We've been studying through the Ten Commandments, and today we come to number seven in the list. It's found in your Bible in Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. And it says, You shall not commit adultery. Jesus called society of his day an adulterous and sinful generation. I wonder how he would describe ours. It is flooded with the philosophy of permissiveness. Statements like these are used to describe attitudes towards sexual relationships in our day.
Well, as long as it involves two consenting adults, who cares? It's a matter of personal privacy. It's no one else's business. As long as precautions are taken, it's okay. If no one's hurt, why not? Everybody is doing it. It's healthy to live together before making the commitment of marriage. Otherwise, how do you know if it'll work out? Statements like these reveal ideas that come from a twisted morality that can only be described in biblical terms of sin.
The standard of measuring right and wrong is not based upon the most recent Gallup poll, nor is it based upon the lifestyle that is so often presented in television soap operas or on the movie screen. The Bible is God's word, and the Bible presents to us the only standard for right and wrong that we can employ. And it's the only one which will ultimately matter, for it is the one that God will use in the judgment.
There are those, undoubtedly, who will find that God's moral standard of sexual purity is old-fashioned or Victorian. In fact, I believe it's neither old-fashioned or Victorian. It is as relevant today as it ever has been. God's standard of sexual purity is wise and healthy. Furthermore, it is not backward or bashful about sexuality. What God says about it is straightforward, honest, and realistic. The Bible tells us that sexuality is from God. It was God Himself who made us male and female.
Sexuality is His idea. It's His creation. He is the one who provided for the one flesh experience. God gave the gift of the marriage union to provide His creatures with intimacy, pleasure, procreation, and protection. It is the highest form of human love. It is holy and pure. As its creator, God knows what will make the expression of marital love the most fulfilling, wonderful expression that it can be.
Likewise, He knows what will destroy it so that it becomes only a selfish game, a lonely experience, and an empty obligation. That is why God placed in the Ten Commandments this word that says, you shall not commit adultery. To understand why God says this, we need to remind ourselves again that the sexual relationship of marriage is pure, holy, God-given, and wonderful. God also says that any sexual activity outside of marriage pollutes sexuality.
The sexual union is a profound and complex union involving much more than just physical oneness. Therefore God forbids not only adultery, irrespective of any so-called mutual consent, but He also forbids premarital sex. Deuteronomy 22 verses 13-21, 1 Corinthians 6-9, 1 Thessalonians 4, 1-8 all speak to that issue. He forbids incest. Leviticus 18 verses 6-18. Sodomy Leviticus 20 verses 14-16, Romans 1, 1 Timothy 1-10. Prostitution Proverbs 6 verses 24-33, Proverbs 7 verses 6-27.
Rape Deuteronomy 22 verses 25-29. Bestiality Leviticus 18 verses 23. And pornography. Now of course the objection that might be heard is, well listen, those things are fun. It's pleasurable to do those things. Do you know that the Bible absolutely agrees with you? The Bible admits that these things are pleasurable. In Hebrews 11-25 it speaks of the enjoyment of the pleasure of sin. God knows that sin can be pleasurable. But I left out one important word when I quoted from that verse.
God speaks there about the passing, the passing pleasure of sin. The pleasure of sin is only for a moment. A God-given pleasure that is used or gotten in a way that God forbids is sin. The moment of pleasure, which can be brought by an experience like that, brings consequences that can last a lifetime or even an eternity. These pollutants that I have mentioned do not build a person's ego. They do not meet certain needs. They do not liberate a person.
All of these things that we put under the heading of adultery this morning actually destroy. They destroy. That is why God forbids it. In the first place these things destroy one's own soul. In Proverbs 6-27 it says, Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? When a person brings to himself a sinful, pleasurable, momentary experience like adultery, he does so with consequences that will remain with him and, as I say, may last a lifetime and into eternity itself.
God furthermore says in Proverbs that the one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking in sins. He who would destroy himself does it. Do you get what God says there? He who would destroy himself does it. These pollutants, these moral pollutants, destroy us folks from the inside out. But not only do they destroy us as individuals, they destroy society. Historically, these things, as I've suggested, have been outlawed in our society. Why is that?
Is it not because a people in a different generation had more moral sense than perhaps ours and they recognize the breaking of this commandment will undermine the very fabric of society? Today, we live ignoring these laws that are on the books of our states and there are some attempts even to overthrow legislation prohibiting adultery, homosexuality, etc., etc. If that is accomplished, then you may be assured that the moral undermining of our society will be speeded up.
It is interesting that even in atheistic countries where there is no belief in God and no study of the Ten Commandments, there are nonetheless laws against these activities. They are not promoted. They are severely limited. In atheistic countries, the two of us who had the opportunity to be on the other side of the Iron Curtain last summer noticed how much moral fiber there is of a certain sense in those totalitarian systems.
Now they are ultimately immoral because they prohibit personal freedoms, but there is a certain moral character to them nonetheless. When you cross into East Germany, you travel through Poland, you travel through Czechoslovakia, you will not see pornography. There are not shops advertising their sexual wares. There is not prostitution openly promoted in the streets. Why? Because they outlaw it, knowing that it will undermine the society they are trying to build.
That you cross into Austria as we did out of Czechoslovakia and you will immediately be confronted with all kinds of advertisements regarding pornography and sexual sin. Is there any wonder that the Western civilization is crumbling and decaying in Europe as well as in America because we have lost our sense of right and wrong when it comes to this commandment? The breaking of this commandment not only destroys one's own soul, it destroys society, and it destroys God's order in the world.
Romans chapter 1 speaks about that. God has established certain order among mankind. That order is destroyed when this commandment is broken. Therefore God has built in certain consequences of this kind of activity. This is found in certain diseases and mental conditions that come as a result of it. These pollutants destroy. Why does God give this commandment? Does he do it because he is mean? Does God wish to deprive us of pleasure? Not at all. God gives it in compassion for us.
God gives this commandment in love because he knows that it will destroy something precious. He knows and wants us to be free to enjoy his gift to its fullest. Therefore he says to us, you shall not commit adultery. But there is more in God's word to be found regarding this subject than in Exodus chapter 20 and in the law. I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew and the fifth chapter. Here we find a statement regarding this very commandment given by Jesus.
In the Sermon on the Mount, several times Jesus refers to an Old Testament law and then elaborates on it as he does in verse 27 of Matthew 5. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. So what the Bible teaches us is that adultery is also committed mentally through fantasy. Our thoughts can lead us to the breaking of this commandment.
We may never break it physically, but the very lust and the very thought process of the heart of a person can lead him or her to the breaking of it. It is committed mentally through our fantasies. That means that there may be many of us here today who could say that we have never committed adultery in a literal physical sense, but if we allow the Spirit of God to take this verse and shine it into our hearts, it would expose us as guilty.
Indeed I don't think it would be exaggerating to say that there could not be one of us here this morning who knows what these things are all about, who could honestly pick up the stone and be the first to cast it at someone else. And we understand that adultery is a matter that can be committed in the mind as well as with our bodies. Adultery is also committed mentally through fantasy.
But there is another aspect of adultery that I want to mention before we go on and is found in the book of James, the fourth chapter. James speaks here to a worldly and fleshly group. And he says in verse 4 of the fourth chapter, You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? For whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Please understand that by world he is talking about the world system of evil.
He is not talking about becoming friends with people who don't know Christ. We are to befriend them. We are to build bridges into their lives. But he is saying that if we become friends with that system of evil that controls the world and regenerates, that system that is headed up by Satan, if we become friends with that system then we have committed adultery spiritually through friendship with the world system. So you see adultery can be committed physically by the physical act.
It can be committed mentally through fantasy and it can be committed spiritually through friendship with the world. And so when we begin to look at adultery in its broadest context we see that all of us ultimately fall under its shadow. In the Old Testament God again and again and again spoke to his people Israel and called them to return to him from their adultery. He was speaking of the false gods that they worshiped. And in the book of Hosea, Hosea takes to himself a wife of harlotry.
She forsakes him and goes out to become a prostitute. In love he sought her. He waited for her. His arms were stretched out to her until the day that he went and found her and brought her to himself again. What is the picture in that book? Why is it there in the Old Testament? It is a beautiful picture of God's love for his adulterous people. God reaches out his arms even today to his children who are committing adultery spiritually.
To those of us who have loved the world and who are living for the world, God reaches out in love to us and pleads with us to return to himself and to be faithful. I trust that that would be the attitude of every one of our hearts. That we would forsake the adultery that we have been involved in and would come back to our Lord, our husband, and love him alone. Give our loyalty to him. Be faithful to him. How can we help each other in this important matter of morality?
How can we help ourselves to avoid sin? I would like to make four or five specific suggestions. In the first place, we can help by not defrauding another person. It speaks about this in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 6. It warns there that we are not to defraud another person. What in the world does that mean? Biblically speaking, to defraud means to excite in another person, to arouse in another person sexual desires which cannot be righteously satisfied. That's defrauding.
It means to entice another person, to arouse another person so that they have a problem with lust that cannot be righteously satisfied. How is that done? Well it can be done by the way that we dress. There are some women that surely do not understand the male mind by the way that they expose their bodies. It can be done through a touch. Sometimes there is much more communicated in a touch than just flesh upon flesh.
It can be done on a date with a young man or a young woman who begin to caress each other and touch parts of the body that should not be touched by another person. That is defrauding. The Bible warns us against it. It says God is the avenger of all of those who are treated that way. For us to defraud another person is to lead that other person into temptation and share in the guilt of his sin as well as be guilty of ourselves.
How can we help ourselves and another person by not defrauding another person? Secondly, by obeying biblical commands regarding marriage. We can help ourselves and others that way. 1 Corinthians 7 verses 2 through 5 remind us, husbands and wives, of the duty that we have to each other. In marriage our bodies do not belong to ourselves. We are never to use marital love as a weapon against our mate. It is never to be used to manipulate, to get your own way.
God's word absolutely forbids that kind of behavior. It is sad, but I believe that it is nonetheless true that there are some people who have, from one perspective, been driven into adultery by a mate that did not obey the word of God with regard to the marital obligations. We can help one another. We can protect one another by reminding ourselves of what the Bible teaches regarding our marriage duties.
We can help one another and others ourselves by recognizing that marriage brings new priorities. We cannot expect our relationships from before marriage to continue on in the same level after marriage. We have to understand that when that person comes into our lives as wife or husband, those relationships we have had before as wonderful, even as holy as they may have been, now become different. There is a different priority to them.
There are some people who unwisely try to continue on those relationships from before marriage. They cannot understand why the husband or wife becomes jealous. It is very clear why they become jealous. It is a holy jealousy. Those relationships cannot be continued on on the same level. There can still be friendship, but there must be a certain distance now as well because of this new priority, this one that God has brought into my life. How can we help each other and ourselves?
Number four, by being aware of the danger of counseling situations with members of the opposite sex. Now listen, this is not only true of pastors and professional counselors, it is true of every one of us who is here. We have to be careful of getting into a situation where we become a counselor to a person of the opposite sex who is having a problem in marriage.
I have heard time and time again of problems starting innocently where a man at work feels sorry for the secretary who is having problems in her marriage. He asks, well, what can I do? Or would you like to talk to somebody about it? He sits down to become the counselor. When that began innocently, it began with a sincere desire to help before long. There is something more going on there than just the sharing of counseling.
There begins to be not only sympathy, but romantic interest, and the temptation to adultery is very real. I beg of you to be aware of situations like that, and if you are involved in it, you back out of it just as fast as you can. There is another situation that I think that we need to be aware of so that we can help ourselves and others. We can do that by avoiding what I call mind pollution. I'm thinking here of such things as soap operas, for example. What are soap operas all about?
Why are they so popular? What are they selling? Why do you find those so attractive? You know why. They sell sex. A survey was done recently, and I think it's in this month's issue of Life magazine, which talks to teenagers and asks questions of them. One of the things that teenagers admitted was that they like soap operas, and the reason they like to watch soap operas is because of the blatant sexuality. It is possible to get hooked on soap operas, and I may be talking to some today who are.
That is mind pollution, my friends. Another example of this would be literature that we read. Even literature that is assigned by some high school teachers is not fit to be read. I hope you parents know what your teenagers are reading, what they are required to read at school. If you don't know, you should find out.
Some of our kids who go to this church have had to read material that I'm sure if you parents knew what they were reading, you would be absolutely amazed and angry, but you don't know. You haven't taken time to find out. It is mind pollution. It is assigned under the guise of being aware of contemporary literature, but the result is mind and moral corruption. I would include here movies that include gutter language, or suggestive, or even blatant sexual themes.
I cannot understand how a person who is serious about his relationship to Jesus Christ can go to a movie like that or watch it on television because of the mind pollution that is involved. Because you see what we allow into our minds affects our morals. Jesus said as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. You see how we begin to think affects what we do. You say, well pastor, I agree with what you're saying, but it's too late for me. I've already broken this commandment.
Well, I've got bad news for you and some good news. If you have broken this commandment, you shall not commit adultery physically, mentally, or spiritually. There's no way for you to go to heaven apart from the forgiveness and the cleansing that comes in Jesus Christ. That's the good news. On the one side you see God is absolutely holy and there cannot be one sin in his presence. However little we think it is.
It's only in the mind, it's still sin in God's sight, and he cannot receive it into his presence. There is no way for one who has broken the seventh commandment to enter into heaven apart from faith in Jesus Christ so that his soul is cleansed from sin and he's given perfect righteousness by which to appear before God. Jesus said in his word through the apostle John, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
You see my friend, I care not how deeply stained may be the record of your life. And it may be very stained. I talked to a man one time, he was my barber for a short period of time. He told me that he had committed adultery with over 900 women and boasted about it. You may be in that kind of a state. Maybe you've only broken it once. Maybe it's only been in the mind. I want you to know that there is cleansing in Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ is able to take the sponge and cleanse that record book that now contains before God the record of all your deeds. He's able to give you a new life and a new heart and a new mind. However polluted, however stained it be, he is able to make you a new creature in himself. That's the best news you can hear. Will you let him do that for you? You understand that what you see, what you hear, what you read, and the people that you associate with determine what you will become.
How does that grid fit up against where you are today? What are you becoming? Stand back and look at your life for just a moment. What are you becoming a year from now, five years, a lifetime from now? What will you be? Because what you will be, you are right now becoming. I can't help but believe that there are some changes that need to be made in our congregation this morning in the lives of all of us. Definite changes.
There need to be some right choices made, some new habits begun, and all of those depending upon the Holy Spirit to enable us to keep them. God says, you shall not commit adultery. He says that because he desperately loves us and wants us to know the fullness of the pleasures he has given us to enjoy. Will you let Jesus Christ be the Lord of your life today so that you really can know those things? Let's bow together.
I may be talking to someone right now who has never trusted Jesus Christ as Savior. You may be religious. You may have been through rituals. You may belong to a church, even a good church. You may even be a moral person who has never physically at least broken this commandment. But today you stand in need, my friend, of salvation. Will you today pray something like this, Lord Jesus? I acknowledge my sins. I thank you for dying for my sins on the cross. I receive you as my Savior and Lord.
Forgive my sins. Cleanse my life. And make me the kind of person you want me to be. If you prayed that or something like that, God knows your heart. God knows your desire this morning for being clean and forgiven. And oh, how His arms are stretched out to you. If you prayed that prayer, would you lift your hand and then put it down? There's not going to be a come forward kind of invitation today, but I would like to give you this opportunity to acknowledge what you've done in your heart.
By the uplifted hand, will you say today, for the first time I've received Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord, I've prayed that prayer? Is there anyone? But I'm assuming I speak to many of God's children. My brother, my sister, what decisions do you need to make today? What changes, what choices are before you? God help each of us and strengthen us by His indwelling Spirit to do the right thing. Lord thank you for making it possible for us to be whiter than snow.
That though our sins may be a scarlet, they can be forgiven and be like wool. Thank you Lord Jesus for your precious blood that cleanses from the stain of our sin and makes us right before God. Lord, today we live in a society that would be described like that one which you lived, adulterous and sinful. Keep us pure. Make us a holy people who live before the world differently and who can be your channels through whom you will work to bring others to faith in Jesus Christ.
Lord this week, may it be so, may our lives be so pure, not self-righteous, but pure and holy so that others can see Jesus through us. And we pray this in His name, Amen.