The 7th Commandment: Do Not Commit Adultery

I just quoted from the first sentence of Joseph Chema's research on global attitudes on adultery.

Mr. Chema is a private researcher who was formerly a director of the UN Population Division. His research was published in Yale University's Yale Global Online in April of last year. Mr. Chema continues, and I'm going to quote now, a global survey across 40 countries covering three-fourths of the world's population found 78 percent suggesting that married people having an affair was morally unacceptable. In fact, Mr. Chema goes on to write that prohibitions against adultery occur in every society on the planet, including Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucianism.

He continues, I quote, extramarital affairs can impose serious emotional effects on spouses, children, and other family members. In particular, an extramarital affair can result in psychological difficulties for the noninvolved spouse, along with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including damaged self-esteem, confusion, depression, nightmares, disassociation from reality, and a compromised sense of confidence. Such violations of personal commitments contribute to eroding trust in society. I'm quoting from a very secular source. This is not a biblical source. This is what secular research is telling us. Over the past year, I've covered five of the Ten Commandments, the Hebrew Bible and Exodus, and today I'd like to cover the Seventh Commandment. If you're counting, I really should be on the Sixth Commandment, so I'll get back to that one. There's various reasons why I wasn't quite ready to give that one. But today I'd like to talk about the Seventh Commandment, as described in Exodus 20, verse 14, which says, You shall not commit adultery. I thought it would be useful to begin the discussion by sharing some current secular research. I had considered getting up and saying, Today we're going to talk about sex. I thought that might get your attention. But I thought, No, I'll actually go with something a little more staid. In fact, as I was working on this sermon, my wife was out shopping with my mom, and my wife came back and said, How are you doing? And I said, I'm doing well. I've been thinking a lot about adultery. And she was like, Really?

I had to quickly explain that actually it was the topic of my sermon. So anyway, she understood that. So kidding aside, this is a very serious topic, right? Obviously. And I found it interesting to look at this completely secular standpoint and realize just how fundamental it is to the human condition, whether you are a Hindu in southern India, or you are here, or you are in Africa, or you are in the farthest reaches of the corner. This concept of adultery and unfaithfulness and so forth is fundamental to our human psyche for two people in marriage. Now, as we consider this commandment, I think it's important that we understand what adultery is, what are we actually talking about when we talk about adultery? That we understand why not committing adultery is such an important commandment. Why is it? Why is this so fundamental to the human condition? And finally, I think it's important to discuss the greater spiritual intent of the commandment, because that's really where a lot of the sin comes from. It comes from our minds, as we'll describe. Now, adultery, by definition, requires a marriage. And this union, this marriage, if we're married then, of course, sets bounds or boundary conditions in our relationships if we're married. And we need to understand the devastating consequences of that broken trust. And if we're single, we most certainly have married friends, and there may be temptations and issues that come up among our married friends if we're single. And we need to look at those, and we need to consider those. So if you're single, there are certainly implications for you as well. And the principle contained in the commandment also touches on the concepts of an applicability of sexual immorality as well. So there's something in here whether you're married or you're single. Let's start with our first point, which is the biblical definition of adultery. Let's go over to Leviticus 20 and verse 10, and let's read the biblical definition of adultery here in Matthew 16.

There's several places where this was given. We're going to read the one in Leviticus 20.

This is actually under a section entitled, Penalties for Breaking the Law. In Leviticus 20 and verse 10, it says, The man who commits adultery with another man's wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer, and the adulteress, shall surely be put in to death. So whether it is the man who's married, having an inappropriate sexual relationship, or it is the woman either married or unmarried, they would both be put to death for adultery. A pretty serious penalty. And in fact, even today, in some cultures, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, there are public canings for the crime of adultery. Even in the United States, 21 states still have laws against adultery where people can be prosecuted and put in prison. Typically, that's not done, but those still exist even in the United States. Now, I could share a lot of definitions, Hebrew and Greek and so forth, of what this word adultery means. It's a very ancient concept, and it describes an illicit sexual affair or conduct from a married person with another married person or a married person with an unmarried person. The word adultery came into the English language about 500 years ago, about the 1400s, and it comes from a Latin root, which means to pollute. It means to pollute. You have something that's pure, and you pollute it in some way. That's where this concept of adultery or this word even that we use comes from. Other synonyms, when we talk about adultery, include unfaithfulness, cheating, misconduct.

This really helps us to begin to peel back the onion of what we're talking about when we talk about adultery. We're talking about pollution or polluting something that has some sacredness to it. You can have misconduct on the job. People can walk into a bar and become disorderly because they're drunk. They can punch somebody in a bar fight, and they might be put in jail for a day, or they might be fined or something. You can cheat on a contract. You can cheat on your taxes.

All of these have consequences. You're not going to get away with these things, but when you have misconduct in a marriage, when you are cheating on your spouse, it goes to an agreement that says, you're going to have a contract. It goes to an entirely different level in terms of what the consequences and the penalties are, which is why this was one of the few things that rose to the level of a capital offense. You could go steal someone's property. You could lie about something. There's a lot of things that were described in the law that would not bring a capital punishment, but adultery was one of those things that brought capital punishment.

There is also greater spiritual teaching on this subject that we'll talk about a little bit later about how we have to guard our thoughts from thoughts of adultery and so forth. We're in the sermon. We're not going to take the time to go through the spiritual analogies associated with the marriage covenant and how that pictures the relationship between God the Father and what he's desiring from his children, Jesus Christ and the church and so forth.

There's a whole set of things. We could talk about marriage. We could talk about the spiritual significance of Christ and his bride and so forth. We'll only briefly touch on those things. We also could go into a lot of depth on what it means to talk about spiritual immorality. The word for spiritual immorality or debauchery is the Greek word porneia, which we now know very well in our society because we have this thing called pornography, which comes from this Greek word which is often used for fornication or sexual immorality.

So there's a lot of places we could go in our short time here, but I really want to focus on this concept of why adultery is so, first of all, prevalent and also why it is so destructive. So let's go to our next point here, which is why does God elevate the sin of adultery to the level of one of the Ten Commandments? Why does it carry a capital punishment? Why is it so important? And why would it be across so many societies as being something that would be considered morally unacceptable?

78% even today, as we see celebrities, as we see politicians, as we see public figures committing adultery and that sort of coming out in a way that we didn't used to see it. You know, with President Franklin Roosevelt or President Kennedy, we didn't hear about their marital infidelities while they were alive. We heard about it afterwards. But now, you know, we hear about these things real time about many of these individuals. Well, to answer this question, we need to understand the fundamental concept of the holiness of marriage.

So for this, I'd like to go over to Malachi 2. Let's go over to Malachi 2 and in verse 11. And let's understand that when we cheat on our taxes, we are certainly sinning. We're stealing. We're stealing from our brother because somebody else has to pay for the roads or pay for the salaries of government workers and all the various services that are provided to us.

And that is a sin. It's a sin before God. But cheating on our spouse carries a greater significance even than that. Malachi 2, verse 11, says Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination—abomination is a very powerful term. It's the Hebrew term toebah. It's used for a variety of things that God detests. So something that God's detests has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned. And what has Judah profaned? What is this abomination? What is this treachery that is going to be described? It says Judah has profaned the Lord's holy institution which he loves.

He has married the daughter of a foreign God. We have something here that's quite profound. We find that marriage is holy. Marriage is holy. And we can sit here in church and we can talk about what holiness means. We use that term a lot in church, don't we? But you don't necessarily find that word used in work. You don't find it used in restaurants. The server doesn't come up and start talking about holiness with you.

We don't use this term typically outside of a church context. But marriage has a holy institution. And the word holy here is the Hebrew word kodesh. It's strong 6944. And it means a partness or sacredness. If you remember our discussion of the Sabbath day, where it says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, that word holy is kodesh. And it's a derivative of the same word kodesh. So there is something sacred about marriage. It is a holy institution. And we see the prophet Malachi sharing that marriage is holy. And in fact, it is called an institution in Scripture.

Now Malachi tells me she doesn't really...she jokes with me. She says she doesn't care for the word institution. She and I are in an institution. It sounds like we're kind of trapped and we can't get out. We've kind of been consigned to an institution. When will you finish serving your time?

But you know, an institution means it is a law, it's a practice, it's a custom. It's something that's fundamental to society. It's an institution. Now the word institution, you'll notice, depending on the Bible you have, in my Bible it's in italics because it's actually not in the Hebrew. They impute it in there. You can look at it inter-linear or literal. You'll see that it's imputed next to holy. They have to give it some sort of a noun so that it works. Or sorry, some sort of an object. It is something holy. And then Malachi goes on in sort of the rest of the section to describe the various unfaithfulness that had occurred leading up to the fact that he hates divorce.

Now, Brian Dyson, who at the time was president of Coca-Cola, he gave a commencement address at Georgia Tech many years ago. And when he gave this address, he shared something that is often quoted, and I want to share it with you here because I think it's pertinent.

He says, imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them. Work, family, health, friends, and spirit. And you're keeping all of these in the air. You'll soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it'll bounce back. But the other four balls, family, health, friends, and spirit, are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. You will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.

I thought that was an interesting quote from Brian Dyson as he gave that because many times the pressures of work, finances, things we have to keep track of around the house, if we have children managing their schedules and so forth, they can cause us to forget that we're dealing with something sacred.

And as Brian Dyson describes, something that can shatter and break. Something that, when it's broken, you can't get it back again. And we can forget that as we go through our lives. If you look in verse 13, it says, and this is the second thing, Malachi 2 verse 13, that you do, And verse 14 gives us a little understanding of what he's talking about. He says, So why is this? Why do you say this?

Now this is interesting because you can enter into some kind of a partnership. You can start a business with a business colleague. You can have some sort of contractual arrangement among a group of people to go achieve some goal. But when you enter into a covenant with your spouse, with your wife or your husband, that covenant is between you and it's also with God. So it's a three-party covenant. We're going to look at that here in just a moment. Marriage is something that God has infused his very presence into. And again, we don't need to read there, but eventually it goes on in verse 15 about how God hates divorce for this reason. Now, I just want to mention, if somebody's got an NIV or another translation besides the New King James, I'm reading from the New King James.

Verse 11 makes reference to a sanctuary. If you don't have this, then it's not a worry. But I just want to make sure I've made reference. There is some discussion about whether verse 11 refers to a sanctuary or to an institution of marriage. We can talk about that in the sermon chat if you have that translation. The church teaches, and I think the context makes it very, very clear, that the New King James translation as marriage being the holy institution is the correct understanding of the flow of this passage.

In fact, even in my Bible here, it talks about this being the treachery of infidelity as the subject. But anyway, we can leave that for the sermon chat if you have a non-New King James version that you're reading from. But let's go back to my point here. Think about this for a moment. It's a covenant. It's holy. It's sacred. It's set apart. So all over the world, whether you're talking about here as Christians in the United States, or Muslims in the Middle East, or Hindus in India, or Buddhists in Thailand, when two people come together and make a marriage vow—we're going to talk about who those two people are in a moment scripturally—there is something holy about that. Even if they're atheists, it doesn't matter what they think is going on. They are entering into something that is holy and is sacred. Even in Greek mythologies, there's references to the fact that at some point in the past, two people were one, and then they were separated. And then they've been trying to get back together ever since. Philosophers—pagan, Christian, whatever you might say—have celebrated this concept, this something dynamic and special about two people coming together—a man and a woman, husband and wife—and what that relationship means. It is special. God created it. He created the universe with its incredible mathematical precision. He created the human body with its remarkable complexity and self-regenitive powers. And He created marriage. Just like the universe and just like our bodies, marriage was designed to work and achieve some incredible purpose. And when we touch on that, it's not about our taxes. It's not about making money. It's not about something physical like that. It's about something sacred and something holy. And even if two people have a ceremony and God has never mentioned, they are entering into something that's very special. Now, let's go into a little bit of detail on this and what I mean by this. Go over to Matthew 19 and verse 6. Matthew 19 and verse 6 gives us the biblical footing for what I just described. Matthew 19 verse 6, because when two people are very close as friends, that's a beautiful thing. When a brother and sister have a beautiful relationship as family, that's a wonderful thing. But when a man and a woman come together in marriage, that's a holy thing. Matthew 19 verse 6, so then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no man separate. This is a little bit difficult to get your brain around because when two atheists come together in marriage, you wouldn't think that God is joining them together. But God created that union, that concept. So even if they never acknowledge God's presence, just like the Greeks were praying to an unknown God that Paul described, I've come to tell you about this God who was the unknown God, they're still entering into something that God created, even if they don't acknowledge it. The Greeks, the Chinese, the Indians, name your philosophers, they've celebrated this concept of what a man and a woman together can achieve. If you look then at what this concept of marriage is, you can see it a little bit farther up in verse 4.

And again, so that they are no longer two but one flesh. A man and a woman, God does not have sex that way, right? He is not a man, he is not a woman, he is God. And we are a reflection of God as a man, and we are a reflection of God as a woman. And when a man and a woman come together and are joined together, we are a reflection of the wholeness of God. And that is a sacred and beautiful thing. You know, it's amazing how things turn out sometimes. I think about Las Vegas shotgun weddings. You know, two people meet in a bar and then they go get married, right? Is that a sacred thing? Yes. It is. They may not regard it as a sacred thing, but it is. You know, I think about Mahatma Gandhi, a very famous man in the world. Mahatma Gandhi was part of an arranged marriage when he was 13 years old. His wife was 14. Now, he fought for most of his life against child marriage. He felt that that was not right, that he was, that children marry. But he was in that relationship until the day he died, committed to that relationship. That was something that was sacred and special for him. You know, my wife's aunt recently had her husband pass away. We were there when he died. We went to the funeral home. We were with her as part of that grieving process. She had been married for many, many years. 40, 50 years, I can't remember the exact date. But you know, her husband, to put it mildly, was a pretty cranky man. In the last 10 years of his life, he couldn't get out of bed. And so they had a hospital bed brought into the house. And he would lie in this bed, and he would gripe and complain. Frankly, he would put her down. He would curse.

And she took care of him for 10 years in that bed. And when he died, we were all relieved. But you know what? She misses him. She misses him. He was not nice to her. But they had something sacred, even though it was troubled many times. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about something that is really beyond our human capacity to understand. And sadly, our own human weaknesses often do not allow us to understand that larger, defined intention between the man and the wife. Now, when we violate that sacredness, we are violating something that God created as holy. We are breaking a contract of something that's holy. Now, we know, for example, when David committed adultery with Bathsheba, she was the wife of Uriah, and he had sexual relations with her. And this led ultimately to him killing her husband. And when David repented of these sins, let's go over to Psalm 51, and let's see what he said about this. Psalm 51, verse 3. David violated three commandments, at least. He lied, he murdered, and he committed adultery. Murder and adultery were both punishable by death. Psalm 51, verse 3.

In a very terrible way, because he has created this beautiful thing for us. To profane something that God says is holy is to profane God himself. Even worldly wisdom understands this. I want to read you from a New York Times article entitled, The Adultery Wars. Adultery really became something that we talked about publicly, sadly, during the time of the Clinton Administration. And if you go do some research on this, you'll find in the 1998 timeframe an enormous amount of discussion of adultery. And so this is December 19, 1998, by Jana Smith. She writes, By and large, the reason to not choose adultery is that the pleasure it offers is taken in trade for harming more enduring love and more important loved ones. This is the secular world, right? The secular world says, Hold on! Whatever passing pleasure you might get will be traded for something much more precious. To do so is to risk the very building blocks of society, because it leads to heartbreak within the family, divorce, and all sorts of issues.

So let's go to our third point. What does it mean to commit adultery? Well, we kind of defined what adultery was, but now we need to, again, peel back the onion a little bit. Let's go over to Matthew 5 and in verse 27. Matthew 5 verse 27, because what we're going to find is that adultery begins in the heart, begins in the mind, it begins in our thoughts. And that's where it starts getting a lot more sensitive for all of us in the room. Matthew 5 verse 27. Jesus, giving the Sermon on the Mount, describes what it means to have the law written in our hearts. He describes what it means to be New Covenant Christians who do not live by the letter only, but by the Spirit. And so he's going to tell us to live by the Spirit. And he says in verse 27, "...you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman who lusts for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That's where it begins.

Now, we tend to focus on this verse as the definitive spiritual application with a focus on the visual aspects of lust. Because it says, for a man... and it says man. And so as men, we feel this verse kind of talking to us as visual creatures that we are.

But there's implications for women in here, too, as we'll talk about. Because for women, it tends to not be so visual. It tends to be more emotional. And women have the same issue as well.

Now, if it's in the mind, this verse raises all sorts of issues, like pornography.

It raises issues of catcalling. It raises issues that go to the heart of what is going on today in the Me Too movement. It goes to men objectifying women. It goes to men looking to women as a means of self-gratification. It means men exerting influence over women to achieve some personal sexual goal.

I mean, this is what we hear about all the time, isn't it? We see great, powerful men, men who get up in front of us on television, I think about Charlie Rose, who I really appreciated watching that show for many years. And then we find out about just awful objectification of women, and just an inability to really understand the gravity of what he was doing, and what some of these other men were doing. Now, we see this idea expanded in the book of Mark. Go over to Mark 7, verse 21. Mark 7 and verse 21. And this is where we get, again, both men and women involved. Mark 7, verse 21. And again, when we talk about men, we're talking about mankind, we're talking about humankind. Mark 7, verse 21. For from within, out of the heart of men, the heart of human beings, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adultries. That's the first thing that's mentioned. Fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. And all these evil things come from within and defile a man. And so men begin to commit adultery when lust or sexual desires for a woman enters his heart. That's when adultery begins. And from that point, those thoughts may remain as just thoughts and then be dismissed. Or they may be acted upon, as sadly we see of many great men in power today, where men begin to use their influence to obtain a physical self-gratification that springs from the thought.

Now, if we were to just say that men are all just sex-crazed people, I think we'd kind of be missing the point here. Men end up in adulterous relationships for many reasons, well beyond just the sex. Men might be in there because of a lack of intimacy with God.

They might be there because they have an immaturity in terms of understanding marital expectations and expecting their wife to meet all their needs. And when that wife doesn't meet their needs, then they go outside the marriage. They might be insecure about themselves and they go and seek support from another woman outside the marriage. They may have an inability to communicate their needs to their wife, which makes them susceptible of seeking fulfillment outside the marriage. There may be a selfishness that focuses on their own needs. It might be a selfishness that desires adventure or some sort of danger. It can be a lack of good male friends to just talk things over with. There's a lot of reasons, but it all begins in the heart. And these mental and emotional reasons, as I said, can lead them, then, ultimately to act out. Now, I made reference to David and Bathsheba earlier, but let's go over to 2 Samuel 11 and let's read this story. Because we have a great man of God describe the entire story of his adultery in Scripture. And there's something very interesting about the mental processes that we can glean from 2 Samuel 11 and what happened in David's mind. And women, we'll get to you, too, okay? Right now we're focusing on some of the men. But 2 Samuel 11, and let's start in verse 2. Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. Here's the beginning in his mind. Perhaps a fantasy, perhaps some sort of thought of being with her sexually. Verse 3, so David sent and inquired about the woman, and someone said, Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And we've discussed this before, that he very likely knew who she was. He certainly knew who Eliam and Uriah were because they were some of his most trusted warriors in his personal entourage. And Eliam was the son of Ahithophel. Ahithophel was one of his trusted advisors, probably one of the wisest men in the kingdom, who he relied upon for advice. So he clearly knew. She was married, no-go zone, right?

And she was very close to his inner circle. That should have been enough for him to realize that this was not a good thing. But it wasn't. It wasn't. He certainly couldn't have married her. But clearly, lust had overtaken him. The thoughts and desires of his heart had overtaken him. Verse 4. We see something very interesting. And I want you to think about this in terms of me-too. I want you to think about it in terms of a rape.

I want you to think about just how brief this is. Verse 4. David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. For her she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. That's it. It was over. He sent, took her, had her, and she went home, discarded like a piece of trash. He was done with her. He had fulfilled his desires, and now he was going to move on with his life.

That's what adultery, self-gratification, objectification ultimately leads to. At this point, I want to take a moment to talk about Bathsheba's reaction and clarify and correct something that I've said in a previous sermon about a year and a half ago. I appreciate people who listen to my sermons and give me feedback. I received feedback on a comment I made about Bathsheba's role in this. There are some indications in Scripture that Bathsheba was culpable in this affair. That reference is in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, where she is not named. The implication is that her sin was there such that she should not be named. There are positions around that. I've done more research, and that was my viewpoint for many years, but I've done a lot more research on this.

I want to share an alternative view of this, which I think may even hold a greater sway. If you look at this, and you look at the story, what we see here, I think more, was that she was a sexual victim of an unequal power relationship.

David didn't go to her home. He didn't go to her home and attack her. He sent messengers. If you think about a man versus a woman at this time, there's an unequal status relationship. If you think about the age of David and the age of Bathsheba, there's an unequal age power relationship. If you think about David as king and Bathsheba as a citizen of the country, there's an unequal power relationship there.

There's a great deal of unequalness here between these two individuals. If somebody goes to your home at that time and says, Please come, the king wants to see you, what are you going to do? No. That would be unheard of. This is the king. This is a man. By the way, this is somebody who your husband is part of his personal entourage. Perhaps she thought that he was going to tell her that Uriah had been killed in battle, or that Eliam had been killed in battle.

She didn't know. She really would have no choice, which is interesting because the word in English that's used in the New King James Version is took. They took her. She didn't really have a choice. Now she's in the palace. She's got no place to run. She doesn't have her family next door. She doesn't have a sister or a brother or a parent or somebody. She doesn't have anybody around her. She is on his territory. She's got no place to run.

And it says he lay with her. Now the word lay with her is not a typical word that's used for rape. But it can be used, and we can talk about that in the chat. It can be used to describe a rape. And then what's interesting we find here is that she was cleansed from her impurity, which means that the reason that she was bathing in the first point, first reason when she saw her, was because she had finished her period. And there was a ritual washing that needed to take place, as described in the law.

There's no indication she was naked on the roof. She was probably discreetly washing herself. And that's when she was seen. And she had just had her period. And now, given that, David clearly would have known that, well, you can't blame Uriah for this, right? Because she had just finished her period. So if she gets pregnant, well then, you know, it's going to be not Uriah. And then she returned to her house. She didn't stay there. And in fact, in the next verse, and the woman conceived, so she sent and told David.

She didn't go talk to David. She didn't have some kind of relationship. She was going to go talk to David. She said, she's like, hey, I just want to let you know. So there's a lot of indications here that, at best, this was what's called a power rape. A seduction. A person sort of like, wow, I don't know what's going on. This is more than I can handle right now. Or at worst, this was just a rape. At worst, David raped this woman. Now that's hard to imagine. David, you know, he's going to be in God's kingdom.

That's the kind of sin that David committed. Now, if we kind of stick back from this and think about what this would mean, when she finds out she's pregnant, she tells him. And then we know the rest of the story. And there's only one indication we have of how Bathsheba felt about this entire thing. And it's over in verse 26. Second Samuel 11 verse 26. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for her husband.

That's the only sort of chance she gets to express how she felt about everything that happened. And she would not have known at this time that David was the reason for that. And that's a whole other story of whether she ever found out. So here we have David, self-gratifying, adventure, danger, all these types of things, why men act out. And we have Uriah—I'm sorry, we have Bathsheba then, the victim of this. And what transpired afterward is just nothing but grief. Nothing but grief. When an Ithafel told Absalom, David's son, to go up onto the roof and sleep with all of David Concubine, this was clearly going right back to this situation where his granddaughter had been violated by David, beginning with her being on a rooftop.

Now, as men, we have to take responsibility for our thoughts. And we need to understand that what leads us to lustful thoughts need to be examined. We need to look at those reasons. There's a reason that we might be objectifying women in that way. And we need to ask that. We need to look at our unhealthy views of women, because of maybe some family experience, some prior life experience, because of the influence of pornography.

Whatever it is, we need to look at that men. We need to examine our thoughts. And we need to go beyond just praying for God to help us. We need to be taking action. We need to be seeking counsel. We need to be talking through our thoughts. We need to be looking at the root cause of what those thoughts are. Now, staying on the same topic of out of the heart comes these evil thoughts.

I want to talk a little bit about how women tend to fall into this. Women tend to fall into something that are called emotional affairs. An emotional affair, I'm going to quote here from David Moltrup in his book, Husbands, Wives, and Lovers, the Emotional System of the Extramarital Affair. An emotional affair is a relationship between a person and someone other than their spouse that affects the level of intimacy, emotional distance, and overall dynamic balance in the marriage.

The role of an affair is to create emotional distance in the marriage. And I've seen this happen in the church, where the line of physical adultery is never crossed.

It's never crossed. But an enormous amount of emotional energy, often from the woman, is put into that relationship. The energy often involves frequent contact, sharing of very personal, even intimate details about the person's life.

And it generally leads the spouse of the person having this emotional affair to receive, or the spouse not in this emotional affair, to receive less and less attention by their spouse. And if left unchecked, these emotional affairs often lead to actual physical affairs. And so this can happen with women. They're not receiving the kind of love and attention in their marriage. They're not able to talk through things. They're not able to express themselves. They feel put down, whatever it might be. And they're at work, and there's a man, and he starts paying attention to her, and they start talking. And then pretty soon, there's an emotional connection that's being made between the two of them. And pretty soon, the woman looks forward going to work, and looks forward to spending that time. Now, it can happen with men, too. Both of these things can happen, both men and women. Now, before we conclude this message, I want to talk about a final point, which is, can we be forgiven when we commit adultery? Now, this may seem like an obvious question. Well, of course we can. Christ came and he died for us. And so we can be forgiven. But there's something that's especially insidious and difficult to take back, as I said, this glass ball. It's nicked. Maybe it's cracked. Maybe it's about to shatter. It's about to break in pieces. How do you restore that? We don't need to turn there, but Proverbs 6, verse 32 says this, A man who commits adultery has no sense. Whoever does so destroys himself. An adulterer destroys himself or herself. Adultery can destroy not only the family unit through divorce. It can damage the trust of children towards their parents. It can damage the relationships across extended families. It can, of course, lead to divorce, which is a leading cause of poverty around the world.

It can hobble future generations with having the opportunity to have fulfilling relationships because of fear over what might happen. Trust is broken. Hurts are deep. Let's go over to John 8, verse 3, and let's see the example of adultery being forgiven.

John 8, verse 3, Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery in the very act.

And now they're going to go on to describe how she needs to be stoned, and there's going to be a discussion about it. And we can kind of skip down here.

Verse 10, When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, Woman, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? And she said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I. Condemn you. Go and sin no more.

Jesus did not condemn this woman. Maybe she was trapped. Maybe she was seduced. There could be a lot of reasons, but the fact is she was forgiven. Jesus saw that there was something in her that merited pardon, and he forgave her, and God forgives us. And we need to come forward. We need to move towards reconciliation. The path is going to be difficult. It's going to be uncertain. But the end result is the promise of God of forgiveness. Now, in some cases, the spouse will still have emotional resilience to forgive, but this can only happen if the person committing adultery is actually able to effectively communicate to his spouse how much he felt or she felt the incredible pain of betrayal inflicted on him or her. And if that's not the other case, the spouse is going to be left feeling like this can happen again, and the spouse is not going to have the trust, and there's going to be ongoing distrust. And unless that can happen, true forgiveness and true reconciliation may never occur. Forgiveness from our spouse may never come. That's a question of facts and circumstances. But ultimately, our spiritual salvation does not need to be lost over this sin. Well, the seventh commandment to not commit adultery is a safeguard in our minds, in our hearts, and in our physical conduct and in our communities. And it goes beyond the physical act. Intimacy in marriage, whether we are married or intimacy with another married individual, if we are single, are powerful emotions that have to be dealt with very carefully. We need to put a priority on understanding these emotions and looking to God to guide us through understanding what this commandment needs for us.