Can Pleasure in God Really Compete with the Pleasures of Porn?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | This week, John Piper's new book launches.
00:00:07.320 | It's titled Living in the Light, Money, Sex, and Power.
00:00:10.520 | It's a trim 150-page book published
00:00:12.800 | as a nice little hardcover by our friends
00:00:15.300 | at the Good Book Company in England,
00:00:16.720 | available now on Amazon, and of course,
00:00:18.400 | the full digital book can be downloaded at DesiringGod.
00:00:22.440 | Pastor John, on this podcast,
00:00:23.600 | we often talk about fighting sin on two fronts.
00:00:25.940 | There's an external front of shielding our lives
00:00:28.700 | from certain influences, and then there's the internal front
00:00:32.320 | of filling our heart with God's glory.
00:00:35.000 | In the struggles against the sinful use
00:00:37.040 | of money, sex, and power,
00:00:38.080 | these things can seem far more powerful
00:00:39.920 | and more dominating in real life experience
00:00:42.100 | than the holy affections of Christ, as you well know.
00:00:46.280 | What would you say to a young believer
00:00:48.880 | who feels this is the case?
00:00:50.880 | Are you saying that God's glory is more powerful
00:00:53.540 | than the lure of internet pornography, for example?
00:00:57.160 | How do you quantify the competing pleasures of the flesh
00:01:00.840 | and the expulsive power of a new affection?
00:01:03.480 | Speak to a doubter who doesn't believe
00:01:05.920 | the pleasures in God is stronger
00:01:08.280 | than the allure of pornography.
00:01:10.440 | - Wow.
00:01:11.280 | That question
00:01:13.560 | really
00:01:15.960 | captures my,
00:01:19.560 | I really wanna figure this out.
00:01:21.440 | I mean, I get the difference between the powers of sex
00:01:26.080 | and the power of spiritual ecstasies.
00:01:28.600 | Those are not the same.
00:01:29.680 | So I've got lots to say about this.
00:01:31.800 | Where shall I start?
00:01:32.800 | Whenever we talk about money, sex, and power,
00:01:36.880 | sex always seems to be in a class by itself.
00:01:40.840 | And the reason for that
00:01:42.760 | is the physical dimension of the desire.
00:01:46.000 | That makes the desire for sex intense and powerful
00:01:50.420 | in a way that the desire for money and power do not.
00:01:55.240 | I'm sure that the desire for money,
00:01:58.040 | some activity or toy or privilege that money can buy,
00:02:01.880 | may have a physical dimension to it.
00:02:04.520 | But I doubt that desire for money and desire for power
00:02:09.520 | ever becomes as overpowering
00:02:12.880 | in their physical dimension as sex does.
00:02:16.160 | So my guess is that when a new believer
00:02:20.040 | or an immature believer compares the power of sex
00:02:24.920 | to the power of the beauty of Christ,
00:02:27.860 | these can feel like totally different kinds of attraction.
00:02:32.860 | And the question becomes whether the kind of attraction
00:02:37.360 | that the beauty of Christ has
00:02:40.760 | can really counter the kind of attraction
00:02:44.640 | that sexual hormones create.
00:02:48.400 | And I see that distinction.
00:02:49.960 | It's a real distinction.
00:02:51.800 | The spiritual joys, even ecstasies,
00:02:55.160 | which we can know in personal relation with Christ
00:02:59.920 | are in fact not the same physical kind
00:03:04.240 | as we taste in sexual craving.
00:03:08.200 | So when I say that the expulsive power
00:03:12.960 | of a new desire for Christ
00:03:14.800 | can drive out the controlling power of old sinful desires,
00:03:20.000 | I realize that this is a battle
00:03:22.920 | not between two pleasures measured on the same scale.
00:03:28.840 | One pleasure is dominantly physical, not only,
00:03:34.160 | and the other pleasure is dominantly spiritual,
00:03:37.940 | not only, but dominantly.
00:03:40.680 | And this creates a problem for a new believer
00:03:45.300 | or an immature believer
00:03:46.680 | because spiritual pleasures are so new to them
00:03:51.680 | and their capacities for these pleasures
00:03:55.380 | may be so undeveloped that they can scarcely imagine
00:04:00.380 | that a godly spiritual pleasure could be intense enough
00:04:05.600 | to conquer an ungodly physical pleasure.
00:04:09.920 | And another difference between these combatants
00:04:13.440 | is that the desire for sex gets its power
00:04:18.440 | from an immediate, narrow, focused,
00:04:23.360 | visible or touchable sensation,
00:04:26.640 | but the desire for Christ and the enjoyment of Christ
00:04:31.640 | is not that way.
00:04:33.780 | It's not narrow in the same way.
00:04:36.320 | It's the pleasures that we have in knowing Christ
00:04:40.400 | are larger in their focus, deeper in the soul,
00:04:45.400 | more lasting and durable,
00:04:48.680 | taking in more of your personality
00:04:51.280 | instead of just focusing on your body,
00:04:54.280 | and more personal and more relational.
00:04:57.740 | And this means that the cultivation
00:05:01.960 | of the controlling power of the pleasures
00:05:06.520 | that we have in Christ,
00:05:07.520 | in other words, the effort to make them
00:05:08.800 | the controlling pleasures happens over time.
00:05:12.880 | It doesn't just happen in that little moment there
00:05:15.160 | while we're facing the battle.
00:05:17.440 | While the sexual pleasures are arriving,
00:05:20.480 | bang, with such enormous force,
00:05:24.180 | which means that the warfare of pleasure against pleasure
00:05:29.180 | is not simply fought in the moment of immediate combat,
00:05:34.600 | but over time as we attempt to go deeper and deeper
00:05:39.000 | in our knowledge of Christ and our dependence on Christ
00:05:41.680 | and our enjoyment of Christ.
00:05:43.920 | For example, the shield of faith that Paul says quenches
00:05:47.680 | the fiery darts of the evil one.
00:05:50.920 | Maybe they happen to be sexual and flaming darts this time.
00:05:55.920 | That shield is not something you leave in your arsenal
00:06:02.480 | and only whip out when the arrows are flying.
00:06:07.400 | The shield of faith represents a daily,
00:06:11.720 | ongoing cultivation of growing knowledge
00:06:15.400 | and growing trust and growing delight
00:06:17.920 | in our friend and king and savior, Jesus Christ,
00:06:21.640 | hour by hour, day by day, week by week,
00:06:23.960 | month by month, growing the effectiveness of this shield
00:06:28.760 | when the arrows happen to fly.
00:06:31.680 | So let me try to illustrate practically
00:06:34.800 | what I'm talking about,
00:06:36.120 | but the growing and the intensification
00:06:38.440 | of this counter desire of spiritual pleasure
00:06:43.440 | over against the immediacy of the physical pleasure.
00:06:47.080 | Basically, the idea is every day we fix our attention
00:06:52.080 | on the beauty of Christ in the way he deals with money
00:06:57.160 | and the beauty of Christ in the way he deals with sex
00:07:00.480 | and the beauty of Christ in the way he deals with power.
00:07:03.120 | And the biblical principle is that beholding,
00:07:06.960 | I'm getting this from 2 Corinthians 3, 18,
00:07:09.720 | beholding, looking at the peculiar glory of Christ,
00:07:14.720 | we are transformed into his likeness
00:07:19.760 | so that his beauty in relation to money
00:07:23.280 | becomes our beauty in relation to money
00:07:25.880 | and his beauty in relation to sex,
00:07:28.080 | our beauty in relation to sex
00:07:29.760 | and his beauty in relation to power,
00:07:32.960 | our beauty in relation to power.
00:07:35.440 | So here's how it works for me.
00:07:37.400 | I'll just give you concrete strategies
00:07:39.720 | that John Piper tries to follow.
00:07:42.160 | When I drink in the word about Jesus
00:07:46.240 | being so unencumbered by possessions
00:07:50.780 | that he had no place to lay his head,
00:07:53.740 | my amazement at his poverty, poverty that made many rich,
00:07:58.840 | moves me, it moves me, it shapes me,
00:08:02.080 | it frees me from my love affair with money, I admire it.
00:08:06.520 | And when he says, "Foxes have holes
00:08:08.640 | "and birds of the air have nests,
00:08:10.000 | "but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,"
00:08:12.120 | I love him, I love his simplicity,
00:08:14.840 | I love his freedom from the love of money,
00:08:17.320 | I love his readiness to risk all for the mission.
00:08:21.320 | And when Paul says, "Though he was rich,
00:08:23.520 | "yet for your sake he became poor,"
00:08:26.320 | so that by his poverty he could make many rich,
00:08:29.280 | I see him, I love him, I'm drawn to him,
00:08:31.960 | and I find him giving himself to me.
00:08:34.800 | And his freedom from money
00:08:36.220 | starts to give me freedom from money,
00:08:38.640 | and his vastly more admirable beauty
00:08:43.640 | so far surpasses the tycoons of Wall Street.
00:08:46.640 | Why would I wanna be like one of them?
00:08:48.920 | He's so free, so loving, so bold, so sacrificial.
00:08:52.760 | Everything about him is more attractive
00:08:55.100 | than all the rich people I've ever known.
00:08:58.000 | So that's the way it works for me.
00:08:59.520 | Beholding the glory of the Lord,
00:09:02.360 | I am changed into a person who doesn't love money.
00:09:05.520 | That's the way it works.
00:09:06.360 | Or let's take sex, for example.
00:09:08.160 | When I look at Jesus' sexual life, same thing happens.
00:09:12.200 | Decades, three decades of, well, maybe two,
00:09:16.120 | of masculine virility.
00:09:18.160 | He had an adolescence, I presume, a puberty.
00:09:21.580 | So one and a half or two decades of masculine virility,
00:09:26.580 | yet not one single millisecond
00:09:31.640 | of a sinful thought or feeling or immoral act.
00:09:36.640 | Women were hanging on his words, following him around.
00:09:42.680 | Former prostitutes wept over him
00:09:46.120 | and wiped his bare feet with their hair.
00:09:49.680 | He lived a life from one angle
00:09:52.020 | that you could say was supercharged with sexual temptation,
00:09:57.020 | and he never sinned.
00:10:00.000 | He never once committed any lustful thought or act.
00:10:04.000 | He denied himself perfectly
00:10:06.740 | without denying the goodness of sexuality.
00:10:10.060 | I watch him, and as I watch him, I love him.
00:10:13.820 | I admire him.
00:10:15.100 | I stand in awe of his purity of mind and body,
00:10:18.820 | and I find myself in that admiration,
00:10:21.180 | hating my own little compromises,
00:10:23.340 | and I find myself longing to be pure
00:10:26.740 | and to be found holy at the last day
00:10:29.300 | and above reproach and glorious in purity,
00:10:32.340 | and his purity sexually is contagious.
00:10:37.340 | Or here it is, here's the way I do it with power.
00:10:42.060 | Just recently I did this.
00:10:44.340 | You can do it in lots of ways,
00:10:46.020 | but when I looked at him in Gethsemane recently,
00:10:50.320 | and he said to his disciples
00:10:55.500 | that chopped off an ear to save him,
00:10:58.220 | do you not think that I cannot appeal to my father,
00:11:03.220 | and he will at once give me more than 12 legions of angels?
00:11:08.400 | Well, now, a legion is about 3,000 soldiers.
00:11:13.100 | 12 legions is 36,000.
00:11:15.540 | 36,000 angels would be enough to rescue him,
00:11:19.580 | and he says, "I can do this.
00:11:21.860 | "That's power.
00:11:23.200 | "That is power," and he didn't do it.
00:11:27.560 | He walked into the jaws of the lion,
00:11:32.280 | and he was killed.
00:11:34.740 | Why?
00:11:35.580 | Why did he use power that way?
00:11:39.540 | And it's so glorious.
00:11:40.940 | It's so beautiful.
00:11:42.020 | It's so loving.
00:11:43.420 | It's so kind.
00:11:44.540 | It's so self-denying.
00:11:46.020 | It makes me say, "I wanna use power that way.
00:11:49.140 | "I wanna lay it down for the cause of love,
00:11:51.720 | "or I wanna turn it for the good of others
00:11:54.620 | "the way he did."
00:11:57.100 | So to the young believer, or the immature believer,
00:12:01.340 | or the doubting believer, I would empathize with you
00:12:06.100 | that the power of sex in the moment of temptation
00:12:10.260 | seems stronger, largely because it's physical,
00:12:15.140 | and greed and craving look so powerful,
00:12:20.060 | when you wanna crave to look cool,
00:12:21.860 | or crave to be powerful.
00:12:22.980 | They look so powerful in the moment,
00:12:25.680 | but I would plead with you to believe and to pursue.
00:12:29.420 | Christ has depths and heights and unexpected dimensions
00:12:34.380 | of pleasure for you,
00:12:36.580 | that if you will go hard after him day in and day out,
00:12:40.920 | these dimensions of pleasure will transform your life,
00:12:45.920 | and they will pull the power plug
00:12:49.460 | on those sinful temptations.
00:12:52.980 | - Brilliantly helpful.
00:12:53.960 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:55.400 | The new book is titled, "Living in the Light,
00:12:57.740 | "Money, Sex, and Power."
00:12:58.820 | It's a nice little hardcover published
00:13:00.340 | by the Good Book Company in England.
00:13:02.940 | It's available on Amazon, downloadable,
00:13:04.900 | free of charge at desiringgod.org.
00:13:07.500 | I am your host, Tony Renke.
00:13:08.940 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast
00:13:10.960 | with author and longtime pastor, John Piper.
00:13:13.780 | I'll see you tomorrow.
00:13:14.880 | (upbeat music)
00:13:17.460 | (upbeat music)
00:13:20.040 | [BLANK_AUDIO]