Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery

President Ronald Reagan once said, I have wandered at times about the Ten Commandments and what they would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress first. Well, probably would have been a 10,000-page document.

One of the things that's so amazing about the Ten Commandments, and we've been doing this series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, is that they're so short.

I mean, these aren't all the laws of God. It doesn't contain everything that's important, but the Ten Commandments give us the foundation for moral law.

It's with these Ten Commandments, we can, with God's help, develop moral laws for all aspects of life. There are only ten of them, and they're so short. Why did He pick the ones that He did? So far, we have gone through six of the Ten Commandments and been able to do an entire sermon on each one and could have done a second sermon. In fact, on the Fifth Commandment, we did two sermons on the Fifth Commandment. Because each one, when you begin to look at it, expands out into understanding a basic moral principle. Last time, we talked about, thou shalt not murder, which has to do with the sacredness of human life. So now we come to a commandment that, in all honesty, is very interesting, has a lot of people who are atheists baffled, because it makes no sense to them. And it is, you shall not commit adultery. There are sociologists who claim that you shall not commit adultery, that monogamy among human beings is unnatural. That we are designed to have multiple partners through life, and therefore, being married to one person is unnatural. Therefore, this is an immoral law. That's an interesting argument, isn't it? It's an immoral law because it goes against nature.

Why would God make this such an important commandment? Why would God say that committing adultery is one of the foundational concepts of all morality?

Well, there's one first concept that we see right away, and that is, if there's adultery, there is an institution of marriage. In other words, adultery is breaking that marriage covenant, and it has to do with sexual activity outside of marriage. So we're going to look at what the Bible says about adultery. I had a hard time putting this sermon together because I kept building all these marriage sermons out of it. And there were times I literally sat down and threw out entire pages of notes. Because I kept saying, no, I can't go that direction, I can't go this direction, I have to stay with adultery. Why would God say this is so important? And when we look at it, we'll see that this is one of the foundational moral principles of all society. So where would we start? We have this commandment. You should not commit adultery. Where do we start to understand it? Well, where we start to understand it, interestingly, is at the end of the Old Testament in the book of Malachi. Because there is a passage in the book of Malachi which summarizes the whole moral foundation of adultery. Because it tells us the whole moral foundation for marriage. So let's go to Malachi chapter 2.

As we go through this, it's important to read that when we read through, especially this passage of Malachi, we don't miss very important words. We're starting in verse 10, and this letter is written, or book is written in a very interesting way. Malachi is like a play.

There's an accusation, there's a response by the people who are being accused, and then there's another response from God. And it goes back and forth and back and forth. So we're breaking in here into a thought process that's going to go on through almost the rest of this chapter. In verse 10, he says, Have we not all one Father, as not one God created us? It's very important. We have a Father. Father is not used as much in the Old Testament as it is in the New Testament. It reference to God. So this is a very important choice of words.

We have one Father who is created of all of us, who is bringing in an appointment of equality before the Father, that if all children go before the Father in a sense of equality before Him, why do we deal treacherously with one another? Why do we cheat each other? Why are we cheating each other when we both or all have one Father? And then the next statement, so this is all part of one sentence, might have fainted the covenant of the Father.

Now, as we go through this passage, we're going to see two covenants. We'll have to explain as we go along. This covenant of the Fathers is the covenant God made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that they, their family, would produce a nation. Their nation would produce the Messiah. And whatever these people are doing is because they don't recognize that they come to one Father who created both of them or all of them, and they are cheating one another.

And in doing so, they're breaking the covenant God made with them and the people. We're going to look at why God had ancient Israel, which is a whole other subject. Why He picked those people, and then we'll touch upon why God is selecting and building a church. Verse 11. Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and Jerusalem. Now remember, Matthew has written after Judah has come out of the Babylonian captivity, and they were reestablished, and the rebel temple was there, and here they are reestablished, and yet their society is deteriorating. And the whole message of Malachi is how their society is deteriorating, and here He's hitting out one of the core reasons why.

Because there's an abomination taking place in that nation. An abomination that deals with people not going before God as a Father, and cheating one another, and breaking the covenant God made with Abraham. So what in the world could this be? Second part now, chapter, verse 11. For Judah has profaned the Lord's holy institution which he loves. He is married the daughter of a foreign god.

You are not approaching God as a Father. You are cheating each other. You have broken the covenant God made with Abraham and your nation and your people. Why? Because you are profaning God's holy institution. Now, institution isn't in the Hebrew, but there's this intent there that they had to put a word in there. Because the whole sentence fits into a concept that he's saying this is something holy ordained by God and the holy issue is marriage. The holy institution is marriage. Because why? He says he has married the daughter of a foreign god.

In other words, they had broken a covenant God had made with Abraham and they were marrying pagans. So we're going to have to look at why that was wrong. Why was that wrong for them to marry pagans? But they are being punished. Look at verse 12. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob the man who does this be awake and aware and he brings an offering to the Lord of hosts.

Wow! May you be cut off from God if you do this deliberately. This has to do with the concept of holiness. We're going to keep going back to the covenant God made with Abraham and then the second covenant he's going to mention here in a minute. A covenant is a very important concept in the scripture.

And when God makes a covenant with people and the people agree to it and break it, they are under his judgment. The covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is that their people would be holy. Now when you usually look up the Greek word or the Hebrew word in the Old Testament that is translated holy, it usually means devoted or separate. In other words, God takes something and says, this is for me. The holy Sabbath day. We talked about that a little bit when we went through the Sabbath as one of the Ten Commandments. God says, this is my day, therefore it is mine. It is to be used the way I want it to be used.

God took Israel and said, you are holy people. In fact, he told them that before Mount Sinai, just before he gave them the Ten Commandments, he says, you have been brought here to become a holy nation. They were to represent God to the world. They had a job to represent God to the world. They were separate from the world. They were devoted to God and they were God's people. Now when God says a person or a place or a people or a thing is holy, he doesn't just mean it's separate for me. He literally says, this represents me.

When God makes something holy because he is holy, that represents, it shows us something about God. You think about it. The holy temple, when you study the temple, it shows us all kinds of vital information about the work of Jesus Christ. The holy Sabbath day. What does it mean to be a holy people? That means that God personally, through his grace, looks at this group of people, what you did with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and says, you are mine. I take you and you are different than everybody else. There are many places he told him, it's not because you were better people, it's because you were basically the weakest of all the people, so I took you and made you my representatives. And for that reason, you were special. It doesn't have to do with God loving other people. That's not the point. It means the job they were given. So Israel was given a job, and because there was this treachery that involved the holy institution of marriage, the holiness of the people given to them from the covenant made with Abraham was being profaned. Now that's a big concept. They were profaning the covenant God made with Abraham because they were cheating each other in marriage. We're going to expand that out a little bit because we're going to see that that applies to you and me. In fact, this passage is going to do with two covenants. We and our marriage is due with three covenants that God has made. To profane something that God says is holy is to profane God because God has separated it. Now there's two points here that we need to look at. One is the institution of marriage.

The marriage covenant, and a little later in this passage, he's actually going to call it the marriage covenant. So we looked at the covenant that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they were, through cheating and marriage, profaning that covenant, that agreement God had made with them. Well, let's go back. Just leave a marker here in Malachi. Let's go back to Genesis 1. Just look at the marriage covenant. You know it. We know it, but we need to understand something about this, why this is so important, and why adultery is considered to be such a betrayal by God, not just to the other person in the marriage, but it is a betrayal to him, and it is a betrayal to society, and it is a betrayal of the covenant that he has made with you, or covenants he has made with you. It's a huge issue. It's a major issue. It's one of the foundational foundational commandments to create love. Genesis 1.26.

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. God created human beings in His image, male and female. Both are in the image of God. Both male and female in our makeup reflect different aspects of the image of God. Understand that. We were made different. We're supposed to be different. The idea that it's so extant in society today that there's no real differences between male and female is the denial of this. We are made different for a different reason, and it has to do with the marriage covenant and what God is achieving, what God is doing. Let's skip down to Genesis 2, verse 18.

Males, we say, we're just better than women. No, we have different aspects. Women say, we're just better than men. No, you have different aspects. We have different components of the same image of God.

That's supposed to do something in a marriage relationship. It's supposed to produce something. Genesis 2, 18. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone, and we'll make him a helper comparable to him. Verse 21 says, And the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, he made it to a woman, and he brought it to the man. Now, this has got to be a shock. If we read the whole story, Adam's feeling a little down. You know, he just named all the animals, and it was fantastic. It was wonderful. He was talking to God, and it was like, but I'm the only one like me. So he wakes up, and God brings out Eve. And he says, verse 23, And Adam said, This is thou bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. He says, wow, this is someone like me. It's a remarkable statement. This is someone like me. Wow, I'm suddenly not so empty anymore. You know, this big emptiness inside of me is not there because there's someone like me here that's compatible. Not exactly the same. Compatible. Different aspects, different sides of the same coin.

Verse 24, this is real important. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. The marriage covenant is a holy covenant, and it was created at creation.

It precedes the giving of the Ten Commandments. It must be real important.

How holy is this covenant? Thou shalt not commit adultery. Remember when we went through honoring your parents? And I said, what that commandment does is actually shows that there's holiness to being a parent. There's holiness to being a parent. It is sanctified by God. You are parents, and therefore you are to teach children, and therefore your children are to honor you. So it protects the whole concept of family. This protects the whole concept of marriage. In fact, what we'll see is that of all the human relationships you and I have, God doesn't call them all holy. If I go out bowling with a bunch of bowling buddies, it's not a holy relationship ordained by God. It's bowling. When we get together for Sposa's Club, it's not a holy relationship ordained by God. Marriage is a holy relationship ordained by God, imbued by God with some of Himself. Just like He does with anything He claims is holy. This represents Him. Of all your relationships with anybody, nothing in the physical world, we're not talking about God, but nothing is more important than the relationship between husband and wife. That is the single most important relationship in your life. How can I have the authority to say that? It's because it's holy. Now, you and I have a holy relationship as the children of God, but that's not quite the same. This is the first covenant God ever told human beings to enter into. And that has to do with the husband and wife as marriage. So that relationship is really important. So we have that covenant and that aspect of holiness. The second aspect of holiness here in Malachi as we're going through it is that they are a holy people, as I already mentioned. As a holy people, they were to be a nation. The holiness that God gave to Abraham wasn't supposed to last for one generation. In fact, he even says to Abraham, I called you because you will teach this to your children. It was to be generational. A nation wasn't supposed to exist for one generation. It was to be passed on from generation to generation to generation. Israel, ancient Israel, was supposed to be God's representatives to the world from the time of Abraham to the time of the Messiah. They were his representatives to the world. Deuteronomy 7. How important is this to God? Deuteronomy 7. Here this is after Israel has come through the first chapter of the Bible. It's a very important chapter. It's a very important chapter. How important is this to God? Deuteronomy 7. Here this is after Israel has come through the Red Sea. This is when they're out in the desert, but it's before they go into the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 7, verse 1.

So we have to understand how important this marriage relationship is, but we're also going to look at how it fits into the Abrahamic Covenant. You must have a nation. That nation, you start with a family. The family grows into tribes. The tribes grow into a nation, and that nation has a purpose. All the prophecies that God talked about what he was going to do with Israel, and then the Messiah was going to come, and then he's going to come a second time. And the foundation of society in that nation was marriage. It's what held everything together. It was the glue that taught the children, that created a society. See, you and I have never lived in that kind of society. We live in a world that around us, we're in the midst of a world that is not a centralized society centered around God. In ancient Israel, they were to create a society that centered around God, and that was to be passed on from generation to generation to generation. It was part of the Covenant. It was part of the agreement. It was a part of their purpose, and they failed at it over and over and over again. And Dixon were going through the book of judges, and he gets sort of tedious after a while. As we get to the beginning of every story, the judge dies. It's usually after the second or third generation, and then the people turn against God, and the nation collapses again until they repent and God brings another judge. That's the story of the judges. It's the story of kings. It's the story of Israel. It was supposed to go on from generation to generation. That was the agreement. That was the Covenant. And at the heart of that was marriage. Deuteronomy 7, verse 1, When the Lord your God brings you to the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Parazites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, seven nations greater than mightier than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor shall you show them and show mercy to them. Wow! Why would God say this? Why would He say, these seven nations, when you go into... Now, He didn't tell them the other nations. In fact, He got upset with them at times because they waged war against people He didn't say to wage war against. But why would God say this? Why would God be so cruel to tell them, you go in and you drive these people out and if they try to stay, you kill them?

There's a reason why. It has to do with, I have chosen you to be my representatives, and you cannot allow the evil in the world to take you. You must remain holy. Look at the next verse.

Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them. You shall destroy their altars and break down their sacred pillars and cut down their wooden images and burn their carved images with fire. And why? 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 says, I need you to be holy and you have to stay holy. And he said, these people are so evil, you have to either drive them out or kill them. You cannot live with them. Because why? Because they will destroy your marriages. And once they destroy your marriages, your children, your grandchildren will turn against me. They will be polluted by that. Well, that's a strong statement. But you see, the marriage covenant is part of the Abrahamic covenant and even part of the Sinai covenant. That they were to have holy marriages so that God could fulfill in them what He chose them to do.

It's interesting if you go through Leviticus 20 or Deuteronomy 22, there are just lists of sexual issues that are condemned in the Scripture. And some of them, you think, wow, by today's standards, they seem harsh. I mean, adultery was a capital offense. Stealing wasn't a capital offense. There are lots of things in the Bible that are not capital offenses. Actually, there are only a handful of crimes in the Bible that are capital offenses. First-degree murder, second-degree murder, or manslaughter was not a capital offense. Kidnapping was a capital offense.

Bringing in and setting up idols, which is what? It just has to do with holiness. It was a capital offense. Adultery, homosexuality, and incest are all capital offenses because they all destroy marriage. This has to do with holiness.

This has to do with holiness.

That the marriage covenant is ordained by God and He is in it. He is in the covenant. And to profane the covenant is to profane Him. Remember, these ancient laws, when you go through all the sexual laws that were given to ancient Israel, they are so detailed, there are many of them. Probably some of you have never even read.

There are laws that don't seem to make sense to us at all.

This seems offensive in our society, but it made perfect sense in their society. You have to see it from their viewpoint because it makes perfect sense. If a woman cannot have a child, her husband cannot divorce her. But he can get a second wife that can have a child.

It had to do with the fact that economically, the entire society was designed not to have poverty.

That meant land. With land, there was no poverty. Land had to be passed on through families. And if a woman could not have a child, the family would lose its land. The next generations would lose their land. So you could have a second wife. You had to love your first wife. And you had to treat the second wife really nice. But maybe you married her so that you could have a baby. Now we do it through artificial insemination. Understand, those people would think we're so barbaric, they couldn't even imagine that. That is so unnatural and unholy. To their mind, they couldn't even imagine it. Artificial insemination. We think it's nice and scientific. We think they're the barbarians for doing what God said they could do. It's the opposite. They would see us as the barbarians. A child must go through the natural, you know, inner mother's womb and go through this natural process. Understand, these laws are there for a reason. And so this holy nation can produce holy generations so that the Messiah will come when he's supposed to. God did a lot of work to make sure Mary was where she was when she had to be. There's thousands of years of work God had to do to make sure Mary is right where she's supposed to be, right where she's supposed to be, right at the right time so Jesus can be born.

That wasn't by accident. That has to do with the holiness of Israel and the holiness of marriage and the holiness of their nation.

And God working through those very unholy people at times to fulfill what he wanted to do. Marriage and family was the absolute foundational rock of what Israelite society was built on. Absolute foundational rock to destroy the family, destroy the society. And God said, so if you commit adultery, you can receive the death penalty. Now that doesn't mean they always gave the death penalty. The offended person could forgive. The offended person did not have to bring them to trial. I wonder how many people were actually stoned for adultery. There may not have been that many. That's a pretty hefty penalty to pay. So you could forgive, and then the person didn't face it.

Understand that the sexual relationship between husband and wife is the way the next generation is produced, but it's also an emotional bond between them. And there are lots of things in the Bible that talk about the emotional bond between husband and wife, and this is part of it. So let's go back to Malachi now. You see we have these two covenants. He just mentioned one, which is the covenant of the fathers.

Now let's go to verse 13. And this is the second thing you do. The first thing is that they're profaning the holy institution by cheating against each other. Cheating with each other. This is the second thing you do. You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying, so He does not regard the offering anymore to receive it with good will from your hands. He says, you come to the temple, you bring your offerings, you come in on the Sabbath, you come in on the holy days, and you pray. And He says, God doesn't answer your prayers anymore. And you're crying. Why is God not answering my prayers? Verse 14, do you say, for what reason? Why isn't God answering my prayers? Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously, you have cheated. Yet she is your companion and your wife by what? Covenant?

So we have these two covenants He talks about. The marriage covenant here, He's already talked about the Abrahamic covenant. The marriage covenant is holy. It establishes marriage, relationship between husband and wife as the primary relationship between human beings. Absolutely, we're at the ground zero here. This is primary relationship between human beings. It must come above all other human beings.

That relationship must come first. That even means more than children. That relationship must come first. Because it is the covenant by which children are produced. He goes on, he says, Now verse 15 is a little difficult to translate, and I'm not going to go into all those troubles, because I just want to get to the main point here that's part of our sermon. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore, take heed to your Spirit, and let not deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. Do not cheat against your wife. He wants godly offspring. That offspring would be generation after generation within the covenant. It would also eventually reach to what? The Messiah.

Marriage in ancient Israel had prophetic events or prophetic importance that hasn't even been totally fulfilled yet. That's how important marriage was within that society. Now we know it's for all humanity, because it was made before there was an Israel. You know, when the marriage covenant was established in Genesis, there was no Israel. It didn't exist yet. So it existed before Israel. And then in Israel, it became the foundation of how society functioned and how God worked within society. Now let's go on to verse 16.

For the Lord God of Israel says that He hates divorce. So He's dealing with treachery here. He's dealing with adultery and just not working in their marriages. But now He adds in divorce. For it covers one's garments with violence, says the Lord of Hosts. Therefore, take heed into your spirit that you do not deal treacherously. You know, I've counted a lot of people over the years that have been through divorce. And they all talk about...they use terms like, I just feel like I've been torn apart inside. I feel as though I have been ripped. It's violent.

Psychologically, divorce is violent. Even to people whose divorces are proper in accordance with the law of God's, because there are some instances where divorce is okay, it is violence what they go through when divorce happens. It's incredibly painful.

And God says it's violence.

Because we weren't designed to divorce. We weren't designed to know it.

So it's painful when it happens. Now this doesn't mean, by the way, that every marriage must produce children to be holy. That's not the point. There are people in the Bible whose marriages did not produce children. What it means, though, is within marriage, the only sexual relationship can be between the husband and the wife. Nothing else can intervene with that or come between them. So we see that the Fifth Commandment about parents, the Seventh Commandment about adultery, actually combined to create an incredible protection around this institution of holy marriage. Now, how does this deal with the Church? We've looked at ancient Israel. How does adultery apply now to the Church? First of all, understand something. The covenant God made with Abraham still exists. But not only does it deal with physical Israel, it deals with spiritual Israel, which is the Church. Now, you know what that means. You and I still are under the covenant of the fathers, if we are spiritual Israel. Spiritual Israel, the Church, we're not here because we're physical Israelites. We're here because we're spiritual Israelites, people from all different backgrounds and ethnic groups, brought together to become spiritual Israelites.

So if that's true, then we're still under the Abrahamic covenant, and the covenant of the fathers still applies to us. So if we deal treacherously with each other before our one father, that's a remarkable statement, by the way, of feminine equality before God. What did Malachi say? Do we not have one father? And what is he talking about? Male-female relationship.

That had to be a shock to a lot of...in a very male-dominated society. And I'm not against male leadership, by the way. We're told to do that. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about equality before God as father, and he said, how could you deal with your wife this way? Don't you know you have one father?

The same God? Well, the church...we're still under the Abrahamic covenant. The church is called to be a holy nation under the new covenant. When we deal treacherously with each other in marriage, we not only break the marriage covenant and break the covenant with Abraham, we break the new covenant as the church of God.

Now, you see why God says this is real important? Because the church is called to be God's representatives in the evil world. We don't have the luxury of trying to live in a community isolated from the world like they did.

Now, we live in the world, interacting with the world. Let's look at Matthew 5 real quick, what Jesus said. Then I'm going to go to a passage written by Paul. Matthew 5, so we can look at what he says directly to the church. We know this. It's about adultery.

See, marriage and family is still the foundation of society. It is the foundation of the church. That doesn't mean everybody in the church is going to be married to a fellow, you know, Christian. It doesn't mean everybody in the church is going to be married. In Israel, not everybody was married. In the New Testament church, you see, not everybody was married. And sometimes people were married to people who didn't come in with them. So they were actually married to people who were pagans. And they had to deal with those difficulties. But it means that still, in our community, marriages are the stability of a society. It's what makes us a stable society. Look at all those little children that came up here today.

We, as a community, have a responsibility of those children, and those parents have a God-ordained holy responsibility to those children. And that marriage supplies the basis for it.

Matthew 5, 27, Jesus says, 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 to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Oh, we all know that. Understand what he's saying. He says, you know, marriage is a whole lot more than just, okay, I don't commit the physical act of adultery. Now, we're just talking about adultery today. I keep wanting to branch out and other things, but we have to stay focused. We're going to talk about adultery. What he says here is, you have to understand this is more than just the physical act. What happens inside our head matters too, because it breaks down the emotional bond between husband and wife.

This is why pornography is a sin. Now, I'm not saying pornography will destroy every marriage. I've seen many marriages where someone was involved in pornography move out of that and have happy marriages. I've seen people where actual adultery was taken place and forgiveness took place, the damaged marriage was healed, and they moved on, and God healed it, and they have happy marriages. So I'm not saying that is the absolute destruction of marriage, but I've also seen situations, and I'm sure Mr. Kellers can talk to you about them too, sad, heart-wrenching situations where adultery or pornography destroyed a marriage.

And we have to guard against these things. And that's why he even says, then in verse 31, Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Now that's back in the Torah that was part of the code that Moses gave them in terms of how divorce took place. Actually, it was to protect women. You couldn't just divorce your wife. You had to actually bring her case before the elders, make a biblical case, and get a certificate that said she was divorced. You weren't allowed to just throw a woman in the street. So what Moses did was actually to protect women. But I say to you, Jesus says, that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a woman, whose divorce commits adultery. And we do know there's other reasons for adultery. Paul talks about... I mean, for a divorce. Paul talks about some. But the point he's making here is that if you divorce for a reason, that is not biblically acceptable, and you remarry, you are committing adultery. Not once. You're committing adultery as long as you live with that person. Now, that's scary.

Well, I've lived with this person for 30 years. It's a common law. You know, we got married. No, no, no. If you committed a fraudulent divorce as a Christian, you committed a fraudulent divorce. It wasn't really acceptable. You got a divorce based on lying or cheating or getting out of it somehow, and it wasn't by the Scripture, and then you remarry. And you haven't repented of that sin that you are living in sin.

You're living in sin in adultery. This is a scary thing. This is a scary thing. This could be an eternal salvation issue.

How important is this marriage covenant? You know, Jesus doesn't lessen the concept of adultery. He expands it. Now, let's look at something Paul wrote, because Paul was dealing with a mess in the Corinthian church, and he had all kinds of sexual immorality. But Corinth was a—let's go to 1 Corinthians 6.

It was a seaport where people came from all over the Mediterranean, and seaports are famous for sexual immorality. Even at the time of the writing of the Bible, pagans thought Corinth was over the line. It was just an absolutely immoral place.

Now, let's start here in sort of mid-verse 13.

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 up us by His power." Now, that's the thing. He said, okay, read through that statement. That's a very important statement. What he's saying here is, and we're going to see how he ties into the holiness here in a minute, your body is owned by God.

My body is owned by God. Okay, my mind is owned by God. My spirit is owned by God. My heart is owned by God. Then how often do we stop and think, wait, my body is owned by God? That's what it means when God says, you are my holy person.

You are my holy people. We'll go on to verse 15. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? If Christ is building a church, and we're all part of that church, which He calls a bride, how much impurity is allowed within the bride?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make the members of a harlot? He was having some trouble with people going to prostitutes. But remember, they lived in a world where temple prostitution was part of their worship. So if they were coming into the church and they were still hanging on to some of their pagan ideas, they would have gone to temple prostitutes as part of worship. It was an offering to the gods.

That seems so strange to us. I mean, it's beyond our imagination. But in Corinth, it was quite... I mean, the temple of Aphrodite, they estimate, had a thousand prostitutes alone in one temple. In Corinth. So they came to these temples. So here you have these people coming to the church, and they're still giving their offerings to the pagan temple. But it's not like they're going and giving them a sheep or a lamb or paying them a tithe. They're going into the temple prostitute because that was how you gave an offering.

He says, certainly not. Do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? So the two, he says, shall become one flesh. He goes back to the marriage covenant. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. We're back to the idea God owns us. If we are a holy people, we have to accept that God owns every bit of us. And that includes our bodies. Flee sexual immorality. It's not just enough to disapprove of sexual immorality. We have to actively get away from it.

I want you to think about something for a minute. We have God's Holy Spirit, as we're going to read here in a minute.

If adultery was unholy among a group of people, ancient Israel, in which God lived among them, how much more unholy is adultery among a group of people in which God lives in us?

See, we have to understand, we live in a society where romance is the reason for marriage. Now romance is part of marriage. It's good.

But we believe romance and romantic love equals—you know, it is the reason for marriage. And that's not what God says. Romantic love is an advantage that God built into marriage.

He built into marriage. It is not marriage. Understand.

I mean, romantic love could go away.

You know, remember being 15 years old and you knew. You knew this guy. Just to sit beside him and stare at him at math class was all there was to life.

And now, you know, he's some kind of drug dealer, you know.

The feeling wasn't evil, and the feeling was real. Aren't you glad you didn't marry him at 15? Okay. So, romantic—and we're going to talk about romance in just a minute as we finish things up— but romance is part of marriage. It is not equal marriage. Marriage is an institution ordained by God in which a husband and wife are made holy, and that relationship is the center of society. When you get married, you have a responsibility to all society. You have a responsibility to God and to all society. Think about that for a minute. Oh, no, I like her because, I don't know, she just—oh, she's cute. I'm happy when I'm around her. I'm going to marry her. No, no, no, no, it's more than that.

It is a responsibility to God and all society. This is why adultery takes place. If we think romance and marriage are both equal—one equals the other—then what happens when there's no romance in the marriage? You'll simply go find it someplace else.

You'll simply go find it someplace else. So we have to understand why God says this. God says this.

We go on here in verse 19. Verse 18, it says, Paul always takes us back to Christ's sacrifice, and it is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that is the price that was paid to make us holy. That's a very steep price.

And we have to be aware of that price, even in how we use our bodies. Adultery is the breaking of the most important human relationship there is.

So how do you safeguard your marriage against adultery? Now this is a whole other subject, but I just want to briefly mention three things. Write them down so you can think about these things in the context of what we're talking about today. That you have a marriage covenant you have made between you and your husband, your wife, and God. You have a covenant with God in terms of marriage, this part of the Abrahamic covenant, that God is creating His people, and it is also part of the new covenant, that God is creating His people, and which His Holy Spirit is in, and we are in this, and we are holy. One. Work. Now each one of these starts with work, by the way, because there's no way to make a marriage happy without work. It's that simple. There's no way to maintain this as the central... Your husband and wife are not the central relationship. God is the central relationship, but this is the second relationship. There's no way to keep this as your second relationship, unless you work at it. The first thing you have to do is make God the central. You have to make God number one and marriage number two. You have to.

If we say, I understand I'm just too busy, I don't have time for daily prayer, daily Bible study, that you and I have a lifestyle problem, you say, well, no, no, no, it has to do with my job. Nope, you have a lifestyle problem. Well, it has to do with stop, because it doesn't matter what we fill in. If God's number one, he's number one. If he's not number one, he's not number one. If he's number one, then there's nothing else you could put in the sentence. I would make God number one, but, okay, then he's not number one. Well, no, he's number one, but, no, he's not number one. If there's a but in the sentence, he's not number one. If God's number one, then we have to make that number one. That relationship has to be number one. And that's the only way you're going to get, and I'm going to get, the ability to deal with the stresses on our marriages. Our marriages are under constant stress.

We are in a battle for our minds. I mean, billboards, movies, music, pictures, fashions, the way people dress is all what? To keep us sexually attracted.

The whole society is designed to keep us sexually attractive, or attracted, looking at things, thinking about things.

And then the stress of life creates dysfunctional emotional marriages. You know, it's interesting. Do research, and there's lots of research that's been done on why people have affairs. You know, very few people say, I'm tired of my marriage. I'm going to go out to a bar and meet a woman tonight. That's not how it usually happens. It usually happens because there's an emotional dysfunction in the marriage that has gone on for an extended period of time. And the person just slides into it.

You know, it's the woman that's working all the time, and her husband's working all the time, and they're trying to take care of the kids, and they're trying to pay for the house, and the cars broke down, and they just bought this boat, and it's just more and more stuff, and more and more things. And her husband hasn't had a decent conversation in three months, and she goes to lunch, and the guy sits down she works with. She's never noticed him. He's not good-looking. He's just an average guy, a little bit paunchy, you know. But he starts talking to her, and he understands her problem. She finds that she likes looking forward to meeting him at work once in a while for lunch, and they talk about her problems. Then one night she calls him to say, you know, my husband's out again. He's working all night, and I'm alone. This is terrible. And he listens to her. Then they start texting. And then one day she can't wait to get to work. Now because she loves her work, because she wants to see him. And then one day they go on some kind of, you know, overnight business trip, and the two of them are set together. And she says, as she wakes up the next morning, how did I get in his bed? That's how most affairs happen.

We have to keep God number one. And then the second thing we have to do is that we have to work to maintain a friendship with our spouse. Here's what can happen to us, and it's part of our society.

A family unit, husband and wife, and then if there's children, becomes a socioeconomic unit. That's what sociologists call it. And we are. We're socioeconomic units. We interact socially as a couple, and we create an economic base. Money comes in, and we feed kids, and we do stuff with it, right? But you know what? If we're not careful in our society, that's all our marriages become. We work all the time, and we come to church as a couple, and we go to somebody's house as a couple, and then we go back to work, and we are a social, economic, young, and economic unit. That's pretty sterile. That's not a place of a relationship. You could hire somebody to be your social economic unit partner.

Right? You can hire somebody to do that.

We have to maintain a friendship, and it takes work. Here is one of the greatest traps of adultery.

I've heard this story, and you know I have 50 books at home on counseling, marriage counseling, and they all tell the same stories. It's like weird. We all have the same stories. Every minister has the same stories. Here's the greatest trap that traps people into adultery. I don't know what happened. She just became my best friend. That's all she was, was my best friend, and that I didn't mean to have an affair with her. The bottom line is you cannot have a best friend of the opposite sex except your spouse. It doesn't mean you can't have friends of the opposite sex, but your best friend of the opposite sex has to be your spouse, or you're already setting yourself up for a trap. Now, you can have all the friends you wanted the same sex. In fact, my wife said to me numerous times, you know what you need to do, Gary? Get out with a bunch of guys and do your guy stuff. You know, you're just bugging me around the house here. Yeah, I don't know what's in here. You need to get out of here. Go do something. Yeah.

She sees it. She knows it.

But I've never heard her say, you know what you need, Gary? You need to get a nice woman that you can be friends with and go have lunch with her. My wife has never said that.

We have to be friends, best friends. We have to talk with each other. We have to spend time with each other. You know what another thing that comes up with affairs? I just had fun with him. He made me laugh. My husband and I hadn't laughed for years. We hadn't had fun together for years. You know what? What is more important than spending some time with your husband or wife laughing and having fun? Oh, I know there's emergencies. There are things that, you know, you can't go quit your job. But I tell you what, there's things you're doing in your life. There's things that you can drop right now. Drop it. This is a holy relationship ordained by the Almighty God. It is the single most important relationship between human beings there is. It is a covenant you made with God. So go have some fun. It's a covenant you made. And it's part of the Abrahamic covenant. It's part of the new covenant. This is how God makes holy people and a holy nation. He can make holy people by just calling a bunch of single people, but a holy nation takes children. It takes generations. A nation requires society, and a society requires marriage and family, a stable marriage and family. And the third point, by the way, I wrote this statement down because the best way to keep another man or woman out of your marriage is by staying best friends with your spouse. Keep them out.

Number three, work. They all start with work. Work to maintain a romantic relationship in your marriage. It's easy to let romance and passion just sort of die. It takes work.

It takes... Well, that's silly. I used to do that when I was young.

We let it die. We have to work. You know, it's very interesting. In one last scripture, 1 Corinthians 7, I went five minutes over this morning, and I'm going to go five minutes over here. I guess if I was Mr. Kellogg, I'd just say, that's it, and I'd go sit down.

And I probably should, but we're going to go... We're still going to end early, okay? We're still going to end early, but I'm going to go 65 minutes instead of 60. 1 Corinthians 7. Because I know the moment I do this, I'm going to say, well, I know I'm supposed to give a 12 to 15 minute sermon, but I'll go 20 minutes. He went 65. Verse 1, Paul says, Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me, don't you wish you would have told us what they wrote? But we get an idea. It is good for a man not to touch a woman, with all the sexual immorality taking place inside Corinth. They must have wrote to him and said, you know, is it just better we don't get married? And you know what his answer was? Yeah, for some of you it is. One of the hardest things we have to do as ministers is sometimes, boy, we'll sit down with someone, and they should not get married. I mean, they should not get married. And yet, they want to get married. And we have to, you know, we can't forbid people to marry. But we sure can't try to discourage them. Now, most of the time, that's very rare, but everybody has been through that. And so they ask, some of you don't get married. And then he says, 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. And this means all kinds of physical affection, but it also would mean romance. It would mean the special things that are just happened between a husband and wife in marriage.

He says, And likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, 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 and prayer and come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you because you be your lack of self-control. He says, You're going to have to work at this. And, you know, coming from a very immoral society, they had to really work at it. Now, we've come from, in some ways, an immoral society.

But we have to make God... This is a blessing from God, and we have to work to receive the blessing, so that we don't allow our mate to be tempted by Satan.

Satan can get to us in our marriages. He destroys more than just us. Children, grandchildren, the church community, society. He does damage that sends ripples and earthquakes through everything.

This is a holy, holy relationship of absolute dedication to God and to each other. Marriage is a blessing from God. And all married couples go through hard times. That's part of life. That's part of what marriage is. It's struggling with health. It's struggling with sometimes not being able to make decisions. It's struggling with trying to figure out how to even understand each other. It's struggling with money. It's struggling with kids. It's struggling with kids.

That's all part of what this is all about. But if we're not careful, those stresses will destroy our marriages. We'll become a socio-economic unit. A couple that just makes money and goes through life sort of living together. That's all there is to it. Not divorcing, because, well, that's wrong. But not reaping the blessings of this relationship, either. Remember, then, that you have to work to make God the center of your marriage, and work to maintain a friendship with your spouse, and work to maintain a romantic relationship.

You see, the commandment, you shall not commit adultery, isn't because God is trying to restrict us from something. The commandment, you shall not commit adultery, was designed by God to protect this incredible gift of marriage. We'll also arise and take our hymns, and turn to page 188, crown him with the many crowns. Mr. Tucker Davis will close services with prayer. Page 188, crown him with many crowns.

Page 185, crown him with the many crowns. Page 185, crown him with the many crowns.

Page 185, crown him with the many crowns.

Page 185, crown him with the many crowns.