READING: Job 30-31, Acts 13:26-52
“I have made a covenant with my eyes.”
Job 31:2
Job, like most men, apparently understood the temptation to look at another person with lust. That desire is controlling and pervasive, consuming a man who longs for what he cannot have. In fact, some men have followed that desire into illicit physical activity, only to lose everything they have for only a comparative few minutes of pleasure. We risk losing much when we follow the lead of our eyes.
It’s no wonder, then, that Job took steps to fight this temptation: “I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I look at a young woman?” (Job 31:1). Indeed, Job made a commitment not only to avoid illicit relationships, but also to rule over his own eyes to keep from even leaning in the wrong direction. He would allow none of the burnings of lust to take root in his heart, and he thus would avoid falling into even deeper sin. In the words of Matthew Henry, “What we must not meddle with we must not lust after; and what we must not lust after we must not look at.”*
How I wish that men today, beginning with me, would maintain such a commitment. I and others use the internet program “Covenant Eyes” to avoid looking at anything immoral, but I wonder if we’ve made the same kind of commitment Job made. It’s one thing to make it more difficult to seek lustful images (as Covenant Eyes does), but it’s another matter to commit one’s eyes to godliness whether or not there are safeguards in place. The former is a step toward protection; the latter is a cry for transformation and victory. We do the first while we cry out for the second, and we always maintain the first because we know the temptation is only one image away.
May God give us Holy Spirit-inspired confidence to win this battle. May we, too, make a covenant with our eyes.
ACTION STEPS:
- Pray for your own purity of eyes, especially if you wrestle with this issue.
- Pray that the young people in your church will not get caught in the trap of immorality and lust.
PRAYER: “Father, I, too, make a covenant with my eyes to look on only those things that are pleasing to You.”
TOMORROW’S READING: Job 32-33, Acts 14
*Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume (p. 715). Peabody: Hendrickson.
