LAW HOMILY: Holiness In The Hidden Places

Holiness in the Hidden Places and the Seventh Commandment

Every week we go through the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to his people. We want to understand the commands of God. We want to understand what God actually has for us to do as Christians.

We don't believe that our salvation is the finish line, but the starting line. And learning the law of God actually helps us learn how to live as Christians in righteousness and holiness. Not to save ourselves, but as people who have been saved and set apart for good works, we want to know what it is that God would have us do.

So today we are in the seventh commandment. I'll read it and then we will reflect upon it. We will repent together and we will praise God for his salvation and forgiveness of all our sins. Verse 12 of chapter 20 says, you shall not commit adultery.

And the Hebrew that just says don't adultery, two words. Sometimes the most dangerous war begins in the quiet recesses, not with cannon fire, but with the faint glow of a phone after midnight. No alarm bells or sirens, just a heart slipping one degree off course.

Adultery rarely kicks down doors. It tiptoes through unlocked imaginations. It stands not with hands or lips, but with glances, fantasies, private messages, the longings that we rehearse in our brains when no one is watching.

The seventh command does not just merely forbid physical betrayal, it forbids the drift that precedes it. It is God's hand intercepting a thought before it blossoms into full blown ruin. You shall not commit adultery, he says, not to steal joy, not to steal pleasure, not to steal away the things that you desire, but to safeguard them for joy from corruption.

When Jesus talks about this command and he takes it up in Matthew 5, 27 through 28, he does not shrink it, he expands and intensifies it, saying everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

He moves it into an even greater battlefield. He teaches that adultery begins at the headwaters of faulty desire. Westminster Larger Catechism captures this as well in question 138, it says, chastity in body, in mind, in affections, in words and behavior, and the preservation of it in ourself is all a part of the duty of not committing adultery.

It says, keeping of chast company. It says, modesty in apparel and dress. It says, diligent labor and our calling, shunning all occasions of uncleanliness are a part of our duty to the seventh commandment.

In other words, God's concern for our desires are that they are holy and his scope for our desire is comprehensive. Our eyes, our hands, our habits, our humors, our tones, our schedules, our solitude all come underneath the seventh command, which means that purity is not just a single action of physical touch, but it's an ecosystem of how we interact with the world in purity and holiness.

In the same catechism, question 139, it says, adultery, what is forbidden there is fornication, rape, incest, sodomy, and all unnatural lusts, unchaste looks, imprudent or light behaviors, immodest apparel, corrupt or filthy communication, wanton looks, company, songs, books, pictures, dancing, stage plays, and all other provocations to or acts of uncleanliness.

Whatever causes lust in your heart is a violation of the seventh commandment. And the Puritan divines who wrote these things were not just prudes and fun police. They were pastoral. They saw in their congregations what sin actually does, like termites eating away at the foundation of the soul.

They saw how the serpent first slithers in through entertainment, jest, imagination, long before like an anaconda, it strangles you to death. In the Heidelberg catechism, it says, God forbids all unchaste acts, gestures, words, thoughts, desires, whatever may entice us.

It tells us positively that we must live chastely, live modestly, whether in holy wedlock or in single life. The Belgic confession says that marriage is holy before God and it condemns the corruption of the human nature, which inflames men to sin.

The canons of Dort remind us that sanctification is not optional moralism, but it's the spirit's decisive work in restoring purity to those who were once enslaved. These aren't fussy reformers and over reaching commands.

What we are seeing brothers and sisters is that adultery reaches its tentacles into every aspect of life. And it is not just a male sin, it is a female sin. And I'm not just talking about the fact that pornography today has become a female problem just as much as it has become a male problem.

I'm talking about whatever it is that makes your eye glimmer that is not Christ, that makes you love it unrighteously and without holiness. I'm talking about whatever has that tractor beam effect that sucks you in, that makes you say, I want that more than anything.

That is what we must repent of today. So whatever that is for you, whatever that is for me, whatever that is for us, let us lay it down at the feet of Jesus Christ who forgives us of our sins, cleanses us of all unrighteousness, amen.

Corporate Repentance and Prayer for Purity

If you will join me in silent prayer for a moment as we repent individually and then join me.

As we repent corporately for Jesus.

Our eyes often glimmer with many things that are not you. And Lord, it is okay to have natural affections and natural desires. There are things that are lawful. There are things that are good for our eyes to gaze upon.

There are things that are holy. Paul says in Philippians, whatever is good, whatever is holy, whatever is admirable, think on these things. Lord, what we're talking about today is the things that draw us from you.

The carrots that dangle in front of our faces that we chase. Lord, would you cause us to hate those things? And Lord, would you cause us to love the things that bring us near to you? Lord, whatever it is that brings us even a millimeter of distance between us and the one who saved us, let us despise it with a holy fury and let us love what is good and what is true and what is beautiful.

And Lord, forgive us. Forgive us of our sins. Forgive us of the fact that since last Sunday when we met together and we left to go out into the nations with the mission of God, we have known that we have fallen short all week.

Our eyes have led us in ways, even in the most subtle ways, that are contrary to our confession. Lord, help us and forgive us. And help us, Lord, to have the courage to lay down those things this morning and to not pick them up again.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. If you're in Christ, this is my favorite part of service. There's so many favorite parts of service, I'm sorry. But it's definitely one of my favorite parts of service because we just looked at the visceral and ugly nature of sin, right?

We looked at how it's awful. We looked at how it's corrupting. We looked at how it's corrosive to the sinner. And we should be destroyed for that. We should be damned for our sin and yet we're not because Christ took the bullet for us.

On the cross, Jesus took our punishment. And not in space and time like we think about, like, yeah, he died for my sins last week, but not my sins today. He died for all of our sins, past, present, and future, so that now our sorrow leads us to repentance and not damnation.

So brothers and sisters, let your sorrow over your sin cause you to leap to your feet as we declare our faith together in the Christ who forgives us. And as we do that, I'm gonna read to you our passage of pardon this morning, John 5, 24.

This is Jesus who says, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'he who hears my word and believes him who sent me "'has eternal life and does not come into judgment, "'but is passed out of death and into life.'".

That's us because of the gospel. Will you stand with me and let us declare our faith together?