An Affair of the Heart
Blessed Lord, who caused the holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we might read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, and that we may embrace and hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life. You have given us this hope in our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit as one God, forever and ever. Amen.
I invite you to turn to our text: Exodus 20:14. Even though it’s a short passage, you’ll want to have your Bible open, since we’re going to look at a number of passages relating to the subject of marriage. This morning, we come to the seventh commandment:
You shall not commit adultery. Exodus 20:14
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been working on my doctoral dissertation on John Witherspoon for the past three years. He was a Scottish pastor who immigrated to the United States in 1768. One of the interesting things that I’ve been able to do a few times during my research is going to Edinburgh and spending a week or two in the National Archives of Scotland, looking through historical church records there—namely, Presbytery minutes and session minutes. Well, it’s interesting to me, at least.
Once you make your way through the handwriting (let me tell you, you become very grateful for people who had good handwriting), you see that most of the recorded items for his church (in the little town of Beith, just outside of Glasgow) dealt with the sins of members, most of which dealt with sex and marriage.
For example, a woman named Margaret Snodgrass was called before the elders on September 25, 1747. She was asked if she was with child, and responded that she was, though she was not married. She claimed that the father was one John Sheddan of Cuff. In the next month, they brought John before the elders and asked him if he had had “any carnal dealings with Margaret”. He denied it. They continued to work with him, but he continued to deny it, even though it was manifestly true. Three years later, the issue was still unresolved. Margaret and John were now married, but they had been found guilty (again) of “uncleanness”, and they had to appear before the whole congregation.
Also in 1747, a man named William Mitchell and a woman named Elizabeth Cochran were rebuked by their pastor, John Witherspoon, for their “irregular marriage”. You’ll actually find this often in the church records of the time. You may think, “Well, my marriage has always felt irregular,” but an irregular marriage was actually when a couple clandestinely committed themselves to one another without the approval of their parents, and without the blessing and formal ceremony of the church. They got married secretly. There were difficulties involved in that: “What do we do? Are these people really married or not?” Well, these two were subject to fines from the church.
Then there was the case of a man named George King and his servant girl Margaret. Margaret accused her master of committing adultery with her and of being the father of her child. George denied the accusations and said, “No, Margaret is pregnant because she’s a loose woman. She’s sleeping around.” But the elders didn’t believe George. Actually, contrary to some people’s opinions that these sessions were vindictive towards women, they often didn’t believe the men in their appeals. So they brought this matter to the presbytery, who also didn’t trust George’s profession of innocence. They said that he was “guilty of gross prevarication of such indecent behavior that he deserves to be publicly rebuked.” He continued to protest his innocence, and it was a full decade later (in the summer of 1756) before he finally admitted that he had indeed been guilty of the adultery.
Some of you may recognize the name Scott Manetsch. The Manetsches were very key in the early days of this church. Scott grew up here, and he’s now a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. He’s a really excellent scholar. He’s written a book called “Calvin’s Company of Pastors”, which documents a similar pattern in the consistory minutes of Geneva. He looked at the records from 1542-1609 (over 60 years), finding 1,572 disciplinary cases involving men and 777 involving women who were suspended for “quarrels”. “Quarrels” usually meant household conflicts—often marital difficulties, abuse, or mistreatment. He also found 636 men and 538 women who were suspended for either fornication or adultery. In fact, he lists over 20 different offenses that were subject to discipline in the Geneva churches during this period, and the top two sins were easily household conflict and sexual sin.
I’m giving you that historical background just to help us see that, although we may have more access to sexual sin in our day (they certainly didn’t have smartphones or the internet), and although sexual sin is much more socially acceptable and even celebrated in our day, there has been no age in the history of the church or the world where sex and marriage have not been fraught with pain and danger, and marked by sin. When you go back and look at these church dealings from 400 years ago, you realize that these were human beings with the same human natures that we have.
In my 15 years of pastoral ministry, probably 90% of the really difficult sin issues that come before the elders have had to do with sex and marriage. That’s the way it has always been, and probably the way it always will be.
That makes sense, since these are two of God’s greatest gifts. There is no relationship which can be so intimate, sweet, life-giving, and joy-filled as the marital relationship; and there is no experience that can be as intimate and powerful within that marriage relationship as sex. So, of course, the devil is going to go after these two great gifts to God’s people—in fact, to all people. We should expect confusion, misunderstanding, perversion, and (sadly) pain—not because sex and marriage are bad, or not worth the trouble, but precisely because they are such good gifts. God’s best gifts are the ones most apt to be twisted and perverted by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
There is so much that we can talk about under the broad category of the seventh commandment, so here’s what I want to do this morning. First, I want to move through three passages of Scripture which are essential for forming a Biblical understanding of marriage. Until we give a Biblical shape to what marriage is, and what it’s about, we can’t understand the significance of these commands. Second, I’ll look at three passages which show how the seventh commandment applies more broadly than strictly adultery (i.e. someone who is married having sex with someone who isn’t their husband or wife). Finally, I want to address three types of people who may be listening to this message. We’re going to have to move quickly, so you’re going to have to think, and have to keep your Bibles open.
Forming a Biblical Understanding of Marriage
First, I want us to look at three passages of Scripture which are essential for forming a Biblical understanding of marriage. Everyone talks about marriage. It is a word that’s in the public eye and imagination. But what does the Bible say about it? First (and unsurprisingly), I want us to look at Genesis 2:
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and marrhold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:18-25
The word that summarizes this biblical building block for marriage is “complementarity”. God created marriage in such a way that a man and a woman uniquely fit together as complements for one another. We see this in verse 18—”I will make him a helper fit for him”—and again in verse 20: Adam looked around, and there were birds, animals, and livestock, but “there was not found a helper fit for him.” There was no one among the creation who was a suitable complement for Adam.
So what did God do to create this one who would be suitable and fit for Adam? He didn’t create another animal or another Adam, but woman. We see in verses 21-22 that woman was both taken from man and given a name in relationship to man. In English, it says that “she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” You can probably see a footnote there that says that the Hebrew words for woman (“ishshah”) and man (“ish”) sound alike. “…she shall be called ishshah, for she was taken out of ish.” There is complementarity in how the woman was formed, in the name that she was given, and in how she alone is considered a suitable helpmate for the man.
When man and woman come together in this one flesh relationship in the context of marriage, it’s not only a union, but a kind of reunion. This woman (not another man) was uniquely taken from the man and given a name in relationship to the man. Only through this understanding of complementarity do monogamy and exclusivity have any coherent moral logic. People like to say: “Marriage can be any sort of arrangement of two people, but of course you want to be loyal and exclusive to one another.” But where is the moral logic behind monogamy and exclusivity? The only consistent moral logic which demands those things is complementarianism. Of course the man and woman must be exclusively bound for each other, because one was made to fit with the other.
Part of what makes woman suitable and fit for the man is her ability to fulfill the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, ’Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it… Genesis 1:28a
If God would have created another man to be with Adam, or another woman to be with Eve, they would not have fit together (in large part) because they would not have fulfilled this mandate. They couldn’t be fruitful and multiply. Only through the complementarity of the sexes can this be fulfilled. That’s the first text and the first big word: complementarity. Men and women are complements, one for another.
Go to a second passage at the end of the Old Testament: Malachi 2:13. God is giving an indictment on his people:
And this second thing you do. You cover the LORD’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, ‘Why does he not?’ Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. Malachi 2:13-15
If the word from Genesis was complementarity, the two words from Malachi are “covenant” and “kids”. In verse 14, the marriage relationship is described as a covenant bond between two parties. Every covenant must be signed and sealed. With a marriage, there are two things that constitute and ratify that covenant. There is both a verbal oath and a ratification sign. The verbal oath is the solemn promises and vows that they made and we still make “before God and before these witnesses.” Then there is the ratification oath, which is the sexual act. But the sexual act, by its nature, is not going to be public. So the reason why you have a “You may now kiss the bride” moment isn’t to give the groom a really goofy smile, but to show in a publicly appropriate way what we anticipate is going to happen later privately. The act of sexual consummation signs and seals the covenant.
After “covenant” comes “kids” (verse 15). The translation is very difficult, but (as the ESV has it) what is God seeking in this union? There are deliberate echoes of Genesis here in the pattern of leaving and cleaving as one flesh. Part of what God was seeking was godly offspring. While it would be wrong to say that procreation is the sole purpose of marriage, or that sexual intimacy is only given as a means to a reproductive end, it would also be wrong to think that marriage can be properly defined without any reference to the offspring that normally result from the one flesh union of a husband and a wife. That’s what God is seeking. By definition, marriage is the sort of union from which children can be conceived.
Listen carefully: this doesn’t mean that procreation is required for a marriage to be valid. What it does mean is that marriage, by nature, design, and aim, is a covenant between two persons whose one flesh commitment is the type of union which produces offspring. I know that because of medical difficulties or old age, this aim is sometimes not able to be achieved. But when a man and a woman are joined, it’s is still in the sort of union which is meant to produce offspring. In other words, we see from Malachi, that marriage is oriented toward the rearing of children.
With all the debates in our day about marriage, have you ever wondered why the state takes an interest in regulating marriage in the first place? I mean, the state doesn’t take an interest in putting some sort of imprimatur upon all of your friendships, the special bond that you have with your dog, or any group of people that wants to come together and say they are best friends. Anyone can have a celebration. Anyone can find a religious group to provide a worship service if they want to commit themselves to any sort of person, or if 20 people want to commit themselves to each other.
That’s not what the state is doing. They’re not involved in allowing people to have special occasions to commit themselves to whatever sort of relationship they want. People can do that any time. They’ve done it for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t called marriage. Why? Because the state does not create or define marriage. Marriage is a pre-political institution. It exists of itself, and the state has seen fit to regulate it and provide certain benefits and privileges to the state of marriage.
People sometimes say, “Look, I’m a libertarian. I just want government out of this, so we can make marriage whatever we want.” Actually, that does the reverse. Then you’re saying that the state can redefine what marriage is, rather than recognize something which has an existence and nature apart from whatever it says. You’re saying, “We’ll let the government decide. They can define it.”
The state has traditionally guarded and regulated marriage because it has an interest in promoting the familial arrangement, whereby a mother and a father raise the children that come from their union. That’s the whole reason that the state has an interest in regulating and promoting marriage: it’s oriented toward the rearing of children, and it’s advantageous for the flourishing of any society that the biological father and mother raise the children that come from their union, where possible.
Let me give you one other passage. Not surprisingly, go to the New Testament, in Ephesians 5. You know this passage. Paul is explaining the marriage relationship between the husband and the wife:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… Ephesians 5:22-25
‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32
The relationship between Christ and the church is a paradigm for the relationship between a husband and a wife. The mystery is that the union of Christ and the church finds expression in a man and a woman becoming one flesh in Christian marriage. It isn’t like God looked at marriage and said, “What’s going to be a good picture of marriage? Let’s do this Christ and the church thing.” That’s reversed. Christ and the church is eternal. In time, God designed marriage to give expression of this eternal sign and symbol. He designed for a Christian husband and wife to come together in such a way that this union of Christ and the church can be referenced and symbolized.
Notice that Paul’s reference to the mystery of Christ and the church only works if there is differentiation in the marital union. Sometimes people get slippery with their language and say, “Yes, isn’t it beautiful? With Christ and the church, you have this mutual indwelling, love, and support for one another. Any two people coming together can show that love and support for one another.” But that’s not the argument that Paul makes. His argument is based on differentiation: namely, the man loves, leads, and sacrifices as Christ; and the woman submits and respects as the church. However that plays out in practice (there will certainly be variations on what that looks like from home to home), the irreducible minimum is that these two agents are not interchangeable. Paul did not foresee any two individuals acting as Christ and the church, but rather that one would be a husband to cherish like Christ, and the other would be a wife to follow like the church.
In other words, we cannot insert two men or two women into the logic of Ephesians 5 and get the same mystery, let alone the same full-orbed picture of the gospel. That is why it’s not a rhetorical exaggeration to say that the gospel itself is at stake in our definition of marriage. Paul himself links the gospel of Christ and the church to the expression of a godly Christian marriage, which can only find fulfillment in a husband and wife coming together in this union.
These are the building blocks. If you just want to get five words to put in your head on what the Bible teaches about marriage, they are complementarity, covenant, kids, Christ, and church. Once you have those building blocks in place, the commandment begins makes sense. It’s not just from divine fiat—“God says it, I don’t like it, and it doesn’t make sense to me”—but has an internal moral logic. It’s no wonder that the Bible considers adultery, fornication, bestiality, homosexuality, prostitution, and every kind of unchastity that would strike at these building blocks out of bounds.
All of that is just to give shape to what the Bible understands by marriage. We don’t want to come into this with a shallow, casual understanding, like: “Well, marriage is whatever. When two people—or maybe even a group of people—come together and decide that they really love each other, that’s marriage.” That’s not what the Bible says. It has a much deeper, richer, gospel-saturated, human-nature oriented, children-flourishing view of what constitutes marriage.
Three Passages which Show the Range of Applications
Secondly, I’m going to give you three passages from the New Testament which show a wide range of applications for the seventh commandment.
And he said, ’What comes out of a person is what defiles him. Mark 7:20
Jesus is contrasting that statement with all the laws about food. He’s saying that they are pointing to something. The reality is that it’s not the sort of food that you put in you, but what comes out of you, that makes you unclean.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’ Mark 7:21-23
You see the word adultery at the end of verse 21, but before that, I want you to notice the phrase “sexual immorality”. The Greek word is “porneia”. You can hear the root of our word “pornography” there. Porneia was a broad term. A leading New Testament lexicon (BDAG) defines it as “unlawful sexual intercourse, prostitution, unchastity, fornication…” James Edwards, a professor at Whitworth College (hardly a fire-breathing, fundamentalist school), states that porneia “can be found in Greek literature with reference to a variety of illicit sexual practices, including adultery, fornication, prostitution, and homosexuality. In the OT it occurs for any sexual practice outside marriage between a man and a woman that is prohibited by the Torah.” So it was a broad term, referring to any sexual sin prohibited by the law of Moses.
So, while it’s not a good argument anyway, it’s untrue to say that Jesus never said anything about “x”. He said something here about a wide array of sexual sins in condemning porneia. He had a broad understanding of what the seventh commandment prohibits.
The Westminster Larger Catechism says:
The sins forbidden in the seventh commandment, besides the neglect of the duties required, are, adultery, fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts; all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections; all corrupt or filthy communications, or listening thereunto; wanton looks, impudent or light behaviour, immodest apparel; prohibiting of lawful, and dispensing with unlawful marriages; allowing, tolerating, keeping of stews, and resorting to them… Westminster Larger Catechism – A. 139
I have to give you a little history lesson here. In 17th century English, “stews” referred to bathhouses—what we might euphemistically call a massage parlor or a gentleman’s club, which is for anything but gentlemen. They were called stews because you’d go and stew in hot water. In other words, they were houses of prostitution. When the catechism says that the seventh commandment prohibits stews, it’s not talking about your favorite soup recipe, which you’re putting on this Thursday. It’s talking about these clubs where sexual immorality would take place. In keeping with Jesus’ own words about to porneia, the Westminster Catechism understands that this commandment has a broad application.
The second text is in 1 Timothy 1. Here we have another important word:
Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 1 Timothy 1:8-11
Notice how Paul is running through the second table of the law. The first table of the law (1-4) has to do with our vertical relationship with God, and the second (5-10) has to do with our horizontal relationships with one another. He first talks broadly about disobedience, ungodly sinners, the unholy, and the profane. Then look what he does at the end of verse 9: “…for those who strike their fathers and mothers…” What commandment is that? The fifth commandment. “…for murderers” refers to the sixth commandment. So we’d expect him to go to the seventh commandment. He gives two phrases for the application of the seventh commandment: “…the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality…” Then “enslavers”—referring to the eighth commandment, since they steal people and put them into slavery. Then he goes to the ninth commandment: “…liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…” You can see very clearly how Paul is walking through the second table of the law.
So he has two phrases there in verse 10 in reference to the seventh commandment. First he says “sexual immorality”, which is the word “pornois” (related to “porneia”). The second is the word “arsenokoitais”. What does it mean? The first time that it shows up in Greek literature is when Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 6, and again here in 1 Timothy 1. Sometimes, people will say that Paul wasn’t talking about the sort of homosexual behavior which we would recognize today. Rather, he was talking about pederasty (man/boy pairs), which was very common in the ancient world. But there was a word for that: “paiderastes”. It was a perfectly well-known and common word.
That’s not the word that Paul used here. Paul used the word arsenokoitais. The major English translations translate that as “men who practice homosexuality” (ESV), “homosexuals” (HCSB), “them that defile themselves with mankind” (KJV), “practicing homosexuals” (NAB), “homosexuals” (NASB), “those practicing homosexuality” (NIV), “sodomites” (NKJV), “those who practice homosexuality” (NLT), and “sodomites” (NRSV).
Where did this word come from? Paul actually coined it, very deliberately, from two words in Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13, respectively—places in the Mosaic law where there are prohibitions against homosexual behavior. Even if you don’t know any Greek, you can still hear how Paul could come up with the word “arsenokoitais”. Here’s what the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) says in Leviticus 20:13: “kaí ós án koimithí metá ársenos koítin gynaikós”. Translated: “Whoever shall lie with a male as with a woman…” You can see the words “ársenos” and “koítin” there. “ársen” is the Greek word for “man”, and “koíte” is the word for “bed”. So Paul is coining this phrase very explicitly from the prohibitions in Leviticus.
Even if you say, “Well, why should we listen to Leviticus? Isn’t there a bunch of stuff in Leviticus that we don’t pay attention to?” That’s not a good argument in itself, but set that aside, and you have Paul deliberately drawing this language from Leviticus 18 and 20, coining this phrase. “arsenokoitais” is an explicit reference to homosexual practice, which was forbidden in Leviticus, so we have it here in 1 Timothy 1.
Sometimes people say: “Well, what it really means…” Listen, translations aren’t perfect, but they’re made by a team of scholars who have spent their lives becoming experts in Greek and Hebrew—and you think, “Well, I read a blog post, and I’m sure that’s not what it really means”?! We ought to have a little more humility than that. If all of the translations give it the same basic explanation, we ought to think that they’re on to something. In fact, they are. Paul is using this phrase not for a specific act of men and boys together, but more broadly about same-sex practice and sexual intimacy.
One final passage is Matthew 5:27-30:
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. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Matthew 5:27-30
Let me give you the last Greek word here: “epithumeo”. It’s the word translated in verse 28 as “with lustful intent”. Lest we come to this point in the sermon and think, “This has been a good sermon. It’s been very interesting. I’ve learned a few things. There are a lot of people in the world who need to hear this”, we need to hear what Jesus says. Sexual sin is a matter of the heart. Of course, it isn’t only a heart matter. Jesus isn’t saying you can have sex with whoever you want as long as your heart is okay. No, that would be an impossibility. He’s saying that even if you don’t commit the physical act with your sexual organs, you can still be guilty of sexual sin by means of your thoughts, fantasies, desires, and affections.
Epithumeo. It means to desire, covet, or long for. Whenever it’s used in the New Testament, it normally has a negative implication. Look, to be pretty or handsome is not a sin. Noticing that someone of the opposite sex is pretty or handsome is not a sin. The sin is when there is epithumeo—a desire, longing for, coveting, and lingering. It can happen very quickly. We move from noticing, to a second look, to a linger, to a head turn. Before we know it, we have a whole pattern of looking for it. We know the sites where we can find it. We know how to get through the filters and firewalls to find it, even when people are checking up on us. We search for it, look for it, follow it, and bring ourselves to a point of stimulation over it. Jesus says, “This too is adultery.” It’s a lustful intent of the heart.
So we can see that the seventh commandment has a broad range of application. We should not just think: “Well, I have never committed adultery against my spouse.” It encompasses sex before marriage; sex with men with men, or women with women; pornography; or all manner of uncleanness. There isn’t going to be an adult who fully escapes Jesus’ penetrating words here. No one can say, “You know what? I have been good to go on the seventh commandment since I was 16.”
A Message to Three Groups of People
What does God have to say to us on the other side of all this important building up of marriage and this important understanding of how broadly the seventh commandment gets applied? I want to finish by speaking to three particular groups of people who may be listening to this message: the tempted, the wayward, and the broken.
I want to do something a little different as we finish. I want to speak, but only what God has already spoken. What matters is what God has to say, not what I think or what my helpful advice might be. I don’t want anyone in any of these categories to leave here and think, “Well, that was interesting, but I’m not sure I agreed with Pastor Kevin.” It’s not Pastor Kevin, but God speaking to you. If you don’t like what is said, then you take it up with God. If you can’t believe what is said in God’s grace to you, then take that up with God.
First, I want to speak to the tempted—those who are aware of how they feel drawn to sexual sin, attracted to what is illicit. In fact, you have been considering this week, and even this morning. You’re weighing, dabbling, and lingering. You’re intrigued and enticed by the notion of sexual sin.
Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:12-13
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
Lamentations 3:22-26
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 2:17-18
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. James 1:14-15
If you find yourself lured, enticed, dabbling, intrigued, wandering, and waffling, hear Proverbs 5:
My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol; she does not ponder the path of life; her ways wander, and she does not know it. Proverbs 5:1-6
Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house… Proverbs 5:8
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray. Proverbs 5:15-23
Hear the word of the Lord, you who are tempted.
Hear what God has to say to you who are wayward—you who are aware, or who have perhaps become so calloused that you’re unaware that you’re living a double life. You’ve been doing your own thing. Maybe you’re continuing to go to church. Maybe you’re still smiling, and putting on all the appearances of being a very lovely Christian. Maybe you know that what you’ve been doing is wrong, or maybe you don’t even care anymore. Maybe you’ve decided that your marriage vows aren’t worth keeping, and that your sexual desires must be obeyed at all costs.
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7-8
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. 1 Corinthians 6:15-20
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Ephesians 5:3
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3:1-5
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, ‘He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us’? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. James 4:4-10
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8
Hear that word, you double-minded and wayward—thinking that at the same time you can be a friend of the world and a friend of God. It’s an impossibility.
Finally, a word to the broken—those of you who have been listening to this entire sermon, well aware of your sin in the past, or very much in the present. You hate what you’ve done. You hate what has become of your life and your patterns. I’m speaking to the contrite, penitent, ashamed, and sorry—those who have laid themselves on the ground at the foot of the cross.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Psalm 130:1-4
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:1-2
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:8-9
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, ‘The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.’ Zechariah 3:1-4
After giving a terrible list of vices, including sexual immorality and men who practice homosexuality, Paul says:
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11
Finally, listen—all of you who are broken, wandering, and tempted. Hear these words from Jesus himself:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:3-8
Father in heaven, give us the strength to stand, the grace to repent, and the intellect and will to believe. May we be a people who love your law, repent when we don’t, find forgiveness, and (by your Spirit) get up, rise, and walk. In Jesus name, amen.
Transcription and editing provided by 10:17 Transcription
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