You Shall Not Commit Adultery

Trevor Lee

November 27, 2005

When I was in junior high or high school one of the things we were exposed to was the “True Love Waits” campaign that encouraged us to sign a card pledging that we would not have sex until we were married. A lot of kids signed those cards. And I heard recently that in follow-up studies about sixty percent of the people who pledged to wait for marriage broke their pledge, not a tremendously different number than society at large. All of these teachings focused on not having sex before marriage because God said not to, and I think the message is much the same with adultery, don’t do it because God said not to. I agree that God says not to, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking about the seventh commandment today, but our prohibitions are so detached and unrelational. You could almost get the idea that God just pulled some rules out of a hat and told us to obey. But that is so far from the truth. The reason God has given us instruction on the limits and guidelines of sex is that it is important to him and he knows it has a big impact on us. God gives us commands because he loves us and wants what’s best for us.

When I knew that God had called me to become a pastor I realized that all the pastors I knew used their kids for most of their illustrations, so I thought, I better have some kids. So Michelle and I had Isaiah. Obviously that’s not the reason we had him, but it works out well because he really does illustrate something well today. He started crawling about a month ago, and ever since he did he wants to get into everything he shouldn’t. So as soon as we set him down on the floor he tends to head straight for the nearest electrical cord and tries to put it in his mouth. Of course Michelle and I step in and stop him, especially since he has teeth now and could probably gnaw through it. Part of what’s hard is that all we can do is tell him no. He doesn’t understand why and I think it would be so much better if we were able to say, “Isaiah, electricity is a good thing that helps us a lot, but it can also be very dangerous. If you chew through that cord it will really hurt you.” And just like it would help Isaiah know the dangers of chewing on power cords if he knew the power of electricity, we can’t fully understand the command not to commit adultery unless we understand the power and beauty of sex.

Unless we understand the mysterious beauty of marriage and sex we will never grasp the seriousness of adultery and other sexual sin. And if we’re going to talk about relationships and sex there’s no better place to start than with the first relationship, in Eden.

I think between reading the creation story in Genesis and having it read to me I’ve probably heard it about 100 times over the course of my life. And that may not even be an exaggeration since I’ve been in church for over twenty-five years now. I think four times a year is a pretty conservative estimate. One of the problems with this is that when you hear something that many times you have a tendency to not even think about it anymore. We all know that God created Adam who got lonely and when none of the bears or tigers really wanted to just hang out God made Eve so that the two of them could be friends and not be lonely. That all sounds pretty uninspiring. Compared to that I think it would be more exciting to watch TV.

We’ve heard this story so many times that we are not even impacted by the depth of Adam’s loneliness or God’s creative power or his love in creating another person who would represent the image of God with Adam. I want you to listen to this story of the first man and woman to ever live on the earth and try to hear it as though you had never heard it before. Don’t run ahead to what you know is going to happen. Let yourself enter into the story and experience it. Try to feel what Adam and Eve felt. Try to imagine what it would have been to be them. Read Gen. 2:15-25 with commentary inserted.

Vv 15-20: Even after God says that it is not good for man to be alone, Adam has to go through what had to be a long and arduous process of naming all the animals. And isn’t it interesting that apparently part of the reason for Adam to go through this whole process was for him to realize his complete incompatibility with all of the animals. I’m sure he was taken by their beauty and uniqueness, but none of them were suitable to be his companion and helper. I can imagine that as each animal was brought to Adam he had a glimmer of hope. “Maybe this next one will be a companion for me so I won’t be alone. Maybe the emptiness and loneliness I feel will go away soon.” But each time he was disappointed. He was lonely.

Vv. 21-22: God didn’t have to use Adam’s rib to make Eve. He had already created everything else from nothing and he certainly was not bound to use a part of the man to make the woman. But God did use Adam’s rib. And the fact that he did is the first indication of the unity and relationship and connection that God had planned for Adam and Eve. Their very bodies would be connected by the way they were made. Eve was joined to Adam through her very construction.

V 23: Do you wonder what Adam was thinking before God brought Eve to him. He had just gone through species after species of animal and disappointment after disappointment as each fell short of the ability to know him and partner with him. He may have been thinking, “Okay, here we go with another one. I just want to name this one and get it over with. I can’t handle the hope anymore. I’m bound to be by myself forever.” But what a surprise when Eve arrives. Think back to the first time you saw your wife or husband, or even the first time you saw a girlfriend or boyfriend. It was exciting. There was an attraction. But you had seen other men or women before that. This was the first woman Adam had ever seen, and he knew immediately the depth of connection he had with her. He raises his voice in a romantic song, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” Adam knew that he was deeply connected to this woman in ways that he could not fully explain. We read what Adam said as a theological statement, but I think it was a statement full of relief, joy, passion, excitement, and fulfillment.

V 24: This verse starts by saying “for this reason.” It is because of the deep and mysterious connection between man and woman that a man leaves his father and mother to be united to his wife. Most children spend at least eighteen years in their home. During this time, at least in the best of situations, the children and their parents develop deep and lasting bonds with each other. They have years of shared history, memories, traditions, and building of trust and love. But the bond of marriage is so strong that it binds people together in a way that they were never bound to their families. Because of the deep and intimate bonds of marriage the Bible says that people will leave the deep relationships of their family to be united to their spouse.

“And the two will become one flesh.” Is it possible to be any more intimate or close than that? Just as man and woman were taken from the same flesh, when they come together in marriage and sex they are reunited as one flesh. Obviously the two people do not become physically reconnected at the rib and walk around as one person, but in a mysterious way the man and woman are re-united as one.

V. 25: So here’s something we don’t talk about very often. After God brought Eve to Adam and he expressed his sheer joy for this creation of God, the Bible says that Adam and Eve stood together, completely naked, and they felt no shame. I’ve always heard that the point of this part of the story is that because no one had sinned they didn’t need clothes. I’ll grant that it is true that the lack of sin in creation at that point made it easier for Adam and Eve to be naked together, but I think that in the context this kind of misses the point. In the story Adam has just celebrated the unity he has with Eve as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and the author has just stated that a man and woman will leave their families to come together as one flesh. This is the next verse. Adam and Eve are basking in a perfect relationship. There is no fear, guilt, doubt, shame, or insecurity. They stand before each other in the most vulnerable of positions possible and they love it. It is perfect unity.

I hope that you are starting to get a sense of the deep and almost inexplicable bond that God created to exist between a man and a woman. A bond that would bring them together as one flesh and allow them to stand naked physically and emotionally before each other without shame. The Bible goes on to further describe this beautiful and mysterious union. Ephesians 5:31-32 quotes Genesis 2 and then applies this teaching to the relationship between Christ and his Church. In a mysterious way marriage and sex represent the union of Christ and the Church. I don’t know how much more holy marriage and sex can be than to represent the relationship of Christ and the Church. This is a beautiful, holy, creative, unbelievable mystery.

But Satan loves to take what God has created to be beautiful and good and make it ugly and dirty and evil. In the book Sacred Sex, it says, “There seems to be a universal principle at work in the world that the things that have the greatest potential for good if misused, also possess the greatest potential for evil.” And humanity has proved this to be true in the area of sexuality. We have made perversion an art form.

Whether we like it or not there are many things we have learned from our culture when it comes to sex. First, culture tells us that sex is purely physical. You can have sex outside the bonds of marriage with whomever you want because it’s just a physical activity. The message is communicated that it’s really no different that climbing a mountain or playing golf. “It’s just sex,” is a phrase not uncommon in our society.

Our culture also grossly objectifies people as objects to be used for personal pleasure. This is especially true in the portrayal of women on TV, in movies and magazines, even in video games. One evidence of this is the pornography industry which takes in an estimated $2 billion a year. On the internet or the TV there are not people with feelings and insecurities and personality. There are only images meant to give you want you want without any investment. You don’t have a relationship with an image, but it doesn’t matter since we are only after personal pleasure anyway.

Another cultural message is that sexual fidelity is not prized, in fact it is boring. Most TV shows about married couples make fun of the fact that they never have sex and even if they do it is more of a chore than anything else. Before they got married it was great, but the worries and issues of kids, bills, and monotony have killed what they had. In fact, if you want to be fulfilled sexually, then it is best to avoid marriage altogether.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis was once quoted as saying, “I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives.” And even beside her personal experience it would seem that she was not crazy to say that. Studies have quite a range of statistics for how many married people will have an adulterous affair at some point in their lives, but an average of the studies would suggest a number somewhere around fifty percent. And as you may have guessed that number is not any different within the church than it is in the rest of the world. And the messages we get from culture tell us that this is no big deal. I recently heard a radio dj say that if people were really secure in their marriages then they would let their spouse go and sleep with other people with their approval. It is only those who are insecure who would not allow this. It that the issue? If sex were only physical and only for pleasure then perhaps it wouldn’t be a big deal to sleep around.

Our society also says that the most important thing is that you are happy and you get whatever you can to make you happy. It doesn’t matter how what you do affects anyone else, as long as you are happy. And this includes your fidelity or lack thereof in marriage. Dame Rose Macaulay said, “Adultery is a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and guarded by lies lest it should be found out … And out of meanness and selfishness and lying flow love and joy and peace beyond anything that can be imagined.” Hurting others for my own pleasure brings love and joy and peace. This is the logical outcome of a me-first attitude toward life.

Compare this to what God created sex to be. It is supposed to be the ultimate expression of love and unity between two people who are committed to each other for the rest of their lives. It joins them together in a mysterious way that is beyond what we can explain as humans. It is the best metaphor that God has given us to describe our worship of him when we worship him in Spirit and truth. Sex is supposed to be where two people who’s lives are intricately woven together in love, relationship, emotion, commitment, and passion can stand together being naked and unashamed.

People cannot stand before each other naked, both physically and emotionally, outside the bonds of marriage, when it is difficult even within marriage. One of the main things I want you to hear today is that God created sex to be a beautiful culmination of the oneness of marriage that brings unity and closeness and reminds people of the glory and relationship of Christ and his relationship with his bride, the Church. It is beautiful and good.

So when marital oneness and unity is broken through adultery it destroys trust, breaks up families, smears reputations, and injures people in ways that can never truly be repaired. This is why God prohibits adultery. It takes what is beautiful beyond comprehension and makes it destructive beyond our worst nightmares. Affairs (and it’s funny we give them such a nice name, an affair sounds exciting and adventuresome) are surrounded by fear, lies, scheming, secrecy, guilt, and rationalizing. A far cry from being naked and unashamed. I do not deny that there is probably great excitement, pleasure, passion, and even enjoyment in an affair; otherwise they would not go on for any period of time. But they can never hold the beauty and oneness that God meant for sex to be. They are a cheap imitation that mocks the creative beautiful mystery of God.

I imagine that this feels heavy and sickening, it does to me. If you are involved in an affair or have been you probably feel very condemned or defensive at the moment. We’ll come back to that feeling, but before we do I want to touch on two other things. First, if you hear all of this and think, “I am so glad I have never committed adultery,” I am with you, I’m glad you haven’t too. But before we get to happy with ourselves let’s remember what Jesus said in the New Testament. Read Matthew5:27-28 You see if we think that we have not violated the commandment of adultery, then we have fallen into the lie of our culture that sex is only physical. In reality, anything that detracts from the unity and oneness of marriage and sexual union within marriage is a violation of the command not to commit adultery. Looking at someone not your spouse and wondering what it would be like to have a relationship with them, giving your spouse the silent treatment, pornography, dressing skimpy to draw the looks of others, giving so much love and attention to your kids that you have none left for your spouse, physically or emotionally abusing your spouse, failure to communicate, having sex outside marriage, flirting with people other than your spouse (flirting with your spouse is a good thing), using sex as a weapon, and on and on. We are all adulterers. Sure, the consequences of giving your spouse the silent treatment may be far less severe than sleeping with someone outside of marriage, but both greatly detract from the possibility of being able to be naked and unashamed.

A second thing. I know this sermon may seem to only speak to those who are married, but it doesn’t. If you are not married right now the principle of marital oneness and unity applies to you too. The Dutch have a slang word for sex, “naaien,” and it refers to two pieces of cloth being sewn together in such a way that they cannot be pulled apart. And this is what sex does. God created it to be in the context of a loving committed relationship because it binds people together physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Sex cannot be just physical, no matter how much you may want it to be. When you come together with someone who you are not married to in a sexual union, not only are you unable to experience the full beauty and wonder of being naked and unashamed, but it is like the two pieces of cloth being sewn together. When you leave that person you rip and there are pieces of you left all over the place. You do not have all of you to give again. I admit that for a long time I had no idea why I shouldn’t have sex before I was married other than God said not to. And while I took that as reason enough, I hope that you can understand in some way today the sanctity of sex within the context of marriage and why God asks you to wait for your own good and for his. That’s not just a trite thing people say to try and guilt you into waiting, it really is for your own good. God does not want you to be ripped apart and to experience sex as so much less than what he created it to be.

Let me say what is difficult to say again, we are all adulterers. I am an adulterer. You are an adulterer. None of us escape falling short of the beauty God created marriage and sex to be.

And this brings me back to the sick feeling that may be pervading this sermon for those who have committed adultery. I hope that now we all feel the pain of the ways we’ve detracted from God’s design for marriage and sex and thus become adulterers. I hope it hurts us because it should. But as with all other sins, the story does not end here. If we repent of our sin and seek to live a life that moves us away from our adulterous ways, God will forgive us and give us his grace. That is part of the beauty of the law and the standards that God sets for us. They show us how to live but they also make it abundantly clear that we are not capable of keeping them perfectly. So we are all in need of God’s grace and he gives it freely to all who repent and rely on Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. There is no sin that is beyond the love and grace of God for those who would accept it.

And while we affirm this to be true, why is it that adultery seems to be one of the unforgivable sins of the church. Oh we may say that we can forgive people who commit adultery, but a lot of the time we don’t act like we have.

People who commit adultery have just injured too many people and caused too much pain. They have done the unthinkable and to forgive them seems like it would somehow condone what they did. Their sin defines them and we believe that they deserve it. But “When adultery causes separation between a person and a Christian community, both moral crusaders and immoral adulterers give credibility to a damnable biblical heresy. They allow adultery to become the defining event in a person’s life.” This event becomes what defines them more than their commitment to Christ, their sincere repentance, or the grace they have received. Hear me well on this. If we as a church, the people of God, refuse to offer grace and forgiveness to an adulterer, then we spit on the cross of Christ and say that his death and resurrection were in vain. Not to mention the fact that we are hypocrites because we all fall short on the command against adulterers.

The fact that an adulterer, just like any other sinner, must repent of their sin in true remorse and fall on the mercy of God is a given. There is no forgiveness where there is no repentance. And one other thing. It is not up to you or me to decide if someone’s repentance is sincere or not. Repentance is judged by God and proved by future actions, not by the judgment of a person who is unable to know the heart.

Can we please not pretend that some of us are immune to having an affair? I don’t think there are many people in the world who say, “I would really love to commit adultery.” Affairs have allure. When Michelle and I got married we had heard this somewhere and I’m thankful that we did. From the beginning we decided to never say that there was no way we would have an affair. We don’t have that much faith in our flesh. But this also has led us to set up boundaries, pray for God’s protection of our marriage, and be honest with each other about our weaknesses.

So what do we do if faced with the temptation to fall into sexual sin, and the sin of adultery in particular? First, I think we can take a page out of Joseph’s book and just run away. When Potipher’s wife approached him and wanted to sleep with him he slipped out of his cloak and ran away. When confronted with the possibility of marital infidelity and compromising of God’s plan for sex and marriage we need to run away. We cannot even think, just run.

Second, pray! Ask God to give you desire for only your spouse. Ask him to keep you strong in the face of temptation. Ask him to help you hate the thought of infidelity. If you are not married ask him to help you keep a positive view of sex that will inspire you to wait for the setting he has ordained. The Spirit of God is powerful and can sustain us when our will cannot. We have to rely on his help to walk in this arena as he wants us to.

And don’t be afraid to find someone else and be open with them and ask them to hold you accountable to the standards God has established. Not just to keep you from doing something you shouldn’t, but also to help you pursue with passion the oneness and unity that God wants you to have with your spouse or future spouse. We are often too embarrassed to do this, but the truth is that others have the same struggles we do or ones similar to them, and if we open up we are likely to find out we are not alone.

So just like Isaiah can’t chew on the power cord because it could really hurt him, sex is a very beautiful, powerful wonderful thing, but if we use it outside the context God gave us for it then it can really hurt us and others. That is why God tells us not to commit adultery.