God’s Top Ten
Thou shall not commit adultery
Central Christian Church
St. Petersburg, Fl
October 2002
Exo 20:14 "You shall not commit adultery.
I was told that Moses came down from the mountain with the two tablets and as the people gathered around him he said, “I have some good news and some bad news.” “The good news is I got Him to limit the commandments to 10, the bad news is He would not throw out the one about adultery.”
It was about nine o’clock at night. A man dashed into the doctor’s office in a highly nervous condition and explained to the doctor that he had been in a very bad state all day. The doctor, in his best professional manner, asked if anything had happened to shock or upset his nerves. "Well," the man answered, "there is this letter I received this morning." He showed the doctor a letter, which stated in part, "If you don’t stop running around with my wife, I’m going to blow your head off." The doctor answered, "Well, that’s a comparatively simple matter. Why don’t you just stop running around with the man’s wife "But, Doctor, the fool forgot to sign his name!"
Sex is a beautiful gift from God, designed by the creator to be shared by one man with one woman as husband and wife.
Marriage is a covenatal relationship put together by God and adultery always occurs in our minds way before it happens in the bed.
The devil and his world will tell you sex is normal and natural between men and women and boys and girls, it is the way God designed us. Well, the world will tell you boys with boys and girls with girls. As long as both parties consent nobody is hurt by sex outside of marriage.
The culture we live in today scoffs at the concept of sexual fidelity in marriage and here is part of the reason why, consider the following:
From a study made of 104 leading television writers and executives conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the study found that Hollywood’s views run far from the mainstream of public opinion. Though 85 percent of Americans believe adultery is wrong, only 49 percent of TV writers and executives do. Everyone else is less likely than Hollywood to say a woman has a right to an abortion (59 to 97 percent). While only 4 percent of Americans have no religious affiliation, 45 percent of the TV writers and executives have none. -- Reported in Newsweek, 7/20/92, "To Verify," Leadership.
It is no wonder that our society is inundated with messages about sex that is contrary to God’s 7th commandment “You shall not commit adultery.” Our divorce rate and the number of married couples in counseling over extra marital affairs have never been higher. It is time we stop listening to Hollywood and start listening to God’s Holy Will!
The U.S. makes 150 pornographic movies per week. The music our children listen to is full of sexual innuendo. All of it is just a lie from the devil.
Sex outside of marriage can become a fatal attraction.
I read the story about a middle-aged businessman whose work took him away from home and out of town on numerous occasions. He went to places he should not have gone and fell into temptation by being attracted to another woman. Before long he fell into a strictly sexual affair with a young woman.
Through therapy he came to the point where he needed to confess his unfaithfulness to his wife. He asked the therapist to go with him as he shared the wretched story of his sin.
The therapist gave this account of the incident. As the meaning of the husband’s words dawned on the wife, she turned pale as death, and staggered against the wall. The tears on her face were as though she had been stabbed in the heart, her anxiety and pain were extreme.
Through this pain the couple found their way to a church, because they believed God had something to say about their sexuality. What they found were pastors, ministers and people who showed them the meaning of the cross for the forgiveness of sins. Praise God for churches that are full of people who understand sin without being self-righteous and judgmental. Through it all the wife was able to forgive the husband and through the cross he was able to forgive himself. A marriage was made whole, wounds were healed and salvation was received.
Adultery in the OT had to do as much with unfaithfulness in commitment as it did with having sex with someone other than your spouse. The Bible often looks at idolatry and adultery in the same light. Loving self more than we love God. Both are reprehensible to God and must be confessed and repented.
Paul speaks about the importance of purity in the NT. I think often times what our young people do not know is that our bodies belong to God, and then they belong to our spouse. Just because we are single does not mean our bodies belong to us and we can choose what we will do with them. Because most of us desire to be married some time we must understand that even though we do not have our spouse yet and we are single, our bodies belong to them way before we are married.
Listen to Paul’s words regarding this:
1 Th 4:1 Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.
1 Th 4:2 For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
1 Th 4:3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;
1 Th 4:4 that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable,
1 Th 4:5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God;
1 Th 4:6 and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.
1 Th 4:7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
1 Th 4:8 Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Verse 6, when we have sex before marriage, during marriage or after marriage with someone other than our spouse we are wronging our brother or sister to whom their body will someday belong in matrimony. The LORD will punish us for that sin.
Yet our society is increasingly promiscuous. TV, the media movies teach that sex is just a pleasurable activity that can be separated from marriage. Remember our society says hey if it doesn’t hurt anyone and two adults are of legal age- well if it feels good they should do it. Grab all the gusto you can get, because you only go around once in life as the Swedish bikini team drops in.
Yet Jesus makes the commandments tougher and more narrow doesn’t he in the sermon on the mount he says, “Mat 5:27 "You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’
Mat 5:28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Mat 5:29 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.
Mat 5:30 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.”
God gives us the 7th commandment to obey today because God seeks to preserve marriages and families.
Our spiritual lives are best tested in 3 areas of our lives those 3 areas are seen by God as either godly or ungodly, they are money, sex and power. You see marriage has a high priority to God; He wants us to come to the marital bed pure and then not defile it after we are married. When we are married we become one flesh and sexual immorality and impurity should not even be mentioned by a Christian.
Not even thought of, if our thoughts are impure sexually, we need to take them captive to the obedience of Christ.
The world judges people by their deeds, God judges by the contents of our hearts. God judges us by our thoughts and so we have no right to judge others who have done what we would do if we believed we could get away with it. Any impurity like that is the same as adultery to God.
A church that is able to help hurting people in this world cannot be self righteous.
That is why we need a Savior because we are all guilty.
Sex is like a great river that is rich and deep and good when it stays within its boundaries. But the minute the river overflows its boundaries, it becomes destructive, sex is like that in the context of marriage it is deep and rich and good outside of marriage it is a destructive force.
God expects exclusivity in marriage because He expects exclusivity in our relationship with Him. The marriage relationship is supposed to be a picture of our relationship with Him. That’s why He is so offended by broken marriages. They mar the picture that He intended of one woman and one man in love with each other for their whole lives, willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the benefit of the other.
Adultery is not just a matter of one spouse sinning against the other. It is a matter of sinning against Almighty God who is your Creator and will one day be your Judge! (Heb. 13:4)
Adultery is an offense against God because it destroys trust. It is the breaking of a vow that two people have made with each other. When a trust that heart-felt is betrayed, it makes it that much harder for persons to trust in God and believe that He will fulfill all that He has promised.
Marriage is a covenantal relationship put together by God between one man and one woman. The only way it works is with Christ in the center of the marriage. What I mean is we must live our marriages by the book.
Husbands we must love our wives as Christ loves the church, giving ourselves up for her. Wives we need to understand their husbands position as the leader of the home. Sex should not be withheld as punishment for what someone did or did not do.
If we win or lose the battle for a faithful marriage will depend on our thought life. We must avoid the thinking that says “the grass is greener on the other side” or “everybody is doing it we need to get over it.”
Men particularly we need to make a covenant with our eyes not to look at a young woman. Movies, with sexually explicit scenes, pornography on the internet, even the ads on TV, in my opinion have gone way too far.
This sin of adultery can occur way before we wake up with our head in Delilah’s lap. It can occur when we lust and covet in our minds. Remember it will be our minds that can bring judgment, so we must show people in the world who have been trapped by the Devil into thinking his lie is O.K. the love and truth of God’s forgiving grace at the cross.
Works Cited
Marquardt, Dennis “1+1=1”
Stroman, John A. “Fatal Attraction”
Talton, Chris “ Broken Rings”
