Today we’re gonna talk about sex. Now that I have your attention. . .
God does not have a Commandment about worshipping Him in a temple or sanctuary. He planned to live in the body of His people. He wants to be glorified in your body and carry out His ministry through you. Here’s a rundown:
1. You invite Christ in your life at salvation.
2. Your body becomes His sanctuary. “You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you” (I Cor. 3:16).
3. You must keep your body/temple holy. “If anyone defiles the temple of God,God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are” (I Cor. 3:17).
4. You do not have the right to do what you want with your body. “Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit . . . you are not your own” (I Cor. 6:19).
5. So You must keep your body from sexual immorality. “Do you not know that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! . . . Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is without the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his body” (I Cor. 6:15-18).
Most people in our culture today don’t often associate the word "God" with the word "sex". In fact, for most people, the only thing they think they know about God and sex is that God is against it. Often Christians are thought to be hung up about sex, accused of viewing the human body as dirty and human sexuality as shameful.
So there’s been a bit of confusion about the Christian view of sexuality. And we Christians have often just encouraged the confusion. Often our own confusion and struggles in this area has led us to reinforce the stereotype our culture has about Christians and sex.
Our culture seems to obsessed with sex. Of course, this is nothing new, because human history is filled with examples of sexual indulgence. From the child molestation that swept through ancient Greece to the temple prostitution in the ancient Near East, from the orgies of the Roman Empire, to the American sexual revolution of the 1960s, every generation has struggled to control and understand sexuality.
Today our media portrays most sexual behavior as harmless as long as it occurs between two consenting adults and doesn’t hurt anyone. Sex is used to sell everything from toothpaste to sportscars, a membership at the gym to a Caribbean cruise. People turn to sex to find excitement, fulfillment, spirituality, intimacy, adventure, and a host of other reasons. Our magazines seem obsessed to find the perfect sexual experience, and millions of Americans watch as people disclose their deepest, darkest sexual secrets on daytime TV.
So with all this sexual confusion, it seems that a discussion of the seventh commandment--God’s commandment against adultery--is in order. Today as we look at the seventh commandment we’re going to try to answer four questions. What does the seventh commandment actually address? Why is adultery wrong? What leads people to adultery? And finally, how can we follow Jesus in an adulterous culture?
1. What Does the Seventh Commandment Address? Let’s begin by looking at the seventh commandment together: "You shall not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14)
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 it’s normal meaning. But this same word can also refer to other kinds of immoral sexual conduct. So before we jump to conclusions, let’s see what the seventh commandment is addressing.
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT FORBIDS ALL VIOLATIONS OF GOD’S BOUNDARIES FOR OUR SEXUALITY.
Now what are some of these boundaries 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.
A University of Chicago study in 1996 found that 23% of married men and 15% of married women have committed adultery. Now the vast majority of Americans believe adultery is morally wrong. In fact, more people today believe adultery is morally wrong than twenty years ago. In 1977 75% of Americans said they thought adultery was morally wrong, but in 1997 that number was up to 86%. Yet our culture still glorifies adulterous relationships in popular movies and TV shows.
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 that 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 two unmarried consenting adults, yet the Bible is very consistent in its condemnation as displeasing to God and destructive to our relationships.
A third kind of sexual boundary addressed in the Bible is homosexuality. Now by homosexuality I’m not talking about same sex attraction, but I’m talking about same sex sexual behavior. Leviticus 18:22 says, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman..." In 1 Corinthians 6:9 the apostle Paul lumps "male prostitutes" and "homosexuals" along with other kinds of sexual sin forbidden by the seventh commandment.
Now the Bible doesn’t mention homosexuality a lot simply because it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as adultery was in the ancient world, but it is mentioned about a dozen times. Of course homosexuality has been a huge issue in our culture the last few years or so. Many TV shows now have characters who are gay or lesbian, along with characters who are involved in pre-marital sex and adultery.
But of course this is nothing new. Homosexuality permeated ancient Greek society. Fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were actively homosexual, with the Emperor Nero himself publicly marrying his male lover Sporus with an imperial wedding in Rome. As far as that goes, King James, from which we get the name King James Version, was a homosexual. (Don’t go throwing away your KJV) The Bible consistently calls same sex sexual activity a violation of God’s boundaries for our sexuality.
Finally, a fourth boundary set by the 7th commandment is incest. Maybe this goes without saying, but the Mosaic Law in the Bible condemns sex between close family members, as well as sex between adults and children. 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.
2. Why is Adultery Wrong? Why does God forbid these things. Is God just a prude? Does God get mad when people have fun? Does God view our sexual desires as unnatural and dirty? Well part of the problem is that we tend to focus too much of our attention on what God says not to do, and not enough attention looking at what God originally intended sex to be.
So let’s look at God’s original plan for sex. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame" (Genesis 2:24-25 ).
Now remember that this passage occurs before there’s any sin in the world, so this is human sexuality in its most pure, undefiled form. What we have here is sex before sin, and this passage is foundational for understanding biblical human sexuality.
We learn here that God created what we call marriage, where a man and a woman leave their own families and enter into a special relationship. This is far more than a social contract, but it’s a covenant relationship, where the man and the woman literally "cleave" to each other in mutual commitment and faithfulness. This results in the two being one flesh, which certainly includes the sexual union.
Finally, we read that they were nude and without any embarrassment, inhibition or shame. The picture seems to be what all the secular books and magazines about sexuality are trying to achieve, but here we find this experience of sexual fulfillment and enjoyment is something only achieved in relationship with God.
And it’s here that we learn why sexual sin is wrong. 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, "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.
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 Church this is believed to be the only reason for sexuality, but when the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe in the sixteenth 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. No matter how much people might try, when they sleep with someone, they don’t leave their soul at home, but they’re united not only physically, but also spiritually.
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.
God also 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 erotic love in the context of marriage.
All of us fall short of the ideal expressed in Genesis 2 because of our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of others, but this is the model. 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 marriage. God’s not against sex, but he’s for marriage.
3. What Leads People To Commit Adultery? Robert Wright’s book "The Moral Animal" suggests that men are genetically predisposed to sleep around. According to Wright, it’s in a man’s best interest from an evolutionary perspective to impregnate as many women as possible to ensure that he passes his genes to the next generation. I wonder what Mrs. Wright thinks of that idea.
Jesus addressed the issue of what causes us to sin sexually in his Sermon on the Mount. "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" (Matthew 5:27-28 NIV).
Jesus quotes the seventh commandment, but then he gets to the heart of the issue. 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.
Jesus IS saying 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.
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, the more out of control they become.
In other words, 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. The more we indulge in our desires without any sort of self-control, the more our lusts rule over us, and in some cases it becomes a full blown sexual addiction. For men in particular this is a danger, and many Christian men struggle with recurrent sexual fantasies and pornography. But the root cause of sexual sin is a life that’s ruled by lust.
4. How do we Follow Jesus in an Adulterous Culture? Bible teacher William Barclay reminds us, "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.
Jesus tells us how we are to follow Him, in a culture that encourages immoral sex.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell" (Matthew 5:29-30 NIV). Easy enough, right? Ha!
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 (are you listening) is the mind, not our eyes, our hands, or any other part of our body. There’s no evidence that one-eyed people lust any less than two-eyed people. There’s no study to suggest that one-handed people are less sexually promiscuous than two-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.
So how 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.
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, that they’re committed to being faithful to each other.
Jesus doesn’t call us to be homosexual or heterosexual, but he calls us to first and foremost be His disciples, and as His disciples, to only live sexually within the bounds He’s set up. That means saying no to some things our body wants to say yes to, refusing to indulge in sexually indiscriminate behavior, being faithful first and foremost to Jesus as our Lord and Master.
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. 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. I didn’t make this up. This is what God has spoken, and this, friends, is where real life, real fulfillment, and real enjoyment is truly found.
God didn’t flower it up. He made it clear and to the point. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” You may not believe me right now, but you’ll be glad you kept this commandment.
