(upbeat music) - A wife writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I and my husband cannot reach an agreement "about a certain thing, so we have decided to ask you. "I can't stand when we watch a movie "and there are scenes with naked women. "I know that he doesn't lust for them "and he doesn't fantasize about them, "but it just bothers me when he sees other women.

"So the question is simply this, "is my husband obligated to give up movies "with sexual or nude scenes if I don't like it "because I'm jealous?" - Yes. (laughs) But I don't wanna start there, even though I just did, because I put the emphasis in the wrong place by making him do it because she's ticked.

That's not the right motive. First of all, I would want to know, is your husband a believer? Sounds like he is, but is he a believer? Does he want to honor Christ above all? Does he want his mind and heart to be pure and full of what is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable and excellent and worthy of praise, Philippians 4:8.

Does he believe that sin killed Jesus, that this woman taking off her clothes in order to make a movie more racy and get a lower rating and a higher attendance, that that sin killed Jesus? Is he okay with that? Okay watching that, okay endorsing that, okay making light of that.

And does he realize that Jesus died to kill sin? So this sin killed Jesus and Jesus died to kill this sin and here you are playing with it as though it doesn't matter. Does he agree with that? So that would be my starting point. And if he's a believer, I would say he is obligated to give up these movies, not first for the wife's sake, but for Christ's sake.

Both of you, I would say to her, both of you should disapprove of these scenes other than jealousy. These scenes should not be watched for other reasons like they're unloving, they're unloving to the women because watching these scenes, buying these movies, paying to go see them endorses de facto, endorses behaviors and desires in those scenes, those women that are going to destroy them.

If the woman who's performing nudely for a living doesn't repent of that, she's gonna go to hell. Here you are saying it's okay to buy, to watch it. It's unloving to that woman's future husband or if she has a husband because it's gonna make life harder for her to have a normal, wholesome, sexual relationship having stripped herself bare for so many men and been touched in so many ways that nothing seems sacred and pure and precious anymore for her husband.

And I've thought of this so many times as I've wrestled with what do I let myself watch? I have a daughter. If my daughter decided that she was going to sell her body to be looked at by men in movies or at a strip show my heart would be broken, which means that all those men who endorse that, pay for that, encourage that and enjoy that don't give a rip for me and my broken heart.

So it's just so unloving to glide through these scenes as though they weren't massively important for life and they're just plain adulterous. I mean, this wife is naive, I think, if she thinks that these scenes in her husband's head have no relationship to how he relates to her. That's crazy.

That means every time he's lying with her he's got competitors in his brain, he does. And the more he has watched, the more competitors he has. And if she happens to be not cool that night he'll just switch gears and go into one of those scenes and that's the way he'll have his stimulation.

That's adultery. And so I think she needs to wake up to the fact that he may say, "Oh, I'm not lusting or whatever." They're there and they're locked down there and they'll be there in years to come. And he'll use them in 40 years, if not tomorrow when she's not so pretty.

And they're just destructive to a man's soul. Our souls shrink to the kind of pleasures we're indulging in. This man's not gonna be able to read his Bible as sweetly. He's not gonna enjoy the fellowship of God as sweetly. He's not gonna look at sunsets the same and he's not gonna look at little babies the same.

His soul has always got this defilement that he's cherishing in there because he thinks it's no big deal. And that is going to push out bigger, nobler, more beautiful things. So I think lastly, he should really care about what his wife thinks. And if his wife is being wounded by this, if she can't quite articulate what it is, she just knows this is not right.

I think she is intuitively wholesome and he's a jerk if he doesn't get this. And he needs to listen to John Piper, read his Bible, look to Jesus in the cross and realize that sinning on that screen. And I don't just mean the play acting sinning in the movie.

I don't even know if it is. I mean the sinning in the studio where this woman created in God's image is walking around naked, being gawked at by cameraman and being told by directors how to slant this part of her body and that part of her body. That whole scene of sin right there is something that he should be deeply offended by and profoundly broken hearted by for the woman herself and for her parents and for her husband and for the whole beauty of Christ that he made sex for, which is being so prostituted there on the screen.

It's not a spectator sport. - Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org and visit us online at desiringgod.org to find thousands of free books, articles, sermons and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

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