Adultery is Costly
I remember the first time I was on the floor of presbytery that we moved into executive session. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that presbytery is closed to visitors so we can deal with a court case against someone who has sinned within presbytery. The purpose of the executive session is for confidentiality.
One of my first thoughts, was, “this ought to be interesting.”
And it was. But it wasn’t interesting in the way that I thought it would be. We were dealing with a fellow pastor that had committed adultery. He had formed a relationship with a young woman in his church, and one thing led to another. (Don’t worry, I’m not breaking the rules of executive session. I’m merely giving general events, which are now publicly known).
The case was difficult… and sobering.
It was difficult because while the man had been caught, and was repentant, he wasn’t truly repentant. What I mean by that is that he was repentant in the fact that he was caught, but he had yet come to a point of loathing and despising his sin. He had yet come to a point of brokenness.
He knew cognitively that the was wrong. But he was still trying to find a way to have his cake and eat it too. He was undergoing the discipline the Presbytery was giving him, but only because he was caught. Not because he felt the odiousness of his sin. He wasn’t sorry for his actions.
Because of that, we dealt with him more seriously.
While this case was being discussed, I was at a loss for who the man was. He wasn’t there. I knew his name, and knew enough in Presbytery that if I could place his face, I would know who we were talking about.
I leaned over to the Presbyter next to me, and asked who it was. The fellow pastor explained who the man was. I was shocked. I remember my thoughts following that bit of information.
“Not THAT guy! No, not him. That guy… how could he do that? He had so much going for him.”
I was blown away, saddened and mortified. The man was someone that I knew only slightly, but who I knew he had a lot going for him. He was an excellent preacher, very well polished, very likeable. He was the sort of man that always made you feel like you were more significant than normal. He seemed to have every thing going for him.
And he lost it all because of an adulterous relationship.
Then another thought hit me. If it could happen to THAT guy… then… it could happen to me too. Who am I to think I’m above such actions. If it happened to THAT guy… it could happen to anyone…
I had to wonder, how did THAT guy face his wife… how did he face his children…? How did he face his parents…? What do you say?
I’m sure there were all the typical lines: “Yes, I still love my wife but…” No you don’t. If you loved her, you wouldn’t have sex with another woman. In view of this, I hate it when I hear ex-wives of adulterous dads saying: “Yes, but he is a good father.” No he isn’t. A good father stays with his wife and children to be a dad that remains home for his children.
The point is that adultery is a serious sin. It is devastating. Not just to the one committing it, but also to their families, to their friends, to the church, and to God. The big lie of adultery is that it is just between the two people involved. It’s never just between the two people involved. It effects everyone around those two people.
Purpose of the Command
We are working our way through the Ten Commandments because we want to understand God’s Law. Remember, the more we understand God’s Law, the more we understand His holiness and our sin, His grace and our depravity, His mercy and our need for Christ.
This morning we are covering the Seventh Commandment: You shall not commit adultery. This is a command given by God to protect the sanctity of marriage and the families involved. Marriage is an institution that God has given us. He is the one that has defined marriage. He has given marriage “for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and of the church with an holy seed; and for preventing of uncleanness.”
The idea is that marriage would help both involved. Both involved would be made complete in their union together, and even more so, in their union with Christ. So to intervene and break this union through adultery is quite a heinous sin. I know that it is rampant in our culture, but that doesn’t make it OK.
Leanne Bell of andtheylivedhappilyeverafter.com, writes the following on the myths on adultery… and I’m just going to read myth number one.
Myth Number One: statistics prove a high percentage of married people commit adultery.
A lot of proponents of extra-marital relationships try to justify their behavior with the pseudo-scientific assessment that monogamy is unnatural and that vast numbers of married people habitually cheat on their spouses. Websites devoted to helping people have affairs take great pains to get this point across - probably out of guilt over the inescapable truth that what they're doing is dishonourable - but as much as they would like this to be true, as much as it would justify their rotten behavior, they have absolutely no proof of what they're saying and absolutely no right to try to foist this ridiculous "science" off on the rest of us.
These websites quote statistics to try to convince us that adultery is a foregone conclusion and that we should just get off their backs and let them screw around to their little adolescent hearts' content. They spit out numbers like 75 % of men have had extra-marital relationships and that 60% of women have committed adultery and that in 80% of marriages, at least one of the partners will have an affair. All I can say about this is the following: 35% of adults believe that 80% of the top 20% of the world's population are wrong about what 65% of the world believes 50% of the time.
In other words, statistics don't mean a **** thing.
The truth is, no one really knows how often people commit adultery or under what circumstances. Neither does anyone know how faithful people are either. While we can rely on statistics like divorce and marriage rates, which are based on the hard evidence of registered marriages and divorces, we can't ever know for certain who is faithful to their spouse and who isn't, and so in that regard it's pointless to speculate about the prevalence of adultery. Especially if we're trying to use those numbers as some sort of justification for our adolescent behavior.
At any rate, it doesn't matter if every other person in the world were committing adultery every day of their lives. That would not make it an honourable thing to do, or something for which you should expect sympathy or understanding.
While she is not writing from a Christian worldview, she does have something to say about marriage. Her conclusions that statistics don’t mean a thing when it comes to adultery is correct. She concludes that it doesn’t matter what the statistics show, adultery is still wrong. I think her basis for this is the conscience that she has been given by God, even though she doesn’t appear to be a Christian. Fundamentally, we know that adultery is wrong. It is always wrong, even when the two people are “in love.”
The problem is that Leanne Bell never hits the nail on the head for the reasons that adultery is wrong. The reason for not committed adultery is that it is not only a dishonor to our spouses, but also dishonoring to God. It is a sin, punishable by death, according to the law.
The Ten Commandments are given showing us the holiness of God. They reflect His holiness to us, and help us understand what it means not to be holy, or what it means to be sinful. When we break one of these commandments in any way, we are ultimately sinning against God.
When David sinned with Bathsheba, his confession was ultimately to the Father for his wicked heart and actions. When it comes to these commands, we must remember that they are not only there to show us how to live, but to remind us of the holiness of God.
The point is that adultery is never OK, because it sins against God and His institution of marriage.
Marriage is a God Ordained Institution
Remember that marriage is an institution given to us by God. Jesus confirmed this truth to us as well. He set it up that the two who are married should never be separated.
Matthew 19:4-6 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made[a]them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’[b] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?[c] (Lasting attachment – meant to endure) So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus is answering the Pharisees in their question about whether or not it was lawful to divorce for any reason. There were two schools of thought in those days, one of Hillel, who believed you could divorce for “any” reason. And the other thought was from the school of Shammai, who restricted divorce for reasons of adultery. That is because adultery has already profaned the marriage.
Jesus was affirming the latter views, and showing that the marriage was a union that was only to be separated by death. Not that all must marry, but those who do marry must realize that marriage is a DIVINE institution, “a state in which they must so conduct themselves (in) that true union—sexual, to be sure;… but also intellectual, moral and spiritual—is not only established but more and more firmly cemented.”
When a man and woman come together in marriage, they are joined together as one flesh, and nothing is to separate that bond and covenant that God has brought about. Since marriage is so sacred and set up by God, He has also given this command so that we would not break the marriage bonds. We must take marriage seriously and the way that we do so is to take the Seventh Commandment seriously.
You shall not commit adultery.
The adulterer is one who breaks the bonds of marriage, and interferes with what God has brought together. It is an assault against the covenant relationship and God. It is to be despise and looked down upon at all times. There are never times where adultery is OK, even if the couple is in love.
What exactly is adultery? It is when a man or woman who are married have a sexual relationship with another person other than their spouse.
Adultery Defined
Adultery is when one of the two married people enter into another sexual relationship or even an inappropriate relationship, that involves the lust of the heart, with another person other than their spouse.
We get the idea of lust entering the picture from Christ Himself.
Matthew 5:27-30 “You have heard that it was said to those of old,[a] ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[b] 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
Once again, He shows us the where the seed of adultery begins. It begins in the heart, just as murder did. This means that by the time that adultery was committed the seed was planted a long time before that.
Here Jesus shows us the beginning of adultery. He is not saying that the answer to it is to mutilate oneself, but to guard the eye so the lust doesn’t follow, and guard the heart, so the hand doesn’t act on the lust that may be there.
The problem we face is that there are pictures and images everywhere that can lead to lust in our hearts. We must guard ourselves against these pictures. We see them on billboard, in magazines, on the television, on the sidelines at football games with pompoms, and on the internet.
No, I’m not talking about porn sites on the internet. I’m talking about normal usage of the internet. There are plenty of pictures that are filled with seductive looking men and women selling everything from weight loss products, to trips to the beach.
We also must guard ourselves about the movies we watch. Remember that many of our Oscar winning movies are centered around adultery. So it make sense that we should not give ourselves over to the idea that there is nothing wrong with the movies Hollywood gives us. We know right from wrong, and to ignore what God has given to us, thinking it won’t matter is like the fool in Proverbs that never heeds warning or instruction.
Adultery is so common, that when our president was caught committing adultery, there was little outrage.
Remember the story I told you about Dee and her realization that our country was in moral decline. She said that during the Clinton scandal, she came out of the church one morning and two men were talking about it. She asked why there was no moral outrage, and one of the men said, “it’s just adultery.”
May we never take this attitude towards sin. This sin not only breaks our fellowship with God, but with our spouse. Remember that this is a sin against marriage itself. Marriage is “an exclusive relationship in which a man and a woman commit themselves to each other in covenant for life and, on the basis of solemn vows, become ‘one flesh’ physically.”
The command is meant to protect this special relationship that was brought about by God, yes, I mean brought about by God. We must remember that marriage is an institution given to us by God. We don’t define it, God does. We didn’t set it up, God did. He gave it to us for our mutual benefit, for our aid to one another, and for the procreation of mankind. To commit adultery is to sin against this God-ordained institution. It’s not something that should be taken lightly. It is sin against God.
Adultery has saturated our world and for it not to effect us, we must takes steps to guard what we watch, hear and think.
2 Corinthians 10:4-6 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6 and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
CURRENT END OF SERMON…
Of course, Joey is always fun to take pictures of. Didn't need a reason here.
