The Real Cost of Pornography
00:00:00.000 | "What is the real cost of pornography?"
00:00:09.240 | John Piper explained in a small talk recorded at our recent 2015 Conference for Pastors
00:00:14.680 | here in Minneapolis.
00:00:16.680 | Here's what he said.
00:00:18.640 | Not all sexual desire is lust.
00:00:22.360 | God made sexual desire.
00:00:24.180 | It has its good place.
00:00:26.240 | In fact, it can become an act of worship in the temple of marriage.
00:00:32.140 | But lust is a sexual desire gone wrong.
00:00:36.360 | Here's my definition.
00:00:38.560 | Lust is a sexual desire that dishonors its object and disregards God, disregards the
00:00:47.400 | promises and the warnings of having or losing the beauties of Christ.
00:00:56.820 | The lusted after woman or man in your head or on the screen or on the street is dishonored,
00:01:09.600 | not treated as a sacred, precious, eternal person in the image of God whose eternal destiny
00:01:17.600 | is always paramount and whose holiness we either long for or ignore.
00:01:26.760 | And the only way that kind of dishonor can daringly be carried out and hold sway is by
00:01:34.280 | disregarding God while we are in the sway of lust.
00:01:40.320 | Ponder with me for a few minutes the natural and the spiritual role of self-control in
00:01:48.500 | relation to lust.
00:01:51.120 | Addiction, I think, is a relative term.
00:01:56.840 | I would stake my life on the guess that in this room no one is absolutely addicted to
00:02:08.000 | pornography or any sexual sin.
00:02:11.520 | None of you is.
00:02:14.640 | What I mean by this is if the stakes are high enough and sure enough, you will have all
00:02:22.520 | the self-control you need to conquer any sexual temptation.
00:02:29.160 | For example, tonight if you are feeling totally in the sway of a sexual desire, more blazing,
00:02:39.640 | more powerful than you have ever felt it in your life, when you believe you cannot resist
00:02:50.520 | the temptation to look at some nudity online and suddenly a black hooded ISIS member drags
00:03:01.840 | your best friend or your spouse into the room with a knife at his throat or her throat and
00:03:10.120 | says, "If you look at that website, I will slit this throat," you will have self-control.
00:03:19.640 | You are not addicted.
00:03:21.120 | You won't click.
00:03:23.720 | Or if a man walks into the room and says, "If you look at that nudity, I will not give
00:03:33.760 | you the million dollars that I have in this bag, cash tax-free, but if you do not look
00:03:40.580 | at that nudity, I will give you a satchel with $1 million in cash," you will have total
00:03:50.980 | self-control.
00:03:52.700 | The fact is 99% of those who give way to lust in pornography or fornication or adultery
00:04:00.780 | are not decisively controlled by their sexual desire.
00:04:05.360 | They are decisively controlled by what they believe.
00:04:10.980 | What they believe will happen if they act on the lust or don't.
00:04:18.300 | That's what controls them.
00:04:20.160 | What they believe, not the sexual desire.
00:04:22.980 | That's the excuse.
00:04:24.340 | The decisive issue is whether they believe the stakes are high enough and sure enough.
00:04:33.780 | If they are sure the friend will die a gruesome death, they will have self-control.
00:04:42.300 | If they are sure enough, and that's real money in there, and it's really tax-free, and it
00:04:47.540 | isn't stolen goods, they will have self-control.
00:04:52.380 | Now nothing I have said so far is distinctly Christian about that analysis of motivation.
00:05:00.220 | That's just the way human beings are wired.
00:05:05.860 | Self-control was a stoic virtue before it was a Christian fruit, and there is nothing
00:05:16.780 | distinctly Christian about self-control.
00:05:21.340 | And yet, this is what engages my mind so much at this moment, and yet Paul lists it as a
00:05:30.340 | fruit of the Spirit.
00:05:33.620 | The Spirit produces self-control in the believer so that the action of the self-controlling
00:05:43.940 | no is brought about by the Spirit.
00:05:52.820 | Control your lusts for the Spirit is controlling them through you.
00:06:00.340 | Isn't that the paraphrase of Philippians 2.12 applied to the fruit of the Holy Spirit?
00:06:07.140 | Self-control, because the Spirit is awakening, creating self-control in you.
00:06:15.180 | The blood of Christ, the blood of the new covenant secures for us Christians the working
00:06:25.580 | of the Holy Spirit.
00:06:27.300 | That's the meaning of the new covenant.
00:06:30.260 | Cause you to walk in my statutes.
00:06:32.820 | I died to make that happen.
00:06:36.700 | This is the new covenant.
00:06:37.800 | This is the blood of the covenant.
00:06:41.080 | And he works, and we act.
00:06:45.660 | His working appears in our acting.
00:06:48.840 | He creates the miracle, we act the miracle of self-control.
00:06:56.260 | But the Holy Spirit doesn't produce the same thing the Stoics did.
00:07:05.260 | Even though, "enchritia" in Greek or self-control in English is the same word used by Stoics,
00:07:15.140 | then and now.
00:07:17.140 | The Holy Spirit doesn't create that.
00:07:20.340 | We don't hire God to produce the same things the world can produce.
00:07:26.160 | How good would that be?
00:07:27.780 | The Stoics did not depend on Christ, and they did not live for the glory of Christ.
00:07:39.900 | But the Holy Spirit is given because Christ died to purchase him for us, and he is given
00:07:49.140 | to glorify the Son in us.
00:07:53.340 | John 14, 6, the blood of Christ was the price of our self-control, and the beauty of Christ
00:08:02.700 | is the mission of the Spirit in us.
00:08:07.340 | The blood of Christ purchases the presence of the Christ-exalting Spirit, and the Spirit
00:08:14.180 | is there to exalt Christ in all that we do, including self-control.
00:08:19.020 | Therefore, the way the Spirit produces self-control that is different from the world's self-control,
00:08:28.420 | the way the Holy Spirit produces self-control in the believer is by revealing the beauties
00:08:35.340 | of Christ to our souls as supremely beautiful, supremely satisfying.
00:08:42.300 | He removes the hardness of heart and the blindness of the soul so that it can see and savor the
00:08:50.460 | beauties of Christ for what they really are, and what he shows us through the word of Christ
00:09:02.020 | is that the all-satisfying beauties of Christ can be lost forever in the bondage of lust,
00:09:12.500 | or they can be enjoyed forever in the purity of heart.
00:09:18.300 | That's what he shows us.
00:09:20.580 | That's how he works the miracle in us.
00:09:24.100 | He shows us the day is coming, and now is, when we will enjoy Christ with the fullness
00:09:31.820 | of joy that outweighs every possible pleasure of lust, which brings us back now to Isis
00:09:38.980 | and the million dollars.
00:09:41.380 | He's about to slit the throat of your best friend, or about to give you a million dollars,
00:09:49.540 | and the Holy Spirit on this analogy shows us that the stakes are much higher than that.
00:10:01.700 | That's what he reveals to us, that the stakes as we face the temptation of lust are higher.
00:10:10.940 | The beauties of Christ, he reveals, can be lost forever in the bondage of lust, or enjoyed
00:10:23.480 | forever in the purity of heart, which means that the Holy Spirit by the word of Christ
00:10:28.820 | reveals this.
00:10:31.320 | If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better
00:10:38.020 | that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
00:10:45.220 | That's the final Isis slit.
00:10:49.060 | Way worse.
00:10:51.060 | And the Holy Spirit brings to your mind, you can lose everything of Christ in the bondage
00:11:01.180 | of lust.
00:11:02.180 | Or, and the Holy Spirit reveals to us the other word of Christ, "Blessed are the pure
00:11:10.660 | in heart.
00:11:12.180 | They shall see God."
00:11:16.700 | A reward forever infinitely superior to a measly million dollars for which every one
00:11:24.740 | of you would have self-control.
00:11:25.980 | It's just what we believe.
00:11:30.620 | Control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
00:11:33.740 | He creates the miracle, we act the miracle.
00:11:37.100 | He creates it by opening our eyes to see the beauties of Christ, that they can be lost
00:11:43.620 | forever in bondage to lust, or they can be enjoyed forever in the purity of heart.
00:11:52.780 | Such a rich approach to addressing lust.
00:11:55.460 | That was John Piper's small talk, Lust, from the 2015 Desiring God Conference for Pastors.
00:12:02.220 | All the content from the recent past con is now online at the website.
00:12:05.580 | You can check it out.
00:12:06.940 | This small talk, of course, coincides with our newest book titled, Kill Joys, The Seven
00:12:12.220 | Deadly Sins, a book you can download free of charge at desiringgod.org.
00:12:17.880 | Click on the books tab and look for the title, Kill Joys.
00:12:22.140 | Until we return, and I ask John Piper, what does the Church offer the world, realistically,
00:12:27.580 | when it comes to racial reconciliation?
00:12:30.260 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:31.260 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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