Morning. Our passage today is Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. I want to encourage you to turn there with me and let's stand as we read God's holy, inspired, authoritative word for us today, Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. You shall not commit adultery. Let's pray. Father, we do pray that you would help us to understand everything that we've read In these 10 commandments, help us to appreciate the spirit of these commands of yours, to dig down deep and see where they're being reflected in our own heart attitudes. We pray that for this morning as well. Help us to be introspective, to think about our own minds, hearts, bodies. Help us to be transformed by your word. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Well, imagine that we did not have the 10 commandments and you were tasked to sit down and determine what you thought should go on God's top 10 list. Would you include you should not or you shall not commit adultery? Why or why not? Why did God include it? I think that's an important question for us to ask today. Why did God include that one as one of the top 10? Well, what we find in God's word is that marriage is one of the great institutions ordained by God to visibly model his love for his bride, the church. It is therefore in Satan's interest to mar and disfigure marriage. Adultery is one of his great weapons. Commentator Philip Riken writes, adultery is the greatest sexual sin because it violates the trust Between a husband and wife, it breaks the marriage covenant, a promise made before God, and for this reason, adultery does more damage than other forms of sexual sin. So God determined that an adulterer is worthy of death. A man who will betray his wife will betray anyone and anything. Adultery is treason against the family, and God hates adultery. It's also treason against Christ, against one's own body. In 1 Corinthians 6, starting with verse 15, Paul writes, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 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. And there's an urgency in this letter to the church at Corinth. For just outside this town of Corinth stood a pagan temple that was dedicated to the worship of Aphrodite, a temple that housed 1,000 prostitute priestesses whose services were part of pagan worship. Adultery was not immoral to the men of Corinth and other cities. On the contrary, it was considered good. It was spiritual. In Corinth, men didn't have to sneak around on their wives. They just went to church. But in the Greek way of thinking, the body and soul were two separate mutually exclusive realities. They had little to do with the other, and what you did with your body had nothing to do in the Greek mind with your soul as far as philosophy was concerned. So many pagans who converted to Christianity struggled with this thought. They thought it was still fine to worship God with their soul, on the day of worship, but the rest of the week, do whatever they wanted with the body, including still making an occasional trip to the temple of Aphrodite. And so Paul told the Corinthians, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. So contrary to what many in that culture believed, God does care about the body. He has purchased yours with the blood of his son. and he has filled it with the Holy Spirit, and he has given strict instructions on what to do with it. And some of those instructions are in 1 Corinthians and other books. They are specific. They are given for our protection and pleasure, not for our punishment. And as we saw with the commandment against murder last week, adultery begins with a sinful perspective that manifests itself in other areas of our lives. typically before it ever results in adultery. Most adulterous relationships don't start with an affair. They start with inappropriate intimacy. The seventh commandment thus forbids a married man to flirt with a woman who is not his wife and vice versa or a single man or woman to get close to someone else's current or I would argue future spouse. It forbids a married woman from seeking emotional support from some other man, whether at church, or work, or some chat room, putting it more positively, the seventh commandment requires husbands and wives to nurture their love for one another in every aspect. And all of that is why Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, just as he did when talking about the motive that leads to murder, manifesting itself first in sinful anger and divided relationships, he then turned next to adultery and said these words in Matthew 5, 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. And we have to keep asking this question. Is Jesus changing the commandments given by Moses? Not at all. He is addressing what we might call the spirit of the law. The Sermon on the Mount explains that when believers are led by the Lord and indwelt by his spirit, that they are able to look at the law with new eyes. They can see that the law is not just a written code of do's and don'ts or a series of four or five word commands. Instead, believers walking in the spirit ask why and how particular commands of God reflect his character. What would Jesus do? Of course, he wouldn't commit adultery, but is that the sum total of this command? What does the prohibition against adultery reveal about God? How does it address our hearts? Well, the command to not commit adultery reveals that we must be faithful in deed and in thought and word. Just like murder, adultery begins in the mind. You find yourself thinking about what you want, what you deserve, what you need, and by what all rights you should have. And the word adultery means to mix something of inferior quality in with something of superior quality to make the entirety impure. And that's a good word for the spirit of this command. Adultery is what happens when we allow the purity of heart and mind, either with regard to our spouse or to the Lord, to be compromised and mixed with impurity. And that impurity does not typically happen overnight. When we say he fell into adultery or she was overtaken by the relationship, these statements simply aren't biblically true. more deeply examined most immoral relationships, it becomes apparent that there were many opportunities to cut them off, to flee from them, but these were ignored. They were rejected. What really happened is that there were a series of lines that were crossed or compromised, line after line, deception invited in here and ultimately accepted there. Rationalization soon followed, allowing the mind to be creative and providing justification and excuse, and the pure steadily mixed with the impure became adulterated. So what do we do? Is there hope? Yes, and the first place to start is where Job started. We start with the eyes. Job told his friends that he had made a covenant with his eyes not to look upon a young woman. And what he meant was that he had made a decision early on to avert his glance when he believed he might be tempted. You need to remember that the battle for the soul rests squarely between your eyes and your mind. But the Bible also notes that those eyes of yours are lamps of your body. And if your eye is healthy, then your body and your mind will be full of light. But if they are unhealthy, meaning that if they are feasting on that which is evil, then your body and mind will be filled with darkness. So a good question this morning is what are your eyes feasting upon? They are under constant assault because our society has given itself over to sensuality and perversion. The average American between internet, television, movies, printed material, day-to-day public interaction, views sexual material, experiences sexual material more than 10,000 times a year is what the polls say these days. That's 30 times a day. If that or something even remotely close to it is true of you, do you give the second glance? And by second glance, I refer to the fact that you often do not have control over what initially comes into your line of sight. You aren't contaminated or adulterated just because you happen to see something when you aren't looking for it. However, you are responsible for how many times and how long you continue to look at it. So will you make a covenant with your eyes? A second step in maintaining purity in body and mind and soul is to bring your sins into the light And that's at least a two-part process. The first being to confess your sins to the Lord and repent from them. And to confess is to agree with the Lord that you have sinned. But how many times have you apologized to the Lord in prayer and said that you have sinned but you're not truly brokenhearted? Are you truly agreeing that what you did was transgress and offend the perfect and holy God? that your sin contributed to the death of his son and in fact would result in your death but for the gracious mercy of Christ who has substituted himself on your behalf. Are you agreeing with that? That's what it means to confess and yet some of you may not think that sexual sin is all that serious. Like I said earlier, you might not have included adultery as one of the top 10. Have you been tempted or undergone trial lately, particularly in the area of faithfulness and sexual purity? Have you taken that temptation seriously? If not, then it may be because we all struggle with the tendency to see our lives in these much fainter strokes and paler colors, if you will, than the Bible presents. The Bible says that life is warfare. And yet, day after day, we live largely unconscious of what's going on around us, that we are actually surrounded by enemies, that the devil is prowling about like a lion, that we are in the thick of combat, that we are living on a battlefield strewn with the carnage of spiritual war. And because we think of our lives as much smaller and ordinary, we pass through days and weeks and years ignorant of that which ought to be engaging us all the time, this fight, for the purity of God, the honor of God, the glory of God, the beauty of the relationship of marriage and more. We don't treat life as a global fight on the Lord's side and the battle for what is right and holy and good, knowing that things that we do impact more than just ourselves in this moment, in the present. They impact the people around us. They impact the people in the future. And so we think it's okay to fail here and there because it's just me in this little corner of the world. I don't really matter and there are not really any long lasting consequences. But what you love, what you do, what you think does matter and it either brings glory to or shame against your great God. So take sin seriously. Confess. Agree with what your sin is. And then repent, which means to go into a different direction. It's a heartfelt commitment that flows out of a heart of agreement to say, I'm going to guard myself better. I'm going to make a different decision. And then I said it was a two-part process, and that second part is bringing your sins into the light by confessing to one another. It may be to a spouse, it may be to a trusted friend, even an elder. James 5.16 says, confess your sins to one another, pray for one another that you may be healed. And the key to realize here is that the benefit of accountability with someone you trust is great in the kingdom of God. And the person whom you become vulnerable to must be spiritually mature enough to handle that trust, but let's be realistic here too. Just as we were talking with confession, accountability will only be effective if you truly want to be accountable. Are you willing to be vulnerable with a trusted individual? Are you convicted enough and broken enough over your sin to be honest and consistent and forthcoming? It's too easy to sneak around and make those who hold you accountable think that everything is fine. Thankfully, you cannot hide from God. So one was make a covenant with your eyes. Two was confess your sins to the Lord and repent. Three, if you will, or two and a half was to make yourself accountable to someone trustworthy and mature. And next is recognize that God intends so much more for you than you are willing to settle for. What do I mean by that? What I mean is whenever we come to this topic, usually you will expect me to say the things that I just said. Those are the negative prohibitions and the do nots, right? Guard yourself, make a covenant with your eyes, I want you to also think about the other side. God intends so much more than you are willing to settle for. For you married men and women, it means that God intends your marriage to be a deep well of joy and satisfaction as it mirrors the relationship of Christ to his bride, the church. It means that in becoming one as a couple, there is something profoundly revealing about the oneness of the Trinity. Not that you become one in essence as our triune God is one, but that you understand some of that intertwining of purpose, of mind, of heart, and love that is shared by the three persons of the triune God, this beautiful dance, this perichoresis as it sometimes is talked about in theology. Why would we want to bring something impure into something so amazing and beautiful as that? Well, typically we do so because we don't see our marriages in that way as amazing and beautiful. Instead, we evaluate our marriages based upon the level to which our spouse cares about us or lives up to our expectations. And so, I'll also say this third idea is even harder for you singles because it requires you to anticipate a potential future marriage and be committed to not adulterate that future blessed relationship by compromising yourself beforehand. Now, parents, you can help your children in this area, help them to think biblically, guard against their tendency to simply indulge themselves. If you're allowing long periods of self-indulgence with video games and television, if you're giving in to their demands because it's too hard to wrestle with them constantly, you may be gaining yourself a short-term peace at the expense of their future struggle with self-control. Why do most young men and women often just look at the most attractive people of the opposite sex? Because they're thinking about their own desires. Why are they so prone to be drawn by pornography? Because they've not had to say no to their flesh. Helping our children think about self-control in this area, helping them to understand what God intends in the amazing and beautiful relationship of pure monogamous marriage not only helps them to remember the proper context, a sexual relationship within the protection of marriage, it helps them to remember the proper purpose to be united to a godly spouse for the purpose of extending and expanding God's kingdom. And most important to our topic this morning, it helps them guard against their own selfishness. When you have been trained to discipline and resist the flesh throughout your childhood, you are that much more ready for the difficult challenges ahead. So remind your children and yourselves that your goal in life, according to 2 Corinthians 5.15, is that we no longer live for ourselves. but for Him who died for us and was raised again. 2 Corinthians 5.15, you no longer live for yourself, but for Him who has died and is raised again. And may that be your banner cry. Jesus died for me, and I who live, I no longer live for myself, but for Him who for my sake died and was raised. I owe everything to Jesus. I owe it to Him to make serving Him my consuming passion and the focus of my life. And when we have that attitude, then the very next verse from what I had said a moment ago is, therefore, after saying, I'm not going to, I'm no longer going to live for myself but for Him who died and was raised on my behalf, then He says, therefore, I regard no one according to the flesh. Do you see how the natural progression goes? I don't see myself according to the flesh anymore. I no longer live, but I live for him who died and was raised for me. Therefore, I'm no longer also going to regard anyone else according to the flesh. I am going to be convinced that God has a plan, and that everything around me, the people that have been made in His image have an inherent respect, dignity, do my honor, and that I want to protect their purity. I want to encourage them to live for Christ. I do not want to see them as objects to fulfill my desires. And it's just this attitude that sees everything on a different plane. And then in 2 Timothy 2, Paul says, flee youthful lusts or passions. Some of the versions say flee youthful lusts. You might ask, what is lust? Lust is an uncontrolled desire for something. It does not have to be just lust in the context of the seventh commandment. It could also be a lust for money, or for power, or for food, or whatever. And with regard to adultery, Proverbs 7 says this, at the window of my house, I have looked out through my lattice, and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths a young man lacking sense. passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness. With much seductive speech, she persuades him. With her smooth talk, she compels him. All at once, he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver As a bird rushes into a snare, he does not know that it will cost his life. Do you see the perspective? This is what I'm talking about. When I look at 2 Corinthians 5, 16, and I see that verse, and I'm reminded that we no longer see others according to flesh. Not only do I see others in the way that God has made them, but I also see sin in its proper perspective. And as Solomon is looking out and he's seeing this, it seems so normal. The young man at twilight who's kind of hiding his actions done for the day. Solomon doesn't see him as just normal. He sees him as an ox being led to the slaughter. He sees him as simple. Seems as to be lacking sense In other words, he is a man who is uncontrolled in his lusts, and therefore he is like an animal. He may feel that he is a virile man sneaking around in the dark, but he is a prisoner who is enslaved by his lust. Those are not positive descriptions, just in case Solomon wasn't clear. And you do not want to think of yourself in this way. Because you can easily substitute the context, friends, with sneaking off to the internet or other types of context. Do not be oxen led to the slaughter. Do not be devoid of sense. If you will follow the things that we found in Scripture today to make covenants with your eyes, confess your sins to God and one another, to recognize that God intends so much more for you, and you are poised to flee from these youthful lusts that unfortunately stick around far more than our youths if we are not careful, then we are ready for what Paul writes in Colossians 3, 5, which is, put to death therefore what is earthly in you. We're not just The intent in God's sanctification program and maturity of believers is not that our life is marked by fleeing from this passionate moment. It's still struggle, struggle, struggle, and they're fleeing from that passionate moment. The ideal is that what is happening more and more is that we're actually putting to death. these things that are earthly in us. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness. Notice that the Bible does not say that you are putting to death biological desire. Rather, you're putting to death the evil desire of sexual immorality. Before we became regenerated, that's what you were dominated by. But when the old man, as the Bible says, was crucified with Christ, that dominion was ended. You do not have to see yourself as just that lustful person who will never get over it. You just carry it around, you flee from each moment to a moment. You also have to be careful, lest in your pride you be susceptible to fall. But there is the hope. that the old man was crucified with Christ. There is the hope of victory. There is the hope of progress. Of sanctification. In which the dominion has ended. The old desires, they're becoming weaker. In Romans 6-12, Paul says, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. You don't just have to flee the moment. Start to make your body Obey the Lord so that you don't obey your passions. The Apostle Peter adds, Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles, abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul. And there's a part of that solution that I was talking about earlier. You take seriously, take seriously the passions that are of the past. Know that they are waging war against your soul. Fight, do not let them reign. Remember that Christ was crucified for you and that the old man was crucified with him. Now the Bible also tells us that if a person denies that he has such lusts altogether, he can be self-deceived or a liar, so the fight is real. Like I said, pride, can come before a fall. I think it's important for men and women to remember that this fight is real. The battle is constant. The enemy would like nothing more than to cause you to fail. And yet, you can still have hope. Remember that you have the Pericle. You have the Helper who walks alongside of you. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. God is watching your eyes. He is pondering your path. Whether those paths lead to the internet or to a man or to a woman, Remember, and friends listen to this, there is no place you can hide yourself, your mind, or your heart in secret from the eyes of the Lord who knows everything. And it may be seeming like, as we've seen with every single commandment, that the more we talk about this, the more it feels like the weight is starting to feel heavy. It may seem again that the 10 commandments are the 10 impossibilities. And if they are weighing you, then here's some good news. If you've not heard it already in the fact that God has intended for your relationships to be amazing and beautiful, if you've not heard it yet already in remembering that God indwells you through his Holy Spirit and wants you to succeed, remember first that Paul tells Titus that the grace of God, particularly the grace given through his word, will teach you to deny lust. So there is a great hope that God has already implanted a weapon in His Word for you. You just need to reach out and take it, friends. It's ready for you to tap into, so read His Word. Pray for the strength of the Spirit. He will teach you, it says, to say no to ungodliness. Remind yourself daily that you are the blood-bought son or daughter of the King of kings. He died to save you from sin. Will He not also live to preserve you, to protect you, to empower you? When you are conscious of your weakness, you become strong. How? Because you are more prayerful. You are more dependent upon God. You are more likely to turn and tap into His Word, and thus God's strength comes to your aid and fortifies you in the very areas where you are most vulnerable. Second, self-control is possible. It's a fruit of the Spirit. The standard may be impossible, but with God's gracious strength and your willingness to train yourselves in godliness, you will see progress. And each time you resist taking the second glance, each time you decide to filter what you watch on television, each time you put those ad blockers on the computer browsers, each time you stop yourself In that relational conversation from going to inappropriate places, you become stronger. Don't let your motto be that of Oscar Wilde who said the best way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it. That is not your motto. It cannot be your motto. The best way to get rid of a temptation is to give in to it. No. Rather, the love of God, the cross of Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, the danger of grieving our Master, the damage to our own souls, the unworthiness of sin, the calling of our lives, all should make the quest for purity a hill to die on. And third, this is really encouraging, I think, God is faithful. He is faithful in spite of a faithless people. The book of Hosea is such a beautiful picture of it. It's easy to read, especially the first chapters of Hosea, and be angry with Hosea's adulterous wife, Gomer. But Gomer is a picture of us. We, the adulterous in our affection and love for God, are Gomer. And we walked after other idols. Sometimes we still do. But God had Hosea continue to seek after his wife. And then he had Hosea write down the story. Sometimes we forget that part, right? God had Hosea write down the story. Not only did he intervene in Hosea's life in this way, but then he said, I want you to tell other people about it. because this is all purposeful. So that we would understand that Hosea's life was meant to be an extended illustration of how God pursues his adulterous bride. Are not these words from Hosea too poignant? Therefore behold, I will allure her. I will bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Okor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt, and in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth. They shall be remembered by a name no more, and I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground, and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land. And I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord. And on that day, I will answer, declares the Lord. I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. And the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel. And I will sow her for myself in the land, and I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you are my people. And he shall say, you are my God. Are you not thankful that the holy God loved you? even though you had adulterated your life with false gods, that he made you through Christ, his beloved bride, and like Gomer, you can come home. You are prized, you are loved, you are fought for, you are died for. So friends, there is hope. If this has been a struggle for you, and as it is, it is a struggle for most, if not all, there is grace. There is strength. There is forgiveness. God wants your heart. He wants to say to those who were speaking to Him and saying, My Baal, kind of overlaying, superimposing upon Him as they prayed their prayers to Him as God, but what they are really still doing in their lives was living as if their true God were all of the idols that adulterated their lives. He called them no longer, not my people, but my people. He said, I am your God. But he wants your heart and he wants your mind and he wants yourself. He wants all of you. And so will you give those to the one who gave himself for you? Will you model that purity of devotion in your relationships with others, particularly your marriages or your future marriages. Will you be convinced that these commandments are not just rules? That Jesus's expansions on the Sermon on the Mount don't just expand the rules and make them more difficult, friends. but that God is actually protecting something good and beautiful and worth fighting for. Don't look at the Ten Commandments as the Ten Rules. Look at them as the pathway to joy. Look at them as God's protective fence around something that is glorious. And if you are willing to fight for that, you will not only please and glorify God, but you will strengthen all those things that we've seen coming out of the commandments, whether it is our worship of God, our testimony to other people, our honoring of his day, our strengthening of relationships with another, our marriages. We will build God's kingdom and we will be blessed. Let's pray. Father, I do thank you for your word and thank you for this commandment and what it instructs us how our tendency is to see this as yet one more do not. And yet there are so many glorious do's that are promises of your word. Lord, you are not a person that wants to stymie or end our joy, you want to increase our joy. And so these aren't rules as much as they are blessings and benefits. Help us to fight for your kingdom. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.