Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Gracepointe Church (Dover, OH)
Exodus Series, Part 12 | Adultery | Randy Garcete
What if the concept of adultery extends far beyond the boundaries of marriage? In our thought-provoking episode, we challenge conventional ideas and unravel the seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," within the sweeping narrative of the Exodus story. By examining contemporary examples from the news, shocking statistics on pornography, and personal stories, we expose the pervasive and destructive nature of sexual sin throughout human history. We shed light on the profound pain and chaos caused by these transgressions, inviting you to reflect on their emotional and spiritual consequences.
But adultery isn't just about marital unfaithfulness. We'll take you deeper as we explore how infidelity signifies a profound betrayal of God himself. Drawing on the story of David and Bathsheba, we highlight the severe spiritual ramifications of such actions, emphasizing that adultery is ultimately a sin against God. With Jesus' teachings in the New Testament, we expand our understanding of adultery to encompass everyone, married or single, and discuss how emotional affairs and broken trust are equally damaging to our covenant relationship with God.
In the final segment, we offer a lifeline for those struggling with sexual sin. Discover practical steps to overcome these challenges through the lens of Christian faith, emphasizing the significance of experiencing God's grace, humble confession, and seeing others as fully human. We also explore the importance of fulfilling one's desires in Jesus, noting that true contentment comes from a relationship with Christ. Through powerful illustrations and insights from the Psalms, we demonstrate that freedom from sexual sin is not only possible but within reach, offering hope for a life dedicated to purity and faithfulness.
Thank you, marcus. I invite you all to open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter 20. And please stand with me and we are going to go ahead and read Exodus, chapter 20, verse 14. I've been preaching through the book of Exodus for the last several months. We've been following the story of God's people as they've been freed from Egypt, free from slavery. God has brought them out of Egypt, brought them to himself to Mount Sinai, and it's on Mount Sinai that God comes down, meets his people, enters into a covenant relationship with them and gives them the law.
Speaker 1:The last several sermons I've been working my way through the Ten Commandments. Last time we looked at verse 13, you shall not murder, and saw how that connected connects, how anger ultimately leads to murder and death. But today we're going to be talking about, we're going to be looking at, the sin of adultery. Let's go ahead and read that out loud together. Verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. Okay, you be seated. Thank you so sure. It was almost not worth the effort for you guys to stand up and do it, but I I love hearing you guys read it.
Speaker 1:Sexual sin has has been part of human human, the human experience, uh, for as long as humans have been around. Today, it continues to cause chaos and damage in the world around us. Within the past month, I've seen several stories in the news that would illustrate this reality. In France, a husband is currently on trial for drugging his wife and violating her and allowing 51 other men to come and violate her over a period of a decade. I've seen in the past week three scandals come out involving high-level politicians. Both of our presidential candidates have had extramarital affairs or have engaged in extramarital affairs.
Speaker 1:Some statistics that most of us are probably aware of having to do with pornography Every second, 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet. 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet. Every day, 68 million search queries related to pornography 25% of the total searches generated and every day, 116,000 searches relating to child pornography are received. 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites, and this is not just a male problem. According to statistics, one-third of them are women. Today, the average age of the first time exposure to pornography is 11.
Speaker 1:Esther Perel in her book the State of Affairs, which I don't recommend reading necessarily it's a very sort of a secular perspective, but one that's insightful, I think. Here she asks in her conferences she'll ask raise your hand if you've been directly or indirectly impacted by a marital affair, whether you've had an affair, whether your spouse has had an affair, or whether someone close to you has had an affair, or you've been the child of a parent who has cheated, or you have a friend who's had an affair, or someone close to you has been the victim of adultery. And she said that normally, three-fourths of the room will raise their hands. So these I love statistics, but these aren't just numbers. Behind every one of these numbers is a story that is drenched in pain and horrific damage and chaos. I read an essay in the New York Times, a lady speaking about the impact of adultery on her marriage. And she says this speaking about the impact of adultery on her marriage. And she says this Some days, nine months later, I still feel a pain so deep it suffocates me.
Speaker 1:It starts in my throat, travels through my chest and sits heavily in my stomach. I try to swallow, but my throat feels tighter than normal, as if heartache and oxygen can't share the same space. Tighter than normal, as if heartache and oxygen can't share the same space. That's the description of raw, visceral pain caused by sexual sin Sexual sin and the pain that is associated with it has deeply impacted, I would say, most of us in this room in one way or another.
Speaker 1:Whether you've been the one who has sinned sexually or someone else has sinned against you sexually, whether it's addiction to pornography or an illicit relationship, whether it has destroyed your life or the life of someone you love, it's a problem that runs so deep in our human experience. So how do we even begin to talk about this problem? So how do we even begin to talk about this problem? I've really struggled to know even how to address this in a way that's realistic, that's not simplistic. There's a lot of pain that is connected to this sin for so many of us. There's a lot of shame around it as well. So how do we talk about this without it, without one just giving up and throwing our hands up and saying what do we even do about this? This is so deeply rooted we can't actually do anything about it. Or how do we talk about this without just giving some little bullet point tips on how to overcome this sin? This is something that's so deeply rooted in the world and in our own experiences. So I ask for prayer from you guys as I talk about this, as I share that I could speak with clarity and with grace, and I could do so humbly as well.
Speaker 1:So, going back to our text, what I want to do today is essentially the first part of the sermon. I want to focus specifically on this verse thou shalt not commit adultery and specifically about adultery in terms of unfaithfulness to God. And then I want to transition to the New Testament, where Jesus talks about this command and he essentially reinterprets it or expands the definition of adultery to really get to the bottom of it, in a way that is not just applicable to us married people, but it can be applied and it's something that's applicable for every one of us who is a sexual creature. God has created us that way. So I invite you, single people, young people, don't check out. In the first part, I'll be talking mostly about adultery which pertains to marriage. The second half, I do want to talk about the root of adultery.
Speaker 1:So adultery in its most simple terms, can be defined as voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her spouse. But marital unfaithfulness isn't simply limited to that action. Marital unfaithfulness can include emotional affairs, flirting, inappropriate physical touch, inappropriate communication. Infidelity is not simply about sex. It's about betrayal, the dishonesty, it's about broken trust. These things cause deep, deep pain. Adultery is often referred to, as we often talk about adultery in terms of we call it unfaithfulness, being unfaithful to your spouse. But I want to show that it is that, but it is so much. It's even more than that. Adultery is unfaithfulness to God.
Speaker 1:So my brother, lyndon, is getting married here in about two weeks and I had the privilege of marrying him and his fiancee, sydney. Sydney and Lyndon came over last week to our place. Christy made some peach smoothies and we sat down and just talked over the ceremony, talked about the vows, the specific details around the vows and the ceremony. In the ceremony and if you're married here today, you at some point stood together with your now spouse and had some version of the following I, randy Garcetti, take you, christy, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death. Do us part. I should have that memorized, but I don't really. Some vows are more personalized, so some people will write their own vows and somehow reword this traditional text to weave in, maybe details of their own stories of how they met and what they mean to each other and the love they have for each other.
Speaker 1:In Exodus 19, we read of an account where God comes down and meets his people and, in essence, has a vow ceremony with his people. In Exodus 19, it's a beautiful account. We covered it several months ago. But listen to this language. It's almost like God is writing his own vows to his people and then his people respond. He says he weaves in the story, the history, how they met, what he did for them. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings, brought you to myself. Now, therefore, you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant. You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. That's how God opens up his vows to his people and his people respond with all that the Lord has spoken. We will do. They enter into that.
Speaker 1:I don't want to call it a marriage, but it's almost like that type of relationship where it's a covenant, love-based, forever relationship. God has always wanted a set-apart, exclusive relationship with his people and he had that with his people back in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. We saw Adam and Eve's unfaithfulness to the covenant relationship and the damage that that caused. But God is again entering into that with his people, with Israel. So the implications that that had for an Israelite husband or wife, when they heard God say you shall not commit adultery, this was much more than just staying true to their spouse. At the root, at the core of that was a promise to stay true to God, to the covenant that they had entered into. It was a covenant vowing to remain faithful for all time, and so a violation of that commandment commandment thou should not commit adultery wasn't just unfaithfulness to my spouse it now was that but worse, it was a violation to my relationship with a covenant god. It was breaking my vows with God essentially, and the consequences of that meant death by stoning. So we see this sort of play out in the story of David and Bathsheba. This is the classic story of adultery in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:The classic story of adultery in the Old Testament. King David is out on the top of his roof or somewhere overlooking his kingdom, and he happens to see Bathsheba bathing on the top of her roof and he's drawn to that visually. Visually, he finds out who she is and eventually he has her husband killed off and basically gets her for himself. So one day, the prophet Nathan, he confronts David with his sin and this is what he says. Listen to what he says. He says why have you despised the word of the Lord he didn't open up with? Why have you cheated on your wife? Why have you been unfaithful or caused Bathsheba to be unfaithful? He says why have you despised the word of the Lord? He continues. He says by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord. Nathan is rebuking David for his unfaithfulness to God, for his breaking of the covenant with God. In David's confession, then in Proverbs 51, he says Against you, you alone, have I sinned, o Lord. His sin, the sin of unfaithfulness, was against God. So essentially, adultery is unfaithfulness to God, unfaithfulness to my vows to God, to my marriage vows, essentially, to my marriage vows, essentially.
Speaker 1:I want to jump forward now and broaden the scope a little bit. Jump forward to Matthew 5. Matthew 5, verses 27 through 28. So I'm not the first person to be preaching a sermon on the sixth commandment. Jesus actually preached a sermon on this too, and it's called the Sermon on the Mount. He took that verse and he preached a sermon about it and sometimes I wish we had like an AI version of the Bible where we could just ask I'm going to try to say this without sounding sacrilegious we could ask AI Jesus to just expand on more of what he meant by this, by what he was preaching about on this verse. But the Holy Spirit is here and hopefully will guide us with this as we work our way through this Verse 27 through 28,.
Speaker 1:You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But and anytime that Jesus says, but it's a sign to just slow down and really pay attention. He says you've heard, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you, everyone that looks on a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her. In his heart, art, he took what was an Old Testament law, a black and white prohibition against intercourse outside of the bounds of marriage, and expanded it and broadened that to apply to everyone, essentially, everyone. Essentially. He says whoever looks on a woman to lust after her. And that word look can be translated in Greek, the word look.
Speaker 1:There is blepo, which in essence John Tyson defines it like this a desire to intentionally look at someone with the purpose of lusting. This isn't just a casual glance, this isn't just a noticing someone who is is naked or immodest. This is a purposeful act of lusting. And I love Dallas Willard's definition of this. He says this is not something that merely happens to them. This is not something that just happens. These are not unwilling victims without any choice in the matter. It isn't like the law of gravity, any choice in the matter. It isn't like the law of gravity. And he defines lust like this I think the desire is desired. The desire is embraced, it's indulged, it's elaborated, fantasized. It is a purposeful entertaining and stimulation of desire that Jesus marks as a manifestation of a sexually improper condition of the soul. So there's a desire that's nurtured and almost feasted on. That he defines as lust. That is lust, and lust and love just cannot coexist. Lust dehumanizes people. It turns others into objects. Love wants a person, lust wants an experience.
Speaker 1:John Tyson, which I'm going to quote a lot from he, has a brilliant sermon on this that I found really helpful. He says Lust extracts a person from the pleasure they give, discards the person and extracts the pleasure. So essentially, lust uses other people for my own personal gratification. And then Jesus goes on and uses sort of shocking language to sort of jolt us awake. He says if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better for you to 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, throw it away, for it is better for you that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. That is shocking language. People have taken this literally. My old barber used to be a surgeon's assistant or something and she had seen people come in with amputated body parts because they took this verse literally. Jesus is not saying go and amputate your body parts, but he is using metaphorical language to say sexual sin and lust is so damaging that it would be better for you to do that than to cause lust to send you into hell. It causes so much damage. It destroys relationships, it deforms us. It truly deforms us. It creates hell on earth.
Speaker 1:I'd like to read sort of a lengthy quote here by John Tyson. John Tyson is a pastor in New York City that I found some of his sermons really helpful in this whole topic. He says this. A large portion of my job I would describe like being a triage doctor in a unit of sexual sin. I've sat with many, many young adults still processing their parents' divorce. I've seen porn ruin trust in marriages, women afraid to be with Christian men because of how they will push their physical boundaries, because they've been discipled for decades by violent porn. People deconstructing their faith because of sexual sin of church leaders. Women using their sexuality and weaponizing it against men, he concludes. He says, and my response to this is that I just want to weep. I just want to weep. I have witnessed hell in the lives of people. Lust and sexual sin creates hell on earth.
Speaker 1:So how do we even begin to deal with this problem? How do we deal with this problem of lust? I was in seventh grade, I believe, when I was first exposed to internet pornography and it opened up a world for me that caused unimaginable damage to my person. I became deeply addicted to pornography as a teenager and later as a young adult, and it caused a lot of damage to me as a person. Something that I brought with me into my dating relationship caused a lot of pain in my relationship with Christy as we were dating and then engaged, and it's something that is part of my story and therefore, I think, is something that I've even struggled to know how to talk about with you all this morning this problem. I know how deeply, deeply damaging it is and the lasting consequences that it has.
Speaker 1:So how do we even talk about this in a way that's helpful? I think I'd like to sort of this last part. I'd like to talk about maybe some things way, that's helpful. I think I'd like to sort of this last part. I'd like to talk about maybe some things I've found helpful and here again, I'm aware that so much of this can maybe sound simplistic or trite. For someone who maybe is in the middle of addiction, who's tried everything, who's listened to different things and is still in those grips, it can be like oh, what can you share with me that's going to be helpful. Like you're a married man, how can what you have to share do anything for me? I trust that God can work through his word and through the testimonies of other believers. So four things. Number one I think we need to start with this, and that is to experience God's grace. Experience God's grace, and Jesus knew what it meant to be tempted with lust. He knew what it meant to feel the desire to lust, and so he knows. He identifies with our struggles and the deep feelings in our hearts when we're struggling with sin.
Speaker 1:And one of the stories I find so beautiful. Especially if you're here this morning. You'd be like I've screwed up my life in so many ways. If you're someone who's just like man, I've really messed it up and you have a lot of shame. This story is just so, so powerful. And it's a story of a woman who is caught in adultery and the Pharisees bring her to Jesus with stones in their hands, because adultery meant stoning by death, death by stoning. And Jesus bends down, he writes in the ground and then he just tells them whichever one of you is without sin, cast the first stone and eventually they all walk away and the woman looks up and Jesus says daughter, where are your accusers? And he says neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. It's just a powerful story of grace, and until you and I experience God's grace for ourselves, we will never have lasting freedom from sexual sin, lasting freedom from sexual sin. Jesus died to take away the penalty and the grip of sexual sin and it's through him, through his grace, it's only through his grace, that we can have, receive the power to have lasting freedom.
Speaker 1:Secondly, humble confession. Humble confession. I think a couple things that are helpful to think about here are just who has your sin harmed? Has your sin, your hidden sin? Has it harmed your spouse? Has it harmed other relationships? Maybe your parents? And I think that's a good place to start with confession, going to the people that are in your life that your sin has harmed and confessing it to them. And confession. I believe confession needs to be humbly done and a transparent confession meaning name the sin that you've actually engaged in. Don't call it a moral failure. I failed morally. Or I named the actual sin and I found, in my life at least, that for years I would confess. Yeah, I struggle with this, you know internet porn, but there was details around that that I had hidden for years, that I never confessed to anybody. It was the deepest part of my shame. And until you confess fully the hidden details, meaning the reality of the sin that you're in, until you confess that to someone else and to God, satan will always just keep you in the grips of that and just drag you back in Humble confession, I think. Thirdly. Thirdly, I think we need to start viewing, and we need to view people as fully human and not as objects fully human and not as objects.
Speaker 1:John tyson quotes a, a pastor talking about this. He says Lust dehumanizes the other. In fact, lust needs to dehumanize. Lust doesn't work when other people are fully human and he has this scenario that he gives that illustrates this. He says this is why exotic dancers always have fake stage names. You would never have a dancer use her real name. Why not? Because that gets in the way of objectification that lust needs. A man leering at an exotic dancer doesn't want to know her real name. A great way to just empty out these clubs would be to stand up before a dancer was to come on and say this is Sultry Susan, but her real name is Mary Walensky. She has four brothers and sisters. Her parents divorced when she was five. Her mother is an alcoholic. She's been married twice. Her last husband beat her. She has two kids and is struggling to get by. She loves dogs and would love to be a dental hygienist someday. That would empty out the room.
Speaker 1:Viewing others as fully human, not as objects of lust Sheila Rae, weguer. I have a lot of quotes but they're just so good I just can't quite help myself. Just bear with me, I'm almost done. In her book, sheila Ray Weguar says this of lust defeating lust is not about limiting a man's encounters with women. So sometimes, as men, I think we're told the lie that I believe it's a lie that. Let me just read the quote Defeating lust is not about limiting a man's encounters with women.
Speaker 1:It's about empowering men to treat the women around them as a whole person, as daughters of Christ. The key to defeating lust is not to avoid looking at women. It's to actually see them, to humanize them I think it's so powerful and then lastly, fulfill your desires in Jesus. So one of the things I used to struggle with, before I was married especially, was to look at you older married guys and be like, oh, less is no problem for you. You guys are married. As a single guy, it's like what chance do I have? So I want to look at you guys and well, everybody who's single. This is not just for you single people, this is for us married people as well, because the reality is that as married men, we can still struggle with lust. Marriage does not take that away, that at the root. I think we need to fulfill our desires in Jesus.
Speaker 1:Esther Perel says Affairs are less about sex than about desire, the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. And God has created every one of you with those desires, with the desire to belong, to feel special, to be close to someone else. And what lust does? It hijacks those desires and tries to get us to fulfill them in sinful ways. Tries to get us to fulfill them in sinful ways. Ultimately, those desires can only be fully satiated in Jesus.
Speaker 1:And listen to the Psalms how David talks about this, this language. He says hungry soul. He fills with good things. He says the children of mankind feast on the abundance of your house. You give them drink from the river of your delights, for with you is the fountain of life, he says. As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness and when I awake I shall be satisfied with your likeness. Ultimately, we can only be satisfied in Jesus. So I've covered a lot here.
Speaker 1:Sexual sin is a sin that has been around for all of history and it's going to continue being part of the human experience as long as sin is part of the world. It's something that has affected many of you, many of us, directly or indirectly, but I believe there can be freedom from from lust, from sexual sin, and I believe our calling as god's people is to seek to live lives that are pure and set apart and and ultimately, someday, the the bridegroom who's been, he's been faithful, he's kept his vows, he's going to return and the church that's you, you that's me. We'll be that bride who's been faithful to our bridegroom and we're going to get together and we're gonna have a wedding feast together. That's a hope that we have someday. That is all I have to share. I'm gonna turn the time over to Sean. Thank you, brother Randy, for the sermon this morning.