The Danger Of Addictions - Zac Poonen

when God made man Genesis chapter 2 we read that he made him on the same day as the animals you heard me say that before God could have made the animals on the fifth day and man on the sixth day to show that man is in a different category from the animals but he did make the fish and the birds on the fifth day but he didn't make the animals on the earth why didn't he do that I mean we talked of animal kingdom as birds fish and all the living creatures on the earth but God split them up a fish in the birds separate and on the sixth day the first part of the day he made the animals from the same dust that he made man except that he didn't form the shape of the animals he just said let there be animals but when it came to man he shaped him and the internal organs of animals are very similar to the internal organs of man man is very different from the birds in the fish but very similar in his body structure to animals and then God breathed into man you know and he suddenly became a living soul he got a spirit as a result of that God breathing which made him have a conscience that was the image of God there that made him aware that he's a moral creature Unser Baloo his creator but he had this body as well so the reason why God made man as I understand it the same day as the animals was to tell him one thing and to tell all of us one thing you are going to face a downward pull because you're made of the same dust as the animals to the things of Earth but you're going to be different from the animals in the sensit I breathe into you and you have an upward pull and if you are born again then you remember Jesus breathed upon his disciples in John chapter 20 after the resurrection and gave them the holy spirit so we've got something more of an upward pull and all of us face this upward pull in the downward pull all the time the Bible calls it the spirit and the flesh struggling and what man and the Lord was saying the man is if you keep yielding to the downward pull one day you'll be like the animals that's why I created both of you on the same day and you can make a choice either to descend to the level of the animals by keeping on responding to the pulls of the dust part of you or you can rise up to the heavenlies by responding to that other pull I put within you you may ask why didn't God just remove this downward pull well then we would have been like the planets who obeyed God automatically like these robots you know you can make a robot God could have made Adam a robot in the sense that he had flesh and blood and bones just like us but exactly like a human being but inwardly programmed like a robot who would just automatically do what God says just like the planets the planets cannot be sinners and the planets cannot be holy and if God had made Adam like that Adam could never have been a son of God just like a planet cannot be a son of God a dog cannot be a son of God because even though your choice it doesn't have a conscience so you need two things to become a child of God or a sinner a dog cannot be a sinner because even though it is choice doesn't have conscience planets don't have choice or conscience dogs are a little better they got choice but no conscience man is choice bliss conscience that means you can choose and your conscience tells you which to choose but you can disobey it so that's the thing that makes you a sinner or a saint so that's how God made Adam and you know the story how when he went into the garden Adam and Eve let's look at them together they both responded in the same way to the temptation and it's very interesting to see that the first temptation that Adam and Eve faced was related to the body and the mind remember that and you'll see later on that the first temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness was also related to the body and the mind the addiction of the body and the addiction of the mind to something God has forbidden turn to Genesis chapter 3 we read there when the devil suggested to Eve you know has God really said that's how he starts you know that's how he comes to us also is there any verse in the Bible which says you can't do this what's wrong with this why don't you try it out there's not really any particular verse that says you can't smoke or drink or try out drugs or watch movies or have a television or that no verse is about many things but remember this the devil starts like that has God really said his God really said Genesis 3:1 and whenever you find yourself looking in scripture not to become holy but to commit sin you know that's not the Holy Spirit leading you to scripture but the devil you know you say well there's no verse that says I can't do that or you argue about a verse that is in Scripture saying now I doesn't really mean that once you begin to twist God's Word to suit your lusts you're on the downward slope immediately it's just a matter of time before you reach the bottom of the pit even if you call yourself a believer or a CFC believer or anything baptized or whatever it is once you begin to go to the Bible to find an excuse for your sin you have already started going down remember that don't look in the scriptures to find comfort for your sin there are preachers who fall into adultery and then where do they can find the comfort in David in other words they go to scripture to find a comfort saying well David commit adultery and you still remain King so I fell into adultery and I can still be a preacher or an elder well what's he going to the Bible for not to learn how to repent but learn to learn our unifies sin it's okay I can still come back to a ministry or be a king or something like that so it's very serious when you go to the scripture to find justification for your sin God did not give us the Bible to help us to find comfort in our sin but to make us holy so that's one of the first things you got to remember and then he did and then he tries all types of arguments you know God knows that if it's like this he appeals to her reason God knows verse 5 we need your eyes will be open etc etc that's the other thing ought to bear in mind when you start using your reason to justify the wrong that your conscience tells you is wrong you know your conscience tells you one thing that's wrong but your reason says but you know this this this this this and finally you justify it and go by your reason ok then we come to verse 6 what did the woman see in the tree and we can say Adam also saw the same thing first of all it was good for food bodily desire whether it's food to eat or sexual desire or you know there are desires God has placed in our body like for food or sex or sleep rest these are all legitimate desires in their proper place well it's alright to eat food if I'm not stealing it's all right to have sex if I'm married it's alright to sleep if I'm not sleeping at work so these are legitimate desires but which can be misused you can be sleeping when you should be away or you may be eating too much or you may be indulging in sex outside of God's plan good for food that's bodily desire and a delight to the eyes you know sin looking at something which pleases my eyes even though my conscience tells me all the time that's wrong that's wrong if he had only stopped looking at it she wouldn't have sinned if David had just turned his eyes away from Bathsheba as soon as he saw her he wouldn't have sinned it's because he continued staring and her body that she's that he sinned and then there was an appeal to the mind the tree verse six was something desirable to make you wise the desire to be intellectually superior to be cleverer and to show myself cleverer and smarter and etc to make me wise now if only the devil had also told her listen I want to tell you them how this is all going to end you really enjoy it when you eat it boy the taste of it the appearance of it and everything but you won't see any result immediately except that you'll suddenly discover your nakedness you'll be a bit afraid of God and you'll start hiding yourself from your husband a distance will come between you and your husband immediately and then later on a few years later you'll have children and your first child will turn out to be a murderer who will kill your second child and then we'll be sicknesses and problems and you're going to live 900 years havin a miserable life with your husband and your children and then all your children are gonna have miserable lives go on and on and on and on now go ahead and eat this fruit you think she'd have eaten it never well what you see there is the devil doesn't tell you where this type of tasting something is going to end he just tells you the pleasure you'll get from it immediately but in all the pleasures in the world whether it's a pleasure of eating or sexual pleasure or fantasies I think women also can have fantasies in the sexual realm or in relation to some boy or something like that and men it's much stronger with pornography and things like that there is a law that God has placed in this area even in the matter of eating food I call it the law of diminishing returns diminishing means decreasing the law of diminishing returns which means I take any area you take a peck of whiskey and after a while one peg will not do one pick satisfied you a lot at the beginning but after a while it doesn't give you as much thrill as the first time you need two pegs then after a while even two pegs doesn't give you the thrill you need three it's called the law of diminishing returns it's the same area with food you find something tasty and food and you're not satisfied of that little you want more and more and more till you become a glutton the law of diminishing returns is the area of sex you indulge in sex and you get a certain pleasure out of it it may begin with pornographic books pornographic images on a computer screen but then you're not satisfied you want more and each time you see he doesn't satisfy you as much as the first time it was a thrill the second dime is not so much you want some more and then gradually you want more and more and you want to get physical with an actual woman or a man and then here's here's where it goes finally you get so you can get so fed up that if you really get perverted you can go to have sex with someone of your own gender men with men and women with women and then you can get still more perverted where you can go and have it with animals it's a decreasing return where you get more and more perverted over it it doesn't happen in one day but that's the direction you're going you may say no I'll stop well before that you think so addiction of anything whether it's food sex internet pornography anything it gets it tightens it grip over you every time you indulge in it you don't realize it's one more chain one more chain it's just closing its grip over you and a time can come and it's almost impossible to be free whatever it is drugs anything and it's a foolish person who allows somebody to time you and allow you won't allow a robber to tie you up I saw cartoon once it's a pretty hilarious cartoon of a robber tying up a man with a rope around a chair and the man's you know in the first knot the man is putting his thumb there so that he can hold it tight for the robber to put the second knot guys crazy I like to show that picture to people who allow the devil to tie them up and they're putting the thumb over that first knot to hold it tight so it's not loose for them to tie for the devil to tie the second knot it's like that as some of you may be doing it and it doesn't matter whether you do it in secret I always say if a farmer goes out in the middle of the night when nobody's watching and so some bad seed in his ground and says boy nobody saw me so what what type of crop is he going to get this because nobody saw him when the harvest comes he's going to get exactly what he sowed the Bible says a man will reap what he is sown and everybody reaps what they have sown the thing is when we are sowing the devil hides from us the harvest time and I tell you you know you saw one seed you get a hundred seeds in return whether it's good or bad that depends on you you choose what you saw the Bible says in Galatians 6 God can't be fooled don't think you can fool God and you saw whatever you like and you won't read you will reap exactly the same thing I mean even if you're forgiven I'll tell you something even if you're forgiven there is a reaping that you may never get rid of no punishment but the reaping of certain consequences I'll give you an example of it here is a person who say kept his mind pure then he started indulging in pornography at a young age and he indulges indulges indulges indulges indulges indulges and dodges for many many years and finally he decides to turn around and give his life to the Lord or get married or okay for the next 50 years he's going to be plagued with dirty dreams with the unhappy married sexual life with his wife he's forgiven he's a child of God he's really finished with pornography doesn't see it anymore but he's destroyed himself is he forgiven yes will he go to heaven yes but his whole life on Earth is miserable for 50 years his married life is unhappy a sexual relationship with his wife is not satisfying because he indulged indulged indulged indulged in doubts in touch forgetting the devil was just dying him around tying him around tying around making him a fool of himself and like an idiot in a fool he just went headlong after the devil when Jesus was always waiting there say hey come along this way you wouldn't listen some of you are going that way it's obvious from your faces I can't stop you Almighty God will not stop you because if he stops you he'll make your robot where you automatically obey Him like the planets and he doesn't want that God doesn't even stop people from going to hell now tell all of you God will not stop you from going to hell he will not if you keep on indulging jesus said that if you don't take radical steps to pull out your eye and cut off your hand clip metaphorically speaking you will end up in hell those are the words of Jesus even if you sat in CFC for twenty thirty years so please take it seriously nobody spoke about Hell in relation to sexual sin as much as Jesus and he was the one who died for our sins he's the one who knew how serious it is and nobody tells us oh it's okay you'll be all right as the devil so you have a choice as to which voice you're going to hear I've decided to hear the voice of Jesus I know it's gone well with me it's not that I lived a perfect life but there was a day in my life when I decided Christ is going to have everything there is of me and it was a battle you know it's like learning how to swim the early days in the swimming pool it's a struggle it's a struggle it's a struggle you wonder whether you'll drown but then you see how people swim so effortlessly after a while they enjoy it so it is the Christian life really becomes enjoyable after a while I can tell you that from my own life but in the beginning it's a struggle and if you're afraid of going through that struggle it's like a person who just doesn't want to struggle the early part of learning swimming or learning typewriting or anything you're just not going to learn it you got to struggle in the beginning look at these people who type so fast you think they learned that the first day no they may it has so many blunders in their typing the first day but look at them how fast they type see boy how in the world do they do it they enjoyed so much so I want to encourage you when you're young to develop some good habits and be very careful about the things which the devil says that appeal to your body and appeal to your mind appeal to your reason think about where it's what you're going to reap the harvest you're going to reap finally whatever thing it is we read about Esau in Hebrews chapter 12 that it says we're given a warning in Hebrews 12 and verse 15 see to it that no one comes short of the grace of God now do you know that he's writing to believers he's not writing to a bunch of unconverted people saying don't come short of the grace of God he's telling believers you guys have been forgiven you guys are in a good church but now make sure that you don't come short miss out on what the grace of God has for you example don't be an immoral godless person like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal the birthright was a spiritual blessing the food which his brother Jacob offered him was something physical that satisfied his need right now and Jacob his brother was a shrewd man ie saw came tired from hunting and Jacob had made this wonderful it says it's a lentil soup it was dal curry I can't imagine a man selling his spiritual birthright for dal curry would any of you do that I mean it's just as stupid to sell your birthright for pornography I'll tell you it's as stupid as selling your spiritual birthright for some doll I mean it was ice cream at least something but da I didn't that it's as stupid to be addicted to something under certain to sell your birthright that he said give me that and I'll give you my birthright birthright was in the future it was spiritual the food was what satisfied my need right now and he thought I'll make a fool of this Jacob I'll get this now and I'll get my birthright also later isn't that what some of you are thinking that yeah I'll indulge myself in these little sins always you remember the thief on the cross we got forgiveness in the last moment you know the thief on the cross would not have got forgiven at the last moment if he had kept on rejecting it earlier on from the time he was 16 17 18 19 by the time he hung on the cross spend so much turned off that his conscience would have been worn out that he would not have been able to respond you're not in that category that was probably the first time he really was aware of how serious he was sin that there's no question of last-minute repentance for people who keep on rejecting it Nats written here you know verse 17 Hebrews 12 that afterwards when Esau desired to inherit the blessing he was rejected because he could not repent is it possible that a person can come to the place where he cannot repent you think you can repent anytime you like you cannot you can for a while I feel it's like this every time you sin keep on sinning you like it approaching a red line that God is drawn in front of you you haven't reached there yet you can still repent you still repent you still have been you keep on indulging in that addiction which you know God is hates and the very thing Jesus died for remember is to save you from pornography and drunkenness and filthy movies and everything else that Jesus died and fooling around with the opposite sex and you neglected yeah so what if he died I want to enjoy myself enjoy myself every time you do that you're rejecting the cross of Christ even though you sit like a holy person in CFC and you're approaching a red line and one day you'll cross it and when you cross it even if you want to repent you will not be able to repent it'll happen it's happened to people I know one or two people I've seen like this in my life there was absolutely no possibility if I talked to them about the Lord in law I was amazed the guy was a Christian but he would laugh when he sort of commits adultery and come home this is in the naval days I remember and I would speak to him and he just laughed it off the guy had crossed the line I couldn't do everything for him I'll never forget that well I don't know about his past life but he's probably gone on and on and on and on and on till his conscience start bothering him I'm teasing how little children and they tell a lie they're immediately convicted but time goes on and on and on on and not even bothered and they tell lies so remember that afterwards even though he cried and with tears he could not repent let me show you one more verse ezekiel chapter 16 it speaks about the sin of sodom Sodom was addicted to sexual sin we read that in Sodom they would even indulge in sex with the same gender men with men and when Sodom has sort of come to symbolize that type of sin any sex outside of marriage is sin even men with women is sin if it's outside of marriage and men with men is always sin is Ezekiel 16 it says here in verse 49 this was the guilt of your sister Sodom what was it is not the sexual sin was because of what pride to much food laziness and lack of compassion for other needy people how did they go into such terrible addiction of anything one pride I want to tell you this every addict whether it's addiction to drugs pornography sex food is always first of all due to your pride that means when your pride when your proud God withdraws his grace from you you don't get grace to overcome sin even though you want to so first humble yourself if you want to get grace and the power of the Holy Spirit second is plenty of food you can overcome many addictions if you learn too fast once in a while and it's not such a big thing I remember I used to fast when I was 21 years old sometimes for two days because I said Lord I want to overcome this desires in my body I would just drink some liquids some milk or something and not eat any solid foods while I was working on a ship because I said Lord I want to count for you have you ever tried that you ever tried fasting for a whole day and continuing with your work you won't die I'll tell you that you'll be healthier I feel so sad when I see young men and women getting fat it says you read in 1 Kings chapter 18 how Elisha when he went up to pray cool but could put his head between his knees the moment you can't put your head between your knees you know you're going the wrong direction I could do that for a long long time I think I can get pretty close even today put your head between your knees it's sad to see people who have no control over how much they eat that's how you get addicted to other things number 3 laziness laziness plenty of Lee and that's the problem a lot of young people today plenty of money plenty of money to waste in disciplined life laziness and there's a truth in the worldly proverb that an idle mind is the devil's workshop he works pretty hard in an idle mind keep yourself busy studying God's Word he peels out busy seeking fellowship with others keep yourself busy doing something for the Lord that's how I was saved from many things in my younger days and number 4 no care for others who are in need try serving others who are in need instead of selfishly thinking about yourself and you'll be saved from many addictions in your life I really believe that if you take these things seriously you'll find that God takes you seriously you play the fool with God you'll find God cannot be fooled I want to tell take you to encourage you to take these matters seriously I believe that many of us in who come along to CFC is a tremendous lack of discipline in today's young born-again believers in all these areas in the matter of humbling themselves in the matter of indisciplined eating in the matter of laziness in studying God's Word or using time profitably and in the matter of a compassion for others who are in need indulging themselves with all the money they get well that's how it ended up in sodam so make sure you don't end up there there's salvation for you today god bless you

Channel: CFC India

Views: 42,580

Rating: 4.8921833 out of 5

Keywords: zac poonen, cfc, Christian Fellowship Church, Church, Fellowship, Christian, Zac, Poonen, dangers

Id: bBoewZlO_jU

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 30 2014