WWUTT 1045 Q&A Divorce and Remarriage, Pastors and Lust, Christians and Piracy?

What does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage? Is a pastor unqualified if he is guilty of lust? And does the Bible say anything about watching pirated content? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily study in God's word that we may present ourselves to God as one approved workers who have no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Tell your friends about our website, www .tt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. How many days we got until Truth Matters? Oh, a little over two weeks. The Truth Matters conference. Yep, a little over two weeks. What is it, 19 or 18 days from today?

I'm excited. I can't remember. I got my Truth Matters bracelet on. Yes, me too. They came in the mail. Yes. Boom, yeah. That's neat. I don't think they've done that before. I don't remember getting something in the mail prior to ChefCon.

Maybe it's just Truth Matters that they do that. Must be.

You have to walk up to the window and get your little badge at ChefCon. Yeah. But yeah, we got our bracelets. We're ready to go.

I'm wearing mine so I don't lose it. That's the same with me. Because I thought about packing it already in my suitcase that I'm gonna take. And then I'm like, well, I also have to pack up the kids. So I don't want to put it in the wrong suitcase and send it on the wrong way.

You got to pack up the kids. I do. I thought your mom and dad were taking the kids. I'm folding the kids and I'm putting in the, they wanted to come, so.

So the suitcases you have to pack for the kids to go to your mom and dad's, you thought the bracelet would end up in there. Probably.

Yeah. Because they don't always listen to me. So they don't always pick the right suitcase.

Yeah, I was gonna put it in my backpack. Yeah, the same with me. I was like, I'm gonna lose this. Yep.

So I'm just wearing it. From now until Truth Matters, we're just wearing our bracelets. You know, two weeks, not too bad.

We're talking about the Truth Matters Conference. It's gonna be at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Yep. An inerrancy conference. Well, they're talking about the sufficiency of scripture.

Yes. So they did an inerrancy summit several years back, but this one's gonna be on the sufficiency of scripture with guys like John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, Justin Peters. I wanna say Kosti Hinn. I think he's one of the speakers too, isn't he?

Todd Friel's gonna be there. I think so. Don't pull your phone up and look this up. We'll be here forever. We would, we would. I was gonna verify. Yep. But yeah, so we're heading to Truth Matters out in California.

Looking forward to everybody who's going to be there. May just take a week off the podcast. We might. It'd be the easiest thing to do. I hope we didn't deflate anybody's expectations for that week coming up.

We'll see how it goes. This being Friday, we take questions from the listeners and you can submit questions to whenweunderstandthetextatgmail .com. Our first question here, the first two questions actually were two questions we had tacked on to last week's questions.

Right. And we didn't get to these because I thought it was gonna take more than the 10 minutes that we had left. Right. So we're about to find out here if we could have fit these into 10 minutes or not.

Divorce and Remarriage After Adultery

All right, let's go. First one comes from David. Dear, what I have typically been of the understanding that remarriage after divorce is allowed biblically only if the divorced spouse has died or remarried someone else.

But I was recently challenged on the latter since the Bible never mentions that allowance. I've read John Piper's paper on the subject and it seems pretty solid. What are your thoughts? Can a divorced person marry someone else if his ex-wife is still alive but is married to someone else?

This question has major practical implications for me as I am currently an elder at a small home church and the pastor and I are struggling with how to counsel one of our members who is dating a divorced man whose ex-wife has already remarried.

Thanks again for your time, grace and peace, David. Well, full disclosure, and we've talked about this in the past. We have. In fact, we talked about this, I think it was around March because this has been one of our most requested episodes.

I've had emails asking, hey, where was that episode where you were talking about divorce and remarriage? Okay. So anyway, full disclosure here, Becky is divorced. I am. And remarried to me, remarried to me.

And in her case, her husband was abusive and had cheated on her. And then he's also remarried. So, you know, the likelihood that there was going to be any sort of reconciliation was just not going to happen.

He was not supporting his daughter, Annie. I think there was one payment he made in her entire life. Yep. So the deal that I made with him when I married Becky was if you give me full custody of her, then you pay nothing.

Whatever you owe on child support, we wipe the slate clean. And he agreed to that. And so I have full custody of our oldest daughter and she does not belong to anyone else. She is mine. That's right. And she's always been my daughter.

Yes. And that's just the way we look at it. Annie, I am your father. Annie, I am your father. That's a terrible Darth Vader impression. That's for her. That's for her in the future when she finally gets to this episode and make fun of daddy's terrible Darth Vader impression.

So anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, divorce. Okay, so you know where we stand on this issue. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's circumstantial. Right, it should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Right. I really don't think there is a blanket prohibition on if you've been married and then you get divorced, you cannot be remarried unless your ex dies.

Right. I don't really think that's what scripture says. Now, I know what John Piper says about this. I've read his paper. I've seen the various Ask Pastor John segments where he's talked about this. He's very, very strict on it.

Okay. I mean, he basically believes that unless your ex dies, then you can't get remarried. Okay. That is the only thing that annuls the marriage covenant is if the other dies. Either your spouse dies or you get divorced and your ex dies.

That's the only instance in which, okay, now you're free to get remarried. And I don't really see that, especially considering that Jesus said in Matthew 19, nine, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery.

So he's really saying there that in the instance that sexual immorality has occurred in the marriage, the spouse who is the offended can divorce the offending spouse. Does this make sense? Right. Am I using the right words here?

Okay. Sure. And get remarried. And the Bible permits that. Christ himself even permits that in the way that he is saying the law to the Pharisees there in Matthew chapter 19. Right. Now, John Piper is not real big on the historic confessions.

Okay. Like what do you mean? So like the Westminster confession of faith. Oh, okay. The London Baptist confession of faith. The Westminster confession is a lot more detailed on marriage and divorce. Oh, really?

More so than the Baptist confession. My understanding there is that the reason why there isn't so much in the section on marriage and divorce in the London Baptist confession is because the Baptist just couldn't come to an agreement on it.

Oh. So there was a lot of, hey, surprise, surprise, a Baptist meeting, they couldn't all come to an agreement on something. Yeah, imagine that. So. They just needed more food. Yeah. They probably ran out of food.

Well, you couldn't have crock pots back then, you know? Yeah. The crock pot had not yet been invented to help hurry that thing along, so. Those poor people. Anyway, the Westminster's put a lot more detail in it than the Baptist did.

And in their section, let's see, this is chapter 24 of marriage and divorce, article five. Here is what it says. Adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.

In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and after the divorce to marry another as if the offending party were dead. And I totally agree with that.

And that was our understanding of it even before you and I had an understanding of historic confessions. Right. So when Becky and I got married, we really didn't know historic confessions. When I became a pastor, I wasn't all that up on historic confessions.

Church history was one of those things I learned as I came to realize the importance of knowing those. And you know, there were some things I learned, but I wasn't very detailed on the church confessions and the Westminster confession section on divorce and remarriage really is quite good.

All very solid and biblical. You've got all sorts of passage mentions in there, including Matthew 19, nine. That's mentioned there in chapter 24, article five on marriage and divorce. All right, so I've got a question.

Okay. What does it mean by being detected before marriage?

Let's see, adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage, giveth justification to the innocent party to dissolve that contract. So in other words, when they were betrothed, but not yet married.

Does that make sense? Okay, so engaged, but not married.

Like this would basically say that even if infidelity had happened in the engagement, that the person who was the offended has just cause to therefore divorce. Okay. So even in the case of that happening in an engagement, it doesn't even have to be after vows were exchanged at the altar, which I can see that being just as justifiable there as it would be in the marriage.

And again, it's as if the offending party were dead. So you think of the sin, the seriousness of that sin. And in our sexually charged culture, we just don't think about how serious sexual immorality is.

Not at all. We try to play it over. We try to sweep it under the rug. Minimize it, yeah. Yeah, minimize it. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. But this is the way that historically

Movies, TV shows, they're awful. It's everywhere.

Even those shows that, you know, TVPG or something like that. Yes. You still have to be aware of the stuff that's in that show because it could still have some pretty adult plots going on. If they don't show anything, they're still talking about it, you know.

But this is just how serious the sin of sexual immorality is. You've got Paul talking about in 1 Corinthians 6, that the sin of sexual immorality is even unique to other sins because every other sin you commit outside your body, but sexual immorality is committed with the body.

Your temple of the Holy Spirit whom you have from God who dwells within you. Right. So Paul says, therefore honor God with your body. In Ephesians, Paul says, let there not even be a hint of sexual immorality in you.

And oftentimes when you see lists of sins mentioned in the Bible, sexual immorality is often at the top of that list. This is a very serious sin to the point that the Bible says so. And I believe that the Westminster's got it correct as well when they spelled out their section on divorce and remarriage.

Sexual immorality in the marriage is as if that person has died because they have committed a sin that is so serious, it has killed the marriage. Even Christ has permitted divorce in the event of sexual immorality in the marriage.

So that's the way I feel about that. Going back to your question, David, you said that this has major practical implications as you are currently an elder at a small home church and the pastor and you are struggling with how to counsel one of your members who is dating a divorced man whose ex-wife has already remarried.

Here's something that I would encourage you to look at. Ask the divorced man why he got divorced. What was the reason for the divorce? Was it his fault or was it his ex's fault? If it was his fault, you probably have a good cause to warn the person in your congregation that they should not marry this man because he was the one that cheated on his ex-spouse, causing his ex-spouse to leave and then go marry somebody else.

And in which case the divorced man, I don't believe should get remarried as a consequence for what he has done. He probably should stay single. Or at the very least, this sister in the Lord that you have in your own congregation should not be marrying the man.

But again, going back to what Becky said earlier, this is circumstantial. It should be on a case-by-case basis. Definitely. So look at those things, talk about those things with the couple. Talk it out with them.

Find out the specifics, the details. They're gonna need to be ministered to one way or the other. So don't just look at it as, oh, okay, well, it wasn't, it was just this and it wasn't this other thing so we can let them do whatever.

Counsel is needed here. And Becky and I went through a lot of it before we got married. We had three pastors, I believe, that we were meeting with. And then we also went to one of the Family Life Today marriage conferences.

Two. Two of them. We went to one as pre-marrieds and then we went to one as a married couple. That's true. That is true, yeah. So we went before we got married and got all the engaged couple counseling.

And then we went as a married couple and we got to do all the stuff the marrieds got to do. Right. Yeah.

That was fun. But we wanted to make sure that I wasn't bringing in, or I wanted to make sure that I wasn't bringing in baggage and putting the blame that should be put on another person onto him or to blame myself.

And not be a good wife in the part of, I'm just not worthy. I'm not good enough for this position, that sort of thing. So we just wanted to make sure we were.

Because when Becky first spotted me, she said to me that she saw me and she was like, I want to marry a man like that. Yep. But she didn't think it was going to be me. Not at first anyway. No, because I wasn't good enough.

Right. So that was part of the counseling was not bringing that guilt into the marriage. And in that counseling, me being able to tell her, look, I see you as pure. You're my pure bride who's going to be walking down the aisle in white.

And I'm not holding any of your past sins against you because I mean, frankly, I wasn't pure either. I had sins in my past and that was my role in our pre-marriage counseling as well because I had come from a failed engagement.

And I wanted to be sure that I wasn't bringing any of that baggage into the marriage as well. And even making sure that I wasn't still holding on to any sort of bitterness. Right. Or anything of that nature.

So that was part of why we got the kind of counseling that we did before we got married. And we sought it out.

Like we felt like it was what we needed to do. Right. In order to get on the right path.

Now we had, let's see, there was a Wesleyan minister and I think two Baptist ministers was our counselors. Isn't that right? Are you remembering that right? I don't remember. Okay. Anyway, all of them.

I remember the Wesleyan. Yes. All of the ministers that we met with unanimously said there really was not anything biblically wrong with us getting married. Right. And we did have in my side, on my side of the family, we have some independent fundamentalists.

Yeah, yep. And we did hear from a few members of the family going, yeah, you see, you're not even supposed to be marrying this gal because she's previously divorced. Right. And that was great to be able to share that testimony with them and walk them through the scriptures that we had been walked through.

Right. And as far as I know, I think we changed everybody's mind. Yep. So everybody was, even those that were previously opposed ended up coming to the wedding. Yeah. So that was great. Yeah, it was wonderful.

But I hope that's helpful for you, David. Again, case by case basis sort of a thing. And don't look at this as just sort of a blanket issue where you can, or now I've given you the answer, so now you're going, oh, okay, well, it's all right.

No, you do need to specifically counsel. Yeah. This man and this woman. And question outright. Right.

What happened? I mean, because you're looking out for your, you're shepherding your sheep. Yes. Or the sheep that, I don't know. You got that right. I did?

You got that right. Okay, good. And you may want to, because you don't know what he has said to the woman, you may want to talk to him alone. Yeah, that's true. And not together as a pre-married couple at first.

May talk to him and say, now what does she know about your past? Right. Or talk to her alone and say, what do you know about his past? And alone meaning, I mean, somebody else is there. Not a man and woman alone.

Right, never. Right. In counseling, that should never happen. Never. Just to state that. All right. This next question wanted to be submitted anonymously. So we've got an Anon here. Hi, Pastor Gabe and Becky, longtime listener here.

First, I want to thank the Lord for the work that he is doing in your ministry. Praise God for seeing you guys for a thousand episodes. Isn't that exciting? Yes. That's such an amazing feat. May God be glorified.

I'm kind of past it now though. I mean, we're at 1 ,040 something now. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not even really thinking about the thousand mark anymore. I just hit

Because I haven't hit a thousand episodes, so.

Oh, that's true, yeah. Because you came in around 450 or something like that. Something like that. I just hit over 10 ,000 followers on Twitter. And Nate Pikowitz had messaged me and said, hey, congrats on getting 10K.

And he said, from here on out, there's nothing spectacular about getting any more followers. He said, the next milestone really isn't until you hit 100 ,000. Oh, wow. So it's like after you hit 10K, it's just like, eh, okay.

You don't really get to see the number tick up anymore because it just says 10K, you know. Aw. But okay, where were we? Back to Anon's question. Second, can you bring clarity to the stepping down of a pastor due to adultery?

We've already seen some pastors rebuked and stepped down due to this sin, and other pastors not stepping down. I'm looking at you, Tulian Chevijian, shame on you. Jesus said that if a man looks upon a woman and lusts after her, he has already committed adultery in his heart.

That's in Matthew 5. If this is the case, then almost all pastors are not qualified due to the sin of adultery. How does, or I'm sorry, does a pastor need to step down when he committed the sin of adultery in his thoughts?

How about if the pastor got attracted to someone who is other than his wife? What if he repented? Can he still pastor a church? Thank you for taking time to listen to this. So kind of the nature of the question here is almost like degrees of adultery.

Okay, yeah. Because it is true what Jesus says in Matthew 5. Of course, it's true what Jesus says. Of course. I don't even need to preface that. But where he says that Well, some people. Yeah. Beth Moore.

When Excuse you. Almost need to make that my one per list now. It's like one per episode. Every time we get together and we do an episode, where's Beth Moore gonna get mentioned in here? No, let's not.

Anyway, so in Matthew chapter five, I'll read the passage out here. Matthew 5, 27, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So if that's the case, if you've got a minister who has looked at a woman lustfully, does that now disqualify him as a minister, as somebody who could pastor and lead a church? Let's go to the qualifications for elders first here.

First Timothy chapter three, verse one. The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife.

And the way that that's translated, it's literally, he must be a one woman man. He must be sober-minded, self-controlled. There's a big one that goes along with that. So he must be committed to his wife.

He must be self-controlled. He must be respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. So that first qualification there, and you've heard this said multiple times, is that the overseer must be above reproach.

He must have a good reputation, and Paul even clarifies there, not only among believers, but even among unbelievers. He must even be well thought of by outsiders. Right. R .C. Sproul was on Renewing Your Mind recently.

And of course, this was an older message. Obviously. Because he has gone home to be with the Lord. And in the message that I heard on Renewing Your Mind, I think this was a week or two ago, he was talking about the qualifications for an overseer in 1 Timothy chapter three.

And the way he started out the lesson, he said, anybody can look at this list and feel like they're totally unqualified. How can a minister ever be qualified to keep this standard?

Is that kind of like Proverbs 31 woman? The Proverbs 31 woman, yeah. Like a woman looking at that going, how can I ever aspire to this?

Who is ever going to aspire to this? And that was an interesting approach to start out the message. Because often, and I've taught this same way, I've heard Mark Dever teach this way on the qualifications of a pastor.

But often we talk about this as anybody in the church should aspire to these attributes. Right. These characteristics, these qualifications. But it's the pastor in particular who must have an ability to teach.

And he sets a standard or a model for the rest of the congregation to follow. Right. Hebrews chapter 13 says, consider those who have taught you the faith and imitate their faith. Walk in their way of life.

But yeah, when you're talking about the level of holiness that is expected here of a man who is supposed to be an overseer in the church, it can be pretty intimidating. You can look at this going, boy, I just cannot measure up to this.

I mean, how am I to be sober-minded? How am I to be self-controlled? I mean, sometimes I do get angry. Here it says, we must not be violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome. So if I've had an argument with somebody, am I now disqualified from becoming a pastor?

So as you're looking at those qualifications, it can be kind of intimidating. But we must remember, as any of us need to remember, that the holiness that we have is not from ourselves. Right. It is from God.

A person who aspires to the office of overseer, there is certainly going to be higher expectations upon him. As it says in James 3 .1, not all of you should aspire to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

So in that case, sure, we know that there's gonna be a greater scrutiny that's gonna be placed upon a teacher than would be placed upon anybody else. You're even in the public eye, you're seen by more people.

Most of the rest of the congregation is just gonna blend in with everybody else. You know what I mean? But all of us, all of us have been called to holiness. Since I'm here in Matthew chapter five, it says in verse 48, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

So, and again, what God demands, he also gives to us. He demands righteousness and he gives us the righteousness of Christ, his imputed righteousness that has been given to us. Amen. And so now walking in maturity in that faith, we must demonstrate these attributes as those who are pursuing godliness.

Now let's bring this now back to the question that was presented regarding levels of like adultery or temptation. So now you have a minister who has been tempted in his heart. He has looked at a woman with lustful thoughts.

Is he immediately disqualified for the pastorate? Let me put this for you in a more specific way. Let's say that a guy is browsing through a catalog and I'm even gonna pick a catalog that I don't even think exists anymore.

A Sears catalog, okay, right? All right. Do you remember browsing through the Sears catalog when you were kids? Yeah. Okay, so did you and your brother, you did the thing where you're like circling the Christmas gifts that you wanted in the toy section?

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah, I looked forward to the Christmas catalog every year. Right. JCPenney, Sears, didn't matter, but I was all over that catalog. I was always looking for the remote control cars too. That was I can see that.

That was my section. So anyway, let's say he's browsing through a Sears catalog and he gets to the lingerie section and he opens it up. And instead of going, whoa, okay, wasn't meaning to turn to that section.

He stops for a minute, a minute, five seconds. He just sits there on the page a little bit longer than he should have. At what point did he become disqualified? Was it at three seconds? Was it at five seconds?

You know what I mean? So what, so is the man now disqualified because he just browsed through the lingerie section of the catalog a little longer than he should have looked at it? Is this man now a hypocrite if he has to go to his brother who is in an adulterous affair and tell this man, you have to repent or God is gonna judge you for it?

Is he not able to do that now because he's got a great big log in his eye since he was glancing too long at the lingerie section in the Sears catalog?

I guess that would depend on his heart. Right. If he didn't feel like that was anything worth confessing. Well, it was something. I don't wanna say that it wasn't anything. I mean, it was something. No, what he feels that, oh, it's no big deal.

You know, like those kinds of things. Right. Like it happens all the time.

Men do it all the time. It's just a guy thing. This is something that, you know, I'll say for me personally, this is something that I deal with when I do my image browsing for the what videos that I do.

And so I have to, before I sit down at my computer and I start doing image searches, I have to pray and I have to say, God, help me to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. And when something pops up on the screen that I should not be setting before my eyes, boom, I'm hitting the X.

I'm getting off of it. I'm moving to another page, whatever it is that I have to do to get away from the search results that I got there. Right. I remember reading an article from Tim Challies where he was talking about that as well.

And he was talking about how his sanctification had so matured to the place now where that disgusts him. Anytime it pops up on the screen, he's immediately repulsed, has to get it off the screen, get back to the task that he was doing.

Right. And I mean, online, you could be searching for brooms. Right. And you could come up with some scantily clad picture. Yep. There really is no safe image search that is out there. Even if you've got safeguards on your computer and whatnot.

Right. And so if a pastor has an image like that come up on a screen and he looks at it for too long, has he become unqualified? As Becky has said, it does consider the condition of his heart. Yeah. Now let's get even more severe here.

Let's talk about a pastor that has downloaded porn and he now has it on his computer. Has he become disqualified for his office? That particular case, I would say absolutely. Yep. And in fact, depending on the severity of it, I would say something like that could even permanently disqualify him.

Yeah. Because you're talking about somebody who is saving images to his computer because in his mind, he is already storing up for himself. I am an intention, a deliberate intention to look at this later.

And it's on his mind and on his heart continually. And that's why he's doing that. That's why he's saving those images. Right. And so I would say that if in a circumstance that a pastor gets caught in something like that, he's probably, again, case by case basis, seek out if this man is repentant and he's truly convicted of it.

Right. And I would have to leave that to elders, but I'm just speaking for myself in this particular instance or circumstance. I would say, I don't see how that guy can continue to maintain that office and ever be able to do it again with any amount of credibility.

Right. He can no longer be trusted. He has no self-control. He demonstrated there he's got no self-control. No self-control over his body, his eyes, his thoughts. And he has given those thoughts over to something that is repulsive unto the Lord, as well as it should be repulsive to any of us.

Right. So yeah, there are certainly various degrees of this. And I've said in the past, and Becky and I have talked about this, I think this was back in March as well, that a person who has, well, we talked about it last year even.

And when I did my series on 1 Timothy, we talked about this. I talked about it with my church five or six years ago. I can't remember when that was. We went through 1 and 2 Timothy. But if a pastor, as a pastor, if an elder has committed adultery as he was holding that office, he's permanently disqualified.

And Phil Johnson actually just talked about this recently with Todd Friel even on an episode of Too Wretched for Radio. And he mentioned the same thing there because what has happened there with that sin is he's no longer above reproach.

He will never be able to have a reputation to hold that office again because he can't be trusted. Can't be trusted with that office and that position again, considering what it was that he did. A person who should have known better more than anyone else in the congregation.

There are people who are not Christians that know that's wrong. And so for him to have slipped so severely in that way. And whenever you mention something like that, there's always somebody that says, well, what about David?

David was a completely different circumstance. David was a king and there were serious ramifications for what happened with David. Even David himself said that he was a dead man when Nathan the prophet came and convicted him over it.

David knew that he was gonna die. But Nathan the prophet said, the Lord is going to be merciful on you and you will not die, but your child will. The child that was conceived of this unholy union. And so death resulted because of the seriousness of this sin.

So you can't compare this to David. You can't say, well, a pastor has done this. David was restored, somebody died. So it's a very serious sin. The Lord takes it very, very seriously. We are called to purity in this way.

And I take this very seriously. I understand the glass house that I'm standing in when I'm saying what it is that I'm saying. Because now people are gonna look at me going, okay, Gabe, we're gonna test you by your words.

That's fine, I understand that. And I should be. I should be held to that standard as well.

And I do hold you to that standard, just saying. Yes, you do.

But it's like we sing in the song, come thou fount of every blessing. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

It is the Lord who purifies us and makes us righteous. And it is he who holds us close to himself. James says in James four, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Flee the devil, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

And that's the way we need to approach these things. Clinging to Christ every day because we in our own flesh do not have the power to overcome the temptations that come at us daily. Especially in the sexually charged culture that we live in right now.

So I hope that was helpful for you, Anon. It's just like we said with the previous question, case-by-case basis. It is. Everything, all of these things need to be handled on a case-by-case circumstance.

Next question.

Oh, what were you gonna say? I was just gonna say, and just be thorough on your investigations.