Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Fight Against Porn | The Writings | Proverbs 7

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Whether you have an addiction to it or not, pornography has taken our culture captive. So how do we fight against the temptation of lust? What's the first step toward breaking our addictions? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Proverbs 7 warns us against the path of lust that only leads to death. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 7

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. A few weeks ago, the adult content website, OnlyFans, revealed some shocking financial figures. During the 2023 fiscal year, their revenue increased by an astounding 20%. That's up to $1.3 billion. Their profits also grew by 20%, up to a half billion dollars. And the number of OnlyFans creators leaped up to $1.5 billion.

up 29% to 4.1 million people. Users grew by 28% to 305 million. That's 28 million people shy of the population of the United States. Now, OnlyFans makes money by hosting pornographic user-generated content. Users pay and content creators take home 80% of whatever they make. The OnlyFans site takes home about 20%. And that means that in the last year, users spent $6.6 billion on OnlyFans. That's made the website's creator a very, very wealthy man. And here's what all of this means. OnlyFans is the biggest and most profitable pornography operation in the world. And it only exists because there are people who want to create and consume sexual content.

It's been said that prostitution is the oldest business under the sun. That's probably not far from true. But that doesn't mean that the sex business is the same in every age. Today, pornography is more available than any sex trade in all of his. history. Sixty-nine percent of men view pornography regularly. Forty percent of women do the same. By the age of 13, 93 percent of boys have been exposed to pornography and 62 percent of teenage girls. This is a enormous problem, not only because of the moral ramifications, but also because of the psychological. Recent studies have found that early exposure to pornography is

correlated to sexual risk-taking. One study concluded this. It said that pornography is quote, connected to negative developmental outcomes, including a greater acceptance of sexual harassment, sexual activity at an early age, acceptance of negative attitudes to women, unrealistic expectations, skewed attitudes of gender roles, greater levels of body dissatisfaction, rate myths, and sexual aggression. We live in a pornified culture, and in some tragic ways most of us are both its victims and its perpetrators. Most of us are among the children savage, by its evil power, and most of us are those who use the men and women we find online for our own sexual satisfaction. And some of us have even been among those selling ourselves sexually. And this is to say

nothing of the ways that our sexualized culture has made things like virginity before marriage, which was the norm up until about 50 years ago, seem improbable, if not impossible, or ideas like faithfulness to your spouse all of a sudden seeming unlikely. We are told to follow our sexual desires in this culture. But we have to ask ourselves where that road leads. Where does the road to sexual indulgence take us? Proverbs chapter 7 offers a spoiler of our future if we take that journey. In this passage, a father is warning his son about a, quote, adulterous woman. Now, it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman reading it. The point is that sexual temptation comes for us all, and it comes for us in many forms. Today, it's less likely to take the form of a,

seductive man or a seductive woman in real life. It's far more likely to be a seductive man or woman we conjured up through the dark magic of Google. And here's where that adulterous seducer ultimately leads us. The father concludes in verse 24. Now then, my sons, listen to me. Pay attention to what I say. Do not let your heart turn to her ways. He's talking about the adulterous woman or stray into her paths. Many are the victims she has brought down. Her slain are a mighty throng. Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. You see, well before researchers realize that sexually explicit content literally changes our brains, literally makes us more depressed and anxious, literally increases the rates of sexual violence, increases and elevates

body dissatisfaction, and a myriad of other things before anyone ever researched. it, the wisdom of the Proverbs put it much more succinctly. This is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. The passage, Proverbs 7, opens with the father, compelling his son, not even to begin down that path. But that begs the question for the majority of us who have already walked down this path. We walked down it online for the first time many, many years ago, some of us decades ago. So what about us who are already on the path to the grave? I think the wisdom of Proverbs 7 still applies if we realize one fundamental reality. Every day we have a choice.

Every day we face to a greater or lesser degree the temptation of lust to take another step down that path or to turn back and head the opposite direction. We face that temptation when an attractive person walks past us at the mall. We face it when we watch TV. We face it when we work with coworkers and employees. We face it on social media. we face it on our laptops. And the question is always,

will we start down the path? The father is sober about the temptation. He describes a feckless young man walking down the street who is met by this adulterous woman who offers him honeyed lies. And all at once is as though he loses control and thoughtlessly falls into her arms. Let's pick up at the beginning of that story.

Then out came a woman to meet him, dressed like a prostitute, crafty intent. She is unruly and defiant. Her feet never stay at home. Now in the street, now in the square, at every corner she lurks. She took hold of him and kissed him, and with a brazen face, she said, Today I have fulfilled my vows, and I have food from my fellowship offering at home. So I came to meet you. I looked for you and I have found you. I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with my my my furs, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let's drink deeply of love till morning. Let's enjoy ourselves with love. My husband is not at home. He's

gone away on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be back until full moon. With persuasive words, she led him astray. She seduced him with her smooth talk. And all at once, he followed her. Like an ox going to the slaughter. Like a deer stepping into a noose till an arrow pierces his liver. Like a bird darting into a snare. little knowing it will cost him his life. You see, the young man lost the fight the minute he took that first step towards the woman. And the same is true of us. The minute we start going down the mental or digital rabbit hole, it's often already too late. Martin Luther, the reformer, famously said of lust that it's one thing to let a bird fly through your hair and it's an entirely

different thing to let that bird make a nest. And that's exactly what the father is warning against. There's no way to avoid the seductive one. you notice his description, he says she walks to and fro, she's in the street, she's around the corner, she's in the house, she's everywhere. And isn't that true today with our phones? The seduction is absolutely everywhere. And so it's not a sin to see her or encounter her or be tempted by her. The problem comes when we allow our eyes to linger, our fingers, to continue scrolling a bit longer, our fantasies to roll on a bit longer. So what can we do? Well, my goal here today is not to lay guilt on you, but instead to force you to your knees before Jesus, to come before him in confession,

even if you feel sick and dirty, which we all do, come to him in need because the truth is you cannot fix this problem on your own. The first step in AA Alcoholics Anonymous is admitting that you're powerless over your problem, and the first step of facing down your own lust is the same. Admit that you can do nothing apart from Jesus' help. You are power, powerless to fix this problem. And then I want you to pray for your daily bread. I'm saying the daily bread you need to have the strength to resist just for one day. Don't worry about the temptations you'll face tomorrow. Don't try to imagine what life would be like if you didn't look at pornography for two days or a week or three months or whatever it is. Don't worry about what comes next. Only worry about one

day at a time. Say to Jesus, I need your strength today. So give me my daily bread. Give me the daily bread I need to say no to the second glance, to say no to the longer scroll, to say no to the pornography, to the fantasy. He can sustain you day by day. Trust him.