Sermon Tone Analysis

#. *Always around*?

ILLN – Last night Melinda and I sat down to watch one of the latest Hollywood fluffy love comedies – this one was ‘Failure to Launch’.

You may have seen it – about some parents who are desparate for their 35-year old son to leave home, so they employ the services of a young lady to help them.

Within the first 5 minutes the male star was in bed with his girlfriend, and at one stage in the film the parents are over-joyed when their son announces his intention to move in with his new girlfriend.

All up yet another example of Hollywood’s great divorce between sex and marriage.

Adultery and sexual immorality have been around for centuries, and still today are almost always in the media – whether its Bill Clinton, Shane Warne, gang rapes or 6-year old American girls – it is seemingly inescapable.

In the decade of the noughties, in the so-called age of raunch, God’s word shines as a bright beacon in a very dark world.

PRAY we might hear it!

#.

*Absolutely awesome gifts*

I want so set the scene as we come tonight to look at the 7th Commandment, with 2 principles which arise out of Gen 1-2.

1)      the first is that relationships matter to God.

In Gen 1:27 God creates man, in the sense of humanity, as male and female.

And male and female they enjoy relationship with God, one another and the rest of creation.

When Adam and Eve break their relationship with God through sin, the rest of the Bible is the story of how God will restore that relationship – as we know ultimately through the death of his own Son the Lord Jesus Christ.

The first principle is relationships matter to God.

2)      The second principle which flows out of Gen 1-2 is that within the relationship between a man and a woman sex is a good gift of God.

Some people think God is anti-sex – not at all.

He designed it.

In Gen 1:28 after creating humanity God blesses them and his first command is to be fruitful and increase in number.

Now that’s a hard thing to do without sex.

And at the end of Gen 2 we read the man and the woman were both naked and felt no shame.

Here is the ideal marriage relationship – a perfect, harmonious relationship between a man and a woman of which sex is a part.

When God made us he included sexuality as part of our make-up.

Christians ought not to be ashamed of sex, it is a great thing - when handled properly.

The trouble is that as fallen people, our sinfulness brings an incredible capacity to distort, misuse or abuse every good gift God gives us.

Including sex.

Well all that’s by way of introduction.

#.

*Adultery: actions or attitudes?

*

a)      *Actions only?

(Ex 20)*

            We move forward to Ex 20:14 and God’s seventh commandment to Israel, to this group of people whom he himself has brought out of slavery in Egypt to freedom now, and the promise of their own land.

How are they to act now as God’s chosen people?

The Commandments come to them, based on the very character of God himself, and so set the guidelines for them, in both their relationship to God (Commandments 1-4) and in their relationships with one another (Commandments 6-10).

Last week we saw – you shall not take someone’s life; this week do not take their body.

The seventh commandment is very simple isn’t it – you shall not commit adultery.

And there are no tricks of meaning here – adultery meant then what it means today – either a married man having sex with a married or engaged woman who is not his wife, or a married woman having sex with a married or engaged man who is not her husband.

It didn’t really pick up sex between someone who is married and someone who isn’t – because Deut 22 expects that a woman will remain a virgin until she is married.

It’s an important commandment because it gives a basic framework for social law – it shows God’s ideal for the right structuring of families and society.

And it would have been in marked contrast to the promiscuity practiced by other religions of the time.

In Israel’s religion adultery was seen as a serious crime against God, and society, and the individual.

And so the penalty for adultery was death – so Lev 20:10 (and in Deut 22:22) – ‘if a man commits adultery with another man’s wife – with the wife of his neighbour – both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.’

Now as we saw last week with murder, this commandment seems to be one many of us have kept.

I can stand before you this morning and honestly say that since I have been married I have never had sexual relations with a woman who is not my wife.

And for that I thank God.

And please pray that it will always be so.

But we can’t leave this commandment only in the realm of our actions.

Jesus, as he does so often, cuts to the real issue – that God doesn’t just weigh up our actions, but also our attitudes and our thoughts.

We saw that last week, and it is the same this week.

Jesus doesn’t narrow the focus of the 10 Commandments, instead he broadens them out really beyond measure.

b)      *Attitudes also (Matt 5)*

            So look with me at our 2nd reading – Matt 5:27ff.

You have heard it was said – you shall not commit adultery.

We’ve heard it this morning.

But – v28 – but, I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Whoa! Repeat – anyone, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

ILLN – so when Bill Clinton stood up and said ‘I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman’ and thinks he is therefore blameless, Jesus would say think again.

Picking up another US President – in 1976 Jimmy Carter was interviewed by Playboy magazine.

Carter said ‘I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust.

I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.

This is something God recognises I will do – and I have done it – and God forgives me for it.’

It is in this understanding of the Commandment where the rubber hits the road for us – we may be OK in terms of the physical act, I haven’t physically committed adultery – but what about our thoughts, our desires, our hearts.

God is interested in our hearts – what is in them.

I stand with Jimmy Carter in acknowledging and confessing my guilt.

And my guess is that for many of the men here this morning you are likewise guilty.

I don’t know enough about ladies to know if they share the same problem – my guess is some do, since we share the same sexual make-up and the same fallen nature.

As we move into the rest of the New Testament, the writers broaden out what God expects in the sexual realm into ‘sexual immorality’ generally.

– in Matt 15:19 Jesus lists some of the things which make us unclean, they  include adultery and sexual immorality; so we see straight away that sexual immorality is broader than just adultery.

- in Acts 15:20 & 29 the Council of Jerusalem write to the Gentile Christians asking them to abstain from sexual immorality;

            - in Gal 5:19, the first item on Paul lists of the acts of the sinful nature is sexual immorality.

It is so serious that in 1 Cor 5:11 Paul urges the Christians in Corinth not even to associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral.

Instead in Eph 5:3 he says ‘among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people’, and in v5 ‘no immoral, impure or greedy person … has any inheritance in the kingdom of God.’

So also in 1 Cor 6:9-10 he writes – do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers, …(etc, etc) will inherit the kingdom of God.

            - and in case you think it is just Paul; well Heb 13:4 says ‘marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.’

            - and finally in Rev 21:8 as John has his wonderful vision of the new heavens and the new earth, he hears the voice of Jesus from the throne of heaven say ‘the sexually immoral – their place will be in the lake of burning sulphur.’

Sexual immorality is a deadly serious issue.

It was a danger for God’s people in the Old Testament, and perhaps even moreso in the New Testament.

You would think we would have learnt from the mistakes of the past.

But we haven’t.

Sexual immorality remains one of the biggest problems in our society.

It causes the denegeration of societies, and the destruction of families and individuals.

Even within the church.

You don’t need to read the newspapers or watch TV for proof.

But it is one thing to point out the problem.

We all know it exists.

Many of us are guilty.

Is there anything we can do?

On the outline I’ve listed a few possible answers and antidotes to adultery and sexual immorality.

You may have some more.

* *

#. *Antidotes and answers to adultery and sexual immorality*

a)      *Prayer – it is a spiritual battle (Eph 6:10-18)*

The first key is prayer.

Temptation is a spiritual battle.

Paul writes in Eph 6 ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’.

Satan wants to destroy me, my wife, my family, my ministry, this church.

And I am not strong enough to face him alone.

He could cut me down in an instant.

But Jesus Christ who is in me is stronger than he who is against me.

To access his power, that power which can enable me to say ‘no’ to temptation, I need to pray.

And you need to pray for me and I for you.

Prayer is the final and greatest of our spiritual weapons.