7th Commandment

While beginning a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, this week I was looking up just different things people have said about the Ten Commandments. There are a lot of quotes I found from atheists and how much they literally hate the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are actually seen as barbaric, that any God that would give them is unworthy of worship, as one atheist said, because they're just so barbaric. They're against morality. The Ten Commandments are against morality.

Then I found an interesting comment that was made by President Ronald Reagan. He said, I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress. Well, probably they'd have been a thousand pages long.

What's remarkable about the Ten Commandments is how short they are. I mean, they're simple statements. Very simple statements. And the one we're looking at now as we've been progressively going through them is the Seventh Commandment, which simply states, You shall not commit adultery. That was the simple statement. So it would be easy to say, well, okay, there you go.

There's the commandment. Don't commit adultery. Let's go on to another subject. But the implications of that statement are enormous. The implications of why God would say that. Why is that so important? You're going to make a list of the ten foundational concepts of all law. You know, why wouldn't you put don't torture animals? I mean, we all think torturing of animals is wrong. Why is it that in here? Why are there so many other things that aren't in there? I mean, you only have ten foundations. Everything else is built out of that. Why would this be in there?

Well, for one thing, do not commit adultery shows that there is a formalized concept of marriage. There's a formalized concept of marriage. That people are married. A man and a woman become married. They become united for life. And to break that bond is a sin. So let's start as we look at what the Bible says about adultery. And I had a hard time taking this sermon and bringing it down into an hour long. Because as I developed it, I kept going into different concepts of marriage. And then I'd have to take them out. Sometimes the entire pages, I'd say, wait a minute.

That's about marriage. I want to talk about adultery as an aspect of marriage. And so I literally had to keep editing this down because I want to zero it all in that just, you shall not commit adultery. Why is that so important? Why is that so important? I mean, there are sociologists today that claim that human beings are like so many other animals. We were never designed by nature to be monogamous. We're actually designed to have different partners. So monogamy is actually against nature.

And there are sociologists who teach that. It is against nature and therefore immoral. It is immoral to be monogamous. And here we have the most strict commandment that we must be, within marriage, monogamous. Let's start by looking at a passage at the end of the Old Testament that summarizes sort of a lot of the teachings of the entire Old Testament on marriage. Let's go to Malachi 2. Malachi was prophesied during the time of Judah.

He's calling them Israel, the nation of Israel, and actually been destroyed at this point. But he's talking to Judah. And God is condemning them for what they've become. They've actually come out of the captivity, out of the Babylonia captivity, and slipped back into old ways. And he strongly attacks the Levitical priesthood. He strongly attacks the leaders. And he strongly attacks the populace on a lot of different levels. But in verse 10 of Malachi 2, he says, Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Now, this is an important point in how this has developed, this concept.

It starts with you and I come from the same place. All people have one Father. So he's talking about how one God, one Father, therefore we all have equal value before God. Now, he's going to carry this concept, one Father. God has created every one of us. And he's going to carry this on into a thought that gets more and more narrow as he goes.

He says, Why do we deal treacherously with one another by profaning the covenant of the Fathers? So he says, If we all have one God, so we all come before the one God, when every one of us pray, each one of us is allowed to come before God as his child, Father is a very important word he uses here. Father isn't used near as much in the Old Testament as the New Testament, but it's used to make a real important point here. We all come before this Father, this relationship as children. And he tells them, Why do you then mistreat each other? And why have you broken the covenant that were made with the Fathers?

Now, the Fathers here is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Adultery in the Old Testament has many reasons why it is wrong. One of the reasons why with ancient Israel is it breaks a covenant God made with a people. The marriage itself is a covenant between two people and God, but it's greater than that. It's actually greater than that. When we talk about marriage, it's also part of the old covenant God made with Israel, and it's part of the new covenant God makes with the Church. Listen to what he says. Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.

An abomination, something that's horrifying to God, is taking place in Jerusalem and in Judah. For Judah has profaned the Lord's holy institution which he loves. He has married the daughter of a foreign God. Now, institution isn't in the Hebrew, but it's the word that the King James put in there, or other translators have used other words, but they had to capture.

They have profaned the holy, something that is holy. Well, we know by the next verse it has to do, or the rest of the verse it has to do with marriage. They have profaned the holy institution of marriage. They broke God's covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by breaking their marriage covenant. So he starts out with, in this subject of marriage, when we deal treacherously with each other within marriage, we are profaning God as Father, and we are profaning, in their case, the covenant God had made with him as a nation.

I'll show you in a minute how that also applies to the new covenant. It's easy to look at marriages. Well, that's between me and my husband, me and my wife, and it's really nobody else's business. That is not the way the Scripture looks at it.

That is not what God says. Adultery is a death penalty sin in the Old Testament. Now, there's lots of... You know, stealing was not a death penalty sin.

There are lots of... You know, all the Ten Commandments were death penalty sins. Why would God make this one that important? Remember, this is his holy institution. Holiness is a real important concept.

The most common definition of the Hebrew or Greek words that are translated holy is that it means to be separate or devoted. In other words, God says, this is devoted to me. This is separate. So he says, the seventh day is separate. It is devoted to me. Marriage is separate than other human relationships. We think in our society, which is just zeroed in on the idea of romantic love, that marriage is separate because two people fall in love.

Marriage is separate as a relationship because God ordains it.

Understand it. Marriage is separate than all other human relationships because God says it's holy. Holiness is an important concept because God is holy. He is separate than everything else. When he says, I take this thing, this place, this time, these people, whatever it is, he says, I make this holy. He separates it for himself. He imbues into it some attribute of him. In other words, everything that God says is holy shows something about God. When God says this is holy, it tells us something about God because God is holiness. He's separate. He's above all things. So he says this relationship between husband and wife is different than any other relationship in life.

So I make it separate, God says. I make it holy. It is my holy institution which they were profaning. When we see marriage only as a romantic experience between two people who fall in love, it is not holy in terms of... It has a holiness concept. It is a feeling concept. And guess what happens when the feelings get damaged or hurt or go away? You divorce. You're separate. Because it's not holy. It's based on my feelings. There are emotions and feelings in marriage, and we're going to talk a little bit about how important that is. And in fact, that's the entire sermons of themselves. What the Bible says about marriage and our emotions in marriage. But we're talking specifically about adultery, so I want to stay focused in on that. And so, God has declared this relationship separate than all other relationships in life. A relationship between a man and a wife in marriage. To profane marriage is to profane God. Understand it. To profane marriage is to profane God. Right? Well, if he profanes the Sabbath day, he profanes God. If you worship idols, one in the Ten Commandments, someone will worship idols, they're profaning God, right?

If you break any of the Ten Commandments, you're profaning God. So adultery is foremost a sin against God who has made a holy relationship.

But also, in ancient Israel, it was part of the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, you think, now wait a minute. We understand the marriage covenant. Marriage covenant is between two people and God. But how in the world does that affect the God... How does ancient Israel marry pagans, which is the main issue here? And we're going to get into another issue in a second. But he starts with you marrying pagans. You're marrying people who worship other gods. He says, and you're doing this, and he says, you're breaking my covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Wait a minute, Isaac and Jacob have been dead for centuries. So how's that breaking that covenant? Well, he goes on, he says, verse 12.

Last part of verse 11, again, the Lord's holy institution, which he loves, he has married the daughter of a foreign God. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob, the man who does this thing, being awake and aware, brings an offering to the Lord of hosts. He says, may people be punished to do this.

Verse 13, and this is the second thing you do. You cover the altar of the Lord with tears and with weeping and crying, so he does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with good will from your hands. So now people are going to God in tears, crying out to God, and God's not listening to their prayers. This is real important. Because why would God not listen to our prayers? They're bringing offerings to the temple.

They're bringing offerings to the temple on the Sabbath and on the Holy Days. They're crying out to God, and they're, God, why aren't you in my life? Why aren't you helping me? Why am I suffering? And there's no answer from God. Why is he not answering them?

Verse 14, For you say, for what reason? In other words, the people say... Malachi said it very interesting, because Malachi is like a play. There's an accusation, a response, and an answer. And seven times through this book, there's an accusation, a response, and an answer. It's almost like a play. You could create this into a play.

He says, for what reason? Because the Lord has been witnessed between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously. Now remember, he started this discourse with, you have one father, yet you deal with each other treacherously. You cheat each other. You hurt each other. This is in the context of marriage. In other words, he's saying, look, this is actually an enormous statement. It basically says, when women come before God, they have the same equality before God as men. You both have the same father. This is an enormous statement that he's making here. See, you need to miss. This passage tells us everything. It summarizes everything that's in the Old Testament about why God created marriage and why adultery is considered so horrible. You come before God as his children, as father.

As a married couple. To cheat each other is to deal treacherously with you, between each other, and break your marriage covenant with God, and break the covenant that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says, with whom you have dealt treacherously, yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. We make a covenant with God when we get married. We promise God, we promise him, that we will try with everything we have to create a holy relationship. A holy relationship. And, viewed with some of his attributes. Now, I want to come back here, because before I finish this passage, I want to look at a couple of passages. By covenant. Well, let's go look at the marriage covenant. Genesis 1. And then I would look at the Abrahamic covenant, or the covenant God made with Israel, and how these two things come together. Genesis 1, verse 26.

Why would he make adultery such an issue? Why would he make this so important? Genesis 1.26. We all know this. The God said, let us make man in our image. According to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish, over the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle. Over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created in his own image, in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Male and female, he created them. Both in the image of God. But male and female contains different aspects of the image of God.

Which I'm glad. I am so glad we're not all men.

Now we'd have killed each other off a thousand years ago anyway, so then we wouldn't matter. Or we'd all be living in caves, eating raw meat. So God gave men and women different attributes of who he is. Remember what Malachi said. Do you all have one father? So he starts this discussion of all marriage. Don't you both have one father?

So how can we deal treacherously with each other? Look at chapter 2, verse 18. We know this story too. But this is the marriage covenant as we see it instituted at creation. This was long before, by the way, God ever created Israel. The marriage covenant precedes the covenant God made at Sinai with Israel. That means it's pretty important. The Lord said, It is not good that man should be alone, and will make him a helper comparable to him, someone who help him who is like him. He was comparable to him. Verse 21. The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in his place. That the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. Now he wakes up, and something's happened. There seems to be a missive of a rib here. He wakes up, and all of a sudden God says, I've got a present for you. And here she walks out. And Adam says, what he says here is very important. This is thou, boat of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. In other words, this is a piece of me. This is someone like me. All I've ever seen are dogs and elephants and giraffes, and this is a piece of me.

Wow, you do good work. I've got a piece of me now. Someone like me. Someone I can communicate with.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and he join to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. He shall leave his father and mother and become, what? The marriage ceremony. He's a marriage covenant. You are to leave all others.

Now, this doesn't mean you are to dishonor your parents. That's one of the commandments. But you know, when you get married, your holy relationship between your mate, is different than your holy relationship between your parents. You are to lead your parents, and make that mates, that relationship, holy.

That's an interesting concept. We still have to honor our parents. We did two whole sermons when we went through the fifth commitment. Honoring parents and teaching children how to honor. But, this is a special relationship. You are to lead them, and this is to be your number one human priority. It's to be your mate. Even more important than your children, and even more important than your parents. And you know what?

You know, anyone who's done studies on child development, the number one gift any parent, any couple, can give children, is a strong marriage relationship. That will give them more than anything else. That security of having a strong marriage is the single most important thing you bring in the child review.

Children develop differently in any strong marriage than they do in a non-strong marriage. You could tell them the same things, but they tend to develop differently. So, here we have the covenant, you know. And so Malachi says, you break this covenant when you divorce. You break this covenant when you commit adultery.

But there's a second covenant that you break when he talked about the covenant God made with the fathers. Israel was called by God to be a holy people. When they stood before Mount Sinai, and he thundered out the Ten Commandments, He said He brought them there to make them a holy nation. That they were to be His representatives on the earth. The reason God took the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was to bring them together to be His representatives.

And He then gave them a lot of laws about marriage and sexuality. A lot more than we have in the marriage covenant, when they were just a man and a woman. Look at Deuteronomy 7.

Deuteronomy chapter 7.

Some of the instructions given to Israel after they were brought out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 7.

Look at verse 1. When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gurgishites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Parazites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them over you, to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. And you think, why in the world would He tell them to go kill all these people?

This is why some people say, wow, God is so barbaric. There's a reason. God brought them out of captivity in Egypt. Brought them together and said, I made a promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In a minute we're going to expand this out even more. So it's even more important than this. And He says, I brought you out to make you my holy people so that you will be my representatives. All the people in the world will know there are the people who worship the true God. The God of Israel is greater than any other gods.

And so they were to be His representatives.

They were to be His people. And they were to kill these people for a reason.

You shall conquer and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. And so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them, that you shall destroy their altars, break down their sacred pillars, cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. Verse 6, For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.

He said, you have a special purpose. You are a holy people. As though these people were gathered together to be a holy people. And He said, if you live with these people, they will take away your holiness.

These people are so evil, they will take away your holiness. So kill all of them.

God looked into the hearts and minds of those people and said, they are so evil, they will destroy your holiness. So kill them all. No, they didn't. We are going through the book of Judges in the N.O. Bible studies. And it's such a repetitive story, isn't it?

Because they kept becoming like the people that they had destroyed. Plus other nations, you know, and other nomadic tribes that kept affecting them. And they kept going back into this paganism that they accepted from the people that lived there. And turned against God over and over and over again. Then you read the Kings. And you have the same story, over and over and over again.

They were a holy people. As a holy people, they were not to marry unholy people. Because unholy people, pagans, this is what he's talking about here, people who worship Baal and Astras and all these other gods and goddesses, they would turn them against him.

Now this is how important it is to be separate from God and for God to make something separate, devoted to him. God says, I chose you, therefore you should be this way. What's amazing is if you go through Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 22, there are these long lists of sexual sins that are condemned.

And some of them, I guess, you know, if you read through all the instructions about sexual purity in the Torah, you would be shocked. Also, some of them would be absolutely strange.

We'd say, wow, we don't do that today. But there are certain things that are condemned so strongly that they incur the death penalty. Adultery, homosexuality, and incest.

Let's put these two covenants together. Marriage covenant and covenant God made with Israel.

They were to be a holy people, and the foundation of their society was marriage. The very foundation is marriage. Marriage creates family. Family creates society. So of all the human relationships, the one between husband and wife was the single most important relationship in Israel.

They were to be a holy people, to be God's representative to the earth. But they were even more than that. They were to be the people through whom the anointed one, the Messiah, would come.

Satan spent all his energy trying to destroy these people. And one of the ways he destroyed them over and over again, afflicted them, had God turned against them, was he would get them involved in adultery and marrying pagans.

And as that would happen, society would collapse. Sexual immorality caused the collapse of society because it destroyed the marriage relationship. As the marriage relationship collapsed, crime would go up, violence would go up, and just general mayhem would go get so bad, and people would turn against God.

Over and over, you go back, when you read now the Old Testament, see how much sexual immorality and adultery is part of the collapse of society. Because once you destroy the marriage relationship, you began to destroy the foundation of what a society is. And that's why he said, this relationship is holy. He didn't say your relationship with your bowling buddy, he says, holy, did he?

That's not what he says? But this relationship is mine, he said. It's mine. It's his. It's God's.

You can't mess with this relationship because what you do, you begin to unravel everything society is supposed to be. See, why this is so much more than romantic love?

This is the foundation which God creates physical societies.

Marriage is the foundation in which God creates physical societies. Remember when you were 15 and you thought you were just in love with this girl? Right? Aren't you glad you didn't marry her? Or this guy? You know? Because that feeling wasn't... was not something to build your life on. Now those feelings aren't bad. Those feelings aren't bad. And they're part of a continuing cycle of life. And they're good at marriage.

But remember, marriage is more than just feelings. It is what God says is the most holy of all human relationships.

And it is there so he can create societies.

Let's go back to Malachi.

Israel's purpose was to bring about the Messiah. If Satan had destroyed Israel and Judah, if there was no house of David, there was no descendant of the house of David, and it was time for the Messiah to come, the whole plan of God would have been thwarted. You notice there was someone named Mary there? God had to work through all of Israel's history to make sure he had one good woman at that point. That took a lot of work.

He worked all through Israel's history to make sure there was one good woman at this point, and one good man named Joseph, who would be Jesus' physical father.

That's a lot of work to make sure that happens. But without that, this life means nothing. If the Son of God did not come into this world, our lives would mean nothing. Him no purpose.

Malachi 13 Let's go down to verse 15. Verse 15, because it talks about the wife of your covenant. Verse 15 is a little bit...you'll see it translated a different way, so I don't want to get caught into the translation problems. I just want to show the point that's being made. But did he not make them one spirit, having a remnant of the spirit, and why one? Let's talk about husband and wife here. He seeks godly offspring, therefore take heed to your spirit, and let not deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. He's seeking the coming of the Messiah, and he's telling him, you better keep your marriages straight, because I'm looking for godly offspring. That's not just the Messiah, but it's how families are built. One thing that Israel has showed us...

You and I don't live in that society. When they lived in a society where they kept the world out, and they obeyed God, they tended to have generations who obeyed God. You and I have never experienced that, because we've always been in the world. Our poor kids are always in the world. We can't get out of it. But he put them in an isolated society. As long as they stayed isolated in terms of the worship of God, not only they didn't interact with the world, but they interacted with the world as a unified society. When they did, they tended to have generational positive effects, but they could never maintain it. Eventually, the world imposed just came into their society. We've never lived under that, because we have a little different role to play.

But that closed society was to produce the Messiah, and it had to create generational offspring who would obey God.

And, on a regular basis, there'd be a generation come along that wouldn't obey God. And guess what would happen? All the Amorites are Amalekites, so the Philistines, somebody would come and call a groom. God would be with them. They'd have pestilence, and they'd have diseases, and all these problems. And they'd say, God, would you please save us? And he'd say, okay. And he'd save them. And you'd usually get a couple generations.

And then, after a while, a generation would come along and just forgot it. And then the whole cycle started all over again.

He wanted godly offspring. They had to survive as a nation, as a people. There had to be Jews, specifically that tribe, in Judea, they had to be there for the Messiah to come in zero A.D. Not that there is a zero A.D. Do you understand what I'm saying? There had to be people there. And it was the family that created the foundation of that society. Now notice verse 16. For the Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce. That's a pretty strong statement. This is a holy union. Now there are certain instances in the Bible, there are certain reasons why a person, a couple can divorce. But there are very narrow reasons. He hates it. Because every divorce doesn't just hurt the people. It hurts society. Every adultery does just hurt the people. It hurts society because this is the most holy of all human relationships.

It is the most holy. The Lord God of Israel says he hates divorce, recovers one's garment with violence. Says the Lord of Hosts, therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal trustlessly. He says, don't cheat on each other. He says, because as far as he's concerned, divorce is an act of violence. And I tell you, after counseling, scores of people have been through divorce. They all describe violence inside. That's what they go through.

It's all violence. It's horrible. Some of you have probably been through divorces. You know what I'm talking about.

It's literally violence that happens inside that person through a divorce.

Some divorces are not... You can't stop them. They're going to happen. There's reasons. But this is why God says this is so important. You can't cheat and you can't divorce, or you break down your purpose. Now that's what he's telling ancient Israel. You can't cheat, you can't divorce, or you're breaking down your purpose. Which is to be God's people representing him, to have a society that represents him, and to bring about the Messiah. And this way we can see... Oh, by the way, that doesn't mean every marriage in Israel had to produce children. There were marriages that did produce children in ancient Israel. It just meant that when you were married, you had to stay married. You had to stay married. I will take the time. What's very interesting... Maybe sometime I'll give a whole sermon on. The marriage laws of Israel... If you married someone and she could not have children, you couldn't divorce her. You could not divorce her. Now, you could get a second wife, but you didn't get a second wife because you loved her. You had a second wife so that you could have children.

So there could be offspring. And when you see in the Scripture, it was just common. It was just common. You could not divorce her, though. So there were men that would have a woman that he loved and a second woman that he had to take care of for her whole life. And he had to treat her as a wife for her whole life. There were laws that said how he had to treat her, but it was so he could have offspring. And there's reasons why the entire society was built on how resources were passed on from family to family and it kept poverty from happening. It kept people from going into poverty.

And so children inside a family was just so important for their economic system. But we don't have that kind of economic system, so that's not applied to the Church at all. But it was applied then. Some people were shocked to find out that God did allow certain cases for a person to have two wives.

It wasn't forbidden. There's laws that actually tell you how it's supposed to work. And it has to do with an economic system based on marriage and family and children and a society that all lives by the same laws.

Now, let's come to the Church. How should adultery be dealt with in the Church? Well, let's look at something here. First of all, you and I are not...the Church is not under...the physical blessings of Abraham in terms of, you know, the nation that God promised Israel... Christ's coming, Second Coming, is Israel. That's not what's promised the Church. What's promised the Church is resurrection. But the Church is called...we still receive the blessings of Abraham, because there's a spiritual blessings of Abraham. So we're still under the Abrahamic covenant. We receive the spiritual blessings of Abraham, because people in the Church are made up of all different kinds of people's backgrounds.

So we receive the spiritual blessings of Abraham, so we're still...that Abrahamic covenant still applies. And we are a holy people. Israel is a holy people to represent God on the earth. They were called a holy nation. In Peter...1 Peter? The Church is called a holy nation. The same term is used. So you are holy people.

And our marriages are still the most holy of all human relationships. That goes clear back to Genesis. Your marriage is ordained by God as something He says, this is mine. This relationship is mine.

Now, I'll give you a clause about how to deal with your neighbor, but that relationship is between the two of you. But, you know, we have to act a certain way, because God gives us...but this one's different. This one's holy. This one's mine. That relationship, that covenant of Genesis still applies to your marriage today. And you are a holy people. We are a holy people representing God. So our marriages are part of the Abrahamic covenant. You know, when we fail in our marriages, God says, just like Malachi, you have failed in the covenant with your wife, and you have failed in the covenant with the fathers. We can still fail with both. But we also failed the new covenant. This is a major issue. Now, adultery can be forgiven by God just like anything else. I've seen a lot of marriages go through adultery, and forgiveness comes from God, the people forgive each other, and they have very happy, strong marriages. So adultery isn't the end of the world. I've also seen many marriages destroyed by adultery, absolutely destroyed, and the children destroyed by adultery. So it is an important issue. Let's go to Matthew 5, look quickly at what Jesus said. Then I want to look at something that Paul writes in this context. We know this passage of the Sermon on the Mount, but we need to cover it in this context, because Jesus here teaches about adultery. Verse 27 of Matthew 5, Now, he doesn't say, well, I've done away with that now. As long as you have love in your heart, it doesn't matter. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman who lusts for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. He says, it's not just wrong to commit the physical act. He said, it is a betrayal of your marriage covenant if you are a woman. And that's what he said. It is wrong to commit the physical act. He said, it is a betrayal of your marriage covenant if you have lust for another person.

It is a betrayal of the covenant.

There is a way, if we're not careful, that we can commit a type of emotional infidelity.

And we have to be very careful. This is why pornography is a sin. Pornography is a sin. And it is prevalent in our society.

And I've seen marriages that were damaged by it. No, I've seen many marriages that were able to... The person of all was able to overcome it, and the marriage actually became...grew, and the couple became very happy. So, once again, it doesn't mean the destruction of the marriage. It doesn't have to mean. But unchecked, I've seen it destroy marriages, too. Because it is a form of adultery, according to Jesus. So Jesus actually expands the concept of adultery here. And says, you can be committing adultery in your mind. And that is a sin. Notice what he says when we skip down to verse 31. Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Now, that's a whole legal term. I won't go into that. But Moses made divorce legal, which is actually protecting of women. In Israelite society, men had all the power. They could just throw a woman away. And Moses said, no, you can't do that. You have to go before the elders. And there has to be a legal proceeding for divorce. So it was the protection of women. But I say to you, and he's talking here to his followers, that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who has a divorce commits adultery. Now, that's a really strong statement there. Now, we know from Paul that there's other reasons that Christians can't divorce. But Jesus here is tying this directly with adultery. And in his discussion of adultery, he says, you know what? You're taking into that society and our society, too. We're taking divorce too lightly. He says, you divorce, and it's not a biblical reason. Well, we just don't get along anymore. We're just incompatible. I know we've been married ten years, but we're just incompatible.

And we divorce.

He says, okay, you have to stay unmarried. If you remarry, you're committing adultery. Now, understand something. If I say I divorce my wife, and for non-biblical reason, and I marry another woman, according to the Scripture, I'm committing adultery. Not one time. I'm committing adultery for the rest of my life if I stay with that woman. By living with that woman, I'm continually committing adultery. Now, that's a scary thing. Because to continually sin without repentance can become a salvation issue.

This is the holy relationship established by God as the most holy of all human relationships. To break that arbitrarily could cost us our salvation.

Now, we had better wake up to that. It could cost us our salvation. That doesn't mean there aren't biblical reasons for divorce. Adultery is one of them. Do you know what's hard? I've seen someone in the church commit adultery, and maybe actually be suspended from church as they deal with that sin and repent, and maybe be outside the church for months or a year. In the meantime, the person who the adultery was committed against, they have grounds for divorce. They're hurt. They're devastated. They're not the person who wants to divorce the person and then remarry. Then two years later, this person comes back and says, I've repented, and they walk back into the church, but the person that they were married to is now married to somebody else. They lost that relationship. They lost it.

I've seen that happen. They're devastated.

But it's legal. That's legal because adultery is a reason for divorce. Even that should be very careful. We should be very careful.

Paul, in dealing with the Corinthian church, dealt a lot with sexual immorality, all kinds of sexual immorality. We're not talking about fornication here. We're not talking about sex between two people before marriage. Those are specific instances dealt with. We're dealing specifically with adultery. We're dealing specifically with the commandment. But you start to expand that out. You start to realize why homosexuality is condemned as a death issue or incest is condemned as a death issue. Capital crimes in the Old Testament.

Sex before marriage had a different penalty because people weren't married. But in marriage, and I'm not saying it was correct or okay, the penalty was severe, but it was different. It was judged a little bit differently. Adultery is the concept. You've entered into this holy relationship.

Before marriage, you're profaning the holy relationship, but you haven't entered into it yet. So the penalty can be a little different. Anyway, let's go to 1 Corinthians 6. Because once again, I want to stick with adultery. Here's our subject. 1 Corinthians 6.

So the holiness of marriage, the marriage covenant, is still the same today. The issue of holiness within the Abrahamic covenant is still today. And the holiness of the new covenant is now added to that. See, now we commit adultery. We're breaking three covenants with God.

That's a pretty serious issue, isn't it?

This started at the mid-here part of verse 13, 1 Corinthians 6.

He says, Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. And the Lord for the body, and God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power.

When we turn to God, He owns our bodies. He owns our minds. He owns our hearts. But He also owns our bodies.

Part of the covenant we make is this body is now God. My mind is God's. My heart is God's. But this body is God's too. He yields it.

He says, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

You know, if Christ is building a church, He says, This is my body. This is my bride. This is my bride. And every one of us are parts of that bride.

So He wants a pure bride. Shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a harlot? Part of the problem they were having in Corinth was that there were men seeing temple prostitutes. Certainly not. Or do you not know that He who is joined to a heart is one body with her? For the two He says shall become one flesh. He goes back to the marriage covenant. He can't break the marriage covenant by going... And people were doing this because they were coming out of society where temple prostitution wasn't considered adultery. It was considered a requirement by the gods. So men and women on some kind of irregular basis would go to the temple prostitutes because it was considered part of an offering to their gods. So these pagans would come in and they were still sort of half pagan, half Christians and they were going to the temple prostitutes to offer their offering to the gods. He says, but He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. God owns us.

That even our bodies are owned. Then, verse 18, He says flee sexual immorality. He doesn't say just get upset with it. You and I have to actively run away from it. This is hard. We live in a society... billboards, movies, music, fashions... Everything is designed to help us or to funnel us into this sexual thinking. Everything is designed to do that. You and I have to fight that all the time.

So He says run away from it. It is an active thing we must do. We can't just say, oh, that's bad. We must actively do it. Flee fordication.

Because we're bombarded with this overload. And if we don't resist it, it pulls us. We become open to adultery. You know, most affairs... it's very interesting. Read research done by psychologists. You'll find all kinds of them on affairs. Most affairs are because... like a man said, well, I just thought my wife was ugly. I wanted to get a younger woman or a more beautiful woman. That's very rare. In fact, most women are surprised. He had an affair with her. Well, she's ugly as I am.

You know, where most women think, oh, he gets seduced by this beautiful woman. Poor guy just couldn't resist. They see the woman as like, well, that's disappointing.

He dumped me for that.

Most affairs are because of emotional dysfunction in the marriage itself.

You know, how do people have affairs with somebody at work? They go on a trip. Right? They have a couple drinks. Or it's with some neighbor. You know, most affairs don't happen because the man or woman said, I'm going to go down to the bar and pick somebody up tonight. I mean, that happens. But that's not how most affairs happen.

They happen because there's emotional dysfunction inside the marriage.

And somebody else comes along and they think they understand me. Of course they don't. Because the other person is doing the same thing.

And so they destroy their marriage for something that doesn't work.

So we have to not only be careful about this bombardment, this sexual bombardment, but we have to be very, very careful about our emotions in marriage. Because that actually may be more dangerous. That actually may be more dangerous. The stresses of life build up on us. And they come between us. This husband and wife. Let's go on. He says, Or do you not know, verse 19, now he really drives home his point. Paul is just going to drive his point home. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

If the people of Israel, in which God did not dwell in them, he dwelt among them. If they were holy, because he dwelt among them. How much more holy are we because God dwells in us? Think about that.

How much more holy are we because God dwells in us? And he dwelt among them. So our marriages must be based on a belief that this is... This relationship is ordained by God. And is more important than any other physical relationship. In our lives.

He gives on, he says, For you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's. He takes us back to, Christ died for us. That's a steep price to be beat to death.

That's a steep price to pay for our sins. How much more should we not try to be holy?

So what we see here is the teachings of Paul are not any really different than the teachings of Malachi. Except they're more strict.

The teachings of Jesus are more strict on his followers. On the concept of holy matrimony. Let me sort of sum up by just giving you three ways... And I know I've spent a lot of time with all these, but things to think about. Three ways that we can begin to fireproof a little bit to fight against adultery coming into our lives.

Because adultery is not usually planned.

And sometimes it is.

It's usually an accident. I say an accident. It builds up and builds up, and then the people do it. I mean, it's not an accident. They choose to do it. But it's something that they slide into. It starts with somebody nice at work that you had lunch with in the lunchroom. And then they seem to understand you. And so, every once in a while you have lunch together. And then she tells you about her problems with her husband.

And pretty soon, every once in a while you even call each other. She's calling you and saying, yeah, my husband got drunk again tonight.

Then you start thinking about how great she is, and looking at your wife and saying, she's not that nice.

Why can't I have this woman? So you start texting her. Pretty soon you text each other all the time. Pretty soon you can't wait to go to work to see her.

See how it happens? It took six months. But pretty soon you're having an affair. You slide into it. How do we keep that from happening in our lives? First of all, you have to work. All three of these things, by the way, start with work. You can't do this by just, oh, my marriage will take care of itself. No marriage takes care of itself. It is a holy relationship in an unholy world.

It takes work. It takes work. Work to make God the center of your marriage. If you can't find time, if I can't find time every day for my prayer and Bible study, I have a lifestyle problem. Well, no, wait a minute. My job, you have a lifestyle problem. Well, the children, you have a lifestyle problem. Well, my health, you have a lifestyle problem. God has to have time every day. And that's the first key to your marriage. He's a holy God who said, this marriage is holy. So we must have time with Him every day so that His Spirit can interact with us so we have the ability and the guidance and the strength to make the relationship work. It's His relationship. He created it. He created marriage.

So we have to have Him involved. Secondly, you and I have to work to maintain a friendship with our spouses.

Now, I mentioned a minute ago how we're just so involved with a constant battle to resist all this sexual inundation that we get, but also the stresses of our lives. The stresses of our hectic lives cause us to become emotionally detached from our mates. There's emotional dysfunction.

You know, sometimes we're both working. We've got kids. We've got the car broke down. We have this financial thing. We have to paint the house. We have this and this and this and this and this. And it piles up and piles up and piles up. And if we're not careful, you know what we become? Marriage counselors call it a socio-economic unit. And it's all we are is a socio-economic unit. That means we interact socially as a couple, and our main purpose is to make money, to keep things going. Well, yeah, we've got to keep things going, especially when we, you know, got to buy the next thing or the next thing. And we become a socio-economic unit. It's hard today, isn't it? We usually, many people, we have two careers. We have kids. We have all these issues. But you know, if something has to go, don't let it be your marriage.

If something has to go, don't let it be your marriage. Let it be something else. Let it go.

We have to maintain a friendship. One of the greatest adultery traps is this. And I tell young people this, and they need to really understand this. One of the greatest adultery traps is to have a best friend of the opposite sex who isn't your spouse.

More affairs happen because, well, I didn't mean it. He's my best friend. My husband says, but I'm supposed to be your best friend. She says, well, you weren't there. And he was always there for me. The pool boy.

But he listened to me. We laughed. You and I haven't laughed in years. We laughed. You hear that a lot, too. We had fun. We were friends.

You have to stay close to God, but you have to put the work into being friends. Not talking at each other, but talking with each other. Because so much adultery happens because the other people just became best friends. I've sat down with couples and said, well, you know, she's my best friend. Sorry, your wife has to be your best friend. I mean, you have a best friend of the same sex. You know, my wife always told me, so there's been times in my life, she said, you know what you need? You need some good male friends to go hang out with. Yeah.

She's happier when I have close male friends. She's not happy if I have close female friends. No, I have to be female friends, but they're not my best friends. You know what I mean? They can't be. Your best friend of the opposite sex has to be your mate. If it's not, fix it. Spend whatever time, whatever effort, whatever money, give up whatever you have to to make your husband or your wife your best friend. Do it.

And cut off your best friend from being your best friend if it's someone of the opposite sex.

And number three, we have to work to maintain a romantic relationship in marriage.

It has to be worked at.

It's easy for us to get to the place where we're not only not friends, we're not lovers. We have a socio-economic unit. That's all it is.

And we forget what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7. Boy, didn't think I could talk so much about adultery, did you? Verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 7. Now, concerning the thing of which you wrote to me, I wish you would have written what the question was. All through the letter to Corinth, he writes, well, you wrote me about this, so here's the answer. If he had told us the question, it would make a whole lot more sense. And the other thing I can figure, he didn't know the letter he wrote to the Corinthians was a weaker part of the Bible. He just wrote a letter. God was inspiring to answer questions. But I wish he'd have written down the questions. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. So the question must have been, is it better that we don't have marriage in the Church of Corinth? When you look at the sexual dysfunction in society in Corinth, let's just say it was a sailor town. That should tell you something. It was a sailor town. The Temple to Aphrodite had, they know, at least a thousand Temple prostitutes, and that one Temple alone.

And they must have asked him the question, maybe it's better we don't get married. What he says is, nevertheless, for some of you, it's probably best you don't. I've had people, I've said down with them, said, you know what? I love you, but I won't do a marriage. I won't do your marriage.

I mean, I remember one time saying that to two people who had, well, I won't give details and be wrong. Let's just say it ended up divorced within a few months. They did not have the ability to be married. I did the marriage on that time, and I've always regretted it.

He says, so sometimes it's good you don't get married. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due to her. In other words, you have to work at this. Affection, you know, and this would mean any kind of physical touch, sexual activity, what we call romantic love. Yes, it's supposed to be there. Now, Paul said you better work at it. If you're going to be married, work at it. Make it happen. He said, also, the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves the fasting of prayer and come together again. And here's why, so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. And so Paul says, work at it. We need to work at the romantic relationship under marriage. Marriage is a holy institution ordained by God at creation. He made it. He said, this is for me. That's pretty interesting. When God looked at it, it made us male and female. He made us different so he could say, hey, did he look at the angels and say, watch this? They must have been amazed. He created them like him, but they're male and female, so they can have a relationship, a special relationship that's holy. It's the foundation of society. It's the foundation of creating children. In the case of Israel, it was the foundation for the coming of the Messiah. Marriage is a wonderful blessing from God. All couples go through difficult times, and the stresses of life come upon us. A lot of times it's not our relationship, it's the stresses that come between us that causes the problems. And then they become our problems, right? But it's the outside stresses that become between us. We can't let that happen. We can't let adultery be in the church.

It's going to happen, and forgiveness is offered by God. But what I'm saying is we've got to fight it.

We do that by doing the three things I just talked about. Work to make God the center of your marriage, work to maintain a friendship with your spouse, and work to maintain a romantic relationship in your marriage. As you can see, the commandment, you shall not commit adultery, wasn't a negative commandment at all. It was simply God's way of setting up a law to protect a holy blessing and a holy relationship between one man and one woman for life.