|
Return to 'Recent Sermons' | |
No adultery Sex. Too much of a good thing?
The Victorians repressed it. We have released it and what a confused result. Even with massive propaganda for condoms and other means of contraception, millions of conceived children are aborted every year. Now it is not good enough that homosexuality is permitted we are being forced to approve it, and any negative statement about it results in a barrage of hate mail, and death threats. The new thought police are listening to make sure do not criticise their sexual ambitions.
Marriage has been abandoned, relegated to something you do once you have a long-term relationship, two children and enough money to indulge in an excess of partying.
But, at least to the tabloid press, the worst problem is that the country is filled with rapists, child abusers and the nightmare is they are living near you! So much for the sexual revolution. We are just as afraid of sex as we were but we talk about, make films about it, use it to advertise everything from food to cars. The media revolution means you see more sex and violence in a week than your great grandparents saw in a lifetime. And we have a succession of diseases to fear. Good bye VD, hello AIDS, hello Chlamydia, what next? - as sin pays its wage – death.
So why do we stick to our ‘out of date’ ideas and consign ourselves to the sidelines of life?
For the simple reason, God’s way is to build strong secure relationships. He wants his people to be mentally healthy with a clear understanding of the limitations of the pursuit of pleasures of whatever type, sexual in particular.
The contrast cannot be clearer. Our culture says sex is a physical event to be enjoyed for its own sake. It has become masturbation with or without someone else present whether male or female. It makes no claim or demands to relate at all. As long as those present consent, who cares?
God’s way starts with building relationships. And it crowns the most intimate relationship with the sexual pleasure of intercourse. It is the starting point of parent / child relationship. It is centred round caring.
Sex is great but outside of God’s way it is a maverick urge leading to isolation, misery, rape and abuse.
So what is God’s plan about? Not primarily sex but relationship. And until our society gets that sorted it is doomed.
So lets start at the start. Genesis 2:18-25
The sexes were not created just to spawn their own kind and populate the planet. They were created to relate. Adam was not good alone. This is significant. The first not good statement in the Bible is that it is not good to be alone. That is not to say that some solitude is not good but the idea that you can live in isolation is in God’s view “not good”. That has implications for our care of those who live alone. Maybe they shouldn’t have to. Maybe we have been defined by our ‘three-bed semi’ culture and lost the will to work out the extended family in our modern society. But I digress.
So Adam and Eve are created to be parts of the core relationship in human kind .- the three part relationship of God, husband and wife. They are created to relate in every way, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. Sex is simply the physical expression of their relationship. Adam called his wife, Eve or ‘living’. Moses adds by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that this sets a pattern for relationships. The pattern is verse 24. The pattern is a recognised relationship, which we call marriage. And a monogamous one at that.
In Exodus 20:14 the principle “You shall not commit adultery” is one of six about relationships with our fellow men.
12 "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
13 "You shall not murder.
14 "You shall not commit adultery.
15 "You shall not steal.
16 "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.
17 "You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."
And the reason it is in the Ten is because sexual urges are the strongest urges humans have, as part of God’s creation. Like the rest of creation we have powerful desires to pro-create - to have children. It is a necessary mechanism to ensure the survival of each species. The Bible is not Victorian and pretending these urges do not exist, God tackles the issue up-front. Just as Adam and Eve were free to eat of all the trees in the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so we are able to enjoy sex but only in the context of marriage. Sex is the physical pleasure reserved for those who have made a life-long commitment to each other, before God and in the presence of witnesses.
Sin is yielding to the temptation to indulge your sexual urges where they should not be indulged.
So ‘Do not commit adultery’ includes
Adultery,
Incest,
Homosexual intercourse,
Bestiality,
Prostitution,
Rape,
Seduction,
Child abuse,
Pornography.
In each of these the God-given urge to pro-create is diverted or perverted to self-gratification.
I do not intend to go for an in depth discussion about these but I will say that the Bible is not silent on these issues.
Adultery, Exodus 20:14
Incest, Leviticus 18:7-18
Homosexual intercourse, Leviticus 18:22; 1Corinthians 6:9-10
Bestiality, Leviticus 18:23
Prostitution, Leviticus 19:29; Deut 23:17-18
Rape, Deuteronomy 22:23-29
Seduction, Proverbs 7
Child abuse is not specifically mentioned in the Bible as it comes under incest and rape. The reason that it is seen in our culture to be so bad is that it is the last bit of morality we hang on to. Every other practise is the subject of film, comedy and condescending approval if not outright aggressive pressurizing to believe the new morality.
Pornography is the exploitation of sexual desire for entertainment. It reflects the obsession of our society for ever increasingly bizarre and perverted sex because our over indulgence can never be satisfied.
The point of the Big Ten is not to act as a legislative core but to be a guide to personal thinking and behaviour. This is highlighted by Jesus himself, who when commenting on the Big Ten, specifically takes issue with the thought processes rather than just the legal fixes that the religious leaders of the day had invented.
27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do
not commit adultery.' 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a
woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If
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. 30And 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.'[f] 32But
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.
The problem of adultery begins as all sin does in the heart. Matthew 15:18-19
18But the things that come out of the mouth
come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean.' 19For out of
the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false
testimony, slander.
If our heart is set on righteousness, then the temptations are resisted from the start. Our problem is that we entertain temptation. We have it in the corner of our lounge, on the table, on the computer, in the local shop, we have temptation to adultery bombarding us all the time.
In 1 John 2:15-17 we read:
15Do not love the world or anything in the
world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For
everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and
the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.
17The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will
of God lives forever.
Love, craving, lust, boasting – the marks of the backsliding Christian.
So what do you love? I know that the official answer is ‘Jesus’, but are you struggling with the attraction of sex? Is the craving still a craving or have you honestly put that behind you. Beware it can catch up with you as Satan will always be on the attack when and where you are vulnerable.
And then you look about you and the world is full of provocative images of the opposite sex or even the same sex to seduce you. Not just pornography but fashion and advertising are obsessed with exploiting our sexual drive. Ultimately we end up boasting about our sin or temptation. Enjoying our little forays into sexual gratification. Jesus says :
28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The only difference between you and the fast living sex machine is that you are living on fantasies rather than actual sex. But your satisfaction is in the same, sex for personal satisfaction rather than mutual giving in the context of a publically recognised and committed marriage. So you are as much a adulterer as the man who puts his thoughts into action and has an affair.
So how do you look at a member of the opposite sex without committing adultery? First, there is the matter of mental discipline. You cannot expect temptation to not happen and you cannot expect changing mental habits to be easy. Nor can you expect the sex drive to be absent. So you need to spend time talking it out with God -admitting your weakness and discussing the failure points.
Then you need to recognise that proper relations in the kingdom of God is when you build up others rather than gratify yourself. That is where our society goes wrong most of the time. We always want the best for ourselves. We deserve it. You don’t . You deserve hell, but by grace alone through faith you have received forgiveness of sins, the presence of the Holy Spirit and eternal life. You have this salvation because Jesus offered himself to die in your place. His model is sacrificial for others. So stop looking for sexual gratification and start looking to treat each of God’s creation, each human being as someone loved by God and want the best for them.
Thirdly, those who are married have this scripture to guide them:
Proverbs 5: 15-18
15 Drink water from your own cistern,
running water from your own well.
16 Should your springs overflow in the streets,
your streams of water in the public
squares?
17 Let them be yours alone,
never to be shared with strangers.
18 May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your
youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be captivated by her love.
This explains why Jesus moved from adultery of the heart to divorce. In his view, the sin of adultery is a matter of what you are thinking. And if you are thinking adultery you are thinking divorce, your wife is not your sexual pleasure. And those thoughts will lead to adultery and divorce, both of which Jesus hates.
The positive
value of being faithful.
We have spent a large part of this morning on the negative. So I want now to turn to the positive value of faithfulness. Most of what I say applies to all relationships but especially marriage.
First there is the physical benefit.
God created you. Your
complex biological body is designed to live as God intended, not to live as
Satan would have you live. So ‘No Adultery’ means that you are not nearly as
vulnerable to most diseases. But more than that you are likely to be fitter
because you are not absorbed in sensual reaction. Sex is great in marriage and
healthy. I have time for the Victorian notion that sex is in itself sinful. The
Old Testament does have restrictions about sex in marriage but they are to do
with washing, keeping the body healthy and infection free. But lust is draining on the physical.
Adultery opens the door to all communicable diseases, some of which are hard to
get without sexual activity. AIDS, Leprosy, Venereal Diseases, being examples
of this. It is also true that all the
pervasions of sex should carry a health warming. Rape, for example, can cause significant physical damage to the
victim.
Secondly, mental health. In this area , lust and fantasies are the most relevant problems. Developing good strategies to get the mind off of temptation and having healthy things to think about will improve your mental health. Too much of the time we are two personalities. The inner one indulging in lust and the outer one being respectable. And that conflict is no good for your mental health.
Thirdly, the emotional health. Unfaithfulness screws up our emotions. In fact one of the main emotional needs is security that comes from faithfulness. We see it in our need for habits, home, comfort blankets and the like. A secure relationship whether marriage or normal relationships between people are foundation of our emotion health. When, as you take your vows in marriage you vow to stay together for better for worse, for richer for poorer in sickness or in health you secure a fundamental strength for your emotional wellbeing. As sinners we will always strain that security at times when we argue but when we make those vows before God we ask him to act as guardian. When the marriage is under stress, we need to reach out to God as well as each other. He is the healer of relationships; his Holy Spirit can bring reconciliation and forgiveness.
Finally, there is spiritual health. Faithfulness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is what we invest in heaven. It is a quality that comes from God himself. And marriage is the physical demonstration of Jesus’ love of the Church. In Ephesians 5:22-32 page 1176 Paul is speaking about marriage relationship and simply wanders from it to Christ and the church and back again. Let me read a few verses to illustrate that.
28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
And in Revelation there is a thread of this running through the chapters 19-21. 19:9-page 1248; 21:1-12. The final acts of eternity is the marriage of the Lamb to his bride the church. In heaven, Jesus says there is no marriage. And that is because we will be fully occupied, with Him. For now in this human physical body we eat and drink and enjoy sex within marriage but the best of this life is just a foretaste of the divine glory. The best is still to come! Do not give in to the temptation for the short-term self gratification of adultery in any of its forms. Live as God created you with your eyes fixed on Jesus
Return to top