Pornography and Resisting the Power of Temptation
Chapters
0:0 Introduction0:35 Sermon
6:6 Outro
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.680 | On April 1st of 2001, Pastor John preached a sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church on Romans 7.
00:00:11.040 | The message was titled "The Importance of Knowing Our Sin."
00:00:14.400 | If Paul argues that we need to know the power of sin, logically we ask the follow-up question,
00:00:20.560 | "Does that mean that we need to experience sinning in order to become familiar with the power of sin?"
00:00:26.480 | In that sermon in 2001, Pastor John answered the question in the negative,
00:00:30.800 | and he did so with a parable of resisting temptation. Here's what he said.
00:00:34.880 | Do not experiment with sin to get to know sin. There's a better way. Let me use a parable
00:00:44.080 | to say it. What I'm doing here is answering the question, "Well, don't you have to be a sinner? I
00:00:50.880 | mean, do some sins and get to know sin like you ought to know it?" I say, "Well, that's not a
00:00:56.320 | problem." Once there were three men standing before a pit. The pit is the pit of lust. I'm going to
00:01:04.240 | talk about men. Tied around their waist is a cord, 100-pound test cord. The cord goes into the pit.
00:01:21.040 | The pit looks very attractive, and it's deadly. Snakes at the bottom of the pit.
00:01:26.720 | It's the pit of lust, the pit of pornography, the pit of internet nudity. It's a click away.
00:01:34.160 | The first man begins to feel the rope, the cord, pulling him toward the pit, and he resists.
00:01:43.280 | 10 pounds, 15 pounds, 20 pounds, digs in his heels, 30 pounds. He says, "No!"
00:01:53.360 | 35 pounds, tightens up. He gives up resisting, jumps into the pit. Click.
00:02:04.880 | The second man begins to feel the cord pulling on him, on his waist. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.
00:02:15.360 | Digs in his heels, resists. "No!" he says. 40, 45, 50 pounds. "No!" Leans back, starts to tighten,
00:02:27.040 | makes his breathing more difficult. 50, 55 pounds. "No!" 60, quits resisting, jumps in. Click.
00:02:39.680 | The third man begins to be pulled. 5, 10, 15, 25, 30 pounds. Digs in his heels, resists. "No!"
00:02:50.160 | he says out loud. "No!" 40, 45, 50. Starts to tighten, his breath is being cut off. "No!"
00:03:02.000 | He leans back and cries out for help. "Help!" He sees a branch, grabs the branch, shaped like a
00:03:10.640 | cross. The branch is shaped like a cross. 65, 70. And off across the field, in his mind's eye,
00:03:21.840 | as through a haze, he sees his wife going about her work, trusting him.
00:03:27.280 | Over on that side, he sees his children playing happily, and in their hearts, admiring him.
00:03:39.440 | And then he lifts up his eyes to the horizon, and he sees Jesus with a big gash in his side.
00:03:47.760 | And his hands are lifted, and his fists are formed, and there's a big smile on his face.
00:04:00.720 | 85, 90. And the cord starts cutting into his side. "No!" And he looks up. 95, 100. Snap!
00:04:16.640 | No click. Now here's my question. Which of these three men knows the power of sin?
00:04:30.240 | If this were a sermon on lust,
00:04:32.000 | I would, at this point, lift up my voice and scan this congregation and shout,
00:04:43.600 | "Are there any soldiers here? Anybody got blood on his shirt?
00:04:54.160 | Show me some scars before you talk about the power of sin. Don't show me your broken ankles
00:05:01.520 | at the bottom of the pit. I want to see blood!" But it isn't a sermon on lust, so I'll skip that
00:05:13.520 | and go back to the point. All I'm doing with that little
00:05:21.040 | parable is answering the question, "Don't you need to sin more to know how sinful you really are?"
00:05:31.440 | And the answer is, "No, you don't." In fact, the wimps who give in at 30 and 60, they don't know.
00:05:44.880 | They think they know. Call it bondage. They'll even use words like "fall." You'll notice I did
00:05:53.760 | not use the word "fall." I said "jump." You didn't fall. You jumped. And you jumped at 25 pounds,
00:06:03.360 | and you don't have a scar on your body. So good. That was Pastor John in April of 2001 in his
00:06:11.120 | sermon, "The Importance of Knowing Our Sin." You can find the entire sermon and over a thousand
00:06:16.000 | other sermons from John Piper all free of charge at DesiringGod.org. And tomorrow is the 32nd
00:06:22.080 | anniversary of the death of American novelist Ayn Rand, an atheist and the author of Atlas
00:06:27.840 | Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Pastor John will talk about what drew him to her works,
00:06:31.680 | what he learned, and how he reached out to her. That's tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:06:36.480 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.
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