The Bible and Today’s Issues

Pornography Is Destructive

1) Sexual Lust Is Sin​ (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 John 2:15-16)​

​2) Consequences of Evil Desire (James 1:13-15; 2 Samuel 11:1-5; 12:1-12)​

​3) Guard Your Eyes and Heart (Job 31:1-8; Numbers 15:37-40; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20)

Central Truth: ​God demands sexual purity.

INTRODUCTION

     The pornography business caters to the desire for instant gratification. Pornographers bypass the need for marital and emotional connections by providing mentally (and spiritually) vicarious interaction with the perfect participant on a screen. ​

     Drawing from several statistics and sources, we find sobering facts: (1) The industry makes more than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined. (2) There are roughly 120,000 searches a day for child pornography. (3) Those addicted experience physiological and psychological changes in the brain ( frontal lobes shrink). ​(4) Pornography watchers have a 300 ​percent increase in marital ​infidelity. (5) One-third of women in a survey admitted to watching ​porn. These are just a few of ​the devastating facts about ​pornography’s destructive and desensitizing effects plaguing society and the church.

1. SEXUAL LUST IS SIN​
     

A. Adultery in the Heart (Matthew 5:27-30)​

B. Worldly Love (1 John 2:15-16)

• Why and how is adultery so destructive?     

Dangerous Preoccupation​

     Every year in the U.S., more than a million deer are hit by automobiles, with late autumn being the most dangerous season, when bucks are seeking to breed. “They’re concentrating almost exclusively on reproductive activities, and are a lot less wary than they normally would be,” said an Illinois Department of Nature Resources employee. Being preoccupied with sex is also dangerous for humans.

2. CONSEQUENCES OF EVIL DESIRE​

A. The Temptation Process (James 1:13-15)

B. From Lust to Murder (2 Samuel 11:1-5; 12:11-12)

• How is the temptation process depicted in James 1:13-15?

Downward Spiral​

     A pastor told how he saw a magazine laying in his yard. When he picked it up, he saw it was pornography. “Out of curiosity,” he looked through it and it created a feeling in him that led him to a porn shop. He was hooked. He then visited a massage parlor. He lost his ministry, wife, and family. He said if he could only go back to that first day. . . .

3. GUARD YOUR EYES AND HEART​
   

A.  Job’s Personal Covenant (Job 31:1-8)

B. Tassels as Tokens (Numbers 15:37-40)

C. Temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:12-20)

• What covenant should we make with our eyes, and how can we keep such a covenant?​

Recognize God’s Holiness​

     We need to see this God of Israel both in His wrath and His infinite mercy. We need to learn a holiness that rejects all compromise with evil and a generosity that seeks and saves the lost. We need to learn to know God as He is.―Leslie Newbigin

WHOLENESS AND HOLINESS​

     God created us as sexual beings (Gen. 1:27; 4:1), but He also provided a way to take care of those needs (Heb. 13:4). Pornography is not an innocuous, private, and victimless endeavor. It is sin and leads to other sexual sins, not to mention the human trafficking involved in its production. (Watching pornography is to be guilty of that hideous endeavor of slavery.)​

     Pornography can be found in all forms of media. Anything that creates desire for someone other than our spouse must be shunned. We are whole and holy only when our needs are met within the parameters God has set for us. Anything less diminishes our spiritual vitality, our witness, and the name of God.

Adopted from the Evangelical Sunday School Lesson Commentary 2023-2024.