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Transcript 544A — The Problem of Lust
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening, Brother Camping. I have a question tonight, and I would like to take my answer on the air if I could. If a married person (man or woman) has a problem with lust, whether or not that problem has materialized, I believe that the strength to overcome that problem must come from God and that it's not within us, that there's nothing within us that I believe can do any good, or anything righteous, apart from Christ. And any light that you could shed on that would surely be appreciated.
HC: This is a very practical question. What do I do if I am tempted by sin? And in this particular case the issue was that of lust, or evil desire. And our caller very rightly put his finger on the answer, to some degree, when he said it is not within us to gain victory, it is not within us to have strength to have victory over that sin. It is God who has to strengthen us.
But we read in I Corinthians 6:18 a statement that addresses itself to this very question. God says there, "Flee fornication." Now fornication is any kind of sexual immorality, any kind of sexual lust, whether in the mind or in the action. And God says, "Flee fornication.'' Now how do you flee fornication?
Well, obviously, when you're trying to flee something or run away from something, you want to get as far away from it as possible. We of course are living in a very sinful world. We're living in a world where the TV programs are designed to aggravate the temptation of fornication. There are all kinds of suggestive statements and actions that are on display when we watch many TV programs. This is characteristic of novels that have been written. Hardly any today that are best sellers that do not contain at least one or two or more incidents that clearly display fornication. This is true of the newspaper, this is true of most magazines today. It's hard to find that which does not encourage fornication. This is true of many of the stories and jokes that are told. They find as their environment, or as their matrix, fornication.
Wherever we turn—the soap operas, for example—wherever we turn, we see an encouragement toward fornication. Now the Bible says, "Flee fornication." So this means that I have to be very selective in what I read and what I listen to. If someone begins to tell a joke and we begin to sense that it's moving in a lustful direction, we have to turn off our hearing aid, so to speak. We have to walk out of the room, or mentally turn off the speaker so that we will not listen to what is being said.
When we are watching a TV program and we begin to sense that this is beginning to happen, we should forthrightly turn it off, and it may even be necessary that we pull the plug and never use that TV set again, if we find that this is increasingly in front of us, and of course it is, as we watch many programs today. It means that most novels we cannot begin to read, because we know what we're going to run into. It means that we have to be exceedingly selective as to what magazines we're going to open up. We have to do everything possible to remove ourselves from the arena where fornication is on display.
Now this is something that we must do. This is what repentance is, to turn away from it. We realize that this is a weakness in our flesh, this is something that can easily tempt us, and therefore we don't want to come near it. We want to stay as far from it as possible, all the time praying, "Oh Lord, give me strength. Oh Lord, strengthen me that I will continue to turn away from this." And if we really mean business about this, then God Himself will also strengthen us and increase our distaste for this. We will have the dynamic of God Himself strengthening us as we flee fornication.