Honor Your Spouse Series

INTRODUCTION

• Today we will continue with our Ten Commandments series. Thus far the commandments can be summarized by saying we are to honor God and we are to honor our parents. Today we are going to open up a subject that is a real problem in our society. This issue at hand today is the Seventh Commandment.

• Exodus 20:14 tells us, “You shall not commit adultery.”

• This commandment can be summarized by saying, “Honor your spouse.”

• Television and movies seem to glorify adultery. Watch the Soap Operas. Many movies we see glorify it.

• Just how prevalent is the problem today? According to an article by Kerby Anderson who is the president of Probe Ministries: (http://www.probe.org/docs/adultery.html)

• How prevalent is adultery? Two of the most reliable studies come to similar conclusions. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior estimates that "More than one-third of men and one-quarter of women admit having had at least one extramarital sexual experience."{1} Samuel Janus and Cynthia Janus, The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1993), 169. A survey by the National Opinion Research Center (University of Chicago) found lower percentages: 25 percent of men had been unfaithful and 17 percent of women. Even when these lower ratios are applied to the current adult population, that means that some 19 million husbands and 12 million wives have had an affair.{2} Joannie Schrof, "Adultery in America," U.S. News and World Report, 31 Aug. 1998, 31.

• Perhaps you are thinking, "This is just a problem with non-Christians in society. It can’t be a problem in the church. Certainly the moral standards of Christians are higher." Well, there is growing evidence that adultery is also a problem in Christian circles. An article in a 1997 issue of Newsweek magazine noted that various surveys suggest that as many as 30 percent of male Protestant ministers have had sexual relationships with women other than their wives.{5} Kenneth Woodward, "Sex, Morality and the Protestant Minister," Newsweek (28 July 1997), 62.

• According to a 1994 University of Michigan study, “infidelity is indeed the primary cause of divorce.”

• Only about 35 percent of couples remain together after the discovery of an adulterous affair; the other 65 percent divorce. Perhaps nothing can destroy a marriage faster than marital infidelity.

• I would imagine all of us here today have either been personally affected or know a person who has been affected in some way by adultery. Today we are going to look at what the commandment means, then we will see that the grass is not greener on the other side and finally we will look at steps as to how we can protect ourselves from the sin of adultery.

SERMON

I. A LOOK AT THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

• Once again God gives us a pretty simple command to follow, but as the statistics I shared with you show, many people do not see this as important.

• When God created man and woman, He also created marriage.

• In Genesis 2:24 we are told, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”

• This is the reason that sex outside of marriage is not what God wanted. When a couple is joined together in marriage, they are no longer two, but one flesh, they have a special bond. God is the creator of sex and it was meant for the mutual satisfaction of the husband and wife. It was meant to be enjoyed within the confines of marriage. Man though has a way of messing up a good thing.

• In the Old Testament, adultery was sex between a man, married or unmarried and a married woman. You have to remember in the Old Testament we had polygamy laced throughout. If a man had sex with an unmarried woman, he HAD to marry her and he was NEVER allowed to divorce her. DEUTERONOMY 22:28-29 says, "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.

• Adultery was punishable by death in the Old Testament, even if a person slept with a woman who was engaged. DEUTERONOMY 22:23-24 says, "If there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man, and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death; the girl, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he has violated his neighbor’s wife. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.