7th Family Protection

Exodus 20:14

Adultery has to be one of the most depressing of sins. When someone commits adultery, it is not just that a man and a women who were not married to each other had sex. If that were all, then it would be less distressing. What makes adultery hurt so much is the pain that you know has been inflicted on the absent partners. Adultery means two marriages are and probably have been in trouble for a while. It means that there has been indifference, maybe anger, lots of arguments, lots of pain and alienation. And whatever pain has been experienced in those marriages, now that the adultery bridge has been crossed, it will only increase. If that were all, it would be sad, but it is far more ugly. Adultery usually means that children, innocent of the affair, are now in danger. Divorce hangs in the air and the psychological sledgehammer is about to come slamming down on their psyches doing irreparable damage.

Adultery is not just two people getting together for an afternoon or evening and finding some momentary pleasure, a momentary thrill of conquest, a momentary ecstasy of finding new love. Adultery is the tip of the iceberg and below the water is found lies, deceit, the destruction of marriage vows, the destruction of families, the destruction of lives. Adultery destroys the ones who commit it, destroys their marriage partners, destroys the children in those marriages, destroys the building block of society.

Welcome to the 7th commandment:
You shall not commit adultery.

As I have mentioned in previous sermons on the ten commandments, each commandment serves as a heading for a whole range of the law of Moses. This commandment covers the area of sexual sin and as I have also mentioned in previous sermons, the particular violation of that area of law that seems most severe is listed. So to commit adultery, of all the sexual sins, was seen as the worst violation.

I have said that these commandments, 6 – 10, are covenantal commandments, given to protect the community to whom God gave his law. God revealed himself to the Israelites and wanted the covenant he made with them to be passed on from generation to generation.

I know this and yet it surprised me as I began to study this commandment that its focus is not sexual ethics but the family. Jesus took this commandment and interpreted it more purely, but when you look at the whole of the Mosaic law, it becomes clear that this commandment, as with the rest of commandments six through ten, were designed to protect the family so the covenant God made with Israel would be preserved.

The 7th commandment was designed to insure that the children in a family were the children of the father. This law was given to a polygamous society where a woman was the property of her husband. If the husband had a sexual relationship with an unmarried woman, he had to marry her or pay a fine to the father of the woman. If the wife had a sexual relationship with another man, she was put to death.

The law may not seem fair to women but this was not a culture in which women had rights. William Barclay wrote about a woman’s place in Jewish society.
Under Jewish law a woman was a thing; she was owned by her husband in the same way as he owned his sheep and his goats; on no account could she leave him, although he could dismiss her at any moment.

In such a culture, a law protecting the purity of the marital bed made no sense. This seventh commandment protected the family. It worked to protect the stability of the family. We will come to other scriptures and issues of marital fidelity, but it is important to remember at the outset, that what is most important to God is the strength of the family.

We are selfish people and expect the world to revolve around us. This is not the case and Christians have been given the gift of discovering that a better life is lived when we live for God and his glory. Part of our service and devotion to God is to see the importance of the family and therefore of marriage. Our marriages need to serve God’s greater concern which is the stability of the family.

In my daughter’s wedding ceremony I said, “The institution of marriage is more important than your happiness in it.” This is why we work out problems we have rather than get divorced. This is why we forgive our spouses rather than get divorced.

This is what the 7th commandment means. Let me tell you what it does not mean.

In our current culture, there is a bias against Christianity because it is viewed as restricting us from enjoying the pleasures of this world. When some read this commandment they see it as just one more item on a long list of pleasurable things we should not do.

But let me make very clear that this is not a commandment against sex. The Bible is not against sex. God created sex and after he had created it he said it was good. Sex is God’s gift to humans. Humans alone, of all creation, have the capacity for great pleasure in sex.

What is the Biblical view of sex?

Our understanding begins in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 1:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, …”
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

God created man and woman and instructed them to Be fruitful and increase in number. How were they to do that? If they wanted more wheat, they had to plant seeds, water them and wait. If they wanted more rabbits they had to put a male and female together and wait and from this observation they figured out what they were supposed to do and how to do it.

When God created man, he chose to have sex be the way they would reproduce and so what we learn from the Bible is that sex is primarily procreational. Sex is how we become fruitful and increase in number.

Sex is primarily procreational but it is secondarily and not unimportantly recreational. Sex is intended by God to be the means by which we have children but it is also a sensual gift we are to enjoy.

The Bible celebrates the recreational aspect of sex. Listen to this from Proverbs 5:
Do you know the saying, “Drink from your own rain barrel, draw water from your own spring-fed well”? It’s true. Otherwise, you may one day come home  and find your barrel empty and your well polluted. Your spring water is for you and you only, not to be passed around among strangers.
Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man! Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose— don’t ever quit taking delight in her body. Never take her love for granted! Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap  thrills with a whore? for dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?

This section from Proverbs encourages men to take delight in the body of their wife. There is much more direct language in the Song of Solomon but we will not read that here this morning. In fact ancient Jews did not allow young men to read this book of the Bible until they had turned 30 years of age.

There are those who point to the church and in particular the Puritans as being opposed to the sensual side of sex and in fact the dictionary defines a puritan as one who regards pleasure or luxury as sinful, but this is very far from the case. It was the Victorian age that covered the legs of pianos and offered to a lady not a chicken breast but “light meat”, not the Puritans.

The Puritans used Proverbs 5:18-19, which I just read, to express the joy and beauty of marital sex. They often spoke of marital sex as one of the great delights and joys among earthly blessings. A favorite Biblical passage quoted by Puritan churchmen was Genesis 26:8 where the king of the Philistines discovers that Rebecca was not the sister of Isaac but his wife.

In the King James, it says he looked down and saw Isaac “sporting with Rebekah his wife.” Other translations say he was dallying with her, caressing her, showing endearment to her, fondling her or playing with her. In a commentary I read the writer noted, “The Hebrew word for ‘sporting’ there does not mean, I assure you, ‘playing checkers’!”

Sex is a gift God has given us for procreation and recreation and he delights in our use of this gift. But notice very well that this gift was not given without restrictions. God did not give this gift of sex and then say, “Use it in any and every way you want.”

God gave the gift of sex and then laid it in the protective wrapping of marriage. He did so because sex is a very dangerous gift.

When I was a teenager, my father gave me a machete, a long knife used to cut small underbrush. This was a large knife and sharp. He did not give it to me as it was, he gave it to me in a leather sheath so I would not cut myself handling it. This is why God gave to us the gift of sex and then laid it in the protective relationship of marriage. He means for us to enjoy this gift but does not want us to be destroyed by it.

When we have sex, a one-flesh relationship is formed. There is more than something physical that takes place. It is this one-flesh relationship, created by having sexual intercourse, that needs to be protected by the commitment of marriage.

This is the Biblical view of sex. Sex is a gift given by God for procreation and for our sensual enjoyment and it is to be used within the protective relationship of marriage between a man and a woman.

This Biblical view of sex has frequently been out of balance over the years of the church. Until the Reformation in the sixteenth century when the Protestant church was born, the church viewed sex, even within marriage, as a necessary evil. Tertullian thought the extinction of the human race was preferable to procreation. Ambrose said that married couples ought to be ashamed of their sexuality. Augustine was willing to admit that intercourse might be lawful but taught that sexual passion was always a sin. Given his intense struggles to control his sexual activities, this is understandable. The Catholic church began to prohibit sex on certain holy days and by the time of Martin Luther and the Reformation, there were 183 days each year where sex was prohibited.

This imbalance in a Biblical view of sex led to the celibacy of priests in the Catholic church, enforcing a celibacy on those who were led to be priests rather than allowing celibacy to be a gift God gives.

The second imbalance is the modern view of sex which views sex as recreational with children an inconvenient consequence. With modern contraceptives and abortion, sex has been set free from any procreational consequences.

In the US, homosexuals are dismissively beginning to call heterosexuals “breeders”. This is the natural step for a culture in which the procreational aspect of sex is being repressed and the recreational aspect of sex is being glorified. And women who have three or more children are also beginning to be called “breeders”. What goes for large families today are an affront to those who celebrate recreational sex.

This brings me back to what I said a couple weeks ago in the sermon on honoring your parents. If you remember, I said that part of our obedience to this commandment was to participate in the process and have lots of children, at least more than one or two.

I caught some flak for this from my own family who felt that it was wrong to put a number out there. But I need to defend myself and say that while I agree I was perhaps wrong to give a number, I think I am right on target in saying that we need to fight against the cultural pressures that are creating a society that is unfriendly towards children. I think I was right to combat our selfish human natures that will use modern technology to restrict the number of children we can have.

I am not advocating unlimited numbers of children. I am not saying we should not make use of modern technology that controls the number of children we can have. I am saying we need to recognize our Biblical imperative to have children and see this as part of our obedience to God.

Children are what make up a family and the family is what is being protected in this commandment. Adultery destroys families and that is why we are commanded not to commit it.

Although the 7th commandment does not deal with marital purity, when Jesus taught, he gave a more pure interpretation of what was meant by this commandment.
Matthew 5
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’  28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’  32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

This along with Jesus’ affirmation of the understanding of marriage in Genesis, the two will become one flesh, makes it clear that marriage is to be confined to one man and one woman who are each faithful to the other. The teaching of Jesus protects marriage which is the foundation of the family. So when Jesus taught on this commandment, like with his other teaching of Old Testament truths, he took us deeper into the truth. To have a strong family, a strong marriage is required and if a strong marriage is desired, mutual fidelity is necessary.

The sexual ethic of the modern world is destroying marriages and destroying families. Adultery leads to divorce which leads to the breakup of families and the creation of the “modern family”. In a modern family, I can have seven siblings: a sister, three half-brothers (two from my father’s first marriage and one from a woman he lived with before he married my mother), and two half-sisters from her marriage before she married my father.

This is not the recipe for a stable family and yet it is increasingly the norm in the West. Research indicates that divorce has a destructive impact on the children involved in divorce which should not be a surprise.

When James Dobson studied self-esteem in children, he discovered two common traits in the families of children with high self-esteem. One was that there was consistent discipline exercised in the home and the second was that they grew up with parents who loved each other and demonstrated that love to their children.

Divorce rips away the protection of loving parents and opens the children to a world that will eat away at their self-confidence.

You shall not commit adultery protects the family by ensuring that the children all have the same father and it protects the family by ensuring marital fidelity.

The Bible warns us not only about sexual adultery but also spiritual adultery. When God spoke through Jeremiah of the spiritual faithlessness of Israel, he accused her of adultery.
Jeremiah 5
“Why should I forgive you?
Your children have forsaken me
and sworn by gods that are not gods.
I supplied all their needs,
yet they committed adultery
and thronged to the houses of prostitutes.
8 They are well-fed, lusty stallions,
each neighing for another man’s wife.
9 Should I not punish them for this?”
declares the LORD.
“Should I not avenge myself
on such a nation as this?

When God wanted Hosea to demonstrate the faithlessness of Judah, he instructed him to marry an adulterous wife.
Hosea 1
When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.”  3 So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Just as a man and his wife are supposed to be faithful to each other, so does God want us to be faithful to him.

In the New Testament, Jesus described himself as the groom and the church as his bride.

As the bride of Christ, we are to be faithful to Jesus. We know he will be faithful to us, are we being faithful to him?

The truth is that we are not faithful to Jesus. We put our trust in the money and power of the world when we are supposed to trust God:
Matthew 6
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

We know we are to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness but we face difficulties and are worried and anxious because of our inability to seek and trust him.

We are tempted to take moral shortcuts and turn our back on Jesus to get what we want. We are faced with sexual temptation and find it too powerful to resist.

We are all adulterers in need of forgiveness. It most certainly is spiritual adultery of which we are guilty. It may also be that we are guilty of viewing pornography or immersing ourselves in romance novels that pull us into an unreal and unhealthy fantasy world.

It may be that we are guilty of pre-marital sex or even extra-marital sex. I know that there are many of us in this congregation who are struggling with sexual sin.

So let me end this sermon with a message of forgiveness. On the bulletin cover you see a scene from the movie The Passion of Christ. In fact, this is for me the most powerful scene in the movie. This is a depiction of the story in John 8 that we read this morning. A woman caught in adultery. In the hypocrisy of adultery, the man she was with is nowhere to be seen. She has been beaten by the men who brought her to Jesus for judgement.

When Jesus confronted her accusers with their own sin, they drifted away, one by one, until it was only this woman and Jesus. And then he reached out his hand to her and she looked up to accept his offer of forgiveness.

Jesus likewise offers to you his hand of forgiveness. If you are guilty of some sexual sin, know that Jesus will forgive you if you come to him in repentance. If you are guilty of spiritual adultery and have been unfaithful to God, know that Jesus stretches out his hand so you can be forgiven and restored.

Jesus forgave the woman and he will forgive you, but hear what Jesus said that came along with his forgiveness.
“Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Don’t make a mockery of Jesus’ offer of forgiveness by giving a cheap confession but not resolving to change your behavior. Accept Jesus’ hand that offers forgiveness as your only hope. Resolve to leave your sin behind and begin anew with Jesus.

Take the positive view of this commandment to heart, You shall be faithful.

If you are married, love your spouse. If you need to forgive your spouse, forgive. If you need to spend more time with your spouse to strengthen your marriage, spend the time. Whatever it takes to strengthen your marriage, do it.

If you are not married, don’t demean yourself by indulging in sex outside of marriage. Resist the temptations, however strong they are.

Whether you are married or not, turn away from pornography and romance novels. Don’t waste your life on what cannot satisfy.

If you are being tempted in some way, talk this afternoon with a friend and ask for help in holding you accountable for your behavior.

A pastor of a large church in Colorado in the US who was also president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was accused this weekend of having a three year homosexual affair with a male escort and for buying methamphetamine from him. He initially denied all charges but has begun to confess some discretions.

This man has been a leader of the church in the US, prominent in the fight for marriage between a man and a woman and now he has been discredited and has pulled down the reputation of the church he has led. His fall is having a huge impact on the church across the US and the world.

Who was holding him accountable? He had such power but did he not have any humility that saw in himself the potential to sin and realize he needed help?

So if you are being tempted in any way, don’t have the arrogance to think you can handle it by yourself. Go to a friend and ask for help. Find someone who will hold you accountable for your behavior. This is important for you, important for those who are your friends and family, important for your church community and important for the church as a whole.

We celebrate the Lord’s Supper this morning. When you come forward, you come to a table that celebrates the death and resurrection of Jesus. If it were not for this, we would have no hope, we would be lost in our sin.

But we are not ones without hope. We are loved by a God who reaches down to us in our sin and pain and distress and lifts us to our feet and a new life.

You may have destroyed a family with your actions. You may be putting your marriage and family in danger with your actions. You may be damaging yourself and your sexual partner from having a healthy marriage in the future.

Leave your life of sin. Come to Jesus. Confess your sin. Receive his forgiveness. Be lifted to your feet and a new life. Come to the table and celebrate the good news that while we are sinners, Christ died for us and so even in our sin we have hope.