LAW HOMILY: Television and Adultery

The Law of God and Christian Obedience

Every week we go through the law because we wanna understand what God has to say to his people. We wanna know how to obey him, this great God who's done everything. He obeyed for us on our behalf, where we had disobeyed, not so that he could release us into lawlessness or to give us antinomian lifetime.

He's obeyed so that we could learn how to obey. He has given us his spirit so that we could grow in obedience. So every week we look at the law of God to learn these things. Today we're on the seventh commandment, which is Exodus 20, verse 14.

The Seventh Commandment and Its Broader Applications

And this is what it says. You shall not commit adultery. Now there's many different ways to actually look at this commandment and all of the commandments in what's called the Decalogue, as we've noticed over the years.

There's many different applications that are underneath these commands so that in these 10 commandments, all of biblical obedience can actually be found. Last week we looked at how indifference to murder does not free us from the guilt of murder as we saw in the sixth commandment.

And I'm sure you've already seen that in this commandment, there's a tremendous amount of depth as well. But today I wanna talk about another application of the seventh commandment that I think is well needed in our day because we live in a media saturated world and the storytellers of our day are no longer the bards and the poets and the playwrights and the novelists.

Sexualized Entertainment and the Seventh Commandment

Today, the storytellers are videographers, special effects artists, lighting designers, and directors. The new novels are movies and television miniseries. But what I find so appalling is just how much sexualized content goes into these shows.

It almost seems like a token topless person is required for every single movie or nudity has become almost required in order to tell a story. It's a checklist that now makes a good movie. If you wanna behold our cultural stories, it almost seems like that you have to overlook these things.

And yet to the secular mind, this all makes sense. We're nothing more than animals. So why not film people behaving like them? But for the Christian who understands the covenant context of marriage and also understands that nudity is a gift from God to from one man to a woman in a shared covenant context, how could we go along with a culture that does this?

How can we make excuses and say, well, I'm only watching the story or I'm gonna close my eyes during that part of it. That kind of content doesn't affect me. How can we do that? How can we make excuses for that?

I remember when the show and I am absolutely not recommending the show at all. I'm critiquing it. When the show Game of Thrones came out, it was marketed to men. It was marketed to men who wanna see adventure, who wanna see dragon slaying and all of these things.

And yet one brief look up at the parental guidance for this show is that it's horrible. And yet so many Christian men for the sake of watching something masculine degraded themselves in front of their television, watching other people degrade themselves on screen.

Laughing at What God Hates

And think about even in lesser examples. I remember John Piper once said that we laugh at the thing God hates. And you know what he was talking about? He was talking about the show Friends, a show where anybody can be with anybody without any covenant loyalty whatsoever in some frivolous exchange of bodies bumping against one another.

And he says, why do we laugh at that? Why do we joke about that? Why do we think that's funny? I think our media consumption as Americans is entirely and wholly displeasing to God. I think there are wholesome shows and I celebrate that when they come out.

Media Choices and the Holiness of God

But as a Christian, our media consumption must reflect the holiness of God. It must reflect God's desires. If Christ Jesus were sitting in the same room as you when you were watching that movie, would you watch it?

Because if it's leading us into lust, it's leading us to break the commandments of God. It's leading us to sin against our God and it's leaving us guilty. So in whatever way that this affects you, whether it's websites, advertisements, if it's movies or whatever else it is, the world is incentivized to market these things to you so that you will become their product.

Repentance, Purity, and Prayer for Cultural Renewal

Well, let's rebel against the world. Let's repent of our sin. And let's learn purity from the one who was perfectly pure, Jesus Christ. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, if this were just a single show or a single movie that had crossed the boundary, it would be infinitely better than what we have today, which is a festering garbage heap of entertainment that degrades men and women and dishonors you.

Lord, I pray first and foremost for the repentance of our culture that we would reject this kind of media, that we would return to a biblical worldview, that we would love and affirm and embrace and hold fast to the covenant of marriage and the purity therein.

Lord, would you end the pornography industry entirely? And would you bring anyone who fights for it to an end? Lord, would you end the Hollywood machine that pumps out disgusting movies with all sorts of lewd and licentious content?

Lord, would you purge us from any inkling or desire to not miss out on the latest story by overlooking things that are abhorrent to you? Lord, would you make our media choices sanctified in such a way that you would gain the glory in everything that we participate in, whether we eat, whether we drink, or whatever movies we watch, let us give all glory to God.

And Lord, for those things in our life that are not glorifying to you, would you cause us to have a hatred of those things? Would you cause a sorrow in our heart that would lead us to repentance? And Lord, would you help us to remember that in our sin and brokenness and failure that Christ Jesus has came to die for sinners, not to allow us to go on living the way that we live, but to so entirely purify us and remove our stains that we would no longer long for the mud.

Christ, the Spirit, and Love for God's Law

Lord, would you heal us, would you forgive us? And thank you for your word that convicts us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to this homily on the law of God from our covenant renewal worship this past Lord's Day.

We publish these messages each week because we believe that God loves his law and far from throwing it away, we believe that the death and resurrection of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will actually help us learn to love and obey God's law.

And that's our prayer for you, that as you chew on these expositions each week, that you would both learn to love and come into alignment with the law of God. And we pray that you would do that by the Spirit's power through the finished work of Christ and to the glory of God.

And with that, God bless you.