Video Transcript: Ten Words of Counsel for Single People

John Piper - Now I close with 10 words of counsel that I want to give to persons who are not married, but who have to deal with sexual desires, and many of these are helpful also I find still in married life as well. Some of them have a very masculine orientation. I can't help that I know that temptation better than I know the female temptation. Some of them are do's and some of them are don'ts. But I intend all of them to be positive in the sense that they are all intended to preserve your freedom from any enslavement but one, slavery to God number One, do not seek regular sexual gratification through masturbation. It is a tragedy that I never heard that word in church, and I can only remember hearing it once in four years of college, from every day going to chapel one time, my father mentioned it to me, What in the world is wrong. How was I supposed to do anything right? How are they supposed to know masturbation is self stimulation to orgasm or climax, and the reason I say don't use it is because it, number one, will not solve the problem. In the long run, it does not receive the pleasure, relieve the pleasure and the pressure very long. Number two, it becomes habitual. Number three, it produces guilt. Then, more importantly, the last two arguments, it contradicts the God given design for sexuality, our bodies and our desires are designed for fulfillment through personal union and self stimulation, contradicts that purpose and inevitably produces a sense of wrongness. But perhaps most importantly of all, masturbation is inevitably accompanied by sexual fantasies which we would not allow ourselves in reality, and therefore we start to become like the Pharisees well scrubbed on the outside and inside, full of perversions. Therefore, number one, do not seek relief and satisfaction for your sexual desires through masturbation. Second. Do not seek sexual gratification through touching and being touched by another person, even if you keep it short of sexual intercourse, I'm speaking to unmarried people. Everyone knows that intimate touching is the prelude to and preparation for sexual intercourse. You stop it, you'll be frustrated to death and wind up in masturbation. Therefore it belongs in marriage. Now where that permanent commitment of marriage is missing, caressing and touching tends to become manipulation of another person for a cheap, personal, private, physical thrill, and therefore contradicts the law of love. It turns the other person's body into a masturbation device. It is not the way God intended it to be used God made us in such a way that if we try to turn that moment of touching into a spiritual, emotional, personal moment of union, our hearts are going to cry out for permanence, for promises of faithfulness. Our hearts say in that moment, you may touch me because you have promised never to leave me or forsake me. You may have me because you are me. We are so made that we cry out for permanence when giving away our most precious gifts, and you all have sensed that, and therefore that kind of touching belongs in marriage. Third, avoid unnecessary sexual stimulation. It doesn't take any. Brains to know that there are enough X rated movie houses and adult bookstores in this city to keep a person livid. 24 hours a day to visit those crummy places is temptation enough. But the real test, the real test comes with what you do with the legitimate sources of sexual stimulation? What do you do with the PG movies? What do you do with Time Magazine? What do you do with the newspaper and television and the drugstore counters and the rock music lyrics. That's where the test comes. Most of us Christians would not go down Hennepin Avenue to the wrong places, but Oh, way we will go, what we will listen to, what we will allow our eyes to dwell upon. This is the great test of whether we are free or whether we are enslaved to the slave master of our bodily passions to keep on looking and keep on listening and keep on doing it. Fourth, when the stimulation comes and the sexual desire rises, perform a very conscious act of transfer onto Christ. I wish somebody had told me about this and shown me this years ago. I discovered this after I was married. You're riding down the street and a billboard or a marquee sows the seed of sexual desire, and sexual desire for sexual gratification in your mind, it moves through your body. What do you do take is what this is, what I find very helpful. Still, you take that desire and you very consciously do something like this. You say, Jesus, it's there now. And I acknowledge that you are my Lord and my God. My greatest desire in all the world. Is to love you, obey you, delight in you. And therefore, Lord, I take this desire that has been sown in my body, and I take it away from your competitor, I purge it, and I give it to you, and now I desire you with that desire, and I thank you for liberating me from the bondage of sin. It is remarkable of how much power we can gain over the direction of our desires if we go on to number five, namely, pray, pray that God will give you in ever increasing strength that love to him, that desire to know Him and obey Him. Above all else, I read a sermon by Thomas Chalmers, an old Scottish preacher once entitled The expulsive power of a new affection. The title is just stuck because it's so good. The most effective way to get rid of a desire that you don't want but you have is to recognize that it's there, admit it and push it out with a new one. You can't get rid of it, really any other way, not effectively. Remember Jesus talked about getting the heart clean of one devil, you sweep it nice and clean it stays empty and Whew. Seven more come back. So it is with sexual desires you must replace them with something new, a new affection. And prayer is the summoning of divine assistance to produce those new desires in our hearts. Sixth, bathe your mind in the Word of God. Every day, Jesus prayed for his disciples, Sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. Truth sanctifies. There is nothing that renews the mind and the heart and enables it to assess things the way God assesses them, than regular meditation on the revelation of God in the Bible, the person who does not take up the sword of the Spirit is going to lose in the battle for his body. Seven, Keep yourselves busy. Very simple advice, Keep yourselves busy. And when there is need for leisure, seek your leisure in things that are to quote Paul, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, worthy of praise. Idleness in a society like ours is asking for trouble. It is much harder for sexual temptation to get a foothold in our lives when we are busy. Very easy for it to get a foothold when we are dawdling, letting our minds run to and fro. And if you need a break for fresh air, take a walk in the park, not down Hennepin Avenue. Eight, don't spend too much time alone. Not an easy word for some singles, don't spend too much time alone. We've got to help you in the church with this. We're not doing a very good job of it, and we will do better. You must spend time with Christian people. Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, not just here on Sunday morning. That text doesn't mean that don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together, many times, in all kinds of situations, in little groups, twos, threes, fours, dozens get together, encourage one another, stir each other up to love and good works. Talk about your struggles with trusted friends, not everybody, but trusted friends, pray for each other, hold each other accountable for purity. Nine This is something I've learned more recently too, probably since seminary, strive to think of all people, especially people of the opposite sex. If there's a problem in view of eternity, it is not easy to fantasize, sexually fantasize about a person. If you think about the eternal torment that that person may shortly suffer in hell due to their unbelief, it is not easy. You know yourselves. You had to bracket rule out those thoughts. Jesus, stay out for these few minutes, because you'll ruin everything to get in here with those kinds of thoughts. It ought not to be, so Paul said in II Corinthians 5:16, from now on, we know nobody according to the flesh. That means we know everybody, from God's perspective, that will clean up your mind in a hurry, that will put a big, strong fence, especially you guys, about abusing the females among whom you function. It will not allow you to depersonalize them and treat them in your minds in ways you never treat them in person. And finally, number 10, resolve to seek the kingdom first and all these things, all the sex that you need will be added to you. That may be a spouse, it may not be, it may be the grace and the freedom to be single in purity and joy and contentment that's up to God, ours is to seek the kingdom first, which means, in other words, our all consuming passion in life must be to glorify God in our bodies by keeping ourselves free from every enslavement but one, the joyful, fulfilling slavery to God.