Good morning. Before we begin, let’s open with a word of prayer.
In Exodus 20:1-17 it says, “Ribbon”
When I was a kid, today’s command was the scariest for me. “THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.” You wouldn’t think that would be scary to a little kid, but it was. The reason it was scary was because I had no idea what adultery was. I knew it HAD to be serious, because it was stuck right between “DON”T KILL” and “DON”T STEAL.” I knew what those 2 meant and I knew they were both REALLY bad.
So I knew adultery was something really bad, but I had no idea what it was. I was afraid I might accidentally commit adultery and never even know it. So I put my reasoning skills to work. I used my best trick for figuring out words, which was to relate the word I didn’t know to words I did know.
For example, I came across the word “liquefy.” Well, I knew what the word “liquid” meant, and I could tell this was a verb, so it must mean “to make something liquid.”
The only word I could relate it to “adultery” was the word “adult.” So I thought adultery must mean, “to act like an adult.” So just to make sure I didn’t break this command, I decided I would NEVER act like an adult. And if you would ask Nellie, I have kept that resolution ever since.
A father asked his 8-year-old son at dinner one evening, ‘‘What did you learn at school today?” The boy replied, ‘‘We learned how to make babies.” Struggling to keep his composure, Dad asked, ‘‘And how do you make babies?” The boy said, ‘‘Oh, it’s easy, you just drop the Y and add I-E-S.”
Now on to our topic for today. Today our media portrays most sexual behavior as harmless and morally neutral as long as it occurs between 2 consenting adults. Sex is used to sell everything from toothpaste to sports cars, a membership at the gym, to a Caribbean cruise. People turn to sex for excitement, fulfillment, intimacy, adventure, and a whole lot of other reasons.
In 1999, Cameron Barnes published a book called, “Affair! How to Manage Every Aspect of Your Extramarital Relationship with Passion, Discretion, and Dignity.” The publisher described it as “a thoughtful, detailed discussion of every aspect of considering, preparing for, beginning, and conducting a successful and emotionally fulfilling extramarital affair.”
What? And Judith E. Brandt has written a book similar to that. An interview with the Chicago Tribune included this discussion with Ms. Brandt:
Q: You say [in your book], don’t feel guilty. That doesn’t seem realistic.
Ms. Brandt: Guilt is basically something built into society to keep you in line. If you are going about your business in a discreet way and you are continuing to take care of your wife and, most importantly, your children, there is no reason to feel guilt.”
Well Ms. Brandt, I have to disagree with you. Guilt is not from society, guilt is inner pain from God designed to keep you from further pain. Sorry Ms. Brandt, but there’s plenty of reason to feel guilt. Because those who commit adultery have broken the promise to “forsake all others.” They have failed to fulfill the covenant of faithfulness that they took before God and their family and friends.
According to Dr. Lana Staneli, author of a book on marital triangles, ‘‘Of those who break up their marriage to marry someone else, 80% are sorry later. Of those who do marry their lover, which is only about 10%, about 70% of them get a divorce. Of that 25-30% that stay married, only half of them are happy. Having an affair is an invitation to an awful lot of pain and tragedy.”
So with all this sexual confusion, it seems that a discussion of the seventh commandment--God’s commandment against adultery--is very relevant. We’ve been in a series through the 10 commandments, and today as we look at the seventh commandment I want to try and answer 4 questions. First, what does the seventh commandment actually address? Second, why is adultery wrong? Third, what leads people to adultery? And finally, how can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture?
First, What Does The Seventh Commandment Address?
Let’s begin by looking at the seventh commandment together: it says, “You shall not commit adultery.”
Now at first this commandment seems pretty clear. After all, we all know what adultery is...right? Usually this word describes married people having sex with people other than their spouse; that’s its normal meaning. But this same word can also refer to other kinds of immoral sexual conduct. So what does the seventh commandment address? Well, I feel that this command forbids all violations of God’s boundaries for our sexual relationships.
As you look through the Bible you will find “no trespassing” signs around various kinds of sexual activity. These “no trespassing” signs warn us that by stepping over these sexual boundaries we’ll short-circuit our relationship with God, undermine our relationships with those around us, and ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. So these “no trespassing” signs are for our own good put there by God to protect us.
Now what are some of these boundaries that God has set up? An obvious boundary is literal adultery. Literal adultery is whenever a married person engages in any sort of sexual activity with a person other than his or her spouse. Next to the sin of idolatry--which is a violation of the first commandment--no other sin is as condemned more in the Bible than the sin of adultery.
Another violation of the seventh commandment is premarital sex. Now even though more people believe adultery is morally wrong today than in the 1970s, the same thing can’t be said for pre-marital sex. According to a University of Chicago study, in the 1970s 36% of Americans believed that “sex between an unmarried man and woman is always morally wrong,” but by 1996 that number had dropped to 24%. The vast majority of people today see nothing wrong with sex between 2 unmarried consenting adults, yet the Bible is very consistent in its condemnation of this activity as being displeasing to God and destructive to our relationships.
So the seventh commandment isn’t just talking about literal adultery, but it’s actually forbidding all violations of God’s boundaries for our sexuality. We could go into homosexuality and incest as well, but I think you get the point. This command forbids the violation of the boundaries concerning sex that God has established for us.
So then we come to the question of Why Is Adultery Wrong?
Why does God forbid these things? Does God view our sexual desires as unnatural and dirty?
Sexual sin is wrong because God designed our sexuality to be enjoyed in the covenant of marriage. God created marriage to be a covenant relationship. This is a creation ordinance that’s given to the entire human race. It doesn’t say back in Genesis “For this reason a Christian man will leave his father and his mother” or “for this reason religious people will leave their parents.” This is something God gave to all of humanity.
What God is in favor of is marriage between a man and a woman, and because of that God is against any sexual activity that undermines marriage. God knows that men and women are never so vulnerable as when they lie naked in bed with each other, so God created a covenant relationship for that vulnerability to be expressed in. Why did God create our sexuality in the first place? God created our sexuality for reproduction. Part of God’s commission to men and women is to produce the next generation of people, and God gave us our sexuality to do this.
Now in the Roman Catholic churches this is believed to be the only reason for sexuality, but when the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe in the 16th century, the Reformers went back to the Bible to see what the purpose of sex was. They found that although reproduction was one of the reasons why God made sex, it wasn’t the only reason. God also made our sexuality for intimacy. The sexual union is the closest expression of intimacy in the marriage bond, where we’re not only united in body, but we’re also united in soul and spirit.
This is why sexual sin deeply wounds people far more than any other kind of sin. This is also why the husband/wife relationship in marriage is a picture of the intimacy God wants with his church like it talks about in (Ephesians chapter 5.
And finally, God created our sexuality for our enjoyment. Sex is God’s wedding gift at every marriage, for them to enjoy with each other in the strongest and most serious of all covenant relationships. The Old Testament book Song of Solomon is an entire book that celebrates the enjoyment of love in the context of marriage.
Sex outside of God’s boundaries isn’t sinful because it’s dirty or shameful. Homosexual activity isn’t sinful because it’s gross or because many people find it repulsive. According to the Bible, every sex act that’s called a sin is sinful because it’s a violation of the marriage covenant that God established. God’s not against sex, He’s just for marriage.
That leads us to question number 3, What Leads People To Commit Adultery?
Jesus addressed the issue of what causes us to sin sexually in his Sermon on the Mount. He said, “You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Jesus quotes the seventh commandment, but then He gets to the heart of the issue. Now let’s rule out some things Jesus is not saying first. Jesus is not saying that sexual attraction is sinful. Jesus is not saying that if you’ve already lusted, you might as well follow through, as if physical adultery is no different than adultery in the heart.
What Jesus is saying is that lust is the root of adulterous behavior. The text literally reads in Greek, “If anyone looks at a woman for the purpose of lust.” So again, this isn’t attraction, but it’s mentally undressing another person, dwelling in the inward fantasy of what it would be like to be with that person. Robertson McQuilkin defines lust as “to desire any kind of sexual pleasure...with anyone who may not legitimately provide that pleasure. He says that any thought that would be immoral to act out is sinful lust.” So this of course probably makes all of us guilty of adultery.
So Jesus tells us what leads people to adultery. We are lured into adultery--or any other kind of sexual sin when we allow lust to rule our lives. When we allow lust full reign over our thoughts and emotions, it’s just a matter of time until we start acting it out. A life ruled by lust makes our bodies the slaves of our desires, and the more we feed our sexual desires with lustful thoughts and images, they more out of control they become.
A person who continually feeds his mind with pornographic images and sexual fantasy ultimately becomes entangled by those desires like a fly in a spider web.
Now to wrap things up, we have question number 4, How Do We Follow Jesus In An Adulterous Culture?
Bible teacher William Barclay reminds us that, “The moral problems which face our own generation are far from new. The fact that they are not new does not make them any less serious, but it does remind us that Christianity is not facing anything which it was not called upon to face before.” We’re in the same boat first century Christians were in, and so Jesus addresses how we are to follow Him in a culture that encourages us to indulge in adultery.
Turn with me to Matthew 5:27-30. Let’s see what Jesus has to say. Here in Matthew 5:27-30 Jesus says, “1”
Now obviously Jesus isn’t being literal here. Jesus is using a teaching devise called hyperbole, where He deliberately exaggerates to make His point. We know that because our eyes and our hands aren’t what cause us to lust. The primary sex organ is the mind, not our eyes, our hands, or any other part of our body. There’s no evidence that 1 eyed people lust any less than 2 eyed people. There’s no study to suggest that 1 handed people are any less sexually active than 2 handed people.
Jesus is using this extreme example to teach us that sexual sin is serious, and we ought to be ready to take extreme measures to deal with sin. New Testament scholar Don Carson says Jesus’ point here is that we are to deal drastically with sin. We must not pamper it, flirt with it, enjoy nibbling a little around the edges. The German Christian Deitrich Bonhoeffer says this teaching reminds us that no sacrifice is too great if it enables us to conquer a lust which cuts us off from Jesus.”
So wow can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture? Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of sexual faithfulness. I’ve always loved the motto for the United States Marine Corps: Semper Fi, always faithful. That’s exactly what Jesus calls us to in the area of our sexuality.
For the single person, this means that he or she is willing to go against the grain of our culture and live a morally pure, virtuous life. For the married couple, this means that even though their marriage surely falls short of the ideal marriage, that they’re committed to being faithful to each other.
Every person struggles with their sexuality, and for every Christian it’s a battle to place his or her sexuality under the Lordship of Jesus. Some struggle to even think a positive thought about sex. And others struggle with sexual temptations that entice them beyond God’s boundaries for sexuality. Every follower of Jesus struggles. But until we’re committed to living a countercultural life of discipleship to Jesus, we’ll find our voice about sexual sin muted and dismissed because we lack the credibility to speak with moral authority. God is calling us to a lifestyle of sexual faithfulness.
The bottom line of the seventh commandment is this: Our sexuality is a good gift from God, to be treasured, protected, and enjoyed in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman.
In conclusion, Wilt Chamberlain was one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived. He racked up statistics like nobody before or since. But the number he will probably be remembered for most is 20,000. In his autobiography that’s the number of women the never married Chamberlain claimed to have slept with.
What’s interesting, though, is the fact that, along with that boast, Chamberlain went on to say “that he would have traded all 20,000 for the one woman he wanted to stay with for keeps.”
But while Chamberlain claims he wanted that “one woman… to stay with for keeps,” he was apparently never willing to pay the price. Because having the ONE means forsaking the other 19,999. There is no real intimacy apart from faithfulness. Chamberlain’s “missing link” was faithfulness. He wouldn’t be faithful to only one woman, and so he settled for sex without love; physical intimacy without relationship.
John Maxwell tells a story of two men who grew up best friends. Though Jim was just a little older than Phillip and often assumed the role of leader, they did everything together. They went to high school and college together.
After college they decided to join the Marines. By a unique series of circumstances they were sent to Germany together where they fought side by side in one of history’s ugliest wars. One sweltering day during a fierce battle, amid heavy gunfire, bombing, and close-quarters combat, they were given the command to retreat. As the men were running back, Jim noticed that Phillip had not returned with the others. Panic gripped his heart. Jim knew if Phillip was not back in another minute or two, then he wouldn’t make it.
Jim begged his commanding officer to let him go after his friend, but the officer forbade the request, saying it would be suicide. Risking his own life, Jim disobeyed and went after Phillip. His heart pounding, he ran into the gunfire, calling out for Phillip. A short time later, his platoon saw him hobbling across the field carrying a limp body in his arms.
Jim’s commanding officer was furious, and shouting that it was a foolish waste of time and an outrageous risk. “Your friend is dead,” he added, “and there was nothing you could do.”
“No sir, you’re wrong,” Jim replied. “I got there just in time. Before he died, his last words were ’I knew you would come.”
That’s faithfulness. And that’s the missing link that makes all the difference in every relationship. May we be men and women who exhibit great faithfulness, just as God has demonstrated His Great Faithfulness to us. And may we extend that faithfulness to our sexual relationships and make sure that we keep it inside the marriage covenant.
Let’s Pray |
