Happy Father’s Day. We continue to work our way through the Ten Words, or the Ten Commandments. These Ten Commands came from God’s lips and God’s fingers (Exodus 31:18). The first four commands pertain to our relationship with God. While the last six pertain to our relationships with one another.
Today, we come to the focus on marriage. While marriage has historically been the glue of civilization, America struggles mightily with the sin forbidden in this command. Recent wedding announcements in the NY Times describe couples finding one another after “encountering many obstacles to happy romance.” What is described in the paper, as “obstacles” are really people according to writer Jessica Pressler. She discovered that this code language was being used for adultery. In spite of the moral of our day, “the heart wants what the heart wants,” God has spoken.
Many see marriage to another person as a matter of transition on the road to happiness with another rather than a fixed and permanent vow to another. Sexual desires are out of control in our society. It is obvious to many of us that the moral fabric of our society is in great jeopardy. A survey of ancient civilizations shows that they considered adultery as “the great sin.” We have seen a cascade of men fall to this sin in recent days – Tiger Woods, former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn showed up in court with hotel maids from all over NYC chanting “shame on you.”
But we don’t have to look to the media for news of adultery. This sin has affected our community and our church in tragic ways. My aim this Father’s Day is to enlarge your vision of what marriage is. I want to restore dignity and honor to those married and especially fathers (and potential fathers one day) who hear this today. And all the way, I want to abolish the myth that staying married is about staying in love. Marriage is much larger and broader than a love between a husband and a wife. The meaning of marriage is to display the promise-keeping love of Christ and His church. Everyone, repeat these words with me: The meaning of marriage is to display the promise-keeping love of Christ and His church.
Today’s Scripture
“You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14).
In an age that claims the mantra, “Keep the government out of my bedroom,” God claims the right to dictate the rules of our sexual activity. In fact, our behavior in this area is an important indicator to our spiritual health.
1. As God Keeps His Promises, You Keep Your Promise
“You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14). The commandment is four words in English and two words in Hebrew. It literally says, “no adulterating” as the previous commandment was literally “no murdering.” This commandment’s seriousness is displayed when we see that God has placed it between the commandments not to murder or to steal.
Adultery occurs when a marriage partner has sexual relations with someone other than his or her spouse. No one is allowed to have sex with any married person except his or her spouse. No married person is allowed to have sex with anyone other than his or her spouse. Marriage is about loyalty. Adultery represents such a breach of faith in a marriage that it can be compared to treason. And adultery is about the violation of that loyalty. God, Himself is interested in your sexual purity. Again, God presumes the right to tell you what to do in your bedrooms. While other instructions on sex are included in the Bible, this word on adultery is here as it is the most important and basic to God’s law on sex. Marital fidelity is the most basic and important of God’s word on sex.
Adultery is a special sexual sin for two reasons.
1.1 Adultery is Heinous because it Violates Your Promise
Adultery is a more heinous sin because adultery betrays the emotional-psychological intimacy that especially connects a husband and wife. It is such an act of intimate betrayal because it violates this most sacred oath. Somewhere a woman is telling herself, “I want to get out of this marriage and start over with someone who really loves me; God knows the clod I married has given me the reason for cashing him in.” But she remembers a promise she made when she married him and she sticks with him in hopeful love.
Some people still have ships they will not abandon, even when the ship seems to be sinking. Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost. Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck. Your family is fragile and its entire future rests on the promise the husband makes to his wife and the wife makes to her husband. A family must be more than what the census bureau says it is: two or more persons related by blood and living under the same roof. And it is much more than this. The basic foundation of the family is not love but a promise made between a husband and wife. Everything rests on this one promise.
Sir Thomas More opposed King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. He was arrested for treason and executed. More’s favorite daughter was Margaret who was highly intelligent. “Meg” would smuggle More’s letters out of the prison cell, the Tower of London. She even rescued his head after his execution. Margaret begged her father to save his life by renouncing an oath he had made. All he had to do to save his skin was to go back on a vow. This is what he told his daughter: “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he is holding his own self in his hand, like water. And if he opens his fingers then he needn’t hope to find himself again.”
Author Lewis Smedes said that when his wife had married to at least five different men since they had wed – and each of the five had been me. Again, marital fidelity is the most basic and important of God’s word on sex.
Again, adultery is a heinous sexual sin for at least two reasons. First, Adultery is Heinous because it Violates Your Promise but secondly,
1.2 Adultery is Heinous because of God
Your marriage points to God and His church. This earthly relationship points to the heavenly relationship. The two are interwoven in the pages of Scripture as they’ll be interwoven throughout eternity. Too few of us see our marriages as a means of worship. Your marriage is an act of worship for many reasons.
God designed marriage in Genesis 2. God gave away the first bride when He gave Eve to Adam. Ultimately, The meaning of marriage is to display the promise-keeping love of Christ and His church. These words should be read against the backdrop of God’s promise to His people. Now we are used to saying “promise” in our day, but I want to introduce you to a new word (for many of you) to display the solemn oath between God and His people. This word is a covenant. A covenant is an oath. It’s a solemn promise that is not to be broken. And your marriage is to point to a greater relationship between Christ and the church – His promise or His covenant. The pages of Scripture record numerous covenants that God has made to His people. The New Testament describes the comparison between your marriage and God’s marriage to His people.
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband” (Ephesians 5:25-33).
Look carefully at verse 31 as it unpacks the rationale for God’s command against adultery in Exodus 20:14: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). This is describing God’s act of making husband and wife a “one flesh” union. Paul in Ephesians 5:31 is quoting Moses in Genesis 2:24. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). Now then take your eyes to verse 32: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant with His church. As believers show covenant loyalty to God only, they should also show sexual loyalty to their spouse only or to their future spouse only.
In the first four commandments, what has God asked for? Exclusive covenant loyalty and commitment on your part to Him: worship no other gods, worship Me My way, reverence My name, and honor My day. Now in the context of our experience, He says, “Show absolute covenant commitment to your spouse.” He calls us to sexual purity.
Is it any wonder that when God wants to illustrate disloyalty to Him through the writings of the prophets, what metaphor does He use? He calls Israel ‘adulterous’ when Israel is unfaithful to Him. Why? Because a covenant requires commitment. And when we are disloyal, when we are unfaithful sexually to our partner, we violate that covenant in the deepest way that it can be violated. Don’t make take your marriage to the trashcan in this throwaway society we live in. Instead, keep your promise in marriage because it violates your promise. When you fail to keep your promise, your sin is heinous as it violates God Himself.
2. Strive for Inward Purity Rather Outward Conformity
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30).
God is concerned with more than your outward conformity. He is concerned with your inward purity. It is not enough to abstain from physical adultery. Christ wants your hearts pure. Christ wants your minds clean. Just because you have not taken up with a prostitute doesn’t mean that you have kept this commandment. Just because you have not had an extramarital affair or a premarital affair doesn’t mean that you've kept this commandment. There is more than one way to break this commandment. Jesus goes right to the issue of lust. Lust is a breaking of this commandment. And then He says, consider your heart. He takes right into our desires. He tells us here that what we lust for with our eyes affects our hearts and our hearts also determine to a certain extent what we lust for with our eyes. Consider our heart and then look at what Jesus does. It’s like a hellfire and brimstone preacher. He connects lust with hell. You see, Jesus’ ultimate concern isn’t just our moral purity. It’s our salvation.
If you tell me you're having a habitual problem with sexual lust, whether you are addicted to pornography or multiple affairs through the years… and you tell me that you are not sure you can stop. I would tell you that such lust will send you to hell if you don’t repent. Jesus Himself makes that connection. You must turn around.
You must marry your confession of Christ and the cross to stopping your sin. I can’t say this loud enough. Most of us are missing the Bible here. And many people who are traveling this road think their church attendance and their Bible reading will make them ok. You cannot walk in heaven from the pornography’s Internet site. There is an avenue from the adulterer’s bed to God. By the power of the cross, you must stop and repent.
Jesus realizes that these kinds of sins, sexual sins, can so take hold of the heart that they can separate us from God. So He calls in this passage for us to deal with it decisively and He uses the most graphic language – cut your hand from you and cast it away, pluck your eye out, and cast its way if it causes you to stumble. Take whatever drastic action is necessary to remove the avenue of temptation.
