What is the greatest defense against pornography? How can a person protect himself from the vulnerability? What do we need to be strong?

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. So we're here to talk about the matter of pornography and Jason it's great to have you back again. Thanks so much. And Trent Moody, my fellow elder at Hope Baptist Church, thank you so much Trent for coming.

Thanks for having me. We're here to talk about the sufficiency of scripture for the cleansing of the mind, the clearing of the eyes and to present to the Lord a heart of wisdom, all in the context of this subject of pornography, dealing with this scourge that's upon our culture and upon the hearts of those who walk in this world. So anyway, we have been doing podcasts on this subject, but this one here, we want to really focus on the positive actions that we can take to fill our minds up with the knowledge of God. And I want to start by reading Colossians 3, beginning in 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 the things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." And then in the next verse the Apostle tells the church, 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." So, the Apostle tells the Colossian Church that there are two sides to this and the first side is to Set your mind on the things that are above so that's what we're here to talk about We want to talk about the refreshment that's there and the help it is to set your mind on the things above. As we consider, you know, the things of Christ and thinking about setting our mind on these things, really one of the foundations of purity in the Christian mind is not to fall prey to some of the misconceptions as we read in the scriptures and find great encouragement in the scriptures regarding purity. And as we look at those who have gone before, men of faith that we have looked to.

We often look to Hebrews chapter 11 of the Hall of Faith and thinking about these men and the great feats which they accomplished for the Lord. We read this in James 5 17, Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. So we don't need to have the misconception that these men that we read of and that we are encouraged of are somehow superhuman. But they were natural men with natural affections, with a nature like our own. Yet, God gave them victory in their lives.

And part of that victory was the victory over purity of their minds and of their life. Yet we know this in the scriptures, many of the men struggle with these different issues or fail as David did. Yet in Psalm 63, David writes this. He says, Oh God, you are my God. Early I will seek you.

My soul thirsts for you. My flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." And just thinking about the contrast between the man whose mind has stayed upon the Lord, his flesh will long upon God and long for God. As a thirsty man longs for water, he will long for God. You know, and we're really, you're really talking about biblical solutions. There are psychological solutions, there are all kinds of practical things you can do.

But the Bible tells us how to do this, and it has to do with the mind. I'll just read another passage. Again, we're here to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for this problem of pornography, and we don't wanna pull the answers out of our own brains. But the Apostle Paul tells the Philippian Church, finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. And that's, you know, we're given this language to help us to understand the kinds of things to meditate on so that we'll have victory over matters of impurity.

Pete Slauson Anybody, anyone who has struggled with lust and has been losing knows what a preoccupation, I mean, if you have any seriousness about winning, you know what a preoccupation that can become. And so it becomes this kind of set of blinders, and you're seeing so narrowly there, and it all, of course, sort of your life rises and falls on, like, did I crash today, this week, this month? And really, it takes the focus off of good. God is keeping us from love killers to keep us for love. He's keeping us from bad things to keep us for good things.

I'll quote Jesus from Matthew chapter 13 verse 44. Jesus says, again, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. So he's not depressed about the selling of his other things. He actually, this is a man who runs home to offload the other stuff to get the treasure. And I think that's a very useful framework for us to think.

Paul in Philippians chapter 3 says, I consider all those past things rubbish, that I may gain Christ, that I may know Christ and the power of His resurrection. And it's what we treasure that turns the switch. Yeah. And Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So treasuring Jesus Christ, treasuring what is true treasure, loving what is truly true, what's truly pure.

That's where the battle is won. And that is where the battle is. And if you go to Matthew chapter 22, when Jesus is asked what's the greatest commandment, He doesn't start quoting prohibitions, like, don't do all the bad stuff. He actually says, the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, which is really relevant to the topic at hand. Loving God with the mind, What are the things that the mind dwells on?

What do your thoughts linger on? This is how we love God with the mind. 1.5 Yeah, so you get up in the morning, and instead of surfing the internet looking at this video clip in that video clip You set your mind on the things above you calibrate your whole thinking You don't get distracted with the the things that would lure you away on your phone but you set your mind on things that are above. So it has to do with what you gravitate toward, and you know, once you pick up your phone, you have to decide where that phone is going to take you. Is it going to take you to the knowledge of God, to purity, or Is it going to take you to the knowledge of God, to purity, or is it going to take you somewhere else?

You know, as we often, as we approach this topic of purity and we think about the battle that we face as men, specifically as men and young men, I believe we often miss the big picture of the challenge. It's common to all of us, but we often think that the battle is won through the power and the strength of our flesh, that we can somehow manhandle this situation. And through our own strength and through willpower, we can somehow overcome this. There are things out there that are helpful to us. There's accountability software, accountability partners, but really, ultimately, it falls to this.

We need to understand that this thing is bigger than we are, and we need Christ. That's what we learn in the Gospel of John. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And that's where filling our mind and understanding our relationship with Christ and finding our greatest treasure as being Christ, that's where the strength is. You know, we cannot fail to remember that Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 1 verse 21, the angel proclaims that you shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins.

And often that is looked at as just being a salvation from the penalty of sins, but really that is a declaration of the power of Jesus Christ to save from the power of sin in a life of a person. And that is why we must seek Christ. He is the one that can save us from our sins. In 1 John, he writes also in chapter 2, in verse 28, he says, Now little children abide in him. And I believe this is really the solution and the key to us overcoming the issue of purity of our minds, we must abide in Christ.

And as we abide in Christ, we know that that infiltrates every part of our being and it affects the way we think, it affects the way we speak, it affects our desires and our will and all of our being. And then he says, Abide in him that when he appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. And so this whole key of abiding in Christ, I believe, is what we really need to seek with all of our hearts and strive for. And it really is a day-by-day thing. It's a lifelong pursuit of God and just living our life, abiding and remaining in Christ.

And He fills up our treasures. He fills up our joys. It is there that we find the fullness of joy. Again, in John 15, he says, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples as the father has loved me. I also have loved you abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love." And then he says this, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. And so the big problem in this situation of purity is that we're seeking our happiness and our pleasure and counterfeits. The great joy of the soul is Jesus Christ. JC Ryle has written a little but really helpful book called Thoughts for Young Men, and he addresses this topic. Let me quote him.

Ryle says, to live on Christ, to draw all from Christ, to do all in the strength of Christ, to be ever looking unto Christ. This is the true secret of spiritual prosperity. I can do all things, says Paul, through Christ, who strengthens me." Philippians 4.13. Young men, I set before you Jesus Christ this day as the treasury of your souls. And I invite you to begin by going to Him if you would so run as to obtain.

Let this be your first step, go to Christ." So scripture has all sorts of helpful counsel about how we can wage this war, but J.C. Ryle is setting before us, Trent, exactly what you were talking about. The first thing is to treasure Christ. If you start with practical tips for winning the war, you can't win the war. This is about a heart that loves Christ.

David really expressed it like this. He said, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek in Psalm 127, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. And then he says, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. And then he says, you know, he will hide me in his pavilion in the secret place of his tabernacle he will hide me and he's talking about being hidden from enemies and the enemy our great enemy of our souls the devil we can hide from him in the secret place of his tabernacle by beholding the beauty of the Lord. It's not a fancy psychological principle, it's just the goodness of God and the power of God working in the heart to protect.

So the topic before us is what do you starve and what do you feed? If you're feeding pornography, undoubtedly you're starving your spiritual life. It's hard to engage with vigor in any sort of spiritual activity. It saps spiritual vigor to head down the track into these defiling things. But the opposite is also true.

Feeding the Spirit also helps in the starving of the flesh. You know, and part of this has to do with renewing our minds to think rightly about everything, to think rightly about what is satisfying, to think rightly about what makes one happy. And we grow up thinking that the wrong things will make us happy. But what makes us happiest is to treasure what is the true treasure and to seek those things. Those are the things that will make us the happiest, not the silly, profane things.

They won't do it. Yes, unfortunately, the flesh seeks after the pleasure of the flesh, but those are temporary, passing things. They do not satisfy. They're fleeting. And the world offers a thousand counterfeits to the one true treasure of the soul, and that is Christ himself.

Christ is all that we need, and we should find our joy in Him. But that only comes to the personal relationship with Jesus Christ and seeking to abide in Him. You know, and just meditating upon, for literally decades, two decades, I've been meditating upon all that this means to abide in Christ and still each year that passes as I read through the scriptures I'm learning more and more and how often it speaks about Abiding in Christ and what that means but apart from it begins I believe with spending time in the Word of God daily like you were saying early getting up in the morning what's the first thing that we put into our hand and put into our eye sockets is we'll really set the course for the day. We need to get up and we need to open God's Word and seek His face and his word and then seek his face through prayer. And it was interesting, the other night I was putting my children to bed and we were reading this little book, something that is helpful to them, just instead of laying their heads, I think it's called Little Pillows, And it is something that they can rest, not just their physical heads on, but rest their minds upon for the night.

And in this, it was speaking about, in Philippians 2, 12 and 13, that it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And they presented this concept that had not really struck me before until that night. And it was, it is God who works in us both to will and to do. And therefore, we should be asking God to work in us His will and to be changing our will to delight in what He delights in. And it was just kind of a key component there that so often, you know, the scripture says, Jesus says, you have not because you ask not.

And so often we have not because we ask amiss that we may consume it upon our own flesh and so our own lust. And so we need to be mindful about what we're asking the Lord for And we need to understand that Christ can do abundantly above all that we ask or think. He will give us more than what we ask, but we need to ask. We need to ask that Christ would fill our minds with his treasures, the things that delight him, that those things would delight us. And so as we seek God and ask him to give us hearts that long for the things that he longs for.

I think that's that happened to Job. Job desired the beautiful things And in Job 31, he says, I've made a covenant with my eyes. And then he says, so why would I want to look on a young woman? I've made a covenant just to look on the sweet things. That transition happened, and that's the transition that we need to look for, is where we just want to set our eyes on the beautiful things and not on the ugly things that are defiling.

And that's what Christ did. I was going to say that's a very different way of thinking about God giving you the desires of your heart. The first pass on that is, God gives me what I want. My heart desires it, and God gives me the desires of my heart, so He gives me that object of my desires. To think about it as God actually transforming your desires, to not give you the object of your desires, but to actually give you what your heart...

Incline your heart towards things. So the thing mattering not being the object of the desire, but actually a transformation of what's desired. And what happens to a Christian is that he thinks differently about everything. He thinks that Jesus Christ is the best and so he pursues him. That's really the brilliance and the beauty of the Christian life is your heart changes to desire the things that are good.

That's really our only hope of escaping bondage to pornography. Amen. And that's what Christ did in John 6.38. He says, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And we need to realize that our life is not our own.

We have been bought with a price and we should therefore glorify God in our bodies and in our minds, which are his. Our life is not our own. We belong to Christ. And just as Christ came not to be served, but to serve, we should have the same mentality as our Lord did. That's our desire to be Christ-like.

And so we should be seeking those things that Christ sought, and that's to do the will of Him who sent us and who called us into His marvelous grace and has translated us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. So we're always growing affections. Everything we do grows in affection. We're always inclined toward the thing that we're spending our time with, and our affections grow. They always grow in a direction.

So, you know, feeding the sweetest affections is the way out of the defiling affections. And it's a snowball that grows. It gets bigger and bigger. The more you feed a good affection, the more it grows. And that's just the kindness of God, the way He wired us that what we feed always grows.

It's an incontrovertible fact of human existence. And it's the principle of sowing and reaping. You know, I think it's the classic saying, if you're in a hole, stop digging, right? Like, step one, stop feeding these bad affections, and then you can start to get out of that hole by feeding good affections, and they'll grow as you feed them. Yeah.

Amen. It's like the story, a little saying that I heard when I was a kid, it said, there's two dogs in a fight and the one that you feed will win and the one that you starve will lose. And so often we're feeding the wrong affections, just like that. And we need to acknowledge that we're not on a playground. It's not something that is trivial.

We're talking about the purity and holiness of the Bride of Christ. And we need to be feeding the affections of holiness and purity within our lives because we are the Bride of Christ and we are His delight, and He should be ours. Pete Slauson Amen. The Apostle Paul told the Roman Church, he said, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." And that's really the most helpful thing. The scriptures tell us how to cleanse our minds, and that is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And the Lord is so kind to tell us exactly what to do. So that's what we ought to do. So thank you. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. Seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, and be unattracted to the unattractive things of this world and seek the Lord.

That's really the way of escape from bondage to pornography. So thank you for joining us. Hope you can be with us again next time. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast.

We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.