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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 20:14
Well, this morning we consider the seventh commandment together, and so we're making our way forward to the end, and we'll have, unfortunately, stopped just short of the tenth commandment for a sort of short break.
We'll have some guest preachers come in early next month, but we'll wrap up the tenth commandment before we head off to Camp Manadnok at the very beginning of June, which I hope you're looking forward to and preparing for, especially in the Gaga Pit, word to the wise.
But we'll look forward to that. So this morning we are considering the seventh commandment, Exodus 20, verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. Now I'm thankful every week, and perhaps this week more than many, that we've been going through Thomas Watson, so many of us in the church have been going through Thomas Watson.
And he gave, toward the end of his exposition of this commandment, 16 points of application, and I'm hoping to get through just three this morning that, of course, will branch out in different directions.
But I'm thankful that in the short time we have this morning, knowing I can't touch on everything, that we can at least touch on some vital things. Thanks in part to Watson, also thanks in part due to the fact that we will begin the Sermon on the Mount when we get back from New Hampshire, and there'll be opportunity again to consider some of these things, certainly the seventh commandment as Jesus teaches on it in Matthew chapter 5.
So this morning I want to consider how this commandment applies to, first and foremost, the heart, even though we'll save the bulk of that in terms of application for the sermon from Matthew 5. And then I want to consider the body, where perhaps we'll have the bulk of some practical application, and then lastly, just a word of warning and exhortation to consider the soul.
So the heart, the body, and the soul. Well first, the heart. Last week we were considering the sixth commandment, and we said that God forbidding murder is more than just a forbidding of the physical act.
First John 3 .15 tells us everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And so by the same logic, we can say this forbidding of adultery forbids more than just the physical act. Everyone who lusts after another is an adulterer.
We don't mean to separate somehow the weight of this commandment from how it comes across us as a sinful people. John's not pulling punches. He's not winking when he says, if you hate your brother, you're a murderer.
Let's put that in air quotes, murderer, wink, wink, but not really. No, he really means that. And Jesus really means if you lust after another, you're an adulterer. He really means that. He really means you will stand before God and give an account for breaking the seventh commandment.
So there is no one in this room who's left unscathed from the demands of God's law. We have to begin there because God's law comprehends the heart. He doesn't look upon the outward act, but the inward disposition.
What would you do if you were not restrained? If you were willing to risk, as it were, willing to get away with it, what would you do? God looks upon the heart. And therefore, we're always dealing with the heart of the command.
And this is clear when we actually consider the way that God portrays adultery throughout Scripture. We find that idolatry is often linked with adultery. And when the prophets come to condemn the faithlessness and rebelliousness of God's people, they often are addressed in terms of an adulterous wife.
God himself being the faithful, loyal, covenant-keeping husband to Israel, and Israel, his people, being an adulterous woman. And so we find that throughout the prophets. And let me just give you an example of how this turns on the heart.
Ezekiel 16, I think, is one of the best pictures of God's relationship to his people. All right? Ezekiel 16, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem. This is beginning in verse 3. Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan.
On the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut. You were not washed in water to cleanse you. You weren't rubbed with salt or wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you.
But you were thrown out into an open field, and you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. Do you see what God is saying about this nation? He's saying on the day that you were recognized as a nation, you weren't cared for, you weren't thought upon, you weren't shown compassion by all those who saw you, who came upon you or passed by you.
You were, as it were, exposed. You were left out in an open field to die. You were birthed and not the slightest care was given to you. You were given over to death. So this is how God comes upon this pitiful nation that is barely able to survive.
And he says this, verse 6, when I passed by you and I saw you struggling in your own blood. This is a very graphic image, isn't it? It's this newborn child now that needs all this care, it's struggling, it can't catch its breath.
And I said to you in your blood, live. Yes, I said to you in your blood, live. I made you thrive like a plant in the field, and you grew, you matured, you became beautiful. I spread my wing over you, I covered your nakedness.
I swore an oath to you, I entered into covenant with you, and you became mine, says the Lord your God. So you see what's happened now, this fledgling nation gasping for breath that all hate, soon it's going to be stomped out in a sort of resting for power among the nations of the world, but God puts a hedge of protection.
He passes by and unlike all the other nations of the world, God says, I will show compassion, I will have pity. And so he wraps this little nation, as it were, in swaddling cloths, he cares and helps it to grow and mature, and now this nation has become beautiful.
Now this nation has become a bride, and God enters into covenant with this nation. He says, you're now mine, you're my spouse, my beloved, the apple of my eye. He says, I clothed you in embroidered cloth, I gave you sandals of badger skin, that must have been something great in the ancient world, were those the equivalent of Prada shoes or something like that?
Maybe, badger skin shoes. The point is, I adorned you, I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, a chain around your neck, I put a jewel in your nose, earrings on your ears, a beautiful crown on your head, and so you were adorned with gold and silver, your clothing was fine linen, silk, embroidered cloth, and your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty.
It was perfect through my splendor, which I bestowed on you, says the Lord God. So now is this nation that God rescued, that God protected, that God grew, and when this nation became beautiful because of all this care, all this love, all the richness bestowed, what was the result?
Was it fidelity? Was it covenant faithfulness? Was it loyalty? Was it zeal? Was it exclusive devotion and worship to God? No, what does the prophet say? You trusted in your own beauty. You played the harlot because of your fame.
You poured out your harlotry on everyone that passed by you. So the acts of betrayal begin to mount up. He spends another two paragraphs listing the amount of idolatry and rebellion, and then he pronounces judgment.
In verse 30, he puts the point on it. How degenerate is your heart? How degenerate is your heart, says the Lord God. So you see, Jesus isn't saying something entirely different. It's not like adultery was only ever seen as the physical act, not in the Old Testament, and then somehow Jesus comes in Matthew 5 and He says, well, actually, it's a matter of the heart.
Wow, amazing, we've never considered this before. Jesus is simply extending what the prophets were always declaring. How degenerate is the heart that throws off covenant loyalty and becomes adulterous and rebellious in all of her ways?
So the heart of the problem is the heart. The heart of this command against adultery is the heart, keeping the heart, knowing that every issue of life flows from the heart. And when we understand what we mean by heart when it comes to this commandment, fundamentally we mean desire, disordered desire, disordered desire.
As a result of the fall, fallen man's mind has become darkened, a heart that's given infections and desires that are meant to be toward God and toward neighbor, for the good of neighbor, for the glory of God, now have caved in upon the self.
And as a result of this radical disordering of desire, God has to command against adultery. Adultery is the outflow of this disordered desire. James 4 says as much. You ask, you don't receive. You ask amiss.
Why? To spend it on your pleasure. This is what disordered desire does. I want, I want, I want. You want for what? I want to spend it on my pleasure. I want to serve myself, to gratify my tastes, my needs.
And what does James say? Adulterers. Adulteresses. Don't you know friendship with the world is enmity with God? He's as good as Hosea or Ezekiel. He's an Old Testament prophet, practically, as far as his concern is found.
He's addressing the disordered desire of the heart. And so we begin here, we really begin at the deepest point, at the foundational place. God forbids adultery because God comprehends just how disordered and dysfunctional the desires of our heart has become.
Now there's a big problem if we think somehow the desire that is forbidden in the seventh commandment is in and of itself repudiated by God. That's a big problem. God never repudiates or disavows or stands against sexual desire.
Never. What's forbidden is not sexual desire. That is a good gift given by a good God. What God forbids is the misapplication, the abuse, the twisting and mutilation of that good gift. The wrong use to the wrong ends, to the wrong people, in the wrong place, in the wrong context.
That's what the seventh commandment forbids. And it's vital that we maintain this. God is far less prudish than we tend to be. It's a good desire if it's used in a lawful way, in the right way, in the right relationship toward a right end.
It's a wonderful gift. What we don't want to do in church is address this desire as something foreign and unnatural to be repudiated, to be pushed away and repressed and so this is always guilty. And then it's as if there's something always dirty, unseemly, somehow guilt always must attach to a desire in this way.
No, only when that desire is not in a right context, in a right relationship to a God-given end. And I think we do a disservice especially to our younger people if they grow up with a certain guilt complex about sexual desire rather than recognizing this is a holy, pure and good thing when it's used in the right way toward the right end.
Marriage is held in honor among all. The bed is undefiled and so we dare not defile what God has pronounced good. But the problem, of course, is disordered desire. Not ordered desire, but disordered desire.
C .S. Lewis wrote, I might probably spend a little too much time on C .S. Lewis, but I find him so helpful on this point, especially in his writing Mere Christianity and C .S. Lewis said our warped natures and the devils who tempt us and all the contemporary propaganda for lust, not for a right understanding of sexual intimacy, but propaganda for lust.
And so you have what? A warped nature, a sin nature, devils who tempt us, the spiritual forces at play around our world and therefore in our lives, and then all of the sort of surface level contemporaneous culture and their communications and media for lust.
And all of this, both our nature and temptation spiritually by spiritual forces and just by the culture, combined to make us feel that the desires we resist are so natural, so healthy, so reasonable that it's almost perverse or abnormal to resist them.
Don't you see that as a way that these issues are being discussed from secular talking heads? This is a very, very natural thing to want to go and sleep around, to have many dalliances. This is, in fact, it's rather unnatural and perhaps even repressive and abnormal to deny that.
Rather, you should throw yourself into the freedom of it, right? What do they call the great movement of the 60s? Sexual what? Liberation. That's the idea. Throw off the constraints. Liberate yourself.
Go into what comes naturally. There's something natural and healthy and normal about having sex anywhere, everywhere, with anyone, all of the time. Make yourself completely available. Never deny the impulse.
Poster after poster, inculcate this message, film after film. Lewis says, associate the idea of indulgence as if it were healthy, normal, youthful, full of good humor. You know? Isn't this great? We can joke about this at the bar.
This is what life's all about, living for Friday night. Now, he says, this association is a lie, right? Now, we know that much, but here's the genius of Lewis. Like all powerful lies, he says, it is based on a truth.
Like all powerful lies, it is based on a truth. Here's the truth. Sex in itself, we're not talking about the twisting of it, the perversion of it, the excess of it, the obsession over it, but no. Sex in itself is normal, is healthy, is wonderful, all the rest of it.
Here's the lie that makes this lie so powerful as it takes that truth and then it perverts it and distorts it. The lie consists in suggesting that any act, any form, any frequency, any relationship to which you are tempted in the moment must therefore also be healthy and normal.
That's the lie. But it says the desire is good and then the lie says the desire is good anywhere, anyhow. Now, as Christians, we say the desire is good when it's constrained by God's purpose, by God's will, according to God's design.
Only then is it good. Only then will it bless your soul. Only then will it sustain you and nourish you. Only then will you be able to say this is a good gift from a good God. When you abuse the gifts that God has given mankind, we do it to our own ruin.
We distort and bite down on the lie and find an emptiness and a misery. If not in this life, then surely in the end, but normally, normally even in this life. Lewis makes the analogy of piano keys, right?
You wouldn't say, well, here's this song that I've composed and, you know, here are the keys you need to play and these are the good keys and these are the bad keys, right? They're just keys. There's no good key or bad key per se, but if your point is to play the right key for the song, then the good key is the right note at the right time.
The bad key is the wrong note at the wrong time, right? Playing a song in the way that God intended is what defines the right key in the right way. So the heart of the problem, again, is disordered desire.
One of the things that I really love about Lewis on this point, and he made it in Mere Christianity but he did it better in a letter that I'll read in a moment, is he's recognizing that desire itself is not the problem, the disorder of our desire is the problem, right?
The desire itself is not the problem, but the disorder of it. It's a right desire, it's part of how we're made as human beings to have sexual desire. The problem is that our sinful nature and the result of the fall is it's disordered and distorted, that desire.
When we understand, again, that being sexual is part of being human because it's part of this good gift that he has given man and woman, part of a good desire toward a good end in giving it. And when you understand desire in that way, you'll recognize that the seventh commandment forbids disordering that desire and therefore calls for a right ordering of our desire.
It does not call for a denial of it or a repudiation of it. So here's the great picture that Lewis gives. This was in a letter, not in Mere Christianity, but this was in a letter he wrote to a very close friend of his, Arthur Greaves, who I think wrote for some advice on dealing with this temptation, particularly, and this is so helpful from Lewis.
Suppose you're taking a dog on a leash, right, you take your dog for a walk. So the dog's on the leash, you're taking him for a walk and you're going past the post and what almost inevitably happens, right?
You're on the sidewalk, the post is off to the left and the dog immediately goes on the far side of the post as you're going forward. So now you're on one side of the post and the leash is wrapped around the post and the dog's pressing forward on the other side.
But you're both trying to go forward. The dog especially is straining with all of its neck muscles to go forward, but it cannot. Its leash is wrapped around the post, right? So he tries to go on the wrong side, gets his head looped around the post.
You see, as his owner, he can't do it. So what do you do? You pull him back. He's straining to go forward and you're sharply pulling him back. You pull him back because you want him to go forward. You're trying to go forward.
He's wrapped his neck around this pole. He's trying to go forward too and you recognize the only way he can go forward and I want him to go forward is if I yank him back. He doesn't recognize that he's being restrained by this pole.
He wants exactly the same thing. He wants to go forward. And for that very reason, he's resisting you pulling him back. No, you don't understand. I need this. I'm trying to go forward. Yes, I know. That's what I'm trying to do when I'm pulling you back.
Or perhaps it's an obedient dog. And instead of resisting, he actually yields to being pulled back almost out of a manner of reluctant duty because it does seem to be going the opposite direction. But he's saying, well, I trust my master.
I guess I'm not going to go forward after all. And then what happens? Now he moves forward freely. Though in fact, it's only by yielding that he will ever succeed in getting what he wants. So you see the point that Lewis is making.
It's only because God has laid up real goods for us to desire that we're able to go wrong by seeking them in the wrong way, snatching at them out of greed, or using them in some misdirected, fleshly way.
So we don't come to this issue, to this disorder desire, and say, God forbids you to go forward. He doesn't want you to go forward. And you're feeling him pull back. This is God's gift, God's design. He wants this for you.
But he's pulling you back from using it in a wrong way. He wants you to get to its intention, to its design. He wants you to truly find how it is good. In order to do that, you must allow him to pull you back.
You must yield to him so that you can go forward truly, freely, and find that all you were resisting was actually resisting a good desire. So that's the issue. Not the desire, but the disorder of the desire.
And this is what Lewis says to his friend Arthur. And so you may feel that God understands your temptations. He understands them a great deal more than you do. Isn't that wonderful? He's saying, Arthur, God knows exactly what you want, what you're resisting, and he knows it much better than you do.
He sees the big picture. He sees the restraint, the leash that you don't even see. Yield to him. Trust him. No good thing will he withhold from you. Only the dog's master knows how useless it is to try to get on with a leash knotted around a lamppost.
And Lewis, at the end of this letter, says that's why you must be prepared to find God implacably, immovably forbidding what might seem really small and trivial to you. Like, why can't you just let me go?
Why are you pulling me back? Because you don't understand. There is no way forward. If you yield to me and come back to me, there will be everything you seek and more. So redemption, God's grace in Christ, redemption seeks to rightly order our desire.
If the fall introduces, especially in terms of sexuality, a disorder of desire, then God's redemption seeks to rightly order our desire. And that's where so much of the practical application of the seventh commandment begins.
Understanding what this gift is for, its proper design, yielding to God, and recognizing that God is reordering our desire in a right way toward a right end. Now in order to yield, we need two things.
Some of us yesterday morning were discussing this point from Watson. The points that really stood out to me of all 16 were the need for fear and the need for delight. And if we would yield to God, if we would allow Him to direct us in a better path, toward a better way, then we also need to have fear and delight.
Thomas Watson says, labor to get the fear of God into your heart. We're saying the heart of the command is the heart. And what you need in your heart is fear. That's going to be the great theme of our time at Camp Manadnock this year.
I can't wait to hear from Michael Reeves on this. Labor to get the fear of God into your heart. How did Joseph keep from temptation? The fear of God. The fear of God pulled him back just like the leash from the master's hand.
The fear of God made him cry out, how could I do this against my God, this wicked thing? He recognized God directs my path. God knows what is good. So a fear of God must be in our heart if we would yield to our master's direction.
And secondly, there needs to be delight. As we were talking yesterday, rarely do we have both of these things simultaneously. They ought to be together. They are bedfellows, but often in the Christian life, we sort of pinball between them.
We'll go from having a great fear and maybe feeling sort of empty or stale, not really having a delight. And then we'll maybe have a delight, but that delight, it almost makes us sort of careless. We're not sober, we're not diligent, we're not watchful, we're just so happy.
And it's sort of a shallow happiness that loses that element of fear. And so we're constantly pinballing between these two things because really, a fear of God is a recognition of God's transcendence.
He's so utterly other, so holy, so infinite. And so this fear that I have to God is recognizing who he is in his transcendence. But the delight of God is recognizing who he is in his nearness, his eminence, his sweetness, his gentleness, the one who bears me up, the good shepherd who takes the lamb upon his shoulders.
And so you can see how if we go all in on either of these, we distort who God is. God is the one who is utterly other and yet near. God is infinitely holy and yet full of mercy. God is the one who is transcendent above all.
God is in his dwelling place. Let all mortal flesh keep silence. Have you ever heard that song? That's the infinite God that we serve. That ought to produce a fear in our heart, but we consider that God draws near to us in Christ by his spirit.
Then we can be filled with delight, a fear and delight. You must eventually have these things held together, even if you don't experience them simultaneously. That's really the goal. In my experience, in my own life, and perhaps what I've seen in others is we tend to veer from one to the other.
Well, that's better than having only one or the other or maybe having neither. Of course, ideally, we produce both because you need deep wells of delight and those deep wells of delight really begin when you recognize this fear of God in your life, when you acknowledge God as he is in his holiness.
When fear gives way to love, right? What does John say? Perfect love casts out fear. It's a wrong kind of fear. It's a fear that says run and hide. The perfect love that casts out fear is not antithetical to fear.
It actually properly defines and fulfills fear so that in Christ there's perfect love and perfect fear for God. And therefore, for those who are in Christ being conformed to Christ, there will ultimately be a perfect love and perfect fear of God.
Angels never have to vacillate between these two extremes. They have a perfect delight when they consider his radiance and cry out holy, and they have a perfect fear when John's trying to bow down to them.
They're like, get up. What are you doing? Perfect love, perfect fear. We need to labor to have these things in our hearts. Thomas Chalmers preached his famous sermon from 1 John 2 .15, his sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection, expulsive power.
Think of, you go to a circus perhaps and they have the big cannon, right, and they load the guy into the big cannon and they expel him, right? He launches out. That's a good image. It's like here you've got this sort of chamber of your heart and how are you going to explode?
How are you going to get rid of this old affection, this tainted, disordered, distorted affection? Chalmers is saying by an entirely new affection. Watson said as much. He says, take delight in the word of God.
The reason why people seek after unchaste, sinful pleasure is because they have nothing better. They that sport with harlotry have no better pleasures. That's essentially what Chalmers is preaching on from 1 John 2.
You want to get rid of this distorted pleasure, this fleshly pleasure in your life? You need something better. You need a higher enjoyment, a higher pleasure, a deeper joy, a much more powerful attraction and satisfaction.
And so 1 John 2, 15, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Why? Well, what's in the world? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
This is not of the Father, it's of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever. Do you notice what John is tripling? You have the love, love, love, right?
Don't love the world, love the world, but love the Father, contrasted with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, the lust of the world. And so we're drawn between these tripled emphases of either love to God or lust like the world.
And Chalmers says this, the love of the world cannot be expunged, right, driven out, cleared by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness. He's saying it's not enough to just go, oh yeah, the world, it's so pathetic what they clamor after.
They don't recognize that beauty is passing, its charm is deceitful. They don't see that vanity is the end of everything. They don't recognize that they're full of selfishness and malice. They don't see the misery that's coming upon them.
Look how worthless the things of the world are. Chalmers says that line of argument will never be enough to actually clear your heart of the tentacles of the world's pull. The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness.
He says this, the heart, this is the heart of the commandment, the heart cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world by a simple act of resignation. I'm done being worldly. Okay, see you tomorrow.
That's not enough in and of itself. But he says, may not the heart be prevailed upon in preference to another who can subordinate the world, the only way to dispossess the heart. It's a language of taking Canaan, right?
Dispossess Canaan of her inhabitants. Here's this land and it's full of the enemy of God, as it were. Go in, make conquest, purge them, cast them out, dispossess them, take it over. And in sanctification, you're essentially possessing your heart.
In matters of sexuality, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, you're possessing your vessel. You're dispossessing rogue and rebellious affections. How do you do that? The only way, Chalmers says, to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.
This is tried and true. If you're a Christian, you've never had a more powerful, victorious season in your life than when Christ was everything to you. When your affections were burning bright and hot to Christ, so powerful was your guard against the arrows and darts of temptation that you almost look sideways at believers that are struggling.
Is it really that hard? Maybe there is something to this higher life theology after all. You know, why is everyone struggling so much? I don't find it that hard to resist temptation. The only way to dispossess your heart of this disordered desire is by having an entirely new and entirely higher and entirely better pleasure.
Not to a worldly, to a scoffer, to a cynic. It's laughable. Ha ha ha. Go open your little Bible. Go pray to your Jesus. That's so funny that you deny what is natural and normal and good. I love signing in to Pornhub.
I love spending afternoons and sharing freely about it with any and all. I'll wear the t-shirt with the logo on it. I love doing that. It's just, you're so repressed and you're going to go try to create some artificial joy in praying to your God and believing your little gospel.
But if you've been given eyes to see, if you've been a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone, you know exactly how much superior the pleasure of Christ is. Joy is unspeakable that only come from His right hand.
And so we're always dealing with the heart if we're dealing with the heart of the seventh commandment. Now, secondly, the body. The body. Tertullian wrote on embodiment, and I thought this was such a fascinating point.
He says, and God formed man, clay from the earth, already, and that's, he's quoting Genesis 2, 7, right? God formed man, clay from the earth. He says, already he is man who is but clay, right? God formed man, clay from the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
This is from his sermons on 1 Corinthians 15 on the resurrection. And what Tertullian is noticing is that first and foremost, man is formed even before he receives this breath of life. God calls the clay formation man.
And so he distinguishes sort of the root of man as body versus man who receives this breath of life and becomes an embodied soul, right? God formed man, clay from the earth, already he is man who is still clay, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man, that is right now the clay, became a living soul.
And so this is Tertullian's logic. Thus, man is first that which was formed, in other words, body. And afterwards, the whole man, body and soul. Now his point is, as to our creatureliness, there is something irreducible about our embodiment.
He's casting off sort of Gnostic, you know, charges against the resurrection hope. And he's saying we can't deny that our identity is fundamentally embodiment. We are embodied. That's what it means to be human.
Now that's not the fullness of what humanity is. We must receive the breath of life and become a living being. That's the wholeness of man. But he's saying we don't begin with that and the body is something that can be added on and therefore dispensed with.
Fundamentally man is body and soul. Ephraim Radner, writing on this, says bodily givenness is the primary matter of scriptural reflection. What does your life of sanctification consist of? Your bodily givenness.
The limitations and constraints, the deprivations, wants and needs of your body. And that's how it involves your spirit, your soul. Bodily givenness is the primary matter of scriptural reflection. Lifespan, survival, physical order, relationships, sex, procreation, toil, pleasure, suffering, weakness, death, the matter of blessing, frustration, transfiguration.
These are all categories of embodiment. From this therefore we understand the relation of the soul and the eschaton and the spirit that indwells. These themes are specific in different ways to what it means to be human.
But they all arise from being a bodied creature. Now the seventh commandment recognizes and acknowledges this embodiment. And wherever we have discussion or extrapolation from the seventh commandment, we have it in terms of embodiment.
Let me just give you an example, something we read past so easily. 1 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 13. Let's just kind of raise our fingers, as it were, whenever we come across body language in 1 Corinthians 6.
Now the body is not for sexual morality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise up by His power. I won't include that, but that by extension is talking about a bodily resurrection.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take members of Christ, that's body language, and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her?
For the two, he says, shall become one flesh, one body. He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you're not your own? You were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
Do you see that emphasis? The body is for the Lord. That's the first thing Paul says. That's a needed lightning strike against the sort of autonomous libertarianism of our day. My body, my right. No one has a right to tell me what to do with my body.
Did you create your own body? Your body was given to you, right? You are your body and your soul. These things were given by God and they're for God, and you must give an account of both body and soul to God.
You're not the end of the equation. The body is for the Lord. Then Paul, in the most profound obverse, says this, the Lord is for the body. The Lord is for the body. It's exactly what C .S. Lewis was pointing out.
We don't repudiate, the Lord is for the body. Genesis 2, wherever we have adultery, the seventh commandment elaborated upon, or issues related to it elaborated upon, you'll often find Genesis 2 waiting in the wings.
He brought her to the man. The Lord brought Eve to the man and Adam said, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called a woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
This is stated explicitly by Jesus in Mark 10, Matthew 19, where you have the sort of divorce traps being set up by the Pharisees. Marriage, in other words, fundamentally begins to frame our thoughts and conceptions about what embodiment means in terms of sexuality.
It's the irreducible frame of reference. We cannot think about properly what it means to be male and female, nor can we understand human sexuality outside of this context from Genesis 2, from the beginning.
Now we're living in days where that's exactly how the discussion is going. Let's try to frame everything independently and isolated. Male means nothing, female means nothing. Human sexuality is completely interchangeable and autonomous, completely isolated from marriage, from the design of marriage, from the purpose of humanity.
We see fundamentally in Genesis 2 is what? The Lord forms the woman, brings her to the man. What does Adam do when he sees the bride? He just starts singing. He's like amazed. What does John Milton do in Paradise Lost?
Is he sort of psychologizing the way of temptation? Part of what Adam begins to ponder is, well, if I eat the forbidden fruit, I'm going to lose the presence of God, but at least I can cling to my wife, at least I'll have Eve.
She's my bone, my flesh, my song, my joy. Unfortunately, because of the fall, he doesn't have Eve, not in the way that he should have, not in the way that he would have. What you see fundamentally is man in marriage was beholder and woman was beheld.
Now I think if we understand the differences between men and women and human sexuality in this way, it goes a long way to understand our own unique temptations as men and as women. Man, fundamentally made to behold the bride, the bride given to man that she may be beheld.
This is God's good gift, good desire. This glorifies God. The fall separates and sets against the man and the woman. Now the man, rather than exclusively seeking to behold the bride for him, wants to behold any bride he can find, wants to behold any form of any bride, in fact, becomes rather contemptuous and dissatisfied with the woman that the man brought.
And the woman, in like fashion, rather than enjoying simply to be beheld by her betrothed, wants to be beheld by many eyes, wants to be thought of and regarded and noticed by any pairs of eyes, especially from other husbands.
You see women as beheld, men as beholders. We never escape this body language. When you understand that marriage frames human sexuality and human sexuality fundamentally is about the one who beholds and the one who is beheld, fundamentally.
It's why you have the euphemism of knowing to speak of intimacy, right? And he knew her. It's like the ultimate form of beholding. I comprehensively understand and see you now, I know you. So man fundamentally as beholder, woman fundamentally as beheld, and you never escape the body language.
Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church and he's the savior of the body, body language. Husbands ought to love their own wives as they love their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it, cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. We are members of his body, of his flesh and his bones. For this reason a man leaves his father and mother to be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
That's body language. We have in the standard marriage vows a recognition that marriage involves our bodies. By the way, the standard vows are taken from the Anglican book of common prayer. For some reason I didn't know that.
I just always thought traditional vows. I think knowing that it's from the book of common prayer as a Baptist, I'm like we need to write our own vows. Anyways, if you ever want to do traditional vows, if you're getting married, that's fine.
But Baptists never did well with the book of common prayer or the Anglican establishment. There was a late 14th century vow that was used at the Abbey of Barbeau. I love this. Here's the vow. I take you to be my wife and I espouse you.
And I commit to you the fidelity and loyalty of my body. Isn't that beautiful? I commit to you the fidelity and loyalty of my body and I will keep you in health and sickness and in any condition it should please the Lord for you to have, not for worse or for better will I ever change toward you until the end.
So it's recognizing that the body is this irreducible fundamental identity of a human being and yet the body, though it's given by God for the glory of God and for the good of the neighbor, it's also given in a unique sense to be a gift unto a spouse.
And that this marital framework establishes human sexuality. And therefore, in marriage, in this marital covenant, you're saying, I espouse to you my body. I'm committing to you my body. It's not just a relationship between us.
It's not just a sort of arrangement. This body is now in a unique way yours. And your body is in a unique way mine. And we in a unique way have been joined together as one flesh. And so you realize even in the way that these vows are exchanged that the good thing is there and it's seen as good.
And yet it's not made ultimate. You have that, you know, neither will I change toward you until the end. So recognizing that this is wonderfully good and yet this too is actually something on a much higher realm.
That there is an end that comes to embodiment, to marriage in the framework of this fallen world. And Radner says bodies are here given over and become the context for the virtues of fidelity and loyalty.
It's our embodiment that becomes, as it were, the runway for loyalty and fidelity. Our bodies are gifts and uniquely gifts for the sake of our spouse. That is certainly at the very heart of the seventh commandment.
This body is good. This body is a gift. And the sexuality that this body possesses is only to be a gift shared and enjoyed and utilized in the context of marriage. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 7, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife.
Let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, likewise the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, the husband does. And every Roman's going, yep, yep, until they read the next part.
The husband doesn't have authority over his own body. The wife does. What? That's not how this works. Yes, it is. You have become one. Now you exercise a certain authority over one another's bodies. Why?
Because in the vow you said, I'm committing my body to you. Now it's yours. Now we become one. So notice for that reason we're to render, not to deprive. And one of the reasons that Paul gives, it's not the only reason, but one of the reasons that Paul gives the Corinthians, and I think we have to understand this, not necessarily, there's all sort of normative application in 1 Corinthians 7, but in terms of what he's emphasizing and why he's emphasizing it, I think we have to take very seriously when Paul says, in light of the present trouble or the present distress.
A lot of his advice is curtailed around a certain crisis taking place in Corinth, which makes the option, should we get married or hold off, a little more different than he might give in a different setting.
But one of the reasons here he says is in part due to temptation, due to the need for us to be self-controlled. Why? Because now as fallen men and women, we have disordered desires. So marriage and sexuality within marriage is a good gift.
That was true even before the fall. But now as a result of the fall, as a result of disordered desire, our sexuality is even perhaps more important, more pressing than it would have been otherwise. Now it's not, if I could put it this way, it's not just eating to enjoy.
It's eating to survive. It's important. You might lose self-control. You might go astray if you don't render but deprive. That's what Paul's concern is. But you recognize, of course, that sex is not an isolated act, not like our world would have it.
Sexual intimacy is never to be separated from the totality of the marital relationship, which is physical but also mental and spiritual and emotional. Lewis, a really good point on this, is it's like the pleasure of eating.
He says we don't isolate the pleasure of eating to one thing, to just say it's just taste. He says that would be like isolating sexual intimacy, say it's just about the act, and cutting off the bond and the emotional and mental and physical characteristics in a way that that actually nourishes and strengthens the marital relationship.
He says it would be like taking food and then spitting it out. You know, take a bite and then spit it out, rather than enjoying it and digesting it and being strengthened by it, right? You're never isolated.
That's why Watson says, it's not having a wife, it's loving a wife that makes a man chaste. It's not having a wife, it's loving a wife that makes a man righteous. Same thing for the wife. It's not having a husband, it's loving your husband that will make you righteous.
Drink water from your own cistern, brethren, running water from your own well, let your fountain be blessed, rejoice in the wife of your youth. He doesn't say put up with the wife of your youth, rejoice, let your fountain be blessed.
For ears to hear, this is very graphic language coming out of Proverbs 5, it's meant to be. Now men, we're living in especially perilous times. Young men especially are growing up with temptations at their disposal that we had to work a lot harder and be more purposeful to come about.
We're also living in the midst of this dehumanizing tendency of our secular culture that views humans as material, mere matter, and therefore our actions have no significance beyond our own immediate need and gratification.
That's how things are being taught. That's how the culture is framing human sexuality. Intimacy restricted to marriage is seen as something horrifically out-fashioned, in fact, a waste. It's one of the worst things you could do.
You're depriving yourself of the little bit of joy you could have in this life. In fact, that's the ultimate joy, according to our world. There's no higher pleasure, as we said, and so you'll never feel fulfilled.
You won't come into your true potential unless you're doing anything and everything you can do to find sexual fulfillment, and for that reason, virginity is a stigma. It's something you get teased about.
It's something to get past as soon as you can, if you're going to count. Now it's been reduced to merely hooking up through cell phone apps, right? Who's in the air? Exchange a few pictures. Swipe left, swipe right, before you know it, fornication.
Everything's upside down. It wasn't that long ago that meeting the family was the first step in a potential long-term relationship, in a potential marriage. First thing you would do is, oh, yeah, we're going to go and, you know, maybe I'll meet, you know, the brothers and the sisters will be at the park and we're all going to meet up, or I'm going to go over for dinner and spend some time with their family.
It would be pretty much right up at the front of, this is really serious, I'm really pursuing this one, so I need to get to know her family. That's all going to be part of this, right? Now that's the very last thing.
Meeting the family is seen as a higher level of commitment than sex. That is monstrously upside down. I will anonymously meet up with you, not even know your last name, but I'm not ready for you to meet my family.
That's way too much commitment. I'll give my body to you, but meet my uncle? No way. That's way too high a level of commitment. That's where our culture is. All other sins are outside of the body. This sin is against the body very much in that way.
A culture that tries to make young women think sexually like young men is destroying and hollowing out how God made femininity. It's the most tragic thing I think we're seeing. For women to be not just physically appearing like men in a sort of trans way, but actually to begin to think about sexuality in a way that men think about sexuality.
What did we say? God made the man to behold the bride. God made the bride to be beheld. It's a sad thing when women are the beholders and men are the beheld. So men, this is the will of God for you. Don't listen to the lies of the world.
This is the will of God for you, your sanctification. You should abstain from sexual immorality. Each one of you ought to know how to possess your vessel, how to be embodied even in this fallen world with this disordered desire in sanctification and honor.
Not in a passion of lust like the Gentiles who don't know God. And so the question you have to ask yourself this morning is, do you know how to possess your vessel? It's hard being a young man in this world.
It's hard going through adolescence, right? Watson in the book mentioned becoming beast-like as a result of the sin, right? In adolescence, really, you are becoming beast-like. For the first time, you smell and you're hairy.
It's like you're becoming this werewolf creature. I remember my sister complaining, you know, when do you get your first bar of Old Spice, you know? It was when my sister was just like, mom, mom, we got to get her osteoterin.
I'm like, ah, what's the big deal, you know? I smell that bit. Are you as thoughtless as a crocodile when it comes to sexuality? Do you just react to what's flashing in front of you? These horror stories of rednecks in, you know, Tallahassee that raised some crocodile from the time it hatched until it's, you know, 300 pounds.
They're like, oh, Sally, you'll never go after me. Well, miss a meal and you'll miss your arm, right? You just snap at whatever's available. Is that how thoughtless you are? You're an image of God. Would you reduce yourself to an animal?
Do you know how to possess your vessel? God looks on the inner man. There's this sort of, you know, tragic appeal to improving your physical stature. All these guys that, you know, spend sleepless hours at the gym pumping iron.
It was that way in the first century too. Paul was often mocked. He's weak in bodily appearance, you know? He's weak in bodily appearance. Yeah? Well, you should see the strength of his inner man. Nothing breaks him.
Well, we want a speaker that will come in and, you know, just kind of has that stature, that presence, that aura about him that speaks with thunder and lightning. And here comes Paul and he's hobbling up and, you know, he's sort of mincing his words.
Well, you should see the strength of his inner man, not his outer man. Strength for a man is not appearance. It's self-control. A man who has self-control can take a city. There's Ajax and Samson's outside the walls and they're getting defeated left and right.
What does Proverbs say? Many strong men have been slain by her. Strong men. So you don't look to the outer appearance. Strength for the Christian is self-control. Do not possess your vessel. Part of self-control is knowing when to flee.
Paul says, flee youthful lust. And that fleeing looks like pursuing, pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who are calling on the Lord out of a pure heart. So you're running from something because you're running to something else.
It's not enough for you just to hear flee lust and just go home and sit and go, flee lust, flee lust. This is what fleeing lust looks like, running to those and with those who are calling out to God from a pure heart.
And because you're running with them, you look back and you go, I'm getting farther and farther away from Sodom. The words of King Lemuel, the utterance which his mother taught him. Did you ever notice that from Proverbs 31?
Sometimes we think the talk always has to be ceremoniously done from dad to son, right? Son, it's time for the talk. Well, in Proverbs 31, it's the mother who's speaking to the son, right? This is what King Lemuel's mother taught him.
What, my son? What, son of my womb? What, son of my vows? Don't give your strength to women. Don't give your ways to that which ruins kings. Don't give your strength to women. Don't behold all other potential brides.
Behold your bride. And that bride becomes Proverbs 31 woman, right? Don't give your strength to women, plural, but give every drop of your strength to the woman that God brings to you. The Proverbs 31 woman is clothed with honor, so women.
The seventh commandment certainly has something to say about our self-presentation, about the way that we carry ourselves, about the way that we display ourselves. In other words, Proverbs 31 has something to say about modesty.
The seventh commandment has something to say about modesty. Does it not? Now, I often feel like I can go pretty hard against the men and just see a lot of heads bowed with conviction, and sometimes there's certain issues with ladies that I feel like I'm beginning to spree across a minefield and start getting blown about left and right, and I'm up getting, you know, scooping chili, and there's eyes darting at me, you know?
So I'm walking on eggshells, but I have to do justice to the seventh commandment. Well, let's begin with something that Paul encourages a church to consider, Romans 14, 12, each of us shall give account of himself to God.
This would be my banner over this whole discussion, that at every turn, and however you consider or discuss this with others, that you would always keep in the forefront and back of your mind, Romans 14, 12, each of us shall give account of himself to God.
Each of you shall give an account to God. Not for others, but for yourself. When you stand before the Lord, you must always have this recognition that apart from all other eyes, you are standing before the face of God.
The eyes of the Lord are now upon you, which means in preparation for that, whenever you stand before a mirror, you need to anticipate standing before the Lord. And coming here and standing before the Lord in worship anticipates standing before him on that great day when you must give an account to him.
So the question for ladies is, whose attention are you after? Now this doesn't mean next week you should show up in a Home Depot brown lawn bag with a head hole, you know? Wouldn't that be a sight to see?
What I like, Alistair Begg's got some flack lately. I actually feel rather bad for the guy. One thing I loved about him, his rule for the staff at the church there in Chicago was all staff is required to dress unremarkably.
They're dealing with inner city Chicago, right? You think all sorts of people coming off the sidewalk from all walks of life, all sorts of deprivation and need. And he doesn't want everyone in a five-piece suit, you know, hello there chap, if you come to visit the service, dress unremarkably.
What does that mean? I don't know, just you wouldn't stand out in a crowd at all for any reason. That's very, very good advice because with modesty, there's a way to appear modest that's actually immodest.
There's a way to be modestly immodest when you consider what Scripture has to say, right? When Peter's addressing the church, he says to the wives, don't let your adornment be merely outward, arranging the hair, wearing gold, putting on fine apparel, let it be the hidden person of the heart.
So he's saying your inner adornment, your inner preparation will actually show itself in your outer adornment. Now, Peter says, don't let it merely be outward. Paul goes a little bit further. He says in 1 Timothy 2, I desire that women adorn themselves.
Peter wants women to adorn themselves inwardly. Paul says this, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with propriety and moderation. What does he mean by that? Well, he tells us, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but what is proper for women professing godliness.
So the danger of the first century church, as far as Paul was concerned, is you have people from all walks of life walking in and you have the elite and women that woke up at the crack of dawn and they had five servants dressing them.
Now they come in like the queen of England and all eyes are upon them. Why? Women are made to be beheld. Oh, what a shame. It seems like you have a spot on your dress, not going off. And Paul's saying, no, I don't want your outer adornment to be the focus.
You've come to worship the living God. Even if your modesty is a distraction, you're immodest. This is not proper and fitting for a woman who professes godliness. And Lord knows you can go wrong on that side as well.
If you're looking down with sort of judgment with contempt upon others, you know, look at all of my custom clothing that is perfectly modest. I go to all the finest modest websites, spend half of my husband's paycheck, look how modest I am.
I don't think you're understanding what 1st Timothy 2 has to say. But of course, if that's one side of the error, the other side is just as fatal. We're living awash with sexual attention and sexual appeal being this pervasive sin in our day.
And it's hard for ladies to go to clothing stores or to find clothes that aren't made to be provocative or to gain attention in this way. You actually have to sort of creatively layer or think through how you're going to appear.
And it's very hard sometimes for women to find support in this. You know, I feel bad. Husbands, we need to step up our game and be in good health because women were made to be beheld by you. And so if you're not able to help them discern is this fitting or not, I mean, I think women are amazed to know that we give almost zero thoughts to display, presenting ourselves to sort of what's on the chair, you know, what, no, that's still good, passes the sniff test, we're good to go.
You know, women are always thinking 13 steps ahead. We need to do a good job. Part of that is we have to recognize, well, we're made to behold her. We're always like, you look gorgeous. Everything's fine.
And also, a husband wants to please his wife, no, no, that's fine, that's fine. You begin to have to know your wife and say, well, you've asked now twice, so I think you're answering your own question, right?
You seem more unsure of it. Maybe you shouldn't go against your conscience. It's neither right nor safe. Husbands need to look at their wives through the lens of what are their daughters being shown? What are their daughters being taught?
How do you want your daughter to go about presenting herself? A daughter is often noticing perhaps as she grows up attention that's being given to her, but she doesn't understand that perhaps distorted desire behind that attention.
A father does. A father does. So daughters, listen to your fathers. This is not some, well, I'm just going to, I'm going to be independent. Now, this is just ridiculous. I don't want to look, you know, flappy.
Listen, your dad's been around the block. He wants what's best for you for the sake of your own honor and dignity and for the sake of not causing any others to stumble. Listen to your fathers, which means fathers speak up.
Uncomfortable territory especially, but moms have to notice this too. Mothers, I think, tend to notice what other daughters are wearing and for some reason they have horse blinders to their own. So always be looking for the plank in your eye if you're addressing modesty in others.
It will just not be heard. This is laughable. You're talking about me. Remember always Romans 14, 12, and again, we need to consider each of us shall give account of himself to God. So this means when we address the issue of modesty, your thinking is primarily vertical.
Primarily, I'm appearing before the Lord. What's my heart after? Whose sight do I desire? Is it the Lord's or is it the Lord's if I'm married? Also my husband's. I seek to be pleasing to him in a fitting way.
But then also if you're understanding and thinking vertically are right, you will think horizontally are right. What is the second table about? Properly loving your neighbor. So that means there's never a place for a woman to say, well, that's his problem, not mine.
Well, I like this and I'm comfortable in this and well, I mean, that's their problem and that's gross that they even would stumble in that. What would Paul say to that? You're no longer walking in love.
Because love does no harm to its neighbor. And therefore, Paul says, I love meat. I love baby back ribs. But if it's going to cause my brother to stumble, I'll never eat meat again. Because God has called me to love my brother far more than I love my comfort or my satisfaction.
Question 76 says this, it's what's required in the seventh commandment. The seventh commandment requires a preservation of our own and our neighbor's chastity. You are your brother's keeper in this regard, ladies.
It doesn't mean that the guilt doesn't fall squarely on his shoulders. Right. But you're going to have to give an account to God and God understands all of the algorithms of your own thinking when it comes to how you're presenting yourself and the kind of attention you're seeking and receiving.
A woman met him with the attire of a harlot, Proverbs 7, and a crafty heart, loud, rebellious, her feet refused to stay at home. But look at the Proverbs 31 woman, strength and honor are her clothing.
And she shall rejoice in time to come, she opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue as a law of kindness, she watches over the ways of her household, doesn't eat the bread of idleness. You see the contrast there, loud, rebellious, I don't want to stay at home.
This is how I'm going to appear. The attire of a harlot, here's the kind of woman that Mama Lemuel wants her son to go after. A woman who's not idle, who wears honor and dignity as her clothing, who watches over the ways of her household.
That's a woman whose worth is far above Ruby's. Well, I think we're out of time. Let me just say, as we perhaps bypass the soul, that, of course, we're living in a fallen world and we do have these disordered desires.
And we serve a wonderful Savior who's able to empathize with our disordered desire. He knows our weakness. He knows the effects of the fall and the pull of the world upon our flesh. And he's ever prepared, ever ready, ever willing to receive you when you come to him, asking for forgiveness, asking for strength to give you help in a time of need.
That's who our Savior is. And you must always remember, it's because our Savior died on the cross for sins like this. We were all adulterers and yet Christ died and he paid that penalty in his death. And therefore, we have become part of his bride now, just like Gomer and Hosea.
Now he's wed himself to us and now he's purifying and cleansing us from all this disordered desire, from all this sexual dysfunction, from all the ways that beholder and beheld have gone awry. And what is he doing by his spirit?
He's cleansing us, preparing us, making us radiant for that day, which is fixed when the bride, unlike the harlot called Babylon in Revelation, but the bride will be fully consummated, when the bride will be fully delivered, when there'll be no more dysfunction or disorder in the new heavens and the new earth.
And until that day, remember young men, remember old men, remember young women and old women. Remember singles as you wait upon the Lord and you have desires and you don't want to pull against the leash, but it seems like you're going backward.
Remember those who are struggling in your marriage, and it seems like there's no singing, no joy, no harmony in your relationship. Remember this. We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness.
He was in all points tempted as we are, but without sin. Therefore, let us come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.
Bless it to our hearts, Lord, let it bear fruit in our lives. We would not be forgetful of these things, Lord. Hide this commandment in our heart and let us ever be concerned about the heart of this commandment.
Lord, let us recognize as embodied creatures all that it means to be chased and upright, walking in a crooked and perverse generation. Rescue and deliver this church from dysfunction and disorder, from sexual sin within and against one another.
Lord, deliver us and let our marriages be upright and held in honor in our own eyes. And even Lord, for that reason, let them shine as lights in the world around us. These things we ask in your son's name.
Amen.