RULES FOR THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY
DR. JIM DIXON
EXODUS 20:14
JUNE 16, 2002
In the Bible, adultery is called the “great sin.” In Genesis, chapter 20, adultery is called the great sin. In Exodus 32 and in 2 Kings, chapter 17, adultery is called the great sin. In the book of Job, the 31st chapter, adultery is called a heinous sin. In chapter 24 of the same book, adultery is called the “sin of deep darkness.”
In the Old Testament law, in the Jewish law, the penalty for adultery was death. In Deuteronomy, chapter 22, we’re told that when a person committed adultery, they normally were executed through stoning, death by stoning. We look at Genesis, chapter 38 and Leviticus, chapters 20 and 21 and we see that sometimes the penalty for adultery was death by fire. But in all cases, the penalty for the great sin was death. And why? Why is adultery called the great sin? Why is it called a heinous sin? Why is it called a sin of deep darkness? Why is the penalty for adultery so great in the Old Covenant?
To understand this, we must take a look at the marriage covenant and the whole concept of divine covenant. So, this morning I have three teachings. Our time is short because I’m getting a late start, but we’re going to try to get through all three of these. First of all, a divine covenant must never be broken.
The word “covenant” has been called the most important word in the Bible. And indeed, in the Christian Bible, we have both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The word testament comes from the Latin word “testimentum” which is the equivalent of the Hebrew word “beriyth” which means covenant and the word testament or testimentum is also the equivalent of the Greek word “diatheke,” which means covenant.
So, in the Bible we have the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament deals with the Old Covenant. Of course, there are many covenants in the Old Testament. God made a covenant with Noah. God made a covenant with Abraham, which Gene mentioned. God made a covenant with David. As covenant theologians believe, God made a covenant with Adam, but the most important covenant in the Old Testament is the covenant that God made with Moses, the Mosaic Covenant. The Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi really focuses on the Mosaic Covenant, the Old Covenant, the covenant that God made with Israel through Moses.
The New Testament focuses on the New Covenant, the covenant that God made with the church through His Son Jesus Christ. These covenants are divine covenants. A covenant is a bond. In fact, the Hebrew word for covenant, the word “beriyth” means, “bond.” God, through the Old Covenant, formed a bond with Israel, and God, through the New Covenant, has formed a bond with the church.
A divine covenant is a special kind of covenant. A normal covenant is a relationship, a bond between two or more parties, the terms of which are mutually arrived at or mutually agreed upon. That’s expressed through the Greek word, “sumpheke,” but that word could never be used for a divine covenant because a divine covenant is a relationship or a bond between two or more parties, the terms of which are decreed by God. God decrees a divine covenant. So, the Greek word is “diatheke” for “divine covenant” and we find it in the Bible.
In the Old Testament, we see the Old Covenant was a divine covenant. God said to the Jewish people, “I will be your God. You shall be My people and through you all the earth shall be blessed.” God decreed the terms of that Old Covenant. God said the terms are these, and He gave the Ten Commandments, the Tables of the Covenant, which were kept in the Ark of the Covenant. God said the terms of this covenant are these: If you obey these commandments, you will be blessed. If you disobey these commandments, you will be disciplined. If you profane the Decalogue, if you reject it utterly, you will become “covenant breakers” and the penalty is death. A serious thing to break, a divine covenant. And so, you go through the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and you see this warning again and again. Do not break the Divine Covenant. The penalty is death. You go through Joshua, Judges, you look at 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, you see again the warning. Do not break the Divine Covenant. The penalty is death. You look at the Major and the Minor Prophets and, again, the warning is sounded and it is clear. Do not break the Divine Covenant. The penalty is death.
Now, you come to the New Covenant in the New Testament. Again, this is a Divine Covenant. God has established this covenant and He has dictated the terms. God says, “Believe in My Son and I will be your Father. You shall be My sons and daughters and through you, the world will be blessed. Believe in My Son. Receive Him as your Savior and your Lord. Accept His atoning sacrifice on the cross, and your sins will be forgiven you. You will be washed whiter than snow. All of your sin will be removed from you, and you will receive eternal life, never-ending life. Obey My Son. Hear His words. Heed them, and you will be blessed. Disobey My Son, disobey His words, and you will be disciplined. Reject My Son, profane My Son, and you will become a covenant breaker and the penalty is eternal death. A serious thing to break a divine covenant.
Indeed, the New Testament tells us it’s more serious to break the New Covenant than it was even to break the Old. You come to Hebrews, chapter 10, and you see that scary passage there where God says, where it is written in Hebrews, chapter 10, “Whoever profanes the Old Covenant, dies without mercy by the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the person. who has spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who says, ‘it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.’ We know of Him who says, ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay,’ says the Lord.” A scary passage. You don’t want to break a divine covenant. You don’t want to be a covenant breaker. You don’t want to profane the New Covenant and reject His Son, God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
There are two words in the New Testament for covenant breaker. There is the word “asunthetos” and the word “aspondos.” They both are translated covenant breaker but they have different meanings. The word “asunthetos” means “to agree to a covenant,” “to agree to the terms of a covenant and then change your mind and become unfaithful.” Asunthetos. Then the word “aspondos” means “a covenant is offered to you by God and you reject it. You won’t even enter into it.” That’s a different type of covenant breaker. Of course, theologians debate eternal security. Calvinists and Armenians. They debate this whole subject of eternal security. Can you enter the covenant and then leave it? Can you become a Christian and lose your salvation? Personally, I believe we’re eternally secure in Christ. Jesus said, “I know My sheep. They hear My voice. They follow Me. I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand.” I believe in eternal security, but, you see, we’re warned again and again in the New Testament with regard to the New Covenant, “Do not be a covenant breaker.”
Certainly, in the sense of “aspondos,” there are people in the world who have rejected the New Covenant in Christ and they have profaned the Son of God. A dangerous, dangerous thing. A Divine Covenant must never be broken.
The second teaching is marriage is a divine covenant. It’s absolutely critical that we understand this this morning. Marriage is not just a covenant between people, the terms of which have been mutually arrived at and mutually agreed upon. Marriage is a Divine Covenant, diatheke. It is a Divine Covenant. The marriage covenant is established in Genesis, chapter 2, where God says, “A man shall leave his mother and father, cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one.” The bond. Beriyth. The Covenant. The two shall become one. This is decreed by God.
We are told in Matthew, chapter 19, how our Lord Jesus Christ quoted Genesis, chapter 2. He quoted the passage on the divine covenant of marriage. He said, “A man shall leave his mother and father, cleave unto his wife. The two shall become one.” Then Jesus said, “So, they are no longer two but they are one.” Then Jesus Christ added these words, “What therefore God hath joined together, let no one put asunder.” Do not break a divine covenant. “What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.” Do not be a covenant breaker.
We come to Malachi, chapter 2, verse 16, and we read that “divorce is an abomination to the Lord your God.” God hates divorce, and we understand it contextually because we see that in Malachi, chapter 2, verse 14, where we’re told that “marriage is a holy covenant, a divine covenant.” Therefore, God hates divorce because you don’t break a divine covenant. Not now. Not ever. Not as long as you live on this earth. You do not break a divine covenant.
When I married Barbara, I acknowledged that I was entering a divine covenant. The minister said to me, “Jim, will you have Barb to be your wife, and will you give your life to her in all love and honor, in all duty and service, in all faith and tenderness, to live with her and cherish her according to the ordinance of God in the holy bond of marriage? Will you?” I said, “I will.” The holy bond. The covenant. A divine ordinance. This is a divine covenant.
Then I said my vows to Barb. I said, “I, Jim, take you Barbara to be my wedded wife and I do promise and covenant before God and these witnesses to be your loving and faithful husband, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health as long as we both shall live.” I acknowledged that I was entering into this divine covenant. That’s what marriage is, and we are not to be covenant breakers.
We come to Ephesians, chapter 5, an incredible passage on marriage where the Apostle Paul tells us that the divine covenant of marriage is meant to provide through symbolism an example of the New Covenant itself between Christ and the church. Now, we look at the relationship between a husband and a wife, and we see something of the relationship between Christ and the church, that there’s an analogy here between these two divine covenants.
We’re told in Ephesians, chapter 5 that even as the church looks to Jesus Christ as the Bride of Christ, the church looks to Christ and seeks to honor Christ in her life. We’re told in the same way a Christian wife is to look to her husband and seek to honor him in her life. We’re told in that same passage that even as Jesus Christ loved the church and gave His life for her, so it is that a Christian husband is to love his wife and lay his life down for her every day.
You see, this is a great mystery. It’s a mystery the world could never receive, only those who know and love Jesus Christ. When Christ came into the world, He said He came not to be served but He said, “I come rather to serve and to give My life, a ransom for many.” As Christians, as we enter the divine covenant of marriage, we must come with that same attitude. We come not to be served. We come rather to serve and to give our lives. What a beautiful divine covenant marriage is. It must not be broken.
We come to this third teaching and final teaching. Adultery breaks the divine covenant of marriage. That’s why we have this seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Adultery breaks the divine covenant of marriage.
We have seen in Genesis 2 that God has said, “A man leaves his mother and father, cleaves to his wife, and the two become one.” That oneness is emotional. That oneness is spiritual. That oneness is physical and sexual. The two become one. Jesus said, “They are no longer two, but they are one.” We’ve seen in Malachi, chapter 2, that God hates divorce. It is a violation of the divine covenant of marriage. We’ve seen in Matthew 19 that Jesus quoted Genesis 2, the divine covenant of marriage, and Jesus said, “What therefore God hath joined together, let no one put asunder.” No covenant breakers. You don’t break the divine covenant. Not ever.
But then, you see, in that same passage, Matthew 19 and also in Matthew 5, where Jesus says, “There’s one exception and that is adultery. Divorce is permissible in the case of adultery or unchastity.” Why does Jesus allow this concession? The answer biblically is this: If adultery has taken place, it’s already broken the divine covenant of marriage. Adultery breaks the divine covenant of marriage. You see this clearly when you look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, where the Apostle Paul is talking about marriage relationships and faithfulness, a husband to wife and wife to husband. He tells us that sex is never to be practiced apart from marriage, that we’re not to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage.
In the secular Greek and Roman culture, it was acceptable for married men to go to the temples and have sex with temple prostitutes, so Paul has to deal with that in 1 Corinthians 6. Paul says, “Don’t you realize that if you have sexual intercourse with a prostitute, you’ve become one flesh with her.” He goes back and quotes Genesis 2 and the divine covenant of marriage. Sexual intercourse is a sign of the divine covenant of marriage as surely as circumcision was a sign of the Old Covenant between God and Israel through Moses and as surely as baptism is a sign of the New Covenant in Christ. Sexual intercourse is a sign of the divine covenant of marriage. What an incredibly high view of sex the Bible has.
The world views sex as recreational but the Bible says sex is a sign of the divine covenant of marriage. It is an expression of the marriage covenant. When you have sex with somebody, in a sense you marry them. What an amazing, amazing statement. Of course, we live in a world where there is a low view of sex. Sometimes even the church has had a low view of sex. In the Third and Fourth century, a man named St. Anthony founded the monastic movement, and from the Sixth century to the Eighteenth century, monastic communities were established all over Europe. People came into these monastic communities. When they came into a monastic community, they took three vows. They took a vow of poverty wherein they promised to own no earthly possession. They took a vow of chastity where they promised never to engage in any sexual activity, and they took a vow of obedience to the regula, the rules of the monastic community. Usually, the Regula of St. Benedict or the Regula of St. Basil.
They took these three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. All three of these vows wound up distorting biblical truth because the vow of poverty led to asceticism in the extreme and a kind of platonic dualism which viewed material things as evil. The vow of obedience to the regula produced legalism, Pharisaic legalism, as though Christianity were just a set of rules. The vow of chastity resulted in an unbiblical view of sex. The word chastity comes from “chaste” which means “pure or holy.” In these monastic communities, it was actually believed you couldn’t be pure, you couldn’t be holy if you ever engaged in any sexual act, even in the context of marriage. Sex itself was kind of tainted. Within marriage, not a sin, but still tainted. You can’t really be holy; you can’t really be pure if you’ve ever had sex. A distortion of what the Bible teaches.
Do you realize it’s God who created sex? I mean, it was His idea. In His sight, it’s wonderful. But of course, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous in any society, dangerous in any culture. Of course, sex can be very dangerous in this culture. Sex is powerful. It’s used to raise Nielson ratings. It’s used to advertise and market products in advertising. Of course, sex has the power to draw men and women to marriage and to family and to childbearing, but it also has the power to tempt men and women away from marriage and the family. Sex has the power to destroy Ecclesiastical careers as we’re seeing in Roman Catholicism today and really throughout church history. Sex has the power to destroy political careers. It’s powerful, and therefore psychologists and theologians agree that we need to have boundaries. We need to put boundaries on sexual behavior and sexual activity. But secular psychologists obviously draw the lines in a different place than the lines are drawn biblically.
Secular psychologists usually approve of sexual behavior if it’s consensual. The boundary is consensual sex, if both people consent. They may draw age boundaries, they may draw professional boundaries, they may draw incestuous boundaries. But, generally speaking, the boundary is consensual. In the Bible, the boundary is covenantal. That’s what the Bible tells us. The boundary is covenantal. Sex was designed for the covenant, the divine covenant of marriage. That’s what God made it for, the divine covenant of marriage, as an expression of that union and that oneness. It is an expression on the physical level of the oneness of marriage, the union, that “two shall become one.” It is a covenant act.
The Bible tells us whenever sex is taken outside of the covenant of marriage, it is sinful and it is porneia, a Greek word which refers to sexual immorality. Jesus used this word again and again, and it’s found throughout the New Testament. This word porneia can refer to fornication, sex before marriage. It can refer to adultery, sex outside of marriage. It can refer to homosexuality. It can refer to prostitution. Porneia. Whenever sex is taken out of the divine covenant of marriage, it becomes porneia and it is sinful.
We understand biblically that sex is kind of like fire. I mean when fire is in the fireplace, it’s wonderful, something to cozy up to like sex within the divine covenant of marriage. But you take fire outside of the fireplace and it becomes porneia. We’ve seen recently here in the state of Colorado what fire outside of the fireplace can do and how destructive it is. That’s what the Bible tells us about sex outside of the divine covenant of marriage.
When our daughter Heather was in high school at Littleton High School, she took a pre-SAT test. There was a vocabulary section on it. One of the questions she was asked was the meaning of the word “cuckold.” She didn’t know the meaning of that word. She came home and asked Barb and me if we knew the meaning of that word. We didn’t know the meaning, so we looked it up. Cuckold refers to a husband whose wife has committed adultery. The husband is called a cuckold. The etymology of the word is uncertain, but they believe its derivation is French and it comes from the French cuckoo which means “idiot” or “stupid” or “foolish.” Isn’t that what a person feels like when their spouse commits adultery? You not only feel like an idiot, you just feel totally devalued. If your spouse commits adultery, you feel totally devalued as a human being, almost worthless.
Some of you have suffered through that and some of you right now are suffering through that. For that reason alone, God would hate adultery. But, you see, God is a covenant-making God, and He forms divine covenants. One of those divine covenants is marriage. He has established it. It is a relationship, the terms of which HE has decreed. He tells us how a husband and wife are to behave and how they are to relate to each other, and He hates adultery and He hates divorce. Adultery breaks the divine covenant of marriage.
As we close, we need to remember that in the New Covenant, there’s a lot of mercy. In the New Covenant, there’s a lot of grace. We want to remember as we close that in the New Covenant, there is forgiveness. When we come in repentance, God forgives. Even though adultery breaks the divine covenant of marriage, God is able to put that marriage back together. He’s able to heal it where there’s repentance. This is the promise of the New Covenant, and this is the incredible faithfulness of a loving God.
So, in your marriages… I know in some of them there has been adultery, but I’ve seen God heal where there is repentance. We have that amazing passage in John, chapter 8, and in some of the early manuscripts it’s in John 21. In other manuscripts it’s placed in Luke 21. But no Bible scholar doubts the authenticity of this passage where Jesus is at the Temple in Jerusalem and the Pharisees bring to Him a woman who was caught in the very act of adultery. They say to Jesus, “What do we do with her? Under the Old Covenant, under the Law of Moses, we are commanded to stone to death such a person. What would you have us do?”
Jesus knew it was a trap. If He said, “Do not stone her,” He’d be accused of violating the Old Covenant. If He said, “Stone her,” the grace and the mercy for which He was loved, the grace and the mercy that had drawn so many, would have faded. Jesus said a beautiful and a wonderful thing. He said to the Pharisees, “Let He who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” By that passage we learn not only that we are not to judge others, but we also learn that adultery is forgivable, grave but forgivable. As Jesus says to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Is there no one to condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and do not commit this sin again.”
It’s a grave sin, but it is forgivable. I know some of you may be struggling with sexual sin. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus tells us that adultery really begins in the heart. Even lust is “heart adultery” and a violation of the divine covenant of marriage. Some of you might be struggling with pornography; you might be struggling with some sexual addiction. God loves you. As a church, we care about you.
You notice in your program on the third page, there’s a group called Nathan’s Challenge. If any of you are struggling with sexual addictions, this would be a great group for you where you could come in repentance and find forgiveness and strength that God might sanctify you and change you. We offer groups within our church. We offer groups outside of our church. We offer counseling in our church. We offer counseling outside. We want to be there for you because we want to be the people that God has called us to be, people who are not covenant breakers, people who do not profane the covenant but people who honor the divine covenant.
If you’re a Christian, if you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you’ve entered this divine covenant. You’ve joined the church. You’ve joined the covenant community and you’re seeking to live by the instructions of your Lord and Savior. The whole sermon this morning is simply designed to exhort you in this obedience and encourage you. Let’s close with a word of prayer.