Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Deuteronomy 5:18

Sermon text is Deuteronomy 5:18. Please stand. And you shall not commit adultery. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your scriptures. We thank you for this word, the seventh of these 10 words, defining who we are as a people, what we’re to do now that you’ve saved us. Bless us, Lord God, at the consideration of this seventh word today and into the next few weeks. May you, Lord God, use this word to strengthen us in our fidelity to you.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

There’s a lot today of the events of yesterday, the shooting in Tucson, Arizona. And some people are saying that it’s a result of the corrosive hate speech that fills talk radio. And of course, that always means right-wing radio. And there certainly is an effect on rhetoric, both right and left, on a country. But I want to talk today about something far more corrosive to us as a nation.

Corrosive to our families when it occurs. Corrosive to our churches when it happens in the context of a local church. Highly corrosive and corrosive of our entire culture. And this seventh word has a lot to do with what’s happened and why things are continuing to disintegrate so badly in American culture.

There was a movie several years ago called Unfaithful starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane. I think there are various Hollywood depictions in many movies. Of course, adultery is common, but several of these movies have tried to show the downside of it. Probably the most famous one years ago was Fatal Attraction. And Fatal Attraction showed the incredible danger it is to a man to engage in adulterous affairs. And that was finding good. But Unfaithful did a far better job of talking about the tremendous psychological emotional damage to the marital relationship that adultery brings and it was wrenching in its portrayal of that and that was a good thing.

Now on the downside, it also contained scenes of explicit sexuality inducing men to adultery. So Hollywood’s a little double-minded on the thing, but at least the attempt of the movie was to show the extreme corrosive nature of adultery on marriages. And as I said, I think we’re going to talk about it too in terms of the culture, American culture at large.

This will be the first of a series of sermons. The next few sermons are listed for you on your outline today, your handout, your notes. That’s a draft. I always have the freedom to leave myself the freedom to change what we might do, but that’s where we’re going. We’re going to go to that portion of Moses’ sermons in Deuteronomy on the 10 words and we’ll deal with it over the next few weeks.

Today there’s kind of a seven-part outline at play even though they’re not numbered. There’s an introduction and a conclusion and then there’s five aspects of this topic that I want to talk about in the middle of that.

And the first thing I want to talk about in the introduction is the importance of pastors to bring the light of God’s word to bear on this particular topic. After that, I’ll talk about the relationship of this commandment to the Holy Spirit, the emphasis on the Holy Spirit as opposed to the Father or Son. And then I’ll talk a little bit about the marriage vow itself and what adultery is relative to that vow.

Vows are involved in adultery. It’s not the same as fornication. Then we’ll look at some scriptures that talk about the relationship of adultery to idolatry generally. And then I’ll talk a little bit in that section about Moloch worship specifically, the relationship of adultery and the breakdown of the family to the rise of King worship and state worship and state sovereignty.

After that I’ll talk about the idea of mutual submission. The vows, the third thing I want to talk about, connect up with the fifth thing I want to talk about. Vows of marriage are vows of mutual submission to one another. And the laws prohibit adultery are connected to the idea of covenant and law and oaths. So, I want to talk about that briefly as we open up this topic this week.

And then following that, I’ll talk about response. The Holy Spirit is the second of today’s seven-part outline. The Spirit is the matchmaker. And that match involves response. And I’ll talk about both physical aspects of response in marriage as well as emotional aspects and their relationship to adultery.

The Holy Spirit brings us into a relationship of response, husband and wife. Vows bring us into mutual submission. And at the heart of all of this is this topic of faithfulness or fidelity to God ultimately being mirrored in our relationship with one another.

And then at the conclusion, I’ll talk about even in the midst of times—I’ll remind us of what some of what Flynn talked about last week—that even in the most difficult of times, the Lord God brings us to rest. So we’ll move from the light of God’s word to rest and we’ll do it in relationship between the Holy Spirit and response in human relationships and vows and submission and then at the middle idolatry and what’s going on the corrosive nature of adultery and new visions of marriage for our whole culture.

So that’s what we’re going to do.

I was at a meeting last Wednesday as was Flynn of the Oregon City pastors and they want to make human trafficking the subject of at least being mentioned in Oregon City churches. Next let’s see. Yeah, next Sunday or the Sunday after that? You know, my question is what’s human trafficking? And I’m not sure I’m not sure anybody really knows. It’s a very interesting definition, but you know, the instinct is a good one.

In response to the sorts of sexual perversions and sexual sins in the context of our culture, the pastors have this instinct to want to speak to it. That’s right and proper. From Judges 19 that Flynn preached on last week, what we saw was the rather horrific nature of the fall of covenant people into no doubt the practices of the Canaanites of the land in which they had been in for maybe 40 years.

And that horrific crime that was committed against the Levite’s concubine, this was laid directly at the foot of the covenant, of the Levite in the story. The Levite’s culpability is the big message of that last appendix to the book of Judges and as Flynn said it really kind of places it—chronologically it’s the beginning of the period. Judges is the responsibility in large part. What happens in the book of Judges is in large part the responsibility of the pastors.

When pastors don’t bring the light of God’s word and blessings and cursings to people as they walk in obedience or disobedience, when pastors fail to guard the bride of the church, then what happens in a culture is the disintegration of that culture and that disintegration is pictured in the context of sexual sin.

So to the extent that we have increasing sexual crimes and sins that the human trafficking buzzword is trying to bring attention to, to the extent that’s going on in our culture, it is proper to see, as in Judges 19, the responsibility of pastors to bring God’s light to bear on sexuality and that light includes the judgments of God against people that break his word. So pastors have culpability and responsibility.

If we have sexual sin and it’s creating all kinds of difficulties in individuals’ lives and family’s lives, the life of the church and the broader culture, it is the responsibility of pastors to step back and say, “What have we done multigenerationally in a city like Oregon City for instance that’s produced the kind of sexual sins and crimes that go on today?” So it is the responsibility of pastors to bring light to these topics of sexuality and to accept some degree of responsibility for failing to bring light in the past.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that event in Judges 19 happens just a generation or two into the conquest. And this is a warning to us. You know, we’ve been around 27 years with—whatever it is, there’s multiple generations now of families present in this church. Understand that the dynamic of a people that want to go in and conquer the land through the proclamation of God’s word, which is what we were in 1983, that can quickly go south.

It did as is recorded for us in Judges 19. Within a generation or two, horrific things were being done by covenant people in a covenant city. So, it’s a warning to us to think multigenerationally and to insist that God’s word be proclaimed faithfully and the light shine forth from pulpit and then in the personal relationships of pastors with their congregants as well. We have a responsibility.

So that’s what I want to do today. I want to bring light to bear on this particular issue and God’s brought us to this seventh word.

Then one of the first things we want to notice about adultery and its placement in the Ten Commandments is its relationship to the Holy Spirit. Now, I’ve talked about this before and I think I’ve actually handed out this chart before, but in a minute we’re going to look at that chart. Now before we do that, let me just quote a couple of scriptures real quickly.

1 Corinthians 6:18 says, “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? Whom you have from God and you are not your own.” So there’s a text that links sexual sin to sins against the Holy Spirit.

In Genesis 6:3 we read, “Now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful. They took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not strive with men forever.’”

Now what’s going on in that text does not involve giants. There’s nothing in the text that suggests that it’s talking about the sons of God, godly men, marrying the daughters of men who were not daughters of God. They were non-believers in other words. And so it’s intermarriage, you know, outside of the faith is what’s being described here.

And the striving of God’s spirit is in relationship to that particular sin. When someone marries someone outside of the faith, that is, when a Christian marries a non-Christian, that’s a striving against the work of the Holy Spirit and the spirit is striving with man. So the spirit is described in this text as the one who brings people together properly in the context of marriage and so the spirit is the particular focus.

Yes, we have one God existing in three persons. These are emphases. Well, on your chart, if you can just take a look at that chart now, look down at the bottom part of it where we list three calls, three recoveries, and then three commandments. And what I’ve said is that one way to look at the 10 words is to look at them as a sequence of three words bringing us to rest in the fourth word, right?

So no greater powers—it doesn’t, you know, “Remember no other gods before me.” You’re going to have gods. Gods are simply ruling authorities or powers in the context of the world and even forces. It’s not saying don’t have any strong ones. God calls civil judges strong ones for instance in the scriptures. What it’s saying is don’t have anybody ultimate beyond me. I’m the ultimate. I’m the lord of lords or other lords. He’s the king of kings or other kings. He’s the god of gods or other gods in the sense of powers.

But what he says is the Father—you know, hierarchy we’re talking about him being lord of lords and have no gods before him that take his place. So all other submissions to authority are under the submission to the Father’s authority.

The second commandment focuses on the person of the Son. The Son is the one mediator between God and man. He’s our brother, but he’s also our savior. And he’s the mediator between God and man. And we’re not supposed to seek mediation between ourselves and the God of all gods through false mediators. And so the emphasis there is the mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The third commandment doesn’t mean don’t say, use God’s name in swearing. It says don’t take God’s name upon you in vanity. What it means is have a fully empowered witness. You’re a Christian. You’ve taken your husband’s name per the song we just sang. You’re not an Adamite anymore. Now you’re a Christian. You’ve taken your husband’s name and you’re to bear that name not emptily but fully. You’re supposed to have a full Christian witness in all that you do. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit. You’re to have a spirit-empowered witness in the context of your life.

So those first three commandments have an emphasis on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And when we have submission to the triune God, that’s when we enter into the rest of the fourth word.

Now the next sets, two sets of three words follows the same pattern. And on your chart, I articulate this. So the next commandments, the ones we’ve just finished, is a triad. Honor your parents, right? That’s a hierarchical relationship. They represent the Father. Honor your father and mother.

So the Father is emphasized. Don’t kill. In other words, don’t take the life and be careful of the life of your brother, your fellow citizens, right? And that has a horizontal relationship that points primarily to our brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, the man who became, was incarnated as man for us.

And then this third commandment in this sequence is don’t commit adultery. And this is, as I said, would be a crime against the Holy Spirit, who is the matchmaker who brings together people.

This is the second part of the outline. On the second day of creation, we have heaven and earth that will come together. You know, we just sang that new version of the Sanctus. And it’s interesting because there’s definitely, you know, the first part is up here. “Holy, holy, holy.” And then it comes down here, right? “Blessed is he that comes in the name.” Whatever it is, it’s down here.

And then it goes back up there. But what it’s being pictured there is the coming together of heaven and earth. And this is what happens in Lord’s day worship. Heaven and earth are kind of connected. Jesus comes to us, we ascend to him, and heaven and earth are connected. The Holy Spirit brings that to pass. So spirit-empowered worship brings those things together. And spirit-empowered relationships in terms of sexuality brings together godly marriages. To commit adultery is a sin against the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, it’s a sin against Father and Son, but primarily it’s a sin against the Holy Spirit.

We’ll see these same three patterns in the next commandments, right? Don’t steal. That’s what Adam did from his father in Eden. And then the next one is don’t lie. Don’t take—don’t lie in court to hurt your brother. So again, the emphasis is now the first is you know horizontal. Don’t steal what’s God’s. Then vertical and finally, don’t covet.

And again, that would be a sin against the Holy Spirit.

This can be related, and you can take this chart home. These are related to the three falls and three recoveries in Genesis, right? Adam isn’t patient. He sins against the Father. Okay? Cain isn’t kind. He kills his brother. And the sons of God in the text I just read are not holy and they intermarry with the wrong gals. And then the rest of Genesis is a reversal of these.

Abraham is patient and doesn’t even receive all what he’s been promised, but he’s patient and he’s given as a model of patience in the book of Hebrews. And uh Jacob is brotherly kind to his brother Esau who wanted to kill him and eventually they’re reconciled. And then finally, Joseph resists the sexual temptations of Potiphar’s wife and he’s going to be holy.

So patience, kindness, and holiness is the three characteristics that are being emphasized in those three falls and recovery and this is reflected in these three words.

So in order to not commit adultery, all this is saying that really it has to do with your relationship with the Holy Spirit. And so a walk empowered by the Holy Spirit is essential to the fulfillment of the commandment to not commit adultery. This is what God has given to us in the scriptures is this emphasis on the Holy Spirit in the context of this third word.

Now if that didn’t make sense to you, ask questions in Q&A time or talk to me this week. But this third in this sequence of three commandments—honor your father and mother and don’t kill and don’t commit adultery—you see the emphasis here is on the Holy Spirit. The spirit is the matchmaker. And we’ll look at the sixth part of the outline, how that matchmaking is affected as well.

Now let’s talk about the marriage vow just a little bit.

How is marriage—what is adultery about in distinction from fornication? Well, adultery, and we’ll get to this as we get to more of Moses’ sermons in the next few sermons, adultery is not a single person having sex with a single person. It’s when one of the people in an adulterous relationship has to be bound by vow to another person. So adultery as in distinction from normal fornication involves a marital relationship or a marriage or a relationship by covenant or vow.

And I say it that way because what we’ll see in Deuteronomy is that if a person’s engaged to another person, betrothed in the Bible, and one of those two parties has sex, you know, outside of that relationship, then they’ve also committed adultery.

Now, what’s the thing that ties them together? Well, first of all, we have a different view of engagement presented in the scripture than we have today. And you know, I’ve thought about this over the years and I’ve thought, well, it’s just maybe descriptive of what they were doing. But I don’t know, it seems to be put forward by God as a good model. And I think it’s well worth a discussion in the next, you know, whatever to talk about on the part of the fathers and mothers here to talk about betrothal as opposed to engagement.

But in any event, whether you go along with that or not, the point is here betrothal was something different than what we think of as engagement. You know, Joseph and Mary are betrothed and he’s going to put her away. He’s got to divorce her. They’re not even married yet, but they’re betrothed.

Well, adultery involves a vow, the marriage vow, either in its kind of preliminary stages of engagement or in its full marital vow. So, the way marriages begin are by way of covenant. And adultery is a violation of that covenant, specifically of a covenant. It involves sexual intimacy outside of covenantal bonds between betrothed people or married people.

Now, the penalty for adultery is death. And that’s very interesting. There’s probably lots of reasons for this, but that’s the plain statement of the scriptures. Again, we’ll see this later in Deuteronomy that the adulterer is to be put to death by the civil magistrate, of course, not by personal vengeance, but rather through the civil government.

Now, why is that? Well, I think partly at least it is an attack. It is this corrosive component to any culture or community that is godly. A godly culture or community has as its building blocks the family. And this is a great high-handed sin, the heinous crime as Job would say. We’ll look at that later, against the family. It’s against the very nature of a godly culture. It’s akin to treason.

Now, in our day and age, treason against the state still is has the death penalty attached to it, rarely carried out, but it’s still there. But the death penalty for adultery has gone away. And that tells us something about what’s happened with the shift of the center of authority or power from the family to the civil state.

But, but that’s what marriage is. Marriage by covenant. Adultery is specifically and its direct application a violation of the marriage covenant through sexual activity.

Now, for those of you that aren’t married, of course, adultery, this particular sin, like all of these 10 words, they’re not ten commandments. I mean, they are commandments, but they’re words. They encompass all kinds of other things. And so, we saw, for instance, the commandment against killing certainly involves murder, but it also involves not protecting other people’s lives. So, sexual sin is the general context of the commandment against adultery. And the Bible makes quite clear in the Proverbs that all extramarital sexuality is condemned.

It warns against prostitution, adultery, premarital sexuality. It obviously stresses marital chastity as the goal and the standard for what we’re supposed to do as Christians. So this topic has great pertinence to all of us. And of course what the Proverbs do is they say that kind of marital chastity, this brings great joy. This is a wellspring of joy. This is not some kind of puritan denial. This is the way we find ultimate happiness and joy and success in the context of sexuality, sexual relationships is with marital chastity.

On the other hand, the Proverbs say that adultery is a devouring fire in Proverbs 6. It leads to death and ruin in Proverbs 7. So adultery is seen as this horrific thing and marital chastity in all of its forms is seen as a great blessed thing.

So adultery has specific relationship to the marriage vow. Next we want to talk about adultery and idolatry.

So at the center of this is this relationship between adultery and idolatry. The scriptures, and most people know this but just to read a couple of verses. Hosea 4:12 talks about this: that a spirit of whoredom has led them astray and they have left their God to play the whore. This is talking about Israel. So, there’s a relationship in the poets, in the minds in the prophets: adultery is seen as what the faith community does when it veers away from God.

And so, we’re the bride of Christ. Of course, even in the Old Testament, Israel is represented as the bride of God. And when the bride is generally unfaithful and idolatrous, it’s described as adulterous. And Hosea is one of those places.

It’s interesting, by the way, that in Hosea 4, it says, says that whoredom, wine and new wine you’ve engaged in which take away the understanding. Now we understand the relationship of wine taking away understanding but it says here in other places that sexual idolatry, sexual adultery or whoredom also takes away understanding.

I don’t know if you’ve ever counseled somebody that’s been guilty or in the process of engaging in adultery but it’s absolutely true. An adulterer completely loses their sensibilities, their sense of all. They become blinded by their own sin. So it’s a great warning to us not to do that.

So this relationship between adultery and idolatry and in Ezekiel 23 we read this: They have committed adultery. Blood is on their hands with their idols. They have committed adultery. And they have even offered up to them for food the children whom they had borne to me.

Now that’s an interesting text because it specifically relates idolatry to adultery specifically. And then it talks about the offering up of the seed, the children to through fire to their idols. Well, that was a practice that was engaged in Moloch worship. Moloch worship is state worship. The children were not always burnt up. They were passed through a fire and dedicated to Moloch, which is the same basic word as king. So, the children were dedicated to the civil state as represented by the king or by the idol of the state, a picture, some kind of statue representation, but really it represented the king, the state, the forces of nature that culminate in the civil state.

So that text ties a direct relationship between adultery and idolatry and a particular form of idolatry, state worship. And it does it in the context of bringing in the concept of children.

Now what we’ll see when we get to Moses’ sermon next week that he begins a discussion of the sin of adultery by talking about seeds and the result of improper putting things together. You’re not supposed to sew your field with two seeds. And that seems like a weird law to us. Well, it’s one of those, you know, things at the beginning of one of Moses’s sections of sermons. It’s an illustration. It’s like a little, you know, picture of what he’s going to be talking about. And what he’s going to be talking about is the result of the seed, children of adulterous relationships as being a problem.

So next week we’ll talk about adulteration. We use that word, right? Something’s adulterated. When another compound is mixed into it, the metal becomes adulterated. Well, here in this text from Ezekiel, that’s being talked about the children and specifically the children in relationship to idol worship.

Now, the family can be an idol too, but in a biblical state, in a biblical culture, the family is an essential building block to prevent statism. The family has control over children. The family has control over property. And so the family is a what you could refer to as a power center. And the head of the family, the husband, who is the one who is the covenantal head of the family, he becomes a tremendously empowered important individual in the context of a culture.

The family is the center of godly culture. Now the church is greatly important to inform the family and call the family not to become idolatrous. But in terms of the basic culture, you see decisions are made you know seven days a week by families and family is the basic building block. And families, while they can become idol, adulterous or idolatrous rather, generally are a great prohibition against certain forms of idolatry.

There was a fellow named Ray Barber in 1944 summarized a study he had done of the family and he put it this way: that he said the family is the basic social institution. He wrote that in 1944. The family is the basic social institution. Would anybody say that today? I don’t think many people would.

If you’re looking at what our culture now is the family can no longer be seen as the basic social institution. Can it? I mean, from a Christian perspective and in Christian culture, yes. But describing America today, I don’t think you’d say that the family is the basic—I think you’d say instead that what’s happened is the family has been broken up into individuals and those individuals find the relationship to culture through the state.

So the state, I think there’s been a big shift from the family and as I just said, the family controls the culture because it’s controlling education of children, their upbringing, and it’s controlling property. Well, now the state has claimed jurisdiction, ultimate jurisdiction, and more and more administrative jurisdiction over those two areas of child raising. Children are seen primarily as children of the state. We’re back to state worship.

There’s been a transition. The state, I think, has replaced the family as the power center. By it becoming the power center, there’s nothing new about this. This is what happens when people lose faith. This is what happens in Ezekiel’s day. They committed adultery and that was related to their idolatry and that was related to statism on the part of their children and their consecration of their kids to the state.

So this is what happens when a culture moves away from Jesus Christ. It begins the power center of a culture shifts from the family to the state.

Now, when that begins to happen, the state becomes hostile to the family. Okay? And you know, if we could think of the state as an entity, which is really not true, but if you think about it, the state has become more and more hostile to the claims of family’s control over upbringing or over property through their regulations, etc. So, the state in order for statism to really work, it’s got to have a weak family. Otherwise, the family is the big power center that makes it inefficient. It makes the state no longer the great center of everything.

Now, how has this shift from the family as a power center to the state as a power center occurred? And I think there’s there’s three elements. There’s lots of them, but I want to talk about three specifically. Sex, law, and feelings.

When a culture has the kind of profound sexual imagery percolating through it that we have in our culture today, the end result is that sex is no longer seen in the context of the marital relationship. Right? And so when sex dominates a culture, it is a deeply corrosive element for the bonds of family life.

It’s interesting in speaking of this to note the differences of expressions of sexuality in the scriptures. There are graphic depictions of sexuality and there are poetic descriptions. The poetic descriptions, the lyrical poetic descriptions are found when the discussion is godly human life going on in godly men, women relationships. And the very graphic imagery of sexuality that occurs for instance in the book of Ezekiel is meant not to titillate people but to shock us with the kind of things that are going on.

Now our culture is moving more and more toward graphic representations. And when it does that, it’s breaking down family bonds. So, a culture that focuses on sexuality, sexual displays, everybody’s supposed to be having sex all the time or you’re not a happy person. This is really part of the manner in which a culture moves away from the family and self-government of a godly society to a state-controlled society because it breaks down the competition to the state which is the godly family.

Sexual freedom becomes rather an asset to the power state who will increasingly control the individual engaged in their sexual freedom. And I’ve mentioned this several times lately that there’s a relationship between “all we want is freedom to do what we like to do” and you know “if we’ll obey all your rules and regulations, we’ll use whatever kind of light, drive whatever kind of car. We don’t care about any of that because we’re thinking about this immediate gratification stuff.”

So, sexuality, the preponderance of extreme sexual imagery, sexuality, all the ads on TV, you know the you know the gig—that is one of the ways the civil state is becoming more empowered as the family is broken down.

Now, of course, it’s a lie that open sexuality is a great thing. I remember some of the early movies open relationships, open marriages, all this stuff. And of course, it’s simply not true. Over and over again in the scriptures, and we’ll we’ll sing this as our concluding song today, there are these depictions that men become violently jealous when their wife has been involved in a sexual relationship. And this movie that I mentioned earlier, Unfaithful, the wife is unfaithful, and it drives the guy nuts and he ends up doing extreme things. Now, that’s real. That’s what really goes on in a population where sexual freedom is supposedly being talked about as a great thing and openness.

In reality, it’s a tremendously horrible force in human relationships. You know, suspicion—that old song by Elvis Presley, right? Well, that’s what goes on, you know. What does he say? “Suspicion torments my heart. Suspicion keeps us apart. Suspicion, why torture me?” Well, that is the effect on husband and wife of adultery. Relationships real or imagined suspicions act as an extreme corrosive.

So sexual freedom has produced great difficulties for the Christian family or the or the families in general in this culture which still identify themselves as Christians and it’s led to a breakdown of the family and a rise of individuals and the rise of the civil state.

Secondly, the other way the civil state grows in its influence is law. Right? I mean laws really sort of define what you believe in and what you don’t believe in. In the context of the scriptures, what we’re dealing with today is a law. It’s a civil law. You’re not supposed to commit adultery. And if you do, it’s a crime. It’s not just a sin. It’s a crime. And in the scriptures, it’s a crime punished by death.

If you don’t have law as the basis for a culture, then whoever has the most power ends up ruling, right? So part of what’s going on in Tucson yesterday, you know, part of that is that the country’s become less a country of laws and more—and what that leaves then is a state that is a power state that just exercises raw authority. Congress gets to decide what we do and say in the administrative branch not because they’re obeying laws, they’re obeying the law of the constitution but because they’ve got the army, they’ve got the navy. They’ve got the Marines. It’s pure force.

Now we’re supposed to respond to that. That’s the way it was in Rome at the time of the first church and we’re supposed to respect that. But a culture that is bound up not with laws anymore, as laws disintegrate and rule is more and more a relationship of force, the family breaks down.

And this is true in the context of marriage. There used to be laws that said adultery was a capital crime. It was against the law to have sex with another man’s wife. And the laws of this country have now changed. Now it’s not a crime anymore. It’s not even a reason why you can get more money out of the divorce than the other partner. When we moved to no-fault divorce, we severely did a death blow or did a blow, a crippling blow to the idea of the family.

The family is a family that’s governed by the covenant that people enter into and it needs the support of civil laws in terms of what it does. And so a law means there’s got to be punishment. If there’s no punishment, there’s really no law. There’s just an idea. So, we have this idea that, you know, people might should be faithful, but there’s no law anymore because there’s no punishment for the violation of this particular law.

T. Robert Ingram writing on this idea or this concept in terms of the law of God said this: “Public witness to mutual consent and pledges of truth. These are the things that make a marriage.” So why do people come together and get married with a witness of the church in the state? Well, Ingram says that’s exactly what makes the marriage. Remember we said before marriage is—adultery is a violation of a marriage covenant. Without a covenant, you can’t have adultery. And so there’s lawlessness when vows are no longer seen as important.

Ingram goes on: “The integrity of the whole moral argument of the ten commandments begins to stand out even more clearly in this the mystery of making and keeping a pledge of loyalty, a promise to God and to a spouse, the taking of the name of God in a solemn oath. These are the things upon which the moral law is built. These are the foundations of society. And this is the foundation of families and marriage as well. These are the things that are kept alive and enforced by the inflicting of penalties for breaking them. Promises, vows, pledges, loyalties all vanish if they are broken with impunity.”

So, society turns on keeping pledges and punishing violations. And that’s no longer done anymore relative to sexual sin, whether fornication or adultery. It’s not against the law. If it was, you can’t punish anybody for it. And you can’t even bring that evidence into a divorce hearing to change what goes on there.

Now, a post-Christian culture is particularly vulnerable in this shift away from the family to the state through the absence of law because the post-Christian culture likes the grace of Christianity, so-called grace, but it doesn’t like the law aspect. And Christians can be led along into a view of cheap grace that says, “Yeah, laws aren’t important. We’re all violators of laws,” you know, whatever it is. It’s easy for a post-Christian New Testament gospel-oriented church to move away from law without the whole Bible being there as what we’re living on the basis of.

So, we’re particularly vulnerable. That’s what’s happened in this country laws are disappearing and specifically laws against the family. So what’s the result? The family is weakened. The family becomes less and less of a power center and the state’s power is increased dramatically as its competition, its rival is weakened and put away.

Now I’m not advocating this, but R.J. Rushdoony in his treatment of the seventh word talks about pre-Christian Poland. And in pre-Christian Poland, here’s what they did to an adulterous guy. They would take him to the public square. The next time I go to the public square in Wroclaw, I’m going to think about this. That city’s been there a long, long time, over a thousand years. They would take him to the public square, and they would nail him up by his privates, and they would leave a razor next to him, and he could either hang there and die, be there dying, or he could cut himself free. And thus, inflict the punishment lex talionis for adultery.

Now that’s not the biblical penalty, right? But the biblical penalty is more extreme. The biblical penalty is death. Okay? So this is a horrific crime.

The early church had to deal with this. They were living in Rome, which also wasn’t punishing adulterers. And so people would have adulterous relationships. They have to figure out what are we going to do? And this is I think one of the reasons why penance became important, you know, as good Protestants, oh, we don’t like penance, boo, that’s horrible, you know, but penance wasn’t about atonement. Penance wasn’t originally in the early church about producing atonement for one’s sins. Penance was about demonstrating a sincere repentance and correction of life for actions you took that might be capital crimes.

You shouldn’t be alive as an adulterer, adulteress. You should be put to death. What do we do in the church? Well, what we do now is there’s no infliction of penalty. The civil government doesn’t inflict penalties. Most churches won’t excommunicate an adulterer, particularly if they’re willing just to say, “I’m sorry.” And that’s it. Well, you know, as kids, that’s one of the first two words kids learn. I’m sorry. Means nothing to them. How do we know what people are saying? It’s difficult.

So, if the church and the state don’t inflict some kind of consequence for adultery, all we’re doing is we’re beefing up the power center of the state and we’re diminishing the power center of families through our rejection of law. No punishment, no law. And so this is one of the ways that the civil state has struck out.

Another third way, third development in our culture that’s moved the power center from the family to the state: you know, the first one is extreme sexual references everywhere. The second one is the deterioration of law and penalties specifically in relationship to adultery, the highest crime against a family. The third area is emotions and feelings.

Marriage is defined not by emotions and feelings. Marriage is defined by vow, a vow to one another and a vow to God. That is a legal arrangement. It is a lawful arrangement. Now, our feelings and emotions are involved certainly, but the basis for the marriage relationship is not feelings or emotion. It’s law. And this culture has moved more and more to define relationships in terms of feelings and emotions, personalness. It’s what an individual person feels, thinks about somebody else.

Now, that is a tremendous societal shift. And one thing we’ve been trying to do here for 27 years is to say, “It’s not about what I feel, it’s about what I believe, it’s about what I think, it’s about what I’ve pledged to.” You know that in marriage you’re pledged to one another and that has to be the core of a godly family.

When we move away from pledges, oaths, and we move into this arena of feelings, you see, that’s another huge crippling blow to the godly family, which is to be the power center controlling the future through controlling children and property. And instead, what we have now is the family has broken down. Radical individualism is as a result. It’s broken down through no penalties against crimes against the family. It’s broken down through extreme sexuality portrayed as the big thing you really want to do in your life. And it’s broken down by changing away from a law-abiding culture to a feeling-oriented culture.

And so when marriage becomes about how I feel about you rather than what I’ve pledged myself to do in covenant to you, we’re in deep trouble.

Think about the implications for children. What if the basis for how mom and dad took care of you or didn’t take care of you is how they felt about you today? Well, see that’s not going to work too good and we don’t feel real good about you and you’re a little crying baby in the middle of the night. We do. We love you. But it’s a matter of obligation and joyful obligation.

Remember what I’ve said is that Proverbs says marital chastity is the basis for a great joyous relationship. So I’m not saying it’s joyless. I’m saying the way to get to joy, the way to be a power center in the terms of the Christian family is to focus on our obligations, our joyful entering into covenant with one another.

You know, when men don’t—you know, not feeling it anymore, well, then they’re going to want to feel something else. You know, nature abhors a vacuum. And when women, you know, you see women after 30, 40 years of marriage just all of a sudden one day get up and leave because they’re not feeling it anymore.

So when we that’s another great societal emphasis. So idolatry in terms of sexuality in terms of the obliteration of penalties relative to laws against the family or sins against the family and the rise of a feeling-oriented culture. All of these are part of the idolatrous movement away from the godly family. The Christian family is the power center of the culture and that’s why we have the state now as the power center of the culture.

So adultery is absolutely tied to idolatry and it’s tied to idolatry specifically of statism.

Okay. Mutual submission.

Well, the obligations, the vow that’s entered into in the marriage covenant is one of mutual submission to each other. You know in Ephesians it says wives submit to your husbands in everything. Now that means in everything. It doesn’t mean you’re always, you know, you’re going to do whatever he wants but it means that in every—it deals with the extent of the topics in which your submission is supposed to happen and it’s in the context of everything not just specific things going on in the family. So it’s the extent because Jesus Christ’s reign is what we’re ultimately submitting to and that is his claims over everything.

What we have is at the end of Ephesians, it says we’re to be mutually submitting to one another in the fear of the Lord. And then it says, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” And then it says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.” What it’s doing is picturing a mutual submission, how that flows into the marriage relationship.

There’s a mutual submission and that flows into the wife being subject to her husband in everything. And that flows into the husband’s obligation to his wife is submission to the basic requirement of service to her. Right? He’s to love his wife. Well, they’re both supposed to love each other. The wife loves her husband by submission to him, by having an attitude of following him. And the husband loves his wife. How? By doing what Christ did, serving her.

So, what we have in the godly marriage is a concept of mutual submission to each other that flows down from our submission ultimately to Christ who has saved us. Submit to one another. Wives, submit to your husbands in everything. Husbands—doesn’t say the word submit, but that’s what’s going on. Submit to Christ by loving your wives in actions, in self-sacrificial actions.

Marriage in godly marriage then, the vows that we take blossom into a community of life of mutual submission to each other led by the husband though, and self-sacrificial love. That’s what’s going on.

On the third day, the plants come up. On the fifth day, more things, teeming things happen. A development of how God’s filling the earth. Your marriage life begins with that covenant. But it fleshes out into the one-flesh relationship. What that means is a community of life together involved in love defined by submission to the proper authority structure in the family to the husband but the family itself being submissive to God and also the husband being submissive to the wife properly and the husband serving the wife in that way.

So the marriage vow becomes this realization: the power center is not a power center where any individual is trying to achieve power. It’s powerful because it’s submissive to Jesus Christ in everything and that’s what produces a godly productive self-sacrificing blessed culture. Mutual submission.

Now this mutual submission results in response. The vow creates mutual submission. Mutual submission is seen in the context then of what how it actually works out in life is response. The work of the Holy Spirit is to bring people together and that bringing people together is one of having them respond to one another in the in the law of God.

We’re told in the case laws that there are three requirements, or three the absence of which can produce godly divorce. Exodus 21:10 says, “If the man diminishes her food, her clothing, or her marriage rights. And if he doesn’t do these three things for her, then she shall go out without paying money. In other words, without returning the dowry.” So, a husband endows the wife, but if he fails to give her food, clothing, or marital rights, she can divorce him properly. Okay.

What is marital rights? Well, it’s sexuality, right? The word has a broader meaning, but in the immediate idea here, I think the thing that normally comes to mind that most commentators speak of here are conjugal relationships. And so response involves sexuality.

If you want to know how to avoid adultery, and you should because of its devastating effects that I’ve tried to lay out both in terms of the corrosive nature of the family, corrosive nature—that if you’ve been through a church that’s gone through an adulterous thing going on, you know it’s horrible. Horrible for a long, long time. Really hard to get beyond, get behind, get past. So you should want to avoid it.

And here’s what I’m saying is that response is one of the central keys. The mutual submission in the scriptures is described as a mutual sexual submission. It says in the Bible, don’t stay away from each other sexually. It says the husband’s body belongs to the wife and the wife’s body belongs to the husband. So response is what the spirit of God is doing. He doesn’t want just get you married in covenant with mutual submission and not, you know, have a good godly relationship and that godly relationship is defined for us here as response including sexuality.

Now if couples don’t have regular sexuality intimacy then you’ve got a disaster going to happen. Either a cooling of the relationship to where it’s just, in Christian circles you may not actually end it but it’s just ended for all intents and purposes, or quite frequently this will lead to adultery of course. Men or women can go find their that kind of response, sexual response elsewhere.

So, the Bible says it’s really important. It says that if you do not engage in acknowledging what the other person wants within the bounds of decency, etc. And if you don’t engage in godly sexuality with one another, you’re giving occasion to the devil. The only time Paul says you don’t do that is maybe for a little period of prayer. But, you know, you got to do this thing. It’s good for you. It’s good for your relationship. You know, there’s something sacramental about it.

And so God says, “Do it.” And if you don’t do it, if you diminish response, it’s actually grounds for divorce. Okay? So, one of the ways that you can prepare your family to guard it against adultery is through response that is physical.

But the word for conjugal rights here or marital relationship is broader. The root word means simple response of speech.

Now, I’ve seen a number of relationships, adulterous relationships in my 25, 30 years pastoring. And most the time—I can’t think of any other time, actually, well, maybe once—but most of the time, we’re not talking about guys going off with somebody that they wanted to have sex with and that was it. What I’ve seen happen is men develop relationships with women, usually in the context of work, or women develop a relationship with the man in the context of some kind of regular activity where they’re seeing somebody else.

And that relationship begins to provide not the sexual desire component, but the response component of speech and interaction and caring and love and interest. You know, a husband wants his wife to look up to him. A wife wants her husband to really love her. And when that doesn’t happen, you’re going to look for it someplace else.

And I’ve seen the biggest inducement to adultery in Christian circles is the absence of response. Not physical but emotional. You know Jesus our savior says that you know if you look upon a woman with lust you’re committing adultery in your heart. Out of the heart the Bible says come adulteries. And what our heart desires is not just physical relationships. Much more than that. We desire this kind of response from another person. Intimate yes but a response from one person. Our best relationship in life.

And when that relationship cools for whatever reason, that’s when problems are knocking at the door.

Husbands, you know, guard yourselves. Guard yourselves physically from the physical temptation by doing what Job did. He said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look upon a mate.” He said, “I know how horrible this would be, a heinous crime before God if I did this and let another man, you know, my wife grind for another man if I’ve done this, if I’ve committed an adulterous relationship. Said it was horrible. And to avoid that, he makes a covenant with his eyes.

In the Psalms, we read that I’ll place no wicked thing before my eyes. So take care in what you expose yourself to. Young people, covenant with your eyes. Do it today. Do it right now. Say, “Yeah, I know I’m looking at things I shouldn’t look at. I’m going to make a covenant with my eyes not to put any worthless thing in front of me.”

It’s horrific that the sorts of things that the Bible portrays, graphic imageries of sexuality that are designed to revolt us and disgust us are now becoming the common fare in all too many homes of people looking on the internet at wrong sites. That’s bad. That’s what can happen, right? Remember Gibeah—the generation two generations out and they’re doing horrific things. That can happen here. So make a covenant with your eyes.

Beyond that though, make a covenant with your heart. Don’t—you know, we live—it didn’t used to be a problem in the ’40s when the family was the social power center of the culture. Most women were at work. It was mostly men working with other men. Not a problem. Now men are working with women all the time. All day long they’re sitting there talking to a coworker. They’re being with them. Relationships develop. And that’s where adultery happens.

I mean, just this last week I heard yet another story. This very thing happening in a in another CRC church. Man and into an adulterous relationship with a coworker. This is what happens. Men, guard yourselves. Don’t let that happen. And if you find that happening, get out of that workplace. Quit the job if you have to. The devastating effects of adultery on your personal life, on your family, and on this church—remember what those are. Remember how horrific they are.

The picture of David’s adultery with Bathsheba on the cover of worship today. Horrific effects. He lost—I think what five of his kids were killed. It actually happened to him beginning with the baby because of his sin. So yeah, give up a job if you need to. And beyond that, he’s not distinguishing that kind of relationship with members of the opposite sex.

Build your relationship with your wife. May the Lord God grant today, this week, this evening when you go home, may he grant you times of response to one another where words are spoken, kind looks exchanged, commitment of vows are made. May that response characterize the marriages of Reformation Covenant Church and may that be a guard against sin.

But more than that, may it be the fulfilling of the great blessing that marriage is supposed to be in the context of God’s word.

The last thing I want to say is rest. You know, last week again in Judges, we have that weird ending to that story. These Benjamites obtain women from the courtship dance. The women no doubt consented to them. It says there’s no idea of rape in Judges 21. The idea is women are looking for marriage partners. The men, the Benjamites receive their marriage partners at the dance. It’s why they’re dancing the way they are. It’s not lewd. It’s not anything like that. It’s just a courtship dance. Everybody knows that’s what’s going on. And it leads to these marriages and the survival of a tribe. The grace of God to a group that had done horrific things and defended people that had done terrible horrific things.

The concluding verse, you know, there were no—everybody did what was right in their own eyes. There was no king in Israel. I think the idea there is it’s like our times, right? We’re increasingly a culture where the power center has shifted from the family and its protection and growth to the state and we’ve gone into radical individualism and we’ve gone into weird forms of sexual perversity now becoming commonplace in the context of our culture. We’re becoming less and less ordered. And while we’re not to the state yet of Gibeah, you know, that’s not unforeseeable. It can happen.

But in the midst of that, in the habitation of dragons, the Bible says there are meadows. There are places of rest. And even though everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes, and there was no king in Israel, even though those were the times, still the people of God when they sought him could still find blessing and rest, marriage, joy. In the context of a story where the priests have denied their responsibility to guard the bride, at the end, you’ve got grateful brides and grateful husbands because God’s rest is there for us.

We live in a similar time, not a similar time, but into a time that may become similar to Judges. And it’s certainly similar—and everybody doing whatever the heck they want to do in the context of our culture. Thank God that this is happening in a post-Christian culture. One of the reasons why Gibeah happens, no doubt, is because of the influence of the Canaanites that hadn’t been wiped out, right?

So if you ever get wondering why did God wipe out all those Canaanites, think of Gibeah. Think of gang-raping men and women to death. That’s what the Canaanites were like. That’s why God said wipe them all out. You can’t work with those people. So we’re not there. We’re post-Christian. But still, you know, in the context of the breakdown of the family, the rise of the powers of the state over children and property, still when we apply ourselves to seeking the Lord for our marriages, right? We can do that. We can build godly homes in a culture here at Reformation Covenant and extend that out multigenerationally as well in the context of difficult times where adultery is more and more common where penalties have been reduced where even the church winks the eye at the crime more often than not, still God says there is rest because as we seek him in this particular area in the context of marital fidelity he’ll bring us great blessing and joy.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your love for us. We thank you that we come to this day, the day of rest, joy, and celebration because of the work of our savior. Help us now as we bring forward our offerings to you, to commit ourselves afresh to sexual purity, to chastity, Lord God, to seeing the great blessing that sexuality is to us and to see it—that this happens only in the context of how you describe things for us in marriage.

Bless the marriages here particularly. Father, convict men of their emotional response adultery they may already be engaged in and may they return to their wives and the same with the wives. Bless us as a congregation. Keep this sin far from us. Keep this corrosive acid away from our culture, from our families and from this church. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.