Graphic Depictions
Tom Shrader teaches on pornography as part of his series on sexuality by design, using David and Bathsheba's story from 2 Samuel 11 to illustrate how what we see affects how we think and ultimately how we behave. He presents research on pornography's harmful effects including dehumanization of women and escalation to more deviant content. Shrader calls believers to pursue holiness by controlling their minds, avoiding even hints of sexual immorality, and testing all entertainment against the standard of what pleases God.
“What I see affects what I think, affects how I behave.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sexuality by Design (2007)
Recorded: February 15, 2007
Duration: 44 min
Themes: purity, temptation, holiness, lust, sexuality, marriage, sin, discipline, struggling with pornography, husband, young adult, new believer, battling sexual addiction, parent, mentor, seeking purity
Scripture: 2 Samuel 11, Romans 12:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Romans 16:19, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Ephesians 5:3-4, Ephesians 5:9
Theological Themes: sanctification, biblical authority, moral theology, sexual ethics, consecration, scriptural design, divine purpose, spiritual warfare
Full Transcript
We are glad you're here this morning today for session three of an eight-session series titled "Sexuality by Design." We'll make this point to you each week: the keyword in that whole title is "by design." God has a plan and God has a design for this world, for you, for how we're to live, and that design is communicated to us through His Word. This whole thing is not an accident, and no matter what area of your life we examine, we see that God speaks to it either directly or through principles that we can take and apply. Certainly when we get to the area of sexuality, God is very clear on sex inside of marriage and outside of marriage. We'll talk about those topics and all the others.
By the way, next week, just to give you a little bit of a tease, the last time I did this series, the topic we look at next week absolutely generated the most hostile, negative email, phone calls, and mail I've ever gotten. So we'll look at that next week when we get there.
God's Design and Scripture
When we talk about design, we're saying God has communicated to us. God created all of this, God spoke this world into existence, and God did not just create us and then walk away. If we really look at the scripture, it's the story of God's creation, man's fall, God's redemption, and then God's restoration of the new kingdom. That's really the story of what we have in that scripture, and the majority of it is consumed with the story of redemption. The first couple of chapters show us creation, chapter three shows we fall, then we have tons of information about God and His love for us, about not leaving us alone, about sending Christ to come and die so that we would have eternal life.
In the midst of this, God didn't communicate only through His creation and not only through Christ, but He gave us the scripture, the Bible. So we come back to this again and again. This becomes really important, but I'm in one of those imagination reading huge growth spurts right now, and I'm reading a lot of stuff about contemporary culture. One of the things that's become a huge issue is that there is a pretty good consensus in the new culture now that there's no truth anymore. That's the big issue right now.
They would say, for example, there are no absolutes. That would be just a basic premise statement. Obviously the problem with that is what? It's an absolute. You can't say there are no absolutes and make that statement absolute. So we've got lots of problems. Where do I go in a world that's confused for answers? I go to God's Word, to the scripture.
God's Design for Human Sexuality
When we talk about our human sexuality, we're talking about how God designed us and what God planned for that. Do you have a sexual desire and sexual appetite? Obviously God put that in you. Obviously that's there. That's part of being human. He made you human, but He also gave us rules or guidelines for that.
I got a call at church. I was actually in a meeting and came out, and the Galata switchboard said somebody called from your Thursday study. They didn't say it was from here or another one, and said last week was way too graphic and they won't be back again. Well, if that was a problem, we've got issues today because today's topic is pornography. I don't know how to talk about it. I imagine there's a more civil way to do it, but I thought, to be honest, I thought I communicated pretty well last week. So I was happy with that, and it may just be that if this is too much for you, you've got to take a five, six, seven week break.
But I think if you can't handle what we're talking about in here, you've just pretty much made yourself obsolete as it relates to the culture. This stuff may not apply to you, but I guarantee your kids and grandkids and your friends are all dealing with this stuff, and you better find a way to be able to communicate to them that God has a plan for this.
Understanding Men and Women
My personal belief is that men understand women better than women understand men. Now, there are always ladies that take offense to that. Here's why I say that. We as men have been told now for 30 years how women think. That's all we get. They just beat us with, "you know, be this, be this, be this." But I don't know if women fully grasp how depraved men are. I don't know if they fully understand how men really think and operate. So I'm going to try to give you a little bit of a glimpse of that today, not too much and not even necessarily how I think but how some of these other fellows think.
The Changed Landscape of Pornography
We're going to talk about today pornography and the acceleration really around us. You have a situation now very different than it was years ago. When I was a young boy, you might get what we would have called a girly magazine or a detective magazine or a movie magazine or maybe even a Playboy. You might have seen that. And then as you got a little bit older, there were places where they showed these movies that you could go in, and you knew it was a little bit of a seedy place and bookstores with no windows or those kinds of things that were going on.
But now you have something with the internet that's changed all of that because now this stuff is available and anonymous. The proliferation of these graphic depictions in our culture has reached a level where it's down into the young, young, young children.
Years ago I was trying to get on a website, a government website, and rather than push .gov, I pushed .com and it threw me right into a pornographic site. I had this stuff not only coming at me, not only the intrigue of it, but now I couldn't get out. Now I got pop-ups on pop-ups on pop-ups all over this place. For the purpose of this lesson, I wanted to Google stats on pornography, but I was afraid once I actually typed it in. I thought if I Google this I don't know what's going to come up.
know what I'm going to see and I'm afraid. Listen closely. Not afraid of what I'd see, I'm afraid I'd like it. So I never push search. That's how weak and fragile and pathetic I am and I'm a good representation of the male population I think.
Pornography is a huge issue. Not a lot of yucks today. It's kind of serious stuff. Give you just some stats. Michigan State Police said in 38,000 cases of sexual assault that they had on file, 41% of them, these guys who were doing the assaults, 41% involved the use of pornography just prior to the act. So pornography was the foreplay for these sexual assaults.
FBI reports that 81% of serial killers in prison said their biggest sexual interest was reading pornography. Ted Bundy, right before he was executed, had that interview, now very famous interview with Jim Dobson, where he said that there is no question in his mind that pornography played a role in the crimes that he committed. It's international, the Canadian Department of Justice found this, that almost half of the rapists who were studied, so about 50%, used sexual pornography to arouse themselves before seeking a victim to rape. About half. Attorney General's Commission report found that exposure to pornography is the strongest indicator or predictor of sexual deviance.
The Real Impact of Pornography
Now, stop right here, this is important. I am not saying that everyone who looks at a playboy becomes a rapist. Not saying that. We're not saying that there aren't people who have looked at these things and been involved in these things and inevitably all of a sudden they begin to act this out in some sort of a criminal way.
What I am saying is, I think it's stupid to think you can watch this stuff and not have it affect you. That makes no sense at all. Think about it. Two weeks ago, you had companies paying 2.6 million dollars for 30 seconds, 30 seconds shot at you during a Super Bowl commercial. So they're going to pay 2.6 million dollars, and these guys are in business to make money, they're not stupid. They're going to pay 2.6 million dollars to have a 30-second shot at you with a picture of a snicker bar or whatever it is.
And you're telling me that you can look at this porno stuff and it doesn't have any impact on you? Why are these very brilliant guys, why are they spending 2.6 million dollars for 30 seconds of your time? Here's what we need to begin to understand. It's what we see begins to affect how we think and most likely begins to affect how we act.
How Pornographic Images Get Locked in the Brain
There was a study done on this issue of pornography by an individual up at UC Irvine and he was trying to figure out why does this stuff stick in your mind? Why do these images get in your brain and get lodged there? Why are those things so vivid? Why is it so difficult to get rid of them?
Here's what he discovered. He said his research indicated that the memories of these experiences, the ones that occur during times of emotional arousal, sexual arousal, are difficult to erase because these experiences get locked into the brain by chemicals. Once they're there, he says, the memories are difficult to forget. Thus, the powerful memories keep reappearing in the mind's screen, stimulating and arousing the person over and over and over again.
So you see something and there's a chemical reaction that takes place and now it's on your hard drive and it's pretty hard to get it out of there and it's pretty easy to access and it seems to be triggered by almost anything. I was in church teaching, standing at the pulpit, getting ready to preach last spring, almost a year ago, and the back door, looking right down the aisle, the back doors were open and in came a girl. I would guess she was about 5'10". I would guess her legs were about 5'8". I would guess that she had about 13 inches of skirt.
The light was behind her so the silhouette I saw are these huge, long, shapely legs coming down the aisle at me as I'm trying to deliver God's Word. The light hits her and she's got something low cut and she just had this unbelievable body. I see this, I'm teaching, and the whole day, she sits right here, the whole day I've got to go over here and teach this way, look down, go over here and teach this way, look down. The next service, when I got up and those doors opened, immediately I had in my mind a picture of her long legs walking down the aisle again. This is in church and that stuff gets locked in there.
The Six Effects of Pornography Exposure
What's the effects of this pornography? Two gentlemen did a study, here's what they did. They took six weeks, they took, you'll like this phrase, they took normal adult men. I don't know what that means. They exposed them to heavy doses of nonviolent pornography. They found six things happened.
The first thing was it dehumanized women. It made men callous towards women. They became truly just an object of satisfying these guys sexually. Here's the second thing. It trivialized forced sex. Though it was nonviolent pornography, there was a lot of semi-unwilling, unparticipatory acts forced on them and this began to trivialize this.
Here's the third thing. They exhibited distorted perceptions of sexuality. In other words, after a period of time, these guys began to see values shift. What was normal before or abnormal becomes normal. It's not unusual. I don't do any counseling anymore, it's just not my deal, but I never met with gals alone for counseling, but I've met with gals with Susan in the room or their husbands where gals have said, my husband watches this stuff and then thinks that I'm Jenna Jameson or something and that I'm supposed to be doing and able to do all of these and willing to do all of these things.
Now let me stop right there. I'm not a prude. Remember, here was our whole mantra, single celibate, married celebration. All of a sudden, he's got some things in mind here that just, I'm not comfortable with that. Here's the fourth thing. It revealed an appetite for more deviant types of pornography. So here's what happened. What was shocking the first week was interesting the third
week, was boring by the fifth week. Then two things happened. Monogamy was devalued along with marriage and non-monogamous relationships were viewed not as normal, but as moral. That's a key thing. That was a byproduct of this study. What they discovered was just by watching this stuff, values changed. I'm immersed in this.
So here you go, 1939. If you and I in 1939 were alive, we went to the movies, we would have gone to see this unbelievable picture, the picture of the year in 1939, Gone with the Wind. So here we are. We're sitting to watch this. At the end of it, we have Clark Gable say, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." You would have heard gasps in the movie theater, now we say it in a Bible study. We've gone from "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," which would be a G rating now. And there's that steady slide.
The Pathology of Pornography
So if you grab your outlines, you'll see those four things down there about the pathology of pornography. It's kind of this trip. This is the scale. It starts, and then I'm hooked, that'd be the first point. I'm hooked, then there's an escalation, I need stronger doses, and then it becomes legitimized, and then I begin to act it out. So I'm hooked, this is the effects on the user. I'm hooked, I need stronger doses, it's legitimized, I act it out.
Let me say it again. Not everyone who looks at this stuff is going to be a mass murderer and a rapist, but it has an effect. What I see affects what I think, affects how I behave.
A Real-Life Illustration
This is a wonderful illustration to me. Last time I taught this, I'm walking to the car, and this guy stops me and said, "I was in your thing today." I said, "Well, I'm not sure what thing of mine were you in." He said, "I was in that talking thing in that study." I said, "Okay." He said, "I don't buy it." I said, "Okay, I'm all right. I make a lot of mistakes. I obviously made one today. What don't you buy?" He said, "I don't buy this whole pornography thing in that I think I can watch this pornography, and I don't think it has an effect on me."
I said, "Really?" And he said, "Yeah." I said, "You can watch it?" He said, "Yeah, I can watch it, and it hasn't affected me." I said, "Do you watch it?" He said, "Yeah, some. I don't have to see it every day or anything, but I watch it, and I'm on the internet with it, and it doesn't affect me."
We're walking to his car. We get to his car, and I said, "Well, you know, that's pretty cool. You're obviously stronger than me. I couldn't watch it. You know, if I saw a little bit of it, if I catch a Victoria's Secret ad during a football game, it gets locked in my brain, so you're way better than me."
I look at his car, and sitting on the front seat are some Tony Robbins tapes. I said, "What are those?" He said, "Well, those are motivational tapes." I said, "Really? Do you listen to them?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Do you listen to them often?" He said, "I listen to them every day." I said, "You listen to motivational tapes every day. Why would you listen to these motivational tapes every day?" He said, "Because I get it in my brain, and then it affects the way..."
And I said, "Really? And you need me to connect the dots for you at this point? You can't see a connection? You can hear something, and it has a stronger effect than what you see and hear? Are you kidding me? Are you nuts? But you're probably the exception. I mean, you're stronger than the rest of us." But do you get that picture? What is going to happen?
The Story of David and Bathsheba
If you've got Bibles, you're welcome to open them to 2 Samuel 11 to a very familiar story. It's the story of David and a lady named Bathsheba. I'm going to read it. I'm going to edit it a little bit as I do, but you can follow along.
2 Samuel 11: "One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing. The woman was beautiful, and David sent someone out to find out about her. The man said, 'This is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.' Then David sent messengers to get her. She came back to him. He slept with her. Then she went back home. The woman conceived, sent word to David saying, 'I'm pregnant.' So David sent word to Joab, 'Send me Uriah.' But Uriah spent the night at the entrance to the palace and did not go to the house. In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it, he wrote, 'Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is the fiercest, then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.'"
Now here's the story. David's walking around the palace. Interesting, his boys are all out fighting, the generals and the commanders are all out fighting, but the commander-in-chief is not. He's walking around, he's in the palace, he sees something in the distance, a figure, somewhat obscured, and he wants it clarified. It's not in here, it's not in the text, but this is when David says to his man, "Bring me the royal binoculars."
He looks and he sees Bathsheba and she is beautiful. Since he's the king and this is common, he says, "Go get her, bring her in, talk to her a little bit." He sleeps with her, she becomes pregnant. Her husband is this guy named Uriah.
So David comes up with this plan. Here's the plan: "I'm going to bring Uriah home, say I want to meet him. He's going to be here with nothing to do, he's got this beautiful wife, he's going to go, he'll sleep with her, then when she turns up pregnant, he's going to go, 'Must have been when I was home on leave.'"
Uriah is such a man, such a man of integrity that he says, "Wait a minute, how could I go up and be with my wife when my men are out fighting? No, I'll sleep right here on the concrete waiting for David to come and get me."
David goes, "That didn't work. Here's plan B." He takes this note and gives it to Joab and says, "Here's what you want to do." And in those days when you
Attack. If you're in the front, you're pretty much dead. Just to make sure he's in the front, you get it there in verse 11. Then the guys withdraw. There's no way that he could survive this. Amazing story.
The Progression of Sin in David's Life
Now there's something here of a fascinating subplot to me, because here's this guy who kind of moves from here's what he sees, and now he begins to think, and then he begins to act on it. He goes from voyeur to sexual immorality to lying to murder. Here's what makes this really interesting: this guy who's doing all this is what? A man after God's own heart. What in the world is going on here?
Hopefully a couple of things. Number one, there's hope for you and me, because we see that all sin falls short of the glory of God. But I think the great indicator of David is that he is ultimately broken over his sin. He's a man after God's own heart. Begin to read Psalm 51. Read about his brokenness. Read about his pain in his sin. "Restore my health." His body begins to erode away.
When I say to people, "How you doing?" they'll say, "Great!" "How you doing spiritually?" "Wonderful! Have my quiet time, I read a Max Lucado book and go to church. I'm serving, I'm singing in the choir. Doing great spiritually."
True Spiritual Health Indicators
One of the great ways to figure out where you are spiritually—I think great spiritual indicators—it's not whether you're reading your Bible or not. Though that's really good, you should be doing it, and the fact that you're not doing it would be problematic. The fact you are doing it doesn't necessarily mean that you're this giant of God. That you're going to church is great, and that you're singing in the choir is, depending upon whether you can sing or not, could be good, I guess.
The key thing is this: how do you respond when you sin? Or even more than that, how do you respond to the opportunities to sin? Because some sins just happen like this, but other sins take time to plan, to calculate, to execute. How do you respond to that? Not just temptation.
Let me give you those five things that are on your outline—how you fall. We use E's for these. You evaluate absolutes—by that you evaluate, you look at them and then you begin to put them aside. In this case, you entertain temptation. You explore departures. You execute deviations. And you attempt to evade detection.
The Five-Step Process to Moral Failure
So there's a process there. I reevaluate my absolutes, the thinking. I begin to entertain now this temptation that takes place. Now I'm going to explore options here. Then I execute this, and then I try to run away from it.
Now as you look at that list, I want to point out to you something—at least this is my way of thinking—the critical point is right here at step two. Temptations come. You can't stop them. Jesus was tempted. Temptations come. Things happen. That's not the problem. The problem is when I begin to entertain the thought, when I begin to dream about it, when I begin to fantasize about it.
I said last week, two-thirds of all adultery takes place with somebody in the workplace. So here it goes, something like this. It could go a variety of ways, but something like this. There's a new girl in the office, and you say to somebody, "Well, she's cute. What's her deal?" "She's the receptionist."
You happen to know that the receptionist takes a break every day at ten o'clock. So at ten o'clock you go back, and there she is by the Coke machines, putting her little money in, getting a little Diet Coke, and you begin to talk to her. You say, "I haven't got any calls yet, but I'm sure you're really good at what you do. And boy, you're pretty good looking." Now the day begins. You're out making calls. A little boring. Your mind gets carried away. You start to think about her a little more.
You get home. There's a little fight with your wife. She said, "You won't touch me till hell freezes over." And you say, "I hope hell never freezes over because I don't want to have to touch you anyway." And now you go back to work, and she catches your eye the next morning. At ten o'clock, you've got a roll of quarters standing by the Coke machine, and it begins that whole process of dialogue.
Warning Signs for Women
Ladies, I just give you this, and then we've got to move on. When some guy—this is how you know that this guy's in real trouble—when this guy says to you something like this: "I just want to talk to you. I just want to share my feelings with you. Can't share them with my friends—they'd laugh at me. I can't share them with my wife—she doesn't understand. You seem to be the only person I really connect with. I just want to share some thoughts with you. I'm going to tell you how I feel."
Gals, here's what he's after. He doesn't care about his thoughts. His only thought is about sex. His only feelings are about sex. He doesn't have any deep thoughts or feelings he wants to share with you. He's after you physically. That's what's going on there. And if it doesn't get to the physical, he's about to have an emotional adulterous affair. So be careful.
Six Things You Can Do
Six things you can do. Number one: recognize the importance of controlling your mind. "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world," Romans 12:2, "but be transformed how? By the renewing of your mind." What you see affects how you think, which affects how you behave.
God says that we are not reformed; we are transformed. We're new creatures, and this process begins not in what we do but begins in how we think. Don't be conformed. Some of the paraphrases use words like this: "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold," or "Don't copy the behavior of the world." Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Think differently.
One of the great indicators that I'm truly converted is I begin to see the world as God sees it. I see people as God sees them. For thirty years, here's how I lived: for thirty years I lived that every person and everything in this world was here for one reason, which was to make me happy. So people were as disposable as the plastic knives and forks that you and I use. That's just why they were there.
There so people are usable, and that's just that's how the world sees it. You're just a profit or you're just a commodity or you're here for my satisfaction. But all of a sudden God says no, this is a human being that's not here for your satisfaction, but really God says for my satisfaction. We're here to glorify God and to please Him. This all begins when I start to think differently.
We have a guy in our church, his name is Chuck Holmes. He's a wonderful man, a long criminal record. God saves him in prison, it's an absolute miracle. He comes out and he is determined to send into the prison really good Bible stuff. A lot of stuff going in there, not a lot of really good Bible stuff. So he's sending in these foundations of the faith, these workbooks, 12 lessons I think. If you finish these 12 lessons and you send them back, he grades them and then he sends you a MacArthur study Bible. It's a wonderful program, and it's a very expensive ministry. The people you're ministering to don't have any money to pay for it, and it's expensive ministry to do.
Wonderful guy. He came in one day, he said I want to share this letter with you, and it was from a guy, his name was Eddie Perez. I'm reading this letter and he says I'm in this gang. I said to Chuck, I don't think about this gang. He said well the only way you can get into this gang is you got to kill somebody to get in the gang. So he said this is a really bad guy. This whole story that he lays out is a life of hate. He said I hated black guys, I hated white guys, I hated everybody. All I wanted to do was fight. All I wanted to do was sexual things, perverted things, deviated things.
In this letter was this one sentence talking about God: I feel His love changing my way of thinking and therefore the way that I view life. That's the whole power here.
Controlling Your Mind
Recognize the importance of controlling your mind. Here's number two, understand the environment that is prescribed by God. Here's what God says: "But among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving."
Here you go: there should not even be a hint, not even an indicator, not even the slightest bit of sexual impurity. God calls us, and I cringe when I say this, so rather than leave it in general terms, let's put it in specific terms. You go ahead and put your name in here, I'll say it my way. God calls Tom to be holy. God says I don't even want a hint of this. I want you above reproach. I don't even want somebody be able to lob a charge against you and have it stick because there's not even a hint of immorality in your life.
Well how holy does He want me to be? Well imagine going home today and opening the mail and you get a letter that says, "Mr. Schrader, don't be alarmed." Now the first minute, the first time you read that, what happens? You're alarmed. Mr. Schrader, don't be alarmed. We just tested the drinking water in your area and it's 95% pure. Wait a minute. I got an issue with that. I'm not worried about the 95%. I'm worried about the 5%.
So I come to God and say, God don't be alarmed, I'm 80% holy. He's going, well I'm really proud of you for that 80%, but I'm worried about that 20%, or 15, or 5, or 4, or 3, or 2, or 1. That's the call. It's a very lofty call.
Testing Everything Against God's Standards
There's a third thing: inspect everything before you take it in. 1 Thessalonians 5:21: "Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil." If I'm going to test something, I have to have a standard. If I'm going to test something, there has to be some measurement. We take a course at school. At the end of the year there's a test. The test is based on the information we had and it's graded accordingly.
So you have kids, let me just take you through this now. You have kids who are being taught pretty much all day long that there's no such thing as right or wrong or true. Now what I said is I would love consistency. I would love to be able to go into a math test and where they say 2 plus 2 and I put 5 and they say no that's wrong. I say wait, wait, wait, stop. I'm going to apply to this the criteria that you've told me I have to use. I sincerely and firmly believe it's 5. I feel like it's 5. It's 5 for me. Who are you to impose your 4 on me?
Test it against something. What? God's standards. So God gives us standards on how we're to live. This goes in every area of your life.
Raising Children with Biblical Principles
Yesterday morning for some reason I started talking about raising kids at this point. God's just got ways to raise your children. We live in a country, I'm getting ready, the reason I guess maybe kids are on my mind because I just got an email yesterday, what are we going to talk about at summer camp? So in summer camp, which is not very far away, we take 700, 800 junior high and high schoolers over to San Diego and I do the teaching for them. It's a really pressured time because it's not really my target audience at all.
The junior highers and the high schoolers are pretty screwed up. The reason is by and large their parents are screwed up. You got a lot of parents who are more concerned about living their lives than they are about raising their kids. Somebody the other day said, can you give me something that would help me raise my kids? And I said, yeah. Have you ever seen Dog Whisperer? Ever seen the show? Any of you ever seen the show? It's the best show on parenting I've ever seen.
If you've never seen the show, you need to go see Dog Whisperer and you just go watch Dog Whisperer and then whatever he does with these dogs, you do with your kids. It's the best parenting show, the best parenting material outside of the scripture itself, but they're really scriptural principles. He basically what he does, he comes in, you got your dog in crisis, you can't control your dog. By the end of the show, with a little bit...
Here you go. Avoid the temptation to be an expert on evil. Romans chapter 16 verse 19: "Everyone has heard about your obedience," Paul writes to the church at Rome, "so that I am full of joy over you, but I want you to be wise about good and innocent about what's evil." I want you to have a PhD, if you will, in good stuff. I want you to be somewhat ignorant, innocent about evil. You don't need to know all these things.
Years ago now, there's a movie that came out with Michael Douglas and Glenn Close called Fatal Attraction. So I had these people saying to me, "Did you see Fatal Attraction?" I don't go to a lot of movies. We're going to a movie tonight, which is kind of interesting - we're going to do that preview on the Amazing Grace movie - but I don't go to many movies. And some of them, I wouldn't go for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is, I wouldn't want you to see me walk into them. I mean, they're just kind of maybe inappropriate, so I might rent it and watch something at home. Not to be hypocritical here, but I want to be careful, because some of you, that could be an issue for you.
But I just don't see many movies. "Have you seen Fatal Attraction?" No. "Have you seen Fatal Attraction?" No. So I said, "Have you seen Fatal Attraction?" I said, "You know, everybody's asking me that. Why do I need to see it?" He said, "Oh, it's an amazing movie. It's an amazing movie." He said, "Look, it's unbelievable. Here's what happens: Glenn Close and Michael Douglas - Michael Douglas is married, and Glenn Close kind of seduces him, and he ends up with her, and they're making love in the elevator, they're making love in the kitchen sink, they're making love all over the place. And here's what's going to happen: if you watch this movie, you're going to really understand and never commit adultery again, because it's a very tragic ending."
I said, "All right, a couple things. Now I can think of two reasons I don't need to see the movie. Number one, the Bible tells me I shouldn't commit adultery. If I watch Michael Douglas and Glenn Close making love in a sink, I could never brush my teeth again and spit into the sink and not think about..." And again, I hope you get my picture here. It's not that I wouldn't like it - I'm afraid I'd love it - but I don't need Michael Douglas and Glenn Close in the sink on my hard drive.
Pursue Entertainment That Glorifies God
Two more things. Pursue entertainment that's complementary to God. First Corinthians 10:31. By the way, First Corinthians 10:31 - that's just a core verse. That baby circled, underlined, moved a thousand different ways, because this begins to define your life. "So whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, you do it for the glory of God. Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks, or the church of God. Follow my examples; I follow Christ." So all that I'm going to be doing is to glorify God. Movies, entertainment, you fill in, internet sites, whatever it is.
So the question would be this: Should I be watching these? Should I be viewing these? Is it okay for me to see this? Let me just flip the question a little bit. This is important. When we talk about giving, we do this. If you ask the question, "How much should I give?" you get one answer. If you ask the question, "How much of God's money should I keep?" you get a different answer.
If you ask the question, "Is it okay for me to see this?" you get one answer. But if you ask the question, "What's the point of seeing it? Does it glorify God for me to see it? Does it glorify God for me to do it?" I might get an entirely different answer. What Paul's saying here is that our whole purpose is to glorify God. That everything we do - he says "eat and drink," which speaks of the most mundane things of life - but everything we do, from brushing our teeth, to studying scripture, to coming to here, to interacting with one another, everything is to glorify God.
Find Out What Pleases the Lord
And here's the last thing that He really calls us to do. This is wonderful. Ephesians 5:9: "Little children, live as lights, find out what pleases the Lord." Let me give you a little homework. We never do this. I'll give you a little homework. Go home and Google "Bible study" and one of the first sites that pops up is I think crosswalk.com. Then you go to crosswalk.com. Then you go in and you just type in "pleases God," search, "pleases the Lord," search, and let the Bible tell you what pleases God.
It seems to me that this verse is really important: "Find out what pleases God." Why? Now the study is not done when you Google and find out what pleases God, is it? No. Now I find out what pleases God, then what? Do it. Find out what pleases God and do it. This is a simple thing.
So I'm trying to figure out should I go see this movie or not? Does it please God? No. Well there's my answer. Not whether it's morally, ethically okay. Does it please God? No. Then I don't really need to go unless I'm just doing this to have fun, which I guess that's okay. All of a sudden my life begins to change in the midst of this.
The Reality of Visual Temptation
I will tell you this about pornography. Oh, let me stop a second because I didn't talk about this at the beginning. I heard something on the news the other day talking about pornography and tests that they've done, because it's always been kind of said, you know, this is a man's thing. They're now seeing roughly visual arousal be equal among men and women. So I'm sensing now this is a problem bigger than just a man's problem.
But when you're talking about allowing in through your eyes these provocative things, you are playing with fire. What you see is going to get in there. It's going to affect how you think. It's going to affect how you see.
each other. If you're married, it's going to affect your marriage. If you're single, it's going to really screw you up. And pretty soon, somewhere, now that I'm thinking this way, it's going to affect how I behave. Playing with fire.
So I look at stuff and the question is, does it please God?
Looking Ahead
Next week by far, I mentioned, last time I did this series, this topic next week generated the most, of any single lesson I've ever done, the most negative response, the most vicious emails, the more people ever that wanted to sit and talk about afterwards. It was voicemails by far more than any. Next week we'll take a look at that.
Let's pray. Father, we look at something like this and I think of my own life in the world and how it's changed since I was a teenager. I look at these years and I look from some magazines that were kind of hidden in the back shelf somewhere, to internet that's all around me, to television and movies. God, these graphic depictions are everywhere.
God, I pray a couple of things. Number one, that You'd guard our eyes and our hearts. Number two, that as we see these things, somewhat just it's inevitable, that as we see these things You'd somehow intervene and keep them from getting locked into our brain.
God, for those who struggle, for whom this is a huge issue, will You drive them to the scriptures? Will You come alongside them? Will You allow them to just get control of their mind as they're beginning to open a video or a magazine or an internet site? Would You just fill their brain with scriptures? Have them ask the question, is this next thing I'm about to do, is this pleasing to You, the Lord, our Master, our Savior?
Father, thank You for Jesus. We pray to You in His name. Amen.