A Blueprint For Purity

A Blueprint for Purity

Psalm 119:9-11

Jeff Hughes

I. Introduction

a. Good evening guys, it is always a pleasure to come and share from God’s Word. When Lynn gave me this chance this evening I was excited to come and speak to you guys on this topic. It is a subject that is near to my heart. Because when you think about it -

b. The lack of sexual purity in our society today is a plague that has flourished into a full-blown epidemic. The free love message of the sixties has degraded into outright hedonism in the late nineties. As Christian men, we seem to be awash in a world filled with sensuality. You can’t drive down the freeway or watch a baseball game on television without being inundated with provocative imagery. As a society we have become de-sensitized to provocative and sexually explicit images. Lust, sensuality, pornography, whatever you want to call it has a death grip especially on men from 11 year olds to men married with children.

c. If you don’t think that my last statement was true, let me give you a few statistics.

d. Pornography is a $13 billion dollar a year industry. More than all revenues generated by Rock-n-Roll and Country music, more than America spent on Broadway productions, theater, ballet, jazz and classical music combined."

e. In 2000 pornography web-site revenues were 2 billion dollars.

f. There are 200,000 porn sites on the web - with an estimated 200 new sites

Everyday. In e-commerce or business transacted over the internet, porn is by far the largest grossing. Christianity Today reported recently that online stock trading, one of the few profitable e-commerce sectors, has typical profit margins of about 0.2 percent. It pales in comparison to porn site profits, which often reach 30 percent.

g. Make no mistake - pornography is big business. Like any other business they are trying to expand their profits, and break into new markets. The new market that is opening up to them is our children.

h. 25% of porn sites have brand names (Barbie, Disney, Nintendo, nba...) in their metatags (these are hidden keywords to make the pages pop up in search engines) they are designed to attract hits from younger viewers using search engines like yahoo or google.

i. According to a study by NetValue, children spent 65 percent more time on pornography sites than they did on game sites in September 2000. Over one quarter (27.5%) of children age 17 and under visited an adult web site, which represents 3 million unique underage visitors. Of these minors, 21 percent were 14 or younger and 40 percent were female.

j. Where are these kids’ parents, you ask? They are watching TV, reading a book, and just basically ignoring what their kids are doing online. They are being quiet right?!? They are out of your hair, so why bother? A different study said 62% of parents of American teenagers say they’re unaware their children had accessed objectionable web sites.

k. What is even more troubling to me, than the pornography industry targeting our kids is how widespread it is in the church.

l. Forty percent of pastors have visited a porn site; more than one-third have done so in the last year. Christianity Today, 2001.

m. Fifty-one percent of pastors say online porn is a possible temptation; 37% admit it is a struggle. Yet only 25% of pastors use filters on his or his family’s computer. Christianity Today, 2000.

n. At least 20% of American adults (Christian and non-Christian) have looked at a sex site online. The ratio is the same for Christians: one in five people in the pews have looked at web porn. The same study shows one in every three men have looked at a sex site; close to half for men under the age 35. Focus on the Family, 2001.

o. I am confident that there are people in this room tonight that are struggling with sexual purity right now. Maybe you’re not looking at web sites or pornography, but what’s going on in your thought life?

p. Science tells us that a man’s sex drive is visually stimulated. That’s the way God made us. When used in the proper context of a marriage relationship, it is a beautiful thing, it works just like God designed it. When we let our eyes and our mind run wild though, we have just fallen into sin.

q. You know, we have this code language for sin in the church. You’ll ask somebody – “How’s it going Bob?” If Bob has been falling into sin, he may say, “Well, man I have been struggling lately.” Why can’t we just come out and say it – “I’ve fallen into great wickedness!”

r. For many years I was caught up in this trap. I thought there was no hope for me. My older brother introduced me to pornography at age 8. I got older, and got more caught up. I got into college and got into an illicit relationship with a girl I’d met. We lived together for two years, and I lived a lifestyle of sin. We also were reaping the harvest of that sin. But, God is merciful. We decided to get married. The only person I knew to marry us was my old Youth Pastor. He counseled with us, and pulled me aside and told me flat out that I was living in sin, and that he would not marry us unless I agreed to re-commit my life to the Lord. Which I did. So, I broke free from the yoke of sexual sin right there, right?!? I got married, that cured me, right? Unfortunately, no.