TV and Movies God’s Way

Introduction

Sadly, many Christians are being conformed to this world in many ways in their life, and one of those ways is in their entertainment, their choice of what they watch in their TV programs and in movies, as well as uh in many other forms of media, which I plan to cover in some other lessons. And I was told this morning by Greg he’s also got a lesson he wants to preach along this line, uh talking about social media. So I think it’s about time for some lessons along this line. What we’re going to talk about this morning is first uh the problem and then the solution. Uh because there is a problem. You know, when you really think about it, uh remember 75 years ago when Gone with the Wind came out.

I don’t remember it because I wasn’t here, but uh a lot of us weren’t here, were we? So, but when that movie came out, there was one that one profanity in the whole movie, and from what I heard there was kind of a controversy about that. There was there was an outcry about that. And uh as as time has gone, things have gotten progressively worse. You know, even in the 60s, you know, with I Dream of Jeannie, uh I I’ve read that they didn’t even want to show her belly button, and it wasn’t proper to show somebody’s belly button on television, uh, even though she was wearing something that I think was immodest anyway, but there was still some semblance of we need to be careful, and you just see where things have come down the line to modern day, and it’s just terrible.

1. General Dangers of TV and Movies

Uh there’s a lot of filth in just about every everything that you watch, and where are Christians in there as far as where we stand? Are are we just one step behind the world? Uh or are we just right there with the world, even? So there’s there is a problem. So, first we’re gonna talk about the dangers of TV and movies. And first I want to look at the general dangers, whether you’re watching something that’s uh relatively clean or not, uh, first of all, there’s the danger that you can waste precious time watching television. According to a Nielsen study in 2012, the average American spends over 34 hours a week watching television. And that’s not all very productive time, is it? And it can be it can be damaging time, right?

But even if it weren’t, even if it weren’t damaging, to watch television for 34 hours a week, there’s a lot of better things you could be doing. There’s a lot of things for the kingdom that you could be doing. Our time is a gift from God that we should use wisely. Paul said in Ephesians 5 and verses 15 and 16, therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time or redeeming the time, some versions say. Because the days are evil. So take up these opportunities that are around us on a daily basis to do good and to help and to grow spiritually if we’re wasting our time with any number of things, uh, and certainly TV is one of those, then I believe we’re walking in an unwise manner.

Uh a second general danger is this steady stream of godless ideology. Are we all aware of the term postmodernism? You’ve probably heard that a bunch of times by now. Postmodernism is kind of this idea of we need to accept all beliefs and all practices and all lifestyles, and don’t take a stand and say that anybody out there is wrong for anything. Well, this kind of thinking is it it really is woven into practically all programming. You know, even the news that we watch. It’s all just religiously neutral and this sort of thing. And that that will permeate into our systems, into our thinking. Uh this idea of uh evolution and uh atheism. That’s in a lot of educational programming. That’s pretty clean programming, but still, even the clean programming.

2. Specific Dangers of Watching Trash

There are ways that Satan is almost sometimes subliminally just getting into our hearts and into our minds. So these are a couple of general dangers. Let’s look now at some more specific dangers of watching trash. And when I say trash, I think you know what I mean, but let me make sure everybody knows what I mean.

Sin being glorified on the screen. Profanity being uttered. People dressing immodestly or there being nudity or even worse, acts of immorality on the screen. That’s what I mean by trash. And obviously there are degrees of trash. And I wonder if sometimes we almost look at it like we do go into a fast food restaurant. You know, well, we all know it’s unhealthy. But we all like to do it at least from time to time. So we think it’s okay if we do it a little bit from time to time. And I agree with you as far as fast food is concerned. But is that how we should view sin? Is that how we should view the filth that comes through our television screens? It’s okay to have a little bit once in a while, as long as we don’t do it a lot.

I want to show you throughout this lesson that I don’t believe that’s the attitude a Christian ought to have. One danger of watching trash is it trains us in sinful ways. When we view those sins on the screen, we hear the way those people are talking, we see the way that they’re acting and the things that they’re doing. It teaches us to say and do those very things. And it’s only a matter of time. If we keep feeding our mind this stuff, then eventually, you know, we start doing that stuff. We all know the verse where Paul says, Do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33. Well we could just as easily say evil entertainment corrupts good habits. What would you do if somebody stood right in your living room shouting profanities?

You would ask them to please not do that if you are very nice. And you might kick them out. Would you allow somebody right in your living room to commit acts of immorality while you just sit and watch? Would you allow them to just strip down in their underwear right there in your home and not say anything. Just sit back. Do we realize that when we invite people through the screen to do that, those very acts in our living room and in our bedrooms, we are doing just the same thing as if those people were actually doing it. We’re being influenced in the same exact way. And so evil company and evil entertainment corrupts good habits and good morals. A second danger of watching trash is passive participation in sinful activities.

I say passive because you’re not actively doing it. You know you might think well it’s okay for me to watch this stuff as long as I don’t do it. Well not only are you training yourself to maybe slip up and do it some later pointing in it to a degree. Really think about that. You are viewing sin for entertainment as a choice. Somebody might say well it’s no different than the stuff I see at school or at work. Well that’s that’s true. But the stuff that you’re around at school and at work is not by choice. And you need to try to avoid that and still try to hide yourself and your guard your heart as best you can. But when you you know go to the red box and see filth and swipe your card and get that filth and go and plug it in your DVD player, or when you’re sending money to the cable company or to the satellite company and choosing to watch filth, I’m not saying that it’s all filth on cable and satellite, don’t get me wrong.

But if you’re paying money to be entertained by sin and voluntarily watching it, is that not rejoicing in unrighteousness? In 1 Corinthians 13, do not rejoice in unrighteousness. That love does not do that. Watching sin for entertainment is showing approval of it, whether we like to admit that or not. In Romans 1 and verse 32, Paul, after listing this litany of sins that the Gentile world commits, he says, and although they know the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. I’m simply showing this verse to show us that it’s not just the sin that Paul rebukes, but it’s approving of sin. When you approve of it, you’re as guilty of it as the one committing it.

And you might say when you’re watching filth in your mind, well, I disapprove of that. Then why are you choosing to watch it for enjoyment? I think that your actions are contradictory to what you’re actually thinking or saying in that case. A third thing to remember here, a third danger of watching trash is that it deadens our conscience. When I was a kid, I used to play guitar a lot. I still have a guitar, but I don’t play it very much. It’s an acoustic guitar, and I always played acoustic guitar. The strings are much thicker than like an electric guitar. When you first start playing it, your fingertips really hurt. And they’ll be sore even for days. But after you keep playing for a while, you build up calluses on your fingertips so that they don’t hurt anymore.

You can even look and see the indentions of the string after you’ve been playing for a few minutes on your fingertips, but you don’t feel a thing. And that’s what has happened to us spiritually many times, is we’ve just become callous. Prolonged exposure to sin leads to apathy. And so that our spiritual fingertips have no more feeling. We can touch sin and it won’t hurt. In fact, we don’t even notice it. In Ephesians 4.19, Paul says, and they, talking about the Gentiles again, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every form of impurity with greediness. They have become callous. They weren’t callous automatically. They became that way. It was a process. And that’s what happens. You know, you start watching something, and boy, it’s offensive.

But then you you’re hooked, and you keep watching it, and it’s a little less offensive, and then over time, then you don’t even notice it to the point where you could ask a Christian, hey, is such and such a good movie? Oh, it’s a great movie. Well, is there is there, you know, stuff, is there stuff in it, bad stuff in it? No, I don’t really remember anything. No, I think it’s pretty clean. Well, I’ve had had Christians tell me that, and I went and checked it out online. There’s websites I’ll tell you later, where you can find out the exact content of movies, and it’s just riddled with stuff. And I think, now, how did that Christian, a well-respected Christian, somebody that I never would have dreamt would have said that that’s a good movie?

How would he not see that? Well, it happens to us all, it happens to me if we’re not careful. And it has happened to me. That you get to a point where it just doesn’t bother you anymore. You just begin to, you know, feel okay about it. You know. Well, Mr. Preacher, you know, you don’t know what it’s like to be in the world. I know what it’s like to be in the world. I remember working at Cracker Barrel to earn a living when I first got married. Those workers all curse and they have all these, you know, dirty jokes and everything else that goes on behind the scenes back there. I know what it’s like. And so you can’t ever let your guard down. You have to continually, even if you’re around it every day, say, no, I’m going to stay sensitive to this, and we’re not going to let this be something I’m used to.

3. Biblical Principles of Preventing Sin

Well, now that we looked at some dangers, let’s talk about some biblical principles of preventing sin. First of all, guard your heart. Proverbs 423 from the reading this morning in the New American Standard says, watch over your heart with all diligence. For from it flow the springs of life. Our heart is a spring. A spring is pure. And the streams and rivers that come from that spring are pure as long as the spring is pure. But if that spring becomes polluted, then anything that flows from that spring will be polluted. We must keep the spring of our heart unpolluted, or else whatever comes out, will be polluted in our thoughts and our words and our actions. We need to protect. You know, we’ve got the song we sing to little kids.

Be careful, little eyes of what you see, and be careful, little ears what you hear, and so forth. Well, what about adults? Are we not all little children before God? We need to protect our eyes, and we need to protect our ears from exposure to sin because we get used to seeing and hearing those things and we start to do them. A second biblical concept here is avoid the path that leads to sin. In Proverbs 22 and verse 3, the prudent sees the evil and hides himself. But the naive go on and are punished for it. So what we need to do, brethren, is not just look at what’s going on right now. We need to see all right, is the path that I’m on going to lead to sin down the future?

And if we see sin down that path, then we need to get off of the path we’re on. We need to change that path and change that course. If we are involving ourselves in watching all of this filth, eventually that’s going to come out in the wash. And so we need to change the path we’re on and look. Look down at the horizon as far as you can see. Thirdly, remove sinful influences. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. This man approved by God, look, he doesn’t walk, he doesn’t stand, and he doesn’t sit with the wicked. And so the person approved by God is one who removes sinful influences.

And as we talked about earlier, the very things that come in through your screen is just like a person actually standing in your presence doing those very things. Fourth, flee sin and pursue righteousness. In 2 Timothy 2 22, I always like that passage, especially for kids to remember because it has four twos in it. It’s easy to remember. 2 Timothy 2.22. And the word Timothy starts with the same letter as the word two does. So it’s real easy to remember. So everybody try to try to log that away. 2 Timothy 2.22 says, now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. There’s there’s this intensity here. Listen, living the Christian life is like standing on an escalator that’s going down.

If you’re a kid in the mall that did what I did, then when you saw that thing coming down, you wanted to run up it. I remember I just wanted to do that so bad. I want to see if I can just run to the top of that escalator that’s coming down. Being a Christian is like standing on an escalator. You’re gonna have to make movement. If you just stand still, then you’re gonna go down to the bottom. So what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to go away from the bottom with intensity. And if you’re gonna go up and down escalator, it’s gonna take effort. You’re gonna run to get up to the top. And so that’s what we’ve got to do regarding sin.

4. Practical Suggestions Regarding TV and Movies

If we just stand by, if we are complacent, then we’re going down. And so we’ve got to fight to stay away from sin proactively and not just sit by and watch it complacently. Well, now that we’ve looked at some biblical principles, let’s finally talk about some practical suggestions based on everything we’ve talked about regarding TV and movies here. Number one, uh my advice would be never watch unfiltered programming beyond a certain rating. Now we certainly can’t trust the ratings, but I think rated R, I think we pretty well know it’s going to be riddled with filth for the most part, pretty much across the board. PG 13, you make your judgment. But from what I’ve seen and from what I’ve read about PG-13 movies and their content, they are riddled with trash.

Riddled with trash. So make your own judgment. So this is a starting point. And do the same thing with TV ratings. Alright, so this is a starting point. Secondly, avoid commercials when possible. Maybe it’s a pretty decent program, but the commercials might not be so clean. You know, that can happen. I got an Amen on that one. So that’s a good point right there. Avoid commercials when possible. Now, one way to do that is D VR. If you record your programming, you can fast forward the commercials. In my household, we don’t actually watch channels, but we have Netflix, which doesn’t have commercials, so uh we don’t have to worry about that, like for our kids and everything. Third suggestion is research the content of movies and TV shows before you watch them.

Don’t go and watch it and then say, man, I shouldn’t have watched that. There’s no excuse. You can know exactly what you’re getting yourself into beforehand. And one resource to check on is pluggedin.com. P-L-U-G-G-D-N.com. Plugged in.com. And when you go and visit that website, you’ll see that it’s by Focus on the Family, which is a James Dobson company. And you have movies, videos, music, TV, and games, where it’ll tell you the moral content of what’s in those media, different forms of media. So if you click on movies and then click on the movie that you’re interested in going to see, you’ll see up there at the top, kind of to the right a little bit, there’s a plugged-in rating where there’s five plugs, and it’ll tell you how many plugs that movie gets.

And that’s not telling you the quality of the movie, it’s telling you the quality of the purity. In other words, it’s telling you how pure, how clean that movie is going to be. The higher the rating, the more pure it is. And as you scroll down, you can see different sections like sexual content and violent content and crude or profane language, which for profanities it won’t actually spell the word out, but it’ll tell you the first letter. So you can know pretty much how much language is going to be in that film. And I I encourage you to go and check out some films you’ve already watched. You might be really surprised that the amount of filth that you’ve subjected yourself to without really realizing it.

That’s because our conscience has become seared, as with the branding iron.

You know, don’t just go watch it and experiment. Don’t let yourself be the filter. Go and check first before you watch it. So let’s say you were interested in The Good Wife. Alright. I wonder if that’s a clean enough show. So you just click on it, it’ll give you a general idea of the kind of stuff you’ll find in the episodes. And down there in the bottom paragraph, I think there’s a good example. It says content concerns very wildly. Some episodes are fairly stayed, others revolve around ticklish moral issues, gory crime scenes, and or burgeoning outside the office sexual relationships. Kalindra Sharma, the firm’s investigator, is bisexual, and her dalliances with her lovers, including Peter, often make their way into plot lines. Characters offer mild profanities and make sexual references.

Are we surprised? Or do we read that and go, oh, I had no idea. We’re used to this stuff. We’re dead to it, deadened to it. It doesn’t affect us. It should affect us. But when you read that, you need to say to yourself, is that something that I want that I really think I need to be watching? Do I need to hear all that profanity and all those sexual references and one of the main characters being bisexual and all this activity going on? Is that something that you you think a Christian should be watching based on what the Bible says? You can click on specific episodes, but not all specific episodes, but once in a while it’ll have a few here that you can get more of a specific idea.

By the way, this is TV 14. So that’s about what to expect with that rating. Alright, another source that you can research the content of movies and TV shows is Screenit.com. Screenit.com is excellent. It’s even a little better than plugged in.com, but it requires a monthly fee, and it’s worth it, but you can find pretty much anything on Screen It, you can find it on plugged in.com. It’s just not quite as nicely organized. On ScreenIt, for example, it’ll give you all these different categories like alcohol drugs, blood growth stuff, you know, profanity, sex nudity, and so on. And it’ll tell you the different degrees that that particular movie has that filth in it. Um, like minor and mild or heavy or extreme. And so that’s very helpful.

Very helpful. Alright. My next uh word of advice would be to go govern everything your children watch. I know as children grow older, they’re going to have more independence and you’re going to trust them more, hopefully, if they earn it. But when children are young, especially, I just I just really want to encourage us don’t turn your children loose with a remote control and a TV. Don’t do that. They go over to a friend’s house. Don’t just trust that they’ll watch good stuff. Talk to the parents. Ask your children what they watched. Be very careful because garbage in, garbage out. Next, I want to encourage us to think about buying a profanity filter for your television. If we watch television much, TV Guardian is an excellent profanity filter.

It’s the only one you should get. And I’ve had a lot of experience with TV Guardian. Go and visit TVGuardian.com and you can learn all about the TV Guardian. What you do is you hook up this device between your cable box or satellite box or DVR or DVD player and your TV. I feel like a salesman right now. You hook it up between those two things, and it filters out profanity by reading the closed captioning of movies and television shows. It doesn’t work for streaming internet shows, but it does for anything else. And if it has closed captioning, it’ll filter it. It works really well. And so, for example, uh we bought a zoo rated PG. It has 22 profanities in it. Now, that’s not uncommon.

It is rated PG. And it has 22 profanities in it. Words with TV Guardian, zero. And what it does is it mutes out the word when it’s spoken, and you can even set the settings to strict, moderate, and tolerant, and it’ll put up a replacement word that’s inoffensive down at the bottom so you kind of know the context of still what’s being said. Cowboys and Aliens is rated PG 13. PG 13, 42 profanities without TV Guardian. With TV Guardian zero. But it doesn’t always work perfectly. Sometimes it’ll miss a word here and there, but for the most part, 99% of the time it’ll catch them. You can find one online for about 70 bucks on eBay. Alright, my next suggestion would be buy a filtering DVD player.

If you’re a movie watcher, if you’re a movie buff, I love to watch movies. My family and I watch at least one a week together. Having a filtering DVD player is a must. Clear play is what you need to get. I’ve used one for years, and I wouldn’t watch a movie without it. You go and visit ClearPlay.com and you can learn all about the ClearPlay. Basically, it’s a DVD player and a membership. The DVD player itself is a special DVD player, and you insert a thumb drive where you have downloaded all the filters from the website with your membership just in one click, all updated to the most recent releases that come out on video. You plug that thing into your computer, and it they are movie-specific filters.

And they don’t just filter out profanity. It’ll filter out, it’ll filter out scenes or parts of scenes, and you go in and set the settings of violence or immodesty and nudity and all those different categories. And it can skip entire scenes. I think we still need to be careful about what we choose. You know, very careful still about what we choose. Because, you know, if a movie has uh immodesty from beginning to end, well, it can’t cut the whole movie out, right? So we still need to be careful. But this is a great, great product. Uh it’s about eight bucks a month, is my membership. You can buy one for about $130 on Amazon right now. They’re kind of hard to get. Uh $300 if it’s with a year membership, so it’s going to cost a little bit.

But you know what, brethren? It’s worth it. What’s the cost of our soul? How valuable is our soul? So don’t look at this and say, oh, that’s expensive. I can’t do that. Your soul is worth it. Uh now finally, since streaming movies are becoming so popular, you know, watching them on your computer screen and on your devices, then uh maybe you need to consider streaming filtered movies. And uh you can do that at ClearPlay.com. You go to ClearPlay.com if you have a membership, then you just go and you click on certain movies, not all the movies you can watch streaming, but you click on watch instantly on the ones that are available, and uh it’ll actually have you rent it or buy it through Google Play, but you play it through ClearPlay’s technology online, and you can watch it filtered right there.

Conclusion

And one other source for this, which I’ve had a little experience with lately, is VidAngel, VID Angel. VidAngel.com has a lot more choices than ClearPlay has presently. And about 400 movies, and you pay a monthly fee and you have a certain number of credits towards watching or buying movies and watching them streamed. So I think this is just starting. This technology is really just getting going and it’s going to be, it’s going to explode. It’s going to be very common before too long. Well, we could say more, but those are some of my suggestions from my experience in order to make sure that we’re guarding our hearts and our minds. Listen, to be a Christian doesn’t mean that we have to be bored all the time.

Doesn’t mean that we have to avoid everything and throw away our TVs. Now maybe you need to. But I think there’s a way to do it, but do it carefully and in a way that you’re not filling your mind and your heart with filth and trash. Do not participate in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead even expose them. Ephesians 5.11. Are we doing that when we subject ourselves to filth by choice for entertainment and pay money for it? Do not be conformed to this world. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Would you bow your head with me in prayer? Our Father God, we we’re sorry that we’re so sinful.

I’m sorry that I’m sinful. I’m sorry that I let my eyes see things that they shouldn’t see, and let my ears hear things they shouldn’t hear. And Father, I want to do better. But I’m thankful for your word, for teaching me to avoid these pitfalls and these things that will ultimately bring bring our lives misery and unhappiness. And Father, things that will condemn our soul. We pray that you would forgive all of us wherein we have sinned by not guarding our heart with all diligence. Teach us, Father, to do this and to do it with intensity, and to realize that Satan is out to get us every moment of every day and every night. And he never rests, he never lets us, he never lets us out of his sight.

But Father, we realize that you never let us out of your sight either. And we realize that one day we will stand in judgment for our actions. We pray that we may live in such a way that honors you and that glorifies your Son. It is in Him that we pray. Amen. We’ll now be dismissed for our Bible classes.