which is and set the example of that thing before the expectation is that others who follow do it and the again, the idea that a spiritual leader is someone who tells other people what to do and without setting the example of that thing first is not is not a biblical view of the leader and so, that’s why I say the proper order in the family begins with the leader.

He or she is to do and set the example of the thing that should be done for those that follow. A scriptural leader is one who, like a shepherd, does first what he asked those ask asks of those that he leads. So, that’s why I say it begins with the leader doing that thing. But what happens then? Knowing that’s that’s the scriptural principle and truth. What happens then if the one who is to lead or is in the role of a leader is not providing that example for others to emulate.

What is the result? The result is that there is no leader and there is no example. And if there’s no example within the family structure, how is the proper order of the family to be established? Because it it rests upon an example. That’s that’s the that’s the crux. That’s the core and the essence of spiritual leadership. It rests in the example. And so without that, there there is no proper order. There’s just everybody’s just floating trying to figure it out on their own. And that’s not that’s not the Lord’s design.

Did you know it was not god’s design that the wife should have to figure out life on her own? It is god’s design that the wife have a husband to lead her and guide her and most importantly, provide an example to her that she can see, not just hear, but see. The same thing is true with the kids. You know, the Bible says, a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.

Right? Why is that? Well, it’s simple. It’s because the the leadership, in other words, a child left to himself means he doesn’t have that leadership. He doesn’t have that guide. He doesn’t have that example actively involved and so the result is obvious. He’s floating. He’s trying to figure it out and he’s falling into the same traps and snares that you know, like we would see in Proverbs, the simple man would fall into.

And so because biblical leadership is based squarely on this principle of example, there are few things that destroy a man or in some cases, a woman’s ability and willingness to lead more than secret sins. Notice I said destroy his ability to lead and his willingness to lead.

And I I use the word willingness on purpose because when a man has secret sins in his life like he’s looking at pornography or was looking at filth on the internet like we were talking about this morning which is what we’re focusing on today.

Any a man that has even the slightest amount of integrity and knows even the least bit about spiritual leadership, that fact, that secret in his life is going to cause him to withdraw, might I say, slink away from his duty as a spiritual leader because a man with any amount of integrity is going to see that he is unfit to provide that example. He’s unfit to tell others and direct them if he himself is not doing the thing. Integrity rebuffs him if you will.

And so, he’ll kind of shrink away from spiritual leadership because he knows he cannot provide that example for those under his care. The result, here’s the result, is this man, or in some cases a woman, and this man will just simply neglect that which is his God given duty and role in his family. Now, we can give all kinds of excuses why we shirk or neglect that duty but but the vast majority of the time it comes down to personally, inwardly, secretly, things are not right.

And so we’re ashamed to try to tell others especially those who are closest to us and many times who know those secrets. As a husband, as a father, how you and I give directions of any spiritual nature to our wife if they know our our search history and our internet web browsing history? If they know and have confronted us and dealt with us over matters of what our what’s on our our our internet, what’s on our phone, what we watch.

How are we gonna tell, you know what, they’re not going to listen. They might tolerate our words, but they’re not gonna listen. That’s just a fact, and we know that. And that effect is even more profound with your children, it’s even more profound with kids. Because your wife is to some degree kind of bound to you, you’re right by marriage bound, marriage bind, right? But your kids, often times when that when that that example is not provided and they see that gross contradiction, sometimes they just bide their time until they can jump out of the nest and they are gone.

Because they don’t forget. Kids do not forget the example set. And the hard thing about this when you’re talking about the family, and I know, listen, I know what I’m saying bites, I get that, I get it. But the hard thing when you’re talking about the family situation is that people within your home know a lot of stuff that that the people in public and we’re coming back to this in just a minute but they know a lot of things that go on in the home, those secret sins that maybe the public in general doesn’t know but they they often know. They hear the conversations even when the door shut.

Now, there do exist some, I put in my notes, some brazen and proud souls that strut around and flex their authority while providing no example or a poor example to those under them. They exist too, who who don’t have any shame even though they provide no example. Those exist too. They don’t see any contradiction. Just like first Timothy six four says, people like that are proud knowing nothing and the this type of people, they are willing to lead, that is they’re willing to flex, they’re willing to command, but they don’t have even enough shame to slink away when they provide a terrible example for those that they’re supposed to be leading.

I want to tell you something. When we talk about the use of the Internet, we talk about what we look at, we talk about fleeing fornication, looking at pornography or other ungodly things on the Internet, the effect of this personal failure in a leader is absolutely profound and we must, we must let this, we must let this bring us into fear. As a father, as a husband, we need to be in fear.

The wise man feareth and departeth from evil. Because the effect of this failure is profound. You see, whenever we’re whenever we have these secret sins in our lives, it not only effectively destroys the credibility, and let let me stop there for a second. What what it what it, like I said before, it destroys our credibility in those we lead. In other words, our words no longer mean anything, they carry no weight and there is no example.

And it makes us very it makes us very hard for those under us. In fact, it it actually casts a stumbling block before the before those that we lead because of of the contradiction.

But not only does it destroy the credibility, our credibility to those we lead, it it also provides later an opportunity to the devil to destroy our children. Because you know what? Our children will one day face these same temptations.

They will and when they face these temptations that we have faced and perhaps fallen into, they will have an excuse to yield and that excuse will be our poor example. That’s exactly the way the people that people think. Why do I need to worry about it? Daddy did it.

Now that’s not to say that you providing a good example is some sort of foolproof way to ensure that your kids always do the right thing. Listen, we’re the children of God, we have a perfect Father, do we always do the right thing? Well no, that’s just a fact. But a poor example provides an excuse that they don’t need.

And not only that, when we have secret sins, how are we gonna provide credible help to them in their temptation when it comes? Because they will. How can we tell them how to overcome it if we’re subject to it, if we’re a slave to it?

And here is the thing, we love our children and when that happens and they fall into it because of those safeguards weren’t there. Why? Because we personally failed. We were indulging in these ungodly things on the Internet. We were addicted to pornography.

They will fall into it and they will endure the terrible consequences of that that that sin produces in their life. So, here’s my point, is that this question of our secret sins is not just a question of ourselves. It touches ourselves, our personal lives, and it ripples directly into the lives of our wife and our children and everyone around us. And many of the effects we will not see in the short term, it’ll be in the long term. Those are all very, very good reasons to take this temptation, to take this sin with the gravity that the Lord lays upon it.

And to to come at it with a resolve that you are going to do and I am going to do whatever is necessary. Whatever is required. To never ever touch it. And that’s what we should do. So, here’s the tools. The first one, if you want to write down the tools, hopefully they’ll help help to you. We have verses to go with each to to help you understand the principles involved.

But the first one is this, keep your distance. Keep your distance. And what I mean by that is, keep your distance in advance. In other words, plan distance. If if we wait until the temptation is in front of us, if we wait until you know, we we feel that that tug of the wicked, of the the lust of the flesh pulling at us in that direction, if we wait to that, we have we have already kind of slipped. We’ve already failed just like we saw this morning in second Samuel eleven and twelve.

So, right now, when there is no temptation, keep some distance. Build into your life distance between yourself and any potential temptation. Genesis 39, look at that if you would. Again, we go back to Joseph, what a good example to us here. Genesis 39 and verse number 10. Talking about Potiphar’s wife, and it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day that he hearkened not unto her to lie by her, here it is, or to be with her. You see that?

He not it’s not only that he was he was gonna say no every time, but he, when he knew she was in the house, he was going a different direction. You know what that is? Distance. That’s distance. It is very hard to be tempted when you’re nowhere near the temptation.

We could go to Proverbs chapter eight, chapter five rather, listen to this, speaking of the strange woman and the the woman of the night, it says this, remove thy way far from her. And come not nigh the door of her house. I know this is referring to a literal temptation of literal, you know, in in in this literal sense but the principle still applies in all in in in any kind of any kind of secret sin like that which is get away from it. Get far away from this sin. Proverbs 22 verse three, a prudent man foreseeth evil and hideth himself.

He’s going the other direction. You see it’s coming. Now, here’s the thing, all of us know, all of us know where the temptation, where it is likely that we’re gonna meet with this kind of temptation. As far as the use of the internet and pornography and those kinds of secret sins, Whether it’s that or another sin. We all know what the source of those things are, where they’re likely to be found and if we know that, we foresee the evil, we need to take steps now to hide ourself, to keep distance from it and so I’ll say this, under keep your distance, I say this, don’t trust yourself.

That’s why you keep distance because you know, if you get too close, you ever seen a magnet? Our flesh is like a magnet. It loves sin And it’s sin is here, our flesh is here, and the closer you bring the two together, the more likely that that that attraction is going to be greater than can be resisted. You ever you ever done that with magnets? Especially with those super magnets they have? What have I forgot what they’re called. But the closer you get, the stronger the attraction. So, the solution is distance.

Distance. Proverbs three five, trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. Our own understanding says, it’s not a big deal, I can deal with it. You know, excuses, excuses, but when it comes down to it, we’re trusting not in what god says and and listen, knowing your own nature is a big part of it. Knowing your own nature and what god says, how the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, that will keep you from trusting yourself.

Proverbs 28 verse 26 says this, he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool but whoso walketh wisely shall be delivered. Don’t trust yourself. Don’t trust yourself. There’s not a person, there’s not a man or a woman, not a boy or a girl in this room that is as good as we think we are.

None of us. We are not to be trusted ourselves. And the second thing under under that creating creating distance is this, limit your own liberty. Limit your own liberty. First Corinthians 10 verse 23 says this, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.

In second Thessalonians three nine, Paul speaking, he’s speaking of the the power that he has as an apostle to forbear working and to take a wage essentially from the church at Thessalonica. But he says, he says, not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensemble unto you to follow us. You know what he says? I have power, but I will not use that power.

I have that power, but I will not use that power. And in both cases, what you have here is you have the question of liberty. Now I know we often use the idea of Christian liberty to to describe the way maybe we we we give other people grace, you know, there’s a certain, you know, way of way we can exercise liberty in that way and we are supposed to limit our own liberty negatively affects our brothers and sisters in Christ or causes them to stumble. Everybody familiar with that idea of liberty.

But here’s the thing, if I will limit my liberty so as not to cause my brother to offend or cause my my sister to stumble, if if that is a principle to limit limit my own liberty and what I’m willing to do, how much more should I be willing to limit my own liberty to protect myself against some sin, against some temptation? And what does that look like in practice?

You see, the question is not whether it is a sin to have this app on your phone, or to go to this website, or to watch this thing. That’s not the question. That’s addressed when he says all things are lawful for me. Of course, I’m not including obvious and gross acts of evil that are on the screen. But the question is not, is it a sin to have Instagram, or is it a sin to have Facebook, or is it a sin to watch YouTube, or anything like that that people watch, TikTok or whatever, whatever is your preferred whatever, TV even.

That’s not the question. The question is this, am I willing to limit that? I don’t mean and be careful here because when I say limit, oftentimes we think about what time limit, I’m not talking about time limit. Am I willing to completely excise it out of my life entirely if that means it keeps me away from the temptation that is there. You know what? That sounds crazy.

That might be what’s needed. And if I say, if I say, I’m deleting Facebook off my phone, I’m not going to use it anymore. I’m not imposing that upon you. I’m saying, I wanna create distance between me and the source of temptation if that be the case. And that is perfectly acceptable to do.

And in fact, I would say, if you know it’s an issue, if you know that’s an avenue by which temptation comes your way, delete it. Get rid of it. It’s not worth it. Well, people might think I’m a little extreme, I’m not on Facebook, I’m not on Instagram. Whoop dee doo. Better that than sin, better that than be tempted even.

So we can absolutely choose to limit our own liberty in order to maintain distance from sin, indeed we should. The second thing, the second tool, the second tool to guard us against pornography is this, is the sanitizing effect of sunshine.

The sanitizing effect of sunshine. And what I mean by that is accountability. Accountability. Ecclesiastes four, nine and ten say this, two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. But you know what, you know the principle that’s being talked about there is this, isolation, being alone, which is the opposite of accountability. And when I talk about accountability, I’m talking about personal accountability, accountability with another person.

Now look if you would at James chapter five. James chapter five James five sixteen. Says this, Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Isn’t it interesting that the oft quoted, oft cited reference to effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man is actually in the context of accountability?

He says, confess your faults one to another and pray for one another. You see this is not confession to God, this is personal accountability. This is I’ve messed up, I’ve gotten into stuff I should not have gotten into. I’m in a bad way. I’m not only going to confess it to god but I’m also going to bring it to the attention and and request prayer from another, a brother or a sister in Christ to bring me into accountability.

This confession of sin, this request for prayer, what it is, is an activator of accountability within the body of Christ. When I say activator, here’s what I mean by that. It that that means when I when I when I failed or I have a problem or have a a sin, a recurring problem in my life, and I bring that thing to my brother or sister, to one of you, or you bring it to one another, and you say, I’ve got this problem. Here’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve confessed it to god and I want to I want to confess it to you because I need you to pray for me.

What you have done is you have activated accountability in the body of Christ. Because by that confession of my problem with my brother, he is made aware of something that he did not know I had a problem with to begin with.

He is made aware so that he can pray for me but because he is now aware, he now has a reason to keep me accountable from that point forward because now he knows that I’ve got a problem. And so what he hopefully is going to do is he’s going to check up on me and he’s going to probe and he’s going to ask the hard questions in order to keep me in line.

You know what that is? That is sunshine. On the dark secrets of our life. Now, there are two parts to this process. This is a biblical, the process of biblical accountability. There are two parts. Number one is this, I first must be willing to confess my faults to him.

Sometimes, people avoid this, the confession to another, they want to do, again, like I said this morning, they want to deal with it with god with ever at ever bringing it out to men because they want to avoid the shame but sometimes, it’s not just the shame they want to avoid or sometimes they they want to they want to maintain you know, a show of righteousness which is vain.

If the secret sin is there, it doesn’t matter what it looks like on the outside. Sometimes, it’s that but sometimes, people avoid this confession to one another because they know that accountability will follow and they don’t want it.

And so that leads us to a truth. If we are unwilling to confess it to another, and the cause, the reason is that we don’t want that accountability, have we truly repented of that thing to begin with? Do we really want to be free? Or are we just trying to avoid the evil outcome of our actions?

So, the first part is, I have to be willing to confess my faults to my brother and to ask him to pray for me but the second thing is this and this goes for the other the other party. My brother must be willing to ask these hard and probing questions that he might not want the answers to. For both of my sons in law before they got before they got married when when when Sam was when Sam approached me, did the right did the right thing and Louis approached me and did the right thing and both of them and Joshua did too with with Rob.

When they when they approached me and they asked to have a relationship with my daughter and eventually they asked me for my daughter’s hand in marriage, in both cases, I did something that was very unpleasant because I didn’t know the answer. You know what it was? I asked them the hard questions. I asked them, are you looking at porn?

I say that, I have no pleasure in asking that question, none at all. You know why? Because I I dread the answer. But how else? You know, with my with my daughters, how else am I going to bring sunshine into that relationship and accountability into that relationship to protect my daughters? So, have to. Well, that’s exactly the way that we’re supposed to have accountability with one another.

Is that person that we speak to and we say, hey, got a problem. Will you please pray for me? Number one, we pray. But secondly, we say, hey, how we doing on that? Because the constant risk that my secret sin will be exposed is a powerful deterrent to keep me away from it. Right? This is this is what we’re this is in the negative sense what we’re talking about in Galatians in Hebrews ten twenty four, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.

That’s what we’re talking about. I’ll tell you something brothers and sisters. One of the plagues of the modern church and I say modern, I’m talking about of our variety, the the the churchianity, the church culture, if I can say it like that, we definitely have one of those around here. One of the plagues of the modern church culture is a kind of distance that the people of God maintain between one another.

And that distance makes it awkward and uncomfortable when someone asks us probing questions of our personal life. Because church culture tells us we need to have that distance, and that’s why you know every you know, there’s a certain pump, and there’s a certain you know, you know everybody comes in and puts on the happy face, and you know everybody looks nice, they have their tie, and they you know have their nice dress, da da da da da.

And the truth is we’re falling apart on the inside, or the truth is that we are we are we’re harboring wickedness inwardly in our lives, and because we have this culture, none of us feels quite comfortable to say, hey, what’s going on? Hey, is everything okay? You know, to ask probing a different, how dare you? That’s that’s private. That’s private.

What what is this? This is the saints of god. We’re going to heaven together. We’re not supposed to have that kind of distance. We’re supposed to be a family in Christ and sometimes that involves holding each other accountable. Asking hard questions for their good or receiving hard questions for our own good.

But if we keep everyone at arm’s length because we don’t want anyone to invade our private life such as accountability requires, we maintain this kind of professional church life. And brothers and sisters, it is dangerous.

Because what we do by doing that is we cut off the very mechanism that is designed to keep us in check and to provide accountability to us. We short circuit it and it breaks down. It’s not supposed to be like that.

You see the distance that we try to maintain is actually harmful to us spiritually. Maybe one of the reasons we maintain it, I mean, there’s all kind, it’s a lot of people been hurt in church and so they want to go to church but they hurt so they close everybody off and and to some degree, I understand that although it is ultimately harmful.

Some other people are are afraid that if they confess their their faults to another, others will judge, will judge them or think ill of them or think they’re not as spiritual and they might be less true.

But that fact should be counterbalanced by Galatians six:one which says, that when a brother falls into sin, we should restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, what does it say? Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. A deep, deep rooted sense of humility that I dare not think ill of this brother who has slipped, who has fallen, who has been tempted. I dare not think ill of him.

We are no different and I am just as subject to that but by the grace of God, that is all. The lord wants us to be convinced of that and so we need sunshine in our personal life, in our private life. We need sunshine in the in the among the people of god. There are people in your life. There should be there should be people in your life to have access to your devices at any time.

There should be people who now have your password to your phone and can look at your history, your search history, or your app history and can see what you’ve been looking at and know what’s happening in your life.

Your wife, your husband should know that. You should know that about your kids. This idea that kids go in their room and nobody knows what they’re doing, what they’re looking at, that is crazy.

So open up your life. Pull the curtains of your life open and let the sunshine of eyeballs into your life. It’ll help, it’ll help you, it’ll help you. Now on that subject, I’ve been talking about personal accountability, which is accountability with other human beings. But we know there are some things that exist which are you know, that provide some semblance of accountability in the form of apps.

You’ve probably heard of you know screen time. If you have an iPhone, you have screen time and it can limit you know, what you can see and what sites you can go to and and that’s fine. There’s also things like Covenant Eyes and there’s apps like Canopy and and then some people, you know, they have like a a personal have a Facebook account but it’ll be the husband and wife together and they use that as a as a means of having accountability and and that’s all fine and good.

Those things are thing are are what I call guardrails. They’re guardrails. And this is what I this is what I taught my kids growing up. I might have mentioned this before in the past, but a guard, I use the term guardrail because of because of its, it helps us understand how useful things like that are, when we talk about accountability. A guardrail on a highway has a purpose.

It has a purpose. And those of you that were driving here were like, well, at least we got a guardrail as you were trying to slosh through the rain. And under normal and proper driving conditions, the guardrail remains shiny and untouched, right? Under normal conditions. And you know what? As a believer, this is our normal life as a believer should be not touching the guardrail, right? You’re not supposed to drive rubbing against the guardrail.

Right? Amen. Like, you you have the guardrail on your phone and it, you know, it barks, it alerts, it does whatever it does, however the apps do and and it says, hey, you’re not supposed to go here. This side is restricted. You know, are you, if if you see that a lot, something is wrong. You’re driving scraping the guardrail. It’s a guardrail.

Our life is not supposed to be rubbing up against the guardrail all the time. Guardrails exist for when our wheels leave the roadway, and we slip and we go out of the way, we slide. They’re designed only to prevent us from going over the edge.

If however, as a normal practice of life we’re slamming into the guardrails constantly, the solution is not more guardrails, but a radical change in the way we are driving.

And that’s what I’m trying to talk about tonight. Not put up more rules. Hey, guardrails are good in their place. So long as we understand their purpose and what their purpose is not. You see, the danger of the guardrails is this, things like accountability apps and restrictions and things like that. And listen, say that, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that, we have restrictions on our kids’ devices, we have an open relationship with our phones in our in our home.

I get on my kids’ phones. You know, I don’t like when they get on my phone because they’re always trying to mess something up but but my wife has access to my phone. I have access to her phone. That’s we have that cut, we we try to maintain that. And that does not foolproof, we still got things we deal with, but that’s the idea.

The danger of the guardrails however is this, if we come to rely upon them to stop us from sin. And here’s the problem, when we do that, we give up on the idea of actual victory. Amen.

We become content to just continually slam into the guardrails And admittedly, slamming into the guardrails preferable to flying off the cliff, but man, that is a shamefully delinquent version of the Christian life. Is it not?

A Christian life is not supposed to be one where we’re constantly a slave to temptation and sin all the time in our private life. And here’s the other dark thing about guardrails is this, there’s always a way around them and there will always be times that the guardrail is for some reason not there. And what happens if you’re sliding off the roadway and there happens to not be a guardrail?

That’s what happens. Because those things can’t change our heart towards sin, they just make it difficult and painful to do it, which is good, but there’s a better way.

And so this leads us to the final thing. And I put it in my notes this, burn the bridges. Burn the bridges. The cold reality is often times we do fall into sin and we have slipped and we have gone over the edge and we have fallen off the cliff and we’ve had to repent. We’ve had to confess. We have to we’ve had to acknowledge what we’ve done and forsake it.

Sometimes, it’s repeated this process. But that painful experience of falling into sin is helpful to us because it shows to us clearly the avenues by which temptation enters our life. And if we address a sin and we attempt to forsake that sin, so that we won’t do it again. Here’s the here’s the part you gotta be careful of. We know we did wrong, we slipped, we fell, we went over the edge, we want to get right, and now we got to deal with it moving forward into the future. The question is how are we going to deal with it? And oftentimes we want to deal with this sin and this temptation with kid gloves. We want to handle it in a moderate way that’s not extreme, it’s not radical.

We want to kinda ease into it and kinda wean off of it, and that is not what the Lord said. Look at Matthew chapter 18, if you would. Matthew 18 verse verse eight. Matthew 18 verse eight.

Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut it cut them off and cast them from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

Now, this is obviously in reference to eternal eternal life. But so often we come at this verse and the first thing we say is, well Jesus definitely doesn’t want us to mutilate ourself and so we basically, we defang the verse and we never say what the verse is actually telling us to do. Of course, we know that the body is the temple of holy ghost and the lord doesn’t want us to mutilate our body but what is he telling us to do?

You know what he’s telling us to do? Get crazy. Get crazy. You see, if you or I have fallen into sin and we messed up and we fell into temptation, We need to get radical fixing it. We need to take it seriously, and we need to need to knock all the stops out and say, I will do whatever I have to do to make sure this never happens again.

And if I, if it’s crazy, if it’s radical, if it’s loony, then I will do it. I’m gonna take the gloves off and I’m gonna go bare knuckle against this sin so that I don’t do it again. We don’t need to moderate, but we need to get extreme. We need to get serious in our response to it about not returning to it. In other words, delete the app.

Put your phone under your car tire if necessary and run the thing over. Put a bullet in your TV in a safe place. It’s not, I’m not joking. Get serious about it.

Job said this, Job 31 verse one, you’ve heard of this, I made a covenant with eyes, why then should I look, think upon a maid? Make a covenant. Strip yourself of the liberty that provided the opportunity.

Make a vow to God, make a covenant with the Lord that you will never you will never go near that thing again. You it might be I’m gonna use this as an example. If if going to Target is a source of temptation, if because something’s at Target or whatever, if that’s I’m just using this as an example. If that’s a source of temptation, you could say, I’m making a covenant right here and right now, I will never go to Target for the rest of my life.

Well, that’s crazy. Do whatever is necessary. Get serious, right? Sell the computer, get a flip phone. We must burn the bridges that lead us back to our sin so that there is no way to return.

And you know what this goes back to? It goes back to the distance principle, which is I’m gonna do whatever is necessary to get as far away from this temptation, so that I don’t fall into it again. I am serious about this. I’ll delete my account. I’ll delete all my accounts. I’ll block all the websites. I’ll get a flip phone. I’ll get rid of my phone. Whatever is necessary.

And may the Lord give us real victory, no hitting guardrails, but our wheels on solid pavement to live for the Lord and to have a secret life with sunshine in it, with a clear conscience so that first of all for the Lord, for his glory, for our relationship to him, but also that we might provide the example to our families that is worthy to be emulated and worthy to be followed, that is credible when we try to lead them. Let’s pray.