The Heart of Adultery
Download MP3All right. Well, good morning. Good morning, William. Got a full house here. My name is Dwight Castle.
Speaker 1:I'm one of the pastors here at Redeemer. If you have no idea who I am, that's because I have not been around here much lately. Wanted to take a moment and update, everyone a little bit on what's been going on in my life. This is something Joel asked me to do this morning since, we had the opportunity, my wife and I a few months back to share with the church, just some of the things that we're walking through. So I wanted to first thank each of you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers and your love and support in this time that we've been walking through.
Speaker 1:It's been sustaining to us. Kinda cut to the chase here, my wife and I, in April, we had conjoined twins that were born. And so this year and everything leading up to that has been, very interesting. A lot of twists and turns and ups and downs. I was trying to think about how to really briefly summarize what my life has been and not break down in front of you.
Speaker 1:So I think 2 themes that I probably referenced last time we stood before you are still constant themes for us. And one is that we're walking through a really hard time. I just want to say that because I think that sometimes Christians have a hard time saying that life is hard, feel like that that that isn't faithful to God. But life is hard and my life is really hard right now. To be honest, I think the thing that I say most often to my wife is it just feels like too much.
Speaker 1:Too much for a human to possibly be able to handle and bear up under. And I think the second thing is just as true is that God has been gracious to us in ways that I cannot fathom. And both are true. Both have been really, really poignantly true in my life. And, the psalmist, I think in multiple places says that if it had not been for the Lord, I would have been consumed by the floodwaters.
Speaker 1:And that is true in my life. And we're in a particularly hard phase right now. I think to give you a really quick update, when when we spoke to the church last time, we were about to go up to Philadelphia, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and give birth to our daughters, Susanna and Elizabeth, And we thought we were gonna be able to come back to Birmingham for a time and be here, before then going back up there. And things changed and I've had to replant my family in Philadelphia for this whole year. We've been in the NICU at Children's Hospital there for 86 days, and we got a lot more time to spend there ahead of us.
Speaker 1:We've moved 4 times in the last three and a half months, 2 hotels, 2 condos, this last one on our 4th floor with no elevator, unfurnished, moving things up there with none of you strong friends here to help us. We've had to leave our home and our community and our jobs and our friends, and I think that's been actually probably one of the hardest parts for us is we miss life here so dearly. We miss all of you. Our kids are having a tough time transitioning. There's a lot of really hard things right now, and yet the Lord has just been faithful and gracious to provide for our every need.
Speaker 1:And so much of that has come through you guys. We're really thankful the girls are doing so well right now. We're actually potentially this week, in the next couple of days, they're doing so well that we're trying to take them out of the hospital to the hospital to the condo where we're living in Philadelphia for a month and a half or two months before the next step of our journey. And so you can pray with us that this week, that insurance will sort out all of the details. That's the only thing waiting at this point for us to bring the girls to our place there.
Speaker 1:And then we'll take them back in September to the hospital, and they'll be readmitted. They'll get tissue expanders in their sides that stretches their skin, and, moving towards separation surgery in December, Lord willing. And then one of our daughters, Elizabeth, has a sizable hole in her heart that will have to be patched probably in January. So maybe in the spring, Lord willing, we'll be back here and have 2 separate healthy daughters that we can, show you in addition to our other 3 wild kids. So, I just want to thank you.
Speaker 1:I won't take any more time, but thank you because the body of Christ has sustained us in this time, and we're so thankful. So and now my smooth transition to adultery, There's no way to do that. There's 0 zero way to do that. So today, we're gonna continue our sermon series on the 10 Commandments. And when we were picking sermons in the 10 Commandments, the topics, this topic was like the last kid picked for kickball in elementary and middle school.
Speaker 1:And when the dust settled, I got stuck with that kid. So that's today. Buckle up. We are going to talk about, the 7th commandment today, and we'll start out by saying the 10 commandments together, asking God to work these into our hearts. So if you will say these with me, they're going to be on the screen or we're all in trouble here.
Speaker 1:Because I don't I don't have them memorized yet, but don't tell Joel. All right. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make any graven images. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain.
Speaker 1:Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.
Speaker 1:You You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet. And as I said, today, the 7th one, you shall not commit adultery. That's our text. So pray with me if you will.
Speaker 1:Lord, we come to you this morning, all of us coming from many different points with a lot of different things going on in our lives. And we all admit right now we need you. Lord, I need you. I wanna communicate your word clearly. We all need you to open our ears and our hearts to your word so that spirit you can change us to be more like Jesus.
Speaker 1:We need you to help us as we talk about this sensitive, kind of heavy topic. So, Lord, I pray right now that the words in my mouth and the meditation in my heart will be pleasing in your sight, oh lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. Now I wanna start this morning by asking a really simple question. Who is this sermon for?
Speaker 1:Who's this sermon for? Immediately, you are all answering this in your own way. In this room, there are some likely who know that this sermon is for you. You're guilty. There are some who are really close to being guilty of this sin.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're in the middle of a situation that's very close to adultery. There are some of you who think it's not for you. And so I want to encourage you to hear these words from Jen Wilkin in her book on the 10 Commandments. I think they're poignant for us today. If you are unmarried, resist the urge to skip this chapter or this topic.
Speaker 1:The most famous unmarried man in all of history had much to say about marriage, so perhaps you will find help here. If you are married and have not committed adultery and have no plans to do so, keep listening as well. And I'll add, if you're listening and you have committed adultery, keep listening because there is a word of hope for you today. I'll also add that if you're here and you've been impacted by someone else's adultery, there's something here for you. Can you forgive?
Speaker 1:Should you? Why? How? I'm certainly not going to be able to answer all those questions this morning, but Jesus wants to speak into your pain as well. Jen Wilkin continues, we have come to the 7th command, as brief as the 6th, and as we will see, equally expansive in application.
Speaker 1:Once again, Jesus will teach us that there is a deeper obedience to be sought, one that surpasses simply not sleeping with someone who we're not married to, end quote. So if you've been paying attention at all over the past several weeks, you can probably predict where we're going here. There's been a theme. There's something deeper beyond don't say, oh my god, and beyond don't murder someone. There's something deeper as well beyond not having sex with someone who isn't your spouse.
Speaker 1:Now I'm sure that most pastors here would make a strong argument for why the commandment that they preached on is probably the most important, but they're wrong. This, I want to suggest, is actually the most important command. It's not just because it's repeated, it's the only one of the 10 commandments that we see twice. In the 10th commandment, God specifically says not to covet your neighbor's wife. That's not why.
Speaker 1:This is the one that most clearly depicts the gospel for us. So marriage and infidelity are the themes of the Bible. The themes that God have chosen as a symbol for his love for sinners. His commitment. We see a story of a loving husband who is just pursuing constantly his spouse, his bride, his people.
Speaker 1:And, though this bride keeps going to other lovers, he continues to welcome her back, and to forgive her, and to call her his own. This is the theme of the Bible. Now, each of the 10 commandments, they teach us something specifically about God. Even these other ones that are more kind of horizontal in nature, they tell us how to interact with each other. They're actually, ultimately, about God.
Speaker 1:And so today in the 7th commandment, God is uniquely teaching us about his covenant marital faithfulness to his bride. And this has huge implications for us. So the problem of adultery is an age old problem. It's existed across all time, all cultures. It actually doesn't take us long in the first pages of the Bible to see sexual sin take over.
Speaker 1:We see polygamy, rape, abuse, whatever in the world is going on in Genesis 6 with the sons of God coming together with the daughters of man and creating the Nephilim, a line of giants, if you want to talk about that after the service, you can find Josh. And he is going to talk to you about what that means. After Genesis 3, in the fall, we see that everything in creation is deeply, irrevocably broken by sin. And so it shouldn't come as a surprise to us that at our core our sexuality is broken as well. We're broken people.
Speaker 1:All of us. If you are a single person in here who has no sexual addiction, or if you are a faithful married person with a healthy marriage and you've never committed adultery, you still have sexual brokenness. The fall pervades all areas of our lives, and the sexual brokenness is what leads to sexual sin. And it looks different for different people. It comes out in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1:But we all suffer from sexual brokenness. Now sexual sin and adultery in particular has been rampant all throughout the pages of scripture. From Moses's time, the 10 Commandments, to Jesus's time as we'll see in a little bit, to our time right now. But I would say that I think there's been a shift lately in the modern era in the West, in America especially, what was previously stigmatized and shunned and shamed is now accepted. It's always been present, but it's typically been viewed as wrong.
Speaker 1:But now it's becoming normative, even culturally appropriate. All you have to do is look at something not that long ago, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. It's literally about a woman who commits this cardinal sin, adultery. And she is actually given the letter a to put on her clothes that will not only say she's committed this bad sin, but she's ostracized from the entire society at the cost of her life. We've come a far away from there.
Speaker 1:I would say that actually one of the main descriptors of America right now would be the over sexualization of culture. You will be hard pressed, I want to challenge you, to watch a recent movie that does not normalize or even celebrate sex outside of marriage. We see politicians who are caught in sex scandals, but now it doesn't tarnish their image or hurt their chances of reelection. I am watching a TV commercial, and it feels like someone is trying to bed me, but all they want is for me to buy a truck, or a burger, or perfume. It could be anything.
Speaker 1:We are a sexualized culture. And if we think that it isn't affecting us, we're naive. It softens us to sin. It numbs us. Now, the way this affects marriage is it says, hey, if you're not totally pleased in your marriage, you can look elsewhere.
Speaker 1:You deserve more. You deserve your soulmate. You deserve to be satisfied and pleased. So maybe you divorce your spouse, or maybe you just kinda cheat on the side, because after all, they have a lot of problems, and you're justified. But God looks on this really seriously.
Speaker 1:In the old testament, the penalty for adultery was death. Can you imagine that in our society now? The penalty for adultery was death. In the New Testament, Jesus says that this is the one permissible exception that is allowing divorce. So God looks at this really seriously, and it's important for us to understand that when we're gonna talk about adultery, we're actually talking about marriage.
Speaker 1:Now Craig last week thank you, Craig. I thought it was really helpful that he said where there's a negative prohibition there's a positive affirmation. So if today we hear God saying don't commit adultery what we also need to hear is honor marriage. And we're going to camp out here for a minute. We're going to talk about the importance of marriage, and God's design for marriage, because it's vital for us to understand how heinous adultery is.
Speaker 1:This is the picture after all that God has given of his relationship with his people. So why did God create marriage? I see three reasons, biblically, that God has given marriage. 1st is to show God's glory. You gotta remember that when God created humans he made them in his image.
Speaker 1:The Imago Dei. And anytime that we see a human we see God's glory reflected in his image in that person. So the more marriages, the more people, we see more of God's glory going around the earth. 2nd, similar, procreation. God says, be fruitful and multiply, and he made cultures and societies to be built off of healthy marriages and families.
Speaker 1:So we need marriage to have more people, to have culture. Thirdly, we've already talked about it is a physical picture of a spiritual reality. It is the picture of the gospel. When we look at a marriage we should see God's covenant faithfulness to his bride. Okay.
Speaker 1:So here's a hot topic question for today. How do you define marriage? Right? Well, the answer is it doesn't matter how you define it. Matters how god defines it.
Speaker 1:Because god, after all, is the creator of marriage, not culture. So God sets the terms. God defines it. And he has made it a very particular thing. And any deviation from that particular thing is no longer that thing.
Speaker 1:So what does God say marriage is? It's 1 man and one woman for life. That's the only confines that sex should happen within. Now, culture wants to say a lot of different things. We live in a world of inclusiveness, but marriage is an exclusive thing.
Speaker 1:It's not 2 men. It's not 2 women. It's not 3 people. It's not you and your wife and the lady at the gym, or you and your husband and your coworker. It's 2.
Speaker 1:And it's 2 people joined together in something called a covenant. Now, covenants come from God. God has made a covenant with his people. There are spiritual covenants that have great meaning and significance, and this is, as we just said, what marriage represents. God loves his bride.
Speaker 1:He's always faithful. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. So why should we keep our marriage covenant vows? Because God keeps his with us.
Speaker 1:Now, unfortunately, God's people in the old testament have a bad track record of reciprocating this kind of covenant faithfulness. The Old Testament is full of descriptions of how Israel is wayward, and constantly goes to other gods or other lovers. And God uses this picture. He actually uses a pretty graphic term, because it's so common and rampant to describe what Israel does. He calls them a whoring people.
Speaker 1:Okay? All over. You could look in any book of the bible in the old testament and see God describing the whoring people that Israel is. And it all culminates in Hosea, where he says, guys, I'm gonna spell this out for you. I'm gonna show you what you're like and what I'm like.
Speaker 1:Hosea, you prophet, I want you to take a prostitute as your wife and she is going to be your wife of whoring and she is going to leave you and abandon you for every lover all the time, and you are to constantly come after her and forgive her and restore her and seek her. And god says, that's a picture of what you have done to me and what I've done to you. So this is a really serious thing, and god's people have never done it really well. Alright. So this is all pretty straightforward, Dwight, so far.
Speaker 1:Right? Don't commit adultery. Honor marriage. God gave us marriage to represent his faithfulness to us. I shouldn't have sex with anyone who's not my spouse.
Speaker 1:Is that really all that this is about? Well, it's not less than that, but it's certainly more. Just like not taking the Lord's name in vain, just like not murdering, there's more beneath the surface. This commandment is a call to spiritual faithfulness. It's also a call to sexual holiness.
Speaker 1:So Jesus enters the picture here. I want you guys to look in your worship guide at Matthew chapter 5. We're going to see what Jesus says specifically about this 7th commandment. Matthew 527. You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.
Speaker 1:But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose 1 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 is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.
Speaker 1:Good old Jesus, always complicating things. Can't just leave it doable. Can't keep it simple. So not only should I not commit adultery, now I can't lust after someone. Jesus is upping the ante here.
Speaker 1:He's saying that it isn't just sin to commit adultery, it's not about the external action only, it's about the heart. In fact, the seed of the sin of adultery begins in the heart. Adultery is just the natural outcome, the natural result, you could say the fruit of that seed. It all starts though with the seed of lust in the heart. Okay.
Speaker 1:So, what constitutes lust? Lust is that lingering look. That prolonged attention. It's not necessarily the just first glance when you see an attractive person. When you notice someone who's beautiful, you're human and you have eyes, and God made you to recognize beauty.
Speaker 1:But what happens is, remember we're all broken and distorted, It's when you go back for more, when you fix your gaze on that person. Now I know some of you, if you're anything like me, immediately in your mind, you're like, alright. Now that's a gray area. How do we really define that? You know, we kinda wanna understand so we could get as close to that line as we possibly can.
Speaker 1:How do I know, like, when admiring beauty? Is it lust? Right? Our hearts are twisted. We try to get close to sin.
Speaker 1:This actually reminds me when I lived in Turkey for a summer, I had made friends with some university students, some Muslim guys. We're walking down the road one day, and a beautiful woman walks by, and all 3 of these guys just stare. I mean, it's just like embarrassing. Like, okay. Well, this is a good opportunity.
Speaker 1:So, I was like, Hey, guys. So, how about that? What does the Quran say about lust? And they're like, oh it's easy, it's easy. The most devout of them said to me, hey listen, The first look is Okay, but you shouldn't look back a second time.
Speaker 1:So just make the first look as long as you possibly can. I was like, Am I hearing this? It's a little cheat code. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you just look as long as you want the first time, don't ever look away, because they literally said this to me. This was this is what they thought. Is that what Jesus is talking about? He kind of goes around that. He's like, no.
Speaker 1:It's about the intent of the heart. If you have any lust, if you have any desire in your mind or your heart, Jesus says that you have already committed adultery. Those are hard words. Let that sit in for a minute. So, though most of us in here probably have not actually physically committed adultery, Jesus now says that we all stand condemned guilty.
Speaker 1:It's likely that we've all been in breach of this commandment at some way emotionally, mentally, if not physically. Now this would have been radical in Jesus's time, even more radical than for us, because not only was polygamy rampant and adultery commonplace, but sexual sin was everywhere. Chastity was not valued, certainly no concept of lust, but Jesus is saying, he's teaching that the heart is the center of who we are. It's the birthplace of our actions, and how we live our lives. So the seeds that take root in our heart will eventually grow into the actual fruit of our lives, and he says that seed is just as deadly as the fruit.
Speaker 1:Both are sin. In the book of James, this is spelled out really clearly what this digression looks like. James says, each person is tempted when he's lured away and enticed by his own desires. Then, desire, when it has conceived, it gives birth to sin. Sin, when it's fully grown, brings death.
Speaker 1:So that's how this thing goes. So, Jesus isn't actually as much giving a new teaching as shedding light on the deeper meaning of what the 7th commandment is about, and Jesus is actually just revealing human nature to us. As Jen Wilkins says in her book, disordered desires result in disordered lives. So sin, it grows quietly in our hearts. 1st with a little look and then a linger, and then that desire's nurtured, and it's grown.
Speaker 1:And Jesus says, beware. Stop it, because it will kill you in the end. See, lust isn't stumbled into accidentally like you fall in a hole. Lust is committed. It's a volitional act of the will.
Speaker 1:It's a decision to let that seed grow instead of killing it. So, I want to step back for a minute. Why is this so hard for us? Why is sexual temptation such a struggle? Because for many many people in this room, this is probably single handedly the hardest struggle of your life.
Speaker 1:And it's probably reeked a lot of havoc in your life. Why? Why is it so hard for us? Sin masquerades as something that's good. And let's be honest, sexual sin does gratify for a time.
Speaker 1:It makes us feel good for a little bit. And so we believe that it's worth it. But temporary gratification isn't the same as true satisfaction. Anyone who's ever had a late night binge at Taco Bell knows what I'm talking about. Right?
Speaker 1:You will always pay for it. Right? And anyone who has given into the gratification of looking at pornography or committing adultery also knows that it's not the same thing as true satisfaction. Sexual sin in particular is attractive because it grants you this perception, the facade facade of passion and intimacy, but without the vulnerability or the commitment that's necessary for actual true intimacy. It devalues the other person because it says that you aren't actually worth my love and my commitment.
Speaker 1:See, at its core sexual sin is selfish, and this is the exact opposite of what marriage is. Sexual sin is about self gratification, Marriage is about selflessness. Someone who's married says, I'm going to give up my life for you. I'm going to lay down my life in all of the really hard ways. But sexual sin says, give me everything that I want, no matter what the cost.
Speaker 1:And Jesus here in Matthew 5, he's kind enough to shed light on this for us. He says, yes, don't commit adultery, but if you don't want to get to z, watch out for a, and everything in between. He reveals that the lust of our eyes and our hearts will lead to our death. If we look back at the fall with Eve in the garden, it's the same phrasing that's used. It says that the fruit was pleasurable to her eyes, and in the lust of her heart, that's what she wanted.
Speaker 1:And it led to her death, and it leads to all of our deaths. So, if disordered desires lead to disordered lives, what about lust? The natural consequences of lust are devastating. Broken trust, broken relationships, broken marriages, broken communities, unwanted pregnancies, disease, divorce, porn, rape, abuse, sex trafficking, child molestation, and the list goes on. Not to mention the gross misrepresentation of who God is.
Speaker 1:So what does Jesus say to do? Well, in Matthew 5, he says take drastic measures. Kill sin, or it will kill you. He uses hyperbolic imagery. He says, be willing to root out sin in your life at all costs, even if it costs you your best hand and your best eye.
Speaker 1:And as we see, this begins at the heart level. So, how do we do that? It's at the seed form. Don't let anything take root that can grow. Don't let a glance linger.
Speaker 1:Don't go to that website with those tempting ads, or to that Instagram account. Don't let a fantasy grow or a guilty pleasure build in your mind where no one sees. Don't let an interaction or a conversation cross the line. Don't even give sin an occasion for these things. That might mean you have to be on guard in normal ways in your life at your job with coworkers, or at the gym, or at the bar or brewery, or with that friend.
Speaker 1:Don't let sin take root and grow, even in the places where no one can see. You can't tame sin. You must kill it. Colossians 3:5 says, put to death what is earthly and fleshly in you. So how do we do this?
Speaker 1:How do you completely kill sin and remove it from your life? Is is that even possible? Well, there's been a lot of different people thinking a lot of different things about this. Origen, one of the early church fathers in 200 AD, he took this very literally and he castrated himself. There have been monks for a long time that have physically removed themselves from society's evils and tried to avoid temptation.
Speaker 1:Is this what Jesus is saying? I don't think so. Please don't gouge out your eye or cut off your hand or any other body parts. We don't need any of that. Remember, this is about the heart.
Speaker 1:So what do we need? We need a new heart. We put sin to death by starving its desires and feeding ourselves with the right things, god's word, prayer, fellowship with believers, being satisfied in Jesus alone. Psalm 30 seven:4 says that as we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us new desires in our heart. Desires for him.
Speaker 1:Now as Christians, we know that God has to give us a new heart for salvation. It's what Jesus did on the cross. But we also need God's Spirit to constantly renew us day by day. We need supernatural power against this, guys. We need God's Spirit to help us to set our gaze on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, as Hebrews says, not setting our gaze in a lingering way on anything or anyone else.
Speaker 1:All right. So where does this leave us? A room full of desperate sinners. Some of us having seen the fruit of this sin played out in our lives, and some still nursing that seed in our hearts. We go to Jesus.
Speaker 1:He is the faithful spouse, the true groom. He's never abandoned his people. He's never faltered in his covenant with us. Though we are faithless, he remains faithful. Though we lust in our hearts and with our actions, and though we constantly abandon our spiritual covenant with Him, He remains faithful.
Speaker 1:2nd Corinthians 5 says, for our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we could be made into the righteousness of God. So, God looks at my adulteress heart and mind, and your adulteress heart and mind, and He offers us not only forgiveness and restoration, but His own covenant faithfulness. Listen. If you feel like a failure today in this regard, good. That's your ticket.
Speaker 1:Bring your sin to Jesus. He brings forgiveness and hope. That is the hope of the gospel. We cannot keep this law, but Jesus kept it for us. And he redeems and he restores us, us who are prone to wander and go to other lovers.
Speaker 1:So, for some of you today, this is a call to flee temptation. For some of you, it is a call to leave adultery. Today. Right now. When Jesus encountered a woman in John chapter 8 that was caught in the act of adultery, there were a lot of things that he could have said to that woman.
Speaker 1:The religious leaders had stones. They were gathered around her, and they were going to stone her to death. And according to the law of Moses, that would have been justified. But Jesus comes up to her, and he looks on her, the Bible says, with compassion. And he says, go and sin no more.
Speaker 1:And if you're in that spot today, hear Jesus' words to you. Go and sin no more. I have personally counseled couples in this church who have experienced the devastating effects of adultery, and I've seen marriages restored. God is faithful. He can do it.
Speaker 1:You're never too far. As Jesus saves us, he changes us. His spirit gives us new desires and new power to fight this impossible sin. When we do this, the unbelieving world around us will look at marriages, and they will see the beauty of God's design. And it won't be because of our perfection and that we haven't sinned, but it will be because of God's faithfulness to us despite our sin, despite the fact that we are wayward cheating, adulterous people.
Speaker 1:God's grace is good enough. Thank you, Lord. God, help us. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you that you have done what we cannot do.
Speaker 1:God, there are people in here right now who I'm sure are hearing the lies of the enemy wracked in guilt. But Jesus, we know that in you there is no condemnation. You have done what the law couldn't do, and you bring us redemption and restoration. So Jesus, I pray for that each of us here, wherever we are in this, Lord, that you will help us to fix our gaze on you. That the things of this world will lose their allure, and we will find you all satisfying.
Speaker 1:As your word says, in your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. God, help us to believe this and to know this in actuality. In your name. Amen.
