Well, this is a topic that every man is wrestling with, every man is battling with from the time that you are aware of what a woman is until the time you go home to glory. The battle continues, does it not? That's why I've called this particular set of messages Every Man's Battle. Every Man's Battle. We are on a battlefront and this is one of the key weapons the enemy uses. It's like a smart bomb. It's like a cruise missile. He knows how to zing it in there and hit us with it. I like to say that there are two diseases that men are especially vulnerable to. One is cardiovascular disease and the second one is sexual lust. We have a tendency to have both of those things hit us. The first one, of course, cardiovascular comes later, lust comes early. But in many ways, our battle with sexual temptation is the elephant in the living room that we don't talk about very much. Every man's battle seems to be his little private war. It takes a pretty close friendship to be able to say, hey, I'm having a battle in this area. This is beating me up pretty good here. I went to breakfast with one of the men I disciple recently. 15 years younger than I am. He heads up a number of Bible studies at Grace Community Church where John MacArthur is pastor. And as we sat there for breakfast, he took me to breakfast and as I bit into my omelet, he said, I just want to ask you some questions. Now remember, I'm his mentor. He said, I just want to ask you some questions. He said, is it possible that your marriage needs work? What? He goes, Are you loving your wife so much as to spoil her? To really cherish her? And by the way, I'd like to know how your thought life has been. Has it been pure? Now, here's a guy that I'm mentoring. And I just thought, this is fantastic. Who talks this way nowadays? We're so private. We don't even let this come into our conversations. But what do we see in the New Testament church? They were constantly admonishing, building up each other, exhorting each other. even in reproving and rebuking each other was the normal way of communication. So I thanked him for his questions. I told him how I was doing and I said, boy, I wish this took place more often among brothers. Well, I like what C.S. Lewis, his particular definition of friendship. The beginning of friendship between men is when one man says to another, what? You two? I thought I was the only one. In other words, we have an instant identification here that this is the battlefront and it is becoming a more serious battlefront because the barriers in our culture that once stood in the way of impurity are gone. Our culture is now openly worshipping sexuality. I believe it's just as serious as the apostasy that Israel descended into when she stepped right into the Canaanite fertility cults, and ultimately killed infants on the arms of Moloch. Because in our culture, we worship sex. Our goddesses may not be in temples. They're on the internet. And men go to the internet and have a vicarious relationship with a cyber prostitute. They go to the internet. And they're having a relationship with a goddess, so to speak. We have our own temples. It just happens to be computers. There's an internet harlot that men are engaging with when they go to these different websites. Also, our nation may not sacrifice its infants on the arms of Moloch, but they are in the abortion clinics, are they not? The fetuses that are destroyed each year, unwanted babies. for the most part because of sexual relations outside of marriage. So I don't have to convince you that our culture is over the edge as far as illicit sexuality. The dam has broken. Our culture is sexualizing our young people. They want the souls of our children. There's a fascinating program on Frontline PBS. The name of the program was Merchants of Cool. It shows how these corporations are absolutely shameless, as they seek for their section of the billion-dollar teen market. They're absolutely shameless. They go down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Daytona Beach, during spring break. They pass out their particular brand of clothing. They film these kids having some sort of an orgy. Then the parts that can be shown back on TV, are pieced together into advertisements. This is what is cool. And so what they're really selling is a lifestyle. They're not just selling clothing made in a third world sweatshop. They're actually selling a lifestyle. That you can live a libertine lifestyle and not face temporal and eternal consequences. And so this is deadly serious. These people are after our youth. I think about that all the time. In addition, college students are facing an onslaught of temptation sexually. Penn State now has a lottery to see if your dorm mate will be a male or a female. Incredible. Imagine saving up all that money to send your son or daughter to Penn State and they have a lottery. In the interest of sexual freedom and gender freedom, you don't know if your daughter is going to draw the name of a male as her roommate in the dorms. Incredible. Madness. It's just absolute madness. What was once considered shameful, which is pornography, smut, has now been mainstreamed into our culture as normal. It's common in dormitories now for men to put a sign on the door of their dorm, stay away, porn session. There was a time when it was private, secretive, but now it's open. Just slap that sign on the door of their dormitory. Stay away. Porn session. Keep out. Keep out. We need to do something as a church. Because the world, through the secular media, is redefining sexuality. And the church has been quiet. We need to take our young people, put an arm on the shoulder and say, this is God's gift of oneness. This is God's gift of oneness. I don't even like to call it sex. I like to call it the act of marriage or God's gift of oneness when I'm speaking about it in a Christian context. I like to take young people aside and it takes a while to explain this to them. That God's gift of oneness is a four-chord strand, a chord of four strands. And that first strand, which is represented by the green here, that first strand is is the agape love where the husband, as a type of Christ, lays his life down for his wife and makes her glorious by his investment in her, by serving her, by leading her in love, by washing her in the word of God. He is the key individual on earth for his wife's sanctification. And so that first part of this wonderful gift of marital relations is the agape love where the husband is a model of the type of Christ. The second one is the spiritual union, the covenant. That this act of marriage is a gift of oneness. The two become one flesh. This is spiritual. This is God's gift to produce a bond until death. And each time that husband and wife get together and share their marital love and affection, it strengthens and increases the bond as a spiritual act. And on the far left, the fact that marital union forms a community into which the child is born, a little miniature community where the child is born into an environment where he or she is wanted and there's love and there's caring and everything that's needed to teach responsibilities of citizenship are there in that miniature community called the family. Now, finally, the one that our culture talks about, to the exclusion of the other three strands, is the fact that yes, there is this pleasure gift associated with sexuality. Sexual pleasure is endorsed and commended in the word of God. In 1 Corinthians 7, 3-5, the husband and wife are to make sure they don't abstain for any long periods of time. You're to do your duty to your partner. You're to have marital relations with your spouse on a regular basis. It's a sin to withhold that type of activity in your marriage. And then in Hebrews 13, 4, the marriage bed is undefiled. This is God's pure and good gift. And then finally in Proverbs 5, 15 and 19, you're supposed to let this marital passion for your spouse keep you from all strange women. As you give yourself enthusiastically to your wife and she to you is to guard you from adultery. So what has the world done with these four strands? The world has sought to unravel them. It has sought to send the message that you may snip off this erotic strand from the four-strand cord that God has woven. You may snip off this erotic strand and use it for your own pleasure and satisfaction outside of the marriage covenant. Of course, that's a lie which Satan uses to slay souls. As soon as you take this strand and separate it from the other three, you're dealing with 440 volts of electricity looking for a ground. It's just sitting there whiplashing on the ground. If you touch it, you're going to get zapped. It's going to produce tremendous damage. You see, God's most powerful temporal gift, sexuality, is a kind of epoxy that's meant to glue two people together. in their souls. And if you take it out of a God-given context and use it for recreation purposes outside of marriage, it produces incredible damage. The fallout just keeps coming. Years and years later, some of you older men who remember the sins of your youth, you could recall those just instantly. And it just keeps kicking out fallout. Oh, we can identify Those of us who have had a background like that can identify with the overflowing joy that that woman had in Luke 7.37 when she broke that alabaster container and anointed the feet of Christ and washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. The overflowing liberty of being washed as clean as new driven snow from that sexual impurity. So we just praise God that the Lord has such compassion upon those who've been snared. He can liberate them from that fallout. Well, our society has changed dramatically, has it not? It has changed a great degree. There are signs of this change all over the place. And one of the places you'd least expect to see it is in the obituaries, even on gravestone epitaphs. There was a time, 50 plus years ago, where the legacy left by a man was his character. We wanted to know what his character was like, what his contribution was to his community. Now it's changed to a great degree through the media. We now see a lot more image than substance, a lot more impressions than actually being a pillar of society. I mean, look at the movies they made that were the classics in black and white. In those particular films, the hero, the protagonist was a man of often nobility and integrity. And his part that he played in the film was ultimately a vindication that righteousness and good will triumph in the end. Well, everything's changed in our film and entertainment today. The genuine masculinity with integrity is almost a disease. We see heroes in films now that are self-serving. They're into situation ethics. They lie whenever it serves their purposes. They're often violent, cruel. We see programs, and if you watch any of these programs, I'm not casting any judgment on you at all. I have watched these myself, but films like Shield, Lost, House, Sopranos, 24 hours. In films like this, men authenticate themselves by self-assertion, vigilantism, violence and sometimes cruelty. Men are hungry for an identification of masculinity. I was reading the other day that this slap down TV wrestling, the number one portion of the audience, the viewership of this particular program is young boys 13 years old. They're just hungry for a male role model. They're just dying to have a male role model. And this lays something right at our feet, brothers. It lays at our feet the fact that God is looking to us to step into that role of being a mentor. Because these young men very often don't have a mentor. I was reading in the Barna that among evangelical dads, only one out of 22 have ever led their family in a devotional. One out of 22 have ever had even one family altar session where the father led the home in a family devotional. Now, that's shocking. If these young men are not going to find out what it means to know God and oppose the snares in our culture, who will teach them? Their friends? I don't certainly approve of everything Promise Keepers does, but sometimes they have illustrations that are helpful. At one of the National Promise Keepers Conference, to really illustrate the point that our young people are facing dangerous situations in our culture, this gentleman purchased every size of animal trap he could, all the way up to the largest trap capable of snaring or trapping a grizzly bear. He set each of these traps and put them on the stage. Then he had a young man, who was 12, blindfolded, and he said, I'm going to give you instructions, and you're going to walk through the spaces between these traps, until you make it to the other side of the stage. So he said, well, take six steps forward. Stop, stop. Okay, now take two steps to the right. Well, he saw it was just too dangerous, because the young man came within 18 inches of the grizzly trap. So he said, we're going to do it a different way. That man blindfolded, put your hands on my shoulders and I will walk, through the maze of these traps and get you safely to the other side. This is a picture of how much our young people need mentoring today. They absolutely need someone to put a hand on their shoulder and say, Hey, I know what you're up against. I know what the fight is. I know exactly where the challenges are. I think about how hungry these men are for masculinity. I was in Circuit City a few weeks ago And this one gentleman had just a brand new tattoo on his forearm. It was in Hebrew. It said, Arad. A-R-A-D. Those letters are changed to English letters. A-R-A-D. And I said, why did you have Arad tattooed on your forearm? He goes, Arad? He goes, that's Dara. I said, well, Hebrew reads from right to left. He goes, oh no. He had one inch high letters. on his forearm. He was in such a hurry to get this girlfriend's name on there, Dara, that he put Eridan instead. These young men are hungry for a male role model. God's plan to communicate the knowledge and the precious things of God to the next generation, God's plan has not changed. If you'd look in your Bibles for a moment, I want to take you to Psalm 78. Psalm 78. It says in Psalm 78, verse 5, For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should teach them to their children, that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments and not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not prepare its heart and whose spirit was not faithful to God." Like so many Old Testament passages, the problem is the dad's and the solution is the dad's. And we see that in this passage right here. In previous generations, the problems was the dads. They didn't prepare their hearts. They didn't have the vision to pass their faith on to the next generation. And what's the answer? Let moms take over because dads are failing? No. Same solution. Same blueprint from generation to generation. It is the dads that must step up and take the responsibility to pass the faith on to the next generation. And this is a wonderful parallel passage to Deuteronomy 6. where fathers are to speak of the things of God, the precious things of God, when they sit down, when they rise, when they're at the table, when they're at work. They're constantly speaking about these things because as much about the knowledge of God is caught as it is taught. Because the young people will see how much Dad loves God. And that is just contagious. I disciple about nine guys. Every one of them would just give a fantastic amount of money if he could open a diary someday and open up to pages where his father writes in that diary how much Jesus Christ means to him. Now, why is that so precious to a son? To hear from a dad how much Christ means to him. Why is that so precious to a son? Because in God's plan here, The confidence that the fathers have in God, the love that the fathers have for God, is what is passed on to the next generation. This is critical because Dad reflects God in ways that Mom cannot. I'll tell you why. Because it says in 1 Corinthians 11.3 that God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, and the man is the head of the woman. That means in God's In God's creation structure, in God's order, there is a certain hierarchy of honor. I'm not just talking about male privilege here, and that's not what I'm preaching. But there's a certain hierarchy in honor and authority down which the authority and honor of God flows. That means that you as a dad are modeling and imaging God in ways that your wife cannot. of man. Her long hair is given to her as a covering, which speaks of the fact that she is the glory of man. You are the glory of God in ways that the woman is not. And by that I mean this, the woman was not appointed by God to image the authority of God. The man was. Therefore, when a young son sits at your feet or on your lap, And he hears about the precious things of God. Not only is he getting information, you are modeling the character of God to your son. Because you are love and authority in the same person. That's exciting. You are love and authority in the same person. I know fathers who are all love and not authority. I know fathers who are all authority and not love. But a godly man is love and authority in the same person. That means you're modeling and imaging the character of the Heavenly Father to the child. And that's why the best teacher a child will ever have is not his pastor, it's his dad. We can't drop the ball on this. You are perfectly suited to teach your sons, your nephew, your grandson. You're perfectly suited for this. We must not relinquish that high calling. Young men are starving for a mentor. I have guys come up to me who are in their 30s and their 40s who ask me to mentor them, telling me they never had a dad who was godly. They never had a spiritual dad. Would you take a little time and mentor me? They're just hungry for this. See, this is God's plan. This is how the faith is to be passed on to the next generation. Through the fathers. And God is for our manhood more than we can possibly imagine. He is for our manhood. He's given us this masculinity for purposes, not only to subdue the earth, that's your job, make it fruitful, that's your vocation, but also to raise up God-fearing communities. He's given us our masculinity for that purpose so we would show leadership in this area. Now the topic that Pastor Adams asked me to address is the topic that's in this Purity Workbook. That's the topic of sexual temptation. What do we do about it? What are our strategies to combat it? How can we strengthen each other? If we're somewhat enmeshed in it, how can we conquer it? How can we teach men to overcome it? How can we teach younger men to fight it? So what I did over the last 12 years or so as I put together some strategies from God's word which I believe are very powerful ways of feeding upon the word so as to build a perimeter around the heart. Because that's really the issue. I remind the guys I disciple that you can go a block away from my house where there's a huge Mormon church and you can hear sermons about why you shouldn't covet and why you shouldn't commit adultery. and why you shouldn't lust. But at this Mormon church, they have nothing to transform them because they're not regenerate. They don't have a relationship to the Word of God where it's living and abiding and seated in their heart and reconstructing everything. All they have is behavior modification and moralism. So the change that must take place in our hearts must be a radical transforming power of the Word of God is what produces the change. the word of God released to produce these changes. So I really think the whole idea of trying to just modify your behavior has a limited value. It's got to start with the thought life, it's got to start with the affections. One of the first things I discovered in seeking purity is that one of the temptations in our culture is to be a sensual opportunist. A sensual opportunist, that's just a term I coined for the fact that there's a constant parade of sexual images going by in front of your eyes. You channel surf, there it is. You open a magazine, there it is. You check your email, you didn't ask for this and there's a line of lingerie ads down the right side. You drive by a billboard, you go to the mall, there's a constant parade of sensual images going in front of your eyes. And the question is, as a child of God, what is your protection against that? Is it simply just, you know, don't even look for a second? What is the solution to this? These are some of the things I discovered in this whole business of being a central opportunist. We have to decide ahead of time whether or not our eyes will settle on those images and just dwell there and let our imagination run wild. I have to make a decision. Will I be a sensual opportunist, letting those images dictate what I think about, or do I have ways to think about those images and turn away ahead of time? That's why in our second address this morning, I have a series of sermons that you can preach to yourself, which will allow you to cut off occasion from this sensual opportunism. I find it's just all too easy. for guys to be sensual opportunists. The image presents itself, you look at it, your imagination runs wild. Before you know it, you're sitting in lust. You're sitting there lusting. You didn't get up today planning to lust. You didn't premeditate, hey I'm going to get up today and this is going to be a lustful day. What happened was the image just presented itself and you didn't prepare yourself to cut off occasions so you wouldn't be essential opportunists and you found yourself lusting. Let me give you a definition of lust. Lust is when we go from appreciation of beauty and virtue to a place of desirability where we covet what is presented before us so as to crave it. In craving it, we imagine what it would be like to have it and experience it. And with that imagining of what it would be like to have it and experience it is the implicit mindset that says, if I could have that without being caught and without consequences, I would take it. You see, that's what lust does. It starts out with a little appreciation of the beauty or desirability of an object and then it moves from there to dwelling upon what it would be like to have it and then, gee, if I could have that without consequences, It sure would be wonderful, exciting, and fulfilling. So we have to mortify lust how many times a day? Sometimes for me it's hundreds of times a day. I'm assuming that must be the same for you. The number of times that you're sexually tempted to lust sometimes is hundreds of times a day. I am no use to God unless my attitude is an attitude of constant mortification of sin. Okay, here's one more. I'm putting it to death. Here's one more temptation, taking that and putting it to death. I am useless to God unless I'm constantly mortifying sin. That means I can't be a central opportunist. I can't just let the images passing in front of me dictate my thought life. I've got to do the dictating instead of letting those images dictate to me. See, there's that constant mortification of sin. Now, this is critical because I can't deny the fact that I'm a sexual being. When God pronounced everything good that He had made, everything wonderful, everything exceedingly good, it was an unfallen creation. With that creation, uncursed, unfallen, Adam and Eve in innocence, one of the things God pronounced exceedingly good was Adam's libido. God pronounced Adam's sex drive for Eve as good. And so our answer is not eradication of our sexual desires. That's not the answer. That was attempted in medieval Europe. And some of the ways they attempted eradication of the sex drives are humorous and painful. Sometimes they wore hair shirts under their outfit as a friar, perhaps made of linen. was this undergarment-like burlap. That constant scratchiness was supposed to override any other stimuli coming in. If you constantly are itching and irritating, it's hard to lust. So that was their approach. Another one was castration. We can castrate, then the hormones won't be there, and perhaps we won't lust. One friar was so frustrated, he stripped himself naked and dove into a patch of rose bushes, hoping that the thorns piercing his flesh would somehow eradicate his sexual lust. Well, the answer for us is not eradication, it's to redeem our sexual desires. I just want to talk about that just for a moment. What does it mean to redeem our sexual desires? If they're God-given, then it means that there must be a place for them that glorifies God. You see, Satan comes at us with that fourth strand snipped off and says, if this can be your playground, this can be a place where you recreate. You can recreate in the area of the erotic. That's Satan's temptation. He cuts off one of the strands from the four-strand cord that God has woven. The only way to beat the devil in this particular temptation is to out-truth him. That means you must uncover the lie that is behind the sexual temptation. And how do we out-truth the devil? You must actively seek in your thought life to restore sexuality to its good, gracious and generous context in which God gave it. It is the gift of oneness. It is the gift that makes you one with your wife. You must preach that to yourself as often as you need to. Affirm, preach, defend, exalt God's definition of the act of marriage, sexuality. Preach God's definition of what it is. It is His gift of oneness. It is undefiled. It is pure in the context in which God has given it. You see, the lie behind today's eroticism is that you can rip it out of its God-given context and then use it for your pleasure. That's the lie that Satan uses. And the world is dead set on redefining sexuality by ripping it out of the divine context in which God has given it. Now, every gift that God has given has a context. I think about the gift of fire. It makes the pistons in my car go as the ignition in the cylinders gives it horsepower. We cook our food with it. We heat our homes with it. We go stay in a cabin up in the mountains and we sit on that couch with our arm around our wife and look at that glowing fireplace. But there's a context for that fire. If you took that fire out of the fireplace and started spreading it around on the curtains and the couch and the forest outside, it would wreak devastation and death. And see, God's good gifts have a moral context. Sex has a moral context. Take it out of its moral context, it becomes incredibly destructive. Sexuality is such a powerful gift that it has to be kept in its moral context. That is God's plan. When it's ripped out of its moral context and severed from the moral context in which God has given it, sex becomes an idol which degrades, enslaves, breaks down a person, weakens them, distorts and defaces the image of God. But when sexuality is redeemed by keeping it in the moral context in which God has given it, that divinely ordained context, it results in deepening our God-given masculinity, deepening our God-given manhood, deepening our calling and magnifying God and his glory. See, God is for your manhood. We need to remind ourselves of that. because this culture has manhood on the chopping block. I read an article the other day that said that male enrollment in colleges is down and female enrollment is up. One of the reasons is there's just this constant, shrill feminism that comes on these college campuses and these guys are fed up. They're tired of hearing, if you're white and male, you are clueless and a burden. They're just tired of hearing that. God is for our manhood more than we can possibly imagine. Well, what else do we have to consider if we're not going to be a central opportunist? We have to remember that God has built this universe upon delayed gratification. Delayed gratification. That means central to your manhood is self-denial. Central to your masculinity is delayed gratification. The highest example of masculinity in history is the life of Christ. What was the gratification He delayed? For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising its shame. Counting that shame as nothing. He was able to wait. He was able to undergo his passion. Incredible self-denial. That is our model of masculinity. You see, the world is telling us the opposite. If it feels good, do it. Go for it now. You can indulge yourself in this. But that's the opposite of what scripture says. Scripture says that self-control is everything. Self-control is what makes a man strong. Uncontrolled passions make us weak. As it says in Proverbs 16.32, uncontrolled passions are like a city that's easily broken into. A man controlled by his passions is a weak man. And right at the center of our passions is our sexual libido. And the question is, what are you doing with your sexual libido? Are you redeeming it? Are you giving it back to God? Are you taking your thought life and turning it into your prayer life so that you're sharing your thought life with your Heavenly Father? He already knows what you're thinking. You see, our ability through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to have our sexuality in its proper orbit is connected to all other virtues in our manhood. A man whose sexuality and lust is running wild and not being mortified I guarantee you that man has other areas of passion which are bothering him. Anger problems. Unforgiveness problems. Road rage problems. Resentment problems. Sexual lust is not an isolated sin. It's connected to your other passions. And when your sexual lust is brought under the Lordship of Christ, it has an amazing effect on the other virtues in your Christian life. I'd back that up from 2 Peter 1, where it says the pursuit of moral excellence is connected to these other virtues that are listed in that chapter. So our sexuality is there. We're to redeem it, not eradicate it. It's always there. It's just turning like a dynamo. It enters our dream space. It's just constantly there, but it must be redeemed. We must keep preaching to ourselves the definition of sexuality as God defines it. Lewis Berry Chaffer, one of the founders of Dallas Theological Seminary, was walking with a new student down the hallway. They were in a part of the seminary where they had to walk the longest hallway and for some reason a woman in very skin tight leotards, a very shapely woman, was walking about four feet in front of them. It finally became clear that they were going to have to negotiate the entire length of the hallway with this woman swaying in front of them. And finally, to break the silence, the young student says to Dr. Chaffer, boy, Dr. Chaffer, and Dr. Chaffer was over 80 at the time, he said, it'll sure be great to reach that age where that type of thing won't bother you. And Dr. Chaffer said, it sure will. This dynamo continues to turn in us until glory. The issue is we must redeem it and put it to work for God's glory. Just saying no to being a sexual opportunist is a huge advance in this area, because those images are going to be there. They're just going to constantly present themselves to you. So what is our strategy? We're going to get into the strategy itself in the second address, but I just want to give you just a little introduction to what the strategy is. When I find myself inordinately attracted to sexual temptation, It's an instant indication that I'm not enjoying the love of the Father and intimacy with Christ. It's an instant indication that I'm not banking upon the fact that God holds me as His precious redeemed child in His heart. It's an instant indication that I'm not meditating on all that God is toward me in Christ. It's an instant indication that I'm not obeying Colossians 3. one and two. I'm not setting my affections on things above. I'm not practicing occupying my mind on things above. You see, there's work to be done in our thought life to keep that thought life on track. The rain that comes out of the sky finally seeks the lowest possible level. In my town, we have some little swampy sloughs, little stagnant ponds. That rain which came out of the sky, so pure on the mountaintops, finally through the drainage in our local hills and the streams, the flood control systems, finally found some little stagnant ponds to rest in. It took the work of the heat of the sun to evaporate that water and send it up into the clouds and distill it. The water naturally flows down and seeks the lowest level. That's like our thought life. If you do not put any work into the system, your thought life, finally settles down to the lowest possible denominator. And there's work to be done to keep your thought life where it ought to be. One of my seminary professors, when he catches himself letting his thoughts flow onto temporal, sensual objects, he says, higher thoughts, Larry, higher thoughts. In other words, come on, get them back up to thinking upon things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies. Get those thoughts back up there. Now, there's work to be done to do that. Because sensual images, there's no work to be done at all. These images enter through the eye gate, you've done no work at all, you're just a passive observer. Whether you're a couch potato or walking through the mall, wherever you are, these images enter. It takes a lot more work to think upon things above. Because you have to concentrate enough to preach to yourself spiritual realities and to present them to the mind's eye. The beauty and the desirability of Christ and His preeminence and His supremacy and His perfect suitability to your ruin and your dereliction and your loneliness and so on. To keep presenting Christ to the mind's eye is work. It not only requires meditation, it requires faith that God gave Him for you. It takes faith to believe that. He was given for me. See, this is where our feeding upon the Lord is so necessary. I meet so many young men who don't meditate on the Word of God. There's work to be done to actually take this book and turn it into sermons that have a penetrating application to you. So that you're saying, my goal is to dwell upon What I know about the works and the ways and the will and the wonders of God, that's my goal. Because that's God's plan. To keep you from being conformed to the world. His plan to keep you from being pressed into the world's mold is that you might be transformed by the way Scripture renews your mind. Now, Satan has a plan for your life to destroy it. And his main implement to destroy it is sexual lust. It says in 1 Peter 2 that lust is waging a war against your eternal soul. Now our problem is we don't think about lust waging war against our eternal soul. I know some of you had a late night last night. I see some drowsy heads here. What I'm telling you right now, I'm going to fly back to California, you may never see me again, but I'm just asking for your attention right now. Take a deep breath if you have to. But what I'm going to tell you right now is absolutely critical in your spiritual survival in this culture. We're not speaking to ourselves in vivid enough language. I was discipling a guy the other day. He's a student at Masters College. He's an A student. He serves in a church. This guy visited a porn site 30 days ago. I was horrified. The problem was he was not horrified. I was devastated. The problem was he wasn't devastated. And so he brought his girlfriend over so they could be counseled. And I encouraged him and then I reamed him in front of his girlfriend. I just told him, you're describing yourself as an addict. You're a rebel. You're describing yourself as having an addiction. You're committing blasphemies. You're going to an electronic with a whore on the internet and having vicarious relations with her. This guy, who was a really tough guy, turned beet red in front of his girlfriend. He needed to be shocked because he keeps excusing it as an addiction. I said, you've got to write some sermons, my friend. You're in deep trouble. You've got to write some sermons. Let me help you. If you were standing on a bluff, above an area that was flat, and there was a cesspool of black effluent down below, and just raw sewage. Under that black effluent were spools of razor-sharp wire. You fell into that pool and sunk all the way down, eight, ten feet. Your body was plunged and ripped up by that razor wire, and all that filth entered those wounds. What would happen to you? Well, I'd probably die. I said, that's what pornography is doing. God is not mocked. It says in Galatians 6, If you sow to the flesh, from the flesh you shall reap corruption. Soul septic infection. You've got to attack this head on. Pornography is making a play for your eternal soul. It is making a play for you. You've got to start preaching sermons to yourself. You're not preaching. Apathetic. You're in a malaise about this whole thing. The guys you've chosen to keep yourself accountable are also compromisers. It's time to fly with some eagles. Pick some men who are having victory and get together with them. Not just your buddies who are also compromising from time to time. Get with men who have consistent victory. Fly with an eagle once in a while. Let them set the bar for you. Man, this guy's waking up. He's taking notes. Oh man, maybe this is more serious than I thought. Just out of curiosity, how many have ever seen the first in the series, the movie Alien? Okay, wow, you guys don't go to movies, that's pretty good. Well, for those of you who haven't seen it, that is a very powerful image that I use when I'm instructing people on what pornography can do to a man. This particular alien, is a parasite like sin and this man who is exploring this one particular planet, this creature jumps up out of an egg case, attaches itself to his face, deposits its embryo inside of him and then the creature drops away. People don't know that this embryo is gestating inside of him, feeding on his internal organs. He looks normal, he looks fine. Now, when all the astronauts sit down to this dinner, in this spaceship. The man who has the alien gestating inside of him, he doesn't feel any different. He's just about to take a bite into his food. All of a sudden, he starts screaming uncontrollably. His fellow astronauts try to restrain him. We're wondering what's going to happen. All of a sudden, as he's bent back like this, an explosion of gore and guts and blood, this huge alien emerges from his chest. And he's just left as a dead, hollowed out being. And this alien goes into the spaceship looking for another victim, another host to feed upon. So I use this illustration when I'm teaching on what pornography can do to you. It hollows a man out. It feeds upon the faculties of the soul so that the very Passions you need to love empathetically, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to show empathy, mercy, gentleness, deeds of kindness. The very emotions you need to love God and love your neighbor are eaten away. Pornography hollows a man out and makes God distant, off in some other galaxy, estranged. It's hard to even picture that God is real when a man's been using pornography. Now, I'm not telling you this because I think most of you are having a problem. I'm telling you this because I'm giving you equipment. Because you know men who do have a problem. And see, I know Pastor Adams is teaching you this. Each of us in this room is a spiritual paramedic. But like no other paramedic, we have the same disease that the one we're helping has. We have the sin disease. We have remnants of indwelling sin. We're still dealing with our own indwelling sin. and yet God has called you to be a spiritual paramedic. You must be ready to help people with this problem. The amount of sexual imagery in cyberspace is growing geometrically. Thousands of new pornographic websites go up every week. This is a runaway problem. It's weakening our nation. It's killing our desire to remain free. It's killing our ability to make the sacrifices necessary to be free. Men are willingly going into bondage, enslavement through pornography. God wants to use you. We know that. But God uses men who are cleansing themselves from defilement. He uses men who are practicing mortification of sin. He uses men who are resolute and not double-minded. He uses men who have singular focus to run the race with endurance and to hear, well done. He uses men who are able to say, Lord, you are my employer. I am your slave. I beg of you, use me today. I beg of you, Lord, use me. God wants to use you. He's got good works that He's ordained ahead of time that you should walk in them. Look in your Bibles a moment to 2 Timothy 2, 21 and 22. 2 Timothy 2. 21 and 22. It says, therefore, if a man cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work. Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart. God wants to use you. but God uses clean vessels and perhaps some of you could be more useful if you were more clean. When I was in Bible college, I lived with four guys, half of them were Vietnam vets and you would have thought it was a fraternity house the way they kept this place so dirty. I came in one summer day wanting a big glass of ice water and every single glass was sitting in a in a sink full of greasy water. So I flung open the cabinets, desperately looking for something to drink out of, and there at the very top was a humble but perfectly clean peanut butter jar, empty. So I stood up and I got that peanut butter jar out and I had my ice water out of that peanut butter jar. Something not designed to be a drinking glass, yet I slaked my thirst using that jar. See, that's a picture for me that God will use The most humble, even believers who maybe never even had a Christian education in a Bible college or a seminary, God will use you if you are serious about cleansing yourself from these things. That you might be set apart, a vessel for honor, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work. And I know the context there is studied to show yourself approved. A workman approved, not ashamed. I know that's the context, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. But also here, the emphasis is cleanse yourself from these things that you might be a vessel for honor. God wants to use you. The next generation is depending upon you. You must make yourself available. Make friendships for the purpose of being an edifier, being an encouragement, being approachable. There are men right now under the age of 35 who are looking for someone they can trust and confess their sins to. Will you be that man? There are young men under the age of 35 who are having a problem with sexual lust. It's eating them alive. They are dying for an understanding older Christian man or a peer that they can unburden themselves to and say, I got a real problem. I am scared to death. I want to be able to share this. I need help. I want to talk about it. I don't want it spread around. I just need a brother. to lock arms with and beat this situation. It takes a lot more than scary stories for us to leave our lusts and heart idols. We have to form and prepare sermons for ourselves which give the biblical logic why the pleasure of Christ is to be pursued and the pleasure of lust is to be mortified. We must prepare sermons for us. that are persuasive, that are compelling, that are penetrating, and we can preach them to ourselves every day. Amen? Amen. We'll give you the strategy in the next address. Thank you so much.