Exodus 20:14 - The Seventh Commandment
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“You shall not commit adultery.
Introduction
Introduction
Applies to men and women
Physical intimacy is for marriage and only marriage.
Physical intimacy is discussed in the Bible in very positive ways.
Song of Songs
Start by discussing marriage, then the duties required, and finals the sins forbidden.
Marriage Union
Marriage Union
Marriage is a one flesh union of a man and woman.
one flesh - Gen. 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
Marriage symbolizes a union - the couple are united to each other.
Complimentary relationship. They fit together and help one another.
The purpose of marriage:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 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.
Marriage exists to teach us about union with Christ.
That is also why there is no marriage in heaven.
When we have the reality we do not return to the shadow.
Covenantal union: Mal. 2:14-15
But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.
Symbolizes God’s covenants with man.
Kevin Deyoung writes,
The 10 Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them Forming a Biblical Understanding of Marriage
This means that marriage—by nature, design, and aim—is a covenant between two persons whose one-flesh commitment is the type of union that produces offspring.
The sign and seal of the Covenant is sexual consummation: publically symbolized by a kiss.
Children are important, but that is not the primary reason for sex or marriage.
Creation mandate: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
J.I. Packer writes,
Keeping the Ten Commandments The Place for Sex
Children are born from their relationship, but this is secondary; what is basic is the enriching of the couple’s relationship itself through their repeated “knowing” of each other as persons who belong to each other exclusively and without reserve. So the place for sex is the place of lifelong, mutual fidelity—i.e., marriage, where sexual experience grows richer as the couple experiences more and more of each other’s loving faithfulness in the total relationship.
Physical intimacy is for building and nurturing a covenantal union and relationship.
Adultery works against this purpose.
Physical intimacy outside of marriage is breaking the covenant and a sin against God
We often think foremost of the spouse.
Joseph - sin against God in Genesis 39:9 “He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?””
It blasphemes the union with Christ it was made to represent.
Principle of Purity and Fidelity
Principle of Purity and Fidelity
God is calling us to be pure and faithful.
Marriage is a relationship of lifelong mutual fidelity.
Hebrews 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
Duties required WLC 138
“The duties required in the seventh commandment are, chastity in body, mind, affections, words, and behavior; and the preservation of chastity in ourselves and others; watchfulness over our eyes and all the senses; temperance, keeping of chaste company, modesty in apparel; marriage by those that have not the gift of abstinence, conjugal love, and cohabitation; diligent labor in our callings; shunning all occasions of uncleanness, and resisting temptations thereunto.”
A heart issue
5. Delight in your spouse - Should be included in WLC
Prov. 5:18-20 “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?”
Positively we are commanded to delight in our spouse.
Hebrews 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
Sins Forbidden
Sins Forbidden
By seeing the purpose and dignity of marriage and physical intimacy we understand the sin of adultery.
Tearing apart of a single flesh.
Mt. 19:6 “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Death for adultery
Lev. 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”
interfering with other marriages
Matter of the heart.
“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.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Kevin DeYoung writes,
Noticing that someone of the opposite sex is pretty or handsome is not a sin. The sin is when this noticing becomes … desire, coveting, lingering, and lust.
Lust applies to all, not just those who are married.
Lust has been normalized in our culture.
The goodness of the sexual union has been warped.
Lust, Contempt, Consuming, and Selfishness.
Lust often begins with the devaluing of another person for self-gratification
We see them as something for us to use.
Stealing - consuming that which is not ours.
Desiring to have what God has forbidden.
Casual sex is using and abusing the other partner - for what you get out of it.
Jen Wilkin writes,
Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands Chapter 7: The Seventh Word: Honor Marriage
Lust itself is an act of contempt, reducing someone to a source of sexual gratification and nothing more. If the sixth command prohibited regarding our neighbor as expendable, the seventh prohibits regarding our neighbor as consumable.
Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands Desire Disordered
We do not consume those we love; we treasure and protect them as image bearers
It cheapens the beauty of marriage and physical intimacy as God created them.
It ends up devaluing the spouse and the marriage union
And ultimately the God who these things represent.
“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
Adultery includes any deviation from God’s design.
Pornography, Masturbation, Homosexuality
Application
Application
Examine your heart
Adultery does not begin in the bed, but in the heart. What about the lust factor in our lives? That’s where the sin is committed and where its influence must be dealt with and cut off.
Iain D. Campbell
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes; for the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts down a precious life. Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; none who touches her will go unpunished.
Receive the gospel
All of us have broken this commandment
Jesus perfectly kept the law and is our righteousness.
Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
His holiness transformed sinners and prostitutes.
Go to God with this temptation.
Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Nurture purity in your heart.
Matt. 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,”
Glorify God with all our being, including our bodies
1 Cor. 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Celibacy if not married - Jesus
Restore dignity to others.
Image bearers of God
We need to view others as God does.
Brothers and sisters - with pure love.
Delight in your spouse
Delight in God
We need a greater affection or desire
Avoid worldliness
1 John 2:16 “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
James 4:4 “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Seek the things above and kill sin - Col.3:1-5
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
Spiritual adultery in OT
Faithfulness to God
Just as we are to delight in our spouse we are to delight in the Lord.
Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Closing Hymn: 306 Jesus, My Great High Priest
Benediction: Now, be reminded that “such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. “ Amen