January 27 Devotion

In describing his innocence to his friends, Job says, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust upon a young woman......If my heart has been seduced by a woman, or if I have lusted for my neighbor’s wife, then may my wife belong to another man; may other men sleep with her. For lust is a shameful sin, a crime that should be punished. It is a devastating fire that destroys to hell. It would wipe out everything I own” (Job 31:1,9-12). James reminds us that, “temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires. These evil desires lead to evil actions, and evil actions lead to death” (James 1:14&15). In other words, the body does nothing the mind hasn’t already chosen for it to do. The place to nip sinful actions is by nipping sinful thoughts. Job knew that if he refused to look upon a woman with lust, then he would never actually commit adultery with a woman. Jesus also said that adultery begins in the mind before it happens in the body (Matthew 5:27-30). “Your eye is the lamp for your body. A pure eye lets sunshine into your soul. But an evil eye shuts out the light and plunges you into darkness. If the light you think you have is really darkness, how deep that darkness will be!” (Matthew 6:22&23). Scripture is clear that if we want to avoid sin, we need to guard what goes through our eyes and into our minds (Proverbs 4:23). Joseph shows us by his example that when sexual temptation rears it’s evil head, the best response is to flee from it. When his master’s wife invited Joseph to have sex with her, he refused. “How could I ever do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). And when she grabbed his shirt one day and demanded that he sleep with her, Joseph tore himself away from her and ran away (39:10-12). James also reinforces Joseph’s actions when he writes, “resist the Devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). The way to flee from sexual temptation is to not allow any sexual impure images through our eyes or impure thoughts to pass into our minds.