You might remember we took a long look at murder, the sixth commandment. And of course, while everything on the spectrum from hate all the way to taking someone else's life is all profaning the image of God and man in some way, what we saw is that there wasn't a whole lot of explanation of why murder is bad or When the Lord gave us the commandment, do not murder, He did not ground His expectation of obedience on logical or ethical terms, right? He said, well He didn't say, because murder doesn't make sense before a holy God, do not murder. That's not what He said. He didn't say, Because it is wrong, do not murder. Of course, it doesn't make sense to murder before a holy God. And of course, it is wrong to murder, but that's just not the terms on which the Lord gave Israel the sixth commandment. So, we saw that there were two main groundings or two main motivations for which the Lord expected obedience. And the first one was fear. Remember, he shook the mountain. He descended in the fire, covered with the cloud. A trumpet, a loud trumpet out of nowhere, shook the ground that Israel stood upon. And they got the picture. They were definitely afraid. And then the other grounding the Lord gave for all the commandments, and last week we saw this, was because I said so. And not just simply because I said so, but because I, the Lord, said so. Because I, the Lord who has called you out of Egypt, out of your oppression, out of slavery. Because I, the Lord, who have brought you into covenant relationship with me. Because I, the Lord, who has brought you close to the Lord who is a consuming fire and let you live. Because I, the Lord, said so. Those were the justifications. Those were the groundings. Those were the reasons the Lord gave as to why we shall not murder. Now, of course, the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, fits into this conversation because the context is exactly the same. And it's exactly the same context where the Lord says we shall not commit adultery. And since I know you guys were taking great notes last week and you remember every word that I said, because we already have a grasp of that context, that the Lord spoke the Ten Commandments, tonight we're going to spend a little bit of time thinking about why adultery is so wicked in the eyes of the Lord. And you might find this interesting. I could not find a single verse in all of God's Word that explains why adultery is so wicked. Not a single one. So we're going to have to look at three of them to put together a picture. And we're going to have to listen closely to get the grasp that we want of why adultery is so wicked. Adultery is the faithless and idolatrous expenditure or use of God's gifts to serve something other than the Lord who gives them. So we're going to go three places tonight and we're going to just listen up for why it is that adultery is so wicked and what you're going to see in these three examples and And really most of the other ways that adultery comes into the conversation in God's Word is that we see adultery as a picture of idolatry. The Lord wants to describe idolatry, and He uses adultery to do so. Let me show you what I mean. First, let's take a look at Hosea. The beginning of the book of Hosea, that'll be on page 632, if you're using the Bible there in your pew, right after Daniel. The very beginning of Hosea. Now Hosea was a prophet to the northern kingdom. You might remember this is about 750 BC, so just prior to the dispersion of the northern kingdom. And Hosea is a prophet that you also might remember that the Lord used to orchestrate a real life episode of harlotry or adultery to show that northern kingdom, Israel, how he viewed its idolatry. So if we take a look there, right in the beginning there, chapter 1, verse 2 of Hosea. When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry, and children of harlotry. For the land has committed a great harlotry by departing from the Lord. So he went, that is Hosea, and he took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. And she conceived and bore him a son. Then the Lord said to him, call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel in the house of Jehu and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. It shall come to pass on that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she, Gomer, conceived again and bore a daughter. And then God said to him, call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy. Ruhamah means mercy. Lo means no. For I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, the southern kingdom. will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, or battle by horses or horsemen. Now when Gomer had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said, call his name Lo-Ami, which means not my people. For you are not my people, and I will not be your God. So the first son, Jezreel, and this might be digging back into the old Bible drill days, but you might remember, Jehu was commissioned by the Lord to wipe out the sons of Ahab. Now, scholars argue about this pretty in depth, actually. Not only exactly why Jehu was commanded to kill the sons of Ahab and then condemned for doing so, but that's for another time. Either he had ulterior motives and he was taking his commission too far, but then he definitely took his commission too far when not only did he slay the sons of Ahab, but he also slayed the king of Judah, the southern kingdom as well. And here we see God's pronouncing his judgment and he gives the northern kingdom of picture in this first son, whose name is Jezreel. The second daughter, Lo-Ruhamah, no mercy, because the Lord was pronouncing his judgment. And then the third son, Lo-Ami, not my people, because the Lord was calling out the covenant-breaking faithlessness of the kingdom of Israel. Now throughout the rest of the book of Hosea, the Lord will alternate between hopeful promises and unfaithful Israel, promises of judgment, promises of restoration, and that sort of thing. But look at chapter 3, verse 1 here. Gomer apparently goes back to harlotry. Chapter 3, verse 1, then the Lord said to me, meaning Hosea, go again. Meaning, Gomer has gone. And Hosea is supposed to pursue her again. The Lord says, go again. Love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery. Just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel. And what were the children of Israel doing? Looking upon other gods and loving the raisin cakes of the pagans. So the Lord is continuing to use this picture of adultery. And of course, there is likely physical intimacy, the sins of physical intimacy going on throughout this. We look at chapter 4, verses 1 and 2. We see that the actual sin of physical intimacy outside of the context of marriage may be going on as well. But the big thing that the Lord is doing is using adultery, using Hosea and Gomer as a picture for idolatry. Let's just take a quick look there at chapter 4, verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of that land. There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing, and committing adultery, they break all restraint with bloodshed upon bloodshed. But as I said, the big theme of adultery is not the sins of the physical intimacy outside of the marriage. The big theme is the idolatry. Take a look again at chapter 4 verse 11. Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart. My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God. They offer sacrifices on the mountaintops, and burn incense on the hills, under oaks, poplars, and terrabents, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters commit harlotry, and your brides commit adultery. Also go with me here, just flip a couple pages to the right, Hosea chapter 11 verse 1. So more of the same. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. As they called him, so they went from them. They sacrificed to the bales and burned incense to carved images. Now again, the prophecy of Hosea is back and forth from promises of judgment to promises of restoration, all in the context of idolatry described by adultery. Fortunately for the people of the Northern Kingdom, and for us who want to know of God's loving kindness, he ends the prophecy, chapter 14, verse 4, with a message of hope I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from him. I will be like the dew to Israel, he shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread, his beauty shall be like an olive tree, and his fragrance like Lebanon. Those who dwell under his shadow shall return. They shall be revived like grain and grow like a vine. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, which again is another name for Northern Kingdom, shall say, what have I to do anymore with idols? I have heard and observed him. I am like a green cypress tree. Your fruit is found in me. So Israel had faithlessly spurned their covenant. They had despised their call to be a nation. They had despised obedience to the Lord, yet they took the land that he had promised them. And they gathered up the good things, the good gifts, the fruit of the land, and used it not only to please themselves, but to please the idolatrous nations around them. And so as we think about this, adultery is at the same time not really a topic in the details of Hosea, but also at the same time the overarching picture the Lord uses to express how he hates Israel's idolatry. They, Israel, were a covenant-breaking people. They faithlessly used the Lord's kindness for their own pleasure and to serve other gods. There's the first one. Let's take a look at the second one. We see something similar in the New Testament book of James. It's page 839. Let's take a look at James chapter 4. I think this is an interesting test case here. James 4 James says, Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust, and you do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask, and you do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that a friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Wait, hold on. Back up the train. Adulteresses? Adulterers? There's nothing about adultery and friendship with the world, right? How is it that friendship with the world is enmity with God, and what does that have to do with adultery? Well, let's take a closer look back there at verse 1. The strife, the discord, they come from the desires for pleasure. And those desires cause the warring, the strife, the discord among the people. Not only among the people, but internally, inside of us as well. Verse 2, you lust but you do not have. You want things that you can't have. You're even willing to murder to get what you want. Obviously, this is going to cause great strife, great quarrels among the body. But wait. All you have to do is pray. And you'll get what you want. Right? That's what it says. Where's that? Verse 2? Yeah, the end of verse 2. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. Now, right here is where All of the cable TV televangelists stop, right? Sow your seed, pray out loud, speak your wealth, speak what you want into existence, and God will give it to you. Give me your dollar, and the Lord will multiply it 30-fold, 60-fold, even 100-fold, right? This is what they say. You just have to ask. Surely, we know better than that. So what does James mean? It's right there in verse 3. The cause of all this mess is that we are so frequently after what we want without regard to what the Lord wants. It's important to realize here, James, he's not talking about minimizing every prayer down to thy will be done. Of course, The simple prayer thy will be done is a great and good and godly prayer, but. He he does expect people to pray for what they want. The problem is not praying for what you want. The problem is praying for you what you want outside or in contradiction or in contrast to what you know the Lord wants. This is adultery because it is taking what the Lord, every good and godly gift comes from above, taking what the Lord is willing to give the one who asks, and using it for the service of another. And as we saw in Hosea, a little bit less forcefully here, but not much. He's calling them adulterers and adulteresses. you are taking the Lord's gifts and serving another master. Whether it's this master or some master out here, the Lord's gifts are for the Lord's purposes. And when you steal from the Lord to serve another master, that is idolatry, which is adultery. So once again, we see the Lord speaking to us saying you want to serve the master of yourself. Idolatry. This is tantamount to adultery. Let's look at one final episode where the Lord uses adultery to describe unfaithfulness, idolatry of false gods, and idolatry of self. It's burning the Lord's gifts of satisfaction to worldly desires. Now this one is A little bit drawn out, but I think it's very powerful. Ezekiel 16. That'll be page 590 if you're using the Bible in your pew there. Ezekiel 16. Right after Jeremiah and Lamentations. You might remember Ezekiel was a prophet to the southern kingdom. This is Judah. It's just later than about 600 B.C. I mean, he had a fairly long stint as a prophet. Most scholars would put this chapter about 590 B.C., somewhere between the Babylonian captivity and the fall of Jerusalem. So he's speaking to the other half of God's people. at this point. And again, I'm going to read a good bit here. And it is almost painful to listen to the words that the Lord uses to describe what His people have done. And there won't be much commentary necessary, but listen to how the Lord uses adultery and harlotry as His way to describe Jerusalem's turn from serving Him to serving the other gods. And let me make sure I know where I'm going to stop, otherwise I might just keep going here. Okay, Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 1. Again, the word of the Lord came to me, Ezekiel, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations and say, thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem, your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite. Your mother was a Hittite. And as for your nativity, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut. nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, nor were you 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 the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. And when I, the Lord, passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your own blood, live. Yes, I said to you in your blood, live. I made you thrive like a plant in the field, and you grew, matured, became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. You were under shame. When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed, your time was a time of love. So I spread my wing over you and covered your shame, your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you. And you became mine, says the Lord God. Then I washed you in water, yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood. I anointed you with oil. I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin. I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, a chain on your neck. I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, oil. You were exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty. Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through my splendor, which I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God. In other words, for a time anyway, the Lord's nation was doing the very thing for which He called them to be His people. Verse 15, But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. You took some of your garments and adorned multicolored high places for yourself and played the harlot on them. Such things should not happen nor be. You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from my gold and my silver, which I had given you and made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them. You took your embroidered garments and covered them. You set my oil and my incense before them, also my food, which I gave you, the pastry of fine flour, oil, and honey, which I fed you. You set it before them as a sweet incense. And so it was, says the Lord God." It gets worse. you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to me, and these you sacrificed to them, the false gods, to be devoured. Were your acts of harlotry a small matter, that you have slain my children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire? And in all your abominations and acts of harlotry, you did not remember the days of your youth. when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood. Then it was so, after all your wickedness, woe, woe to you, says the Lord God, that you also built for yourself a shrine and made a high place for yourself in every street. You built your high places at the head of every road and made your beauty to be abhorred. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by, multiplied your acts of harlotry. You also committed harlotry with the Egyptians, the very fleshly neighbors, and increased your acts of harlotry to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched out my hand against you, diminished your allotment, gave you up to the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines who are ashamed of your lewd behavior. You also played the harlot with the Assyrians because you were insatiable. Indeed, you played the harlot with them and were not satisfied. Moreover, you multiplied your acts of harlotry as far as the land of the traitor Chaldea, and even then you were not satisfied. How degenerate is your heart, says the Lord God, seeing you do all these things, the deeds of a brazen harlot. You erected a shrine at the head of every road, built that high place in every street. You were not like the harlot. No, even worse. You were not like the harlot because you scorned payment. You were an adulterous wife who takes strangers instead of her husband. Men make payment to harlots, but you, you made your payments to all your lovers. And you hired them to come to you from all around for your harlotry. You are the opposite of other women in harlotry because no one solicited you to be a harlot, and that you gave payment but no payment was given you. Therefore, you are the opposite. Now then, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God, because your filthiness was poured out and your nakedness or shame uncovered in your harlotry with your lovers and with all your abominable idols because of the blood of your children which you gave to them, surely, therefore, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated, I will gather them from all around against you, and I will uncover your nakedness or your shame to them. that they may see your shame. And I will judge you as women who break wedlock or shed blood are judged. I will bring blood upon you in fury and jealousy. I will also give you into their hand, and they shall throw down your shrines and break down your high places. They shall also strip you of your clothes, take your beautiful jewelry, leave you ashamed and bare. They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones and thrust you through with their swords. They shall burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women, and I will make you cease playing the harlot. You shall no longer hire lovers. So I will lay to rest my fury towards you, and my jealousy shall depart from you, and I will be quiet and be angry no more. because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated me with all these things. Surely I will recompense your deeds on your own head, says the Lord God. And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations. Hardly any comment necessary after that. The Lord's people had turned away from their covenant with Him. They had taken the good gifts He had given them, and instead of stewarding them for His mission to be a kingdom of priests, to show the world His glory, they had used those gifts to serve not only themselves, but the false gods of their neighboring nations. And the Lord uses adultery and harlotry as the picture, as the way to communicate how vile their actions had been. You might think, I hope you don't, but you might think that we are a long way off from what is the seventh commandment. We're not quite so far as you might think. It's almost as if the Lord knows that we know how devastating, how hurtful, how crushing, how unfaithful adultery is. And so he uses that picture to explain perhaps something that we don't sense or feel as much, idolatry. He uses that understanding to show us how wicked unfaithfulness, idolatry, and serving the master of ourselves really is. The specific sin of adultery, that is, the physical intimacy outside of the context of marriage between one man and one woman, is all of this. We're not so far away as you might think. That specific sin is all of this. When we think about it specifically, we can see it. We all have heard Genesis 2.22-24. The Lord took apart of Adam, and He made woman. And He says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And we all remember the preceding chapter. So God created man in His own image. The image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created them. And then God blessed them and God said to them, here's their mission. Here's their purpose. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Subdue it. Have dominion. God's purposes in marriage, one flesh, intimate relationship to include physical intimacy, physical companionship. Of course, this has the effect of meeting the Lord's purposes for procreation and multiplication and children who are brought up in fear and admonition of the Lord. Of course, this marriage is a picture of a covenant, is an unbreakable thing. That's why Paul uses it as a picture of Christ and the church, the bridegroom and the bride, and God gave gifts of desires commensurate with these purposes. So it's so easy today to think of physical intimacy, to think of sexuality as something, a biblical view of that, as something against Our desires, but this is not so. The desires are exactly commensurate with the Lord's purposes. Adam was alone. And it was very good. But Adams body was clearly already made for this one flesh union. God creates the desires. God gives the gift of the desires and the gift of marriage. And adultery says, I want to do it another way. This turns the focus away from adultery as a sin against one's spouse, and turns the focus towards unfaithfulness against the Lord. Adultery is bad. Adultery is wicked. Of course, because it breaks the covenant between man and wife, between spouses. It says, I'm not satisfied with you, woman, or you, man. And of course we know the Lord says lusting is akin to that adultery. Even that lustful glance, hmm, that's the one the Lord should have given. The Lord is doing it wrong. unfaithful, idolatrous. Adultery spurns the covenant between man and his Lord as creator. Ultimately, the adulterer is accusing the Lord. I'm not satisfied with the spouse you gave me. I'm not satisfied with the singleness you keep me in. I want to fill the desires you gave me now in my terms. Ultimately, the adulterer cares nothing for the covenant into which the Lord has brought him, and even worse for those of us who are God's people. Adultery cares nothing for the lordship of the Lord. It cares nothing for the purposes of the Lord. It cares nothing for the stewardship of marriage, for the stewardship of the desires of physical intimacy that are gifts from above. It cares nothing for the purposes for which the Lord has given us all these gifts. So the Lord has commanded against adultery. The Lord has shown purposes for the physical intimacy that is meant for only inside of the context of marriage. The Lord has shown the mission of his people to be fruitful and multiply and to raise up children in fear and admonition of the Lord. The Lord gives us bodies fitted for these purposes. Right? The Lord gives us the desires and the pleasures of fulfilling these purposes. The Lord gives us the covenant of marriage within which to execute the mission He has set out before us. And even more, the Lord has brought us, Christian, into covenant with Him. He has shown us our sinfulness. He has demonstrated our helplessness. He has drawn us near to Himself, condescended from glory to become a man in the virgin birth. He lived the perfect life we could not live. He died the death we deserve. And He was risen on the third day, proving Christ's work a sufficient payment. ascending to intercede for us at the right hand of the majesty on high. This is the Lord who has given us spouses with whom he has brought us into covenant before him and with whom our delight and the Lord's purposes come together in the glorious way he intended. Now One last time. Adultery says, no Lord, you got this all wrong. I have this body. I have this longing for companionship. I need to be satisfied in this way. Now, this marriage business, this context of marriage business, this is just in the way. This covenant between me and you and this woman is standing between me and what I want now. Come to think of it, this covenant between me and you, Lord, Father, Creator of heaven and earth, this whole thing where you tell me what to do, that's getting in the way of what I want now. And putting it this way starts to sound like that part of Ezekiel chapter 16, which I don't know if you got the same impression, but for me was long and enduring and painful to listen to. But we do it. We do it all the time when we contemplate these things of adultery. Adultery is wicked because not only is it unfaithfulness to the other part of your own flesh, your one flesh in the marriage covenant, and because it is unfaithfulness to the Lord who created you and the Lord who brought you into covenant with Himself through repentance and faith in Christ, all the various forms of lust and physical intimacy outside the context of marriage where the Lord has placed those gifts. They take those gifts, those acts take the gifts that come from above and spend them in the service of another master. I'll ask the same question and I'll give the same answer as I did last week. Where does that leave us, right? And once again, I can't think of any better example than Peter at the end of John 6. Where does that leave us? You have the words of eternal life. There is no where else to turn. There is no where else to turn. For the adulterer. There is only one perfect. Adultery free life. With which to stand before the Lord. Who is the consuming fire? And live. Only the Lord will give you that life and take yours through repentance and faith in Christ so that you can stand before the Creator and the One who has drawn you near to Him and live. Let's pray. Father, as we so often do, when we hear the sins of Israel, we bounce back and forth between thinking, how could they end? Lord, that is me. And in some sense, I suppose both are true. But because both are true, Lord, We flee to Christ, give us hearts to trust and to obey him all to the glory of your gifts and your covenants and your purposes. Amen. Let's stand together and sing.