Ten Promises: Adultery
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Wicked Bible
There was a Bible printed in 1631 that contained just one error. A three letter word was missing from one verse. As a result all of these Bibles were ordered to be burned and the publisher was steeply fined and lost his printing license. The three letter word they omitted was from the 7th commandment. From :
“You shall not commit adultery.
Instead of You Shalt Not Commit Adultery, the word NOT was inadvertently left out and it read You SHALL commit Adultery.
SLIDE: Picture of Incorrect Version
This Bible became known as the “Wicked Bible” or the Sinners’ Bible or the Adulterer’s Bible, only a few copies remain and of course they are incredibly valuable. Omitting one word makes all the difference.
You shall commit adultery. It’s not only challenging to get it right biblically, but sermons on adultery are challenging to preach because of the children.
The Wicked Bible is the Bible
Adultery
Thou Shalt Not Commit Agriculture
There was a family who went to church together and the pastor preached a sermon on adultery and they were nervous because their little boy was sitting next to them and heard some adult themes, but they hadn’t yet had “the talk” with him. So when they got in the car they told him that the sermon had more to do with mommy’s and daddy’s and less to do with little boys, but they still asked him about the sermon…they braced themselves as he asked why did the preacher keep saying, “thou shalt not commit...agriculture”. What does that have to do with mommy’s and daddy’s? The wife looked at the husband and said, “I’ll let you answer this one”. The little boy had misunderstood the entire sermon. He asked what thou shalt not commit agriculture meant and his Dad, quick on his feet, said it means: don’t plow in another man’s field.
Don’t Plow in Another Man’s Field
The fact is we seem confused about this commandment. It seems so simple, but when we dig deeper, we find that it is easy to say don’t plow in another man’s field, but we become like the cows who think they see greener pastures, or we don’t like the field God has given us, or we are tired of that field, or we feel constrained by that field, so we are like the cows who stick their necks out through the fence to be fed from a forbidden field.
You may be thinking, I have never had an affair, so I have kept this commandment.
In both of these cases, a minor mistake, a minor misunderstanding, led to missing the simple message thou shalt not commit adultery. And before we are too critical, isn’t that how we treat this commandment?
You may be thinking, I have never had an affair, so I have kept this commandment.
What is adultery?
And before we are too critical, isn’t that how we treat this commandment? You may be thinking, I have never had an affair, so I have kept this commandment. Others of you aren’t married and you have never had an affair with a married person, so maybe you are thinking that you have kept this commandment.
I called all of us murderers, or something very close to it the past two weeks, and you came back, so maybe if I call all of us adulterers today, it won’t be quite as bad. Because scriptures, specifically , relates idolatry to adultery as well.
Because all of us, to one degree or another, according to the Law of God, according to the Scriptures, are adulterers.
Holiness must Exceed Holiness of Holiest Person you Know
Holiness must Exceed Holiness of Holiest Person you Know
The sermon on the mount found in , was preached by Jesus in order to set the standard for holiness for the people. They had thought that the standard of holiness was the behavior of the Pharisees. When we think about the Pharisees, we have a negative impression, but during the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were loved by the people and they were thought to be the holiest people on the planet. Jesus sets the stage for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 and verse 20:
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Mother Teresa—Jonathan Edwards: Resolutions
Jesus was saying that our holiness must exceed the holiness of the holiest person we know in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Think of the most holy person you know. Think about Mother Teresa and her holiness in her care for others. Jesus said your holiness must exceed hers if you are ever to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
Jonathan Edwards is one of the giants of church history and he wrote a personal journey called Resolutions. And these were short resolutions that he made for himself to live a holy life. And one of his resolutions was to resolve that since at any one time there is a person on planet earth, a christian on planet earth who is the most holy person on the planet, that he resolved I am going to be that person. Jesus said unless your holiness exceeds that holiness you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
The Pharisees were the spiritual leaders of the people, they were the holiest people known to man, and they scrupulously kept 613 laws externally, but Jesus said they hearts were unclean, he called them white washed tombs.
Lustful Intent: About the Heart
One of the laws they kept was the seventh commandment and they believed that by refraining from committing the physical act of adultery that they were keeping this aspect of God’s law.
But let’s look at Jesus’ words in
“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.
:
Jesus takes it up a notch and says that if a man has looked at a woman with lustful intent he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. It’s the only commandment given twice, once for the actual act and another time for even thinking about the actual act of adultery
This passage is from the Sermon on the Mount. And the sermon on the mount was preached by Jesus in order to set the standard for holiness for the people. They had thought that the standard of holiness was the behavior of the Pharisees. When we think about the Pharisees, we have a negative picture, but during the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were loved by the people and they were thought to be the holiest people on the planet. Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount in
For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus was saying that our holiness must exceed the holiness of the holiest person we know in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. The Pharisees were the spiritual leaders of the people, they were the holiest people known to man, and they scrupulously kept 613 laws.
Lustful Intent: About the Heart
One of the laws they kept was the seventh commandment and they believed that by refraining from committing the physical act of adultery that they were keeping this aspect of God’s law. Jesus takes it up a notch and says that if a man has looked at a woman with lustful intent he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Notice carefully what Jesus is saying and not saying in this verse. Lustful intent is more than a quick glance. It is even more than admiring something or someone who is beautiful. Lustful intent means that you have decided in your heart that you want to possess that person. It means taking the step of saying I’m in if you’re in. Jesus said if you have done that in your heart you have already committed adultery.
Some of you have taken that step. Some of you have decided in your heart that you are going to have an affair and yet here you sit in this sermon today. Jesus says that adultery isn’t only the physical act, but the mental one.
Shouldn’t Have Been News to Them: Job’s Covenant
And this shouldn’t have been news to the Pharisees or the people. It shouldn’t have been news at all that adultery wasn’t just the external deed but the internal heart orientation. Because in the oldest book in the Bible, a man named Job, a man who would have had EVERY excuse in the book to be unfaithful, to focus on lustful thoughts and intents, said this:
I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman. ~
“I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?
Once again, it’s all about the heart. Jesus is not interested in those who are only externally faithful externally holy, but he is more interested in our internal holiness. Keeping the 7th commandment is far more than refraining from committing the physical act of adultery.
Once again, it’s all about the heart. Jesus is not interested in those who are only externally faithful externally holy, but he is more interested in our internal holiness. Keeping the 7th commandment is far more than refraining from committing the physical act of adultery.
: It Begins in the Heart
Us and Them Versus Us and Him
Jesus says that adultery begins in the heart. Adultery not only breaks the seventh commandment, but also the first commandment. We see this in , verse 21-25:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
-they knew God, but didn’t worship him…they had other gods before him…and that led to sinful desires, lusts, of the heart…which led to sexual impurity.
-Spiritual adultery—…idolatry
-Sin is pleasurable for a time……until it isn’t.
Peaceful time in boat...Niagara Falls—Emotional Affairs—Social Media in Divorce
Distracted to Death…in one state alone 17k deer are killed by cars and trucks…and the number spikes in the Fall…because that is the season that bucks are pre-occupied with mating…so they will run after a doe even into the road…they are literally distracted to death.
that is when the bucks are pre-occupied with mating…they will fight another buck or following a doe even running out into the road. Distracted to death.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
Why is adultery so serious? Because it breaks the marriage covenant. Ruin lives of children.
Jesus levels the playing field. Because when it comes to sexual sin it seems that Christians can have an us and them mentality. But with Jesus it isn’t ever us and them by us and him.
Illustration of a Severed Vine
Imagine that you plant a vine…your intention is for that vine to grow up the side of your house and to cover the side of your house with ivy and with flowers…so you plant the vine, you water it, you take care of it as it grows…eventually it begins growing up on the house and it begins to add beauty to the house…one day you are cutting your grass, you are doing the trim with a weed whacker and in a careless moment you hit the very bottom of the vine and you sever the root completely. What is going to happen to the beauty of that vine? It’s all going to die. There is nothing you can do to fix it. That is the way adultery is. It severs the nerve of a marriage. That is why the penalty for adultery in the OT was death and under the New Covenant the penalty is divorce, because adultery severs the nerve of the marriage.
Now you can bring that vine back. You will have to provide lots of care and attention.
Adultery not only breaks the trust of a marriage but it causes the offended one to break trust with others as well. If you can’t trust your spouse who can you trust?
Ruined lives of children, Imagine the Devastation playing life backwards.
MOVIE CLIP: HOPE FLOATS
If You Knew You Wouldn’t Get Caught
72 percent of men and 68 percent of women said that if they KNEW they wouldn’t get caught, they would have an affair. If they knew they wouldn’t get caught. So we have websites such as Ashley Madison…where you can secretly have an affair with someone who is also committed to secrecy. We say, that’s terrible. Let me ask you a question...
If God Wouldn’t Know
If you not only knew you wouldn’t get caught, that your children wouldn’t find out, that it wouldn’t impact your relationship with your family, but that also if you knew that GOD wouldn’t find out—God sees all things—but imagine that you knew that God wouldn’t see it. And imagine that you wouldn’t feel much shame. Would you have the affair?
You say that is a weird unlikely scenario....yet, we commit adultery all the time and act as though God doesn’t see it and that it won’t impact our marriage. Isn’t that the definition of what pornography is? Your spouse won’t find out, your kids won’t find out, you may feel some shame but you can also kind of justify it, and maybe God doesn’t really care that much either.
Jesus Levels the Playing Field: Us and Them Versus Us and Him: Prone to Wander
Jesus levels the playing field. Because when it comes to sexual sin it seems that Christians can have an us and them mentality. But with Jesus it isn’t ever us and them by us and him. We are prone to wander, we are prone to leave the God we claim to love.
Practical Advice from Jesus
Jesus said it’s about the heart. You can be a person who never commits the physical act of adultery, but yet you have an adulterous heart. You have an orientation of your heart that is prone to wander.
And it makes sense because when you get married, you are marrying not just the physical person, but the entirety of who they are. You are marrying their heart. You are marrying their secrets. You are marrying the results of everything they have going on inside their minds and hearts. The physical person isn’t really who the person is, the person is really the sum of all of their experiences and struggles and even sin. That is who you are marrying. And if your heart and mind have been filled with pornography, with lustful intent…you may seem clean on the outside, but on the inside you could be rotting away.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
Practical Advice from Jesus
So Jesus gives some options, some practical advice for how to address lustful intent.
Look at what Jesus said next in verse 29:
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.
Right Eye and Right Hand: Iraq and Pornography
The right eye, the right hand was known as the strength of a person. The right hand of power.
I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman. —
“I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?
So people read this and set up all kinds of legalisms. So be careful what you wear. Be modest.
So people read this and set up all kinds of legalisms. So be careful what you wear. Be modest.
During the time that the US went into the country of Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein, women in the country would wear clothes covering themselves from head to toe. Why? To be modest. For purity. So if the women covered themselves from head to toe, that should the men be pure, right? When we went in and took over Saddam Hussein’s palace the US found pornography in his palace. So here even in a country where the women are covered from head to toe, there is pornography in the center of the palace in the seat of power. Because it isn’t about the external rules…even though external rules are good.
Personal legalisms are good. And necessary. But they don’t get to the heart and to take from Jesus’ words that we need personal legalisms is to miss the whole point. The Pharisees kept 613 laws, Jesus isn’t saying we need to have 620 laws, he is saying that we need a new heart. Look at the passage again:
: 29
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.
Stop Trying to Achieve Holiness Through Your Own Strength
And I believe that we misread this passage. First of all, Jesus is using hyperbole, exaggeration, which was a common rhetorical tactic, to make a point about the seriousness of sin. But the whole point of the sermon on the mount is to demonstrate that we can’t do it. That if the standards of obedience are what Jesus said, that our holiness must be greater than the holiness of the holiest person we know, than we are in trouble.
So the way I read it is that if you think that you can change your heart through controlling your right hand or your right eye, you are going to be led down a path of destruction. In other words, stop trying to achieve holiness through your own strength. It would be better if you just didn’t have that eye or that hand if you are relying on either to bring holiness. Because it’s really about your heart.
And you can’t cut off your heart. You can cut off your hand or pluck out your eye.
Adultery is grounds for divorce but adultery is also grounds for forgiveness.
Jesus says that adultery begins in the heart. Adultery not only breaks the seventh commandment, but also the first commandment. We see this in , verse 21-25:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
-they knew God, but didn’t worship him…they had other gods before him…and that led to sinful desires, lusts, of the heart…which led to sexual impurity.
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
Why is adultery so serious? Because it breaks the marriage covenant.
Illustration of a Severed Vine
Imagine that you plant a vine…your intention is for that vine to grow up the side of your house and to cover the side of your house with ivy and with flowers…so you plant the vine, you water it, you take care of it as it grows…eventually it begins growing up on the house and it begins to add beauty to the house…one day you are cutting your grass, you are doing the trim with a weed whacker and in a careless moment you hit the very bottom of the vine and you sever the root completely. What is going to happen to the beauty of that vine? It’s all going to die. There is nothing you can do to fix it. That is the way adultery is. It severs the nerve of a marriage. That is why the penalty for adultery in the OT was death and under the New Covenant the penalty is divorce, because adultery severs the nerve of the marriage.
Now you can bring that vine back. You will have to provide lots of care and attention.
Adultery not only breaks the trust of a marriage but it causes the offended one to break trust with others as well. If you can’t trust your spouse who can you trust?
MOVIE CLIP: HOPE FLOATS
Adultery is grounds for divorce but adultery is also grounds for forgiveness.
How do we safeguard ourselves...
Marriage is a Picture of Christ and the Church
We need a picture of what marriage is.
Paul gives us this picture in:
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.
Paul is saying that a marriage should be a picture of Jesus’ relationship with the church.
So if a marriage is a picture of Jesus relationship with the church than Jesus’ relationship with the church is also a picture of marriage.
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Leave and Cleave
In other versions it is leave his father and his mother and CLEAVE to his wife. That word cleave means to be glued. So a man is to be glued to his wife. Happy wife-happy life. Sometimes I wish that husband rhymed with life, but it doesn’t. Be glued to his wife. The two will become one flesh. One person. So Paul is saying that is the picture of Jesus’ relationship with the church. That Jesus is GLUED to the church. A husband leaves his father and mother, the most important relationship a person has before they are married…leaves that and cleaves to his wife, is glued to his wife. Jesus left his father’s throne and came and pursued us. And the wife he pursues is adulterous. We are an adulterous people. In the Scriptures, idolatry is synonymous with adultery of the heart. So we pursue anything but Jesus.
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
He pursues us and glues himself to us. So a marriage is to be a picture of that most intimate relationship.
Already and Not Yet
There is this theological concept of the already and the not yet. We are betrothed, the church is engaged to Jesus. That is the already. But the final consummation happens in the future. That is the not yet. Marriage is the same way. There is the already of where we are today in our marriages. But we need to play out the not yet. Growing old together. We need to play out what we want our lives to look like when we are older. Play your life backwards. What do you want the not yet to look like. I want to have grandkids running around the house, I want to grow old with Melanie and sit on our rocking chairs, and for her to bring me my blanket. Older couples who love one another to the end, sometimes dying days apart. There is such a beauty in that. That is the not yet.
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
Forgiveness—Prodigal Son—spent money on prostitutes…that’s what we do. Spiritual adultery. Heart adultery.
Adultery is grounds for divorce but also grounds for forgiveness.
Wife commits adultery on husband and white dress
Adultery is grounds for divorce but also grounds for forgiveness.
Adultery is grounds for divorce but also grounds for forgiveness.
Forgiveness—Prodigal Son—spent money on prostitutes…that’s what we do. Spiritual adultery. Heart adultery.