The Big Ten: Keep Your Eyes on the Road
I know you are all really excited about
today’s commandment. Number 7: Do not commit adultery. Oh yes…nothing more
uncomfortable than your pastor giving you, “The talk.” Right? It feels really
weird talking about…intercourse…at church! Gives me the shivers! But guess
what, there’s a lot of s-e-x in the B-i-b-l-e.
The writers just say it so much nicer, with words like, “He went into
her tent and he lay with her.” Or my favorite: “And Adam knew his wife and she
conceived.” Like he went up and shook her hand and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m
Adam, nice to meet you,” and out popped Cain and Able.
Now it didn’t take long in the
scriptures to figure out that people were going to misuse this gift of sex that
God had given to them. In Genesis chapter 6 we find the first instance of
sexual immorality. Chapter 16 is the “incident” with Abraham and Hagar,
resulting in Ishmael. Chapter 19 is
Now, when this was originally written,
it was mostly geared towards women. In that culture, it was ok for a man to
have a polygamous marriage, where he had more than one wife. But a woman could
have only one husband. So it was pretty difficult for a man to commit adultery.
All he could marry as many women as he wanted. Which, by the way, is a practice
I will never understand. More than one wife. Can you imagine?!
So it was a sin against your spouse.
It’s not nice to cheat. We all still know that today, right? Generally, if you
cheat on your spouse, you will upset that spouse. You have hurt them and
wounded them. God has brought the two of you together in a very special
covenant, and if you break that covenant, you are sinning against that person.
And usually our train of thought on the topic stops there. But the Bible also
tells us that adultery is a sin against God, which we don’t often think about.
In Genesis 39:9, when Potiphar’s wife is trying to seduce Joseph, he replies,
“How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” Obviously his master,
Potiphar, would be upset, but more than that, to commit adultery with her would
be a sin against God!
Which may seem somewhat odd to us,
right? Like, why would God even care? Well, he has several reasons to care. He
created us. He created our sexuality. He knows what the purpose of sex is and
adultery goes against his purpose. But I think he has an even deeper reason for
this commandment. Remember, all commandments eventually go back to his love for
us. God knows that when two people come together in a marriage relationship,
they become as one flesh. There is a deep and intimate bond created between
them. And when that bond is broken through adultery, it causes a lot of pain
and a lot of anguish, for both parties, but especially for the victim of an
unfaithful spouse. And God hates to see us in pain. He hates it when we are
hurting. He wants us to live happy, wonderful, satisfying lives, and when
adultery happens, it sucks the joy right out of life, doesn’t it.
So people lived by the letter of the
law. Don’t cheat on your spouse. Fine. But they found all sorts of ways to get
around that law, and still get their kicks. People invented divorce, right?
Like, divorce isn’t a gift from God, even though I’ve heard some people express
the relief of their divorce like it was heaven-sent. But people were using
divorce, and some still do, in a not-so-good way. Like a man would marry a
woman, find out she couldn’t have kids, and he’d say, “Well, that’s enough of
you. We’re divorced. I’m getting a wife that works.” Or he would divorce his
wife just on a whim or because he’s found someone he likes better or who will
give him a richer inheritance. The covenant of their marriage meant basically
nothing. It meant, “I’m committed to you until I don’t feel like it or
something better comes along.”
But Jesus said, No, marriage and
divorce is not something to be taken lightly. Unless the other is unfaithful, a
divorce is wrong. Also, I would add, and I know you aren’t supposed to add
things to scripture, but I think Jesus would concur on this one, they just
didn’t talk this way in that time and place: abuse. If you are being abused,
get some help and get out. I mean real abuse. Not the “he won’t give me his
credit card to go shopping with” kind of abuse, but the real abuse that goes
against the vows made to love, comfort, honor, and keep. The kind that devalues
your life.
The point Jesus is making is, do not
take divorce lightly, which we unfortunately have a problem with in this
country. But maybe an even bigger problem we have is our problem with lust. Did
you notice the sermon title? Keep your eyes on the road. You all know what I’m
talking about.
There was the group of young guys
going on a retreat with their youth counselor and they were driving to the camp
site and they got on the topic of lust. One of the boys asked the counselor,
“Well, what is lust?” And the counselor said, “Well, if I’m driving down the
road and I see a billboard with a scantily-clad woman on it, and I look away,
that’s not lust. But if I take a second look, that’s lust.” The van was quiet
for a minute, until a boy from the back seat asked, “What if I just take one,
long look?”
Jesus got very serious about the issue
of lust. He says, “Hey, if you even look at a woman lustfully…or a man,
ladies…you have already committed adultery with them in your heart.” And he
says if your eyes are causing you to sin, there’s a simple solution: tear them
out of your head. Because it is better to lose your vision than your soul.
Lust is one of the seven deadly sins,
right? Which, by the way, there is no Biblical list of the seven deadly sins in
the Bible, it’s just a list made out of our early Christian tradition. If you
read the Bible carefully, it’s not hard to figure out that all sins are deadly.
Regardless, lust is a huge problem. I want to play a short video for you, in
which a woman is concerned that her husband may fall into the trap of lust for
another woman, but then we come to find out, maybe she has some lusting
problems of her own.
Play
video
Ok, a funny story, right? But I think at the heart of
it lies a truth that we all have feared or struggled with at some point in
time. It’s the idea that the grass is always greener in the other pasture.
Maybe someone else would treat you better. They’d really care about you and
treat you better. It’s the stuff that midlife crises are made of. The men that
trade their wife in for a younger model. Or the wife that leaves or husband for
someone with more money and who “really listens” to her. Or you feel liked the
“excitement” is gone from your marriage and you start looking for that
excitement elsewhere.
Because lust isn’t always physical. Sometimes it is
lust after an idea. Lusting after what could be. Lusting after the feeling that
you got when you first met your spouse that maybe you’ve started to feel with a
co-worker.
How do we get so out of control with this stuff? How
does it get to this point? To the point where divorce becomes an option and
cheating is ok as long as you don’t get caught and your marriage is just
something you have to put up with until your spouse dies, then you are free! I
don’t think this was God’s intention for the covenant of marriage. I think he
had something bigger and better in mind.
Do you remember last week when we were talking about
the commandment, “Do not murder?” And do you remember how we said that if you
put a positive spin on it, and instead of saying, “Do not murder” you said, “Do
respect life,” how it changed the whole view on what God was trying to
communicate through that commandment?
I think the same is true for this commandment. If we
put a positive spin on “Do not commit adultery,” we see the commandment in a
whole new light. It goes from do not commit adultery, to “Do love and respect
your spouse.”
If any of you ever come to marriage
counseling with me, or if you have had it with me already, I hammer home two
points: one to the husband and one to the wife. And I can’t claim creative
genius for this, I’ve only been married for 3 years and five months, as of
today, so my marriage wisdom is not exactly extensive. So I give the advise
that I was given by someone who had been married for a long time and apparently
knew what he was talking about. Today, I’m going to share this advice with you,
free of charge. To the husband, I give two orders: always make sure that your
wife feels loved, and feels secure. That doesn’t mean just telling her she is
loved and secure, it means doing things that will let her know that she is
loved and secure. To the wife, I give one order: make sure your husband knows
that he is making you feel loved and secure. Not just by telling him, but by
doing things that let him know that he is a good husband.
If both parties do these things, it
creates a cycle where the husband makes is wife feel loved and secure, the wife
shows her appreciation, and it causes the husband to want to do more to make
her feel loved and secure, and so on and so on.
And when one or the other of you gets
off track, you can gently nudge each other back on track just by doing one of
these things. It doesn’t have to end up in a fight. Let me give you an example.
While I was sitting in my office writing this sermon, Holly came down to see
me. She sat down in the chair across from my desk and sighed. I said, “What’s
up.” She said, “I’m bored.” Now, through our communication and desire to make
one another happy, and my desire to make her feel loved and secure, I was able
to pick up that in “woman-speak,” what she was really saying, was “Hey! Pay
attention to me!” So I stopped working and we took a walk.
Guess what: when a positive cycle like
this is in effect, adultery is the last thing on your mind. When you try to
outdo each other in showing each other your appreciation for one another, no
pasture looks greener than your own. Forget that, you don’t even notice the
other pastures. When we go beyond the idea of obeying the letter of the law “Do
not commit adultery,” and we start obeying the spirit of the law, “Do love and
respect your spouse,” not only does it keep us from sinning, but it increases
our enjoyment of life, our enjoyment of our marriages, and our relationship
with others.
So, for all you married people out
there, and you know what, for those of you who aren’t married, I want to give
you some principles that can help you to do better to love and respect your
spouse, or really these principles work in any relationship or friendship or
family. Some principles for increasing the love and respect in your
relationships.
Principle 1: be the first to do the
right thing. If you and your spouse or friend or mom or whoever have this
downward spiral of a relationship, which consists mostly of fighting and
nitpicking and getting on each other’s nerves, I want to encourage you to be
the first to do the right thing. Because if you are both waiting for the other
to apologize or shape up or whatever, it ain’t never gonna happen. Be the first
to put the brakes on the direction your relationship is going, do a 180, and
start doing things that show love and respect.
Principle 2: Stop laying snares for
each other. You know you do it. The lady who did the little GPS bit on our video
sings a song called, “I lay a little snare for you,” to the tune of “I say a
little prayer for you.” It talks about women who say things like, “How do I
look? Does this make me look fat? Do you think she’s prettier than me?” You
know, all those questions there are no right answers to. But lots of times in
relationships, we lay snares for each other.
Holly and I do this to each other
sometimes. Tell me married folks with kids if this has happened to you. You and
your spouse are asleep, it’s about 2 in the morning. And your kid starts
crying. So what do you do? You both lay there, and pretend to still be asleep,
like you can’t hear the siren screaming in the next room. And it goes on until
one or the other can’t take it any more, and you bargain with yourself, “I had
a hard day’s work, I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I need sleep more than my
spouse does. Why can’t they just get their buns out of bed and take care of the
kid?” And you are both thinking that! Finally, one of you can’t take it, and
you throw the covers off, and you are just steaming mad at your spouse.
Or we let the dishes pile up in the
sink. Just waiting for the other one to finally notice they need done. And we
say things to ourselves like, “Does she not see that we are out of spoons? They’re
all dirty. Maybe if I pile it a little higher she’ll notice. It’s her turn to
do the dishes. How can she just sit there and not notice these dishes?”
These are the kinds of snares we lay
for each other. We make opportunities to get upset at each other. Stop laying
snares for each other.
Principle 3, and this one is the most
important in any relationship, but especially in a marriage: Make God your
priority together. Pray together, pray for each other, read the Bible together.
It’s really hard to stay angry at someone you are praying for, and it’s almost
impossible to commit adultery against your spouse if God is at the center of
your relationship and your have devoted yourselves to prayer and living out a
Christian marriage.
There you have it: be the first to do
the right thing, stop laying snares for each other, and make God your priority.
These things are key priorities to help you increase the love and respect in
any relationship, but especially in your marriage. And I hope as you go out
this week, that you try some of these things. Do your best to not only live by
the letter of the law “do not commit adultery,” but also the spirit of the law,
to love and respect your spouse.
Pastor
Dan Metzger
Van
Buren United