Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Why Adultery Is Off Limits Our society obviously does not endorse the Seventh Commandment, and even professing Christians often do not seem to take it seriously. Why does God consider biblical marriage so important? Let’s look at what the Bible says: 1. Jesus on marriage and adultery (Mark 10:1-2) 2. God and Israel and adultery 3. God and us and adultery The Commandment is fairly simple and it is spelled out for us among other places in Exodus 20:14. It is the seventh of the Ten:
I wondered at times in my more honest moments, why adultery has to be such a big deal. Think about the other Commandments: You shall have no other gods besides Me. We talk about the most obvious thing in the world. We have one God and He fills the universe. He is it! So theologically and practically we think one God, that is all. No graven images, of course. That makes such clear sense because how can a God who is not seen be represented by anything that is. We understand about taking His name in vain. It is such a precious and high and exalted name. What business would we have of treating Him that way. The Sabbath is His day and His day for us. We like that; it makes practical sense. It makes theological sense. Even the one about honor your father and your mother, the transitional commandment between our vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship He has placed us in on earth. You shall not murder -- of course not. That is another no-brainer. It seems to me, on the surface, at first blush, suddenly now we are talking about a matter that is a bit different. You shall not commit adultery. Is adultery right up there with all those other lofty issues? Isn’t it more, as we perceive it, kind of a spicy, soap opera issue, the things trash novels are made of -- scandalous and treacherous? Is it that big of an eternal issue? Adultery, in the minds of many, takes its place perhaps in that list of I’ll never smoke, drink, chew, go with girls who do, and certainly never commit adultery either, because it’s just not something you ought to do. And yet, in God’s mind, because of God’s character, this sort of dalliance is huge. It made the list, the top ten and it is a big deal. Far bigger than our culture would have us think. As I ponder the notion of adultery in light of the other commandments we have talked about which are obviously big ticket matters, has God maybe left preaching and gone to meddling in our personal lives? Neither society and sadly, the church seem to take the Seventh Commandment all that seriously. You have heard the statistics -- the violation of the marriage covenant which always involves treachery is statistically as high among the professing Christian community as it is among those who are not. There is something really wrong and clearly God has not trivialized the issue, but we have. Our culture has. Let’s take a second and define a couple terms. Adultery is the word that is used in the Seventh Commandment in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy. I want to define adultery and try to distinguish it from the other big name sexual sin, fornication. Why doesn’t it say, "You shall not fornicate"? Why adultery? What is the issue? Adultery is a violation of a covenant commitment. We call that marriage. A covenant, contract, promise, commitment. It is a violation through physical intimacy. It is a broken contract. Fornication is a completely different word although it does not involve necessarily a completely different act. Fornication is a general term for sexual sin but not under covenant terms. Adultery is a sexual sin that constitutes a violation of a covenant. Fornication is simply sexual sin, regardless of covenant commitment. Premarital physical activity would be fornication. The text does not say, "You shall not commit sexual sin" in a general sense. It is stated elsewhere with regard to fornication. It is against the rules and carries with it its own penalty. Adultery is singled out because adultery is a violation of a covenant that has been struck. Why does God use that term instead of the more general one? It is because the Ten Commandments are more than what God wants. He wants there to be no fornication. He wants there to be no adultery, no murder, no theft, and all these other things. But the reason this is what God wants is because it represents who God is. It is an issue of character and our God, the God of the Bible, is the God of covenant. He is the God of promise, the God of contract, the God of loyal love. He names adultery here specifically as being in violation not only of what He wants, but of who He is, making it considerably more significant. We know from Bible history that the children of Israel were God’s chosen people and that God entered into a unique and special relationship with them, bringing them out of the land of Egypt and into the Promised Land. In bringing them into the Promised Land, He used the nation of Israel as a tool of judgment against the nations who were there, the nations who were already in the land. If you want to read about their heinous sins, the book of Leviticus is full of them. They had to do with sexual deviancy of every sort along with other things that occupied their fancy. They were judged for their sin, fornication leading the way. They were judged for it, but they were not God’s covenant nation. When Israel, on the other hand, began in Biblical terms playing the harlot with foreign nations, that was adultery because God and Israel were in covenant relationship with one another. Do you see the difference? Fornication, sexual sin, is wrong in the eyes of God and will be dealt with by God. That in no sense minimizes that, but adultery is wrong at a different level because it violates the covenant character of the God of heaven. That to Him, clearly, is huge. God’s people need to understand adultery. I think probably the best way to understand God’s perspective on the notion of adultery is first to understand what God means by marriage. The Bible has much to say on that issue. I have chosen to go to the New Testament, to Mark 10. In Mark 10 the adversaries of Jesus are going to try to trap Him with an issue. That issue will give us an open door to address this whole topic of adultery. Rising up, He went to the region of Judea, which was swarming with religious people. Judea. Because of Jerusalem, because of the temple, the more devout tended to be there. So whenever the Bible talks about getting closer to Jerusalem or Judea we know He is probably going to run afoul of people with other religious notions.
Ponder the dynamic here. Here is Jesus, the author of the Bible. When Jesus stands up to teach the Bible, it is like graduate school, like where you want to be. There were other competing schools of thought and if people had a clue what was really going on those teachers would have been left talking to themselves. If you really want to know God’s mind, Jesus of course would teach it. He would teach the Bible accurately. Please understand that in the first century the Pharisees, the scribes, the rabbis, the lawyers, did not have a good handle on the Bible. They had many hundreds of years talking about the Bible. They understood the commentaries of the Bible, the sermons of those who used to preach about the Bible, but the Bible itself was not familiar territory. So they are going to be wrong. Here, of course, is a case where there is no exception. The Pharisees say to Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" They have a trick in mind. The Pharisees, rabbis, and so forth, followed two schools of thought. They had options. Perhaps what they were trying to do with Jesus was get Him to commit to which school was He. There were two schools of rabbinical thought in the first century, the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai. One of them was conservative and the other was liberal, kind of like people today. The school of Hillel was liberal; that is to say, if someone then wanted a divorce from his wife, no problem. They interpreted things more liberally. The school of Shammai was stricter and some would adhere to Shammai and Shammai would have taught them only adultery. Their thoughts came from the Old Testament. Let’s pause for just a second and give ourselves a reminder. We really are not that much different from these people. Oftentimes, what will we do when we are trying to resolve a biblical issue? Some Christians are a little more liberal in theology and others are a little more conservative. We will tend to look for a teacher or an interpretation or some way of telling us what we really want to hear. Is that not human nature? That is what they are doing, but when they come to Jesus with an either/or, look out, He is about to throw them a curve ball they are totally unexpecting. By the way, you could ask this question today in evangelical Christian circles -- Is it lawful to get a divorce? You will find answers across the spectrum. Sad, isn’t it, that we are really not that much different from these forbearers. Jesus gives them an answer, a great answer. It is a trick answer. I’ll say it right up front.
Here is the trick: as soon as He asked the question, their Pharisaic, legally trained minds rolled back in their Scriptures to Deuteronomy 24. Their notion of what Moses taught was there. What is allowed? It is kind of like we will ask sometimes, if I do this is it sin? We want to know how far can we edge toward sin before it is really sin, and that is what they would do. Moses said we can go this far, or we can do this thing, or we can draw the line here because if you went any further than that then you are probably in trouble and maybe need to change to the Hillel school or something. They are going back to "Deuteronomy Moses," back to the first four verses of Deuteronomy 24. This is the reference they have in mind:
Frankly, nobody really knows what that means, but it isn’t good. Probably it has to do with adultery, but it is not known. But what that did is leave a line blank and folks are pretty free to fill it in the way they wish, either to the conservative or to the more liberal side.
If he turns against her and sends her down the road, she can’t go back to the first guy and so on. The idea is not to play musical wives and musical husbands and confuse the issue. They go automatically and naturally to Moses in Deuteronomy and Jesus as much as says to them, you have the wrong book of Moses. We do that too. When He says, "What did Moses say?" their first response is "Deuteronomy Moses." What are the rules? How far can we take it? Jesus is saying, no, not "Deuteronomy Moses," "Genesis Moses." Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, not just the legal part. Jesus then quotes it to them. He says you have that commandment because your heart is hard, nothing to brag about. They are saying how can we get away with this thing, how can we make this happen, how can we get divorced with impunity? You don’t even ask that question unless your heart is hard. Their motives were wrong right out of the block and He has called them on it here. Because of the hardness of your heart, because you are all messed up. Because you already created a problem Moses allowed that. But He said that is not God’s ideal. Let’s not talk about "Deuteronomy Moses," let’s talk about "Genesis Moses." If we do not understand what God has in mind with regard to marriage then we will not understand the whole notion of adultery. Some of this may be obvious, some may not, perhaps, at least not for me. Let’s look at Genesis Moses, because that’s what Jesus does. He says:
Let’s go back to the way God intended it. You want to be God’s people? He is saying, then let’s be God’s people and let’s set our priorities and our agenda according to what God wants, not according to what God might allow because your heart is bad. Big difference. In Genesis 1, God makes everything, and then in verse 26 God says:
And God blessed them. We get more details in the second chapter of Genesis, very interesting, beginning in verse 18 as the focus of Scripture zeros in on "creating in our image."
The Authorized Version says "helpmeet." That means a helper meet, meet meaning adequate or right. "A helper suitable for him" is probably good. That’s the idea.
And then God did not bend over to the other side and scoop up more dirt and make a woman. The Bible says God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from Adam. Then He did that and closed up the flesh in its place (verses 21 and 22). Some interesting observations. We like to think that when we talk about getting married it is God’s design for two people to get married because it’s just not good for the man to be alone. True enough. To greater or lesser degree at certain times of life we experience that, but that’s not all there is, that the man should not be alone. After awhile it just isn’t good any more. The man was not only alone (notice this in verse 18); also in verse 20 that there were no good options for him. Verse 20 says everything was created, everything was named, and yet among all the creation there was nothing, no created being, that corresponded to him. Interesting word. Nothing suitable. So God created for him a woman who corresponded to him, complemented him, and completed him. Their parts matched. They lined up together. They were right together, as created beings. That is how God designed it. The woman’s creation was distinct from that of the rest of the animal world. All of that was built of dust and she was not. Men and woman are created deliberately and designedly in the image of God to match one another. It is quite a concept. Are you with me? No good options. No good source to originate yet another being so Adam and Eve were created from one flesh and designed to be one flesh. The text goes on in that regard.
Then in verses 24 and 25 we get something of an editorial interjection. The story ends and the commentary is inserted. It is this commentary Jesus quotes in Mark 10 and elsewhere when He says:
Because that completes the two of them. That makes them united and it causes them to reflect Who? God! -- Who created them in His image. The image of God and one flesh are related to one another. In Deuteronomy 6, arguably the most well known passage in all of Judaism is the Shema of Israel because the first word of Deuteronomy 6:4 is Shema. It is a verb. It is an imperative. It says listen, don’t miss this.
That’s who He is. And when the God who is One creates male and female in His image, brings them together and they become one flesh, they are reflecting the image of God most accurately in that relationship. God’s image in people is most completely reflected in the covenant relationship of marriage. The LORD is one. We are created in His image. Two become one. Independent family unit, and away we go. That is God’s design. When the Pharisees questioned Jesus on that score or when Christian people get balled up in personal problems and begin to call into question the covenant issue of marriage, this is where to go. Cut through the hardness of hearts stuff and go to the softness of the heart of God and to His perfect plan and start and finish there. This is what God wants. Adultery is a treacherous avenue of ripping this arrangement in shreds. That’s why God is so opposed, specifically, to adultery. It mars what should be the most complete reflection of His image among people. That’s the point of a wedding. I was counseling this lady who was on her way to her third husband and the second one was still in the picture. I asked, "Did you have a wedding?" I used to think that even Christian people can get too caught up in the wedding and not be concerned about the marriage. Now I think we don’t even get the wedding. The wedding is intended to symbolize this formula where a man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife. They make covenant vows to one another before God and this company and seal their covenant commitment. That’s what it is supposed to be, and it isn’t always. It is the promise, the vows, the witnesses, the contract. Marriage is to reflect the character of God. This is my theory: how does marriage do that? In a marriage, the idea is this. I must decrease. He must increase. I put myself aside when I commit to loving and putting another person first. Wife puts herself aside when she commits to submission and respect to her husband. The two of us start looking more like Jesus because we are less like ourselves. That’s where it is supposed to go. I talked to a guy one time when I worked at the mine. He was your quintessential mine-worker guy, big, tough, strong, loud. He said, "I’m on my third marriage. This is what happened to the first one. This is what happened to the second one. I’ve been married to the third one 13 years now. This one better take. If it doesn’t; that’s it. Those darn women want one hundred percent!" From the standpoint of a believer, yes. As we enter into a marriage relationship that has a growing and changing dynamic to it, yes. One hundred percent means more Jesus, less me, and then God is glorified. That’s the whole point. That’s the ideal. There is a lot of confusion if we don’t get the order straight. The order is you leave and you cleave and you become one flesh. It is very fashionable today to become one flesh and then to cleave and then to leave or whatever. That indicates someone has no clue of what a wedding is and even less of a clue of what marriage is. When we do weddings we talk about marriage. It is the foundation of home life and social order and must so remain until the end of time. If we are having problems with the home life and social order, it is undoubtedly because we don’t understand a wedding and we don’t understand a marriage because God’s priorities are not ours. Perhaps because we have been like the Pharisees and just have tried to see how close we can get to the line without actually crossing and we have forgotten that Moses also wrote Genesis. Adultery, then, is considerably more than an exciting dalliance outside of marriage. It is a treacherous betrayal of a covenant, a covenant that God takes seriously and expects us to as well. It is a direct violation of His sacred covenant. It is more than defrauding a partner who hopes you will leave and come with him or come with her. It is more than defrauding. It is more than creating domestic chaos and breaking someone’s heart and ruining children’s perspectives and shattering people’s confidence and ruining someone’s reputation. It is worse than that, because adultery deeply offends the God of covenant love. In His image we are made. His design is one man, one woman, one flesh, one life, to reflect His oneness. It is more than what He wants. It is who He is. And He is wonderful. We are to reflect that. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |