Transcription
Hallelujah! Thank you for that welcome.
Colossians chapter 3. The way they have this stage set up, I thought I should make a dancing, singing entry, but I don't want to offend anybody. I don't want to run you off before I get a chance to preach.
Colossians chapter 3. I want to minister this evening on the plague that has gripped a whole generation, and it's not COVID; it's pornography. It is absolutely destroying a generation. I can't count how many young disciples have been taken out of the running, pastors have had to be removed, and lives have been destroyed by pornography.
I was reading Ezekiel the other day in my devotions, and it speaks of a restored priesthood. In chapter 44, verse 23, it says, "They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the unholy and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean." If there was ever a generation that needed to know the difference between the unclean and the clean, it's this generation.
I recently read articles and was talking with Jesse just before this. I've read that Millennials prefer porn and masturbation to sex. What's wrong with you guys? Something's really wrong with this generation, and I'm sure it has everything to do with the availability of that and how easy it is. You never have to fear rejection from an airbrushed picture. That might be it; I don't know. But I am going to beat it to death tonight.
At some point, you have to say "uncle." At some point, this has to stop. So let's consider Colossians chapter 3, beginning with verse 1.
"If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them."
Let's pray.
Father, I thank you for your word and for your warning. I thank you for the confrontation, God, with our generation in the world that we live in. We know, God, that we have to listen to you. It is urgent that we heed your word and obey it. I pray that it will be the firm resolution of every man in this building that not one man in this building would leave still leaving that door open, still entertaining the possibility. But every man here tonight will shut this down once and for all. I pray for your delivering grace in Jesus' name. And if there's anyone not saved, save them tonight. Amen.
We all know porn is wrong. What you need to know is that porn will kill you. Knowing it's wrong, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've heard it a gazillion times, but you have to understand what it will do to you. The statistics behind pornography today are staggering. It's ubiquitous. Just one site called PornHub logs over a hundred million visits per day. One site. There are 962 searches for PornHub per second on the internet.
Eighty percent of those viewing pornography—this was all in an article from PornHub, so I suppose that statistic applies to PornHub—80 percent of those views come from smartphones and tablets. Smartphones and tablets are the gateway electronics. Those are the things that are an open door to so many men.
And the problem is that you think this is anonymous. You think you can do this and nobody will know. It's so easy; there's nobody in the room. It's just you and God. Don't ever forget that. But I also want to remind you that there is an entire network of people watching what you're viewing. You are on record the minute you go there, and anybody who wants to can find that and can hunt you down with it.
So you're a Christian, and you testify, and you become a preacher, but you've got a little problem, and you think you're going to get away with it. But somebody wants to bring you down. It's just a matter of hunting it, finding it, and destroying you with it. It's that simple. There is no anonymity.
This is something we've been hearing for quite some time. This is across the board on the internet. As soon as you're on the internet, you're in the public realm, and everything you do is a matter of record. Every minute, there are 64,000 new visitors to PornHub. There are almost 8 million views per minute throughout the internet worldwide.
Fifty percent of those are people aged 11 to 13. Sixty-five percent are 14 to 15. Seventy-eight percent are 16 to 17. Okay, I must be getting this wrong. These are the number of people in these age groups that have viewed it. So it's not saying these are the overall percentages, but 50 percent of 11 to 13-year-olds have viewed it, 65 percent of 14 to 15-year-olds have viewed it, and 78 percent of 16 to 17-year-olds have watched pornography.
They're getting younger and younger. I believe I read somewhere that the average start of pornographic viewing is now down to eight years old. Yet 75 percent of kids' parents today don't believe their kids are looking at porn, which would include many men here tonight. You think your kid knows better. I've taught him better, and I've raised him better. You'd better be looking at his phone, and you'd better be checking his iPad. You better be having conversations with him because this is a plague. There's no other way to describe it.
The American Medical Association says that pornography consumption is associated with decreased brain volume in the right striatum, which affects emotions and empathy. You wonder why we have a generation of young murderers, young thugs, people who can be violent so easily? Well, they're looking at porn, and it's removing their capacity for empathy, the ability to relate to other human beings.
Decreased left striatum activation influences logic and rational thought, and lower functional connectivity to the prefrontal cortex. Don't I sound smart? The center of complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. As reported, pornographic use increases the amount of gray matter in the brain decreases. So pornography makes you stupid. You're already stupid just going there, but they'll take that stupid and multiply it. Amen.
You will soon wear the moniker "Dumb and Dumber." Single-handedly, according to the Center of Research on Marriage and Religion, pornography is a quiet family killer, contributing to adultery and playing a role in 56 percent of divorces. This confirms the observation of most divorce attorneys. Two-thirds of divorce lawyers at a 2003 meeting noted that online porn addiction had increasingly become a factor in more than half of the divorce cases they handled.
Time Magazine reported in 2016 that married people who start watching porn are twice as likely to be divorced in the following years. When a woman starts watching porn, she's three times more likely to split. So all I'm doing is giving you the raw data that demonstrates that this plague is far more detrimental and far more lethal to the quality of your life than anything out there.
The financial cost to business productivity in America alone is estimated at 16.9 billion dollars annually. These are workers who aren't productive because they're looking at porn—16 billion dollars a year. We could go on and on, and the stats are never-ending. The world has been pornified, and it's making a massive impact on homes, marriages, children, and the minds of people.
Let me tell you something: how many of you notice the world is nuts? Have you noticed? I mean, we're talking about these people who can't connect the dots, and there are more dots out there than a Braille version of Moby Dick. You can't miss the dots. But I'll tell you, the dots behind the insanity of our generation? Porn. It's making people nuts, making people crazy, making people unable to process life correctly.
And guess what? You are a people, and if you let this get a hold of you, I remember reading a book years ago called "The Affair of the Mind." It talked about the physiological groove that gets carved into a man's brain through pornographic usage that literally is almost like a lobotomy. It completely disrupts the ability to think clearly.
Now, our text is written to Christians, and Paul targets sexual sin in verse 5 in no uncertain terms. That's the context for everything he says. He says, "Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry."
I have used covetousness, which is idolatry, in offerings, and I have used it to speak about money, but that isn't what Paul is talking about. This is a moral issue of covetousness. The word is "pleonexia," and the Complete Bible Library Dictionary says that pleonexia is not restricted to monetary greed. It suggests an insatiable appetite for other things.
Ephesians 4:19 very clearly attaches it to immorality, which our text does: "Who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with covetousness." That's making the connection. Pleonexia is this inordinate and absolutely overwhelming desire for what is immoral.
Ephesians 5:3 says, "But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints." Second Peter 2:14 says, "Having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices and are accursed children."
In all of those texts that I just read, there is no connection whatsoever to money. It's all connected to sexual immorality, and it has to do with a hunger. Pornography is designed to stimulate that hunger, to stimulate that covetousness. Paul has said that has to die.
He uses several other words in our text. Uncleanness is the word "akatharsia." It means moral impurity, especially in relation to sexual sin. We all know the word fornication is "porneia," from which we get the word pornography. It includes all kinds of sexual immorality.
"Pathos" means to experience strong physical desire, particularly of a sexual nature. That's what pornography is produced for: to stir your passions. You can't look at a naked woman without it stirring your passions.
"Evil desire" is "epithymia," which means bad, evil, harmful strong desires to have what belongs to someone else or to engage in an activity that is morally wrong—to covet, to lust, to desire.
So Paul basically gives us no wiggle room whatsoever. However you have chosen to rationalize and justify pornography, as far as the Bible goes, it is completely verbatim. There is no place for it in Christianity. There is no place for it in the life of a Christian man. Period. End of discussion.
This brings us to God's perception of porn, and God's perception only goes from bad to worse. How does God see this obsession, this endless desire for pornography? Is it just boys being boys? Is it simply human sexuality run amok, or is it something far more profound than that?
Bear in mind the consequences. Bear in mind how it plays out. I have had to sit through, I think I'm up to four divorces that have been created by pornography. I have had to remove men from ministry. I have had to remove young men from being involved in our church ministries. I've had to counsel marriages through endless heartache and just watch it evolve.
I've had to actually throw a couple of guys out of church eventually because there was simply no repentance. We're talking about something that, just looking at it practically, we have to know that this is going to kill you. But you have to look at it from the way God perceives it as well to really get your head around it.
We can go to Matthew 5:27-29: "You've heard that it was said of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell."
That's about as radical as it can get. Very clearly, Jesus understands pornography. He understands the lustful looking at another woman as the seedbed, therefore sharing the exact same dynamics as the actual act. If you look, you've done it. Why? Because it's the same sin. It's the exact same genesis. It starts at the same place.
Even though you don't physically consummate it, it's the same sin. If you so much as look, you've done it. This is why, in the end, as pastors, we do not stand in the way of a woman who's had enough and is desirous to divorce her husband because he is an ongoing repeat-offending porn abuser.
We don't want that to happen. That's the last thing we ever want to see. We don't counsel women to do that. We don't advise them. We caution them that there's a lot of pain and problems in that decision, but we will not say you can't do it because Jesus said you can't divorce except for sexual immorality, and we're talking about it right here.
Okay, so if you want to lose your wife, if you want to lose your children, then just go on playing with this stuff because sooner or later it will come out. The redundancy of it, the fact that you're not repentant, will ultimately cause your wife to leave. She will not put up with it indefinitely.
Second Peter 2:18-19 in the New Living Translation says, "They brag about themselves with empty foolish boasting, with an appeal to twisted sexual desires. They lure back into sin those who have barely escaped from a lifestyle of deception. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of sin and corruption, for you are a slave to whatever controls you."
We hear a lot about slavery these days. It's become very fashionable to make this a racist issue. This has nothing to do with race; it has everything to do with morality. Slavery is something nobody wants to be. Nobody wants to be a slave. Nobody wants to be under someone else's control.
But God says that's what happens when you give yourself to twisted sexual desire. You are a slave. It's repeated in First Corinthians 6:18. In the New American Standard Bible, it says, "Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body."
There's something about immorality that enslaves, that captures a man. The Life Application Bible Commentary says the word "body" refers not to the flesh but to the whole being and personality. He sins against his whole being; he sins against his whole personality. This sin has disastrous effects.
But what an enticement it can be for all people, and believers are not exempt. Clearly, other sins also affect the body, such as gluttony or drunkenness. But listen to this: no other sin has the same effect on memory, personality, or the soul of a person as sexual sin.
Probably not a man in this building has come to this point in your life without some exposure to pornography. None of us were born Christians. I'll never forget the day I was lying in bed sick with the measles or whatever it was. I think I was about 10 or 11 years old. My dad walked in and threw a copy of Playboy on my bed. I guess he was trying to heal me, trying to make me feel better. I don't know, but I saw things in that Playboy that I remember to this day.
I saw things in that Playboy that, from time to time, will rise unbidden. Ever been in prayer, and there she is, Miss March? Let's get real. You get involved in this stuff; you're sinning against your entire personality. Nothing affects the memory like sexual sin. Nothing stays with you like sexual sin.
There are millions of sins that you have committed that you can't remember, but I bet you can remember the vast majority of your sexual sins. Is this something you want to involve yourself with? Because this is, according to God's perception, the entry into slavery.
Paul goes on from that point in First Corinthians 6, where he says that this is a sin against the body. In verse 19, it picks up: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? You have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body."
The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So he who sins against his body sins against the temple of God. This is very much like the Antichrist spirit in Daniel, where it describes that the Antichrist will bring his own image and set it up in the Holy of Holies. That's what you're doing when you're involving yourself in sexual immorality.
Your temple is the Holy Spirit, and what you're doing is dragging in a different God. You're dragging in a different spirit. You're dragging in something that defiles the temple of God. That brings us full circle to idolatry again, which we saw at the beginning of this in Colossians.
Covetousness, sexual covetousness, is idolatry. We know very clearly from scripture that idolatry is something that God has never taken lightly. It's the number one sin in the Bible. The Old Testament is filled with idolatry, and idolatry is what always brought Israel to ruin. Idolatry will destroy you, and pornography is idolatry.
Romans 1:24-25 says, "Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever."
That is the definition of idolatry. That is putting our creature desires and our creature drives and appetites before the desires of the Creator. What does it say? It says the inevitable consequence of that is you get given up to your lusts. You get given up to these things that are driving you because God says, "I'm not putting up with it. If that's what you want, if you want Aphrodite, I'm going to give you Aphrodite. You want Diana? I'll give you Diana. You want 150 breasts? I'll give you 150 breasts. I'll hand you over to what it is that you love."
I said at the beginning of this, we all know porn is wrong, but we need to know that it will kill us. It will destroy us. It will end your spiritual life.
So Paul starts this discussion with a call to put to death our members—our body parts. It's the word "melos," our limbs. Put them to death. We do this based on what has already been done for us. It says in verse 3, "For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."
That's good news! That's the best news you've heard all night. Up to this point, it's been a pretty miserable service, but here's the promise: you've died. The hard part has already been done, and your life is hidden with Christ. If you'll stay there, you won't get sucked down this sewer hole.
Paul draws a logical conclusion from that fact that we've died in Christ. In Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 4, reading from the New Century Version, it says, "So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us even more grace? No! We died to our sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. When we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. So just as Christ was raised from the dead by the wonderful power of the Father, we also can live a new life."
We can do it! Oh, you don't know how bound I am. There is no bondage that Jesus didn't kill. He killed the porn. He killed that perverse sinful nature. He killed it on the cross. He killed it. So don't say that you can't because very clearly, you can, and you must.
In that whole text is a great argument for baptism, but the point is that we are supernaturally joined to Christ's death. We are hidden in Christ. That's a reality; that's not theology. That's who we are as Christians, and we are not to live that old life. We are to live this new life in Christ.
Paul gives us some insight into just how we do this. He says, "Seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth."
It's about where you go in your head. It's about what you give your thoughts to, and it's about getting control. What does it say in Corinthians? It says, "Bring every thought into obedience to Jesus Christ."
So Miss March marches into your head? Arrest her and bring her to Christ and say, "Deal with this. I will not have her living rent-free in my head anymore. I'm done with this way of thinking."
When you first start this undertaking, you may have to arrest her 300 times a day, but by the time you're through, you evict her. She's not there anymore. I'm telling you this is true. I am no better than anyone in here, but I am telling you that you can get the victory in this arena simply by saying, "God, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm done. I repent."
What's repentance? Metanoia: the change of mind. I'm not letting my mind go there anymore. Amen.
I mentioned they show up unbidden. Yeah, they do. I can't stop the birds from flying around my head, but I can keep them from building a nest in my hair. Amen.
Which is why I got rid of all my hair.
So let's think about this. This is the number one gateway right here. The first thing you need to do is put a filter on it. Right? Put Covenant Eyes on there and make yourself accountable.
Yeah, make yourself accountable. Give your pastor your report because every week it'll send him a report. I have several guys right now who I get their reports every week. I can see where they've been. I can see what they're doing. You can't go anywhere if you've got Covenant Eyes on your phone without somebody knowing about it.
But beyond that, I've got another tip. This one's my own idea. Okay? On your phone, you've got these groups, right? You take applications that are similar, and you put them into a group. That way, you know where to go and how to access them.
So you make yourself a group that has whatever browser you're using to access the internet, and you put that in the group. Then right alongside it in that group, you put your Bible.
So you only have two things in this group: you have the internet and you have the Bible. Every time you get itchy, you start moving towards the internet, and you pop up that group, and there's the Bible.
Now what'll it be? The Bible or the internet? Confront yourself every time you go to use the internet. Put the Bible right there. Amen.
When you do that, I guarantee you, if you will make the right choice, you've got a very binary situation there. It's very simple. This isn't rocket science. You don't have to wrestle through, "What am I going to do? Am I going to go look at naked women or look at the Bible?"
Right? Very simple. You choose the Bible. You've made it easy on yourself. The Bible's right there, and you start to read.
Well, I guarantee you this is what will happen: after just a few of those, the desire to go to the internet on your phone will weaken because the last thing the devil wants you to do is read your Bible.
So he's not going to keep tempting you with the internet because every time you go to the internet, you go to the Bible, and he's pulling his horns out. It will not be long before you don't have the itch anymore. Amen.
See, that's too easy. This whole thing is easy when you get down to it. It's as easy as making a choice to make Christ King over everything. Amen.
Prayer and fasting will help you. If you are seriously bound by this, you need to take up prayer and fasting. Seriously. For several months, I had a man in my church who couldn't get on top of it. It got so bad eventually I had to throw him out of church.
About, I think it was close to a year later, he came back. He wanted to live for God, and he set the course in his life. He fasted three days a week every week for that year. He fasted three days a week. Why? Because he was serious about killing his flesh.
He didn't talk about killing your flesh all day long. I'll believe you when you start fasting. Amen. That's what fasting's all about. It's all about killing your flesh. You'll lose pounds of flesh if you'll start fasting.
I don't know how to beat this fast; it's just being hungry is enough to make a man go, "I'm not doing this anymore. I need a sandwich."
I've already mentioned accountability. You need to be accountable. If you're struggling with this, you need to be accountable. Don't hide it anymore. He who covers his sin will not prosper. You can't get on top of sin by hiding it.
Every one of us is human and sinful. You come to me and say, "I need help. I need accountability." I'm not going to go, "What kind of creature are you? What kind of wicked, slimy, horrible Christian are you?" I'm not going to do that.
I'll say, "Thank God that you're finally serious about this." Right? You will have people in your corner cheering for you and doing all they can to help you. Amen.
I know you feel like a monster. Get on top of this, and you won't feel that way anymore. The shame goes, the joy comes, the victory is yours, and you will absolutely agree with me one thousand percent that the joy of the Lord will come back into your life.
You'll no longer walk in this shame and this thing that eats your lunch day in and day out. Nobody looks at porn and comes away unscathed. A man cannot take fire to his bosom and not get burned.
You feel that shame until you finally completely cauterize your conscience, and you can't feel anything anymore. At that point, you're beyond salvation anyhow. But if you will deal with it and get on top of it, you will get to a place where you will say, "That was the best decision I ever made in my life. I'm no longer bound by this. I'm no longer living in it. I don't indulge it. I don't even think about it. It's not a part of my life."
What a great place to be! What a great place to be when you can say, "Porn is just not a part of my life. It's not there. I'm not looking for it anymore." Amen.
I want every head bowed, every eye closed. It would be great to never have to preach a sermon like this, but that's not the world I live in. I have dealt with far too much wreckage, and I have seen too many good men—good men, as good as we're capable of being—destroyed by something that is so conquerable, something that is so unnecessary to be a part of your life, something that just simply doesn't apply.
There are many men here today who have fought this battle through to its logical and righteous conclusion, and they could stand up here right alongside me and say, "Yeah, absolutely. You get to a point where it's simply not a part of your life. It doesn't even enter your radar."
It's not something you look for. Yeah, the devil throws stuff at you. I get that. He certainly doesn't do it every day. He doesn't do it every month. He doesn't do it often. Once you get removed from that arena of your life, the further you get from it, the more distant you are.
I'm talking years and years and years distant. It's not like it crops up often—hardly at all. Those unbidden images, but as soon as they do, they're so powerless that instantly it's just a matter of swatting it away, turning it over to Jesus and saying, "I'm not thinking that. I'm not going there. I refuse to go there."
Boom! It's God. It's not an issue. Get right back to praying, and you're good to go.
So every man in this building is going to fight this arena one way or the other, and I'm praying that the vast majority have thought it through to its logical conclusion. But there are those that get on top of it, and what I have observed through the years is that men that get seriously bound by this go through three or six-month cycles.
That's the common—seems to be—they get on top of it for about three months, and wham! Then they're coming and confessing again. Or maybe they go six months, and occasionally it's a year. But you have to get this completely dominated. You cannot allow this to continue in your life.
Maybe you're here this evening, and you're not even a Christian. Maybe you've never even thought it through before. I was a Christian. I mean, if my dad's going to throw a Playboy on my bed, there can't be that bad. Can't be wrong. Can't be evil. This is my dad, for crying out loud.
But it is evil, and it does funky things to you. It shrinks your brain, it destroys your empathy, it destroys your character, and it makes you incapable of genuinely loving or genuinely being loved. It strips your brain out, man.
That turns women into an object. It's destructive, start to finish. There is no benefit to it. Some of the social engineers of our day try to say, "Oh no, this is helpful." There's nothing helpful about it.
It turns you into a strange creature. If you've never been born again, then you don't understand how good holiness is. You don't understand what it's like to be free. You don't know what it's like to be able to truly say, "No, I'm going to make the choices here. I'm not going to be driven. I'm not going to be dominated. I'm not going to be a slave. I'm not going to be controlled. I am going to rise up in the power of God, resurrected with a whole new life, and I'm going to be able to tell sin who's in control around here. I'm going to be able to walk in dominion and victory because I've died with Christ."
He's already done this. He's taken care of it. He has moved in a supernatural arena. He has fought this battle for me. He has died to this sin or any other sin, be it alcohol, be it drugs, be it rejection, hatred, violence—all sorts of things that get hold of people and destroy them. Jesus died for it all.
He died for our salvation. He died to bring deliverance. You're here tonight, and you're not a Christian. You don't know God, but what I am offering you sounds very appealing. What I am offering to you—can that be true? Can I really get free from this? Can I get free from drugs? Can I get free from the sin that dominates me? Can I get free from my immorality? Can I get free from my brokenness? Can I really get free?
And the answer to that is a guaranteed yes. You can most definitely get free, but you can't do it alone. You need Jesus Christ. You need the power of God to set you free.
While heads are bowed, eyes are closed, no one's looking around, if you're here this evening and you're not a Christian, but you want Jesus to come into your heart and do this very thing for you, raise your hand.
Receive it. Say, "Pray for me, Pastor Lamb. I don't know this Christ that you're talking about. He doesn't dwell in my heart, but you're telling me something that I've wanted to hear all my life."
Put your hand right up where I can see it. Hallelujah! There's one down here. Here you go, brother. Amen. God bless you.
Who else would join this honest heart? Just lift your hand. It's not hard. It's not hard.
You get to a point where you're just sick of it. You're sick of sin. You're sick of what it does. You're sick of the toll of it. I got saved when I was 19. I'd already had enough sin to say, "This just isn't worth it. This isn't the way I want to live."
Who else? Join this honest heart. Maybe you're backslidden, and maybe it was porn that brought you down, or maybe it was something else altogether—bitterness, anger, resentment, rebellion. There are so many different ways.
The old song I used to sing with Scotty: "So many ways a man can fall; only one way a man can stand." There's only one way he can stand—that's Jesus Christ. But there are a million ways you can fall. You can fail, you can walk away, it can break down.
Maybe that's you tonight. Maybe that's where you are. You're backslidden, and you want to get your heart right. Raise your hand right where you're seated.
Say, "Pray for me, Pastor Lamb. I am not where I need to be. I am not living for Christ as I need to be living. Jesus is not my Lord tonight, and I'm choosing."
I don't care if you've been through this 20 times. I don't care if you've backslid, got your heart right, backslid, got your heart right. Until you get it locked into Christ, you just have to keep doing what you have to do.
Raise your hand and say, "I need to give my life to Jesus Christ." Amen, brother. You raised your hand. Slip right out. Somebody's going to meet you here at the altar. They're going to pray with you.
I need a brother to come help me pray. Hallelujah!
Speaking to Christian men here, amen. I was talking with Jesse before this service, and he mentioned it. You know, it has come up from time to time, but you haven't had a whole sermon on it, especially in a men's discipleship class, for a couple of years.
My thought was you probably shouldn't let a year go by without addressing this sometime during a men's discipleship because this is primarily a man's problem. Oddly enough, statistics are that it's becoming a growing problem among women, but I'm not preaching to women; I'm preaching to men.
If you're unclear on that topic, you definitely need to come to the altar. But beyond that, I want to invite the whole group. I want you to come because even if you're walking in victory over this and you've got it by the tail, it never hurts to say, "God, I want holiness above everything else."
On top of that, I don't want men to avoid the altar tonight because if they come to the altar, everybody will know they've got a problem. Avoid the altar and avoid deliverance.
So we're all going to come to the altar. Amen? If you've got this problem, you come too. Amen? Then you go talk to your pastor about it.
Okay, I'm giving you cover here. Aren't I a nice guy? I'm giving you cover here. The reason I'm trying to give you cover is I really want you to come and touch God with this.
I want you to open your heart to the Spirit of God. I want you to let God convict you. I want you to let God make you feel the weight of this. I want God to awaken you to the danger you are in because of your involvement with pornography.
That's why I want you at this altar, and I want you praying. I want you getting a hold of God. I want you really, really opening your heart before God and saying, "God, this has to change. This has to change."
Get a hold of God at this altar. Let God have His way right now in your heart.
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
"Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord. Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
"Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord. Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."
"Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation and renew a right spirit within me."
"Cast me not away from Thy presence, O Lord. Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me."
"Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation and renew a right spirit within me."
Say this prayer with me right now:
"Father God, I come to you through the blood of Jesus. I pass through the veil of His flesh into the holy throne room of God, and I crave this holiness. I crave this righteousness. I weary of sin. I am surrounded by sin, and my soul is vexed by the hearing and the seeing of it day after day.
I believe you, God, to work a miracle in my heart and in my mind, to fix my thoughts upon you, to help me to serve you with my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind, and all my strength. I believe you for victory and dominion over every besetting sin. You have given me this promise: I am dead in Christ, and I am alive to righteousness.
I thank you for your miracle power in Jesus' name."
Let's worship God as your pastor, Chris.