We want to continue our studies now in the Pornographic Age and Victory in Christ, lesson number two, The Destructive Nature of Pornography, and we will try our best in this lesson to frighten you about the great, great danger that pornography presents, what it can do to you, what it can do to your family, if you allow yourself to get involved with it, And also, as you see in the textbook, we have memory verses for the lessons. At the beginning of each lesson, there's a memory verse that pertains to the next lesson. So you have time to memorize that. And so this is what will motivate us to do whatever is necessary to get the victory over over pornography. It's like dealing with a pornographic addiction is like dealing with an alcohol or drug addiction. It's something that you have to be desperate to get the victory. You must know that it's a matter of doing or dying, sinking or swimming. You have to be ready and willing to do whatever is necessary for victory. We see that working with young men involved with drugs in Nepal. And we have a program, basically we have a church. But we don't lock them up. They have to come, they have to be ready to do whatever's necessary to get themselves free of the drug addictions. And that's the way it is with pornography. So in this lesson, I want to frighten Christian men and women try to frighten us to flee from pornography. Proverbs approaches the subject that way. The first nine chapters particularly have warning after warning about the sexual temptations and the strange woman who represents the sexual temptations. And so this is an ancient battle. There's nothing new here. And Proverbs is written, first of all, for children. And we see that in the first 10 chapters, my child, my child, my child, my son. And that's when we need to have the victory over these things, is when we are, when they're children, when we, our children, our young people, before they pollute themselves with the world, that they can get the victory. And Proverbs teaches us that that is possible. And one of the approaches is to frighten children about these great dangers. They don't have any experience in the world, but they can learn experience by these warnings that are given from the Word of God. And so repeatedly, in these early chapters of Proverbs, we see this kind of sharp warning Proverbs 2, 18 and 19. For her house, her house, the house of the immoral woman, inclineth unto death, her paths unto the dead. None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. Proverbs 5, 4 and 5. But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on the hill. Proverbs 5, 8-14, Remove thy way far from her, come not nigh the door of her house, don't even come near the door, lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel. Let strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be in the house of a stranger. And thou mourn at the last when thy flesh and thy body are consumed. Then say, how have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and the assembly, and so Here's a man who has defiled himself, and now he's ashamed and he's bewailing what he's lost. That's what we need to do. I just think all the time, had I grown up with this kind of instruction, had I grown up in a church, the kind of churches we're striving to build these days, Had I grown up in such a church, learned these Proverbs, and had an opportunity to have the right kind of friends, my life would be very different today. Proverbs 5, 22 and 23. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holding with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray. And that is true today of multitudes. Proverbs 6, 26 through 28. For by means of a harsh woman, a man is brought to a piece of bread. The adulterous will hunt for the precious life. Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned? No, of course not. Warnings, sharp warnings. Proverbs 6, 32 through 33. Whoso committeth adultery with a woman, and Jesus said that is a matter of the mind and heart, first of all, lacketh understanding, he that doeth it destroys his own soul. This is no small issue. A wound and dishonor shall he get, and his reproach shall not be wiped away. These are the things that need to be preached from every pulpit today. but they're not being. Proverbs 7, 22 and 23. He goeth after her straightway as an ox goeth to the slaughter. He's following this immoral woman, and she's all over the internet today. You don't have to go out and find her. But he goes after her as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver as a bird hasteneth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life. Let thine heart, and then verses 25 through 27, Proverbs 7, let thine heart decline, not decline, to her ways. Go not astray in her paths, for she hath cast down many wounded. Yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. And so Proverbs approaches this issue with these sharp, sharp warnings in attempt to put fear in our hearts about this kind of sin. And so that's what this lesson does. Pornography will corrupt your mind and heart and take you on a downward spiral. Steve Gallagher writes about that. He deals with pastors and other men who have become addicted to pornography. He has a program he operates in the church in Kentucky. But he said, at the altar of sexual idolatry, his book, every time a man looks at pornography or gives over to some other form of sexual sin, his mind becomes more polluted, his heart more blackened, and his perspectives more distorted. Sin corrupts the soul, and its vile touch doesn't simply disappear when a person stops the behavior. And so he's warning about this downward spiral. He says, I cannot begin to count the men I have ministered to over the years who never imagined where their indulgence of lust would lead them. And Alan Sharp, he has on the internet, has 50 consequences to expect if you never forsake your porn. And they're very shocking. He says, men who view pornography for any length of time need ever harder forms of the product. They must graduate to something more wicked, more hardcore, more illegal to get the same level of arousal they once enjoyed with milder stuff. And the milder stuff is very wicked. Talk with any sexual offender serving time for rape, child abuse, It's child sexual abuse or worse, and you'll find a man who started his journey with soft core pornography at a young age and kept going, and I believe that's true. We've got to deal with it at the childhood level. David corrupted his soul by his sin with Bathsheba, his sin, and all the other sins that came out of that. And so he had to pray in Psalm 51 in his great prayer of repentance to create in me a clean heart. Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me. He had become corrupted in his very spirit. So pornography is a downward spiral into the depths of wickedness. And man's heart is capable of anything. Any, any kind of wickedness is desperately wicked. And in Romans chapter 1, Paul describes that downward spiral that occurred. I believe he's describing what occurred after the flood and when idolatry was invented. Babylon is the mother of harlots, and harlotry there is talking about idolatry and the invention of worship of stars. And alongside of it always has been immorality, goddesses and all that stuff. And Romans 1 verses 21 through 24 describes this downward spiral. And it starts with the natural, basically, natural uncleanness, which is men with women. That's natural, but it's supposed to be only for marriage. But it starts with the uncleanness engaging in that outside of marriage. But it's natural in the sense that God made a man and woman for that. But then it degrades. And it says God gave them up. God gave them up to uncleanness. And then God gave them up to vile affections. And so that's where the corruption of the very nature occurs, women with women and men with men, and then it reaches a third stage, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, which is anything and everything. Everything is sexualized. And so the uncleanness and then the vile affections and the reprobate mind. This is a process that has happened repeatedly in history. The Canaanite nations experienced this, the nations that were Sodom and Gomorrah, and then north of that, all those Canaanite nations, Jebusites, Amorites, Gergesites, Ivites. And by 1400 BC, they were engaging in every kind of wickedness, including bestiality. incest, and they were destroyed for that. But it happens in the lives of individuals. As the mind is allowed to dwell on these wicked things in the secrets of the imaginations, then the corruption grows. Ted Bundy, the rapist, serial killer, destroyed so many women and their families. But he was interviewed, I believe it was James Dobson, quite a bit before he was put to death. And he described his, he believed that it began with pornography as a child, the corruption of his heart and mind and soul. And so it's a downward slide. You can't say, well, I'll just stay at this level of it. You don't know where, you don't know what will happen to you. And it is greatly corrupting all of society today. I don't think we know, even now, at the dawn of the internet age, really, I don't think we know how far this thing has already corrupted us. But books have been written, Jonathan Van Maren, actually an article, Pornography is Destroying Childhood and Changing Sexual Desire, and he's documenting this, and how that porn use, ubiquitous porn use, because it's everywhere. There's no doubt that children and young people are engaged in pornography on the internet, unless there's a major, major effort on somebody's part to protect them. And normally there's not, not even in Baptist churches. And so there's this toxic rape culture he describes. It's because these young men's minds have been so corrupted by unnatural pornography, by sexual activity that involves violence, choking, almost to death. supposedly as a sexual thing. It's hard to even imagine, but that it has become so widespread. He's talking about Britain here. It's become so widespread that it is affecting girls and how they think of men and how they think of marriage. And he wrote another article in 2024, as violent porn making girls identifies transgender. very strange kind of thing that previous generations, when I was a kid, no one even thought about such things. But porn addiction, he says, is now ubiquitous among young people, and a generation has grown up with their view of sexuality shaped by the extreme and violent content found on major porn sites. an increasingly toxic sexual environment in which sexual violence has been normalized, has been the result. And so he's talking about the world, first of all, and how that there's the dating culture and there's, you know, there's been the idea that fornication is not so bad for a long time. And so that, you know, was immorality, girls and boys. But now these young men, these boys, have been taught that they need to strangle the girls, and they need to nearly kill them, and they need to abuse them violently. And the response of the girls is, and we're talking about girls age 16 to 21. UK report, nearly half of them said they had a partner expect sex. Of course, that's all wrong. But that's society today and the rock and roll culture of the 60s. broke the ground for this, but to expect to involve physical aggression, such as slapping and choking. And so girls are thinking, I don't want to be a girl. I mean, it's doing all kinds of crazy things to people. And it can be traced back to pornography. Ubiquitous means it's everywhere. Everybody's participating. Pornography will displease the Lord who saved you. We're talking about the dangers, we're talking about sharp warnings. Paul taught Timothy to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that woreth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier, will massively displease the Lord who saved you. Pornography will grieve the Holy Spirit. We are taught that the Spirit of God comes when we repent and trust Christ savingly. Ephesians 1, 12 through 14. And that if you don't have the Spirit, you're not saved. He that hath not the Spirit of God is none of his. And so the Spirit of God is there if you're saved. And he won't leave. It's a seal. sealed unto the day of redemption, Ephesians 4.30, but he can be grieved. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we're sealed unto the day of redemption, and your body is not your own, and the Spirit of God is there. And so in that same context, in chapter 5, verse 3, it says, but fornication and all uncleanness, let it not be once named among you as becometh saints. grieving the Holy Spirit by this uncleanness which he hates and despises. Pornography will harm Christ's reputation in you if you're saved, if you belong to Christ and you bear his name in this wicked world. Paul talked about that in Ephesians 5.3. Again, in the context of sexual immorality, impurity. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not be once named among you as becometh saints. Not once named, Paul said to the first churches. Well, it's named everywhere today among professing Christians and pastors. Pornography will drag Christ's sacred reputation into the gutter. That's what Nathan, the prophet, said to David from God. that because of your sin, he said, you've given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. And they still do. And they still do 3,000 years later. They bring up David. Well, what about David? And so God is still being blasphemed by that act of sin 3,000 years ago. Pornography will make you a defeated backslider. Living a secret life of sexual impurity is backsliding at best. if not an unsaved person, but you become a slave to that, and you might be faithful to church still, and you might even be in the ministry, but you're not living the Christian life as God intends it, backslidden, pornography will enslave you. John 8, 34, Jesus warned about that. Jesus answered them, verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is a servant of sin, and slavery, bondage, the world. And so pornography is a drug, it's been said, and the internet is the drug dealer. Pornography is a drug. I believe it's more powerful than most of the drugs. It will enslave you. You will take, well, I can quit. Now you'll become a slave. Pornography will corrupt the conscience. And that's a very serious matter. The conscience, God has given it. Paul, always, he said, I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man. Acts 24, 16. Exercise, present tense in Greek, continual repetitive action. I'm always exercising myself to have a conscience void of offense. That's the true Christian life. But the conscience, we're told, can be corrupted. The good conscience is mentioned six times in the New Testament. and the pure conscience is mentioned, and the conscience void of offense is mentioned, and so the conscience can be pure. But they were warned that conscience can be made shipwreck, 1 Timothy 1.19. It can be seared, 1 Timothy 4.2. It can be defiled, Titus 1.15. And it can be evil. An evil conscience, Hebrews 10.22. a corrupted conscience, and pornography will definitely corrupt the conscience and make you feel guilty all the time. Pornography will make you a hypocrite and a liar, because you have to lie to hide your sin, and then you live a life of hypocrisy and deception, always, automatically, once you get involved with that. Pornography will harm your marriage, It's destroyed countless marriages. Alan Sharp says it will cause untold harm to your best friend and loyal wife. You'll lose the respect and trust of your wife. You could lose your wife altogether if she divorces you, as often happens. Pornography use increases marital infidelity by 300%, he says. Roughly 40% of people who identify as sex addicts lose their spouse. Destroying and ruining and harming marriage. Permanent harm, really. The loss of trust cannot really totally be regained. Pornography will harm your relationship with your children. That's what we see in Proverbs. As the man, the father, is saying to the son in Proverbs 23, 26. My son, give me thine heart and let thine eyes observe my ways. And so I have to live right before my children to have their respect. David's sin with Bathsheba is a great example of that and how that he lost the respect of his sons. Two of his sons tried to kill him. That's the most dishonorable thing you can do to someone is kill him. They didn't just want to take his throne. They wanted to kill their dad. And so that It stemmed back to David's fornication, David's adultery. Pornography, and it began with pornography, an image of Bathsheba as she was out bathing herself. Pornography will harm or destroy your ministry. Countless ministries have been ruined, and this is going to get a lot worse. But it's almost a daily headline in the Christian news sites. do research for, for Friday News and Old Timothy. And it's almost a daily thing. And many of the prominent men have been destroyed, ministers destroyed, by visiting prostitutes. But I think if each case could be analyzed, it would probably involve pornography. Paul knew the dangers. He didn't have the internet, but he lived in a highly sexualized society. And he, as we've seen, and he did everything he could to protect himself. He refused to be dominated by his body. He said, no you not, that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize. So one that ye may obtain. and every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, the old olympics, but we are incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly, so fide I, not as one that beateth the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means When I have preached to others, I myself should be cast away. And so he's talking about his ministry. He's talking about living in such a way that he does not become rejected by God in regard to his ministry. He teaches us that it's possible to preach to others and end up being rejected, to be a castaway. He's talking about a prize. He's not talking about salvation. He's talking about a prize. Winning a prize. He's talking about the will of God. Doing what God's called me to do. The prize. And he wanted to avoid being a castaway. And the Greek word, adakomos, but it means unapproved, rejected. worthless. It's translated reprobate in 2nd Corinthians 13 6 and rejected Hebrews 6 8. That's what it means. That I'm rejected that God is measuring me and he's not just going to over. He's not going to overlook sin because I am doing good things. The Bible definitely teaches that. Jack House, he used to teach that soul winning would cover, I guess, a multitude of sins. But we don't see that here. Rejected, cast away. And so his standard was to be temperate in all things. That's a high standard. To keep under my body and bring it into subjection. That's a high standard of Christian living. The very highest standard. Keep under the body. And so. And this passage is not a commandment, it's an example. It's a testimony to be imitated. Paul said, this is what I do. He's he's showing himself as the example, as he often did. And he's the only apostle, as far as I know, that said, follow me. He was a magnificent example of everything that he preached. This is like a Nazarite vow type of life. Free will, but to live in the strictest separation to God. Numbers 6, 1 through 8, all the days of his separation, he's holy under the Lord. Holy under the Lord. But I personally know lots of preachers who have lost their ministries due to pornography. Beginning with a student at Tennessee Temple in the 1970s. that toward our graduation, I guess our last year there, we were graduating, and he was trying to be accepted by BIMI as a missionary, and during the process of evaluation, they found out that he was addicted to pornography, which was, in those days, magazines, long before internet, but that disqualified him, and I saw that, I knew him, and saw that, and it frightened me. And it should frighten you to lose your ministry over what, nothing? I know two men that I've preached in their churches. I've preached conferences in their churches. And then later they were disqualified from the ministry, out of the ministry because of child pornography. One of them was a grandfather. I don't know how long that pornography had been going on, but he was a grandfather when it came out, and he was disqualified. He was very well known. And the other was the father of several children. Child pornography. They didn't start out with child pornography, I'm pretty sure. It was a downward spiral. Pornography will bring the chastening. God. Hebrews 12. He chastens. It's an evidence of salvation. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. If you endure it. If you have it and if you endure it. He's dealing with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons. Well, that was written in the context of a culture, the Jewish culture, in which fathers did chasten their sons. In most cultures today, all across the world, this doesn't make any sense. What son is he whom the Father chasteneth not? Well, most sons are not chastened. Certainly not in Nepal, where we live. And yet God does chasten. When God receives us through saving faith, and He receives us as adopted sons, He begins a chastening program. to produce holiness in his children. And the Bible says that he will do whatever is necessary, and that there is a sin unto death. All unrighteousness, John talked about it. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin unto death, 1 John 5, 17. Many in the Church of Corinth had experienced that in 1 Corinthians 11, 29 through 30, sin unto death. because of their careless attitude toward the Lord's Supper and the things of a New Testament church. Ananias and Sapphira died, the sin and the death. David, I believe we see in the case of David what this is. that it is a sin in which God is convicting about, but there's no repentance. And there comes a point, that you pass a point, and there's a sin and a death. Because when David repented under the ministry of Nathan the prophet, in 2 Samuel chapter 12, the prophet said, you've repented, you will not die. which indicates that he would have died had he continued in impendence. And so this is an evidence. I've often thought about it, how so many people claim to be saved, but they've lived in sin for a very long time. And you just wonder today, where is the sin under death? Where is the chastisement? Are they not even saved? Obviously, in many cases, they are not. Pornography will cause you to be devoured by the devil. 1 Peter 5, 8, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Devouring, lion. The devil cannot devour me if I'm not in a position spiritually to be devoured. He looks for those he's able to devour. He has permission to devour. Demas was devoured because of his love of the world. We've seen it countless times, the devouring of the devil. I met a young man three years ago now in Chicago, And he had recently gotten saved, and he seemed to be saved, seemed to have clear evidence, and seemed to be growing. But he never made any progress, really, since then. And every time I go back to that church, I ask about him, and I'm told, well, no, he's not making progress. And it's because he's addicted to pornography, and it's because he won't do what's needed to be done to have victory. He lives with a brother, as I understand it, in a home together or in a room, whatever. And they have Internet and he has an iPhone and he has pornography and he won't move to a different situation, which is what he would absolutely need to do. Devoured by the devil. Everything he could have been for Christ, devoured by the devil. In this case, pornography. I think of one of our Bible college graduates who was probably the best preacher we've ever had in our Bible college. But he was living a double life. And we had more and more doubts about him. Finally, things came out. We removed him from the ministry. We tried greatly to help him, to keep him. But eventually he left the church and he is devoured. He still hangs around, but he's not in church. He's not doing anything for the Lord. It's just getting more and more miserable and messed up. Devoured by the devil. And then we want to note that pornography addiction will be found out. Numbers 32, 23, be sure your sin will find you out. That's scary. But it's true and we might as well face it and deal with it. And Paul, Added to that, in 1 Timothy 5, 24 and 25, some men's sins are opened beforehand, going before to judgment, and some men, they follow after. So, just because your sin is not exposed in this present life, doesn't mean that it's hidden. God knows all about it, so it will be judged at the judgment seat of Christ. We think of David's sin. We think of Ananias and Sapphira's sin. We think of Jack Howes, son of David Howes, son of Jack Howes, who pastored Millard Road Baptist Church in Garland, Texas, and was having adulterous relationships with multiple women, as I understand it. But he was caught when someone in the church, a man, found a briefcase with photos of the pastors in immoral situations. David did not plan on that being found. Jack Scopp, who pastored after Jack Hiles, Jack Scopp, the son-in-law of Jack Hiles, thought he could get away with his sin. He was having an adulterous relationship with a teenage girl in the church. And somehow or the other, he left his phone on the pulpit or something, and one of the deacons got a hold of it and saw things. regarding him, the pastor, and the teenage girl. And he had to go to prison for many years. Be sure your sin will find you out. Steve Gallagher describes many examples like that in his book, At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry. One pastor was having an affair, and so he's on the phone in his office talking to this woman, who's not his wife, having wrong conversation, and he accidentally turned on the intercom. So everybody in the church building heard his conversation. Be sure your Zen will find you out. In another church, a deacon, there was a production company that was making a documentary of prostitution in that area. And so they brought the cameras out, and they actually went over to where prostitutes were, and they were filming. And a man drives up. and tries to get the services of a prostitute. Well, they edited that documentary and they were showing it to someone in the church, some people in the church, and they recognized that the man in that car is one of our deacons. And so he was busted. Be sure your sin will find you out. And that's the word of God. So it's absolutely true. Pornography will rob you at Christ's judgment seat. We can be robbed, we can be ashamed, we can lose our reward. It's got to be a really serious matter because it is so emphasized and repeated in the New Testament. Romans 14, 10 through 12. 1 Corinthians 3, 14 through 15. 1 Corinthians 4, 5. And 2 Corinthians 5, 10. Now all of those passages, those three passages, are written to the church at Corinth, which was a carnal church, so obviously carnal Christians need to hear a lot about the judgment seat of Christ. It is a good motivator to holiness. But then in 1 John 2, 28, John talked about it, and he said, now little children abide in him, that when he shall appear, We may have confidence and not be ashamed before he met his coming. So obviously it's possible to be ashamed before Christ when he comes at the rapture. So this is serious stuff. This lesson is intended to shock and awe. It's intended to put the fear of God, the fear of sin, the fear of judgment in our hearts as God's people today. And that's one of the proper motivations to live right. We end that lesson at this point.