Purity and Faithfulness

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Transcript:

Good evening. We’re going to be in Exodus chapter 20 tonight. Exodus chapter 20, continuing on with our series on the Ten Commandments.

And I have to tell you up front that there are some subjects in Scripture that I’m less comfortable with talking about than others, and it’s not because I’m afraid to tell you what God’s Word says, it’s just because there are some topics that are uncomfortable in general Tonight is one of those topics as we look at the Seventh Commandment where it discusses adultery. We all know what the word adultery means. It did throw me a little bit for a loop when my seven-year-old, he’s eight as of yesterday, but when my seven-year-old asked me what that word meant, because back a couple of months ago in the course of our homeschool study in Bible class, We came to the Ten Commandments and talked about them, and I taught him some memory techniques to remember which was which.

We came to this one, and he said, Daddy, what’s adultery? I’m not ready to answer that question. A lot of questions I’m not ready to answer.

I know Brother Greg’s been in there when we’ve had some really odd prayer requests during Sunday morning prayer time, because you can’t, you know, in our day and age, Even trying to listen to the news, you can’t get away from certain things. And so we have conversations all the time. Daddy, what’s abortion?

Daddy, what’s a transgender? Daddy, what’s. .

. And I think, oh, I hate 2019. But then on the other hand, I’d rather them.

. . I guess I’d rather them ask these questions of me than learn about things off who knows where.

Yeah, and get who knows what kind of ideas. That way I can at least try to steer them and shape them in the right direction. Well, he asked me what adultery was as we were going through the Ten Commandments.

And I had to think for just a second, because how do you explain this to a seven-year-old? And I gave the example of somebody being married, and they decide they want to go date somebody else while they’re still married. And I said, you know, it’s kind of like the idea where we’ve talked about idolatry.

And this is true. This is where I’m going with this. It’s a little bit like the concept of idolatry.

because in idolatry we’re taking all or some of the loyalty that we owe to God alone and we’re giving it away to somebody else, whatever our idol is. Now we may give it to our money, we may give it to our job, we may give it to our family, a lot of times we give it to ourselves, but we take some of that loyalty that we owe to God alone and we give it to somebody else. Well the same thing in adultery, we take a piece of that loyalty or all of it that rightly belongs only to our spouse, and we give it to somebody else.

And yes, there’s the physical aspect of that that we’re all clear on. There’s the emotional aspect of that. But if you boil it down to what adultery really is, whether we’re talking about the emotional, the physical, it all falls under the heading of taking some of that loyalty that belongs only to your spouse and giving it to somebody else.

And so the Bible tells us in Exodus chapter 20, verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. Some of your translations say, thou shalt not commit adultery. It’s the same thing, just a little updated wording.

And just like I told you last week when I talked about murder in the Sixth Commandment, I wish that all of the commandments were long like some of them are. It makes it a lot trickier to memorize them when they’re longer, but it’s nice to have a little bit of explanation right there in the text as to exactly what he means. It certainly would have come in handy in the discussion about thou shalt not kill.

We had to search elsewhere in the scriptures to see what is he talking about, how does it apply to this situation, how does it apply to that situation. And so we talked about several things last week. Capital punishment, warfare, manslaughter.

We talked about all of those things from a biblical perspective. And just because God doesn’t explain it in detail right here in Exodus chapter 20 doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t give us answers to it. It just means we have to look elsewhere.

And part of the reason why this commandment is so short is because it’s something that the Israelites and we should just understand. That is something God doesn’t want us to do. You shall not commit adultery.

And so we get to the biblical understanding of what adultery is, and adultery is the consensual violation of the marriage covenant. It’s the consensual violation of the marriage covenant, because the Bible does talk about people who were found in intimate situations, but they were forced or coerced, and the Bible doesn’t describe that as adultery. When you see the discussions of what adultery is in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament context, and when you see the laws and the punishments that are meted out for that, there’s the presumption that we’re talking about somebody who’s there consensually.

You know, a woman who is attacked, that is not adultery. A woman who’s been forced, who’s been kidnapped, that is not adultery. That is assault.

But in Leviticus 18. 20, in other parts of the Old Testament law, There’s this description of, again, with the assumption that we’re talking about people who were there by choice. It says in Leviticus 18.

20, Moreover, you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife to defile yourself with her. That was part of God’s law. Do not go and break your marriage covenant in that way.

In Deuteronomy 22. 22, it says, If a man is found lying with a woman, married to a husband, then both of them shall die. the man that lay with the woman, and the woman, so you shall put away the evil from Israel.

Now, a lot of the. . .

Yes, that’s the point I was more delicately trying to work my way around to. If you didn’t hear that, Brother Ken said there’d be lots of dead folks around here. Yes, that’s what I was trying to get to.

That would keep us busy for a long time. Now, we need to understand there’s a moral law given in the Old Testament where God says, you know, this is what you’re supposed to do and this is what you’re not supposed to do, and we’re talking about morality because it reflects the character of who God is. And there are things like that that are reaffirmed in the New Testament where Jesus said, don’t do this.

There are also ceremonial laws like the sacrifices that are not in effect any longer because Jesus fulfilled the purpose of those sacrifices. There is no way for us to go out and say, well, Leviticus says to slaughter a bull in this circumstance. For us to do that says, I don’t have faith in the ability of Jesus Christ to have paid for whatever that was, so I’m going to go try to add something to that.

That’s a no-no. There are ceremonial laws. There are also civil laws. And I believe that those were given, I believe we can learn from those, something about the character of God and God’s will, but those civil laws were given specifically to the nation of Israel for the governing of the nation of Israel.

We have to be very careful not to confuse that with what we’re supposed to do today. And Benjamin will ask me at times, why was that part of their laws? And I said, because, number one, God wanted to keep the nation of Israel pure, and number two, God wanted to keep the nation of Israel different.

I know you used to see those bumper stickers that said, keep Austin weird or keep Norman weird. they wanted to be different on purpose God wanted Israel to be different on purpose because they were the vessel that he was using to bring his son into the world and so they had to be kept distinct they also had to be kept pure and in a relationship with him so God said for the nation of Israel there’s this law here that this has to be punished in this way now the New Testament still teaches so I said all that to say don’t read this and think oh I want to vote for the guy It says there right there in black and white, we should be voting for the guy who wants to bring back the death penalty for these things. That is not the New Testament position on it.

But the New Testament position is still that adultery is against God’s will, that it is still something that displeases God, it’s something that dishonors God when it’s practiced especially among God’s people. And we can, even though we are not under that aspect of the Old Testament law anymore, we can still learn from the Old Testament law that this is something God took seriously. Because he said there’s a penalty that has to be paid any time there’s a consensual violation to the marriage covenant.

Why is it such a big deal? Why does God say, well, this particular relationship has to be protected with this law. This particular relationship, if you violate this, I mean, you could violate a business agreement, and you could be punished in some less severe way.

So why is it God said this one has to be so protected? It’s because adultery ignores God’s design for marriage. Marriage is one of the first things that God revealed to us as mankind.

Marriage is the first institution that God set in place. First was the family, then was the state, then was the church. Marriage is foundational to God’s design for all of society.

And we see when there’s a breakdown in the family, there’s a breakdown in the other institutions that God set up as well. But adultery ignores God’s design for marriage. We see this in Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians chapter 5, we’re going to look at several passages. I hate bouncing around from passage to passage, because when people do that, it’s so easy for them to take a verse here and a verse here and pull them together and stitch them together where they don’t belong and take part of it and make the Bible say anything they want to. I don’t want to pull things out of context.

I don’t want to make up my own teachings on the fly. But for such a broad topic, sometimes we’ve got to go to more than one passage to get a full view of what God says about it. So in Ephesians chapter 5, God says, speaking through the Apostle Paul, he says in verse 25, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.

Now that’s a pretty tall order, that men, we’re supposed to love our wives the way Christ loves the church. I don’t think I have that perfect kind of love any day, ever. And yet that’s what I’m supposed to strive for.

That’s supposed to be the goal. It says in verse 26, just as the Lord does the church. For we are all members of his body, for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. Okay, so up to this point, when it’s talking about the wife’s responsibility toward the husband and the husband’s responsibility toward the wife, Paul ties that in with the relationship between Christ and the church, because marriage, when done correctly, is supposed to reflect the love between Christ and the church.

But hold on, here’s where he goes further with the explanation. He says in verse 31, quoting the Old Testament, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. There’s the assumption in marriage that God puts us together with the intent that we stay together, that we’re supposed to go from being two to being one.

The husband shall leave his father and mother. There’s a sort of severing of ties. Now, that doesn’t mean we’re longer part of our other family, that we no longer love them or have anything to do with them.

I mean, y’all saw that my mother was here this morning. She was coming and helping out with the kids on Sundays while Charla and Carly Jo still can’t get out. You know, I love my family.

I’ve never been as much a part of it as I ever was. But when I married Charla, okay, there was a point where the relationship changed because it’s no longer me and my parents making decisions together about things. it’s me and Charla.

And my first priority is this family over here. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I know sometimes we think, especially once we’re on the parent side of that, we think, oh, that doesn’t feel right.

They’re supposed to come to me still. But that’s the way God designed it for us to leave and to cleave and to become one flesh. And there’s the assumption that God intends us to be one flesh and to stay together.

And in Matthew chapter 19, in a passage that we’ve read just recently. Matthew chapter 19, starting in verse 4, He answered, Jesus answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. Again, there’s the assumption that it’s supposed to be a lifelong dedicated bond.

All right? And I’ve heard preachers say before that at the altar, at the marriage altar, people come together and they agree to be one flesh, and then they spend the next several years arguing over which one they’re going to be. I think that’s pretty fitting in far too many circumstances.

Now, God’s design is that we would marry, that we would be absolutely loyal to our spouse, that we would live out that devotion and that we would stay together and continue to be devoted together to one another until we’re separated by death, that man would not separate us, whether it’s somebody else or whether it’s our own selves, that man would not be able to sever that relationship. And I want to pause right there and say that I know many of you have been through divorce. I’m not trying to beat you down over that.

Most of you know, I think, that I have been too. In my case, it was not something I had a choice in. It was not something I wanted.

It was something, as a matter of fact, I fought against for over a year. Because even though one of the things that makes adultery so difficult to talk about is, And as much as I don’t like the word victim, I was the victim of it. And even still tried to leave the door open for reconciliation for nearly a year until I realized that that door was just shut completely.

So please don’t think that I’m trying to put you down if you’ve been through a divorce. I’m telling you, God’s design is that we’re supposed to stay together and be devoted to each other for the rest of our lives. And that’s part of why I fought for a reconciliation, is because I believed that it was one of the most gut-wrenching experiences of my life.

And yet, I knew, okay, it’s just a principle of God’s word, that if there can be forgiveness, and if there can be reconciliation, that’s what God wants. And so I say that it’s not necessarily that every moment I thought that sounded like the most fun option. It’s just my firm conviction that God intends marriage to be a lifelong covenant, and so that’s what I strove for.

So I want to make that clear before we go any further, that I do believe divorce is a very serious issue. I believe divorce is something we should avoid at all costs. But at the same time, I believe God has grace for each of us.

And what I’m telling you tonight is just what I think God’s word says. So the concept here that God designed marriage to be is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman where you love each other and you can trust each other, where you can trust each other implicitly. That’s the idea of a man and a woman coming together and no longer being two but being one.

And adultery ignores that design because adultery says I can betray you maybe without consequences. I can betray that trust without consequences. It’s the idea again going back to how I tried to explain both adultery and idolatry to my son.

You’re taking the loyalty that belongs to somebody else or belongs to your spouse and you’re giving it to somebody else. So adultery is such an issue because it ignores God’s design for marriage. And the reason that’s so important, to see that, we have to go back to the character of who God is.

We have to go and look at who God is in the first place. So much, so much of what God says is right and wrong that the world looks at and says, well, that doesn’t sound like fun, or God is so harsh. If we would understand that all of this is rooted in who God is, it makes all the sense in the world.

Right and wrong are rooted in who God is. It makes all the sense in the world. I’ve told you before that there’s something that I learned about in college that they called the Euthyphro Dilemma.

And the idea was the ancient Greeks discussed the gods, and they said, do the gods love something because it’s good, or is it good because the gods love it? Now, this was presented to me as an argument against Christianity. I had a particularly hostile philosophy professor who said, okay, if you believe right and wrong is based on what God says, he said, does God command it because it’s right, or is it right because God commands it?

And it’s a gotcha question. Because if you say, oh, it’s right because God commands it, then he says, well, if God commanded you to steal and murder, would that be right? Well, no. Okay, then did God command it because it’s right in and of itself?

If you say that, well, then there’s some greater law that even God himself is subject to. And so you’ve either got right and wrong being totally arbitrary and God could change it at any time, or you’ve got a God who is not completely sovereign in the universe, who’s not really God at all. And I’m here to tell you, as a freshman philosophy student, that’s a real brain puzzler.

And I knew, I knew neither of those options was acceptable. I knew that neither of them were true. I just couldn’t figure out how to get it.

I couldn’t figure out what the answer was. And it was years into my pastoring, I finally figured out what the answer is. The answer is not that there’s right and wrong out here in the universe that even God is subject to.

And it’s not that God could change his mind tomorrow and say, okay, something else is a different standard of right and wrong. There is a standard of right and wrong that does not change, that comes from within who God is. It’s right and wrong reflect the nature of God.

Because God is faithful by his nature, God expects faithfulness from us. God said faithfulness in marriage is right, unfaithfulness is wrong. Why?

Because God is faithful. when God says lying is wrong it’s because God is a God of truth it’s rooted in his nature you know what the Bible says God cannot lie that’s another thing I was taught growing up and it’s true in a very simplistic way there’s nothing God can’t do there are some things that God can’t do he can’t sin, he can’t lie there are a few things that he can’t do it’s always consistent with his nature but because God is a God of truth he says truth is right and lying is wrong. It’s not that there’s some other law up there that God’s subject to.

It goes right back to who God is. You look at any of the commands. You look at anything He tells us to do, and it’s a reflection of who He is.

That’s why the Bible says we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It’s not just God’s standard. It’s not just God’s rules that we’ve fallen short of.

We’ve fallen short of who He is by His nature. He by His nature is holy. He by His nature is just. He by his nature is truth and love personified.

And every time we fall short through sin, we’re not just falling short of his standard, we’re falling short of him. All right? So to understand why God cares so much about this, we look back at his nature, and we see that we are called to live lives of faithfulness that reflect his faithfulness.

God expects faithfulness. God says don’t commit adultery because God expects faithfulness because guess what? God is faithful.

And part of the whole idea of marriage, part of the whole idea of marriage is that we would demonstrate to a watching world what God is like and what his relationship is to us. See, God is a faithful God. God is a promise-keeping God.

God is a covenant- keeping God. And when we strive to live up to the marriage covenant, we reflect who God is and his keeping of his covenants. We reflect how God the Father dealt faithfully with Israel, even when they were unfaithful.

We reflect how Jesus deals faithfully with his church, even when we fall short. We reflect who God is. And we see this in Leviticus chapter 11, verses 44 and 45.

He says, for I am the Lord your God. It goes back to who he is. I am the Lord your God.

And as I’ve explained to you before, when we see Lord in all caps in the Old Testament, it’s usually referring to those four Hebrew letters that spell out the personal name of God. It is probably pronounced something like Yahweh, but we don’t know for sure. The pronunciation has been lost through the centuries.

He says, I am the Lord your God. This is who I am. You shall therefore, because of who I am, you shall therefore consecrate yourselves.

Consecrate means to set yourselves apart as holy. Because I am him, because this is who I am, you must set yourselves apart and be holy, and you shall be holy, for I am holy. Why does God call us to live lives of holiness?

Because he wants us to reflect who he is. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And now he’s talking about, he’s not talking about creepy people here.

He’s talking about, I think that’s a reference back to the dietary laws. but he was telling them to set themselves apart and be different, not to defile themselves. He says, For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God.

Well, here again, he’s talking about who he is. I am the faithful God who brought you up out of Egypt. I’m the faithful God who heard the cries and the pleas of slaves in the midst of their slavery in Egypt.

I’m the God who unleashed the plagues on Egypt. I’m the God who split the Red Sea wide open. I’m the God who provided for you in the desert.

I’m the God who loved you enough to do all of these things to bring you out of where you were into where you are now. And because I am that kind of God, because I’m that faithful kind of God, because I’m the kind of God who keeps my promises and does what’s right, you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. You want to know why God tells us to do certain things and not do certain other things?

It’s because it’s a reflection of who He is. God’s standards are a reflection of who He is. and his holiness.

That’s an exciting thought to me. I mean, we say all the time, Christianity is not a list of rules, but it really isn’t. That’s not just something we tell ourselves.

This isn’t just a list that God put out and said, hey, I’d like to spoil their fun today. So what kind of rules can we put in place to make it as rough on them as possible? It has nothing to do with that, especially when we get down to the law of Christ in the New Testament.

Why does God put These restrictions on us. And why does God encourage us to do these things? It’s because it reflects who He is.

And what’s God’s desire for us? What’s God’s plan for us in Christ? It’s that we’d be conformed to the image of His Son.

It’s that we’d be more like Him. And so He tells us, be holy because I’m holy. And so God calls us, even in marriage, especially in marriage, to be faithful.

To be faithful because we’re trying to reflect who He is. Now some of you are sitting there this evening, you’re saying, how does this apply to me? I’m single, or I’m divorced, or I’m widowed.

Well, Jesus, as he did with so many of the commandments, expanded it as well. And this is the passage, the thought we’re going to close on tonight. Jesus clarified this as well, because it’s not just about marriage and the physical act of adultery.

I’m sure the Pharisees would have thought, well, I don’t have a girlfriend on the side, so I’ve never gone out and committed adultery. and Jesus said, oh no, there’s more to it than that. Matthew chapter 5, starting in verse 27, he says, You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery.

And he doesn’t dispute that. He’s not saying, you’ve heard that, but it’s wrong. He doesn’t say that.

He says, but I say to you, he’s clarifying here, because the Pharisees thought they were always okay, and those that were listening to the Pharisees, this was during the Sermon on the Mount, those who had come under the influence of the Pharisees always thought that they were okay, as long as physically and outwardly they were doing the right thing. And you look at the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus brings everything back to the condition of the heart. You’ve heard it said, you’ve heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery.

Verse 26, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in her heart, in his heart. And when you get down to the condition of the heart, it’s a little more difficult to protest innocence. It’s human nature.

If we’re not careful, our eyes and our brains can get away from us. And I don’t think I need to go into any more detail than that. I remember hearing some pastors at some kind of meeting having lunch discussing this passage.

And one of them asked the senior statesman of the group, he had to be in his 80s, When does this ever get any easier? And he said, I’ll let you know. And I’m thinking, you’re like 150 years old.

The thought that you still deal with this creeps me out. But it’s human nature, okay? It’s human nature.

Especially it’s sinful human nature. And Jesus was warning us, okay, just because you haven’t physically gone out and committed adultery, that’s not all there is. God calls us to more than the outward pretense of holiness.

God calls us to actually be holy. God calls us to take control of that thought life, of those thoughts in our brain. God calls us to take captive those eyes and bring them under Christ. Just like with anything else, we talked last week about murder, and we talked about anger in our hearts.

That’s a pretty close parallel. Well, in our human nature, sometimes it’s hard to control that temper. You know, we want to fly into a rage.

I’m pretty even-keeled, but every once in a while, my neighbors do something that I have to just go sit in the other room and breathe before I go outside and say things. And sometimes, especially in this world we live in, all kinds of thoughts fly into your head, whether it’s this commandment, whether it’s being angry with your brother for no reason, whether it’s jealousy and coveting, all sorts of thoughts. How do we control that?

We can’t. But if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit of God dwells within you, and he can. So I just want to leave on that tonight and remind you that it’s not just about faithfulness outwardly.

God calls us to be faithful and to be pure in the inward condition, in our hearts. And the only way we can do that, the only way we can do that is by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. If you’re sitting out there tonight and saying, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit lives in me, I don’t know anything about that.

The Holy Spirit comes to take up residence inside each of us when we trust Christ as our Savior. And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior before tonight, I want to invite you to do so. You and I, none of us can keep these commandments perfectly, especially when we understand what Jesus talked about in the condition of the heart.

when we realize that these commandments deal more with the condition of the heart than what we’re doing outwardly, there’s none of us that can follow them perfectly. And yet God’s standard is perfection. And so we’re left with the realization that we’ve sinned against a holy God and we are separated from Him and that that separation will continue not only through this life but in the life to come and we’ll be separated from Him for eternity in hell.

And yet God loved us enough that even though we could never live up to His standards, He loved us enough that he sent Jesus Christ, who lived up to his standards every day of his life on earth and every day in eternity, because he’s God by his very nature. And he sent Jesus Christ to live that perfect sinless life and to be nailed to the cross in our place, to shed his blood in our place, and to die in our place to pay for our sins in full. For every fit of anger we’ve ever had, for every lustful thought, for anything you’ve done, for anything you’ve said, Jesus Christ died to pay for it.

and tonight, if you’ve never trusted him as your Savior before, that sin can be forgiven, the slate can be wiped clean, and you can stand whole and pure before a holy God. If you’ll simply believe that you’ve sinned against God and need a Savior, and you’ll believe that Jesus Christ died to pay for those sins and rose again to prove it, then you’ll ask God to forgive you. Because of what Jesus Christ did, the Bible says you’ll be forgiven.

You’ll have a relationship with him, and you’ll have eternal life with him in heaven.