Your Heart is Never Offline

Searching the web is like navigating a minefield, search long enough and you’re likely to find yourself in trouble. What happens when we find the wrong things? God has given us help and hope for such an occasion.

Well. Good morning, Church. Good morning, Church. I turned my voice on. I forgot the switch was off this morning. So good to see you guys. Hey, a couple of things before I get started. One, I want to announce that I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Last week, we had our Mission Marketplace fundraiser for our Dominican Republic team. We raised $10,500, yes, last week. So, yeah, thank you so much. That doesn’t even include the yard work, the babysitting, the services that will deal with the hole digging. I said that hole digging. So thank you so much for that. And we look forward to leaving next June and giving you guys a report about all the Lord’s doing over there. And then I have two warnings. Warning number one. Dads, it’s Mother’s Day a week from today. If you’re like me, you have not bought flowers or chocolates. Get on it. Kids, the coupons that you can make for your parents. I will scrub the toilet. I will make my bed. I will do all our yard work for the rest of the year. You have a week to make those. Make sure you keep your promises. So that’s warning number one. You have a week from Mother’s Day.

Warning number two, we’re in the middle of our series Chat Room, navigating an online world through a biblical perspective. And today I have the privilege of talking about the pitfalls of online navigation. And so if I had to give this a rating, it’d be a PG 10 sermon. You know, I asked my students sometimes, what rating would you give the Bible? PG? I’m like, have you read Judges? Children’s Bible – this is not a children’s Bible sermon. So I just want you guys to be aware of that. If you have kids that are under ten and they’re welcome to stay here. We do have Children’s Sunday School all the way up through 12th grade. I encourage you, if there are ten or older for sure to have them stay for the sermon. I’m going to pray in a moment – if you want to leave during that time to drop your kids off and come back, that’s great. Otherwise, I may say some words. Just full warning where your little daughter or son may say, Hey, daddy, mommy, what does this word mean? And I just want to give you a heads up. So let me pray for us now.

Father, we thank you that your word does not skirt the truth. Lord, if we read from Genesis – Revelation, it’s not a pretty picture at all times. It’s not an endorsement of sin. It’s a revealing of what lies within our hearts. What happens when we rebel? When in our brokenness and fallen nature, we sin. It leads us to the conclusion that we need a savior. Everyone in this room stands at equal footing on the cross, all in needing of salvation. No one better, no one lower, all of us unable to save ourselves. God, I pray, Father, that there be found freedom in my brothers and sisters this morning. For those who are struggling, just getting here this morning, silently suffering with addictions or other proclivities that they keep hidden and that, Lord, your truth would be gracious and yet honest and convicting. And you give us a help and a hope for our future this morning. I pray these things in your Son’s most precious name. Amen.

Hey, if you have your Bibles, I have no slides this morning, so if you want to read along with me, you want to open up the second Timothy chapter two, verse 22. There are bibles in the seat pockets in front, behind, left or right of you. We’re going to be camping out in that text all morning. I’ll mention some other verses from other texts, but we’re going to break down this one verse line by line. So take out your phones, get your Bibles out. If you’re a highlighter, this is a verse you want to highlight. If you’re a note taker, write in the margins. Take advantage of the bulletins we give you.

And so I want to start off with a story. I had a student one time approach me and said, John, I have a question for you. I’m really struggling with Jesus being perfect. I said, oh, okay, hit me. What do you got? She said, Jesus was fully man, right? I said, Yep. She said, There’s absolutely no way that I can comprehend that he did not struggle with lust. In her mind, no man can live on this earth and never lust after a woman. I thought that was a great question, a tough question, but a fair one. So I answered her question with a question of my own. I said, Which do you think is more difficult to believe: that Jesus never lusted, or that he actually rose from the grave? She sat back and thought about that question for some time. She really wrestled with that. She thought a man never lusting was on the equivalent miraculous level of raising one from the dead. Maybe she’s right. I mean, that was a pretty good juxtaposition there. I never got an answer from her. Searching the web today is like navigating a minefield. Search long enough and you’re likely to find yourself in a little bit of trouble. Whoops. Boom, boom. They didn’t see that one coming. What happens when we find the wrong things? Research as early as 2022 reveals 68 million search queries on the Internet are related to porn. That’s about one out of nearly four. What about Christians? Do they fare any better? According to Barna Research, in 2022, 68% of churchgoing men, and more than 50% of pastors regularly view pornography. Now, you may be saying, John, what does a Christian mean? Is he talking about nominal believers? Well, it depends. If someone identifies as a Christian and they attend on Christmas and Easter, studies show that they tend to struggle a little more. They don’t hold a biblical ethic when it comes to sexuality. They probably don’t hold to Christian doctrines of purity and morality here. But for those who are regular church goers and attend church regularly, they fare a little better. But the era of margin is not great. When it comes to Christians 18 to 24 years old, the statistic jumps up to 76% actively search, actively search, for pornography. Women. They hang around in 30% and they’re closing the gap on the men. I remember in Bible college when I first went to Bible College, straight out of high school, young, vibrant. I mean, I was with other believers, young, and we were excited to grow in our faith. It was the first time I got introduced to what an accountability group looked like. Every guy was like, Hey, let’s be honest. Let’s be transparent. Every single guy confessed. He struggled. These are men, young men, who are wanting to do the right thing, who knew and were convicted this was wrong. And we all struggled except one guy. And we called him a liar. I mean, he was kind of a you know, there’s people, you know, you’re like who are just like saintly. You’re like, hey, you’re just like super patient. Like, I’m going to try to get you angry. Let’s see if I can do that. He’s like, okay. You know, like and he’s just like, So maybe he didn’t. But we doubted it. We all doubted it. I’ve sat across the table from numerous men who looked me in the face and said, John, I want to stop. I don’t know how. I can’t. I’ve prayed and I’ve asked God to deliver me and give me the strength. Why is He not answering my prayers? Why can’t I stop? I want to. It’s too difficult.

Well, I want you to leave today with a hope and a help for such an occasion when it comes to navigating online. So if you have your Bibles, let’s open up to 2 Timothy 2:22 and reread this verse that was read earlier today. Says this; “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart”. So the first command that Paul gives us here is flee. Flee youthful passions. Now, in the context of this passage, he’s talking about actual vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor. More, precisely, teachers. False teachers and good teachers who rightly divide the word of God. Who rightly preach. Who don’t use the Word of God for their own advantage. Who please God rather than men. And so, youthful passions can include like being argumentative. As verse 23 talks about, a lot of young men are a lot of bravado, brash, confident. And as you get older, you realize, I don’t really know as much as I thought I once knew. But this also applies to sexual morality. Now, don’t let the youthful passions trip you up or confuse you. Does it get easier? In some ways, yes. When you get older, maybe things ease up, you become more wise. But that temptation is just as lively when you’re older as well. And so we’re going to zero in on talking about this specific sin of sexual immorality. We read earlier from 2 Samuel chapter 11 about David. There’s a difference in strategy for David when he faced Goliath, and when he was tempted with Bathsheba. James 4:7 says this: “Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you”.

When it comes to temptation, we are commanded to flee. When it comes to the enemy, we are commanded to resist. 1 Corinthians 6:18 says “Flee from sexual immorality”. 2 Timothy: “Flee from youthful passions”. David did the opposite. He Googled Bathsheba. He searched for her and he checked it out. Let’s go back to the text. This is verse 2 of chapter 11 of Second Samuel: “It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof, a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful.” Let me pause there and say this. This is where David lost the battle. Instead of fleeing from temptation, he followed it. I have no idea of what David’s motivation was. I don’t know if he woke up that morning going, You know what? I know today it’s bad day for Bathsheba and I’m going to go on the roof and I’m just going to happen to be glancing around and see if she’s there. Or if he’s just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Many have made the account of David should have been leading his men in battle. I said earlier in that verse that his commander and his men were fighting wars and he should have been leading them and that he was idle; in his idleness led him to be more susceptible to sin. But David had the choice to flee, and instead he followed. It goes on in verse 3, “And David sent and inquired about the woman. So David sent messengers and took her and she came to him and he lay with her”. He invited her into a private chat via messenger. Man, this sounds so much like modern day, does it not? This could’ve been written by anyone in this room.

David followed sin instead of fleeing from it. The word flee here in 2 Timothy 22, comes from the Greek word pheugō where we get the word fugitive. The word is in the present tense, meaning it’s a constant state of fleeing from temptation that God is commanding us here. From the earliest description of sin. We read in Genesis 4:7: ‘Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it”.

We were going through the book of Luke and we paused to do this series and we just finished The Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness. And in chapter four, verse 13 of Luke, it says this: “And when the devil had ended, every temptation against Jesus, he departed from him until an opportune time. We get this view of sin or temptation as crouching at the door, stalking like you’re its prey. Waiting to strike for an opportune time”. If I can compare it to what we’re talking about today, it’s navigating online by yourself in the dark, with the room closed and the lights off, and allowing your imagination and your fingers to take you where you want.

Probably no better theological imagery portrays temptation chasing after us, and how we should flee better than Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner. I love old cartoons. I grew up on that stuff. And Wile E Coyote, for those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s this coyote. He’s trying to capture this roadrunner. And so he sets up all these contraptions, right? He builds like these rockets and he puts them to his shoes so he can follow after him. He tries to drop things and catch him in cages. And that’s like temptation, desiring for you waiting to strike, crouching for its next opportunity. And the roadrunner is just like Beep-beep! Right. Like you heard that, right? He’s just running. He’s just as fast as he can, fleeing. I want you to develop a roadrunner mentality when it comes to temptation. It’s like a fugitive. A word there in Greek. It’s like a fugitive with a spotlight. You ever see those movies where the spotlight searching for the fugitive. You need to be running and and getting away and fleeing from temptation like the roadrunner. That means when you’re online by yourself and you know you shouldn’t be online, don’t go. That means when an ad pops up that you weren’t expecting, shut it down. That means when you’re by yourself and lonely, you call someone and you hang out or you go get coffee at a coffee shop and you leave the area in which you are being tempted, You need to flee. That’s step number one.

The second word we see here in 2 Timothy 2:22 is pursue. The word pursue is the same word that is elsewhere translated persecute in the New Testament. It means to go after with a vengeance. Paul is calling us to run hard after the four aspects of Godliness laid out here in this verse. Let me pause here and note the difference between two mentalities when it comes to battling pornography addiction, and that is the idea of prevention and the idea of pursuit. Both are helpful, but I believe one is clearly superior. Prevention carries the idea that you can outlast temptation with protective barriers like filters, accountability and removal of devices. I’m not saying these methods aren’t helpful. They’re just not good enough, because you can’t simply outrun temptation. I don’t know if you know this, but Wile E Coyote caught the Roadrunner three times. Let him go. But he caught him eventually. And you will be caught eventually as well. You may have to travel for your job and stay at a hotel overnight with no filtration on that lobby computer or complete access to your hotel TV. You may get invited to an after school or after work party and no accountability partners there. Pressured, available to do whatever you want with the people at that party. And let’s not forget these little Pandora boxes that we carry around with us. Everywhere we go, we’re at the click of a few fingertips. I can access the knowledge of good and evil. Anything I want, and I carry this everywhere I go.

Accessibility, affordability and anonymity. Each believer should take advantage of these preventive measures and all they have to offer when it comes to battling against pornography addiction. But the long term goal is not prevention, it’s pursuit. Pursuit of something greater, more satisfying than these youthful passions laid out here. Paul here commends us to relentlessly pursue these four godly characteristics, and let’s go over them one by one.

The first one is righteousness. Righteousness refers to a right behavior in conformity with God’s word. You may be here saying, John, I’m struggling to conform as it is. You have no idea what I did this last week. Brother, Sister, may I say to you I unfortunately do. This has been my struggle for the majority of my adult life. I can remember being as young as seven years old carrying this. I’m going to put a pin on what that looks like, what that means, righteousness. I’m going to come back to that.

So let’s go to Faith. Faith, he refers to both being faithful to and trusting in God. It’s interesting how faith is related to your concept of God, how big or how little you see God. Going back to my opening question with that student, Do you believe God can do what he says, accomplish what he promises? Do you believe he was like us, tempted that he knows what it feels like to be attracted by the fleshly desires of this world? And yet without sin. Do you believe God can only save us? But He can also recondition our hearts. Free us from the former bondage we lived in and fill us with a new love for Him. Faith is simply taking God at His word.

Love here refers to God’s unconditional love. You may say, John, I’m a pretty natural, loving person. I’m going to say, no, you’re not. Everyone in this room struggles with sneaky subtleness of self love. Everyone. Otherwise, Paul here would not command us to pursue it if it came so naturally. In fact, pornography is founded on self-love. It really centered around what you get, what you feel, and what makes you happy. There is nothing about pornography that is self denying, as it’s really all about numero uno. You. I don’t say this in a condescending, condescending manner. I mean this with the most sincere humility, as I would know this first hand. How many times have I hurt my wife, my family, and betrayed my Lord? Your heart’s never offline. Sooner or later, you feed your fleshly urges and your desires. It comes across in how you talk, how you withdraw, how you stonewall, how you hurt even passively-aggressively. How many people did David hurt in trying to cover up his tracks with Bathsheba? Bathsheba was taken advantage of, manipulated. Uriah, her husband was killed to cover it up. Joab his general was … David used his authority to command him to carry out these orders. Could you imagine being a friend and being in that situation? And on top of all that, David killed the innocent men that Uriah fought alongside with, as he commanded the armies to be pulled back so they all could die. Good men fighting for David, killed and slaughtered in battle. If you pursue love with a vengeance, you won’t look at inappropriate materials because your motivations won’t be centered around you, but others. I can’t recall a time in my struggle with pornography where I was thinking of how I can love others while in the act of searching or viewing it. In fact, quite the opposite was true. I had to stop thinking about my wife. I had to stop thinking about my Lord in order to continue to feed that passion. I would instead silence the conviction of the Holy Spirit within me. When you pursue love, you are compelled to put your love for others above the love of self.

The last thing we see here is peace. And peace usually doesn’t just happen. You have to pursue it deliberately and sometimes with much effort. Paul is trying to communicate here the idea that we are called to pursue peace with other believers, with believers being described here as those who call upon the name of the Lord from a pure heart. To have peace means to have harmony and be in one accord with other believers. This means humbling yourself, confessing our failures and yes, even forgiving those failures in order to maintain that harmony. When it comes to pornography, having peace with other believers means evaluating how you contributed to affecting the unity and the relationships that you hold dear, calling yourself out and owning it. How many homes lack peace because of this sin? What was once a casual glance has become a habitual stress relief. An online chat room has become an emotional affair. Promises of getting help, promises that you’ll stop – left unfulfilled. To pursue peace is to address what you have contributed to the breaking of the peace in your relationship with other believers.

I said I’d come back to the the first one of righteousness. Remember, righteousness refers to right behavior and conforming yourself to God’s word or his standard. Some of us here are struggling with fleeing sexual immorality. The stats show it. People in this room today have looked this previous week. All of us here are struggling with conforming ourselves to God’s word on some level, that’s for sure true. I’d like to share with you a story about how I found a better way to live, rightly conform myself to God’s word through pursuit rather than just prevention. I want to say a couple of decades ago I was at a church and this gentleman comes from the back of the stage and he’s in a wheelchair and he wheels himself up like this, rolled up on stage and sat here and he could just move his fingers like this. On the stage behind us was a picture of this gentleman before the accident, and he looked ripped. I mean, he had his shirt off so I could clean my clothes on his on his abs. Right. He was he was he looked like he was going to eat you alive. He looked like Chuck Norris on steroids. Right. And he talked about how his religion was bodybuilding was working out and how the gym was his church. And he looked liked it. He reflected that in his in this picture, you could see the attitude. There was no words, but just attitude. Like you wouldn’t want to cross across him on the on the walk on the sidewalk. He just looked like he would have to walk way around him. Right. And he said he was working out in his gym, in his house. He was hanging upside down from the rafters, doing sit ups. Right. And the rafters snapped and he fell and landed on his neck and broke his neck. Woke up in the hospital paralyzed. Here he is on stage doing this. And you see the picture. He talked about how his whole identity was lost, what he thought was important to him, his body, where he found his self-confidence, his religion, his ability to walk, gone in an instant for the rest of his life. He was struggling not just physically, but emotionally with all the differences that came from this accident. And he began to talk about how the good team of medical professionals that not only were putting him back together physically, but were counseling emotionally. And then he talked about this one doctor. She would stick around later and longer than the rest of the team and would offer to pray for him, counsel him and encourage him, build him up. He began to see hope in what was a very hopeless situation. She shared the gospel with him and he fell in love with her. And then out from behind him walks this woman. And my first impression was she is gorgeous. Not as beautiful as my wife, I want to make sure that’s on camera. But she was beautiful. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. And she had money. And she picked him? This is a great picture of God’s love for us. We are paralyzed from our sins, unable to save ourselves, stuck in the rut underneath the weight and condemnation of judgment that we rightly deserve. And God comes along. And He’s beautiful. I mean, He owns everything. I mean, He’s all knowing. Talk about intelligence. And He chooses us and He loves us. And in our brokenness heals us. Ministers to us, stays with us. Gracious with us. I realized how good God’s love was when I saw that picture. And then their kids came out on stage. Two boys. And I remember one of the boys because he helped in the Sunday school where my daughters were at little kids. There’s not many young men who come to do that. It’s mostly girls, right? And he was so great. He got on the level with them. He’d play games. He was respectful. You could tell he loved God. And I’m looking at these two young men. He can’t even play catch with his dad. How much work did this woman put into their marriage and into raising their kids? Unconditional unreciprocated love. A beautiful picture. An imagery of how God loves us.

And then my wife had to say something. She turned to me. I don’t know what prompts her to do this. She turned to me, and we’ve been married, we’ve said our vows, we had our wedding. She says, John, I would love you like that. And that’s the day I realized my wife loved me unconditionally. You would take care of me when I can’t even do anything. You would love me like that. And then probably the more startling idea was, I don’t know if I would love you like that. Once again, points to the picture of God’s unconditional unmerited favor. The grace of God’s love for you and for me.

It’s finding something more beautiful, more satisfying, a greater source for love. You see, pursuing is more than just running from temptation. It’s about running towards someone. You know would help you and your love for pornography? A greater understanding and love for God. There’s this sin that I call the sin of forgetfulness. All Christians do it. We forget how good we have it with God. We forget how committed, how loving, how patient, how holy, how dedicated, how grace-filled God’s love is for us. And when we forget that, we’re more prone to temptation. We’re more prone to wander and to chase after what seemed to be oases. But they’re just mirages of love. The last thing he mentions here is a companion, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. We can’t become godly on our own. We need to be surrounded by brothers and sisters who are fighting to be pure as well. They pray for us. They hold us accountable. They encourage us. They even help train us. I can’t begin to tell you how important it is for you and I to have companions to walk alongside us and share life with us. Sadly, many Christians today walk on their own and they fail on their own. I floundered so long in my personal journey with this particular sin because I was too prideful to think that I could do it by myself. And probably, more honestly, too ashamed to ask for help. If I called or if I asked you a question, do you have a companion today? Someone you can call on? Someone you can be transparent with? Someone you can confess to. Could you name someone right now?

In closing, I’d like to address three kinds of people in this room. The first are those who don’t struggle with this sin. You may be sitting here and going, John, this is a great story. I’m like your friend in Bible college. I really don’t have an issue with this. Or maybe you’ve overcome it and praise God for that. We need those kinds of models and encouragement and hope to have someone who says, Hey, I’ve been there. My question to you is, can you be a companion? When someone that you know is struggling with this, will you reach out? Will you call them? Will you offer up your aid to be a brother or a sister in the Lord, to come alongside them and love them where they’re at? Probably one of the most empty feelings that you can feel is when you confess your weaknesses and you find no one there to be there for you. I’ve had people tell me when they’ve been honest with their friends, how they they felt deserted, how friends left them because it was too much or how they were too unlovable in their struggle. Would you be in companion for those who don’t struggle here?

For those who have been hurt by someone who is struggling, you need a companion too. I can’t recall the times where my wife would say, I wish there was another spouse, another woman that I could talk to who has been hurt like I have been hurt. Someone who could give me guidance and counsel with how to best be gracious and yet deal with the pain that comes from this. May I encourage you, if you’re a spouse here who struggles with that, would you reach out? Would you call somebody? You need a companion too. Burying other people’s burdens comes at your sacrifice, does it not? It’s something we’re called to do. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. And you need help just as much as the next person.

And the last one are those who are struggling. I just want to say this. You’re not alone. If you’re in a small group, would you reach out to someone in your small group you trust that you can confide in? And if you’re not in a plugged into a small group, do you reach out to the pastors on staff? I would love to get you connected with resources and men and women who are willing to come alongside you, encourage you, support you, and hold you accountable, but in gracious and loving manner.

I opened our time together, offering a help and a hope. And here’s the help. We’ve seen 2 Timothy 2:20. You need to flee, meet me. Right? You need to flee. You need to pursue God and his people. And you need to not do it alone. You were not made to do this in isolation. And here’s the hope. As I was struggling, and if anybody here has struggled in sin, you know what it feels like to feel unclean. You know what it feels like to feel ashamed. To not feel good enough. To feel hypocritical when you come to church and you sing about worshiping God and you realize you didn’t worship him during the week. I was struggling in this particular sin. And I had a companion of mine come and I don’t know what prompted him. I don’t know if it was the Holy Spirit; probably was. And he shared this verse for me from Acts chapter ten. And for you theologians out there, this is not going to be in context. So please forgive me if I take this out of context. He read this and it blessed me to hear this. This is Jesus himself speaking. Acts 10:15. It says this: “what God has made clean, do not call common”. If you struggle with this particular sin or any addiction for that matter, if you’ve placed your faith in the Lord Jesus, you are clean. And praise God for His grace that provides that. Let’s pray.