Jim Van Gelderen: Third coinfection. This one’s bad: unbelief. Unbelief.

I’m going to have you turn to this passage because I want you to see it. Go to First Timothy chapter number one. I want you to look at verse number eighteen.

Let’s go to the back part of the verse. Verse number eighteen of First Timothy chapter number one. Now watch this.

This is fascinating. It says, “That thou by them mightest war a good warfare.” That’s what you want.

That’s the main verb there. “Holding faith”—that’s a participle—”in a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck.” That’s the conscience; the faith is what is shipwrecked.

So here’s the picture. God has given us a conscience. In fact, John chapter eight talks about the Holy Spirit convicting the conscience.

The Holy Spirit is the one who uses the conscience. Obviously, the conscience can be mistaught.

I’m not going to give a full lecture on the conscience, but here’s the point: when you and I push away our conscience, we shipwreck our faith. That’s why I said a moment ago that many of these young preacher boys who are compromising at thirty, who are buying into the progressive line, are doing so because they shipwrecked their faith.

Did you know that true Bible church living doesn’t make sense? It’s backwards. In other words, I want to ask you a question.

Just the gospel: if you were going to go to Madison Avenue, to an unsaved marketing firm, and say, “Help me come up with a good way to present the gospel,” do you know what that marketing firm would tell you? “Tone down hell and tone down sin.” And every one of us in this room would say, “You have no gospel if you do that.”

See, the gospel, the very presentation of the gospel, flies in the face of Madison Avenue. It flies in the face of marketing. You’re not supposed to work when you tell people they’re sinners going to hell.

That’s not supposed to work. But you have to understand that’s the way God is. He works opposite of the way the world thinks it should work.

It’s foolishness to the world, but it’s the power of God unto salvation for us who believe. We say, “Man, that’s not a very palatable message,” but the Holy Spirit took that thing, sliced me up one side and put me down the other. Before long I’m on my face, repenting and turning to Jesus to deliver me from the sin God was tearing me up about.

The point is that the gospel is completely counterintuitive. So that’s the way all ministry is.

If you, as a church, went to Madison Avenue, went to some great marketing firm, and said, “How can we reach our community?” they would give you an answer completely antithetical to the New Testament.

Their way is pragmatism. God’s way takes faith. If you’re a bold gospel proclaimer, you have learned, “I know it doesn’t make sense to tell people they’re going to hell and they’re sinners, but do it with compassion and love through the power of the Holy Spirit and they’ll get saved.”

You’ve learned that faith works. Pragmatism works too, but it doesn’t work spiritually. Pragmatic churches have huge churches, sure they do.

Are lives being transformed? Not so much. The world can get big crowds, but the world can’t transform lives.

So here’s my point: when somebody starts compromising in their own morals and pushes away their conscience—”I don’t need to do that. I don’t need to get with my pastor. I can get victory over that”—and pushes off the Holy Spirit and the conscience, do you know what they do?

They shipwreck their faith, which means they can’t believe God. And if you cannot believe God, you cannot be an independent Baptist fundamentalist.

You’ve got to move to the left. You’ve got to be pragmatic. If God’s not helping you, you’ve got to get something else to work.

I’ve seen guys who were raised in the right thinking, went to a good school, got the right philosophy, and then compromised. If I saw that, my first question would not be a debate about evangelical thinking versus fundamentalist thinking. My first question would be, “When’s the last time you looked at pornography?”

You see something that seems unrelated? It’s not unrelated at all. Something is shipwrecking their faith.

It may not be that issue, but something is shipwrecking their faith. If you’re a young man, you keep looking at that filth, pushing off the Holy Spirit, and not dealing with it biblically, one day you will compromise because you’ll have to.

Unbelief is one of the most tragic coinfections of moral impurity. You’ll one day be down at these loosey-goosey, come-as-you-are, leave-as-you-were, everything-goes churches at the edge of town, because you have to use pragmatism. That’s the significance of it.

Now, for time’s sake, let’s move on. I’m just trying to introduce a couple of others.

Number four coinfection: you lack discernment. It kind of goes along with unbelief. Here’s what the Bible says in Proverbs chapter six and verse thirty-two: “Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding.”

If you’re looking at pornography, do not be critical of this church. I am amazed sometimes to find out that a kid is being critical about something, and then you find out he’s looking at pornography. I’m thinking, “Why did you even open your mouth?”

The Bible says you lack understanding. As long as you’re looking at filth, you don’t have understanding.

Many times people hiding sin in their life are the most critical people. I sometimes tell our students, “Why are you listening to people who are not walking with God, who don’t have God’s hand on their life, and who don’t have spiritual thinking?” They have no credibility.

Learn to be discerning. Some of you guys are going into the ministry.

You have to learn to discern well, but you’ll never learn to discern while you’re compromising your conscience. While you’re involved in mental adultery, you will not have understanding.

Number five: you will not hate sin. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, arrogance, and the evil way. Proverbs chapter thirteen says that by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.

So if you’re not departing from evil, you don’t fear God. If you don’t fear God, you won’t hate sin.

One of the great tragedies, particularly for young preacher boys, is that they don’t have a fire about anything. They soften up because they don’t have a fire burning in the belly. I want to listen to a preacher who has some fire burning.

Sometimes they’ll say, “That young kid is a little out there, a little over the top.” At least the fire is burning. I’d rather have fire than no fire.

You can always tone down fire, but you can’t tone down no fire.

A few years ago, one of my daughters was in elementary school. I always told my daughters, “If a guy gets fresh with you and starts talking bad or dirty to you, you have my permission to hit him.”

My middle daughter was out on the playground. Some kid started getting fresh, and she warned him. Then she slapped him across the face and knocked him down.

She took her shoe, which happened to have a heel on it, and went right into his stomach. He went crying to his dad, and his dad found out what happened and said, “Served you right.” He found no sympathy on the deal.

You say, “Did you tell her she mishandled it?” She may have, but I’d rather have her mishandle it than not handle it at all.

By the way, if a girl in this room slaps a guy for being fresh with her, it wouldn’t bother me. You get a girl to slap you across the face, you better wake up. You have a problem.

The point is, there’s no hatred for sin today. We need some girls who are walls, as in the Song of Solomon, and not doors.

A wall communicates to the male population, “Buzz off, bud. I’m saving myself for one.” I like walls.

A door basically says, “I’m not really interested in saving everything for one.” Young ladies, are you a wall or a door?

We have lost our hatred for sin, even in our own movement. When you are in moral impurity, even if you’re defeated in your brain, it will dissipate your hatred for sin.

Last of all, it hurts relationships. What happens is, when a man has moral impurity in his life, he puts his hands up like this. He doesn’t want his wife to get too close because she might find out.

He doesn’t even want his kids to get too close. Some of the research my wife and I did said that when a man confesses pornography, particularly to his older children, he needs to confess it because many of those older children blame themselves for not being close to their dad when it has nothing to do with them.

When the father confesses, he’s saying, “You’ve probably wondered why there’s a distance between me and you. It’s not your fault. It was mine.”

When a man is in moral impurity, he puts his hands up. He does not want anybody to find out. It hurts his marriage and it hurts his parenting.

The Bible says that if you’re filled with the Spirit, you’ll submit yourselves one to another. Then the rest of that chapter talks about husbands loving wives, wives submitting to husbands, and children obeying parents. All of that doesn’t work when you have a man who’s not walking with the Spirit of God.

He’s not willing to submit to his God-given roles, and it causes problems in the whole mix.

Relationships get hurt. For you young men, some of you looking at filth have a wall between you and your dad, don’t you? Some of you dads wonder what in the world is going on: “Why can’t I get close to my son?”

That’s why you need to go to your dad and confess it. Get a relationship going there. Hidden sin—any hidden sin—always hurts relationships, because we’re more concerned about not being found out than we are about establishing God-given relationships according to the will of God.

I think we’re right here at the time. Confessions for moral impurity: just some food for thought. Hopefully this will help you.

And counseling, if that’s your role, may hopefully be a help to someone in the room who is struggling with some of these. Let me urge you: if there’s an issue in your life, make it known. Get it to your pastor and say, “I need help.”

There are things that help. There are people who are seeing sustained victory. You don’t have to live that way the rest of your life.