Scripture Readings
Scripture Readings:
Mark 10:6-9-But God made them male and female from the beginning of creation. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.
Matt 5:27-28-You have heard the commandment that says, you must not commit adultery. But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
In a 1976 interview with Playboy magazine, President Jimmy Carter made the following statement: “I have lusted in my heart”. It was quite a joke at the time but how many people would have to admit the same thing? Here is a President of the most powerful country in the world admitting he has “lusted in his heart”. I would suspect a great number of people would be guilty of this very thing. A person might say there is no harm in this but I would have to disagree with them. Every time a person lusts after another person of the opposite sex, they are breaking one of God’s commandments. Every act of lust begins with a single thought and then can grow until a person acts on it. Jesus said that if we even look at a woman we might as well check into the Holiday Inn. Well, that’s not exactly what He said but you get the point.
From President Carter back to King David the problem has existed and no one is immune from it. King David was one of God’s favorite people. David was a king, commanded great armies and had all the wealth he could desire. King David’s greatest desire was to build a temple for God. God had blessed him with all he could desire.
One day David was walking on the roof of the palace and looked out over the city and he saw a woman with unusual beauty taking a bath. He sent someone to find out who the woman was and was told her name was Bathsheba. David sent for her and when she came to the palace he slept with her and the result was she became pregnant. He knew he must hide this fact so he sent for Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. He sent Uriah to the front lines knowing that Uriah would be killed and in a short time he was. Bathsheba came to the palace and became one of David’s wives and bore him a son which died because David had displeased God. That was the short version and you can read the whole version in your bibles.
David had to commit another sin, murder, to cover up the first sin, adultery, and in the end he paid dearly for his actions. I bring up this subject because the morality of people in this country and all over the world is something that is falling by the wayside and is being abandoned. If it feels good, do it. When a person commits adultery, it isn’t just one person that gets hurt but many. Children are born out of wedlock because of adultery and the fathers abandon them, not caring about the life they have created. The woman may find herself living in poverty the rest of her life, struggling to raise the child. The consequences might even be more severe and she might have contracted HIV or another disease. The number of single mothers is growing and I’m not saying that it is all due to adultery but adultery has to be a big part of that number. Why does one partner commit adultery? The reasons are many but the biggest reason is sin. A man may feel his wife is uninterested in him or maybe she is too involved in her own activities. It could be that the man’s ego has been hurt for whatever reason or the wife has just let her self go and he doesn’t find her attractive or as desirable as he once did. I believe yes, he can still love his wife but at the same time he isn’t getting what he feels he needs so he turns elsewhere to feel better about himself. At that precise moment when he decides to turn elsewhere, the idea of adultery is the furthest thing from his mind as he seeks out someone who can fulfill his needs and when he finds her she feeds his ego and he goes away happy, not caring about what he has done. A woman might start feeling she is unattractive or her husband doesn’t love her because she feels worthless, all of which are imagined because she never talks to her husband about how she is feeling. So she goes out looking for someone to validate her self worth, someone who will tell her what she feels she needs to hear. There are so many reasons adultery happens that I can’t begin to cover all of them here. All anyone has to do is watch tv and you will see adultery in many programs and it is promoted because sex sells. An old tv show called Melrose Place was full of people committing adultery and was a very popular show. Society has accepted adultery as a way of life and this way of life often leads to divorce. Just like in the story of David, adultery can often lead to murder. A person might even say that adultery is the gift that keeps on giving because the problems it causes are endless.
This is a problem Christians and non-Christians face and many Christian marriages end up in divorce because of adultery. Pastors lose their church and many face public humiliation. I think every one can remember Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. God knows we will sin even if it means committing adultery but if we are truly repentent He will still forgive us. It is easy to give in to this type of sin but through Christ’s strength we can resist it.
There was a guy that started dating a married woman and each night they would pray and ask for God’s forgiveness and the next day they would see each other again, and again they prayed for God’s forgiveness. This continued for quite awhile. Some would say that God forgave them each time they asked for forgiveness but did God really forgive them? I don’t believe He did because they continued sinning by seeing each other and they weren’t truly sorry for what they did. They convinced themselves that it was alright to do what they were doing because they prayed and asked for forgiveness and that is an easy illusion to fall into. A person can convince themselves of anything as long as it meets their purpose but God knows what is in our hearts and whether we are sincere or not.
As Christians we must not distance ourselves from people who commit adultery, we must be tolerant and forgiving because if we don’t are we any better than they are? We must start teaching our kids to have good moral values, values they can grow with. The church and school can help but parents should not expect the church or school to do what they should be doing. Should the church be teaching moral values to our children? That is something that is open to debate but I will close with this thought. Would you rather have your children learn good moral values in church or on the street? I can assure you that they would be completely different teachings. We may never stop people committing adultery in this country but we can slow it down.