[1 John Series 8] The Pull Of Materialism And PridePrimjer

The Lust of the Eyes

Some of the things out there are great things, but they need to be lived and appreciated through God’s perspective. Sleep is a great gift of God, but laziness will wreck your life. Sex is a gift from God in the intimacy of marriage to bring a husband and wife together and express their love for one another, but pornography is destructive. God blesses us with opportunities, experiences, relationships, and even material things. But just devouring stuff, and needing bigger and better every moment, is a problem that takes us far from Him.

The lust of the eyes is a big deal. The Bible tells us that some fateful day when King David should have been off at war, he saw Bathsheba bathing on the rooftop. God’s will for his life was to be at the front with his army. He didn’t go, so he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What happened from then on? He committed adultery and murder. What we see affects what we do. What goes into our eyes is crucial for what comes out of our lives. What are we taking in? 

Jesus said that our eyes are the lamps of our body. If our eyes are good, our whole body will be full of light. But if our eye is bad, our whole body will be full of darkness. Therefore, what we put before our eyes is crucial. It affects us.

In the taking of Jericho, Achan took some of the spoils that he shouldn’t have taken. When he explained what happened, he said he saw these nice things. When he saw them, he said, “I want that.” And then seeing turned into action.

Ladies, if what you are watching is basically geared towards getting attention from guys, that will affect the way you operate in life. Guys, sometimes we are going to have to close our eyes during the commercials, even when watching baseball. 

What we put into our mind and our eyes affects what we do. It affects us. Take advice from all of us who have made plenty of mistakes: looking at the wrong things will be detrimental. What goes in can affect the way that we think. We are very visual. Look out for the lust of the eyes, because it affects what we do. When you desire to follow God, your desire is different. The Spirit motivates us to seek after God.