Introduction
There’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed over the past few years. That’s the phenomenon of ’the better offer’. It comes in two forms: the first is where you don’t reply to an invitation until the last minute because you might get a better offer; but the second is worse. That’s where you say you’re coming to something and then when a better offer comes up you just don’t go. I’ve seen it happen at dinners that I’ve organised. I’ve even seen it happen at weddings - forget the fact that the parents have paid a small fortune for your meal. Just change your mind and don’t bother telling anyone!
Of course this unwillingness to commit, or this inability to keep to a commitment, is just a symptom of a wider malaise in our society isn’t it? And it’s seen most strongly I guess in the area we’re thinking about today - in the area of sexual relationships. We no longer have husbands and wives. We now have current life partners. We practise serial monogamy. And of course if you listen to the media, which most of us do too much probably, the message comes through loud and clear and often not very subtly: sleeping around is normal. "Try it before you buy it" is the dominant philosophy presented to us in all sorts of forums. We’re told you can’t be happy without sexual experience, of one sort or another, it doesn’t really matter. How often do you see older women on TV or in movies complaining that it’s so long since they had sex with someone - as though they can’t be happy without it. And it seems that people are buying it!
But what’s the reality behind this media campaign? Well the reality is people aren’t happy despite their experimentation with sex. In fact they seem to be all the more frustrated by the lack of fulfilment they find in either casual relationships or more permanent relationships that fall over at the first hurdle. What’s offered by our world, sexual encounters without the foundation of heartfelt love, is a counterfeit that never satisfies. It just leaves people wishing for more.
God’s solution: Promise Keeping
So what’s the solution? Well here’s where we come to the 7th commandment. This is the one that’s supposed to ruin your life, take all the fun away, leave you stuck in a rut, make you miserable. So what’s at the heart of this 7th commandment?
You may remember, if you were here, that when I began this series I said that the commandments are an expression of the character of God. They’re given to help us see what it means to be godly people. So what’s God like? Well, God is a God who keeps his promises, who remains faithful no matter how the objects of his love behave. So when he tells us not to commit adultery, at the first level he’s simply telling us that he expects us to do what he does: to remain faithful to the promises we made or will make on our wedding day.
But on top of that need to remain faithful is an underlying need to maintain our purity of heart and mind so we can avoid the temptation to fail in our faithfulness - and we’re going to think about that in a moment.
First though, we need to realise that sometimes it’s easier to make a promise than it is to keep it. Circumstances change; people change; or perhaps they don’t change, we just discover the truth about them that we hadn’t realised at first; external pressures are applied; and we find ourselves faced with temptations that are difficult to resist.
And of course we live in what Jesus described, even in his day, as a wicked and adulterous generation: one where faithfulness is no longer valued: in fact faithfulness is even laughed at as though it were old-fashioned, out of date; ours is an age where experimentation with several partners is prescribed for future happiness in marriage; where what I want at the moment is more important than what I promised back then. So how can we be helped to remain faithful and to keep our lives pure
1. God’s Good Gift of Sexuality
Let’s start at the very beginning: In Gen 1 we discover that God made them male and female. In Gen 2 the woman is made from the rib of the man, so their union is a kind of reunion, being remade into the one flesh from which they came. So we’re told, a man will cleave to his wife and they’ll become one flesh. That is, they form an organic unity, the way flour and milk and egg blend together to make a pancake batter. Once you’ve mixed them together it’s impossible to separate the parts. In other words there’s an indivisible nature to their relationship.
What’s more their sexual joining is designed by God as a good and pleasurable thing. The Song of Songs celebrates the enjoyment of sexual pleasure between a husband and wife. Heb 13:4 says: "Let the marriage bed be kept pure." In other words sex within marriage is a pure and good thing - provided we maintain its purity.
But of course with marriage, becoming one flesh is only the start. From there they need to grow in their relationship with one another so not only their bodies but also their minds and spirits and wills grow together into a living unity. But God has made us in such a way that that doesn’t happen independently. The union of their bodies as they give themselves to each other sexually seems somehow to be integral to strengthening the bond between them in those other areas.
2. Fallen Sexuality
The only problem is that our world has turned God’s good gift upside down. One of the results of the fall was that human sexuality became distorted. So instead of arising out of love it became a means to control.
Now we start with sex and hope that love might follow.
People forget faithfulness to their promises preferring to seek out their own sources of pleasure.
The root of the problem goes back to the fall, to the fact that we don’t trust God to satisfy us or we’re too impatient to wait, so we go looking for our own sources of satisfaction. And ours is an age that offers many and varied ways to do so.
As a result of the fall the good gift of sexual desire was perverted to become a desire to please oneself and/or to rule over the other.
Let me give you some examples. Think about the male who forces himself on his partner for his own pleasure, ignoring her feelings. Or the person who indulges in pornography at the expense of building a relationship with their partner. Think about the female who withholds sexual favours as a way of controlling or punishing her partner. Or the male (mostly) who exploits prostitutes for sexual pleasure, ignoring the fact that in God’s eyes this makes them one flesh. We read what God says about this in 1 Cor 6 today: "16Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." 17But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18Shun fornication!" So sex with a prostitute is incompatible with being united with Christ. And let’s not forget the lifestyle that’s being promoted by our media at every opportunity at the moment, where a person gives up the union of man and woman and exchanges it for sexual pleasure-seeking with someone of the same sex.
All of these are examples of people turning sex from what God intended it: something that expresses the love a man and a woman have for one another, into simply a way of satisfying their own selfish desires.
3. Avoiding Temptation
Well let’s think about how those of us who are or will be married can avoid the temptation to fail in our faithfulness to our spouse.
Remembering your spouse is a gift from God
The first thing I want to suggest is something that someone said to me when I was first married. They said never forget that your wife is a gift from God. Never forget how blessed you are to have her for a wife. Now I have to say as the years have gone by I’ve realised the truth of that more and more. Who else would put up with me the way she does? Who else gives me the support and strength that she gives. Who else knows me well enough to tell me to pull my head in when I’m being stupid. But can I also say that I sometimes forget that. Human beings are much better at picking up on other people’s faults than they are at recognising their good points. When you live close to someone it’s much easier to be annoyed by their bad habits than it is to be grateful for the good things they do for you, particularly if those good things are routine, always being done for you. So pay attention to the good things you see in your spouse. Thank her or him for the things they do for you. Work on building your relationship with one another by doing good things together, by spending time talking and enjoying each other’s company. Tell each other how you’re feeling. Enjoy this gift God has given you.
Remembering your love for God - Joseph (Gen 39:9)
Secondly don’t just remember your love for your wife. More importantly remember your love for God. Do you remember Joseph in Egypt? Do you remember the reason Joseph was thrown into prison? "Gen 39:7And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, "Lie with me." 8But he refused and said to his master’s wife, "Look, with me here, my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my hand. 9He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great wickedness, and sin against ... God?" He was more concerned about what God would say than about what Potiphar would do to him.
Faithfulness in marriage can be a struggle. As I said before circumstances change, people change, things can get rough. That’s why we promise "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." Someone once defined marriage as an impossible relationship between two incompatible people and there’s a lot of truth to that definition. So it’s no wonder that people sometimes struggle with their marriages. But remember that God is involved as well. Your faithfulness in marriage reflects your integrity as one of God’s sons and daughters. So ask God to strengthen your commitment to one another. Make sure that your Christian faith is something you share with each other, not just with others in the church. And be aware of how, as a Christian couple, the way you relate with one another reflects on the way people view God.
Realising the path to adultery begins with the first step - reading the signs
Thirdly, realise that the path to adultery starts with one, often innocent, step. So learn to read the signs. People rarely set out to have an affair. There may be some who have no sense of faithfulness and who simply play around, but most people, I think you’ll find, honestly intend to remain faithful to their spouse. Yet as Michael pointed out last week the instances of divorce among Christians are as common as they are among non-Christians. Even among those who profess faith in Christ we find people having affairs. I can think of a number of notable examples. One of the highest profile examples was Rev Gordon MacDonald, pastor of a huge church, then head of World Vision, then of Inter-Varsity Fellowship. Until in 1987 he was on a speaking tour, feeling lonely and met a woman in a hotel restaurant who was also alone. They began sharing meals together until in the end it became an affair.
His fall was typical of many. It began with an innocent offer to share a meal table together. It happened in the context of loneliness; of unstructured time. Probably they clicked as they shared their stories together. I imagine he’d find it hard to identify a moment when it moved from being purely innocent to being contrived and focussed, but at some stage I imagine it did. What’s more at any moment along that path, until the final step into bed with her, he could have stopped it. He could have done what Joseph did, though with far less danger to himself. He could have said, "No, this is not pleasing to God. This is a sinful path I’m walking down."
If you’re someone who spends periods of time away from home you need to take this seriously. If you’re someone who’s struggling with your marriage for some reason, you need to take this seriously. If you’re finding your relationship with your husband or wife difficult you need to take this very seriously. Do something about your relationship before it’s too late. Join a marriage course like the one Roy and Jo and Melinda and Seamus were going to run last month. Think about the great gift God has given you in your husband or wife.
Remember the path to adultery can start with the most simple and innocent steps, but once you get on that slippery slope it’s very hard to pull back, to recover. Jesus was very blunt about being careful where we let our eyes wander because he knew that unfaithfulness starts in the mind and heart long before it turns into action. His radical solution sounds extreme but that’s because he knew how easy it is to begin down that path and how hard it is to turn around once that journey has begun.
Be careful how you train yourself as you move into relationships.
Fourthly for those who are just embarking on relationships with the opposite sex, remember what Michael said last week about the way we can inadvertently train ourselves in faithlessness. Be very careful when you begin dating that you don’t just give up at the first hurdle, that you don’t just do it for your own good pleasure. Make sure that you learn what it means to care for the other person in such a way that you’re concerned for their well being more than your own. And take seriously God’s word when it talks about sexual purity, when it reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Keep sex for when you’re joined with another person in a lifelong committed relationship. Don’t take that precious gift lightly. Preserve it until the right moment.
4. Struggling with forgiveness
Finally let me just touch briefly on the issue of responding to failure in a marriage. There may be some here who have experienced unfaithfulness on the part of their spouse. What can be done in that situation? Well, the first thing that needs to happen I guess is that the unfaithful partner needs to repent. That is to turn around and renounce their unfaithful behaviour. If that first step doesn’t happen then there isn’t much that can be done to restore the relationship, I don’t think. But if repentance can be managed then forgiveness can be possible. The model Jesus gives us is of the father in the parable of the prodigal son. When the son repents and returns to ask for forgiveness, the father runs to meet him and then brings him back home. If the wronged partner is able to handle the cost involved in such forgiveness and the unfaithful partner truly turns away from the past failure, hope is restored to that relationship. They may still need help healing the hurts of the past, restoring trust and commitment, but in God’s power it can be done.
God calls us to committed faithfulness to one another as part of our commitment to him. He calls us to purity of mind and action, to help us maintain the purity of our relationship with our spouse. He calls us to keep our promises just as he keeps his.
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