Over the last few weeks, Paul has been making a case about mortification, or killing our sin. Now, in verse 5, he is going to mention specific sins that need to be killed.

• Like an

plant, these things are introduced in subtle ways, yet they can quickly become a life-destroying force in a person’s life.
• Our

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concern is understanding how to kill these invasive weeds in our life. If we want to understand how to kill these sins, we must understand what they are.

Why these sins?

• We don’t know why Paul mentioned these specific sins, but it is reasonable to deduce that they had something to do with the Greco-Roman world and the city of Colossae.
• In his book, A Fellowship of Differents, Dr. Scot McKnight describes an eye-opening walk he once took down the Roman roads of ancient Pompeii. The volcano that erupted there in 79 A.D. preserved a vivid snapshot of Roman culture in the century when the church was born. “It is not an exaggeration to say the city was swamped with erotic images,” writes McKnight. Explicit pornography was everywhere. “The sexual reality across the Empire, of which Pompeii was a typical example, was a total lack of sexual inhibition.”
• A Grecian citizen named Demosthenes is quoted as saying, “We keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for daily concubinage, but wives we have in order to produce children legitimately and to have a trustworthy guardian of our domestic property.”

Paul called Christians in Colossae to put to death “sexual immorality.”

• Do you recognize the Greek word for sexual immorality: porneia.
• Porneia as used in the Scriptures describes any illicit sexual activity

of the divine bounds established by marriage and thus includes the ideas of unlawful sexual intercourse, unchastity and fornication.
• Porneia includes (but is not limited to) adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and prostitution. As an aside, porneia refers primarily to sins of the

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, but those sins can never be divorced from the sins of the mind or heart, because all sin is related. Sin in one area always makes us more susceptible to sin in other areas.
• The Gospel of Jesus Christ turned the world of sexual

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upside down. Christianity brought chastity, a which was completely foreign to the Greco-Roman world. Into this world of pagan idolatry where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but regarded as normal, the Christian faith came as a purifying fire.

The Raging Fire of the Sexual Revolution

• In our culture, the “fire” that has been burning is the fire of the sexual

, which was an attempt to loosen culture from the norms of the Christian sexual ethic.
• Cultural

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does not come through laws, it comes as ideas have champions and artifacts.
• What has been the impact of the sexual revolution?

// Increased sexualization of all humans as well as the separation of sex from any kind of objective morality.
// There are around 42 million porn websites, which totals around 370 million pages of porn.
// The porn industry’s annual revenue is more than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. It is also more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC.
// It’s not just a male problem >> 33% of women aged 25 and under search for porn at least once per month. Only 13% of self-identified Christian women say they never watch porn—87% of Christian women have watched porn.
// A shocking 2020 poll claims that 30% of American women under 25 identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender.
// Children are being formed by porn >> 11 is the average age that a child is first exposed to porn, and 94% of children will see porn by the age of 14.
// The National Center on Sexual Exploitation discovered that 1 in 8 (12%) of video titles on the largest mainstream porn websites in the UK describe activities that constitute sexual violence. Pornography usage has been linked to an exponential rise in divorce rates, violence against women, sexual activity among teens and unplanned pregnancies.
// In fact, a case can be made that one of the factors (there are many) leading to mass shootings perpetrated by young men over the past decade is active use of pornography while being physically rejected by actual women. This movement, called the Incel, or involuntarily celibate movement, links most of the perpetrators of mass gun violence.
// Therefore, since 2016, 17 states have introduced nonbinding resolutions declaring pornography to be a public health crisis.
// Not just a problem outside of the church >> 68% of church-going men and over 50% of pastors view porn on a regular basis. Of young Christian adults 18-24 years old, 76% actively search for porn.

Killing the Root of Desire for Porneia

• The

is the starting point >> Romans 1:16 | For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
• Killing the sin of porneia begins with the heart’s trajectory. Who is in

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? >> Matthew 5:27-30 | “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
• How do we fight the battle of the

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or attention? >> 2 Corinthians 10:5 | We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
• Jesus calls us to radically deal with the

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.

1. Deal with the external triggers: Be willing to get rid of the smartphone, cut the cable, drive another route, go to another gas station.
2. But the external boundaries are meaningless and insufficient without dealing with the internal desire. How do I kill a desire? You can’t. You must replace it will another desire. In Christ, the replacement desires is ALWAYS a better, more satisfying desire that will lead you to a deeper delight.
3. The desire for fulfilled sexual desire is a desire for pleasure, for relationship, for covenant security.
4. Commitment to community is the path to victory. Isolation is a guarantee of defeat.

We cannot immediately fix the culture’s porn problem apart from…

• Cultural change will come as Christians embrace the call to mortify sexual immorality in

.
• We can live free from sexual immorality, preach a message of human dignity, and create community within the church that will be a lighthouse and a

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for those who have been abused, broken, objectified, victimized, and exploited by the bad ideas of the sexual revolution.