DON’T TAKE A LOOK AT IT
TEXT: JOB 31:1-12.
🔑KEY VERSE “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” (JOB 31:1).
Pornography is said to be a $12 to $13 billion-a-year industry. This is more than the combined annual revenues of the Coca-Cola and McDonnell Douglas corporations. Pornography websites are busy every day and night. About 25 percent of all search engines requests are for fun of some level! Playboy’s website alone now averages about 5 billion hits a day. And those aren’t just at night time. Psychologists and counsellors see a direct link between this increased use of pornography and their increased caseloads of crashing marriages and rape.
Satan wants to keep people in slavery to pornography and sin. Job, while carrying out some self examination in our passage, said he made a covenant with his eyes not to think upon a maid lustfully or look with unclean motives. He equally condemned the sin of adultery and rape in the same passage, highlighting the heavy penalty of sinning against your neighbours wife or daughter.
Pornography is progressive; it dominates the mind of its victims until they’re completely enslaved. It is highly addictive and incites the mind which in turn, leads to unacceptable practices that destroy one’s reputation and character.
Some of these things may be accepted in some societies, but God, the righteous Judge, will not excuse them. Those who are trapped in the web of this hard to become practice know that it thrives on secrecy. The first step to take is to repent and confess the sin to God; after which it will be necessary to break the secrecy by discussing with someone to whom one is responsible. This could be parents or guardians, husband or wife, or perhaps, your pastor, in order to get the needed help and support. After prayer and assurance of salvation, victims must also press forward to be sanctified.
✍THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Make a covenant with your eyes and mind today.
BIBLE IN A YEAR: ESTHER 6-10.
MEDITATION
Tough consecration needed for victory over sexual sins
- Consecration for sexual cleanness
a. Job was married with children, yet he did not rule out the possibility of messing up with a maid if there was no definite precaution v1. Avoid over confidence.
b. Job was holy and blameless, yet he knew that without extra caution, he could still fall into sexual sins, Job 1:1.
c. Job was a wealthy and a high class person in the society, yet he knew that an ordinary maid could bring him down if he was not careful, v1. Don’t underrate any potential tempter, emotion is stronger than intelligence and common sense. “Keep yourself pure.”
d. Job knew that, in addition to purity of heart, he must watch against doors through which sexual temptations enter, v1.
Q Is your purified in addition to salvation from sins? That is the starting point to victory over sexual sins.
e. He knew that the way sexual sins can come into his life was through his eyes and thoughts v1.
f. He decided to be hard on his eyes and thoughts. That is consecration v1.
Q Have you thought about your own area of weakness? What hard consecration are you making to deal with that area of weakness. For example, you are to cut off from pornography, control your eyes from objects of temptations, avoid over familiarity and shady relationship with opposite sexes, free your mind from any unchristlike passion for opposite sexes, avoid intimate social media friendship with opposite sexes, your communication with opposite sexes should be scanty, etc. “Every one should know how to possess his own (personal) vessel in sanctification and honour” I Thessalonians 4:4.
g. Check also Matthew 5: 28,29, I Thessalonians 5:22 to see the commands to make tough decisions against sexual sins. - Clear sinless conscience
a. Job could boast of his clear undefiled conscience in dealing with opposite sexes vv9,10.
b. Defiled conscience, due immoral complications and carelessness with opposite sexes will block you from divine presence and favour, make you miss God’s purpose for your life, bring you into deeper bondage, keeps you in perpetual backsliding and send you finally to hell, Matthew 5: 29,30. Flee from immorality, either mental or real. I Corinthians 6:18.
Lord, I present my heart to you. Come and do a deeper work of purity in my heart now 🙏🙏
Lord, I have decided to make tough decisions that will keep me far from immoral complications. Strengthen my will to stand by my decision🙏
Lord, I commit my life to your hands. Let me never be a prey of immorality🙏
Pray that God will visit and deliver those entangled in sexual sins in the church🙏
HYMN: All things are possible
