Summary 

The seventh commandment reveals God's beautiful design for sexuality within marriage while addressing how sin has distorted this gift. God created sex for three purposes: procreation, pleasure, and as a picture of divine love between Christ and the church. However, sin has broken this design through adultery, pornography, emotional affairs, and lustful thoughts. Jesus expanded the definition of adultery beyond physical acts to include lustful intentions of the heart. Our response should be twofold: listen vigilantly to God's word about sexual purity and receive His abundant love and forgiveness. The gospel offers hope for all sexual brokenness, as Christ pursues and redeems those who have fallen short of God's design.

Transcript

Father in heaven, we do pray. Now, the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts, the things that we contemplate and think on, sit with this morning would be pleasing in your sight, Lord. I pray that you'd bring grace where we need grace and conviction where we need conviction.
That you would cause us, Lord, to indeed walk in your ways to find that the law of the Lord is beautiful and more to be desired than gold, that it's more to be desired than honey and honey from the comb, that following you is the way of life. That in you is the way, the truth and the life, because that is who you are. So I pray, Lord, this morning that you would do that in us. In Jesus name, Amen.
All right. I want to suggest to you something that I have said before. I think now I've said this, at least in individual conversation. That is this, that the devil has no raw material to work with. God creates out of nothing, ex nihilo, as theologians like to say.
But the world, the flesh and the devil, don't they twist and they distort what is given by God. God's good creation. And the best things that God gives are also often, also often the things that are most twisted.
About a month ago, I heard that possibly the best word to describe our current world is the word libertine. Libertine, obviously it's related to the word liberty, right? It actually comes from the Latin word libertinus, which was the Roman slave who had been freed. And so there's a good sense in which it's something good. Liberty is actually freedom is something to be prized in a lot of way.
But by 1500 or so we know, actually, we know this in part because of writings of John Calvin, really the great theologian in the Reformed tradition in Geneva, that the word was already being used, libertine, to refer to somebody who didn't want to do what somebody else told them. No authority. Don't tell me what to do. The individual as the arbiter of what is right, and most of all, what is right is what gives that individual pleasure in this world. Libertine.
So don't tell me what to do with my body. Don't tell me what to do with my guns. Don't tell me what to do.
Of course, the praise of the libertine that marks our time in part why a series on the Ten Commandments can feel so sticky and challenging. Unlike the permissive gods of our day, namely the gods of self actualization and self expression and self fulfillment and self self and the permissive gods of antiquity which were numerous. The God of the Bible, the one who gives the commandments at Mount Sinai, the one who comes living the commandments in the Incarnation, the one who gives the commandments of the second Pentecost. There, in Acts chapter 2, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is a rather intrusive God.
We prize kind of ourself as the arbiter of the good life. And he tells us that we must worship him alone. He tells us how we must worship. Don't have other images of gods.
One author says that he's a good micromanager or a bad micromanager, depending upon how you think of micromanagers. He even tells us how we must spend our time. Right? And he. He's the divine idealist.
He expects us to live in the world without violence and vengeance, in this world without anger. Who is this God who keeps telling us, y', all, we are going to get to the 10th Commandment, where the Lord is even instructing us how we ought to desire and think about things.
So take this libertine ideal that we live in in our day and this reality of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit as speaking to us and calling to us and speaking into all these different aspects of our lives, both of that first Pentecost at Sinai and the second one at Jerusalem. And come to the seventh commandment.
And I feel like we have a little bit of a mess on our hands.
One of the great libertine creeds in our day is no one can tell us what to do with our bodies and our sexual desires and our constitutional right, thank you very much, to pursue freedom, to pursue what makes us happy. And here's what our response often is. Can I have a little privacy, God, please. Right.
And what does he say?
No.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. Again, like last week, it's kind of short. It's pretty simple. It's even shorter. Again, in the Hebrew, it's only two words again.
Lo. That's that word again. Tanap ta na. And like last week, in some ways, it's pretty straightforward, right? Last week is pretty straightforward.
Don't murder. Pretty straightforward this time. Don't have sexual relationships with anyone who's not your husband or wife. Don't commit adultery. But guess what?
Like last week, there's a lot here. A lot here. This morning I want to. And I'm going to say this. There's always so much that I don't say.
There's a lot this morning I'm not going to say. And there's still, it's still longer than I normally have it. But this morning, I want to talk to you first about how the Bible sees sex as something beautiful and then as something broken, and then as something that truly God does also love and redeem. Okay? Because it's true that only God creates the world.
The flesh, the devil. The world can only distort what God makes. Okay? So first, the beauty of sex. The Bible begins with the goodness of creation.
You all know this. If you read your Bible, if you open to the first chapter, there are a few things that are repeated, and God said is repeated. But the main thing that you will hear is, he saw that it was good. Good is the refrain. Good is said over the creation days.
That is, until a little glimpse into the sixth day when Adam is all alone. And it is wild, y'. All. It is actually wild that there is something that is said to be not good before the entrance of sin into the world, right before the rejection of God. God himself looks upon it after saying, good, good, good, good.
And he says, not good. This is what he says. It's not good that man should be alone. Make a helper fit for him. Now, what God does is he does not make an animal.
We have them already paraded by him. He does not make another man.
No, he creates woman. They're similar, but they're also very different. When God brings the woman to the man, this is what the man says at last.
No, this is what he says, okay, this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Which is to say we're similar. That's what he begins with. You're me. We go together.
Bone of my bone, flesh in my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. But that the second thing is, we're similar and we're different.
She shall be called Isha because she's taken out of Ish. Similar, but not quite the same thing. Work together. Complementing, working similarly differently. Think back at the end of chapter one, when on the sixth day.
By the way, I think the best understanding of chapter two in Genesis is that it's a snapshot into the sixth day of creation. Okay, but on the sixth day of creation, anyway, on that sixth day, after God made humankind male and female in his image, he told them what? Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. Right at the end of Genesis chapter two, after Adam said this at last. It says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.
By the way, it's the man leaving the father and mother. It's interesting, I think, different cultural tradition, but hold fast, cling to be bound up in together with it says, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Many people properly understand that as a sexual thing. Much more than that, though, is the binding up together physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, the whole deal. They are to hold fast to one another in heart and in body, faithfully, committedly.
What I'm saying and what Jesus says in Matthew 19, which we're going to get to, is that creation is the starting point for understanding. Well, to be honest, all of the commandments, but very specifically the seventh commandment. It is the starting place from which you understand marriage and from which you understand sexual experience. And you must start with the idea that it is God's idea. And because it is God's idea, it is therefore good.
We must start with the goodness of it, the beauty of it, the gift of it.
More than this, actually, within the context of this union of husband and wife, and they're physically holding fast to one another, naked and unashamed, it is actually how God's mission in the world through them goes forward. You cannot have a fruitful and multiply unless you have a husband and a wife procreating. It's how God made the world. It cannot happen outside of that. God designed sex between a committed husband and a committed wife to be the means of his fruitfulness and multiplying happening.
Okay, beauty and good because God made it. He doesn't make bad things beauty and good because procreation was actually part of his mission from the very, very beginning.
Which is to say that God is not a cosmic prude kind of going, what are they doing when they are clinging to one another, when they're bound together? Marriage is the sort of union from which children can be conceived. And sexual intercourse is meant for that.
But it also does not follow that sex in the Bible, as the traditional Roman Catholic physician has taught, is simply a utilitarian thing, meaning it's just for procreation. It's for. It's for just an end, a utilitarian end. One of the things that you find in the Bible is it's also not just for procreation, but it's for pleasure.
Which is why we have an entire book called the Song of Songs. I said the sermon is a little bit long because I'm going to read it. I'm not going to read all of it for you. But it does begin this way. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine.
Draw me after you. Let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers. Let me Skip ahead. Chapter four, verses 10 and 11.
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride. How much better is your love than wine and the fragrance of your oils, than any spice your lips drip. Nectar, my bride. Honey and milk are under your tongue. And for those of you who know the book, I'm going to skip over the parts that will make you redder than you are.
This is breathed out for us. The theological word is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Bible. God's word is certainly never pornographic, but it is unashamedly erotic at times.
And it may embarrass us because often we may be more prudish than the Lord himself.
So sex is beautiful because it's the mean by which God intends his mission to go forth in procreation. It's also beautiful because he has made it pleasurable. But also I want to suggest to you that it's beautiful because he has also designed it to be a picture actually of his love for us, and that the union of husband and wife, particularly in the context of a healthy, clinging and oneness, spiritually, spiritually, mentally, physically, entirely naked, unashamed, is to actually be a sign point, post and a picture for us of God, our life with Him. Our life will be with him when we are fully united to Him. He is the great groom and his church is the bride.
And the new heavens and the new earth are described as the marriage supper of the Lamb, welcoming us into a consummate life with God.
Sex is for fully and permanently committed relationships that are a blend of affection and loyalty and biology and joy and all of that bound up together. A marital oneness.
But that in the Bible is preparing us. That's part of why Paul, in the end of chapter five of Ephesians, says it's a great mystery when he's talking about the husband and wife. But he then says, but I'm talking about Christ and the Church.
So there's a mystery to which it points. CS Lewis says that it is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united in an ecstasy of love and delight, compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. Should say it's nothing compared to the oneness that we will have the consummation of all things with our Lord. But it is a picture of it.
So first we have to start with beauty and design and procreation and pleasure and picture and we have to start with the idea that God is not a prude, and we should not be either.
But if we go to these things, we have to go to the other side of it, right? Because there is a good reason for this command. It's a good reason for this command because for all the beauty that we see, we also see a lot of brokenness.
We have to see that God loves it so much that he builds it into how his mission works in the world.
But we cannot sort of push aside the ways that it is so entirely destructive at the same time.
So I began this morning with this idea that God alone creates, and that when God creates, he creates good. And that all sin, all sin is only always a distortion of the good, the world and the flesh. And the devil can only take and twist and distort. So we have to start with goodness. But here's the reality.
Matthew 19, 3, 9. So the Pharisees come up to him, Jesus, and test, tested him by asking it is, is it lawful divorce to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning, created them male and female, and said, therefore man should leave his father and mother and hold fast his wife, and the two should become one flesh? And this is Jesus. So they are no longer two flesh, but one.
He says, there is a union that takes place in this marital reality of husband and wife, that they are one flesh. And so he says, then what you've often heard in weddings, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
Which is another way of saying, don't commit adultery. Don't be unfaithful in your physical relationships.
They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? Let's argue about the Bible here, right? And he said to them, because of your heart, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it was not so. Here's part of what I'm saying.
Jesus grounds sexual and marital ethics in creation. That's what Jesus does. He says, if you're supposed to have a picture of what God intends for the world in terms of our marital and sexual ethics, you have to go to the beginning, okay? But what's also interesting is he does then go on and say, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery, which he says, sexual immorality can have such a breaking effect in the world that what is intended, which is oneness complete oneness can be broken and broken, allowed to be broken. You can can seek divorce in this context because it can be so utterly destructive.
It can be so breaking.
I read this week of the session minutes from the church of the great Scottish Presbyterian pastor of the 18th century, John Witherspoon.
Session records are like elder board minutes in the Presbyterian tradition. Okay. And what's interesting what I read is that almost all of them are devoted to issues of sex and marriage, 18th century Scotland. I also read that there's a book that was published not too long ago that just analyzes the consistory meetings in Geneva under John Calvin. So think mid 16th century consistory meetings being a similar thing to session records.
Different word for the more or less the same thing. Those are from 1542 to 1906. Those are six and a half decades. There were 1,572 disciplinary cases involving men, 777 involving women who were suspended for marital abuses, marital difficulties and mistreatments sexually.
636 men and 538 women were suspended for fornication, sexual activity outside of marriage. Why am I sharing this with you? Right.
Whether it's 18th century Scotland or 16th century modern day Switzerland, think 16th century France at the time Geneva or 21st century Harrisburg. Our sexual lives can be something that is a gift and something that can break, break families, break marriages, break communities. We know this.
Sexual activity improperly done, which by the way, can be between. Improperly done, can be between a married husband and wife. It's a lot, unfortunately, much more of that than we care to admit can wreak havoc on a family, can wreak havoc in churches, can wreak havoc in society. Societies, of course, can only continue if they reproduce. But that reproduction, we know, is best done in certain settings where there is an actual oneness, where there is a love and a commitment and a binding together of a husband and the wife.
It's not just about reproducing, but reproducing with parents who love and care for and tend to, because they love and care and tend to one another.
Casual sex that does not have the pledged fidelity of marriage. Man is not really loving the woman in that way. There's a using and an abusing, and we know it.
I said last week that when Jesus says that if we harbor anger against our brother or call him fool, that we're told that we break the sixth commandment, thou shalt not murder. Right, Jesus. Then we heard this. He goes on to talk about how if we look at somebody in lust with Lustful intent, we commit adultery. Which is to say that the actual act of intercourse is not the only way to commit adultery.
Right. And this is a principle. It's actually a very, very important principle. So this is an important principle when you come to the Ten Commandments. A rule for the Ten Commandments are that they are typically the most extreme example of every kind of sin that kind of falls under that category, which is that they include all of the lesser things that are that are going on in them.
Right. Let me put it this way. We all know that most adulterous situations do not begin in the bedroom. They begin by finding that that other person connects with your emotions in a way that your spouse somehow doesn't or doesn't care to. And you start to talk to them more and more and you start to confide in them more and more.
And they become a surrogate spouse emot emotionally. And that leads to something else. We know this. They start with noticing, with flirting. They start on computer screens and in chat rooms and in offices.
I just heard recently of a church in our denomination who a number of years ago, the minister had a four year adulterous relationship with one of the elder spouses who was the woman's ministry director four years before anyone found out. We know it's not just that there's so much else that is comprised in that kind of thing.
The Bible can speak of porneia, which includes pornography, of fornication and incest and pedophilia and homosexual practice and bestiality and sexual violence and adultery, because they're all little twists on the idea of creation right there in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 that Jesus points back to in Matthew chapter 19. All of them are subsumed under this command.
My point is that we twist, we distort this good thing that God has given to us for pleasure, for our pleasure and for our good, because that is what we do with our sinful hearts. We take the beauty of what God has given us and we break it. And we all do is what Jesus says. Jesus doesn't let any of us off the hook, not one of us.
And of course, this is actually why so many Christians prior to the Protestant Reformation thought of sex, even within marriage, as a necessary evil.
Why is because there's so many perversions of it, there's so many ways that we've twisted it, distorted it. So Tertullian, the early church father writing in the third century, regarded the extinction of the human race preferable to procreation because it's so broken he said there's no right place for it. We might as well go extinct.
Ambrose, famous church father in Milan in the 4th century, said that married couples ought to be ashamed of their sexuality. Married couples. And Augustine admitted that while intercourse may be lawful, sexual passion is always sinful. Great St. Augustine. And so maybe you know this, but the church actually began to, through time, say that certain holy days couples, married couples, would have to abstain.
And by the time of Martin Luther, that number of days was up to 183, which is a half as silly as all that sounds. We know. We know in our own lives, in our own hearts, in our own eyes and our own minds and sometimes our own actions how it can be that sex in the wrong place, a glancing eye that sits upon the subject of your desire, an addicted screen, an emotional affair. There have been plenty of those who that have been non physical contact that have wrecked havoc on people's lives. We know how utterly destructive every single one of those things can be.
We may laugh off the idea of what some of these early church fathers said, but we know how destructive these things are.
We may want to dismiss this old prudishness, we may want to show them all the song of songs, but we know how hurtful these things are. We know how destructive they can be. So what do we do with it? What do we do with this reality of the beautiful gift that God has given us, that we have twisted and distorted? And it becomes something that is so broken and it touches all of us?
What do we do?
I want to tell you something that seems very simple, but I want you to look to the word of God, and I want you to look to the word of God, written and embodied, okay? And as you look to the word of God, written and embodied, I have two words for you, okay?
And these words are for us who are tempted and who are wayward and who are heartbroken and are filled with shame. But the first one, and this is for all of us, the first word I have for you and for me is listen. Listen to the word written. You who are married, listen to some of the stuff that it calls you to in terms of loving each other, being united in one flesh, being naked and unashamed, emotionally, mentally, physically pressed into all of it, but also for all of us. Let's give our attention to the words of scripture as it calls us to be vigilant.
I mean, listen to some of the words that the Bible uses on this subject. But sexual immorality, this is Ephesians 5, verses 3 and 4. But sexual immorality and all impurity and covetousness must not even be named among you, might not even be named among us. It's kind of intense. It says, as is proper among the saints, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking among you.
So let's listen vigilantly to that. First Corinthians 6. We actually heard this. I want you to hear it again because it says this. Flee.
Flee from sexual morality. Every other sin that a person commits is outside of his body, but the sexually moral person sins against his own body. So the Bible does seem to say there's a dynamic at play in some of this that is so destructive to your own self that you must flee it.
Or again, listen to the Gospel reading today. You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, this is the words of our Lord Jesus himself, upon which the church is built. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And then he goes on.
If your right eye causes you to sin, Does it say close? It says, tear it out.
Tear it out and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members and that your whole body go to hell.
I mean, do you think Jesus wants us to listen to him?
He absolutely does. He is not always talking like that. That's not the normal sort of way that our Lord talks about things. He is saying, listen to me. Do not neglect this command.
Listen and be vigilant. I want to get to the second. Well, let me tell you a little bit of. Let me tell you a quick story. Okay?
So this week I was at the Army War College. I was actually invited, really I felt very honored to be invited to the 71st National Security Seminar. The Army War College has been doing this for 71 years. And they invite about 100 leaders, community leaders from across the country to participate in this seminar all week. And they have 75 nations represented.
They send their best single sort of colonel to this thing. And this is like a program where any army person who's going to be colonel or above has to attend this sort of program at the Army War College. And I was invited to be a part of this this week. And we heard from three four star generals this week. Okay, so like the commanding general over Europe and Africa, the commanding general over the Western Hemisphere.
And then General Ron Clark, who was the commanding. Who is the commanding general over the Pacific. So he's over the army from Alaska to Australia to South Korea and Guam and Hawaii and Japan and all that, Right? And he's a phenomenal speaker. And he told this story, and I tried to look it up.
I took some notes, but I didn't take them detailed enough. So I tried to look it up for you. But he told this story of how on December 7, 1941, right there on Oahu, there were these two watchmen who were watching for these 12 cargo ships, US military cargo ships that were supposed to be coming. And they were supposed to be telling people, oh, yeah, they're on the way. And so there's these two guys and they're up watching out for these two cargo or 12 cargo ships.
And they see and they hear 183 other. Sorry, not ships, airplanes, airplanes. Not 12, but 183 buzz by them and they go, huh, huh. I guess that's the cargo ships. Of course, General Clark says, I don't know how you mistake 12 cargo ships, US military planes for 183 Japanese fighters.
But they weren't vigilant. They weren't listening attentively. If they were, they could hear, let alone see the noise difference.
And we all know the outcome.
So first, I'm just saying, listen to the word of God. Please be vigilant. Don't dismiss this.
There's another word. And so one of the things I said is one of the words is towards the word of God as it's written. The other one I want you to see is the word of God as it's incarnate in Jesus. And that word is receive the words love.
The wonderful, the wonder of the Christian faith, and this is said from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible is that God loves adulterers.
There is no sin that you have committed that is outside of the possibility of God's grace.
I know we can just sit in our sin. We can be, and our world does say you are defined by your sexuality. But often we also define ourselves by our sexual sins. Right? And the Lord says, no, receive my love.
It's not the way of Jesus to be defined by your sexual sin. It's not. He invites you to be defined by his love for you.
When we define ourselves by our sin, we often feel as though we are outside of the possibility of God's grace. And one of the things that the Bible says over and over, and actually there is an entire Old Testament book devoted to it, is that God pursues the adulterer.
So let me leave you with this illustration. I grew up largely in the purity culture of 1990s American evangelicalism. And so I heard an illustration a number of times, and I imagine you did, too. Probably you've heard this illustration before, particularly if you're around my age. So the speaker's talking about being faithful with your bodies and sex and stuff like that.
And he begins, of course, holding up this red rose, and he passes it out. I give it to Will, and he looks at it and he goes down. He goes down and he goes down. And of course, as you're touching it, it's just falling apart, right? Because roses are fragile.
And at the end, of course, he comes back and I go over to Casey and I say, hey, can you have this rose for me? And she gives it to me, and all the petals are off. And one of the things that the speaker would say is, do you want to offer your spouse this kind of thing? We're like high schooler in the 90s. And of course the answer's I don't want to do that.
Because he says, who wants this? Who wants this?
What is the right answer for Christians? Jesus. Somebody said it. Jesus is the right answer.
He is. His grace for you is so expansive. His love is only ever for sinners. And what is sin, but it is spiritual adultery. Jesus love is only ever for adulterers.
And he wants you. And he's the faithful one. He's the constant one. He's the one whose love never ends, who unites you to himself in perfect oneness. He knows you perfectly.
He loves you. Ultimately, that is the reality of Christ's love. He says, I want that because it's the only kind of person. He loves us who are broken. Be loved by God.
Amen. Let's pray. Lord, pray that you guide us in this often, what is a very hard subject. But I pray that we would be those who listened vigilantly and who receive love of our groom. I pray that we would cherish in its proper place your gifts for us and that we would be careful as we distort them so often for our own gain, our own pleasure, our own desires, our own devices.
God, this morning I pray that you'd also speak to us, and speak to us your grace and your love, and lift us up in Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

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