Adultery
Pastor Mathew Magera – 3/26/17 – Sermon 220
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Marriage. The sacred union
between a man and a woman. A gift given by God to the human race. Adultery. The
destructive discord destined to dissolve the true intent of marriage. Do we
even know what the word, adultery, means anymore? About two weeks ago when I
started planning for this sermon, I found a video clip online from Jimmy
Kimmel's late night show where he sent an interviewer out to ask kids what they
think adultery means. So they asked, "what is adultery?" One kid
said, "adultery is being a movie star." The follow up question was
"do you know anyone who is an adulterer?" the kid said, "Johnny
Depp." Another kid comes up. "What is adultery?" The kid says,
"Adultery is archery but for adults." Another kid comes up.
"What is adultery?" The kid says, "Adultery is being an
adult." The last kid comes up. "What is adultery?" The kid says,
"Adultery is parenting that is fun, nourishing and all sorts of
things." The follow up question was "are your parents
adulterers?" "Yep," he says. "Both of them?"
"Yep." "And what do you think about that?" "It's
fun."
You shall not commit
adultery, the Bible says. If those kids had it right, Hollywood would be a sin,
the Olympic Games would promote sin, any adult would be a sinner just because
they are an adult and if you are fun parent, you’re a sinner too. Okay, they’re
just kids. Still, we hear the words “you shall not commit adultery” and I don’t
want you thinking this commandment does not apply to you, because it does. This
commandment is for you if you are married because it centers around a married
relationship. This commandment is for you if you are not married because it
centers around honoring the relationship designed for marriage. No matter if
you are an adult or a youth, this commandment applies to you. Each of us has a
responsibility.
While adultery may have many
definitions nowadays, in the Bible, it mainly had to do with the intimate relationship
between a married man and woman, to which I will simply call intimate relations
to bring everyone on the same page. You see, in the Bible, such relations
confirmed a marriage. If a man and a woman were getting married, these
relations would seal the deal, so to speak, to consummate it. Marriage, as it
comes from the Bible, is not a legal contract. There is no license that you
have to get from the courthouse. There are no signatures, no witnesses. You
could be married without a marriage license in the eyes of God and you could
also not be married, in the eyes of God, even though you have a license.
Going back to adultery,
though. In the Bible, any man or woman could be accused of adultery and the
punishment, get this, is death. How many people would be alive now if that were
still enforced? Okay, but who dies? The adulterer or the victim? Essentially,
if they both consent and they are both married to other people, they both
should die but their spouses would live. If it were an un-consensual relation,
the adulterer is to die unless the adulterer is a man and the woman is not
married. In that case, he would be required to marry her. Now, here is where
things get a little more interesting. No matter if the woman is married or not,
if she screams for help in a place where people would easily hear her, she is
not considered an adulterer, no matter what. She is safe. If she doesn't scream
for help, she dies. If the relations take place out in the country where no one
would hear her scream for help even if she tried, she would not be considered
an adulterer even if she consented and didn't scream for help. Bible laws are
unique, aren't they? Even Jesus talks about adultery and goes so far as to say
that even if you think about committing adultery, you have sinned in your
heart.
But like I said, can you
imagine if these consequences for adultery were still enforced today? Adultery
is all around us, unfortunately. Relations reserved for a husband and wife have
become as entertaining as sports. Who's playing who today? What's their
strategy? How big are the players involved? Who's going to score first and in
the end who is going to come out on top? We can't even argue about this. It has
become like a sport. But, what is our response? Ultimately, I think people can
be placed in one of two main groups when it comes to adultery. 1). People are
going to be shoving the Bible down people's throats or 2). People are just
going to brush it under the rug and they are not going to talk about it
anymore. Which is better?
With that question in mind,
I want to take us to John chapter 8 where we find Jesus teaching in the temple
courts in Jerusalem and a number of people are there listening to him. All of a
sudden the teachers of the law and the Pharisees bring in a woman who had been
caught in adultery. Not suspected. Not rumored. But caught. The Pharisees say
to Jesus, "In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now, what
do you say?" You can just imagine them there stones in hand ready to give
this woman her punishment. You can also imagine this woman there, barely
clothed, now knowing what is going to happen to her. And so here we have these
responses to adultery that I just mentioned. We have the teachers of the Law
and the Pharisees who are there to shove the Law down her throat as they stone
her to death for her sin. We also have the woman here who would just brush it
under the rug and not say a word about it. What should Jesus do? Should he
agree that the Law says to see her stoned and pick up one himself to fulfill
that law? Or should he let her go as if she did nothing wrong? How would you
feel in her place? Caught in the act. Caught even thinking. That's where we
are. That's where I am too. Our only prayer is that the next thing that happens
to us be as quick and painless as possible, but I can’t imagine stoning to be a
glorious way to die.
After a while Jesus utters
those words we might know, "Whoever is without sin, cast the first
stone." The next thing heard is stones falling to the ground, one by one,
and people walking away, until Jesus was the only one left. Jesus says,
"Where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She says, "no one."
None of them could do it because they knew, each one of them, they were not
without sin. They were guilty. Jesus is rightfully the only one who could cast
the first stone but he doesn't. He's the one who could shove that Law down her
throat, but he doesn't. Yet, Jesus also does not agree with the woman's choice
of lifestyle where sin is simply brushed under the rug either. He makes two
statements to her, "Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life
of sin." He offers her forgiveness. This is without any confession on her
part. This is without any command being given to her. This is without her
making things right with her husband. This is without her going to church or
memorizing any Bible verses. He offers her forgiveness without seeking anything
from her. His love for her is rooted not in her actions but in his coming death
on the cross where she is made spotless.
What does this tell us? It
tells us that we need to be reminded what is right and what is wrong. But, more
importantly, it tells us that grace comes first. This is what the Gospel does
for us. It frees us from where we have once been, it takes that sin away but it
leads us to live lives that are rid of that same sin. When Jesus told the woman
that he does not condemn her and that she should leave her life of sin, it was
genuine forgiveness, genuine encouragement. When Jesus does not condemn us, that
forgiveness and encouragement is just as genuine. God has created and given the
gift of marriage to be sacred and God wants it to be that way. God created this
gift to offer partnership. God created this gift to be a physical
representation of God's love for us. Marriage is the closest thing we have to
understanding God's love other than Jesus himself. A true sacred marriage is
just like I showed the kids earlier, it is a union that cannot be taken apart
because God created it that way. When we go against what God has made it only
hurts us even if we don't know what we're doing and even if we know exactly
what we're doing.
When the Law is shoved down
our throats it might encourage good works in keeping the law but with the wrong
motive. You must act this way in order to be loved by God. Grace doesn't work
that way. But, grace is also not cheap like brushing sin under the rug as if it
never happened. Grace comes with the freedom from sin but with the
responsibility to live it out. If we have the wrong motive, it destroys our
understanding of God and it makes our ability to extend grace that much more
difficult. We don't keep the commandments to improve our relationship with God,
to win His love, to receive more of his love or to earn his forgiveness or
salvation. We keep the commandments as a response to grace finding us.
"When the reality of truth and grace captures your heart, when it's your turn
to stand... before all, guilty and deserving of death, and when you hear the
words "neither do I condemn you," then in that moment all the right
motives for obedience are born."[1]
We obey not because we have to pay back for what we've already done but because
we owe absolutely nothing anymore. Obedience becomes an expression of love and
an act of devotion.
This commandment is aimed
directly at the state of marriage and because it does we have to understand the
benefits of marriage. God gloriously honors and extols marriage. God loves the
institution of marriage so much that he gave this commandment in order to
sanction it and guard it. God loves marriage so much that he gave us this
commandment so that we also might see the importance of marriage, how sacred it
is, and to honor it. After the creation of Adam and Eve, this was the first
thing God did. It was not good for man to be alone. Even Adam said of Eve, “this
is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” And God said that together they are not
two, but one. Therefore, God also blesses marriage more than any other
relationship which makes it nothing less than a matter of divine seriousness.
And, in all seriousness God gave us marriage because of those intimate marital
relations. God was thinking once they learn how to do that they won't want to
stop, so God gave the gift of marriage to ensure that we had the opportunity to
be that way because it was good. God created it good.
Adultery is one of those
sins, that while not weighted heavier than any other sin, is one of the most
difficult to avoid and it is because we don't care and because it is carries no
modern consequence. There is no earthly motivation to follow this commandment
other than it is morally the right thing to do. It would preserve our relationships.
It would preserve our families. It would enrich our marriages. But, the divine
benefits of marriage can only be realized through faith. If we could see that,
we wouldn't have such a problem with adultery that we do today.
So, what happens when such a
sin becomes a part of our lives that we just don't care about doing the right
thing anymore? What happens when we have no intention of changing what we are
doing? What happens when we have no intention of walking down the right path
even before we've started walking? What happens? What happens is that just like
the adulterous woman, we will not be able to outrun the law whether we try to
keep it or plainly ignore it. Some of us may have already been confronted with
this fact. Our only hope is that grace happens for us just like it happened for
that adulterous woman. Our only hope is that grace happens for us. The good
news is that it does. Grace does happen for us and it renews us and it sends us
forward, not backward. Grace even when we didn't deserve it. Grace even when we
had not obeyed. Grace even when we had not been faithful. If there is any
benefit in that grace given to us when we didn't deserve it, there is most
definitely a benefit of the gift of marriage, that God would seek so desperately
to protect it, to guard it, to sanctify it. Afterall, that's what Jesus did on
the cross. His death preserved the spiritual marriage between us and God so
that it would be eternally protected, eternally guarded, and eternally
sanctified. God loves marriage. God loves intimate marital relations. God takes
it seriously because he love us. What about we take it seriously not because it
will earn us anything but because we love God for rescuing us from the death
that we so ultimately deserved and caused the stones to fall to the ground? To
God be the glory, now and always. Amen.