Sexual immorality is rampant in today’s culture and sadly it is a tremendous sin within the church today with pornography statistics that are so saddening – even among church leaders. One cannot help but to be bombarded with sexual temptation given the amount of sex on television, movies, the internet and even on billboards. I’ve been reading an excellent book entitled The Good News We Almost Forgot by Kevin DeYoung. In this book he steps through the Heidelberg Catechism giving a wonderful exposition of this wonderful catechism of faith. In his discussion of the seventh commandment he nails it on the head concerning the correct way a Christian must handle sexual temptation. I wanted to share this excerpt from his book…
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8). This has been the most helpful verse for me in fighting lust and the temptation to sexual immorality. We need to fight desire with desire. Satan tempts us by holding out something that will be pleasurable to us. We aren’t tempted to gorge ourselves on liverwurst, because for most it doesn’t hold out the promise of great pleasure. But sex does. Pornography does. A second look does. The Bible gives us many weapons to fight temptaton. We need to fight the fleeting pleasure of sexual sin with the far greater, more abiding pleasure of knowing God. The fight for sexual purity is the fight of faith. It may sound like nothing but hard work and gritting your teeth, the very opposite of faith. But faith is at the heart of this struggle. Do we believe that a glimpse of God is better than a glimpse of skin? Do we believe that God’s steadfast love is better than life. (Psalm 63:3) We’d probably sin less if we spent less time thinking about our sins, sexual or otherwise, and more time meditating on the love and holiness of God.”
How true is this! May we see that sin truly is a “fleeting pleasure” that can never satisfy and will always destroy and more importantly is an offense and an affront to the Living Holy God. Let us be reminded of the truth that we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ and how shall we who have died to sin continue to live in it? (Rom. 6:2) May our minds and hearts be drawn upward to Christ to see that to desire Him above all is the true ever-flowing wellspring of peace, joy and eternal contentment.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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