Law Homily (7th Commandment)

Now, as we come before the law of God this week, holding it up before us as a rule of life that would aid us as a tutor in how it is that we should walk in the obedience of faith, we come to the seventh commandment, which we read in Exodus 20 at verse 14.

It says, thou shalt not commit adultery. Now, that command here, as with others, has a very plain prohibition, but is also packed full of deeper exhortation and warning.

Starting with the elementary, the implications of the command are clear. Keep the marriage bed pure.

No matter what your impulses and lusts might tell you, no matter how natural your urges and curiosities may seem, you are to keep the marriage bed pure.

But let's define this, right? What is adultery? Because it could be easy to brush this aside as meaning only the most egregious cases wherein you engage in a sexual relationship with someone other than your husband or wife, narrowing its meaning to only the most evil violation of the command.

But it's so much more than that. And yet, once again, we've reduced obedience to merely not committing the most evil form of the sin.

This is why I think it's important that we see the heart of this command if we're to properly esteem what we are to do in order to obey, beyond simply not doing the worst that we could possibly do.

Keep the marriage bed pure, right? This is the principle. And here, we find much that if we're not doing, we ought to be, and for two reasons.

One, it serves as a preventative form, or a preventative from the utter violation of committing the actual sexual act of adultery, right?

So the principle here, striving to do the things that we should be doing serves to prevent us from actually committing the sins in the worst ways that we could commit them.

But second, it fosters joyful marriages wherein you aren't constantly in a defensive war with your flesh to hold yourself back from the debased urges, but where you are on the offensive, constantly searching for ways to better love and cherish your wife or husband.

Now, this will have many forms, right? You'll start obeying this in a positive way, actually doing things so that you don't end up doing the worst.

You'll have many forms, depending on where you're at in your life. Depends on who your wife is, right? Her personality experiences and so on, or who your husband is, his personality experiences and the like.

It'll depend on your stage of life. Like I said, younger or older, married or unmarried, children in the house and so on.

But again, we heed the principle, no matter where we are or what our situation is or who our spouse is, we keep the marriage bed pure.

And remember that it doesn't just happen, that you have to work for it. And so husbands, you should love your wives and cherish them, serving as Christ served his bride to the church.

And you've probably heard effeminate men say that you lead by serving, but the opposite is actually the model.

Be like Christ and serve her and your family by leading, right, serve by leading.

That's the calling. That helps you to keep your marriage bed pure. Bear with them as the weaker sex, as Peter says, don't expect your wife to handle emotional situations like you do or like other men do.

They're not made that way. And give them what they need to do the works that God created them for, to make things beautiful, to care for their home and people.

Don't expect them to work in the ways that you do. They have certain works that God's given for them, empower them to do it, give them what they need to do it well.

Too many men expect their wives to be just like the guys because they don't know how to love a woman in the ways in which

God made her. But don't let that mark your marriage. Treat your wife like your wife, a woman given to you by God to love and to cherish.

Help her to walk with him, wash her in the word, equip her for the works that are suitable for her.

And wives, respect your husbands and submit to them. Not just when it's easy or because you agree with him, but because that is his due.

He's attached his life to yours and you've agreed to the same, now let him lead. And if he sins, there are ways to work through those things, but you owe him honor in this way.

Don't hold it back from him and don't prevent him from even trying to lead and don't make him feel like he's constantly needing to re -earn your trust.

Second, you should take on his mission, right? Making beautiful the things that he gives you. Don't be disappointed in what he provides.

If he's working hard for you, give thanks to God that you have a man who would even do that. Even if it isn't as much as you'd like, be thankful and work in light of it, receive it and put it to good use.

Be faithful in little and trust the Lord will bring you more. And don't expect your husband to be one of the girls, right?

He's not gonna wanna talk to you about his feelings all the time, especially if you shame him or use his pain against him.

Honor him, celebrate his accomplishments and his effort. Be thankful for a man who acts like a man.

And when he opens up, again, don't look for ways to make him more like a woman or to use it against him later.

Now for unmarried folks and children included, you're not without obligation here when it comes to honoring the seventh commandment to not commit adultery and to prepare yourselves for marriage.

Again, you need to prepare yourselves to be this kind of husband or wife someday. So learn these behaviors early.

Surround yourself with healthy marriages and encourage your brothers and sisters here to cultivate healthy marriages.

Don't put asunder what the Lord has joined together by encouraging division or argument in your brothers and sisters.

Be a friend to the marriages around you. Pursue purity sexually.

Again, this is for all the people who are unmarried, all people, all of us, even if you're married, pursue purity sexually.

But if you are unmarried, heed these things. If you are a child, heed these things. And if you're a parent, heed these things for your child.

Just to be clear, right? Pursue purity sexually. Again, this doesn't just happen in our time.

You need to protect yourself from fornication and your eyes from evil. This will bless your marriage immensely later on.

The prevalence of pornography in our culture is disgusting and it's destroyed the purity of the marriage bed, no matter if you're married or not.

Protect your eyes from that evil. And parents do not let your children to be exposed to these things.

Have rules for phones, standards for their friends. Parent your children in this way and it will bless them.

But too many I've seen are afraid of being seen as harsh or overbearing parents. But the truth is at the price of a healthy marriage for your children, it's too great a cost.

Just so your children can have an iPhone or so other parents don't feel like, you know, that they're not doing enough because you have standards.

Love your children enough to protect them from perversion. And lastly, don't delay marriage as you reach that age.

Find a godly spouse, pursue good counsel around you to ensure it's a positive relationship and embrace marriage as a gift of God, not a burden added to you later in life.

Now, there's much more obviously that could be said about marriage and sexual purity, but suffice it to say that as we confess our sin to God this

Lord's day, that there is much that each of us should be doing yet aren't. There may be things that you should not be doing yet are.

And there may be things that you have done but shouldn't have when it comes to keeping the marriage bed pure.

And that's a sad thing. Those are hard things to move on from. The pain is real and the lingering collateral damage in particular can be significant.

Yet it's the reality of the fallen world that we live in. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.

We failed the standard and in so doing are deserving of the wrath of God for it.

But God being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved.

And raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come, he might show the surpassing riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And so in whatever way you have failed from the smallest to the largest degree, hear this, that Jesus Christ has come to save sinners like you, that you have sinned and in some of you in the worst ways, but this does not need to control you anymore.

Confess your sins to your God who being rich in mercy and love toward us makes us alive together with Christ and run to him for forgiveness.

Trust in him, not yourself, not your ability, not your record. It isn't good enough, but in him and in him alone.

So if you would, please join me in kneeling if you're able to confess your sins to your

God. Let's do that to this day. Father, we are a people stiff necked by nature, we're stubborn to keep our own way, stubborn in our unfaithfulness even to our word, to one another and most importantly to you.

And yet in your kindness and in your mercy to us, Lord, you have and your love for us, you have redeemed us by your grace, we have been saved in Christ Jesus.

And Lord, we give thanks this day that despite our shortcoming, which is certainly there, that you, our confidence is not in ourselves, not in our record, but in you.

Lord, we do confess that we are a people who will find ways to sin, invent ways to sin.

Lord, may you protect us from that. Lord, may your spirit work in each of us here, where not only today, but for generations to come to preserve the marriage bed, to keep the marriage bed pure in this people, that we would be a church, a community of strong families that start, starting with husbands and wives who love one another, serve one another.

Lord, and serve you and honor you in the ways in which they live and raise their families.

Lord, may you strengthen us from this point, that point of each of our lives, the marriages that are represented here today and in the future.

May you strengthen us from there outward, that we would be a people, again, a bedrock of a family that loves one another.

Lord, help us by your spirit, Lord, preserve us, keep us from stumbling, keep us from falling off of the way with sexual sin in particular.

It's so dangerous, so pernicious. Lord, may that never happen within this community.

May you protect this community from falling into the deviance of sexual sin, particularly our young ones, where may you protect their eyes, protect them from the advances in technology that are positioned or positive to us as advances and yet put so much risk right in front of their eyes.

May you preserve them from that or protect them from that, that they would not be consumed by it. May you teach our nation even to have a hatred for these things, make it illegal again, these types of atrocity of pornography and sexual debauchery.

May these things return to where they belong in hell and not be things that we see publicly everywhere we go, it would seem now, or anything we watch on TV or read a magazine, all these things is, may you just return all of this to the pits of hell,

Lord, by your kindness to us. We ask your help that you would strengthen us by your spirit, we ask in Jesus' name, and amen.

Now, as the forgiven children of our God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lived a perfect sinless life and died a sinner's death as a substitute for us and rose again on the third day in victory over sin and death for all of his people for all time, please stand if you would with me in the newness of life that he has called us into as we are assured of our pardon because of God's declaration over us from 1

John 1 at verse nine. We read, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The Lord has heard your cries this day, church, receive his pardon by faith, knowing that he has received us as his own by his great love for us in Jesus Christ, our