So God gives this command not to keep us from having fun or to set some arbitrary moral line in the sand, God gives this command to protect the bonds of marriage and to help preserve the family. The family structure is important to God because it is the foundation on which the rest of society is built. We heard a few weeks ago that the family is the first school, the first hospital and the first church that we will all experience. We learn how to interact with the rest of society through our family so the integrity and the strength of the family is important which means that the integrity and the strength of a marriage is important and for marriages to be strong there needs to be no adultery.
To understand why adultery is so destructive we need to go back and look at what marriage is really all about. If we look at the story of creation we see that God made Adam but then said it was not good for him to be alone so he made a helper suitable for him. In Genesis 2:24 it says that a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. I’m not sure we fully understand what this one flesh means to God, but through the covenant of marriage and through the physical act of consummating the marriage through sex – two become one. Physically, emotionally but even more importantly spiritually – two people become one in the eyes and in the heart of God so when one of the partners in marriage physically unites with another person - when they commit adultery – the integrity of that bond is compromised and it creates brokenness and pain, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. So the reason God says no adultery is because it weakens the bonds of marriage, which in turn weakens the strength of the family, which in turn weakens and destroys the community and society in which we live.
Now this command is pretty clear, in fact in Hebrew the command is just two words – no adultery, and adultery is defined as having sex with a person who is not your spouse and before we start trying to define what sex is so we can see just how far we can go without breaking this command, let’s add to this command the teaching of Jesus. Just like we saw last week with murder, Jesus expands our understanding of this commandment and tells us that God isn’t just concerned about our actions but about the attitudes of our heart and the thoughts of our minds because it is those two things that lead to our actions. So in Matthew 5:12 Jesus says…
This teaching of Jesus changes this commandment drastically. While before we might have felt pretty confident because we have never had an affair and cheated on our spouse, how many of us can say we have never looked with lust at another person? Suddenly we all stand guilty and condemned before God, but remember there is forgiveness for the sinner; in fact, when Jesus was confronted with a woman caught in adultery he offers forgiveness. Look at John 8:3-11. So whether we are guilty of adultery or guilty of lust – God offers forgiveness and grace and we need to hear Jesus say to us, neither do I condemn you, but we also need to hear the words, Go and sin no more.
While it is important for us to accept the forgiveness and grace God offers so we can work to restore and rebuild our relationship with God and our spouses, we also need to work on the sin no more part. There is no easy way to say this, but if you are currently having an affair – you need to end it today and seek some help. I know a man who had been having an affair for years and his wife knew all about it but he refused to stop. He convinced himself that to leave his wife would cause her pain, and he didn’t want to do that, but somehow he failed to see that his affair itself was causing her pain. That’s one of the things that happens when we begin to justify our sin – we become blind to the reality of our lives. And if we can lie to ourselves that an affair is ok, we can lie to ourselves about anything and believe it. If you are currently having an affair – stop and get some help. Get some spiritual help, get emotionally help, get help and support from trusted friends, but stop today and get some help.
If you are considering having an affair – don’t do it. If you think that entering into any kind of intimate physical or even emotional relationship with someone other than your spouse will solve your problems or help you feel more fulfilled you are wrong, it will only create more problems. The better thing to do is get some help for your marriage and the underlying problems that are leading you to even think about adultery. Marriage is not easy – it is hard work and it can be painful and messy, but the rewards of staying together through the good times and the difficult times can be tremendous.
There really is no grey area in this command, when God says no adultery – God means no adultery and we need to take this command seriously and do what is necessary to honor God and the covenant we make in marriage. We need to end adulterous relationships if we are in them, but we also need to guard our hearts and lives so we don’t fall into the temptation to enter these relationships in the first place. In his book on the Ten Commandments, Win Green has what I think is one of the most profound statements on adultery I have heard, he says this, make no mistake, we break the 7th commandment because we have already done something much more serious – we’ve broken the 1st commandment. We’ve allowed something (or someone) to come between us and God.
The single best thing we can do if we want to preserve our marriage and protect our hearts from the temptation of lust is to make sure we are always working on our relationship with God. That is why the first three commandments all have to do with protecting that relationship. If our relationship with God isn’t right – nothing else will be and no other relationship will be healthy and strong, but if we are right with God, if we are living in God’s will and drawing upon God’s grace and power we will find the strength to live within the boundaries that God has set for us. So the daily discipline of prayer and scripture reading and worship and service and giving of ourselves to God will do more to help us than anything, and if you really want to preserve and protect your marriage then pray, read scripture, worship and serve God with your spouse. If you constantly place yourselves before God together – God can do more to keep you focused on each other and not on others.
One of the great joys of being a pastor is officiating at weddings, and I was able to do that again this weekend, but it can also be a bittersweet. The very first wedding I did lasted about 6 months. They weren’t members of the church and when things got difficult there was no one to help. The second wedding I did has lasted 18 years and it is still going strong. I have seen them go through highs and lows and incredible challenges during that time, but they are still together and one reason is because they have been active in the church and they still are. Studies show that couples who are involved in some kind of small support group are more likely to stay together than couples who aren’t and I share this information with every couple I marry. I encourage them to be part of the church, but even if it is not part of the church, be part of some group where together you can find support and encouragement for those times when things will get hard, because things will get hard.
So working on our relationship with God is the foundation on which everything is built, but we also need to work on keeping our hearts and minds and eyes fixed on the right things. Let’s go back and consider Jesus teaching. He says, when you look lustfully at someone you have already committed adultery. Now the word lust here means a strong desire or longing combined with an evil intent. We aren’t talking about looking at someone and thinking that they are attractive, we are talking about looking at someone with thoughts that are impure in their intent and God is concerned about these thoughts because many times it is these impure thoughts that lead to sinful actions. The best biblical example of this is the story of David and Bathsheba. David was kind of Israel and was married but committed adultery with Bathsheba, but it’s not like the act of adultery just suddenly happened, it never just suddenly happens, it all begins with lust. 2 Samuel 11:2-4a.
This affair started because David saw Bathsheba bathing and she was beautiful, but you know what, it really started even before that. Go back to 2 Samuel 11:1. You see, David should never have been in Jerusalem in the first place, he should have been out with the troops. He shouldn’t have been in Jerusalem and he shouldn’t have been out on the roof in the middle of the night, but he was. David put himself in places where he was going to see things he shouldn’t see and those poor choices are what led to the lust and the adultery.
What we learn from David is that when Jesus says Go and sin no more and warns us about how we look at those around us he is telling us that we need to be careful about where we put ourselves and what we allow ourselves to see. We live in a world where we are bombarded with sexual images at every turn. TV, internet, billboards, magazines – we are bombarded with images that encourage us to think about sex and all of these images begin to condition us to look at everyone around us the same way and while we may not be able to go through life with blinders on, at the very least we can work to keep ourselves out of tempting situations.
Like David who knew he shouldn’t have been in Jerusalem and knew he shouldn’t have been out on the roof at night – we know those places where we shouldn’t go. We know the TV shows we shouldn’t be watching, internet sites we shouldn’t visit, and magazines we shouldn’t buy and if we aren’t able to keep ourselves from these things, we need to ask someone to hold us accountable.
The problem for David was that he sent all of his officers out to battle – he sent his support staff away and had no one to help hold him accountable and keep him from those places where he shouldn’t go. We will never be able to go and sin no more on our own, we need God, which is why we need to work on our relationship with God, and we need the help and support of trusted friends. If, like David, you are already caught up in situations or habits that you know are not healthy then again I encourage you to seek some help. Don’t continue to walk the roof at night alone thinking you can handle it, ask God for forgiveness and ask those around you for help.
While the world around us might see nothing wrong with lust and even celebrate inappropriate sexual interactions, God does. God is serious when he says no adultery and Jesus is serious when he says that it is what we see with our eyes and what lies in our heart that will get us into trouble, so we need to work at keeping our eyes and hearts pure and we need to work and even sacrifice for faithfulness and integrity in our marriages. It is not always easy to do this, but if we will, we will experience the blessing of life and the fullness of love, the love of a spouse and the love of God.
