The Big Ten - Faithfulness; no Adultery

Exodus 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery.”

Some of you have been here every week of the series on the Ten Commandments, and you know what I’m going to say. You know that it was God who created us, and the same God gave us rules to live by. There are some people who want to say, “It’s my life and nobody can tell me how to live it.” I want you to imagine something. Imagine you are coming home with a brand new TV. You spent all your money on it, and it’s a big one. You bring it home and take it out of the box. There is a book of instructions, but you decide you are going to ignore it. After all, it is your TV and nobody can tell you how to use it. So you carefully place the TV on the floor, screen up, and you call the neighborhood children to come in and play. They begin jumping up and down on the TV. What will happen to the TV?

Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. God created us, and when we choose to ignore the instructions of the one who created us, then we are unable to serve the purpose that God created us for. But following God’s Ten Commandments helps us to stay in right relationship with God and with other people. 

Today’s commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” Simply put, this means any type of sexual intercourse between a married man and anyone other than his wife or a married woman and anyone other than her husband. 

According to Dr. Michael Austin, PhD in Psychology Today, adultery involves breaking a promise. When a couple marries, they promise to forsake all others and to commit to one another until death do us part. Adultery includes breaking that promise. It thus means deception; when we make a promise, truth says that we keep the promise. When we do not, that means we have committed deception.  Adultery also is a problem because it undermines the institution of marriage. 

But adultery is wrong for more than these reasons. Thirty five times, the Bible compares God’s relationship with His people with marriage. What does our relationship with God look like? In Ephesians 5, Paul is giving instructions to husbands and wives. He starts with the command to Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Then down in verse 25 he continues: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Do you see this picture that God presents? Marriage is meant to be a picture of God’s relationship with the church! Husbands, your role is loving your wife as Christ loved the church. What does that mean? Jesus gave his life for the church. So there is no place for staying out all night and spending all the family money on alcohol. There is no place for gender-based violence. And there is no place for adultery.

Now, in Matthew 5:27-30, just like Jesus did with murder, he redefined adultery. There are plenty of Christian people who say, “I would never commit adultery” yet in their hearts, they have already done so. Anyone who looks lustfully has already committed adultery. How can he compare an attitude to an action? I have heard the excuse a thousand times: I didn’t hurt anybody. Who cares what I think about in my free time? It’s not like I’m going to act on what I’m thinking about.

The fact is, both adultery and lust are sins against God. They are both ways of finding satisfaction in something other than God, and this is idolatry. We already spent an entire sermon on the subject of idolatry, which is putting anything in the place that can only be occupied by God. Now, as for adultery, and even more with lust, we live in a culture that is becoming more and more sexually obsessed, especially with the internet available to anyone who can buy a bundle and with garbage being broadcast every day by Bollywood and Nollywood. With that in mind, who can keep to this holy standard? And what are Christians allowed to do? 

Those are completely the wrong questions. 

Jesus takes the focus off the “outward” and visible actions and again looks at the heart. He is more concerned with the “inward” — our motives and attitudes. If we simply look at the rule itself, we can fool ourselves and others by saying “well, I never technically broke the commandment” when the reality is, we were just as guilty. The point of this is not just to avoid adultery. The point is to discover and follow what is really the will of God for his people. 

So Jesus says, “Do whatever it takes to root out everything, every hidden propensity to sin.” He uses extreme examples — cut off your right hand. Gouge out your right eye. But the truth is, many people fail to follow Jesus with their whole hearts because they are holding on to something that causes them to sin. I have seen people who are stuck in the trap of adultery; they live double lives and their sin causes them to be sinful in many, many other areas. But rather than stop, they allow it to drag them to Hell.

There are some whose phones are causing them to stumble — you have sinful images or sinful conversations at your fingertips, in your pocket or purse, all the time. But you justify it by saying “I need my phone for important calls.” If your phone is causing you to sin, it’s time to destroy the phone. It would be better to live without a phone than to end up in Hell.

You love the story line of your Bollywood shows, so you just can’t turn off the TV. It’s time to get rid of the TV altogether. Would you rather waste your time on a show you like and end up in Hell? You won’t let go of traditions that at heart are idolatry. Which is more important, a tradition, or God himself?

The key is not just to get rid of the distractions, the idolatry, the adultery. Just because a husband stops cheating on his wife does not mean their relationship is mended. Just because a wife quits stepping out on her husband doesn’t rebuild the trust that was lost. Likewise, getting rid of what distracts us is only the first step in rebuilding a trusting, loving, faithful relationship. We must seek God with our whole hearts. The opposite of adultery is faithfulness. Which is a Fruit of the Spirit. Meaning it only comes from the Holy Spirit. We cannot expect to be faithful — not to our spouse, nor to God, without a gift from the Holy Spirit, coming from constant interaction, listening, following Him.