Purity is not optional

If there's anything in the American mind today that the Christian has to address, it's the question of sexual ethics and sexual purity. And for that reason, Simon and I went a little bit long on this episode because there really is a lot of ground to cover as we talk about the biblical nature of the discipline of purity, as well as the practical nature of the discipline of purity. And so, for that reason, this is going to be a two-part episode. The first week now, episode one, is on the theological and biblical nature of the discipline of purity, and next week will be on the getting nitty-gritty with the practice or the practical theology of the discipline of purity.
I hope you enjoy. Welcome to The Student Podcast. This is where two guys get together and we discuss and learn how to be students of Jesus Christ. So good to have you today. So I have this whole system in my books where when I write, when I read through books, I will specifically I'll specifically write quotations on the top that I want to remember, and then for each paragraph I just write maybe one or two words or sentences on the side of the paragraph and the margins, what it's for. what was summarizing that paragraph, and then on the bottom is if I want to interact with the author, you know, if I want to argue with them, or why don't you bring up this passage? Exactly, yeah. So when I'm skimming through a book that I've read, I'm able to quickly, you know, I knew he said that in this chapter, but where was it at? And so I'm able to just really quickly find it in my in my marginal notes, like, oh, OK, it's that paragraph.
Do you have a highlighter coloring system like you do for your Bible? No, no, no, I don't. I don't use. Blasphemy. Why would I use highlighters on my books? No, I profusely underline. And I put a little star. I have a single underline system, a double underline system. and a double underline with stars next to it. So things that I think are, you know, that's quote worth. So if it's just like a one sentence thing, that's what I write on the top. But if it's like what I think is really hitting hard at his main point or her main point, whoever's writing, you know, I'll put a single line or a double line or double line and then stars on the side yeah kind of like okay this is a and again it's for me to remember later if i'm reviewing the book like oh this was a really important section so so then i'm not having to reread books all the time yeah so a lot of times what i do is just resources yeah and so yeah and then having quotes on hand and it helps me retain the information better because oh yeah it's kind of like the whole you know uh understanding it synthesizing it yeah you're processing it in between reading it and spitting it back out exactly yeah uh dr miller at geneva used to always say if you're reading a book without a pen in your hand you're not actually reading Oh dear, probably not done very much reading in my life. No, but you have a special brain. I think we think differently. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not.
It takes me a long time and a lot of work to work through a book. And so I remember Spurgeon in his lectures to his students, he was talking about how you can, a pastor who just kind of flies through a whole bunch of books without actually you know, digesting it doesn't actually do his congregation any good. So it's much better to read fewer books and read them deeply than it is to read a whole bunch of books and not remember what in the world you read. Yeah, yeah. No, Natalie and I were talking about that with Bible reading even, because like I really prefer to just take it shorter and deeper than broader and faster, but she was saying, you know, like depends kind of what your goal is with the reading because like if you know some books like you want to get what is the structure of this book what is it about what's like the history here yeah and that's a little bit easier just uh better suited towards just like blasting through and actually getting the big picture versus that so yeah even different approaches with reading the bible i think Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I know a couple people messaged me specifically when we put together a Bible reading list this year and let me know about a guy who teaches, I think he teaches at the Master's Seminary or the Master's College out in California. And he has a system where essentially you read nine chapters of the Bible a day. And the whole point is not to get stuck in the details, but to, as you read through these books over and over and over again, that you start getting a biblical theology of how does this all tie together. And so he'll bring up like, have you ever noticed the parallelisms that happen between the book of Ecclesiastes and what Matthew says in his gospel?
And I was like, No, please elaborate on that. But I don't read my Bible that way. I mean, for years I used to read my Bible front to cover in one year, and that's what I did. But what I normally tell people when we're and you're doing marriage counseling or counseling of any type, I'll normally tell people, well, I don't, for family worship, you just start with reading one thought unit itself. So kind of go with the headings, whichever Bible you're in. Now those aren't perfect, you know, some man made those up, but just read from one heading to another heading. So you're getting one complete thought or one complete story at a time, rather than jumping in with one whole chapter or trying to overwhelm yourself, just getting a habit.
I really think that's what I find most effective for people. But it is, I mean, it's good also to read a whole lot. Yeah. Well, why don't we pray, yeah? Yeah, let's do it. Do you want to pray this time? Sure. All right. I think I can do that. All right, let's pray.
God, we do pray to you and thank you that you are our Father and that we can call you Abba Father. Thank you, Lord, for your Holy Spirit who bears witness in our hearts, Lord, that we are children of God. We ask, Lord, that as our Father, Lord, you'd care for us as your children, and that you'd feed us richly, Lord, through your word as we engage with this study, Lord, and see, Lord, what you call us to be as men of God. Lord, we ask for your help. Lord, apart from you, we can do nothing. We ask for wisdom from your Holy Spirit. You've promised, Lord, to give wisdom to those who ask for it. And we come to you, Lord, because you're a hearer of prayer. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen.
Alright, well we are at chapter 2 of Disciplines of a Godly Man, the Discipline of Purity. And I just have to say that this is I think one of the most pressing issues when I talk to guys, I disciple men, I have spent countless hours here in Chicago, in Beaver Falls, just being an accountability partner, but also being a counselor and being a pastor of men who have struggled with this discipline. And this is a specific issue in life that I think is extremely difficult and important. And so, that's kind of where I wanted to start. Rather than jumping right into it, I actually wanted us to answer a question. I mean, this is like the first real chapter. Yeah, yeah, the first one last time was like an intro, I think, yeah. And so the question is, why in the world put this at the front of the book? Why make it this serious? Like, why is it that, why does he make it, you know, the discipline of purity that big of a deal? What do you think? Yeah, I think I mean, I guess I was a little surprised about that too, because this is like, oh, the uncomfortable subject.
But I think that's exactly his point. Disappoint is uncomfortable. And he starts off. Oh, where is it here? I think he starts off defending himself with this. He's like, you know, if you don't think that this is important, if you don't think this is, you know, if you think this is a Puritan idea, I think he says it is, but it's only because it's biblical. Yeah, I have that underlined in here somewhere. Towards the beginning of this. Anyway, Which I guess I was like, why is he defending himself? Like of course, this is what like we're called to do but I think that's his point is Discipline is hard. If you don't like this, you're not gonna like the rest of the book.
Yeah At least that was my impression. But where's yeah, he says under the will of God purity It's kind of towards the middle of the chapter. He says Sometimes people under the Christian umbrella simply do not buy what I am saying in regard to purity. They consider such teaching to be Victorian and puritanical. Victorian, it is not. Puritanical, it gloriously is." And I thought, what a beautiful point.
But I'm kind of asking, yes, I think pedagogically, you're right, that he's getting at one of the hardest issues, one of the most uncomfortable issues really early on. But do you think that he has biblical justification? What right do we have as Christians to care so much about sexual ethics? I guess that's where I want to start. Do you think that there's biblical reasons for us to start here? Whenever the Bible is coaching men on holiness, it comes up in the Bible.
You see that in Psalm 119, how can a young man cleanse his way? You see that in Proverbs all the time. Solomon's telling his son, either figuratively or in reality, Beware of the strange woman like that comes up every time. Yeah, you know, it's like the first six chapters for all that Yeah, it's just solidness. Um, and then when you see timothy, um, you know being trained you put paul and washing timothy, um it comes up, and then Thessalonians is, you know, that verse, I think it's 1 Thessalonians 4 or 3 or something. This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that you're spot on, right? That when we talk to, about men specifically, this is a big issue. But in the church, I think that this is an ancient issue and a very, we're no more, our society is no more nor no less pagan than it was in the time of Corinth. And again and again he brings up, you know, we live in an age of Corinth. And I think he's spot on with that. I wanted to start with 1 Corinthians chapter 6, And he says in verses 12 through the end of the chapter, he says, Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you think, or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh.
But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside his body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? And you are not your own, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. I think there's this gnostic understanding in evangelicalism, especially in the spiritual world of American religion, that God cares about your soul and he cares about your heart, but you body, you can do whatever you want.
And here he's saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. You as a whole person were redeemed. You are physically united to Christ. You are spiritually united to Christ. You have been redeemed body and soul. And so, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Therefore glorify God with your body. Every other sin that you can commit is outside your body, but sexual immorality is against your own body, and your body is Christ's. He paid the blood price for it.
That's why we're going to be raised again from the dead at the resurrection. And so I think that this topic is especially prescient to starting this conversation on disciplines of holiness, because if we're not talking about how to be a godly man and ignoring our bodies, then we're starting on a wrong foundation. We're starting on a wrong premise. You know, we're acting, we're just being Gnostics. Oh, we can care for our souls, but it doesn't matter what our bodies do. Right. Yeah. No, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.
This idea that like the reason we're disciplining ourselves in godliness is that every part of our life is under the authority of Christ. And like every part of our flesh kicks against that. And so like, it's not like you were saying, it's not just, oh, believe in Jesus and give him your heart. And like you said, keep on going. But no, this whole process of discipline is bringing, you know, not only my thoughts, but my body into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
Yeah, and how much more, especially in our culture that ties sexuality with identity, how much more should the Christian understand that in our culture today, right? If you're a Christian, you don't even have a choice in your own sexuality because you have a Lord. if God truly is sovereign, then he is right over even your sexuality. I know that that would make the Freudians and the LGBTQ community go crazy with saying that, but our sexuality is not our choice. Our sexuality is not ours to determine, but it's the Lord's.
Right. Our affections, what we do with our body, how we think, they're all bound up in who we are in Christ. Yeah. And so, I actually really, at first, I was a little surprised that he started with this chapter when I first read this, you know, like a decade ago. But now, really have come to appreciate that he really deals with it head on. Yeah. What did you think about this guy, Professor David A.J. Richard at the New York University Law School? Do you remember what he called, you know, what the ideal we should be working towards? I think I have it here. Pornotopia.
Yeah. Isn't that nuts? That just made me sick when I read it. You wanted to puke, but yeah. yeah it's crazy i don't i've never i've never usually when i've talked to even unbelievers and confronted them with like the law of god usually even they're like yeah that's wrong yeah but i've met a lot of you know just outright liberals who have said quite the opposite no that yeah no it's my sexuality i can do with i can do what i want yeah it's free exercise it's free um free expression of of who I am.
Right. But again, I love this about the Heidelberg Catechism when it talks about your body's not your own. Yeah. Body and soul. Yeah. So, but he quickly gets at, but it's not just the world, it's not just, you know, the liberals out there on college campuses. Right. But he brings it home. Yeah. Do you think that this is a problem in the church? Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it seemed like it was the issue in campus ministry, because a lot of times you're interacting with, at least I was with the campus ministry I was at, it was a larger, a non-denominational Reformed Baptist type ministry.
But when you were dealing with a young man who'd either come to Christ or walked away from Christ or was really trying to get serious in his faith, and we were trying to do nitty gritties, it would come down to Bible reading, praying, and this, purity. If you weren't doing those three things, you could pretty much predict every other aspect of their life. And if they weren't fighting for purity in their life, they probably weren't fighting for freedom from alcohol or any other thing in their life.
Yeah, and I think that's right, because again, this is so close to who we are as people. I think that's one thing that actually the LGBTQ community actually gets better than evangelicals, right? They assume it as part of your identity, as part of who you are as your sexuality, and evangelicals want to respond so negatively against that, saying, no, it's your choice. And I'm saying, no, it's both. right?
If you want to show whether you're of Christ or whether you're of the world, what are you doing with your body? How do you treat your iPhone? What are you doing at night when nobody else is there? It will reveal a lot whether you're following after the pagan ideologies of this world or whether you're following Christ.
And he gives a whole bunch of Statistics now my book is pretty old. I'm wondering if it changed the statistics. I mean, I've got One from 1988 which is not modern by any no Let's see, I think I've got another one here 2017 maybe so that one's better. Okay. What are the statistics for that? Oh Oh, I'm just looking at the footnotes. Let's see here.
So he says from the leadership poll, Leadership Magazine, pastors indicate that 12% of them had committed adultery while in ministry, one out of eight pastors, and 23% had done something they considered sexually inappropriate. And then among subscribers to Christianity Today who were not pastors, that figure almost doubled with 23% saying they had extramarital intercourse and 45% indicating they had done something they themselves deemed sexually inappropriate. Yeah. And I think the next paragraph he starts off with, the contemporary evangelical church broadly considered is Corinthian to the core. Yeah.
I preached a series of biographical sermons a couple summers ago at church, and one of them somebody asked for was Balaam. And so we talked about Balaam and his episode with the donkey and all that the first time. But the second, we actually did Balaam in two weeks. The first was Balaam and the witchcraft doctor is essentially what I called him. But the second is, that failed.
But how did Balaam actually influence the Israelites? He tempted them to marry non-Israelite women. And then you switch over to the book of Revelation, it talks about Balaam and his sexual immorality. The sin of Balaam is still alive and well in the church today.
The statistics are stark and shocking. We have a couple books over there. Um a little paperback illustrated books, uh, good pictures bad pictures and I it's sad that I have to talk to my Six-year-old son my eight-year-old son about hey There are pictures on the internet that you you shouldn't watch, you know, there are things that you shouldn't see um there's another book up there um that covenant eyes have you heard of covenant eyes yeah we use that okay yeah so do we and the guy who owns covenant eyes or i don't know how what his title is there he wrote a series of sex education books and we've had to go through those with our kids now. And the reason why having to start talking with our children about sex now, I'm appalled by this, but the reality is that the statistics are that most children will accidentally stumble across some type of pornography before they're eight years old. Really?
Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. Exactly. And it's just kind of like, I mean, I wasn't that much older before I was exposed to it. I think I was, how old are you in sixth grade? 12, something like that. And that was on paper. I mean, you don't even have to have paper now. I mean, there's fifth graders walking around with iPhones and droids. Nobody calls them droids. I don't know what your Android people call them. Galaxy Note 56 plus. I don't know.
Whatever version you're on now. uh but the point is it's like it's it's sad to me yeah that we live in such a sensual society yeah that is just it's pervasive everywhere yeah um yeah i mean even growing up and i'm not even that old you know 22 years old and from the time i was a kid to then late in high school, the conversations we'd have at the table, you'd never talk about sex or sexuality at the table. And by the time I was ready to leave the home, we, it was a dinner table conversation simply because of current events and what was going on. And I was like, this is nuts. Just in my lifetime that that's changed.
So. Yeah, I mean, it's just the world we live in, you know, and he says at the bottom of that section when he just calls out people in churches, you know, he says, No wonder the church has lost its grip on holiness. No wonder it is so slow to discipline its members. No wonder it is dismissed by the world as irrelevant. No wonder so many of its children reject it. No wonder It has lost its power in many places and that islam and other false religions are making so many converts Sensuality is easily the biggest obstacle to holiness amongst men today and is wreaking havoc in the church godliness and sensuality are mutually exclusive And I think he's right with a caveat Let me just ask the question to beg the argument with the author here.
Is all sensuality sin? I mean, it depends how you define sensuality. Yeah. This is where I want to be careful, right? We have more time to tease this out than he does in the book. But talk to me about it. So should we just turn into, you know, kowtow to Roman Catholics and, you know, all sex is bad and it's only for procreation? Well, I mean, I think it wouldn't take long, if you're reading through the Bible, to get to Song of Solomon, which again, depending on how you define sensuality, is a very sensuous book, both literally and figuratively, as we've talked about before. Yeah, but by the way, just for people watching, you and I literally just finished Song of Solomon in our devotional time.
What was that? end of last year. Yeah, it was the very end of Christmas, end of the new year. Yeah, yeah. It was the end of 2021, and we were going through like two chapters a day. Plowing through it. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's absolutely clear from the book of Song of Solomon that, no, there's this enjoyment that is good between a husband and a wife. And even in Proverbs. Yeah, Proverbs 5.
Yeah, you know, to be satisfied in the breasts of the wife of your youth, you know, so it's clear from the scripture that that all sensuality, now sinful sensuality is different, or this inordinate desire for sexual pleasure and fulfillment is what he's getting at here. And so it just needs to be very clear that the Bible, it's not like the Lord made Adam and Eve and was like, oh man, I didn't know they were gonna do that. Stop enjoying that. He says he delighted in it. Exactly. It's good.
So there is a doctrine of biblical marriage and sex within the marriage covenant that's good, and that's where it's meant to be. That's where 1 Corinthians 7, after he goes on here talking about how you're not to, you know, to fame the temple of God. In 1 Corinthians 7, it's better for you to marry than to burn with passion. And wives don't belong to themselves, but they belong to their husbands, and husbands, likewise, their bodies don't belong to themselves, but they belong to their wives. And so there's this reality that even the commands of God is that we're not allowed to withhold sexual pleasure from our spouse. Actually, one of the most hurtful things I see when counseling married couples is when one spouse is using it as a bargaining chip to hurt the other spouse.
But with that big asterisk, you know, I think he's right. I told you about how I make notes in my books, and on the top of this, godliness and sensuality are mutually exclusive. Every time I disciple a guy, if they're still looking at porn, if they're still lusting after women, there's always an amount of stagnancy in their spiritual walk. Because you cannot separate godliness from purity. Just can't happen.
Speaking of things written in the book, I had a question mark written by, he's talking about, it's no wonder that the church is rejected by so many of its children. I guess I hadn't thought about impurity in the church as a reason the younger generation is kind of losing touch with the church. And I wondered, I guess that didn't jump out to me as a logical outflow that I would normally think of. And I guess, I don't know if you had thoughts on that.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I, uh, I mean, I'll speak abstractly about someone and I'll speak closely about someone, um, abstractly. You know, I know of people who have walked away from the faith, children who have walked away from the faith because they know what's on their dad's computer. You know, they've stumbled across, you know, their, so they'll hear things preached one day, but then the next day, you know, they know that it's like hypocrisy. Yeah. Okay.
Um, more closely, uh, you know, this is going live and it's in the public record. My stepfather's in prison for molesting my adopted sister. I mean, if you want to talk about a flagrant way of showing impurity, and you'll talk to him, you know, I'll talk to him on the phone and, and he'll talk about the small steps that happened to get him there to where, you know, he, he, he committed the sin. And I mean, heinous, horrible sin that has wrecked my family.
I mean, I can't go into all of it. I couldn't explain all of it or show the depths of what's happened, but I mean, I literally have siblings who have, they want nothing to do with God. They want nothing to do with the church. They want nothing to do. You know, I've asked one of them before how I could pray for them. And I mean, just don't ask me how you can pray for me. If God cared about me at all, he wouldn't have let all this happen. Wow.
I mean, that's a pretty serious story to bring in here, but I don't think it's any less serious than the story that Arken Hughes brings up, as he talks about the life of David. And I can see that when... Arkent Hughes gives this path towards sexual sin in different steps, and he talks about desensitization, relaxation, fixation, rationalization, and finally denigration. And so, First he talks about how in David's life there's a desensitization that happens in his heart, right?
David was a man after God's own heart. But then before he even becomes a king in Hebron, we find him taking multiple wives. Right. you know, we find him, uh, I think the kids and I were in family worship and are doing family worship over the past week. And we've been at this point where David's about to become king. And, and there's this point in, in second Samuel where it's just lists all the wives that David has when he's, and he's already got seven wives. Yeah. But Deuteronomy 17 specifically said a king was not to multiply wives. Right.
And so that's what, Archangel Jesus getting in that first part of desensitization is his heart's already becoming callous towards God's law, and his heart's already becoming cold towards the commands of God. And so he talks about ways in which we can become desensitized in our age. What are some of the ways that either in your life or that Arken Hughes brings up or practical examples, what are some ways that you've seen men get desensitized to sexual sins?
Yeah. I mean, just I think the cultural prevalence that we're immersed in daily is a desensitization in and of itself without a fight against it actively. I mean, you just go to the store. I mean, I guess the theme I see that's most desensitizing, I guess I should say, is just the objectification of women, that our culture just sells and loves and supports, and women themselves come to expect. Yeah. You know you see that in Hollywood you see it when you go through the grocery aisle at the store You see it when you're on the internet you see it in the average unconverted woman's view of how a man will treat her an expectation for how a man will treat her and this kind of hookup culture that is just celebrated and loved and okay and just how we work now. Just swipe right. Right. Just tender. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The guy who, now I don't know anything about this company. I'm not endorsing them. Somebody told me something about their connection with Mormons, so I don't know. But no matter what, have you heard of the company VidAngel? Yeah. So you're able to get this thing where it hooks up with your Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime. And they'll actually filter out different things that you don't want to see. So if you don't want to see nudity, or if you don't want to hear blasphemies, or you don't want to hear F-bombs, they're able to just filter those things out. Right. And I remember they were in this lawsuit with disney. They finally I mean took them to bankruptcy quite literally. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean they've emerged out of bankruptcy and everything.
Okay, but but they were just talking about the statistics of when hollywood will say You know, oh, well, this is just artistic freedom why we're doing this or artistic expression why we need to show You know women either scantily dressed or nude and so they just I mean these are people who for a living Count the seconds of how many how often people are nude or scantily dressed and how you know Whether it's bikinis or topless or whatever, you know, but the point is is that the statistic was something like no It's well over 85% of the time if somebody is naked. It's a woman. Yeah Yeah and go talk to anybody working in Hollywood and ask them how many women are producing those films and Yeah How many executives on the board? Are women? No, it's it's men. Yeah using women to line their pockets and to fill their fancies because sex sells, right? um and so this was uh Yeah, he said something here that on the next page that I thought was just really interesting.
Oh, no, he doesn't have it here. It's going to be later that he'll talk more about television specifically. Yeah, it's on another page, so we'll get there in a second. But he talks about David when he went up to the, you know, he's kind of getting desensitized from these, from his, God's sexual commands and then He eventually stays home from battle, where again God had said that the king was to go out and lead the men into battle. So instead he sends Joab to go take care of it.
What does he point out for that with relaxation? Why is that a problem? Yeah. Yeah, well, David wasn't doing what his calling was, as like, captain in general of his of his military. But I underlined here, it wasn't just that, he writes, the problem was his relaxation extended to his moral life. It is hard to maintain inner discipline when you are relaxing in this way. Yeah. So it wasn't just this external, I'm not going to do my job, but internally he had relaxed in being disciplined. Yeah. And I think that's really the case. I mean, I say it to people all the time. I mean, I have to talk about, check my own heart on this. You can't go on autopilot. Right. As a Christian, you are not allowed to put, there's no such thing as cruise control for your faith. Either you're hot or you're cold. You can't be lukewarm. Yeah.
The second you take your foot off the gas and you take your hands off the steering wheel, either you're going to lose speed and stop, or you're going to keep at the same speed and veer off into a ditch and die. You've got to be purposeful in your faith, and you've got to keep your hands on the wheel. You have to stay diligent. You've got to run the race with perseverance.
And this is what he said at the end of that section I thought was so helpful. Just when we think we are the safest, when we feel no need to keep our guard up, to work on our integrity, to discipline ourselves for godliness, temptation will come. It's when we take our hands off the wheel. It's when we're like, well, yeah, I'll be good. Satan's not going to attack us. If you're like, man, I'm going to go to church, and this is going to be great. I'm going to read my Bible.
Rarely is that when the heat of temptation is going to come. It's going to come when you're walking around campus, when you're at the workplace. This is one of the things I used to have to tell guys all the time when they would fall into pornography. I'd be like, well, what time did that happen? We'd look at their covenant eyes report, and it's like 1 o'clock in the morning. Well, no duh, you're decision fatigued, you're tired, stop being on the internet after 10 o'clock at night. You have no business being there. You're going to make poor decisions because you want to just relax. You can't relax.
Yeah, it's amazing how many parallels I was thinking as he as he goes through all these different stages you see this exactly and I think it's proverb 7 with Solomon talking to his son about the strange woman and he plays out this narrative and he's alone And he's by the corner of her house and there's no one else right? I mean exact same thing, you know just copy paste different chase characters and a few of the circumstances but you know, he's He's relaxed and in a vulnerable spot.
Yeah, and of course, that's where Temptation swoops in and nails him. Yeah, and he doesn't have to go look for it. Although sometimes you do but She's there. She's the one who grabs him. Yeah, and and tries to entice him to come into her house Pornographers are good marketers and they know I mean that You know, I was talking to a guy one time and he was talking about how he struggles with pornography and not going to these websites and stuff, and how he would just be searching on Facebook Marketplace and just looking at stuff for sale or whatever. then sure enough there's an ad that pops up right but that ad is like the trigger that then he goes and looks at you know he clicks on it when he knows he shouldn't have clicked on that and then that gets you know his mind running down the it's like a domino stream dominoes exactly right and and what what we have to learn how to do is stop the domino. Sometimes that means running over and kicking the domino stack so the rest of it doesn't fall down.
It takes some collateral damage to pull this off, and he's going to get to that in a second. Then he talks about fixation. You want to summarize what he means by fixation? Yeah, I think it's kind of like You know, David's on the roof here and he's glancing around and sees this naked woman bathing, but then he gazes. And then that gaze just kind of like you were saying, kicks that domino over and it starts this at all costs mentality in his head. Ration goes out the window and it is, this must be mine at all costs. Yeah, and so I think you kind of put, you know, fixation and rationalization together, but I think that that's right. The line between those two gets blurred really fast because he fixates on her, but then he kind of has this hypothetical conversation, you know, internal interlocutor in David's head, you know.
Oh, I would really be loving her. Her husband's so far away, she could use comfort. Well, it's really love, you know. And there's all sorts of people who rationalize away sexual sin that same way. You know, oh, but I just really need this. Oh, I just need this release. Oh, if God didn't intend for this, he wouldn't have made me this way. And so rationalizing it away. I really liked the little quote here on the section on fixation when he says, God disappears to lust glazed eyes. When your heart is just fixed on that person. But that person isn't even a person anymore. It's an object.
And we can even talk about his own daughter and son what happened. Do you remember the story about David's daughter and son? I think he talks about it later. Yeah, he talks about it, Amnon. Amnon, yeah, rapes his daughter Tamar, and then Absalom murders Amnon. Yeah, but let's talk about that story, right, with Amnon and Tamar. What's going, because it's the exact same thing that happens with Amnon, right? Amnon sees his half-sister, and what does he think about her? he's like she's beautiful and i must have her yeah and she's like no and she tries to resist him and she forces he forces her he rapes her yeah and um yeah it's this you know and yeah if i remember the story correctly he's like let me lay with you no i'm not gonna leave like you know and it's just this determination like he he had determined his mind from the beginning what he was gonna do but Yeah, he's he's laid out a whole plot, you know, he acts like he's sick gets permission from david to have her come in and she makes him food and and it's this whole sexual encounter where he's lusting after her if she makes him the food and she brings it to him to eat and he asks him for her he asked her to actually feed him and when she feeds him then He he assaults her.
Yeah, he violates her and and this is an absolutely atrocious thing and one of the one of the lines in that in the scriptures you know uh and then he hated her more than he ever loved her because he wasn't actually in love with her he wanted his desires filled not actually caring for her as a person she became an object to him and so this is something that the rationalization and fixation when we become fixated rather than loving right it becomes this detrimental horrible That person is now just an object. Mm-hmm. It's not it's no longer loving that person as we would want to be loved but it's Treating them like they're a piece of French toast or something. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah worse than that. Yeah.
Yeah, I I had a question for you about what your thoughts were on this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or can he use quotes as saying, at this moment, so in the moment of lust, at this moment God loses all reality. Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. And just statement, Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, because I mean ultimately I have a hard time twisting lust to where it's not at some point hatred of God, and maybe I'm not reading it in context or something. Yeah, so Dietrich Bonhoeffer there is getting at the existential crisis that happens, right, because this happens all the time in the church when I talk to guys who are wrestling with pornography and their accountability partner, and we're working through this, you know, we're putting this into death, It's not that they don't love God, it's that they don't love God enough. It's not that they don't love God, it's just that they've thought too little of their sin.
And so as they fight against this sin, it's almost like this overwhelming thing to them where where it's like lust blinds their eyes and what they should be committed to goes to the background. It's no different, I think, than what we find in Genesis chapter 3. You know, when the lust for the forbidden fruit enters their heart, it says, you know, God's told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for the day you, you know, dying you will die. But When Satan tempts Eve, he deceives her, and in her heart something changes, because at one point she didn't have a desire, but now it says that she looked upon the fruit and it was pleasing to the eyes and pleasant for food. something had changed in her heart where now instead of God's Word being the one that she trusts and the desire for fellowship with God, now it's as if God's out of her mind and all she can think about is this fruit. immediately after eating the fruit, they know God's there.
Because they, oh man, we're naked. You know, they go hide and they try to clothe themselves. And so, I think that's what Bonhoeffer's getting at. It's more of an existential reality. And we can say that with any sin, you know, people dealing with covetousness, with greed, with you know, with hatred that blinds them, you know, and there have been people who have murdered people and have talked about it.
It's like it wasn't them who were doing it. But the reality is, no, it was you. It was just an unbridled you. And I think that's why I really like the quote that he uses, God disappears to lust-glazed eyes. And then the last part is the denigration. There's all these things that happen before the actual act of sin. I hate when people talk about, oh, I just fell into this affair. No, you committed adultery. It might have happened quick or it might have happened slow, but you walked into it. That's how it works.
And so I really appreciated the fact that he walked this through and then he talked about, you know, how David became a murderer, a liar, an adulterer. And it all started in his heart and in his mind way in the past, but it has horrible repercussions for his life.
And that's where you were at down here, you know, as rain goes downhill and the things that happen are, You know, his son dies. His daughter Tamar is raped by his son Amnon. Amnon's murdered by Absalom for this. Absalom comes to hate his father because his father is unwilling to, you know, do that amount of justice that he should have done. And David's reign lost the smile of God. His throne never reigned in its former stability.
And this is one of the things that I have to talk about with men who have committed affairs before, you know, and they repent of that sin, they cut off the relationship, you know, delete phone numbers, block phone numbers, all sorts of stuff. But that doesn't mean that there's no repercussions for that sin. Right. I mean, David is forgiven. Psalm 51 and Psalm 32 are clear. but never again do we see David at his height.
And that's one of the things I struggle with, with guys where they've hid their pornography addiction from their wives. And I'm talking to you, a guy, you know, if I was preaching, I would be talking more with women as well. But specifically, I'm a guy and I counsel guys. I don't counsel women alone. Olivia does that.
But with guys, I mean, this is one of the things, you know, you have put a scar your marriage and it's it's going to be hard for your wife to get over that there is forgiveness but in this life humanly speaking forgiveness is always is just a scar. There's going to come a day when it's going to be gone, thank the Lord. But in this life, there's repercussions for sin. Yeah.
Well, even if you think like after David's dead and gone, Solomon's family life isn't any better. And after him, Rehoboam, Jeroboam, I mean, the kingdom just starts falling apart. And you start, you know, David's kind of the first king of Israel, first Davidic king of Israel. He kind of sets a president for a bad, I mean, he's a decent king, but not so great father. Solomon's a worse husband, you know, and it just, it disintegrates from there.
And you read through 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and you're sitting there going, when's there ever going to be a good king? Right, I know. It's literally left, I think the scriptures leave you with that on purpose, because then in Matthew chapter 1, a new genealogy comes.
Finally, there's going to be a one who truly the lord delights in his heart and he delights in his father's heart Yeah, and he'll do no wrong. Yeah, you know It's crazy.
I mean it's kind of a side side trail. It's crazy that christ is willing to have that Wicked line of kings as his kingly lineage. Yeah, you know like you just read bad king bad king bad king Oh good king bad king bad king bad king like In his genealogy, it's like, whoa, if I was trying to be king, I sure would have picked a different family to come from if I had my brothers. Well, what other family would he have? They'd all have that story.
But Christ's humiliation coming in, this is a point of speculation I heard someone make one time. In the pericope adultery, you know, I think that this is actually part of scripture. People disagree, right? When the woman caught in the adultery. Oh, okay. It says that they catch her in the act of adultery. One, there's a problem there because where's the dude? But they bring her to Christ and they're wanting to stone her. And Jesus just starts writing in the sand, or writing in the dirt. I'd really love to know what he was writing. One of the speculations I've heard someone make one time is if they caught her in the act, is she actually clothed? How is she clothed? Where could a sinful man's mind run as they could be imagining what she was just caught in?
But Jesus doesn't do that. There's no point in which Jesus is looking at her as an object. But in that picture he does what Amnon could never do, what David certainly didn't do. But Jesus loved her, forgives her, cares for her. Where are your accusers? And he sends her away forgiven. And so that beautiful picture of what Christ does is wonderful.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Student Podcast. Feel free to go over to the website, sharonharpc.org backslash student and find more information and other shows. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We appreciate it. Have a great day.