Fighting Porn Addiction with Grudem’s Systematic Theology
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, we have a question from a 17-year-old young man in London who writes, "I have been
00:00:11.060 | in bondage to pornography for a few years now.
00:00:13.720 | How do I even begin to break free from this?"
00:00:16.940 | Speak to this young man who feels the bondage of pornography and who has been struggling
00:00:21.100 | with this for years.
00:00:22.100 | So what would you say to him?
00:00:24.100 | Well, what I say particularly to any given young man or woman, and I think the women
00:00:30.260 | who listen to this shouldn't think, and I'm sure if they're listening, they don't think
00:00:36.780 | that this is just a male issue.
00:00:39.500 | Increasingly, women are entangled sometimes for different kinds of reasons than men in
00:00:45.700 | pornography.
00:00:46.700 | So I don't want to think just men here, although that's usually the way we're thinking about
00:00:52.820 | it.
00:00:55.980 | Whether I speak to a man or a woman in a certain way is going to depend on what I know about
00:01:01.540 | them, whether they're a believer, whether they're walking with the Lord, whether they're
00:01:06.620 | really fighting in biblical ways.
00:01:08.180 | So I'm just going to assume as I answer this that the person I'm talking to is a Christian
00:01:14.420 | and trusts Jesus and believes the Bible.
00:01:18.860 | And here are just things that that young man might consider.
00:01:24.060 | Number one, getting right with God precedes getting our pornography issues fixed.
00:01:35.900 | That is, justification precedes and is the foundation for sanctification.
00:01:41.500 | The only sin that we can defeat is a forgiven sin.
00:01:47.580 | That's the way I like to say it.
00:01:50.060 | So that if you get that backward and start saying, "Okay, I've got to fix this sin.
00:01:54.500 | I've got to kill this sin or I can't get right with God."
00:01:59.980 | That's backwards and that's the opposite of Christianity.
00:02:03.420 | Christ died and justifies, died for and justifies the ungodly.
00:02:08.820 | And therefore we start there.
00:02:10.100 | So I'd want to encourage them, trust him, trust him for his cleansing and his forgiveness
00:02:16.020 | on the basis of faith alone.
00:02:17.900 | The second thing I would say is that great things are at stake here.
00:02:22.740 | I wouldn't play fast and loose.
00:02:24.460 | I'd say if your eye offends you, tear it out and throw it away.
00:02:28.540 | Better to go to heaven with one eye than to hell with two eyes.
00:02:31.220 | In other words, we're dealing with really serious issues here, Jesus said.
00:02:35.180 | Number three, I would plead with that person that they're going to lose their enjoyment
00:02:44.900 | of God if they continually prefer the enjoyment of nudity or something like that.
00:02:53.980 | Because Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
00:02:58.420 | I know in my own experience, the times when I give way to any kind of sensuality, my capacities
00:03:06.100 | for spiritual delight in God diminishes.
00:03:10.540 | And I know that the trade-off is always lousy.
00:03:14.260 | So for the sake of greater joy and greater pleasure, we fight against temptation.
00:03:21.780 | And the fourth thing I would say, from 1 Thessalonians 4, I think verse 4 or 5, it says, "Control
00:03:33.660 | your body and treat your wife not in passion, as the Gentiles who do not know God."
00:03:42.220 | The implication of that statement, in passions like the Gentiles who do not know God, is
00:03:47.460 | that knowing God has a powerful effect on subduing passions.
00:03:55.460 | Here's what I say, I've actually said this to a bunch of guys.
00:03:59.660 | When they have been working at this for a long time, I say, "You know, I don't really
00:04:04.500 | know how deep or strong your knowledge of God is."
00:04:11.260 | So here's my assignment to you to help you overcome pornography.
00:04:15.460 | Get a copy of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology, it's only about 1,100 pages, and read it cover
00:04:22.920 | to cover over the next six months.
00:04:25.900 | And then come and we'll talk again about your problem with pornography.
00:04:29.460 | Because here's what I'm thinking, I think Satan is bringing his attacks against us,
00:04:37.300 | and we're using our little pea-shooter, Sunday School level knowledge of God to try to defeat
00:04:44.180 | him.
00:04:45.180 | And there's such vast, deep, glorious, beautiful, strong, wonderful things about God that when
00:04:53.380 | you're grasped by them, it just has an indirect, powerful effect on making sensuality less
00:05:02.660 | of a power in your life.
00:05:04.340 | So it's kind of an indirect way of undermining the powerful effects of sexual temptation.
00:05:12.700 | Practically, I'd say get a copy, you can even get it online, of John Owen's Mortification
00:05:19.220 | of Sin.
00:05:20.220 | It's an 80-page old book that teaches us how to fight sin.
00:05:26.860 | My book, Future Grace, has a chapter in it on lust and how I go about fighting it.
00:05:34.380 | Online at Desiring God, we've got this little thing I wrote called Anthem, A-N-T-H-E-M.
00:05:39.980 | A, avoid, N, say no, T, turn your mind and heart, H, hold a beautiful vision of Jesus
00:05:52.220 | in your mind until it triumphs over the other sensual vision, E, enjoy, M, move on.
00:06:00.700 | I unpack each of those as really practical steps.
00:06:04.540 | I wrote that, not out of some theoretical view of how to fight temptation, I wrote about
00:06:11.380 | it because in the backyard one day, I was pushing my lawnmower and my wife had just
00:06:16.740 | told me the night before that she saw some people doing some sexual hanky-panky out behind
00:06:20.740 | our garage and I passed the place in pushing my lawnmower where they were and my mind immediately
00:06:26.900 | created that scene and became lustful at that moment.
00:06:30.660 | I had to fight back and forth as I was pushing the lawnmower.
00:06:34.540 | I'm fighting to get this thing out of my head.
00:06:37.740 | I've tasted what these guys are dealing with and so we're in this together and those are
00:06:44.900 | my best efforts so far to try to put forward concrete, practical, biblical steps to defeat
00:06:50.940 | this monster.
00:06:51.940 | Thank you, Pastor John, for those principles for fighting pornography, and thank you for
00:06:56.340 | listening to this podcast.
00:06:57.700 | If you have a question for Pastor John, please email that question to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:07:03.660 | Please include your first name and your hometown in that email.
00:07:06.440 | You can find the mentioned resources that Pastor John has written and thousands of other
00:07:09.740 | resources for free from him online at DesiringGod.org.
00:07:13.740 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:14.740 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:14.900 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:15.900 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:16.900 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:16.900 | [BLANK_AUDIO]