Second Presbyterian Church

"Adultery, What Are We To Do? The 7^th Commandment"
May 25, 2003

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Sermons Homepage » Sermons for 2003 » Sermons for May 2003

#8 in the Series on The Ten Commandments
The Rev. Daniel E. Hale, D. Min.

• Exodus 20: 14
• Matthew 5: 27-28

Professor Martin E. Marty, Church Historian was the keynote speaker at the Sprunt Lectures while I was a student at Union Theological Seminary. These lectures were notorious for being dry and boring. Professor Marty began his lecture with something like this:

In order to make a novel interesting it has to have three ingredients: royalty, religion, and sex. (pause) "Take your hand off my knee!" said the queen to the bishop.

Professor Marty is a gifted theologian and professor.

The Lord gave the children of Israel this commandment: do not commit adultery. What is adultery? It is whenever a married person has sexual intercourse with a person to whom they are not married. In German the word is Ehebrechen or Ehebruch; it translates "marriage breaking." Quite simple, committing adultery breaks a marriage.

Marriage is still quite popular. It still is the thing to do. The tragedy, however, is that one out of every two marriages ends in a divorce. Each marriage has, statistically a 50% chance of failure. If I were to have surgery and I knew that my odds for not making it through the surgery were 50%, I'm not so sure I would take that chance. Those are high odds when it pertains to elective surgery.

But why bother? Why did the Lord give this commandment to Israel? What difference did it make? Much of the Middle Eastern culture, especially during the Time of Jesus and the Early Church weren't too hung up about marriage and sex. A man could be married and have a mistress, or visit a prostitute with no real sense that he was being unfaithful to his wife - or wives. He could also visit the Temple of Aphrodite and pay money for the sexual services of the priestess and call it an act of worship!

Today is surprisingly similar. We have communal groups. We have "open marriages." We have people choosing to just live together. And many of us are not so astonished by this change in our cultural norm. In the time of Christ non-Christian people had sex in worship. In our time too many people just worship sex. Numerous magazines and TV shows thrive on the erotic activities of actors and other famous people.

And the church has struggled to respond. In fact the Christian community has responded in two primary ways that have been real problems. The first way is to react to the sexual revolution (if that's what you want to call it) in a condescending, self-righteous manner that has too often brought out the hypocrisy of the ones reacting. In other words if the church speaks out against the morality of the surrounding culture then the church had better have its moral ducks in order. Christian leaders who have not been able to maintain proper Christian moral behavior have done much harm to the witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Often the moral self righteous approach just turns people away because it is experienced for what it is - self righteous, uncaring, condescending and hateful. It breaks the command of Christ to love your neighbor as yourself. It gives the illusion that Christians are somehow superior as human beings when Christians are not. Jesus reminds us of that. If we are proud of how well we have behaved morally and we don't take into consideration our secret lusts and fantasies, then we miss how potentially immoral we are.

The other approach by the church to the change in our cultural norms of sexual morality is accommodation. Since most of the people are doing it anyway, then go along with it. It's probably not that bad anyway. Therefore the church either overtly or covertly condones the different standards of sexual morality. The sense of what is right and wrong become relative to the context. In other words, perhaps what is right and wrong for you is not necessarily right and wrong for me. It's okay if Elder So and So is having an affair at the office. Who are we to judge? It's okay if Rev. So and So has a live in sexual partner. What difference does that make to us?

This approach muddies the waters of morality so badly that the church will crash and sink on the shoals of the Commandments of God.

But pastor, you might ask, you have just condemned one view and you have just condemned the opposite? That, in itself is confusing. What are we supposed to do.

The answer is: on the one hand we are not in any position to act morally superior to anybody. As Christians we are, by definition, sinners who have been saved by the Grace of God? On the other had, God does demand certain moral behaviors from us. And these demands are to be taken very seriously. Just because we are in no position to behave in a morally condescending manner, neither are we let off the hook from the demand from our loving God to behave in a very upright manner.

What can this do for us? It can give us the sense of being open and compassionate to those who are going to get hurt by sexual promiscuity. It can give us the place where we can be available, in the name of Jesus Christ, to minister to them and perhaps help them to come around. When people behave in the manners that our culture is suggesting they will inevitably get into some kind of trouble often serious, even life threatening trouble. Neither the morally condescending nor the accommodating approach can help that person in his or her time of need. And I believe that that is what Christ would have us to do! Jesus ate and associated with outcasts and sinners. He did it in a way that did not lessen his morality or behavior. And with the help of God, we can do the same, so that we can win others to Christ and bring them home to God.

I believe that adultery is wrong. Does that mean I should go around condemning everybody who has committed adultery? No! It means, as a Christian that I encourage them to come into the fold and experience the love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in that process they can learn how the love and grace of God demands our full effort to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ as consistently as possible. It means that we can be the tools with which God provides a new beginning for someone, like the Prodigal Son. It means that we can call out and give compassionate warnings to those around us that sexual promiscuity and adultery can only harm them.

The message is simple. We are not to commit adultery. And our fantasies demonstrate, at least to ourselves, that all of us are just a step away from breaking this commandment, if only in our minds.

Our task is this: Look to God, ask him to help keep us out of trouble, and work toward helping those who have already gotten into trouble. Amen.