Well, it's 830. And I want to welcome you to
our second
session of against the night. And how many of
you were here
yesterday for the first class? Well, a large
number of you
were and appreciate you coming back. And I
always think this is
a tough subject, not only to talk about, but
it's a tough
subject to go to. Because, you know, you can
just imagine
people coming to a class like this and having a conversation
later in the day and somebody saying, What
class did you go to
at 830? Well, I went to the one on pornography,
you know, and
everybody concludes, oh, we know now what your
problem is, you
know. And so this is kind of not only tough to,
to, to teach,
but it is certainly tough to go to as well. Let
me ask, does
everybody have a yellow worksheet? If you don't have
one, you need one. And if you would raise your
hand, Howard or
Colin, we can get one to you. So we've got just
a handful of
them more. So as you come in, why, grab a seat,
we appreciate
you being here so very, very much. One of the
young men that
I have particularly come to appreciate that is
here this
morning, and I've asked him to open our session
with prayer is
Colin Packer. Colin came and worked with me.
And with Bob
Chisholm, my preaching associate at Preston
Crest for a summer,
he is preparing to preach, he's working on his
graduate degree
here. I really recommend him to you. So keep
your eye on him.
And I really have great confidence in the
future of the
church when I know people like Colin. He's
married, he's well
married, in fact, and he's, he's got a very
bright future ahead
of him. I'm going to ask him to lead us in
prayer. So let's all
let's all bow and Colin, if you would lead us
in a morning
prayer, please. It's been my privilege and
opportunity to
make 12 trips to the great country of Russia.
Preston Crest
sent me immediately when the wall came down.
And Gorbachev was
still in power at that time. My wife went with
me on the first
two trips, which were the most difficult trips
to make. Russia
did not have enough food. She told me she's a
medical surgery
nurse. And she said, I estimate that they're at
least 60-70
years behind us in medicine. While the United
States had its
life expectancy continuing to go up, Russia's
continues to come
down. Their current life expectancy is 56 for
men, just
to give you some idea. Alcohol consumption
amounts to a huge
cause of their death and dying, as does
smoking, lung cancer. It
has been a remarkable experience to go in and
to see people who
are both formerly we thought our, our enemies,
but who in
fact, knew very little about us. And we're
told, as Igor Egorov
told me, he said, you have to remember that the
wall not only
kept you all out, it kept us in. And we were
deceived in the
sense that we were told we had the greatest
standard of living
in the world. And only when they began to see
Western television
from Europe, when the wall came down, and they
saw shoes and
clothing and cars and TVs, did they realize
we've been
deceived. We've been deceived for 70 years. One
of the places
that I have been privileged to go a couple of
times is the city
of Vogelgrad. Vogelgrad is the former city of
Stalingrad. And
I've been privileged to go there on two
different occasions. And
on both occasions, I went to see while there,
the battlefield of
where the Battle of Stalingrad really took
place. And as I
walked along the battlefield and saw what
occurred there, it was
only then that I began to realize the immense suffering
and death that took place in Russia at that
time. What you
see is a hill called Mammoth Hill. And on the
top of Mammoth
Hill is a 170 foot statue of Mother Russia. And
she is
turning like this, her body is facing one
direction, and she's
turning back toward Russia with her arm
outstretched. And there
is anxiety and worry all over her face, as she
is exhorting
her countrymen to come to Stalingrad to save
the city and
to save the nation. At her feet is a mass
grave, where
thousands who died in that battle are buried.
And there is
24 seven funeral music that constantly plays,
you hear it
all the time that you're walking around the
battlefield and the
cemetery, you hear this funeral dirge that is
playing over the
cemetery. What happened there is that in August
of 1942, the
German Sixth Army attacked Stalingrad. I talked
with a lady
who has now become a sister in Christ, and she
was a little
girl, and she and her sister were playing in
the front yard
when the Messerschmitts and the Focke-Wulfs
came over their
house. And when they came over, she screamed to
her sister and
they ran under the house and she laid on top of
her sister to
save her life. Her mother and dad were killed.
She was just a
little girl. And of course, her sister was even
younger. It was
that surprising. Hitler's decision was to take
the city of
Stalingrad and to take it quickly. In fact, he thought
they attacked in August, and he thought they'd
take it within a
week. And so all of his troops wore summer
uniforms. Now, what
he didn't understand was what historians have
called the
Russian character or the Russian personality.
They were not going
to turn that city over to him, because his plan
was to then get
his troops in the river, and he would float his
army up to the
Moscow River into Moscow, and he would flood
Moscow. He wasn't
going to take Moscow, he was just going to
flood it, kill
everybody in it with a flood. So that was his
plan. And the
Russians said, No, you're not going to do that
to us. We're
going to fight, and we're going to fight you
into the fall. And
then after the fall came Christmas, and after Christmas
came January, and then came February, and then
you were in
the depths of the Russian winter. It is the bloodiest
battle of World War Two. More men died in this
one battle than
any other battle of World War Two. What Russia
needed was a
hero during the battle, and they found a hero
in a young man from
Siberia whose name was Vasily Zaitsev. Now, he
was taught by
his granddaddy to shoot a gun. His granddaddy
taught him to
shoot wolves up in Siberia, and he learned to
be very accurate.
His granddaddy taught him to shoot at the right
eye of the
wolf. And so when he was a little Bitty boy, he started
learning how to shoot one bullet at a time at a
wolf, and he
learned to be very accurate. So he became,
after the Russians
discovered this, he became their hero, and he
started shooting
individual Germans in the Battle of Stalingrad.
And he was
extremely accurate, and so the Germans
wondered, what should we
do since we've got a sniper here? And so what
they did was
they countered with the head of their super
sniper school in
Berlin, and the man's name was Colonel Konings.
Now, within
this huge battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest
battle of World
War Two, there is this private battle that's
going on just
between these two men. And these two men are
fighting each other.
They're not paying much attention to what's
going on out
here. They study each other's habits. They
study the way each
one of them has camouflage. On one occasion,
Zaitsev puts his
body alongside some dead Russian bodies, and he
is very, very
still. And he learns to cover his eyes, because
your eyes are
white, and can be seen by the other sniper.
They studied the
firing patterns of one another. They studied
each other's ways
of attack, sleeping, eating. And within this
huge battle of
Stalingrad, there is this personal battle that
is taking
place between these two men. Now, their story
is told in both
a movie and in a book that's entitled Enemy at
the Gates. And
in this story, and I'll just complete it right
here, Zaitsev
finally kills Colonel Konings, kills him in a
railway yard.
There's a scene in which Konings is slipping
across the well, the
yards, and as he does it, he realizes, have you
ever, I know
you have, have you ever been in a situation
where you were
looking one way and you realize somebody was
looking at you? You
suddenly realize somebody's right here. And he
turned, and
there was Zaitsev right there. And Zaitsev just
raises his gun
and kills him. Now, by the way, I have seen
Zaitsev's gun in the
museum. And just for your information, he
killed 242
Germans. That's how many he killed with a
single shot. It
was a single bolt action rifle. And so he only
had one shot each
time. Deadly accurate as a sniper. Now, what we
have seen
so far in our study yesterday, I introduced to
you the words of
John in 1 John. I mean, in John 1. I've been preaching
on 1 John all summer, so I've got 1 John on my
mind. But I'm
talking about John 1. And this is where I get the
title, Against the Night. John says, the light
shines in the
what? In the darkness. And the darkness, what?
Does not
understand it or does not comprehend it. In
other words,
when Christ came to this world, he came to a
dark world, but
the dark world he was against. He was against
the darkness. He
was against the night. The light shines in the
darkness and the
darkness does not understand it. And what I
have done for these
classes here at ACU is that I have picked three lifestyle
issues that illustrate in a very, very real way
that the
light shines in darkness and darkness does not
understand it.
I want to begin, if you'll look at your yellow
sheet now at the
top of it, I want to begin now by pointing out
to you that our
world, according to scripture, is a
battleground very much like
Stalingrad. It is not a playground. We have, as Jesus
teaches us, we have in this battleground that
we have, we
have an enemy. The world is a battleground, not a
playground. And what Jesus pinpoints as our
enemy is the
being of Satan. Jesus describes him as a
murderer from the
beginning, that from his very beginning he has
wanted to take
out human souls. He has wanted to kill, if you
would, all of
us who possess a soul. So we fight secret
battles with him.
And the battles that we fight with him include
things like
pride, anger, and materialism. All of us fight
these battles
with Satan. We all know what it means to have
to fight over our
ego. Pride may be one of the first and one of
the most
dangerous sins that we commit. In the Middle
Ages it was
thought to be the first of the seven deadly
sins, pride. Anger
just amazes me what continues to happen on some
of the
interstates in Dallas. Somebody gets what they
call road rage
or anger and here's somebody they don't even
know and within
10 seconds they shoot and kill him. Anger
continues to be a
real problem for nearly everybody. Materialism,
we live
in an affluent country that is so very blessed
and one of the
secret battles that we fight with Satan has to
do with our
affluence, our materialism. How many people in
the United
States do not work 40 hours but work 70? I was
interested that
Fortune magazine said the American workforce
outworks the
Japanese and the Germans. We are people, many
of us, that have
two jobs. I know guys in Dallas right now that
are holding down
two jobs. I know a lady right now that works in
our office and
she not only works at Preston Crest but she's
also now taking
a night job. Now part of her motivation is to
be with her
daughter so she's working at a YMCA or YWCA or
some place where
her daughter works out in order to be with her.
But there are a
lot of people that spend a lot of time with the
issue of
materialism. These particular battles can all
be discussed in
public. You've heard sermons on pride and anger
and materialism
and in mixed groups. We freely talk about that
but our most
private of all of our secret wars is what the
Bible calls
lust. In other words it has to do with the
whole realm of sex.
And for years there's some of us in this room
that are old
enough to tell some of you who are younger that
we remember
growing up and we never heard a message from
the pulpit about
the subject of sex or sexuality because it was
just one of
those untouchable topics. You just didn't talk
about it. But
Satan has used again and again sexuality to
attack the people
of God. This is not new. What is new today if
you want to make a
note outside this one what is new today is not
that Satan uses
sex to attack our lives but what is new is
technology. That is
what is new. Many many Christians are losing this
personal battle with Satan in terms of their
own life. Charles
Swindoll has written in his book Killing Giants
and Pulling
Thorns, bolt your front door and it, he's
speaking about
pornography, it will rattle at your bedroom
window, crawl into
your living room through your TV screen or wink
at you out of a
magazine in your den. Paul says in I
Corinthians 6 and
verse 18, flee, run from sexual immorality. And
how many young
people have been inspired by the story of
Joseph who did exactly
that? He ran to get away from Potiphar's wife.
He got out of
there because he knew that he might lose this
personal battle
that he was having with Satan. I've been
impressed that the
book of Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, the
Epistles of Paul
all use the strongest possible language in
order to warn us
about this particular sin. The fact of the
matter is that we
are in a fight now for our character and our eternity.
Someone says yes, but what is the difference between
pornography and pride or pornography and
affluence and
materialism or pornography and anger? The
difference is that
the Bible makes it very clear that this sin
affects the core
of who we are. And you're going to see as I
develop this this
morning that there is a lot to be said about it
in terms of
your personal heart and your personal soul. So
this morning I
want to be sensitive to you. We have young
people in here. We
have some children in here. We have ladies here.
We have a mixed
group. We have college students. We have those
of us who are
older. I want to be very sensitive to this, but
I also
want to be courageous and I want to be true to
God's Word and I
don't want to be fearful. I probably am going
to break some
of the code of silence that is in the church. I
call this sin
the elephant in the pew. And I mentioned to you
again, as I
may have mentioned to you yesterday, I just got
an email
from a church out in Fresno, California that
I've known for
years. And one of the elders wrote me and said,
would you
come and do a weekend of champions for us here
in Fresno?
And this is one of the prime subjects that I do
with men when
I do that weekend. He said, every single guy
that the
eldership is now counseling and pastoring and
taking care of is
dealing with pornography. Every single one of
them. We don't
talk about it. We know it's there. It's the
elephant in the
pew. Now let's start in by asking the question,
why then is
the battleground of lust so very, very
dangerous? And I want
to give you some reasons. I want you to write
these down in the
blanks that you have there along with some
other information if
you'd like to have it. First of all, lust is
everywhere. It's
on TV. It's particularly on the internet,
magazines, motion
pictures, in athletics. Time magazine has
written and listened
to these words. As of July 2003, there were 260
million pages of
pornography online. That was an increase of
1800% in just five
years. Americans, listen to this, rent upwards
of 800
million pornographic videos and DVDs a year.
800 million. That's
a huge, huge number. One in five rentals right
now is a porn
flick. Porn sites last year made 2 billion,
that's with a B,
dollars in revenue. 35 million people every
month visit porn
sites. And according to the Nielsen ratings,
one in four
internet users is going to a porn site, one in
four. So this
is beyond epidemic. This is way beyond epidemic.
You know what
the number one seller on the internet is?
Pornography. It's
not music, it's not iTunes, it's not athletics
or sports. The
number one seller on the internet today is
pornography. And
now there are even gay and lesbian porn sites
that attract
viewers. So it's everywhere. It surrounds us.
And that makes it
particularly dangerous. Secondly, it is no
respecter of
persons. It is highly accessible. Most men have
gone to
it. 41% of all women are now going to porn
sites. And 40% of
all clergy in the United States are going to
porn sites. Okay?
Are you just kind of getting the idea that this
is a huge thing?
This is bigger than maybe you thought? 40% of
all clergy, 41%
of all women, and most of the men in the United
States. Listen
to this, 90% of all children between the ages
of 11 and 18
have already been accidentally exposed to
pornography. And
that's what my huge concern is about is that
pornographies are
not after us. You know who pornographies are after?
Children. New York Times had a massive article
just the other
day, front page article about this very, very
subject. Because
what the porn industry is after, they want
customers for life.
And so they want an 11-year-old boy or
14-year-old girl who'll
stay with them for years and years and years.
They're not
after us. Because we, you know, we don't have
much longer. But
they know that children do. And they know that
children have
access to money. And they know that children
have, somebody's
calling me here. That happens to be my son, who
doesn't know
that I'm back at his alma mater. He's now,
we're very excited in
our family. He has just in the last two and a
half weeks been
invited by Randy Lowry, the new president of
Lipscomb to come
and join his administration. So now Mark is now
working at
Lipscomb. So I'm going to tell him, what do you
mean calling us
right in the middle of the ACU lectureship? You
know, kind of a
guy are you sound like a Lipscomb guy, you know. Fred
Lane has written regarding this in terms of and
a lot of us I
think can understand this. It's a book entitled
obscene profits.
Technology has also taken porn out of seedy
stores and
delivered it into the living rooms of middle
America. When I
was growing up in Nashville, if you wanted to
see a pornographic
film, you had to go out of Davidson County,
because it was
against the law there, to some seedy triple X
looking junk
place, you know, and there'd be about six cars
there. You know
what I'm talking about? Almost every town had
those kind of
adult movie places. Forget that. That's all
gone. They can
deliver it right into your living room. They
can take it
into the finest homes. They can take it into
the biggest plasma
TVs. They can take it right into Middle America.
It is no
respecter of persons, men, women, and
especially children.
If this really doesn't touch you, then in many
senses, I
think you may be stronger than Samson, wiser
than Solomon, and
godlier than David, because it touched all
three of those guys,
every single one of them. Then next, let me
point out to you
that lust takes place in our secret life. It is
the kind of
thing that includes deceit, and then breakdown
in our own
spirituality. What I'm describing is, think of yourself
or think of someone sitting alone at your
computer. It's
Saturday, nobody is there. And you put in some
URL, something
flashes up and it's pornographic. And now it's
anonymous. And you think, you know, nobody's
ever going to see
this. Nobody's around here. Nobody's ever going
to know
this. And so once you step over the line, it's
easy to
rationalize and step over it again and deceive
yourself into
thinking that no one will ever, ever know.
Listen to what Paul
says in Ephesians 5:12-14. For it is shameful
even to
mention what the disobedient do in secret. But
everything is
hidden. But everything exposed by the light
becomes visible,
for it is light that makes everything possible.
You see,
lust takes place in our secret life. It doesn't
take place in
our public life. And then one of the things
that has interested
me about this and may interest you is how
addictive it is. You
always want more. I've been to some training
sessions in which
we're learning more and more about addiction
and the part of
your brain that is stimulated by heroin and
cocaine is the part
of your brain that is stimulated by pornography.
This is why
when those of us who get on pornography become
addicted to
cocaine, we take you through the same
counseling therapy that we
would take you through if you were on cocaine.
It's exactly
the same part of the brain. It's exactly the
same biological and
physiological function. It's exactly the same
thing that
occurs when hard drugs go into your body. So
like a shot of
heroin, the internet hooks you in about 60 days.
As one guy in
DeSoto, Texas said, a minister in a church
said, I'd like to
resist but I can't. I sit down at the computer
and I type in
S-E-X and I'm hooked. It's addictive. And then
it never
gives up. It never runs out of idea. Lust comes
in all kinds of
forms. Sometimes it's verbal, written.
Sometimes it's visual.
71%, listen to this statistic, 71% of men in
this cycle
consider suicide. See this goes to the core of
who we are. This
goes to our heart. It goes to our character. It
goes to our
soul. Your enemy, the devil prowls around like
a roaring
lion looking for someone to devour, Peter
writes. Lust
never, never gives up. So how are we going to
win this battle?
How are we going to win this private secret war
between Satan
and us? Well, in Ephesians 6, Paul spends a good
deal of time and space talking about the
armament and the
struggle that we have. Now I'm not going to
read all of this
to you because everybody in this room probably
has read this
passage. But this passage has to do with the
battle that we're
having with Satan and the secret war that we're
having. We're
like two snipers that are facing off against
one another. But I
want you to see in verse 11, I want you to see
that he talks
about standing against the devil's what?
Schemes. Now I
want you to think about that for a moment
because just like an
experienced sniper, Satan probably is never
going to come
at you in the same way, especially if you fend
him off.
He's not coming back to you that way. It'll be
another time of
the day. It'll be through another person or a
magazine, TV, a
sports program. It'll be when you're not
expecting it. It'll
be on an airplane. He's got schemes and he has
been at this
a lot longer than we have. Look at the next
verse because it
tells you that the war that we're in is not
with fellow
human beings but it is against the rulers, the
authorities and
the powers of this what kind of world? Against
the night. This
dark world and against the spiritual forces of
evil in the
heavenly realms. Wow, you're losing us Paul.
You're talking
about things we can't see but that are real.
Talking about a
reality in which we're all immersed, in which
Satan is the
leader of powers that are dark and evil forces
that are
spiritual. And then instead of just saying,
okay and we don't
have a chance or you're on your own, he then
says, therefore,
look at the beginning of verse 13, put on the
full armor of
God and then he starts giving you all the armor
of God that
you're familiar with. Now I want you to notice
a couple of
things that's true about this. I want you to
notice that all of
the armor that God is giving you is so you can
be on the
offensive, the attack. Somebody says, what do
you mean? Do you
remember when Jesus uses the word church early
in His
ministry and He's up at Caesarea Philippi and
He asked the
Apostles, who do people say I am? Well some say
you're John
the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah 1 of the prophets.
He's not
taking a poll, He just turns around and He
says, who do you
think I am? Peter quickly confesses Him as the
Son of God
and then He says, upon what you've just said I
will build
my what? Then what does He say? And the gates
of Hades or Hell
will not prevail against it. Now what is He
saying? Why did
ancient cities have gates? They had gates to
protect them.
Who's on the offensive here? The church and the
gates of hell
will not stand up against my church. The armor
that God has
given you and me is not so that we can be
defensive, it's so we
can be offensive. It's so we can be on the
attack. It's so that
we can become proactive as we say. In other
words, instead of
saying, woe is me, I can't do anything about
pornography. Oh
yes you can. You can make some choices. You can
go on attack.
You can be proactive. You can become
accountable. You can get
with some other guys. You can talk to your wife
about this.
You all can go on attack against this. Are you
getting the idea?
This is not something where we just roll over
and play dead and
say, woe is me, I'm just some, you know, little
Christian down
in Texas and I can't do anything. Satan is
going to kill
me. He wants you on attack. The other thing I
want to observe
about this is do you notice that if you turn
and run you don't
have any armament? All of the equipment is
here, breastplate
of righteousness, sword of the spirit, helmet
of salvation, feet
shod. If you turn and you start running,
there's nothing there
for a coward. Engage the enemy. Engage him. Go
on attack. What
Eisenhower said that morning, June the 6th,
we're going in.
We're landing the troops in Normandy. We're
going to engage
the enemy. And what I'm saying here is that's
always true in
spiritual war. You engage Satan. You don't run
from him. You
don't run from him at all because you've got a
power within
you that is greater, John says in 1 John, that
is greater than
anything that is out there. It is called the
Holy Spirit. So
how can we win then over this battle of lust?
Well, we can be
prepared for it and we can get prepared for it.
We can prepare
our young people for it and our children and
our men for it.
Lust is committed to wage war against your
soul, your life. It
is a life and death combat. It is a private war
that you and
Satan are engaged in. And if you've battled
with lust before,
just know this, Satan's going to come back at
you again and
again and again and again. I'm not strong
enough. I'm not smart
enough. I'm not even equipped to fight Satan
without God. But
with the Holy Spirit in me and with God in me,
I am. I'm not
smart enough, but I'm strong enough because the
power that is
in me is greater than the power that is outside
of me.
Secondly, be willing to get training because
that is true of
anyone who is going into war. This is not a
question of how
far can I go and still be a Christian. This is
not how many
sites on the Internet can I look at and still
go to Heaven when I
die. This is a question of how holy can I be?
What kind of
character will I have? Because our standards on
sexual purity
are so mixed up with the culture and with God.
And so many
people today no longer read their Bibles. Many
people have
no clue what God's standard for sexual purity
really is all
about. It is God's Word that trains your heart
for battle.
Please write that down. It is God's Word that
trains your
heart for battle. And you cannot win unless you
know the
tactics of Satan and you learn those from the
Word of God. In
my Weekend of Champions series I spend a lot of
time taking
guys through the stories of men like Moses and
David and
Solomon. You know what we're talking about?
We're talking
about real players here. You're talking, I mean
when you talk
about Moses you're talking about one of the
greatest leaders in
the history of the world. I've got two or three
books on
leadership that take Moses as the greatest
example of
leadership in the history of leadership. And
the guys that
wrote them they had no clue that he was a holy
man of God.
They're just looking at his leadership. David
was a real
player. I mean you looked out at a crowd of
guys and head and
shoulders above them there's David. David was a
killer. I
mean you see these guys coming back right now
with their heads
chopped off in Iraq and Afghanistan. You
remember what
he did to Goliath? He cut his head off and sent
his body
back. And God said you cannot build my temple
because you've
got so much blood on your hands. Saul killed
his what?
Thousands. And David his ten thousands. I mean
we're talking
about, we're talking about a poet, a musician,
a good
looking guy, a guy who had a lot of trouble
with women. You're
talking about a real player when you're talking
about David. And
when you study the tactics of Satan working on
David or
working on Moses or working on Solomon you're
learning, you're
getting some training. I mean no one in the
United States
military is going to make the decision that we
take young men
and women out of the United States, put them on
a boat, put
them in a uniform, hand them a weapon and send
them to Iraq.
No, we train them. They go through all kind of basic
training, the desert training, they learn
weapons, they learn
all kinds of defensive maneuvers. You always
train an
army when you're going into combat. And this is
a combative
situation between you and Satan. And you need
some basic
basic training. In addition to getting training
and having a
strategy in place, we need to keep in mind that
we are the
children of God. Listen to these words from
Proverbs 4:23. Above
all else, guard your heart for it is the
wellspring of your
life. Guard your heart. Now the message that
Jesus will give us
in the New Testament is you protect your heart. Everybody
look at me just a second. You protect your
heart with your
eyes, Jesus said. The gateway to your heart are
your eyes, not
physiologically, spiritually. So that what you
look at, Jesus
says, feeds your heart. So one has to decide,
one has to make
choices as to what you look at. And this is the
strategy. So
wisdom says reduce your exposure to this kind
of stuff. Avoid
the situations that would allow your eyes to
feed your heart in
terms of this kind of thing. Then know your
triggers. Know
your weaknesses. Well trained soldiers know
their weaknesses.
They know their triggers. They know what they
can do and what
they can't do. I talked to my uncle Bill just
before I got to
come to Abilene. He's 80. I guess Bill's 85 now.
And I only
have one uncle. It's my mother's brother and my
mother's dead and
my dad's dead. So he's kind of that generation.
Anyway, he was
in World War II and was a hero in World War II.
He was a
fighter pilot, flew about 58 combat missions,
was shot down
three times and highly decorated. And he told
me not too
long ago the story of one day where a
Messerschmitt, just one
German plane was coming toward him. And he
started going
toward and they started going at each other.
And they were
firing at each other. He said it looked just
like a Christmas
tree right across that guy's wing, because he
was firing so
much at him. And he flew under him. And then
when he turned
around, he looked back and as he turned around,
this German
pilot had already turned the Messerschmitt
around was coming
back after him again. Well, they did that again.
And this time,
he flew under him as they were firing. And he
turned that P 51
around. And as he did, he noticed that this
German pilot
was coming right, he'd already turned his
aircraft. So he said,
You know, I thought, I'm in a faster plane. But
this guy is
flying his plane, which is slower, he's getting
in around
quicker than I am. If we keep doing this deal,
he's going to
shoot me and kill me. So on the third pass, he
said, I shot at
him and shot him. And just as I went under him,
I waved at him
like that, headed right for England, he said,
you know. I
said, Bill, if I tell this story, and somebody
says, Well,
but you know, didn't he run from battle? He
says, You just tell
them I'm still alive and well and living in
Tennessee. You
know, sometimes you have to know your
weaknesses, don't you? You
have to know that you're not as good as Satan.
You may have
overcome him sometimes, but sometimes you don't overcome
him. You know, there, you need to know your
triggers. And by
triggers, what I mean is that for some guys,
it's internet,
other guys, it's movies, other guys, it's
magazines, other
guys, it's billboards. It's not the same for
everybody. And we
need to know what our triggers and our
weaknesses are turn off
the TV, go a different route in your car,
install internet
filters. Let me give you one. Write this down
if you have a
computer www.covenanteyes.com www.covenanteyes.c
Om. Now when
you bring that up on your computer, it will show
you how to install a filter on your computer.
And you didn't
filter out all this junk. You just filter it
out. Our kids,
one of them was calling a moment ago, our son
and our two
daughters are in their 30s and 40s. They've got
this on their
computer. Know your weaknesses, know your
triggers and realize
that what we're really talking here is
accountability. I
advise a lot of guys that are having difficulty
with this,
get this computer that you've got out of your
bedroom. Put it
in the living room where everybody can see it. Become
accountable with some other guys. And this is a
path that I
suggest to all guys. And that is be very, very
accountable to
other guys so that they know what's coming in
on your
computer. You know what's coming in on their
computer because
usually it's the computer that is providing so
much of the
problem in here. Then know your position and
stand your ground.
Remember we're using the Biblical notion of
combat and
war here. Be self-controlled and alert, Peter
says. Your
enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring
lion looking for
someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in
the faith.
Guys, let me talk to you specifically, the men
here. We
cannot hold our ground against Satan while
reading Playboy, GQ
the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated and
then take the
Bible to church on Sunday. You're going to lose
the ground.
You're going to lose that war because it is
absolutely a weak
and defenseless position. Lust will come at you
with guns
blazing and it will win that war with you.
It'll win that battle.
It'll win that moment with you every single
time. Know your
position and stand your ground and realize that
Satan is a
liar. That's what Jesus calls him. What we need
to do is fight
the lies of Satan. Let me give you some of the
lies that he
tells us. Here's one of the key ones. You can
handle this
problem by yourself. You don't need to help
anybody. You don't
need any help from anybody. You don't need to
tell anybody,
especially your wife. You can handle this alone.
That's a lie.
You cannot handle this alone. Do you think you
could get off of
cocaine alone? You think you can get off of
heroin if you're
addicted to it alone? That's naive to think
that you don't
need some help or therapy. If you're a cocaine
addict, if
you're shooting up and you tell yourself, I can
get off of this
by myself. All I've got to do is go cold turkey
and I can get
rid of it. That's a lie. We need every bit of
the help, training
and reinforcement that is available to us. Let
me give you
another lie. Don't ever tell this. They'll
never know. Here's
what I'm learning. The power is in the secret.
That's where the
power is. It's in the secret. As long as we can
keep it secret,
Satan tells us, as long as we don't ever tell
anybody, as long
as we don't ever let anyone know that this is a
problem. See,
that's where the power is. And when you expose
the secret, it's
no longer in the darkness. It's now in the
light, John says. So
when we're told it's legal, you won't ever
catch a disease, it's
private, it can be controlled, you can stop it
whenever you
want to stop it, you're not hurting anybody
else, all those
are lies. Lots of lies. He is the father of
lies. The next, be
responsible for your own actions in battle.
There is a point of
view about men particularly that I want to try
to explode here
just for a second. I've run into it for years.
And that is that
all men are created with some kind of
uncontrolled sexual
desire. That's a lie. You are not created that
way. You're
created in the image of God and you choose your
behavior. And
the idea that simply says that because I'm a
guy, I'm just made
this way. No, you're not made that way. You're
created like
God. You're created with the power of self-will. You're
created with the power of choice. You're
created to be able
to choose what you do and what you don't do in
your behavior.
And so be responsible therefore for your
actions in battle. Be
willing next to retreat. Look at this next one.
Be willing to
retreat. Flee from sexual immorality. Purity
involves new
software for our minds. New information that is
positive and
wholesome and uplifting. New routine. Don't
linger. Don't
take a second look. Refocus your heart. And
then as we begin to
wrap this up, leave the secret life. 70% of
pornography is
seen at work. 70% of pornography is seen at
work. Sex is the
most frequent topic on the Internet. Walk in
the light and
take the power out of lust. Talk with your wife
if you're
married. If you're not, talk with some other
Christian guys
and together battle Satan. Leave the secret
life. And last, call
in reinforcements. Go public. Place your
computer in a public
area. Be accountable. Seek a safe person to
talk to that you
can trust. Find a group that will monitor your
morality. Pray
together and step out of the shame. I have been real
interested in an athlete. I've never had the
privilege of
meeting him, but Sports Illustrated featured David
Robinson, the all-star former center for the
San Antonio
Spurs and a dedicated Christian. It
spotlighted, this article
did, his desire to be sexually pure. And the
article explains
that the reason he would never let his eyes
wander is that he
was committed to following Jesus Christ. I made
a rule when I
got married, David said. And he mentions all
the women that
were trying to flirt with him. I decided if
anyone's feelings
are going to be hurt, they're not going to be
my wife's. If I
think someone is acting inappropriately, I tell
them. It
may sound harsh, but that's the way it is. My
wife is not going
to be the one to suffer. Amen. I appreciate
that in a man. I
appreciate that, especially in an NBA MVP, a
person who is a
outstanding athlete, but in a deeper sense, is
a man devoted
to purity and to character. Our class tomorrow
will begin at
8:00. It's entitled, Deeper and Deeper I Go. I'm
going to share with you some things from my
wife. I'm going
to share with you some things from my own life.
I'm going to
talk to you about your heart. I wish I had
known, have you ever
have you ever learned something and you wish
you knew it years
ago, but you didn't? Well, that's tomorrow.
Deeper and
deeper I go. I might have to start it at 8:00. I'm
going to finish by 845. You'll have a little
extra time for
some coffee. After class. I hope you'll be here
at eight. I'm
going to start it at eight because I got to
catch a flight
at 10. It leaves Abilene at 10:00. And as you
know, you
got to be out there ought to be there by 9:00
at least
in order to make a 10:00 flight. So I'll have
to start it
at eight. We'll be through by 845. Deeper and
deeper I go is
going to be the title of it. Let's bow for
prayer and thank
you so much for coming and I hope that you will
feel like
your day is off to a strong day from this
beginning this morning
and against the night. Let's bow. Father, I
thank you for the way
in which you've created us in your image with
the ability to
choose. We've talked father today as you know
about the
dangers of that choice and about the risk. But
you made us in
order to choose and you wanted us to choose to
follow you that
our hearts would be pure and our lives would be
strong and our
character would be great. We pray Father that
you'll help us
to to win this battle in our personal lives.
And we pray
father that we'll try more and more to help
other people to be
pure in a pornographic age. Bless us today.
Help us to be
light and help us to be against the night. In
Christ's name we
pray. Amen. Amen.