In last Sunday afternoon's message on the Seventh Commandment ("You shall not commit adultery"), I included a review from Thomas Watson's study The Ten Commandments on antidotes “to keep from the infection of this sin":
1. Do not come into the company of a wanton person. We must avoid places of temptation “as a seaman does a rock.” “He who would not have the plague, must not come near infected houses.”
2. Look to your eyes. Job: “I have made a covenant with my eyes, why then should I look upon a young woman?” (Job 31:1).
3. Look to your lips. “Impure discourse is the bellows to blow a fire of lust.”
4. Look in a special manner to your heart. “Thinking of sin makes way for the act of sin.”
5. Look to your attire. This commandment means that we should dress in modesty, so as not to provoke others to lust.
6. Take heed of evil company. “The fire of lust in kindled in bad company.”
7. Beware of going to plays. What would Watson say of the access we have today to film and video?
8. Take heed of mixed dancing. Again, what would Watson say today about the current provocative dance styles?
9. Take heed of lascivious, and pictures that provoke to lust. What would Watson say about the internet?
10. Take heed of excess in diet. “When gluttony and drunkenness lead the van, chambering and wantonness bring up the rear.”
11. Take heed of idleness. “When a man is out of a calling [job], he is ready to receive any temptation.”
12. Positively, let every man have a chaste, entire love to his own wife. Cf. Proverbs 5:18: “rejoice with the wife of your youth” see also vv. 19-20). “It is not having a wife, but loving wife, that makes a man live chastely.”
13. Labor to get the fear of God into your hearts. “As the embankment keeps out the water, so fear of the Lord keeps out uncleanness.”
14. Take delight in the word of God. “The reason why persons seek after unchaste, sinful pleasures, is because they have no better.”
15. Give serious consideration to the fact that God sees our every act of sin, that few who commit adultery fully recover from the harm it does, that it makes God stand as a witness against us, and that “it leaves hell in the conscience.”
16. Pray against this sin.
JTR
No comments:
Post a Comment