While you should take steps to limit your children’s exposure to pornography, you also need to prepare them for it. Sadly, their exposure is inevitable. But I want to encourage you that teaching your children simple truths can springboard you into deeper and more difficult conversations about God’s design for sex and his desired protection of them.

The reality cannot be denied—the majority of teens are viewing pornography—whether on purpose or by accident.1 We know porn is everywhere, but I think many parents fail to realize what characterizes today’s pornography. Internet porn is made up of moving images with sounds depicting every type of sexual activity and orientation. It is dark, it is free, and it is evil.
What is worse than our children’s exposure to pornography is why they are choosing to view it. Of the children who admitted to intentionally searching for pornography, nearly two-thirds of them revealed they had done so for one or more of these reasons:

To look for new ideas to try sexually
To learn about sex in general
To find out how to get better at sex
To discover what potential partners expect from them sexually

Girls, in particular, mentioned using pornography to learn how to meet boys’ expectations.2
The Internet is providing our children with sex education, and it is the worst type. It displays a corrupted and distorted depiction of what God designed to be a wonderful expression of intimacy and oneness. Pornography lures children in, feeds their curiosity, then leaves them with images that stick. These “hooks” pull them back to look again, and what they see shapes their desires.
We can easily see the potential for great danger in this trend, yet most parents I speak with struggle to talk to their children about pornography, let alone the dangers of it. The Bible tells us that we are to shepherd our children, so we must push past what feels uncomfortable or brings up our own issues with sex. Our children are counting on it.
Scripture beckons our children to listen to our wisdom.
Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,and forsake not your mother’s teaching,for they are a graceful garland for your headand pendants for your neck.My son, if sinners entice you,do not consent (Prov 1:8–10).
Our guidance is not just a source of protection. It also beautifies our children as they become better image bearers.
To help you do what feels impossible, I will outline four negative effects of pornography and provide you with a conversation point for each. I hope that in doing so, you can see how approachable this topic can be, given the biblical truths you are already discussing at home.

Threat: Pornography is confusing and overwhelming for children. Not only can they not process its explicit nature, but they also cannot make sense of the complex themes and messages. They will also see sex portrayed as violent and that any combination of people, sexes, and ages can be involved. This will cause them great stress, and the exposure can be traumatic for some.

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Only through the Scriptures are our people equipped for a life of holiness. Only through the Scriptures does the Spirit perform His work of sanctification. Though every expositor will receive his criticism, preaching the Scriptures is not a burden, it’s a privilege—the privilege of being used by God, to do His work, of preparing His people, to bring Himself glory.   

Today, I’m writing to my fellow expositors out there—men who have dedicated their lives to mining the riches of God’s Word, who have committed themselves to drawing their people to the text of Scripture, and who rest on the Spirit to take their lisping words and change their people’s hearts.
It’s a tireless task—far from an easy calling. We know the command—it’s been etched into our soul: “Preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2). Every week we feel the weight of the aorist imperative, reminding us of the great urgency of our task. We hear Jesus’ words as we study the text and write our sermons, “Feed My sheep” (John 21:15).
And yet, we also hear the criticisms, don’t we?
“Pastor, you’re too long, or deep, or direct. You’re not political enough, or personal enough, or funny enough. You talk too much about sin, too much about Jesus, too much from the Bible.” 
Words that show that our churches have been affected by our distracted culture, an individualized religion, and a consumeristic mindset.
What should concern us more than these trends having seeped into the hearts of our people, is the fact that we are affected by their criticisms far more than we are willing to admit. We know the weakness of our heart. We know our unspoken desires. We want our church to like us and affirm us. We long for their praise. We want our people to stay, not leave.
And if we are not careful, if we do not prepare our hearts for the inevitable discontentment we will hear, we will cave under the pressure, and be pulled to places in our preaching we never thought we would go.
And yes, they will leave Sunday morning on their sugar high—happy and energetic—but they will also leave malnourished because of the diet we have just fed them.
How do we, expositors of God’s word, guard our hearts against the pull of the people? How do we prepare ourselves for their criticism? How do we stay committed to serving the feast from God’s word, when so many, are so often, ordering from a different menu?
Answer: we read, re-read, and read again 2 Timothy 3:16-4:2, and apply those divine principles to our expository calling.
Remember the Divine Nature of the Scriptures You Have Been Called to Preach
We must remind ourselves about the divine nature of the Scriptures we have been called to preach. Paul’s command, “preach the word,” was not written in a vacuum. It’s the necessary command if 2 Timothy 3:16 is true, if “All Scripture is inspired by God.”
Our commitment to exposit the word is based upon the nature of the book, not the fickleness of the people. Yes, we could preach other things. Yes, we could tell more stories, and be more political, and social, and funny. But why would we?
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Written by Iain M. Duguid |
Friday, November 18, 2022
As a prophet, Ezekiel embodies in his actions both the Lord who has sent him and the people of Israel to whom he goes. In this dual representation Ezekiel foreshadows the ultimate sign-act, in which the Word becomes flesh and the Lord of Glory humbles himself to come and live among us, an act far more restrictive and humiliating for divine glory than anything Ezekiel undertakes. Jesus comes not merely to show us the enormous scale of our sin for which judgment could rightly befall us. He comes also to bear our punishment through the priestly act of atoning for us, offering his own body as a sacrifice on the cross to deal with our sin, once for all (Eph. 5:2). 

1“And you, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you, and engrave on it a city, even Jerusalem. 2And put siegeworks against it, and build a siege wall against it, and cast up a mound against it. Set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. 3And you, take an iron griddle, and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; and set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege, and press the siege against it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. 4“Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment. 5For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel. 6And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year.7And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city. 8And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.

Ezekiel is commanded to begin his ministry immediately by performing a series of sign-acts, warning of the coming of judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah. Many of the prophets are instructed to carry out dramatic action to accompany their messages, ranging from simple sermon illustrations to complex acted-out parables. These signs are not merely visual aids; they are designed to reach people’s wills and hearts, enabling people not just to see the truth but to feel it.1 Ezekiel performs more sign-acts than most prophets, perhaps because his communicative task is harder than most. He must preach a message of Jerusalem’s inevitable downfall to a people convinced it could not be captured by the nations—and then, after the city’s fall, he must convey hope for the future to a people crushed by despair. Even those who are reluctant to stop and listen to Ezekiel’s words will be forced to recognize the import of his message through these dramatic signs. It will become clear even to a reluctant audience that a prophet has been in their midst when these signs begin to become reality.
The first of his sign-acts is in three related parts, depicting Jerusalem as a city besieged not merely by the Babylonians but by God as a result of the people’s long history of sin. Those who remain inside the city will be reduced to starvation rations and, worse, forced to eat defiled food. The exile in Babylon will not be a brief sojourn but a lifetime, akin to the forty-year wilderness wanderings. There is a glimmer of hope in that Ezekiel’s 430-day ordeal matches the nation’s 430-year stay in Egypt, suggesting the possibility of a new exodus at its conclusion. Yet the focus of the sign-acts is very much on the reality of the imminent judgment on Jerusalem from the Lord.
First Sign
Ezekiel’s first sign-act involves erecting an elaborate model depicting Jerusalem as a city under siege. He is to take a clay brick, perhaps 10 inches by 24 inches (25 cm by 61 cm), and draw a map or a picture of Jerusalem on it while it is still soft (v. 1). Such bricks were common building materials in Babylon, and city plans sketched out on bricks have been excavated at the site of Nippur, in the same region as Ezekiel’s exile.2 Then the prophet is to create a diorama of a besieged city around the brick, with siege ramps, army camps strategically located around the city, and battering rams to break through the walls (v. 2)—all the latest weaponry and the overwhelming force the Babylonians will bring to bear on Jerusalem. With the city surrounded by the Babylonians, there would be no way into or out of Jerusalem.
Yet the Babylonians are not Jerusalem’s biggest problem. The prophet himself is to take the Lord’s part in the drama, with his face fixed toward Jerusalem, representing a settled attitude toward the city, and an iron griddle, or pan, between him and the city, depicting the complete severing of relations between Israel and her God (v. 3). The use of an iron object highlights the impenetrability of the barrier. No communication between the people and the Lord will be possible, which means that their cries for mercy and relief will go unheeded. This griddle is thus the visual equivalent of the Lord’s forbidding Ezekiel in the previous chapter to act as an intercessor for the city (cf. comment on 3:24–27 [at v. 26]).
The dual agency of Jerusalem’s awful fate is prominent throughout these signs. The Babylonians may provide the army that is to besiege the city, but it is the Lord who has decreed the city’s inevitable destruction and has cut off any channels of communication. This must have seemed inconceivable to many of the prophet’s contemporaries, raised on the assurance of Psalm 46, that Zion could not fall so long as the Lord dwelt within her. Ezekiel will challenge head on this concept of Jerusalem’s inviolability in Ezekiel 8–11 (cf. the sermon of Ezekiel’s contemporary Jeremiah in Jeremiah 7).
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