The Seventh Commandment, we've chosen to take the time, both because the commandments are not taught and therefore they're less understood, so we're taking two weeks on each commandment. This week I heard a very sad message, or actually it was a radio interview. A number of men were going around at the Christian Booksellers Association National Convention And they were asking people who, these are people who work at Christian bookstores or who market Christian books, they were asking people if they could name the Ten Commandments. And not a single person could. Not a single person at the Christian Booksellers Association National Convention of the 80 they interviewed could get it right. And frequently the people said, The most I heard anyone remember was three. Most people say, you're not supposed to commit adultery, you're not supposed to kill. One lady said, you're not supposed to have any of the gods before me. One man said, I don't know them, I just keep them. And I would suggest that if you don't know them, then you can't keep them because you don't obey what you don't know. So it's I've not been apologetic and going through the Ten Commandments with. It's not been slow but we haven't certainly rushed through them. And because if God's law is a permanent thing Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away before my words pass away before any of God's commandments pass away and the commandments of God are simply the character of God laid down in words. lay down in law so to speak. If I'm the head of my household and I have a character as a father and I say these are the ways in which we're going to run our household, my words which are displays of my character are the very things that run our family. And God's laws are simply the display of his character. Let's look at the seventh commandment again. You shall not commit adultery. Well, we looked last week at what that meant. What did that commandment require? And what does that commandment forbid. And the requirement of the commandment was that we so honor and we so cherish God given covenant of marriage that we do not let any form of the misuse of sex affect this marriage whether premarital sex or sex with someone after you that you're a Christian or any kind of the number of perversions which are listed in scripture and which men have taken to the nth degree. In other words, marriage is such a high and holy gift that God says, and I have even invented sex to be enjoyed in the context of marriage, but it's so special that I put a fence around this gift, and this fence has a sign on the gate, for married people only, and that no one has the right to abuse this gift. You have not the right to Destroy someone else's marriage. Neither have you the right to destroy your own. And since until you're married, you don't know for sure who you're going to be married, you can't experiment in the meantime. God says, I don't want you trashing my gifts. It forbids all kinds of expression of sexuality outside a covenanted marriage. Now today, we're going to look at what our Lord Jesus Christ had to say about this commandment. And again, I've taken this particular tactic every week. This is the commandment. This is what it means. And let's look at our Lord Jesus Christ and what he says and then what his apostles say, because there have been so many in our day who set aside the commandments of God, who because they say, well, that's just Old Testament footy-ditty stuff. We're now in the New Testament. We're free in the Spirit, or we just follow Jesus and love. And what they do unthinkingly, but really, is they pit the Father against the Son. Well, sure, maybe the Father gave his commandments, but Jesus, he comes along and he has the authority to set them aside. Well, why is there this desire to separate the work of the members of the Trinity? Why do you want to pit the father against the son? Well, yes, the father gives these commandments, but the son comes along and says, oh, these are bad. I have new commandments for you. That's exactly what is being taught today. I had a discussion with a brother the other night. We were talking about some people we know who want to say that the little commandments of God are both passe and that we're now under the commandments of Christ because these other commandments were no good. Christ had to come and do a doctoring job on the commandments. So they're pitting the father against the son. We don't want to do that. So we're going to take the time to see what the Lord Jesus Christ says about each of these commandments and what His Holy Spirit-inspired apostles say about these commandments. Where there's going to be six things, our Lord says at least six. I said I'm going to limit it to six. There are several more things. But our Lord deals with His commandment about adultery several times in the Gospels. And I'm just going to take the Gospel of Matthew, for example, for the most part, and just walk through the Gospel of Matthew in different passages and see what our Lord has to say about the seventh commandment. Look at Matthew chapter 5. We'll begin there. And this is a Christian church and we are Christians under the authority of God's word. So we open up God's word and we're looking at chapter 5 of Matthew's gospel. Chapter 5, 6 and 7 are the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said these are the stipulations for those who live in my kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount is not a booklet on how to become a Christian. The Sermon on the Mount is this is how Christians are. a guideline for the laws of the kingdom of God. Matthew chapter 5 beginning in verse 27. You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. It's not simply the physical act. It's the mental attitude. It's the emotional attitude. Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. People say, I don't see what the big deal is. I didn't do anything. I was just thinking it. But God says, it's only because of social pressure. It's only because of the constraints of my spirit. It's only because of the constraints placed around you. If you could, you would. Because your mind has already gone there. It's not socially advantageous. You wouldn't get in trouble. It might harm your marriage. It might harm your standing in the church. It might get you in trouble. So I don't do, I don't carry out what I think. I just have all this stuff going on in my mind. The Lord says, you fool yourself. If you've thought it in your mind, You've already done it as far as I'm concerned. Our Lord says that, you know, you can't say, well, I don't commit physical adultery, but I engage in all kinds of mental fantasies and congratulate yourself that you're doing OK. You're not doing OK. any more than a woman who may not engage in exactly the same sexual fantasies, but she watches soap operas or she reads certain kinds of romance novels, and she fantasizes emotional things that are her version of sexual lust. She fantasizes about how things might be with a different man or a different person. In fact, our Lord says this is so serious, he says, I think you need to take radical action. And please note, verse 29 is figurative speech. Verse 29 is not meant to be taken literally. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. And in verse 30, he says, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. Well, in other portions of scripture, we know that the sin isn't in my eyeball. The sin isn't in my hand. The sin is in my heart. The sin is in my whole being. Tearing out an eyeball isn't going to affect your heart. Cutting off a hand isn't going to affect your heart. He's speaking figuratively. He's saying take radical action. Do you have a problem with lust? Then get rid of cable TV. You can't pray for mental purity and have garbage coming into your home and wonder why you don't have mental purity. You can't be a usher at an X-rated movie theater and ask for people to pray for you about your thought life. You need to cut off the spigot, turn off the spigot that brings all the filth into your heart and into your life. Do you have internet problems? Do you watch garbage on the internet? Then have someone else put a filter and a guard on it and let them keep the password or get rid of the internet or do something, but don't keep having the bilge pumped into your heart and you say, well, I just really am really struggling with my thought life. You're going to. People have put controls on their TV. People have gotten rid of their TVs. People don't have access to certain things because they say, my heart just can't go there. Ladies, if you find yourself sitting and watching soap operas and being involved vicariously in other people's emotional ups and downs and romantic ups and downs, and if you read romance novels that make you fantasize about how things might be in a better world, then you need to get rid of that stuff. It's not doing your heart any good. You can't pray for purity and not turn the spigot off. You have to turn the spigot off and cleanse your heart. Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. That's radical treatment. That's being serious. He's speaking figuratively. So you don't have a television, so you don't have cable TV, so you don't have internet garbage, or you because you have X, Y, and Z. What is wrong with that? Is it such a great swap? Well, we don't have a TV in our house. Pray for us. We're the most sacrificial people in the 21st century. Or we don't have this, or we don't have that. Jesus says, from his perspective, it is better that you lose one of your members, one of the parts of your body, than your whole body be thrown into hell. Or a way of paraphrasing that, better to go to heaven maimed a bit than go to hell whole. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. Again, figurative language, but he's saying deal with it sharply, severely. I don't know if you saw TV last night, but I'm robbing banks. And what I'm trying to do is I'm kind of going to drop it down to 7-Elevens after a while. And after a while, I'm just going to mug little old ladies. And then I'm going to go to lemonade stands and take quarters from little kids. And I'm going to try to gradually extinguish, extinguish, extinguish, extinguish, extinguish my sins. No? It's not acceptable to say, well, I used to be a bank robber, now I'm a Christian bank robber, now I'm a Christian 7-Eleven holder-upper, and now I'm a Christian robber of lunchroom money, and now I'm a Christian robber of lemonade stands, and hopefully one day I just won't be a dishonest person. No, you are to take radical steps in dealing with your sin. And you say, well, I struggle with lust. Well, most men do, unless they have other problems, in which case you have to take radical steps in dealing with it. Many ladies can struggle with having emotional fantasies about what Mr. X or Mr. Y would be like. It's not for nothing, ladies, that they have Fabio doing I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercials. And, you know, they don't have Alfred E. Newman doing those kind of commercials. And they don't have some kind of slob doing it. They have somebody that some ladies must think that that's cool. They don't spend billions of dollars in advertising for nothing. Let's go on to Chapter 5, verses 31 and 32. Jesus picks it up again. He said, there's another way that you can misunderstand this whole question of adultery and divorce. He said, it was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Let me say, in the first century, Jewish males, the rabbis, made divorce really easy. Are you dissatisfied with your wife? Write a writ of divorce. Say, I'm dissatisfied with her because she burns the kosher meals. That was sufficient. You could divorce her. The only trouble was, a man could easily remarry, take on a new wife, build a new family up. But in the first century, there were no jobs available for women, just as women. You say, well, I'm going to open up a dress shop here in Jerusalem. You didn't do that. There weren't any dress shops opened by women. You either went back and lived with your parents, or you became a prostitute or a beggar. Those were your options. And he said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. That's what you say. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, pornea, some kind of sexuality not expressed in the biblical way, then you make her commit adultery. She's going to probably have to remarry just to survive. And what you're doing is you're causing her to commit adultery by this easy divorce, this lax divorce, which is very advantageous for men. They could divorce for any reason, according to the rabbis, but not women. And whoever marries a divorced woman this way commits adultery themselves. In other words, a wrong view of divorce, easy divorce. You can divorce your wife for anything and then remarrying someone like this or allowing her to remarry, you're involved in adultery. This does not please me. You are not guarding marriage. You're not making the marriage work. You're finding any out and you're polluting all these marriages. In Jesus' eyes, an easy, wrong view of divorce leads to multiple adulteries. He says, except on the ground of sexual immorality and whatever you see sexual immorality in the U.S. or the N.I.V. modern translations. That's usually the Greek word for now. Last week we said for now means any sexual sin committed outside of biblical bounds that would include fornication or elicit sex before you're married, it would include homosexuality, it would include pornography. We get our modern word pornography from that. If a spouse was addicted to pornography, if they were involved in all kinds of other sexual perversions, that's all covered under porneia. It's general sexual uncleanness. If you find that your spouse is engaged in porneia, that was what Jesus was allowing for the only biblical divorce. We're going to come back to that in a minute by looking at Matthew 19 because Jesus picks it up again in Matthew 19, and he goes back to this question of divorce. And I realize I'm speaking to some folks who are divorced. We've interviewed everyone who's joined the church, and if they've been divorced, we've talked about it. But Jesus and later the Apostle Paul will add one other. There's only two biblical reasons, according to historic Protestant understandings of Scripture, how a person can be divorced. You can be divorced because one of the parties in the marriage was guilty of porneia. And you can be divorced, Paul says, because the unbelieving spouse, let's say two non-Christians get married and one of them becomes a Christian. And Paul says, if your unbelieving spouse will live with you, great. That's super. Maybe you can win them to Christ. You don't know. But if the unbelieving spouse should leave you, you're not obligated to try to save the marriage. You don't know for sure that you would save the marriage. And in 1 Corinthians 7, verses 15 and 16, are what Protestant theologians consider the second clause that allows for divorce if an unbelieving spouse leaves you and divorces and separates from you. Let's look at Matthew 19 verses 3 through 9. And Pharisees came up to him and attested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Like we think. He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female. In other words they are perfect fit. They're made for each other. And therefore and said therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast. The old word was cleaved to his wife and they shall become one flesh. OK. And normally in a marriage ceremony we say at this point he who God has brought together let no man bring us under. Don't drive a wedge between two people whom God has brought together. So they are no longer two but one flesh two singles become one couple and God's intentions was that we stay that way. So they're no longer two but one what therefore God has joined together let no let not man separate. They said to him why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And what they're doing here is they're misquoting what Moses said in the Old Testament. And Jesus has to correct them again. Just because a person throws the Bible at you doesn't mean it's right. The devil even misquoted Scripture in trying to tempt Christ. So as you're speaking with someone, let me, as a word of encouragement, sometimes some of us who know our Bibles pretty well have a habit of talking to other people in a way that they just think we're opinionated and mouthy. And they don't know their own Bibles well enough to know we're quoting Scripture to them. And so it ends up being a battle of two wills. If you're trying to explain either to another Christian who's uninformed or to a non-Christian, get out your Bible and show them the verses they're talking about. So if they want to blow smoke back at you and they want to argue, say, well, look, you're not arguing with me. This is just what the Scripture says. If you don't want to believe it and obey it, that's your deal. But I'm just telling you that's what Scripture says. But sometimes you can go back and forth with a person and they'll say, well, I just talked to this really opinionated person today and they're just cramming all this Bible stuff at me. your authority is the Word of God. If you know the Word of God, take the people to the Word of God and help them to see this is the stuff you've made up. This is what God says. Their issue is with God, not with you. Their argument is really with God, not with you. Jesus has Scripture misquoted to him, and he said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you. Moses didn't command them. Oh, you found a flaw with your wife. She's out of here. Here's how you can divorce her. End of case. If push came to shove, and this person wouldn't deal with it, and they were unrepentant, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, prior to that, from the creation of marriage, it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, again, it's the catch-all phrase, pornea, covers a multitude of sexual sins that breaks the marriage bond, and then marries another, this person's committing adultery. Again, the Protestant and Reformed churches for the last 500 years have said there's only two biblical bases for divorce. The only two biblical devices for divorce is there some kind of sexual uncleanness came in and defiled the marriage. You have an unrepentant member who is involved with some kind of sexual sin and will not repent of it and will not keep the marriage bed holy. Or you have a person, an unbelieving spouse who leaves you in the cold and you're out there and that's the only other biblical case Protestant theologians have understood for divorce and remarriage. Perhaps that's not your conviction. It's the conviction of our church. It's the conviction I said of the majority that doesn't make it right. But I'm teaching you that except for separation by an unbelieving spouse who leaves you or sexual uncleanness that the person will not repent of. Those are the only two biblical basis for divorce and therefore you could not be remarried unless there was biblical basis for divorce. Please note. Jesus said any other type of divorce and remarriage amounts to legalized adultery. He didn't say, well, you know, you can divorce if there's irreconcilable differences. You know, you people just fight all the time. That's fine. He didn't say that. He didn't say if you're mutually incompatible. Years ago, we had a situation where a man was involved with an adulterous relationship and appeared to break it off for the time being. We were trying to help him rebuild his marriage. He was having an argument with his wife about how bad their marriage was and that's why he committed adultery. And she looked at him and I thought she did a great job because he's normally a quiet person and he was a good talker. And she said, I was involved in the same bad marriage with you and I didn't commit adultery. Having a bad marriage is not an excuse to commit adultery. Mutual incompatibility is not an excuse to commit adultery. Or our culture says, you know, the feeling is gone and I just can't get it back. So it's time to check out of this marriage and check into a new one. And that may make for popular songs. But a loss of love, as people understand in our culture, where the feelings aren't there, is not an excuse for divorce. Rather, it's a reason for you to burrow down and look in your own heart. and repent of your sins and ask the Lord to because you love him. I sat on a man's porch one time for two hours and argued with him why he shouldn't leave his wife. He says I don't love her anymore. I'm tired of her. And he had this long list of things she did and she was a real work. I said I'm not asking you if you love your wife. I haven't argued with you that she has major problems. You profess to be a Christian. Let's do the maybe the first honest heart check you've ever had. Do you love Jesus Christ? Then love this woman because you love Jesus Christ, even though to you right now she's not lovable, but because you love Christ, you're willing to work at loving her. He goes, I don't care. I'm self-consciously walking away from everything. And that man apostatized that afternoon. He would not love Christ. He would not show he loved Christ. He says, I don't have any feelings for this woman. And it's more important to me that I live with somebody that I have feelings about. And feelings come and go. How much sleep you had last night. How stuffy the air in the room is. How congested your sinuses might be. How tired you are. Love is not a feeling. Love is a committed covenantal action for the other's well-being. Number four as I'm going down in Matthew 19 verse 18. The rich young ruler came to do comes to Jesus as what must I do to be saved. And Jesus says well let's look at your heart and what he does is he quotes from the seventh commandment as well. You're not to commit adultery. Check. You're not to do this. Check. You're not to do this. Check. You know, Jesus is saying people who are truly members of the Heavenly Father's family want to be obedient children. Do you want to obey Him? He doesn't take you into His family so you can be a jubilant delinquent. He doesn't take you into the family so you can be the family rebel, where every time you come to a family gathering, here they are. They're the hardheads. They're the family rebel. They never really obey. There was a funeral that Pastor Rast attended work for a girl who committed suicide in a fit of anger against her parents because they wouldn't let her do what she wanted to do and she was always known as a rebel and her friends who spoke at her funeral talked about what she was a rebel and everything she was a rebel in sports at school she was a rebel in class she was a rebel in extracurricular activities she was a rebel at home and the youth pastors gave her a free pass into heaven because he said well she prayed the prayer when she was 12 and that made her a Christian God doesn't have permanent rebels in his household. If you want to have an attitude, he will take you out behind the woodshed, and he will teach you lessons about how the family runs, and he will discipline you so that you will be a loving, submissive child. But you will not be a rebel your whole Christian life. If you profess to be a Christian and you're a rebel, you're only deluding yourself. You're not a real Christian. Real Christians love their Heavenly Father. They love the commands of the Heavenly Father. They like how the Heavenly Father does family, and they want to be a loving, participating member of that family. So Jesus frisks the rich young ruler and says, well, do you do this? Do you do that? And he thought the seventh commandment about committing adultery was a worthy question to ask this young man. In fact, in Ezekiel 36, verses 26 and 27, the passage the Lord Jesus Christ had in mind when he chides Nicodemus in John 3, the famous passage about the new birth, and Nicodemus is going, I don't understand. I'm really old and how can I get back in my mother's womb and be born again? Jesus goes, Nicodemus, you are the leading theology teacher in Israel. In our English text it says, you are the teacher of Israel. Everybody knows you're the main man. And you don't understand the ABCs of the Old Testament? The new birth is not some esoteric, hidden under a rock teaching. It's very out there, very plain. Ezekiel 36, the promise that God was going to give people a supernatural new birth. And what would the new birth produce? Rebels? People who check in and out and rarely obey their Heavenly Father? Rarely obey the King of the Kingdom of God? No. He says this, when I give the new birth, when the Spirit does this, He will take out your stony, unresponsive heart and give you a new heart that loves me, that wants to obey me, that is moved to follow my commands. But you profess to be a Christian and you're almost never moved to obey His commands, then you're not really a Christian. And you need to pray for this new birth, this new heart, this new nature created within you. Fifth point Jesus makes is in John Chapter 8 and to encourage you adultery is not the unpardonable sin. Adultery is not the unpardonable sin. It is a great sin. It is a serious sin. It is a sin which can affect several people and hurt them dearly. But it's not the unpardonable sin. John Chapter 8. Did I say John 8 a minute ago or Matthew 8? Did I say? Okay, John 8 is where I want you to be. is a famous passage where a woman is caught in adultery and the Pharisees fling her at Jesus' feet. It says, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. Which says all kinds of questions like, right, and it's like, so who was spying on this to do that? That's not an easy thing to do. And by the way, where's the guy? But you know, they were self-righteous Pharisees and we've caught this woman and she had to have had a partner and so where is the guy? See they were very clever the Pharisees and men didn't really have these legal problems because they just got a free pass frequently from the machismo rabbis of the day. And so they caught the woman threw her at Jesus's feet and said OK the Old Testament penalty for adultery is for her to be stoned. And Jesus says fine let him who is without sin pick up and cast the first stone. They all just kind of look at the ground and kind of shuffle their feet and clear their throat. And nobody bends over and picks up any rocks. And it says that they left beginning with the oldest first. Because they had been sinners longer. They had committed more sins. But please note, he didn't give this woman a free pass. What does it say there in the last part of verse 8? He says, does nobody condemn you? Is nobody prepared to pick up rocks and stone you? I'm not going to stone you right now, but listen to me. Go and sin no more. You cannot return to your adulterous life. I'm not giving you a free pass that you think you can go sin and practice sin and make a habit of sin, but somehow you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can profess to be a believer and live a life of adultery. You cannot. And so our Lord is saying adultery is something that can be forgiven but you cannot keep engaging in adultery. The last time our Lord speaks about adultery and sexual sins that abuse the marriage is in the book of Revelation. It's easy to forget that the Gospels don't contain the only words of the risen Christ or the of our Savior on Earth. The book of Revelation is full of quotations. If you turn to Revelation chapter two, Jesus is speaking to seven churches and he's threatening to take the Holy Spirit away from them unless they repent. That there's sin going on in each of the churches that he's calling them to account for. And why he's speaking to these churches is that he's the Lord of the church. And I'm speaking through the messengers, through the pastors, to each church, and I'm telling you to repent of your sins. And in chapter 2, verse 14, what does our Lord have to say to the church in Pergamum, what is now Asia Minor or Turkey? He says in verse 14, But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, You remember Balaam was the Old Testament prophet who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food to sacrifice to idols and practice sexual immorality. Balaam was the one who was hired by Balak. We're looking for somebody to curse these Israelites. This giant army of Israelites is invading the promised land and we've heard what they're doing and we need a prophet and we need someone who will utter curses against them and somehow they'll be defeated in battle. And so Balaam is hired, and he goes out there to pronounce a curse upon them, and God will not let him do it. Every time his mouth opens up, all these blessings come out toward the Israelites. And Balaam goes, we're not paying you this hard currency to have you bless them. Let's review this. You curse, we pay. I'm sorry. And not only blessings come out, God will not let him curse the Israelites. But Balaam is a wicked man, and even though he says Good things when God opens his mouth, if God takes his hand off him, he's a wicked man who's for hire. And he says, Balak, you know, God won't let my mouth literally curse them. But you know what? I got a scheme and God will nuke them for you. Get their men to mess around with pagan women. Go out and seduce their boys. And God will be angry at them for marrying and committing sexual adultery with all these and committing fornication with all these foreign women. And he'll look for you. He'll judge them for you. And that's what Balak had his young men do. Had his young women do. And they seduced the young men of the Israelites. And God did judge them. That's exactly what happened. And the Old Testament says one of the most wicked men in the Old Testament one of the most clever sinners seeking to undermine the program of God was Balaam. And so Jesus is telling the church in Pergamum, you've got people in your church who are just as wicked as Balaam was, and saying, it's okay to be involved with what? It's okay to be involved with idols, and it's okay to practice porneia. You can watch pornography. You can be involved in all kinds of sexual weirdness, sexual things that abuse the marriage bed, and it's okay. It's okay. And Jesus is saying, it's not okay. And if these people don't repent of it and if you don't discipline them then I'm going to pull the plug on your church. Chapter 2 verse 20 through 23 the church in Thyatira. Different church similar problem. He says but I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel. I don't know that there was a woman in the church named Jezebel you know that was Ahab's wife in the Old Testament and she was one of the most wicked women in the Old Testament. I don't think too many Jewish women. I think it's actually a code name. I think Jesus is talking about this woman who is a false teacher who calls herself a prophetess. and is teaching and seducing my servants. I don't think the seduction necessarily is literal that she's also committing adultery with them, but I think it's a seduction by teaching. It's like watching these heretical women on television and on the Heresy Channel and listening to the garbage that they teach. These women were teaching, seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality. In other words, it's okay for Christians to be involved in sex. Christians don't have to be pure. You don't have to save yourself for marriage. You can be involved in all this garbage. There was the heretical church, Chapel Hill Harvester, has its pastor, has been exposed several times for being involved in the most lascivious sins imaginable with various people in this congregation. And there's still people who go there every week, and this has been going on for 10 years. Horrible, terrible things. to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Apparently she was involved in some kind. Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed. I'm going to physically strike her sick. And those who commit adultery with her, whether he's speaking of spiritual or literal, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. And so a congregation was tolerating various kinds of sexual misconduct in the church, and that's okay. In Revelation chapter 21 verses 1 through 8 and chapter 22, our Lord ends the book of Revelation by saying this, He's saying you cannot practice adultery. You cannot practice porneia, sexual immorality, and be a real Christian. You're not going to heaven. He says it twice in one and a half chapters. Read my ellipse. You are not a Christian if you habitually practice sexual uncleanness and think that you can be a true Christian. You can't sleep around and think that's OK. You can't commit all kinds of sexual weirdness and think that's OK. In Chapter 21, beginning In verse 1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So here's a vision of what is coming. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. As we've said before, this is the repeated language of the Bible about the covenant. I'm having this relationship with you. You are my people. I am your God. We will be forever united. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Those are some precious promises that all believers look forward to. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new, the new heavens and the new earth. Also, he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. That's Christ speaking. To the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. Are you thirsty for eternal life? Do you want eternal life? Jesus says, I'll give it to you and it won't cost you a penny. Ask me for it. I will give it to you. I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. I've made the payment. You must want it. The one who conquers, the one who perseveres to the end, will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, I don't want Christ because I might get grief from my friends. The faithless, I'm not going to believe this. The detestable, people who are involved with all kinds of filth. As for murderers, the sexually immoral and who are unrepentant of it. Sorcerers, that's people involved in the occult. Idolaters, all chronic liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. He's saying, you can't be a practicer of these sins and think you're going to heaven. You're deceived. You're still on your way to hell. In chapter 22, he says it again. In verses 12 through 15, he says, in a different way, he says, who are those people who are outside of heaven who aren't going to heaven? Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, my payback with me, to repay everyone for what he has done. and the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Has your stinking unrighteousness, have the robes of your unrighteousness been stripped off and are you wearing the righteousness of Christ? That is your certificate to heaven. You will not get to heaven unless you're wearing the righteousness of Christ. Outside, people who aren't in the city, who aren't in heaven, outside are the dogs, That's a figure of speech, but people who are unclean and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral, all those involved in porneia of various kinds and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. You cannot be a habitual sinner like this and think you're going to heaven. My people don't wallow in their sins. A pig returns to its wallow, but my people don't return to their wallow. Let's conclude by looking at what the Christ apostle Paul says. Paul has a few things to say. This is sobering stuff, but we live in a day when filth is rampant, people despise the biblical guidelines for marriage, and everybody, you know, the number of people today who think that sex is a recreation sport and not something for the beauties of marriage have defiled marriage in America, and there are people, multitudes of people who profess to be Christians and live like cats and dogs. If you go back to the book of Romans, chapter 13, the Apostle Paul reestablishes the sanctity of the seventh commandment And he says, you don't understand. You people who say, I don't have to follow commands. I just love Jesus. And I'm just ruled by love. And just legalistic people need commands. I'm just full of love. That sounds spiritual. But it sounds very contemporary. We're the love generation. We're not the legalistic law people. We're the love people. Well, that's not what Paul says. Romans 13, verses 9 and 10. He's dealing with how can you tell if you're really loving The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, we just talked about that, the seventh commandment. You shall not murder, that was the sixth. You shall not steal, that's coming up. You shall not covet, that's number ten. And any other commandments are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. How can I tell when I have the love of Christ ruling in my heart? Because I don't steal from you. And I don't kill you. And I don't commit adultery with your wife. And I don't lie to you. And I don't covet your stuff. That's love. It's not, huh, I feel ooey gooey for you. Like, ah, what is that? But our culture says we don't need love. We don't really need law. We just have love. And love is blind without the law of God to show it how to express itself. You want people, all the perverts in the world, to say, this is love to me. Well, the limits, the parameters that God puts on love show what real love is. And everything else that claims to be love that doesn't fit into God's parameters is false. It's an imposter. How can I tell when I'm loving you, when I'm fulfilling God's laws toward you? Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Paul's again writing to pagans who had become Christians and they didn't instantly become spiritual giants and they had to deal with a lot of the garbage that they still were losing into their lives from the culture. First Corinthians 6 beginning in verse 15. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ. You're united to Christ. Shall I take them the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute. Can a Christian go to a prostitute. Never do you not know that he who was joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her for it as it is written the two shall become one flesh. That's the idea for your sexual union. But he was joined to the Lord has become one spirit with him becomes one spirit with him. So flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body so to speak. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Christ purchased you. You're in union with Christ, you're polluting Christ when you have sex with a prostitute. You're sinning against your own body, a Christ bought body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? He says, if you've forgotten that Christ purchased you, have you also forgotten that the Holy Spirit indwells you? You can't pollute this temple. This isn't a temple made of marble. This is a temple of your body. It's been cleansed by the blood of Christ. The Holy Spirit doesn't live in the temple in Jerusalem anymore. He lives in cleansed human temples that have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. The temple in Jerusalem was cleansed by the blood of lambs and doves and bullocks. Our temple has been cleansed by the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And the Holy Spirit now dwells here. And you're going to take this temple and you're going to pollute it with a prostitute? He says, what were you thinking? Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Boy, just exactly what our pagan culture needs to hear. Well, let's keep going. Ephesians chapter 5. We're just going to look at a couple of verses here. I'm belaboring these commandments because it's so important that we understand the truth. We live in such a cesspool in our culture. And people act as if they've been hit over the head with a hammer and have no sense of right and wrong. And I'm not thinking that you guys are living in lascivious relationships, but you talk to people who are. You have talked to people who tempt you to. You talk to people who are at work or at school who act like, you know, sexual perversions is nothing than a preference of being left-handed or right-handed. In Ephesians chapter 5, in a verse that I think very few expositors have done adequate work for, and I'm not going to be the one to do the adequate work, at the end of discussing husband and wife relationships, the husband is the head of the home. He's to love his wife sacrificially. He's to love his wife like he loves his own body, practically. He's to, if necessary, lay down his life as Christ, lay down his life for his bride. You're to do that for your bride, and the wife is to respond to the bridegroom this way. And then he says in verse 32, this mystery is profound. It's a mind stretcher. You can meditate on this mystery for the rest of your earthly life and not plumb its depths. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. There's something about a man and his wife, the bride and the bridegroom, which is analogous to Christ's relationship with his bride, the church. And if you understand how Christ and his bride relates and how Christ sacrifices for her washes her keeps her watches out for her provides for her and the special union and her response to him. You will understand how a husband and wife should function in marriage. Paul is lifting up Christian marriage and saying it's this high and holy thing. It's not simply it's better to marry than to burn which he says in other places as true better to marry than be consumed with sexual lust. But marriage is not legalized prostitution. Marriage is this thing which sex is an expression of the glories of marriage, but it's not the only thing or even the main thing. It is a thing and an important thing and a precious thing, but not the main thing. And look at what the culture has done. It's reduced sex to marriage. How can you tell a movie of a couple's in love? Because now you see them under the sheets together. That's how the culture thinks love is. The culture doesn't know anything about the true glories of marriage. And Paul says, this is a profound thing. It's like Christ, the bride and bridegroom and his bride, the church. Well, these aren't the only things that Paul has to say. And Paul has to go in each of his letters, he has a warning. Almost every one of Paul's letters, he says, don't misunderstand me. I understand that you've come from some pretty bad places. You cannot continue to wallow in these sin habits and think you're a real Christian. Because real Christians will struggle and deal with their sins, and they will seek to put their sins to death. They will not habitually wallow in their sins the rest of their Christian life. Please turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. There's five warnings I want to look at briefly. And you can tell people, say, well, Miss Goody Two-Shoes, Mr. Self-Righteous, that's just your opinion. And Paul says, no, Mr. Hardhead or Ms. Hardhead, read my lips. You cannot indulge sexual immorality, pornea, adultery, and think you're a real Christian. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 9 through 13. I'm in the wrong Corinthians. Let's try the right Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 5, 9 through 13. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Again, this is the Greek word for people who are involved with sexual perversions of any kind outside of biblical marriage. Not at all, meaning the sexually immoral of the world any more than the greedy or swimmers and idolaters. Since then, you would need to go out of the world. He's saying, I'm not saying you can't ever have a meal with a sinner because there's nobody but sinners to have meals with. But what? Now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother. They profess to be a Christian. If he is guilty of sexual immorality or is known to be a greedy man or is an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard or a swindler. Here's a person with a dual reputation. They profess to be a Christian and they live like a hellion. He says you can't even eat a fellowship meal with this person. You can have a cup of coffee with them while you're trying to witness to them, while you're trying to show them the scripture. But in the scriptures, to sit down together as a fellowship meal, as brothers and sisters in Christ, you cannot do because you're saying, they're a real Christian, they're not in question, that's how Christians live. And that muddies the water. It muddies the water. People become confused. He says, for what do I have to do with judging outsiders? I'm not going to stand in judgment day about people who are outside the church, who are still lost. He says is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge in other words exercise church discipline. God judges those outside a judgment day purge the evil person from among you. You are tolerating in the church of Corinth a man whose father died and now he's living with his stepmother. And you think that's OK. That's a biblical perversion and you knew it. And you were actually boasting about that. We're such a broad minded church that we have all kinds of people in our church. And that's fine. We're a very forgiving people. Paul says no you're not. You're not broad minded. You're not big hearted. You've lost your Christian mind. You're outside the laws of God. This is how love is expressed. Love does no wrong to his brother. Love keeps the commandments for his brother. You cannot do this sexual perversion and thinking it's OK. And then over in Chapter 6, Paul even becomes more blunt. Look at Chapter 6, verse 9 and 10. Do you not know that the unrighteous The word righteous means law breaking law abiding law keeping unrighteous means law breaking. He says Do you not know that the law breakers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now what is the phrase will not inherit mean you're not on your way to heaven. You're not going to glory. You're not going to wake up to Christ's favor. You're going to wake up to Christ's wrath as your judge yourself deceived. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Do not be deceived. Don't deceive yourself. Don't let some false teacher deceive you. Neither the sexually immoral, again that's that word pornea, people who are involved with sex outside the bounds of Christian marriage, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, and there's two Greek words there for both the effeminate and the more masculine in the homosexual relationship, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. He says you can't live like that. You cannot habitually live like that. You cannot wallow in these sins and think you're a real Christian. Real Christians repent. Look over at Ephesians chapter 5. He has to warn the Ephesians. Ephesus was a church that had become out of sorcery and witchcraft. Remember when they finally came to faith in Christ, it says that they burned this giant pile of all their occult trappings, all their trinkets, amulets, tarot cards, all their Ouija boards, all the paraphernalia of the occult world. They had a pile that was so big it was estimated that it was 50,000 Denarii and a denarii was what a working man a blue collar man who worked in the first century equivalent of a factory made for a day's work. That's 50,000 days wages of occult stuff was burned. They had a lot of things they were involved in. What does Paul tell them in Ephesians 5 beginning in verse 5. For you may be sure of this. You can take it to the bank that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or his covetous that is an idolater he lives for his box has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things because of the sexual immorality impurity idolatry etc because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience The Sons of Disobedience is not a term for a hard headed Christian. The Sons of Disobedience is a phrase for unbelievers and people who profess to be believers but who are self deceived and think they are but are still wallowing in their sins. They're called Sons of Disobedience. You and I know as Christians we do not obey the Lord like we'd like to. But if we do not make it our practice to wallow in our sins and never repent of them. If you're a cruel Christian you will repent. First Corinthians Chapter 4 verses 3 through 8. 1 Corinthians 4, verses 3 through 8. We read this stunning passage last week. This is the will of God, your sanctification. This is the will of God that you be holy. As the author of Hebrews says, no matter what you say with your mouth, if you don't want to be holy in your heart, if that's not your heart's desire, you're not a real Christian because God's children want to be like their Heavenly Father. They want to put to death their sins. They want to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. Christians don't do that. A real Christian doesn't. And if they fall into it, they repent and they come back out of it. They stay in it. They're not a real Christian. That each of you know how to control his own body, his own vessel in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. They just live as cats and dogs. If they feel like doing it, they do it. That no one transgress, break God's law and wrong his brother in this manner. Sometimes it says defraud rather than wrong, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. Again, we said the imagery was from the Book of Numbers when the nation of Israel was just being settled. It was sparsely populated. There were no cities. There were no civil governments. There was a few towns. They were set up as cities of refuge and if something terrible was done to a member of your family, Your family could appoint the avenger of blood who would go after the perpetrator, and he could pursue this person wherever he found them. He could take vengeance upon the crime. But if they fled to a city of refuge, these cities of refuge, the elders of the city would adjudicate the crime, and you couldn't touch a hair on their head until the elders decided this is what the law allows in this case. But Paul's bringing up the question, but what if it's not a member of somebody's family? You defrauded that person? You did so-and-so to his brother or his sister? They're not. They didn't send a family member after you. God says I'm the Avenger. You mess with my people. I will avenge it. An Easter of 1994. I got a phone call which stunned me and stunned the elders. A pastor who was sexually abusing women in his congregation. and who had been confronted and was and was not submitting to the discipline of the church and was not and was controlling his own so-called repentance and wouldn't let the elders find out although one elder knew and wouldn't tell his wife wouldn't come clean wouldn't stop. And I get a phone call. He was supposed to have repented. He was supposed to have come clean but he wouldn't. He was managing his own situation and he was in another country and he was speaking on Christian marriage. And a robber came to the door because, you know, all Americans are rich, especially Baptist pastors. So that's a little humor. So anyway, the pastor came to the door, and a man comes to the door with a sawed-off shotgun and says, have your wife come out and bring all of her jewels. So you know that wasn't a Baptist pastor. So his wife comes up, and this guy doesn't know what to do, and maybe it's not quite sure what happened, but the guy's gun went off, and from 18 inches away, he blew away this guy's knee. And he was medivaced from this other country to the United States for medical treatment. He wouldn't deal with his sin. He wouldn't listen to the elders who were trying. He wouldn't tell the other elders. He wouldn't tell his wife. He wouldn't stop picking on God's people and abusing them. And verbally, he would say things in the pulpit as clues to those people that I'm still in control and you dare not say anything. And so, God takes him out while he's visiting another country, hypocritically speaking, in Christian marriage, and his leg is forever changed, and his life is forever changed. God is the avenger. He will take care of those who abuse his people. And finally, in Hebrews chapter 13, we'll quit here. Hebrews chapter 13, one verse, verse 4. The author of Hebrews is wrapping up this long letter to these Jewish Christians to persevere. Don't turn back. Don't go back to Judaism. If you do there's no hope for you. And he's wrapping up in chapter 13 with a checklist. By the way don't forget this and don't forget this and don't forget this. Chapter 13 verse 4. Let marriage be held in honor among all. Do you hold marriage in honor. You singles, are you saving yourself for Christian marriage because it's God's great gift to you and it's God's great gift to the world, but they don't care about it. But are you saving yourself for Christian marriage such that you want to be God's man or God's woman in purity in this relationship? Are you keeping yourselves pure? Let marriage be held an honor among all. Well, are you married? Are you guarding your marriage? Are you keeping your marriage pure? And let the marriage bed be undefiled. Don't drag garbage, don't drag sewage into your marriage bed. For God will judge the sexually immoral, the people involved in pornea, and adulterous. If you're involved in sexual perversions outside of Christian marriage, and if you're involved in wrong relationships in marriage, God will judge you if you don't repent of it. These are all warning passages. I belabored the point because we live among so many people who you say thou shalt not commit adultery. And they've got a thousand ways around that. And the scriptures are very clear. You cannot live that way and be a true Christian. If you're a true Christian, God will ratchet up the pain and ratchet up the conviction until you will repent. But you can't live in sin perpetually and be a real Christian. Children of God repent. Tools don't. What's a tool? You can be a professing Christian. You can be one of the first members of a church. You can be a pastor or an elder for a period of time. God can use you like you use tools. I have a pegboard in my garage and my tools hang there. Not many, but they're there. And so when I get a tool, I go take it down and I work it, work with it. And what do I get when I'm through with it? I leave the tool on the pegboard or leave it on the workbench and I go back in the house. It's just something you use for a period of time. Balaam was a tool. Judas was a tool. He was not truly a believer. They were not born again. They were not supernaturally changed. They're just somebody God used. Judas cast out demons. Judas preached the gospel. But he wasn't a real believer. He was a tool. But a son, he's a son forever. He repents of his sin. How do you show that you're a son or a daughter? You're a lifelong repenter. If you're not a lifelong repenter, at any point in your life, you stop repenting and say, no, I don't need to repent anymore. I'm in. Uh uh. Because you will be a sinner your whole life and you need to repent your whole life. Let me close with hope. This is a very sober. I hope it was sober for you. It's sober for me. It causes me to examine my heart and the purity of my heart and the edges of my life. For you singles, I hope that you look at your life very carefully. For parents to help your children. Go back to 1 Corinthians 6. It's a passage I read two verses, but I didn't read the third verse. and a passage of hope. Does God save people involved in sexual immorality and adultery. Yes he does. First Corinthians 6 9 10 and 11. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Yeah we read that lawbreakers aren't going to go to heaven. Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice both halves of sexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. Who made up the church in Corinth? People who used to be homosexuals, people who used to be adulterers, people who used to be involved in sexual cornea, people who used to be covetous, greedy men, people who used to be drunkards. Christ changed them. And such were some of you. Everybody in this room who is a Christian is in that verse. I was guilty of breaking all ten of the commandments. And such was I. But then look at the great hope and how did this happen? Well, just read the verses. But you were washed. How were you washed? Well, do you know there's a detergent better than Tide, better than any other detergent, better than Oxy, whatever. It's the blood of Christ, which can not only take away the guilt of your sin, but the stain of your sin. And God can give you a new heart that doesn't want to do that sin anymore, as revolted at the thought of it. But you were washed. The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin. It is the super detergent. Now, I'm speaking symbolically. There's nothing magic about the blood of Christ. It's not a literal detergent. But it is God's appointed means of cleansing from the guilt of the shame of sin. But you were justified. God only washed your sins. He says you can have the righteousness of my son. It is if you never sinned at all and you have this huge mound of positive righteousness. The only people going to heaven are people who have all their sins purged and have positive righteousness to be in the presence of the righteous God. You will have the righteousness of Christ. You will be wearing the robes of Christ's righteousness instead of the filthy, stinking rags of all the sins that you've committed, all the laws you have broken, all the befallments you have done to your own being. It says you were justified. God gave you Christ's righteousness and placed your sins upon Christ. But you were justified. How? In the name of Christ. This one person, Jesus Christ, can forgive sins and give you His own righteousness. For God made Him who knew no sin. When? When did He do this? He made Him sin on the cross. For God made Him who knew no sin to become sin. That we, believing sinners, vile, helpless, dirty, befouled with our own filth, that we, believing sinners, might become the righteousness of God in Him. He gets my sin, my terrible sin. I get his righteousness, really and truly, and so I can go into God's presence now and for the rest of eternity because I come in Christ. And the Spirit of God is the one who helps you to believe it, empowers you to do it. I don't care what sins you have committed and how many times, I can tell you on the authority of God's Word, this is true of you if you believe in Jesus Christ. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. Let's pray.