LAW HOMILY: The Positive Command For Sexfulness

Every week we look at the law of God because we want to understand what God's heart is for His people. We want to understand what obedience looks like for us. We want to know what God has said because we don't lump off 75 of the Old Testament and say that that's irrelevant to us.

We believe that the New Testament is the fulfillment of, not the abolishment of the Old Testament. Now by the Holy Spirit's power, we can grow and we can learn and we can become obedient to God and His law, not by our power, but by His.

We don't obey in order to be saved, but now that we are saved by His obedience, we learn to follow Him and obey. Now, today we're gonna be on the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. And I wanna do something similar to what I did last week.

Instead of looking at the negative side of the command, I wanna look at the positive side of the command, which is what the Westminster Larger teaches us, that the command is both the thou shalt not, but also the thou shalt do.

And when you read this commandment, something in us usually relaxes. And that relaxation is the problem itself because when you hear you shall not commit adultery, we measure ourself against the mere visible violation of this commandment, the dramatic betrayal, the discovered affair, the shattered marriage.

And since most have not done that thing, we settle back into a kind of quiet confidence that we've kept the law. For the law of God does require that we don't do that. But the law of God does also not merely require avoidance of the letter, which is what the Pharisees got in trouble for.

It also forbids its opposite. So that the commandment is not only a fence around marriage, but a call into one. It's not merely a prohibition against the destruction, but a summons to its cultivation.

And by that measure, many of us who have kept our bodies faithful have not yet fully understood what faithfulness is. What the command requires in its fullness is that not only a husband not sleep with another woman or a wife not sleep with another man, but that a husband and wife give themselves to one another completely, not partially, not occasionally, not as a concession to appetite, not as a gnostic way of pacifying carnal desires in route to the more perfect spiritual ones.

The Apostle Paul writing under the Spirit's guidance does not treat sexual union and marriage as a sensitive topic to be handled at a careful distance with the 49 foot pole. But he addresses it plainly and with the force of a command telling husbands and wives that their bodies don't even belong to themselves.

They belong to each other. And that the conjugal debt that exists in a marriage is a real debt and that we are not to withhold it as a minor matter of personal preference unless for a season to dedicate ourself deliberately to fasting and prayer.

So what Paul is doing here is he's not lowering marriage, he's elevating it. And he's elevating the appetite in marriage to faithfulness. And he's saying that a faithful marriage actually has more intimacy, more regular, more joyful, more frequent intimacy as a way of what?

Protecting the marriage from adultery. Yes, as a way of celebrating what God has done. Yes, as a way of participating in the image that Paul even says that marriage is a mystery of the Trinity. In a strange way that we can't even understand, mysterious way, a husband's love for his wife represents Christ's love for his church and that he left heaven and earth to seek her and save her and cover her with his love.

And in a very mysterious way as well, the wife's submission to her husband and an adoration of her husband and affection for her husband represents the love, submission, and affection that a church has for Christ.

It says in Proverbs, we talked about this, I don't know, a couple months ago, that love between a husband and wife is to be a fountain, not a desert. Now, we talked about it then and I'll repeat it again now.

You know, we as humans like to codify things. We like to say, okay, well then how frequently does it mean so that I can make sure I check it off my box? Well, I think that's the wrong attitude. I don't think that's what it's getting after.

If you need water every so often in order not to die, then you also, marriages, you need intimacy so that your marriages don't wither. Because sex and marriage is a cistern, Paul, or Solomon says. It's a mystery, Paul says.

It is something that we do not withhold.

Why?

Because it is something that is good. So as we look at the sixth commandment, we have to also look at not just its prohibition,.

But its admonition.

Yes, protect yourself from adultery. Yes, protect yourself from lusting after someone else, but also protect yourself for something. And that's for joyful intimacy with your spouse. And if you're single, protect yourself for future intimacy with a spouse.

So remember, the commandment is not just thou shalt not, it's also thou shalt do. And when we understand these things, guess what? Our marriages would be healthy. Our marriages would be happy. Our marriages would be holy.

Because sex is not unholy in the confines of covenant marriage. It is actually beautiful and glorious to God. He made it as a gift. And when we use it rightly, we worship and honor Him.

Amen?

And when we don't use it rightly, we dishonor Him. So however that lands, whether it is a marriage that has grown dry, or whether it is a mind that is distracted with lust, or whether it is any number of other ways that the purity of marriage has been compromised, let us pray.

Let us ask God to forgive us. Let us lay down our sins at the cross of Jesus Christ and let us receive His forgiveness. Because there is one perfect husband who's always faithful. And that is Him. And He will forgive our sins.

Amen?

Let's pray. Lord, in the same way that the tabernacle pointed to the true tabernacle, the Passover lamb pointed to the true and perfect lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, every prophet in the Old Testament pointed forward to the final prophet, you, every king on David's throne pointed forward to a king who would rule the world, in all of these types and shadows, the intimacy between a marriage and wife is still a type and still a shadow that points to the ultimate marriage of Christ and His church.

Let us steward that relationship for those who are married well. Let us treat it with great honor and great sobriety and great solemnity. Let us look at the marriage as something sacred and glorious and husbands.

Let us look at our wives like Christ loves the church and let us be sacrificial and give ourselves for her to wash her in the water of the word and to care for her. And Lord, help our wives. Though they are being led by imperfect men, that for the glory of Christ, they would submit and cherish their husbands and love them as the church loves and submits to Christ.

And Lord, let our marriages be a telling and a story of the very gospel of God. And Lord, I pray that you would protect our marriages. Marriages are ground zero for the enemy's attack. There are several things in Genesis 1 that the enemy, or that, sorry, our God said are very good that the enemy would love to destroy.

The very good things are masculinity, femininity, marriage, and children. Lord, would you protect these most basic elements of society and flourishing? Would you make Christians different than the world?

Would you make our marriages holy, more beautiful, more lovely, more joyful, more passionate even than the world? Would you make our communication better with each other than the world? Would you make our mutual sacrificial love towards each other better than the world?

Would you make our marriages a picture of heaven so that divorce would even be rooted out of Christian marriages? Lord, would the pagans stand mystified at the joy and delight and the unity and the closeness of Christian marriages?

Holy Spirit of God, would you help our marriages? If there's one way that the enemy could break apart a church, it is either to distort their doctrine or pervert their marriages. Lord, I pray that you would protect us.

I pray our marriages would be better and our marriages would be strengthened. I pray that any sin that is causing disunity and disruption and chaos in any of our marriages would be repented of swiftly.

Join together joyfully. Live together in harmony for the good of ourselves, for the glory of God and for the advancement.

Of your kingdom.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Amen.

There's all sorts of ways to sin in marriage and every one of us have done it, if you're married. If you haven't been married, I would beg you not to have unrealistic expectations. Your future spouse is not perfect.

About a week in, you're gonna find out things that you don't like and then about two years in, you're gonna say, oh my, what have I done? And guess what? It's normal, but it's all a part of the sanctification.

I love how our brother Ken asks us every week to pray for the sanctification of his marriage and I hope that that hits us, that we all should be praying for the sanctification of our marriages because marriage is one of those areas that has a target on it from the enemy.

I thought when we started the Shepherd's Church, if we could just preach biblical sermons, this is how naive I was, but I was in a church that wasn't. If we could just preach biblical sermons, then everything would go well.

It's so much more than that. That's maybe the starting point, but my prayer is that our marriages would heal, that our marriages would thrive, that our marriages would succeed, not just on paper, but with all passion and vigor and that we would be able to teach others how to be married to the glory of God.

That's what I pray for this church and in Jesus Christ it can happen because in him, all our sins are forgiven. In him, all of our chains have been set aside. In him, every weight and encumbrance that trips us up is gone.

In him, we've been washed white as snow. In him, all of our shames and our guilts have been set aside. In him, we have freedom. Freedom unto what? To look at the person corresponding to you and to say, I'm sorry I sinned against you, I love you.

And I'm probably gonna do it again tomorrow and I'm gonna apologize to you again tomorrow and I'm gonna apologize again to you the next day and I'm gonna repent of my shallow repentance and I'm gonna repent of my need that I don't even understand that I need to repent and I'm gonna repent so that I can be better for you so that we can be better together so that we can give more glory to God.

That is available to us in Christ because the gospel heals our wounds. Listen to what it says in Romans 8, 33 through 34. Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Because God is the one who justifies.

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

We have an advocate.

We have one who has died and rose and can never die again. Who intercedes for our marriages, who intercedes for our children, who intercedes for our personality quirks, who intercedes for our anger issues, control issues and everything else.

We have been forgiven, brothers and sisters. Do you know that? Do you know that down in the fiber of your being, in your bones, in your marrow? You are not your sin and if you're in Christ. So now stand as new creations with me and let us announce our faith together.