0:00:00 - 0:00:25 I was off doing something else and the Lord interrupted that he told me to make this video. And so I can only conclude that there are people out there who are praying for this right now and that he's going to cut some chains for you here and now, and that brings me quite a bit of joy because I happen 0:00:24 - 0:00:55 to know the power and importance of the things that I'm about to tell you. So many of you are beset by sins by things that you don't want to do, but you do them anyway or things that you do want to do, but you can't seem to find the strength to do them consistently. One of the reasons that you're failing 0:00:54 - 0:01:34 in achieving repentance is that you don't fully understand the reasons you're doing what you're doing and you don't fully understand or sufficiently understand the situations that you're in and why things are the way they are every desire that we have at its root in its basis, purest form. It's R form 0:01:33 - 0:02:22 is a call to God. It's a signal, deeply impregnate, impregnated within us that draws us to him like a beacon. When we misinterpret that signal, we pervert. The very thing that draws us nearer to God into what pushes us furthest away. The trouble with desire is that it's a feeling that's detached from 0:02:22 - 0:03:06 any kind of understanding any kind of specific fulfillment. And the only way we can process that is by attaching it to people, things, situations, actions and so on. When you try to address sin, you're focusing on the desire as if the desire is the problem, but the desire isn't the problem. It's your 0:03:06 - 0:03:44 understanding. It's what you attach it to. That's the problem. All of reality is designed by God to teach us more about Him. He's in and through all things, all things testify of Him. They demonstrate how he is and why he is that way. They give us evidence for why, how he is and what he has is better 0:03:43 - 0:04:26 than anything else. None of these things are meant to be vacuously adopted or believed or practiced. They're all given with sufficient reason and those reasons are everywhere. The number one problem here, it's not actually what you might call temptation. It's dishonesty, it's dishonesty. Now, we could 0:04:26 - 0:05:02 talk specifically about any so called vice, any sin. And the pattern is going to be exactly the same to dismantle this bomb. You have to look at what it really is. You're being promised something you're believing in an idea whose causes and effects are distorted from reality. The costs of what's offered 0:05:01 - 0:05:32 to you are diminished compared to how they really are. The benefits are amplified compared to how they really are. Furthermore, the alternatives to whatever you're offered are distorted in the same ways or maybe even in whether or not their men. So in other words, maybe a choice has, has five alternatives 0:05:31 - 0:06:04 and maybe you, you only know about four and that fifth one would obviously be better if you only knew about it. All of this boils down to just a few really simple ideas or obstacles. Maybe what are those obstacles? So first off, you don't know what the real set of options is. And second, you don't know 0:06:04 - 0:06:38 the true cost and benefit of each of them. Sometimes there's a third which is, you do know these things and you have ample reasons to believe them, but you choose not to when you frame it this way, everything becomes immensely easier. Now in Hebrews 12 1, Paul says, wherefore seeing we are compassed 0:06:37 - 0:07:07 about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us aside, lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience. The race that is set before us. What is this cloud of witnesses? Well, if you read the preceding chapter, it's living examples of people who have great 0:07:06 - 0:07:46 faith, but people are not the only cloud of witnesses. You're immersed with evidence that God's way is superior to any alternative. So why is it so hard to believe this part of it, like I said, is a failure to fully use the faculties of reason that you have to honestly perceive and process the information 0:07:46 - 0:08:18 that's so abundant that you already know that you've already experienced in Ecclesiastes 67, we read all the labor of man is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not filled. So in this, in this uh verse mouth is just your, your carnal uh desire. And what what this says is that everything that normal 0:08:18 - 0:08:51 people do, it's just a shovel coal into that furnace of cardinal desire. That's the motive of normal people. And yet, and yet the appetite is not filled. It doesn't do what it purports to do. So if you hold on to beliefs that you've already falsified through your own experience, the only problem there 0:08:50 - 0:09:24 is your honesty. Now, why do people so fully cling to what they know doesn't do what it purports to do any time you sin, what you're doing is you're indulging in a false belief. The belief is that that is going to give you a net benefit that exceeds what it actually does, that it's going to serve a purpose 0:09:24 - 0:09:48 that it can't actually serve or one that something else does a much better job of. So when it's so obvious, why do people keep doing it, why do alcoholics pretend that alcohol is going to do what they think it's going to do? Because it doesn't, it doesn't work or any other drug or porn. What, what are 0:09:48 - 0:10:10 you doing when you, when you get into that stuff? What are you after? Do you even know? Have you even thought about it? Have you sat down and said, why do I do this? What's, what's the reason? And is this the best way to get what I'm after? We could go through this with every single thing? Because the 0:10:10 - 0:10:44 answer is no, it's not. And you know, it's not. But here's the big, here's the big idea. I'm gonna tell you the reason you keep doing it is because you don't know of a better option. And you're afraid to sit in that emptiness. That's the reason which boils down to a lack of hope and trust, hope that 0:10:44 - 0:11:10 God actually loves you and he actually has the power to fulfill his promises to bless you and trust that He knows what he's doing, even if you can't see he can. And so you're afraid to sit in the lack of an option. And so you indulge in what you know, cannot give you what you seek because you've already 0:11:10 - 0:11:46 tried it. It doesn't work and you do it anyway because you're afraid to be empty. So many of God's blessings require you to be empty first. They can only be found by one who's prepared in that way, but you don't trust him enough for him to take you there. And this is a hallmark of how you can know that 0:11:45 - 0:12:19 . What you're trying is never gonna work because it doesn't leave you filled. You're still hungry for more. What comes from God fills you. You're not hungry after that, you're satisfied everything less than that. We'll fall short of that in John six. Well, I'll give you the briefer one first in Matthew 0:12:19 - 0:12:47 five verse six. He said blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. If you're not filled, there's something wrong. One possibility is that you're not actually looking for righteousness, which means how God is. You're looking for something less. The problem 0:12:47 - 0:13:18 with something less is it doesn't endure, it doesn't give you what you're after God alone is sufficient. Everything else is insufficient. In John chapter six, Jesus is talking about the bread of life and he says, verily verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my father 0:13:17 - 0:13:41 gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. Then said, they unto Him, Lord Evermore, give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on 0:13:41 - 0:14:11 me shall never thirst. He said, I am the bread of life. He said, Moses gave your father's bread in the wilderness and they were still hungry. Even the manna from heaven was insufficient to satisfy you the way that I can. And he tells them how they can eat his flesh and drink their blood and be filled 0:14:10 - 0:14:52 . He taught them how to be like him like he is. And he said that he said, you have also seen me and believe, not to believe is so much more than to acknowledge someone's existence. It's to have sufficient desire and understanding, to seek to understand how God is and have the courage to live that way 0:14:51 - 0:15:24 and to trust Him and to believe Him to follow his example and not to be so desperate from day to day that you arbitrarily do things just to fill the hole inside of you that's caused by your longing for Him. And that's another secret what you're after when you do all of these things, it's either to hide 0:15:24 - 0:15:46 from Him because you want to squish down, minimize his voice because it shows you that there are some things about you that aren't quite right and they could be better and you don't like that because you don't wanna be better or, and I think for most people who are gonna watch this, this is gonna come 0:15:46 - 0:16:19 to you as a surprise. The reason you do these things is because you are hungering and thirsting for God. It's not the stuff or the the activities that you feel like you're tempted towards. You have a deep hunger and thirst for what exceeds the intensity and the energy and the joy that normal life seems 0:16:19 - 0:16:50 to offer you thirst and hunger for more. But those things are only found in and through God, not these fake seeming shortcuts, these counterfeits to the real thing. And you know, they are counterfeits. You know that because you go after them and you still hunger and thirst. It doesn't solve the problem 0:16:50 - 0:17:20 at best. All it does is kick the can down the road. And so I ask you what Isaiah asked so long ago in chapter 55 wherefore do you, do ye spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies, not hearken diligently unto me and ee that which is good and let your soul delight 0:17:19 - 0:17:56 itself in fatness. Ho every one that thirst cometh. Come ye to the waters and he that hath no money. Come, ye buy and eat. Yeah. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price, incline your ear and come unto me here and your soul shall live. Go to the only one that has what you seek God and you 0:17:56 - 0:00:00 say. Yeah. But where is he right now? What do I do right now to have that filled right now? It's a path. It's not available here and now, but that doesn't make purported alternatives better. They're fake. They don't give it to you. Now either earlier, I read Hebrews 12 verse one. Go read Hebrews 11. 0:00:00 - 0:19:03 See what that's all about. Faith is a process. It's not something where you push a button and you immediately get what you're looking for. It's a tool that God gives us to obtain things that require a process. It's sufficient reason to engage the process because otherwise all you do is push buttons and 0:19:03 - 0:19:33 get what can be gotten by pushing buttons. And that's a lot of what sin is. Have you ever been tempted to do a sin that would take like 12 years to pay off? Why do you suppose that is only reasons? Only reasons can motivate you to go the distance on something. So if the path is long, it's not gonna be 0:19:32 - 0:00:00 something that you can be tricked into. You have to have reasons. Those reasons might not be perfect and there might be a better path, but you'll have reasons or else you're not gonna go down that road. Now, I told you that what you're really after is more of God and that's not an easy thing to get. 0:00:00 - 0:20:23 It's worth it, but it's not easy. So let's come back to this in Hebrews 12. I'll reread one and I'll keep going for a couple more verses. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us 0:20:23 - 0:20:52 run with patience. The race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. I'll pause here. So what is the target? Well, it's, it's 0:20:52 - 0:21:18 a question of who not what it's Jesus. He's the author and the finisher of our faith. He's the beginning of our faith and he is the end. He is what, what stimulates it in the first place, the source of our desire. And the only thing that will fulfill our desire, the path in between is what it's all about 0:21:18 - 0:21:46 . What's that path like he showed us, look at his life. He had a reason, the joy he looked forward to which we read in another place in Isaiah. Um It talks about how when he sees his seed that he will feel satisfied in his toil, in his suffering for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross 0:21:46 - 0:22:10 and all of these things he went through, he was looking ahead to what that would enable for us. Paul continues consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. In other words, his life was so far opposite of what he was doing it for 0:22:10 - 0:22:31 that. That was a greater trial for him than any like thing can be for you. It doesn't matter how far off it seems how brutal it might seem to get there. How unlikely it might seem. He was literally surrounded by people that were the epitome of the opposite of the kinds of people he had hoped to do this 0:22:31 - 0:22:54 for or that would be worth doing this for better said, while we were yet sinners, he loved us. Verse four, you have not resisted unto blood. Striving against sin. That's a very important concept. You ought to be willing to die rather than to sin against God. And if you're not there yet, you don't yet 0:22:54 - 0:23:13 have sufficient desire for what it is you actually seek because it's not gonna be in some simple thing like you fire up some porn or you take a swig of alcohol or you smoke a joint or whatever your thing is that you don't want to do that. You do. It doesn't matter what it is. You're nasty to your spouse 0:23:13 - 0:23:43 , whatever it is, what you seek is not in that cheap thing. That cheap thing can't give you good things. So what's gonna motivate you to pay a higher price? You need to know what it's worth just how hard it is to get. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto Children. This 0:23:42 - 0:24:09 is the part that we need to highlight that all of these experiences are to teach you, to teach you what to teach you what actually provides what you seek and to teach you what its actual cost is no, that desire that you have. It's just sort of a free gift, but it can expand and deepen and it will, if 0:24:09 - 0:24:34 you really seek it, honestly, you're going to experience that and it will enable you and empower you to travel paths that are much harder than you're willing to right now. Much longer, much less likely seeming because it's not right there in your face. And that's the way that's the demonstration of Jesus 0:24:34 - 0:25:01 . My son despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint or quit. When thou art rebuked of him, when he shows you that the through your reasoning that these things cannot give you what you seek because you do them and you don't get it. How do you respond? Do you faint? Do you quit? Do you say I'm just 0:25:01 - 0:25:30 gonna keep doing it or do you keep searching with renewed desire with even greater effort, with even broader willingness to do things that you wouldn't have done otherwise for whom the Lord loveth, he chasten and scourge. Every son whom he receives. There is a path, there's a path. Now, do you have to 0:25:30 - 0:25:58 endure all the way to the total fulfillment? Jesus is the author and finisher of your faith. And I'm telling you, he's the only thing that can fulfill what you seek. So does that mean that what I'm telling you says you will, you will get nothing until the end. No, the entire path is punctuated with foretastes 0:25:57 - 0:26:25 of that glory. You'll see that as you go into it as you stop getting uh taken off the path by these stupid things that you know better about. How will you find those partial fulfillment in every way Jesus is in and through all things. But I'm going to give you a clue. It comes back to that cloud of witnesses 0:26:25 - 0:26:54 . This, there is no shortcut. This is as close as it gets when you know what the path is. You can more directly follow it. It's the cloud of Witnesses, Hebrews 11 is well known to be all about faith, but it's not just about faith. It starts by saying faith is the substance of things hoped for and the 0:26:54 - 0:27:26 evidence of things not seen, which could be said a lot better. What's line two for by it, the elders obtained a good report or they became good demonstrations of how Jesus is. The entire chapter is about people who through faith became much more like Jesus than they otherwise would have been. The cloud 0:27:25 - 0:27:53 of witnesses is people more like Jesus than you. That's the concentrated cloud he's in and through all things but not evenly. If you met Noah as a man, you'd have a much greater example of what Jesus is like than in 7 billion other people and all the creations and situations in life. Besides, you know 0:27:53 - 0:28:25 , you can learn an awful lot about how God is through becoming a parent. You can learn even more about how God is. If you met Jesus as a man or Moses or Noah, or Elijah or Abraham, what am I? What am I telling you? That call to sin is a call to God not sin. Satan's interrupting the message to hijack 0:28:24 - 0:28:52 it and you're letting him even though you're way too smart for that. That call is a line with segments that go from dot to dot And the dots of people and they are people more like God than you. If you want to correctly interpret the call, you need to understand that it's going to draw you to people who 0:28:52 - 0:29:20 know something about God that you don't, who are more like him than you are. That is the only partial fulfillment of those desires until you get to the end. I hope that this is powerful for you. I hope it makes sense. I hope it's a launching point for your own studies and prayers on this. Uh I was gonna 0:29:19 - 0:29:45 end here, but the Lord says, give them an example. Ok. Here you go. What are you actually seeking with porn? There are going to be particulars that are different for, for everyone. What you're actually seeking is a more intense version of the feeling that you would get if you had closer association with 0:29:44 - 0:00:00 God himself, that might really make your mind explode. Because you think that what you're after with this is either a really specific material that you're looking at or some, some base carnal thing, desire that you're trying to fulfill some sort of biological, mechanical thing. It's not true at all. 0:00:00 - 0:30:39 I, I, if that were what you were after you'd do it in different ways, but what you're actually after is you're, you're, you're searching for a richer connection with God, a richer exchange with what's deeper, what's more meaningful in life in an ideal sense? Is there any midpoint between being in the 0:30:39 - 0:31:09 presence of God and being here here? Now, as you are in normal life, there is, it's called a righteous spouse. A righteous spouse will bring you closer to that than anything else can in this life short of an actual experience with God himself. Is that experience with pornography? Is it anything like 0:31:09 - 0:31:34 the real thing? It's not, it can't be, it can't be, it can't contain that. It can't support it. And the second you start down that road, you know that it's so obvious, but you turn off all the sensors and you just pretend it's not there. You just ignore that information and what happens. You come out 0:31:34 - 0:31:55 of it. You know, you're depressed, you're despondent, you're, you're disappointed, whatever you feel empty, you're worse than you were before. So why keep doing it? Even, even if you don't believe what I'm telling you. And even before when you didn't know these things, you'd never heard it from anyone 0:31:55 - 0:32:26 , why do it again, if you know, it doesn't work. It's like I said, it's because you're scared. You don't believe God, you don't believe He's nearly as good as those of us who met him know who we've experienced this. If you had the slightest clue of how good He is. I thank God that you don't yet. I thank 0:32:25 - 0:32:53 God that you have no clue how good He is because everything you see is valuable in life. The meaning of it would just evaporate like dew in the hottest noon sun and you'd be miserable here without the tools you need to do what you need to do here while you're here in the first place. And so in some ways 0:32:52 - 0:33:19 , it's a great gift, but you have to be honest about what's really going on and you already know so much that you're not living up to. So just be honest. And if even if you don't believe anything I'm saying, at least believe what you already know and stop doing what you know, can't do the reasons, can't 0:00:00 - 0:00:25 I was off doing something else and the Lord interrupted that he told me to make this video. And so I can only conclude that there are people out there who are praying for this right now and that he's going to cut some chains for you here and now, and that brings me quite a bit of joy because I happen 0:00:24 - 0:00:55 to know the power and importance of the things that I'm about to tell you. So many of you are beset by sins by things that you don't want to do, but you do them anyway or things that you do want to do, but you can't seem to find the strength to do them consistently. One of the reasons that you're failing 0:00:54 - 0:01:34 in achieving repentance is that you don't fully understand the reasons you're doing what you're doing and you don't fully understand or sufficiently understand the situations that you're in and why things are the way they are every desire that we have at its root in its basis, purest form. It's R form 0:01:33 - 0:02:22 is a call to God. It's a signal, deeply impregnate, impregnated within us that draws us to him like a beacon. When we misinterpret that signal, we pervert. The very thing that draws us nearer to God into what pushes us furthest away. The trouble with desire is that it's a feeling that's detached from 0:02:22 - 0:03:06 any kind of understanding any kind of specific fulfillment. And the only way we can process that is by attaching it to people, things, situations, actions and so on. When you try to address sin, you're focusing on the desire as if the desire is the problem, but the desire isn't the problem. It's your 0:03:06 - 0:03:44 understanding. It's what you attach it to. That's the problem. All of reality is designed by God to teach us more about Him. He's in and through all things, all things testify of Him. They demonstrate how he is and why he is that way. They give us evidence for why, how he is and what he has is better 0:03:43 - 0:04:26 than anything else. None of these things are meant to be vacuously adopted or believed or practiced. They're all given with sufficient reason and those reasons are everywhere. The number one problem here, it's not actually what you might call temptation. It's dishonesty, it's dishonesty. Now, we could 0:04:26 - 0:05:02 talk specifically about any so called vice, any sin. And the pattern is going to be exactly the same to dismantle this bomb. You have to look at what it really is. You're being promised something you're believing in an idea whose causes and effects are distorted from reality. The costs of what's offered 0:05:01 - 0:05:32 to you are diminished compared to how they really are. The benefits are amplified compared to how they really are. Furthermore, the alternatives to whatever you're offered are distorted in the same ways or maybe even in whether or not their men. So in other words, maybe a choice has, has five alternatives 0:05:31 - 0:06:04 and maybe you, you only know about four and that fifth one would obviously be better if you only knew about it. All of this boils down to just a few really simple ideas or obstacles. Maybe what are those obstacles? So first off, you don't know what the real set of options is. And second, you don't know 0:06:04 - 0:06:38 the true cost and benefit of each of them. Sometimes there's a third which is, you do know these things and you have ample reasons to believe them, but you choose not to when you frame it this way, everything becomes immensely easier. Now in Hebrews 12 1, Paul says, wherefore seeing we are compassed 0:06:37 - 0:07:07 about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us aside, lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience. The race that is set before us. What is this cloud of witnesses? Well, if you read the preceding chapter, it's living examples of people who have great 0:07:06 - 0:07:46 faith, but people are not the only cloud of witnesses. You're immersed with evidence that God's way is superior to any alternative. So why is it so hard to believe this part of it, like I said, is a failure to fully use the faculties of reason that you have to honestly perceive and process the information 0:07:46 - 0:08:18 that's so abundant that you already know that you've already experienced in Ecclesiastes 67, we read all the labor of man is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not filled. So in this, in this uh verse mouth is just your, your carnal uh desire. And what what this says is that everything that normal 0:08:18 - 0:08:51 people do, it's just a shovel coal into that furnace of cardinal desire. That's the motive of normal people. And yet, and yet the appetite is not filled. It doesn't do what it purports to do. So if you hold on to beliefs that you've already falsified through your own experience, the only problem there 0:08:50 - 0:09:24 is your honesty. Now, why do people so fully cling to what they know doesn't do what it purports to do any time you sin, what you're doing is you're indulging in a false belief. The belief is that that is going to give you a net benefit that exceeds what it actually does, that it's going to serve a purpose 0:09:24 - 0:09:48 that it can't actually serve or one that something else does a much better job of. So when it's so obvious, why do people keep doing it, why do alcoholics pretend that alcohol is going to do what they think it's going to do? Because it doesn't, it doesn't work or any other drug or porn. What, what are 0:09:48 - 0:10:10 you doing when you, when you get into that stuff? What are you after? Do you even know? Have you even thought about it? Have you sat down and said, why do I do this? What's, what's the reason? And is this the best way to get what I'm after? We could go through this with every single thing? Because the 0:10:10 - 0:10:44 answer is no, it's not. And you know, it's not. But here's the big, here's the big idea. I'm gonna tell you the reason you keep doing it is because you don't know of a better option. And you're afraid to sit in that emptiness. That's the reason which boils down to a lack of hope and trust, hope that 0:10:44 - 0:11:10 God actually loves you and he actually has the power to fulfill his promises to bless you and trust that He knows what he's doing, even if you can't see he can. And so you're afraid to sit in the lack of an option. And so you indulge in what you know, cannot give you what you seek because you've already 0:11:10 - 0:11:46 tried it. It doesn't work and you do it anyway because you're afraid to be empty. So many of God's blessings require you to be empty first. They can only be found by one who's prepared in that way, but you don't trust him enough for him to take you there. And this is a hallmark of how you can know that 0:11:45 - 0:12:19 . What you're trying is never gonna work because it doesn't leave you filled. You're still hungry for more. What comes from God fills you. You're not hungry after that, you're satisfied everything less than that. We'll fall short of that in John six. Well, I'll give you the briefer one first in Matthew 0:12:19 - 0:12:47 five verse six. He said blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. If you're not filled, there's something wrong. One possibility is that you're not actually looking for righteousness, which means how God is. You're looking for something less. The problem 0:12:47 - 0:13:18 with something less is it doesn't endure, it doesn't give you what you're after God alone is sufficient. Everything else is insufficient. In John chapter six, Jesus is talking about the bread of life and he says, verily verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my father 0:13:17 - 0:13:41 gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. Then said, they unto Him, Lord Evermore, give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on 0:13:41 - 0:14:11 me shall never thirst. He said, I am the bread of life. He said, Moses gave your father's bread in the wilderness and they were still hungry. Even the manna from heaven was insufficient to satisfy you the way that I can. And he tells them how they can eat his flesh and drink their blood and be filled 0:14:10 - 0:14:52 . He taught them how to be like him like he is. And he said that he said, you have also seen me and believe, not to believe is so much more than to acknowledge someone's existence. It's to have sufficient desire and understanding, to seek to understand how God is and have the courage to live that way 0:14:51 - 0:15:24 and to trust Him and to believe Him to follow his example and not to be so desperate from day to day that you arbitrarily do things just to fill the hole inside of you that's caused by your longing for Him. And that's another secret what you're after when you do all of these things, it's either to hide 0:15:24 - 0:15:46 from Him because you want to squish down, minimize his voice because it shows you that there are some things about you that aren't quite right and they could be better and you don't like that because you don't wanna be better or, and I think for most people who are gonna watch this, this is gonna come 0:15:46 - 0:16:19 to you as a surprise. The reason you do these things is because you are hungering and thirsting for God. It's not the stuff or the the activities that you feel like you're tempted towards. You have a deep hunger and thirst for what exceeds the intensity and the energy and the joy that normal life seems 0:16:19 - 0:16:50 to offer you thirst and hunger for more. But those things are only found in and through God, not these fake seeming shortcuts, these counterfeits to the real thing. And you know, they are counterfeits. You know that because you go after them and you still hunger and thirst. It doesn't solve the problem 0:16:50 - 0:17:20 at best. All it does is kick the can down the road. And so I ask you what Isaiah asked so long ago in chapter 55 wherefore do you, do ye spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies, not hearken diligently unto me and ee that which is good and let your soul delight 0:17:19 - 0:17:56 itself in fatness. Ho every one that thirst cometh. Come ye to the waters and he that hath no money. Come, ye buy and eat. Yeah. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price, incline your ear and come unto me here and your soul shall live. Go to the only one that has what you seek God and you 0:17:56 - 0:00:00 say. Yeah. But where is he right now? What do I do right now to have that filled right now? It's a path. It's not available here and now, but that doesn't make purported alternatives better. They're fake. They don't give it to you. Now either earlier, I read Hebrews 12 verse one. Go read Hebrews 11. 0:00:00 - 0:19:03 See what that's all about. Faith is a process. It's not something where you push a button and you immediately get what you're looking for. It's a tool that God gives us to obtain things that require a process. It's sufficient reason to engage the process because otherwise all you do is push buttons and 0:19:03 - 0:19:33 get what can be gotten by pushing buttons. And that's a lot of what sin is. Have you ever been tempted to do a sin that would take like 12 years to pay off? Why do you suppose that is only reasons? Only reasons can motivate you to go the distance on something. So if the path is long, it's not gonna be 0:19:32 - 0:00:00 something that you can be tricked into. You have to have reasons. Those reasons might not be perfect and there might be a better path, but you'll have reasons or else you're not gonna go down that road. Now, I told you that what you're really after is more of God and that's not an easy thing to get. 0:00:00 - 0:20:23 It's worth it, but it's not easy. So let's come back to this in Hebrews 12. I'll reread one and I'll keep going for a couple more verses. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us 0:20:23 - 0:20:52 run with patience. The race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. I'll pause here. So what is the target? Well, it's, it's 0:20:52 - 0:21:18 a question of who not what it's Jesus. He's the author and the finisher of our faith. He's the beginning of our faith and he is the end. He is what, what stimulates it in the first place, the source of our desire. And the only thing that will fulfill our desire, the path in between is what it's all about 0:21:18 - 0:21:46 . What's that path like he showed us, look at his life. He had a reason, the joy he looked forward to which we read in another place in Isaiah. Um It talks about how when he sees his seed that he will feel satisfied in his toil, in his suffering for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross 0:21:46 - 0:22:10 and all of these things he went through, he was looking ahead to what that would enable for us. Paul continues consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. In other words, his life was so far opposite of what he was doing it for 0:22:10 - 0:22:31 that. That was a greater trial for him than any like thing can be for you. It doesn't matter how far off it seems how brutal it might seem to get there. How unlikely it might seem. He was literally surrounded by people that were the epitome of the opposite of the kinds of people he had hoped to do this 0:22:31 - 0:22:54 for or that would be worth doing this for better said, while we were yet sinners, he loved us. Verse four, you have not resisted unto blood. Striving against sin. That's a very important concept. You ought to be willing to die rather than to sin against God. And if you're not there yet, you don't yet 0:22:54 - 0:23:13 have sufficient desire for what it is you actually seek because it's not gonna be in some simple thing like you fire up some porn or you take a swig of alcohol or you smoke a joint or whatever your thing is that you don't want to do that. You do. It doesn't matter what it is. You're nasty to your spouse 0:23:13 - 0:23:43 , whatever it is, what you seek is not in that cheap thing. That cheap thing can't give you good things. So what's gonna motivate you to pay a higher price? You need to know what it's worth just how hard it is to get. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto Children. This 0:23:42 - 0:24:09 is the part that we need to highlight that all of these experiences are to teach you, to teach you what to teach you what actually provides what you seek and to teach you what its actual cost is no, that desire that you have. It's just sort of a free gift, but it can expand and deepen and it will, if 0:24:09 - 0:24:34 you really seek it, honestly, you're going to experience that and it will enable you and empower you to travel paths that are much harder than you're willing to right now. Much longer, much less likely seeming because it's not right there in your face. And that's the way that's the demonstration of Jesus 0:24:34 - 0:25:01 . My son despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint or quit. When thou art rebuked of him, when he shows you that the through your reasoning that these things cannot give you what you seek because you do them and you don't get it. How do you respond? Do you faint? Do you quit? Do you say I'm just 0:25:01 - 0:25:30 gonna keep doing it or do you keep searching with renewed desire with even greater effort, with even broader willingness to do things that you wouldn't have done otherwise for whom the Lord loveth, he chasten and scourge. Every son whom he receives. There is a path, there's a path. Now, do you have to 0:25:30 - 0:25:58 endure all the way to the total fulfillment? Jesus is the author and finisher of your faith. And I'm telling you, he's the only thing that can fulfill what you seek. So does that mean that what I'm telling you says you will, you will get nothing until the end. No, the entire path is punctuated with foretastes 0:25:57 - 0:26:25 of that glory. You'll see that as you go into it as you stop getting uh taken off the path by these stupid things that you know better about. How will you find those partial fulfillment in every way Jesus is in and through all things. But I'm going to give you a clue. It comes back to that cloud of witnesses 0:26:25 - 0:26:54 . This, there is no shortcut. This is as close as it gets when you know what the path is. You can more directly follow it. It's the cloud of Witnesses, Hebrews 11 is well known to be all about faith, but it's not just about faith. It starts by saying faith is the substance of things hoped for and the 0:26:54 - 0:27:26 evidence of things not seen, which could be said a lot better. What's line two for by it, the elders obtained a good report or they became good demonstrations of how Jesus is. The entire chapter is about people who through faith became much more like Jesus than they otherwise would have been. The cloud 0:27:25 - 0:27:53 of witnesses is people more like Jesus than you. That's the concentrated cloud he's in and through all things but not evenly. If you met Noah as a man, you'd have a much greater example of what Jesus is like than in 7 billion other people and all the creations and situations in life. Besides, you know 0:27:53 - 0:28:25 , you can learn an awful lot about how God is through becoming a parent. You can learn even more about how God is. If you met Jesus as a man or Moses or Noah, or Elijah or Abraham, what am I? What am I telling you? That call to sin is a call to God not sin. Satan's interrupting the message to hijack 0:28:24 - 0:28:52 it and you're letting him even though you're way too smart for that. That call is a line with segments that go from dot to dot And the dots of people and they are people more like God than you. If you want to correctly interpret the call, you need to understand that it's going to draw you to people who 0:28:52 - 0:29:20 know something about God that you don't, who are more like him than you are. That is the only partial fulfillment of those desires until you get to the end. I hope that this is powerful for you. I hope it makes sense. I hope it's a launching point for your own studies and prayers on this. Uh I was gonna 0:29:19 - 0:29:45 end here, but the Lord says, give them an example. Ok. Here you go. What are you actually seeking with porn? There are going to be particulars that are different for, for everyone. What you're actually seeking is a more intense version of the feeling that you would get if you had closer association with 0:29:44 - 0:00:00 God himself, that might really make your mind explode. Because you think that what you're after with this is either a really specific material that you're looking at or some, some base carnal thing, desire that you're trying to fulfill some sort of biological, mechanical thing. It's not true at all. 0:00:00 - 0:30:39 I, I, if that were what you were after you'd do it in different ways, but what you're actually after is you're, you're, you're searching for a richer connection with God, a richer exchange with what's deeper, what's more meaningful in life in an ideal sense? Is there any midpoint between being in the 0:30:39 - 0:31:09 presence of God and being here here? Now, as you are in normal life, there is, it's called a righteous spouse. A righteous spouse will bring you closer to that than anything else can in this life short of an actual experience with God himself. Is that experience with pornography? Is it anything like 0:31:09 - 0:31:34 the real thing? It's not, it can't be, it can't be, it can't contain that. It can't support it. And the second you start down that road, you know that it's so obvious, but you turn off all the sensors and you just pretend it's not there. You just ignore that information and what happens. You come out 0:31:34 - 0:31:55 of it. You know, you're depressed, you're despondent, you're, you're disappointed, whatever you feel empty, you're worse than you were before. So why keep doing it? Even, even if you don't believe what I'm telling you. And even before when you didn't know these things, you'd never heard it from anyone 0:31:55 - 0:32:26 , why do it again, if you know, it doesn't work. It's like I said, it's because you're scared. You don't believe God, you don't believe He's nearly as good as those of us who met him know who we've experienced this. If you had the slightest clue of how good He is. I thank God that you don't yet. I thank 0:32:25 - 0:32:53 God that you have no clue how good He is because everything you see is valuable in life. The meaning of it would just evaporate like dew in the hottest noon sun and you'd be miserable here without the tools you need to do what you need to do here while you're here in the first place. And so in some ways 0:32:52 - 0:33:19 , it's a great gift, but you have to be honest about what's really going on and you already know so much that you're not living up to. So just be honest. And if even if you don't believe anything I'm saying, at least believe what you already know and stop doing what you know, can't do the reasons, can't 0:33:19 - 0:33:38 provide the reasons you're doing it for the objectives you seek in doing it. You know, it can't provide that. So stop doing it. If, if all you can do is leave that empty, then that's what you should do and you'll be that much more prepared when God gives you something to put in it.