What Is Adultery?
# 14 Sermon on the Mount 9/16/90
Text: Matt. 5:27-30 E.B.C.
WHAT IS ADULTERY?
INTRODUCTION
A. The human mind is an inquisitive thing. It can spend hours daydreaming about crazy abstract things. Like how many angels could stand on a head of a needle. Or how many tiny pebbles of styrofoam make up a complete sheet of stryrofoam. But the mind produces its most absurd deductions when it deals with matters such as "what is sin?" That question we have discussed in previous times together. But a very similar question will be the focus of our time together today. Have you ever wanted to tear off the wrappings and discovery what adultery really is all about? If you did, I'm sure you'd never admit it, right?
B. As I mentioned last week the Pharisees of Jesus' day thought they knew just what adultery was and their understanding of it suited them just fine. Their view was little different than the attitudes prevalent in our permissive society today - everything goes.
C. So today we want to find the answer to this question from Jesus, not from the devious crevices of the human mind. What is adultery?
I. THE DEED OF ADULTERY (V. 27).
A. Basically, adultery has referred to sexual relations between two people of which at least one is married to someone else. But we must, for or present discussion, broaden our understanding of sexual sin to actually go beyond adultery. We draw this conclusion from Jesus' use of the inclusive terms "everyone" and "a woman" from which we conclude that even the unmarried are dealt with here to.
B. Why is adultery such a big problem today?
1. Paul gives us one reason when he says to Timothy, "But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived" (2 Tim. 3:13). What Paul is really saying is that man's evil desires will drive him into further and further permissiveness which describes our society precisely. Ours is a day of unbridled indulgence in every sexual perversion imaginable.
a. Our appetite for sex is enormously out of proportion to its function. C.S. Lewis has said, "The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body." But while one might eat a little more than he should he will not eat enormously more than he should - like for a hundred men. But the sexually active adult male who indulges in his sexual appetite, if each act produced a child, easily could populate a whole community. This is absurd and a preposterous excess of its function. Would we not think it absurd should we find a country where whole theatres could be filled to watch a covered plate slowly be uncovered exposing, just before the lights dimmed, a burger and fries?
C. There is, having faced the reality of the problem of adultery in our society, a unbiblical way of dealing with the problem.
1. Some have concluded that all sexual activity is sinful. During the Victorian Age, this mentality far from preventing promiscuity, only caused all kinds of accesses to be hidden from the public's eye.
2. But even earlier than this, in the twelveth century, a similar mentality existed. Peter Abelard, a French theologian, committed sin in a weak moment and impregnated a woman he had come to love. The parents of the girl were so enraged they forcibly had Ablelard castrated.
3. People have also manifested another unbiblical way of dealing with sexual sin when they have tried to remove themselves from the world and all its temptations. Origen, a early church father, sought to escape lust and immorality by becoming a hermit in the Egyptian desert where he lived in poverty and deprivation for thirty-five years. But he, himself, admitted that Satan had no difficulty finding him there.
D. The Biblical solution for sexual sin is not external but internal. Job understood this when he said, "If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or I have lurked at my neighbor's doorway, may my wife grind for another, for that would be a lustful crime." Jesus began his discussion by referring to the deed of adultery which everyone understood, but then he shatters all there comfort zones by describing something far more serious.
II. THE DESIRE OF ADULTERY (V. 28).
A. Do you remember presidential candidate Jimmy Carter's public admission, which Playboy Magazine made so much of, "I'm guilty of committing adultery of the heart." Well, he was referring to Matt. 5:28 when he made this honest admission.
B. What does Jesus mean when he says, "everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery...?"
1. Jesus is speaking here of an intentional looking with the purpose of lusting. One cannot help the first glance but it is what one does thereafter that Jesus is talking about. When our eyes see an attractive man or woman and we intentionally allow our minds to dwell on immorality we are committing adultery.
a. We are allowing lust to control us when we go to X-rated movies, when we purposely select T.V. programs known for their sexual orientation, or even when we go to places where we know our lust will be satisfied.
2. We must also keep in mind that Jesus is referring here to both men and women. Lust of the heart is a human tendency which is not bound by gender.
C. Jesus is clearly suggesting that adultery clearly begins in the heart. So, the godly person, must plan in his heart to avoid lust-satisfying situations. Paul exhorts Timothy to "flee from youthful lusts" and to cultivate a "pure heart" (2 Tim. 2:2). We stated earlier that simply removing ourselves geographically from a lustful world is not the way to deal with sexual sin. But there is a time and a place for us to purpose our hearts to "flee" from tempting situations.
1. Joseph and David present us with contrasting ways of dealing with sexual temptation. Joseph, when he was propositioned by Potiphor's wife, fled the room leaving his tunic behind in his haste. He would not allow sinful desires to grow in his heart. Meanwhile, David, on the other hand, when he saw Bethsheba bathing, he allowed lust to grow in his heart and he acted upon it.
III. THE DELIVERANCE OF ADULTERY (vvs. 29-30)
A. One might think at this juncture that we are beyond hope regarding this serious sin. But Jesus provides the deliverance which can be ours if we will heed his advice. Understanding His words in their literal sense, goes like this. If you have a lustful eye remove it and if you are acting sinfully cut off your hand. On the surface this sounds like an absurd suggestion. For is it not just as possible to lust with only one good eye as two, and is it not just as possible to act sinfully with one hand as two?
B. But Jesus's reasoning abilities did not go bonkers here. What he is doing is using a figure of speech. It was commonly understood in those days that the right eye and the right hand symbolized that which was most valuable to a person. So what Jesus is saying is that we should be willing to give up even what is most valuable to us if so doing it will protect us from doing evil. You will have to examine your own life and decide what you may have to give up to stay pure. It may be the VCR, it may be attending certain movies, it may be reading romantic novels. You'll have to decide for yourself. But whatever it is do it.
C. The bottom line here is that sin must be dealt with radically. How radical are you? Paul said, "I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified" (1 Cor. 9:27).
CONCLUSION
A. This morning we have allowed Jesus to feed our inquisitive minds regarding the true meaning of adultery. As we have studied what He said about it we come to the startling conclusion that, according to His teaching, we are are all adulterers. Not only this, but we are also confronted with the impossible demands of Christ's kingdom righteousness.
B. Would you allow me to make this observation, that Jesus actually wants us to despair over our righteousness which he hopes, in turn, will cause us to rather seek his righteousness? The Lord's remedy for a wicked heart is a new heart, and His answer for our helplessness is His sufficiency.
C. There is a story told of a highly educated, popular woman during the American Civil War who fell into prostitution. By the time she was twenty-two years old, she was friendless, broken, and lay dying in a hospital. Just before she died she wrote a poem lamenting her life. It ends like this:
Fainting, freezing, dying alone,
too wicked for prayer,
Too weak for a moan to be heard
in the streets of the crazy town
Gone mad in the joy
of the snow coming down,
To lie, and to die,
in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud
of the beautiful snow.
Sometime later a verse was added by another pen.
Helpless and frail as the trampled snow,
Sinner despair not, Christ stoopeth low
To rescue the soul that is lost in its sin,
And raise it to life and enjoyment again.
Groaning, bleeding, dying for thee,
The crucified hung, made a curse on the tree.
His accents of mercy fall soft on thine ear.
Is there mercy for me? Will He heed my prayers?
O God! in the stream that for sinners doth flow,
Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
D. Men and women go to hell forever because of their illusion that sin is only an external issue when Christ offers to wash them whiter than snow.
