We're going to do something somewhat unique today, at least in our study of the Ten Commandments, and that is the pastors have come up with, I think, nine questions regarding the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery. And they're wide ranging. But we just thought it might be helpful, especially as we apply this commandment to our own lives and to our church, to do it in this fashion. So Brother Tom is still going to teach. He's going to start off by answering every question. I'll read the question off. He'll answer it. Then he'll open it up for us as pastors to add or comment on. And then we want to give you guys an opportunity to ask any questions as well. So that's kind of the format today. And we hope it'll be helpful and edifying to all of our souls. So before we begin, let's pray together. We thank you, Lord, for your kindness and mercies to us in revealing to us in a very clear and powerful way the law of God. We thank you that it was written upon stone tablets at Mount Sinai. We thank you for it recorded in the word of God for us to study. But we thank you most of all for it being inscribed upon the tablets of our hearts as the spirit of God has come to regenerate us and make us new. We pray that you would give us great attention and focus as we look upon the seventh commandment again today. May these questions, may these answers, may additional comments be helpful to build us up in love, to help us to live pure lives, pure in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. Help us, oh Lord, in our marriages to love our spouses and remain committed to them. for the single people out there, help them to live sexually pure lives, and keep them away from all the snares of the devil, who would love to see them tripped up and trapped in these kinds of sins. So please bless us now, encourage our hearts, and ready us and prepare us to worship you today, both this morning and this evening. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. But it's a big part of our next world, and a big part of our era. question we have is, does the Bible provide us with a sexual ethic that all image bearers of God must follow? And maybe you want to explain why there might be some questions in people's minds whether there even is a sexual ethic consistent in the Old Testament and New Testament, but is there one and what is it? Well, the basic assumption is that there is an ethic that's written on our consciences, which became the Seventh Commandment when the Decalogue was given. But the answer to this is, is there proof that there was an ethic prior to the giving of the moral law besides the Seventh Commandment? And if you study out in the patriarchal record in Genesis, Starting with chapter 6, verse 3, the judgment of God expressed in verse 3 indicates, In unmistakable terms, a divine disapproval of mixed marriage. For example, that the godly line of Seth were forbidden to marry the ungodly. A second proof is we have a history of the sanctity that was applied in procreation, the story of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar. This indicates that this certainly is a part of religious instruction in the patriarchal families. And keep this in mind, and I'm not a textual That isn't my area of expertise. If they had any of the Scriptures at all, some people say that it could have been the book of Job, but that's conjecture. So it's amazing that there was this underlying ethic that you find without even revealed instruction from the Lord. And going on from Joseph, next we have the indignation of Jacob's sons when the purity of their sister Dinah was violated by Shechem, Genesis 34, 5, and 7. That this tradition was not confined to the Abrahamic family is evident. Remember the case of Abimelech. Abimelech was a king, and he had taken Abraham's wife, Sarah, and he would have violated her had he not known that this was Abraham's wife and not claimed it was his sister. So even the king of Bimelech had in his conscience a realization that he should not do this. And when God reproved Abimelech, he said, behold, you are a dead man because of the woman that you have taken. For she is a man's wife, ver 3. And his defense, if you remember, resided in the ignorance of the fact that Sarah was Abraham's wife. And this was why he could plead in the integrity of my heart And the innocence of my hands have I done this in verse 5. And God recognized his plea as valid in verse 6, and this implies that he was fully aware of the wrong of taking another man's wife, and therefore aware of the sanctity guarding the marital relation. And this wasn't A Hebrew, this is a pagan king. As indicative of the measures taken in the patriarchal period to prevent the dangers and liabilities arising from mixed marriages as well, we have the steps taken by Abraham to ensure that his son Isaac would not take a wife of the daughters of the Canaanites, Genesis 24, 2-4, and also the charge given by Isaac to Jacob, you shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. And then there are the laws of the Pentateuch which prescribe marriage to not be outside the degrees of consanguinity and affinity, which means that they were not to marry a near relation, for example, a first cousin. And it is a case of, at Corinth, where Paul's teaching as well, that one had taken his father's wife. The woman in question here is undoubtedly the stepmother. In Leviticus 18, 7 and 8, distinction is made between the uncovering the nakedness of your mother, verse 7, and the uncovering of the nakedness of your father's wife, verse 8. Hence, Paul is dealing with a case which falls into the category of that forbidden expressly in Leviticus 18 verse 8, verse 20, verse 11, and Deuteronomy 22, verse 30, and Deuteronomy 27, verse 20. Yeah, good. So it's really important to see in the Old Testament, even before the law was given, in Exodus 20 on Mount Sinai, there is this consensus among image bearers of God that there is a sexual ethic that all God's image bearers must hold to and live by. And so Tom has just enumerated a lot of that. And remember in Leviticus 18 and 20, God says that the Canaanite pagan tribes were kicked out of the land because of some of these sexual sins. The land literally vomited them out figuratively, but that's what the words literally say. And so even these pagan Canaanite tribes are being judged and condemned by God because they are breaking God's sexual ethic found in the seventh commandment. So I think the Old Testament and New Testament are clear. There's one sexual ethic. For one, sex is a good gift from God. We should never think that it's gross or nasty or some necessary evil. This was supposed to go on even before the fall. It's the very means of carrying out the dominion mandate. But sex is restricted to the marriage bed. And any sexual activity outside of the marriage bed and marriage being defined by the Bible is considered sinful and condemned by God. So it's really as simple as that. Sex is a good thing, but only in the marriage bed. Anything outside of the marriage bed is sinful. And I think you can kind of boil down the sexual ethic of the Bible to those three propositions. Does that mean anything else? Well, if that's true, Brother Tom, how do we understand the practice of polygamy, especially by Old Testament saints? If the sexual ethic is one man, one woman together in monogamy, what about polygamy? Well, we'll start with a verse that Peter gave in Acts at the times of ignorance. Comparatively, God winked at, but the first recorded deviation from the law of monogamy is the case of Lamech. And Lamech took unto himself two wives, Genesis 4, 19. It is beyond dispute that many good men have been guilty of this sin as appears by what is recorded in scripture concerning Abraham, Jacob, David, and so on, nor do we find that they are expressly reproved for it. which has been a stumbling block to some modern writers who think that polygamy was not unlawful in those ages, but was afterwards rendered so by being prohibited under the gospel dispensation. However, we need to understand that there were many bad actions of good men that is recorded in the Old Testament scripture, but not approved of nor proposed for our imitation. Of this kind, we must conclude the polygamy and having concubines as several holy men mentioned in scripture to have been that. It may appear that this practice was not justifiable. We should observe that some sin or other is often expressly mentioned in the Old Testament as connected and that came out as a result of that. Thus, Abraham's taken Hagar was occasioned by Sarah's unbelief because the promise of her having a son was not immediately fulfilled. Jacob's taking Rachel to wife after Leah was occasioned by Laban's unjust dealing with him and his own discontent arising from it. And his going in unto Bilhah was occasioned by Rachel's unreasonable desire of children and the taking of Zilpah by Leah's ambitious desire of having preeminence over Rachel by the number of her children. Again, the practice was generally detrimental to that peace, which is so desirable a blessing in the families, so that many disorders followed. So we read of an irreconcilable quarrel between Sarah and Hagar and of Ishmael's hatred of Isaac, which the apostle calls persecution. And we may notice as well the contentions which there were in the family of Jacob and others, the envy expressed by the children of one wife against those of another. And the opposition which one wife often expressed to another is that of Penina, one of the wives of Elkanah, to Hannah, the other. It is subjected that if polygamy was a sin against the light of nature, it is strange that it should have been committed by good men and that they should have lived and died without repenting of it. or being in the least reproved of it, as we did not find that they were in Scripture. But our reply is that indeed a sin, which they might have known to be so, had they duly considered it in all of its circumstances and consequences. But this they did not do, and therefore it was not so great a sin in them as it would be in us, who have clear discoveries of the heinous nature of it. If we suppose that they repented of all sin agreeably to the light that they had, they might be saved. This though unrepentant of was no bar to their salvation, supposing that they knew it not to be a sin and God's not having explicitly reproved them for it argues only his forbearance, but not his approval of it. Yeah, I mean, fundamentally it violates the creation ordinance of marriage. Yet it was, I guess we could say it was tolerated, regulated in Old Testament law. Could we also say that it's somewhat like divorce in the Old Testament, where again that was regulated, tolerated in this fallen world among God's people as their And that's why it's helpful to have an understanding of what our Lord was saying in Matthew 19. He says, this wasn't how it was in the beginning, but because of the hardness of your hearts. So there was some laxity made that way, but that wasn't the desire of God because God hates divorce. Yeah, good. And I think I don't know of a single instance or example in the New Testament where you read about a polygamous relationship. I think the New Testament is entirely silent. on the issue of polygamy. But I do think there are places where polygamy is explicitly condemned. I mean, you know, for elders and deacons, they need to be a one-woman man, which I think at least has to do with being faithful to one spouse, not many. And in general, that's true for all Christians. 1 Corinthians 7 talks about how we need to each have our own husband and each have our own wife, not multiple wives or husbands. And I think the analogy of Christ and His bride to us is instructive. Christ didn't have two brides or three brides or four brides. He has one bride, the church, and so should we. You guys have anything else to add? The point about God not explicitly reproving the sin, I think that He reproved it in the consequences. It never worked. And I've got a feeling that probably a lot of those men repented because of the pain that they felt as they saw their wives fighting with one another, ridiculing each other, couldn't get along together. So, sometimes God reproves us with His Word. Sometimes He reproves us by letting us live with the consequences of our sin. So, I would say a lot of those men I think it's clear that God disproved of polygamy by just seeing the results of polygamy in the Old Testament. I wouldn't die on this hill, so keep that in mind. But it does seem that with the coming of Christ and the dawning of the new creation, as Pastor Ben's already mentioned, with the qualification for officers in the church, there's a reiteration of the creation norm for one husband, one wife. and not really any prescriptions provided for anything beyond that. Though Eve was guilty and not a hapless victim, Moses nevertheless documented the circumstances and preconditions of her sin. What are some common circumstances and preconditions that attend our remaining sin in committing adultery? Spurgeon used to have a saying that sometimes he plowed with another man's heifer. And so I share my indebtedness to a book by Randy Alcorn, which I've kind of put into my own words is very helpful here. But first, we need to understand that we are targeted for it. The devil loves to use temptations this way to bring us down, especially if you are a pastor or a minister of any sort, public or private, as a teacher, preacher, teacher, helper, or as any kind of salt and light in the world, Matthew 5, 13 to 16, then take heed You are a targeted man or a marked woman if you're ministering to ladies. The forces of evil have taken out a contract on you. There is a price on your head sufficient to make any bounty hunter salivate. Satan is out to get you, and he will do this by temptations to violate the seventh commandment. Critical fact number two, we are vulnerable to sexual immorality. All Christians are susceptible to sexual sin. The myth that we are morally invulnerable dies slowly, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. And critical fact number three, we are fully responsible for our moral choices. It's often said that people fall into immorality. The expression is as revealing as it is faulty and dangerous. The very term fall betrays a victim mentality. It sounds as if we were walking down a street and someone tripped us up or kicked our feet out from underneath us. It implies that moral collapse comes out of nowhere, that there is little or nothing we could have done to prevent what happened. We do not fall into immorality. we walk into it. Go ahead, Pastor Ben. Yeah, and I think, you know, when it comes to our relationship with God, being tempted to commit this sin, especially as married couples, it can come from just simply dissatisfaction and discontentment with God's providence in our lives and His abundant provision in our lives. We just get fed up with how God rules over us. And we can be tempted to sin against our spouse and sin against God. I mean, God was the one who made us one flesh. God is the one who brought us together. God is the one who gave us a suitable helper. And ultimately, us being tempted to break the seventh commandment is to raise our fists at God. and accuse God of wrongdoing, of giving us a spouse that we really don't like and is really not helping us, and we're looking to somebody else that God hasn't joined us together with. So I think we always need to keep in mind that this ultimately is a sin against God. And it's a sin of just simply being discontent, covetous, of something that doesn't belong to us, that God has not said yes to. But on a human level, when there's marital strife and disunity, that's when you can see this sin really become a great temptation. When we're not one, when we're not united, it could be on a variety of things. It could be as simple as finances. And we can be set against one another and we can begin to think there's somebody better out there for me, who understands me more, who is better looking, who is more gracious, more talented, whatever it might be. And so we really need to work hard in our marriages to stay united on all fronts. because one little breach in our relationship with our spouse can open the door for the devil to wreak havoc in our lives. Thank you, Brother Tom, for emphasizing powerfully the fact that the minister and the aspiring minister has a target on his back. We all know we can name the men who have fallen into this sin, and many more pastors whom we don't know their names. But I want every person, every man in this room, and every woman in this room to know that the devil would love for you to fall into this sin, and therefore it needs to be guarded. You need to be guarded very closely, lest you get a blot, lest you ruin your life, you ruin your marriage, you ruin your life. It's like Like the Proverbs warns us, you don't come back from there. And I'm not saying God doesn't forgive. He does forgive, but you still carry scars of your sins. Thank you for the faithful warning, and may all of us, pastors and non-pastors, take it to heart. Two things. One, the third bullet point you brought up with our responsibility, our accountability, That's part of the sting of crying out to God in repentance is realizing, coming to the full realization that when we went to this, I don't know, went to this website or went to this particular place in town or wherever we did so willingly, We chose to do it. We did not, quote, fall into it. We did it. And that is just absolutely critical, first, to get the lesson from this, don't waste your sin, in a sense. But it's also critical to magnify the forgiveness of God, the loving kindness of God, the tenderness of God, and the way he stoops down to us and deals with us. But the other thing is those preconditions that Pastor Joe mentioned. For starters, just don't go there. You know, whether you have to put your family computer right in the middle of the living room or whatever you've got to do, do it. leave the phone in a cubbyhole or in the office or whatever and don't pack it around with you all the time. You know, there's just a thousand different things we could do, but the flip side of that, of course, too, is the positive work of you can't just go around hacking at sin constantly all the time and never do any positive work. The positive work is to attend to those things that make for a healthy, nurtured, Marriage, for example, husbands protecting their wives from strain by being communicative, being understanding, being listening so that she won't be led astray by some guy in the office or whatever the case may be. To work on those kinds of things, even though we are fully responsible and fully accountable, there are conditions that we can avoid that will greatly aid that battle against sin. I'm going to skip a few questions just to piggyback off of what Eddie just said. And so we'll try to come back to the other ones. But what are some helps and aids to obeying the Seventh Commandment for single people and married couples? Number one, guarding your mind. It is often the result of a long process in which a mind susceptible to sin is granted unguarded exposure to immoral thoughts. Number two, and I'm again taken from a book, Randy Alcorn, Sexual Temptation, Establishing Guardrails and Winning the Battle, take precautions with the opposite sex. We need to be careful where, when, and why we meet with those of the opposite sex. Do you look forward in a special way to your meetings with someone, say at work, for lunch, Or do you counsel appointments with others to meet with him or her? Do you prefer that your spouse or co-workers not know you are meeting again? Or do you feel flattered when seen with him or her in public or meeting again? Excuse me, any of these can be warnings of an improper relationship. Number three, discern the subtle signs of attraction. We must develop an early detection system to spot moral danger before we are too deeply entrenched in it. Number four, anticipate and prevent sexual temptations. It's always easier to avoid sexual temptation than to resist it. As Joseph ran from Potiphar's wife, so we must run from the lures, baits, and hooks of impurity when it comes to sexual temptation. God says, be a coward, 1 Corinthians 6, 18. Those who travel with their jobs or ministries are often subjected to considerable sexual temptation. Home, family, and community provide certain natural restraints that are removed while traveling. and so on. And many of us know that this was part of the reason of a fall of a pastor who was very much used in our G3 ministries. Michael and I saw him back in 2021 in Atlanta, that he was too much traveling alone. Give me one moment. And I believe, Pastor, that would go along with this. Could you read question number seven? Is that the…why are we commanded to flee from sexual immorality? Is that the question? Yes. Yeah, 1 Corinthians 6, 18, rather than stand and fight against it. It is very interesting. Flee from sin, not stand against it, not fight it, but run away, in a sense, be a coward and turn your back on it and run. Why…I mean, what's so unique about this sin in particular that we are called to flee from it? I have a paragraph that is taken from chapter 6 of The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, and I want to focus on two words in this statement. First, I'll read it and explain why these two words are so important. John Owen says, some lusts are far more sensible and discernible in their violent actings than others. Paul puts a difference between uncleanness and on all other sins, 1 Corinthians 6 verse 18, flea fornication. Every sin that a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. Hence, the motions of that sin are more sensible, more discernible than others. Well, perhaps he may have the love of the world or the like, and is in a person no less habitually predominant than that. But this is such an interesting half a sentence. Yet, those sins do not make so great a combustion, combustible in the whole man. Something about the temptations to this sin is bringing a flammatory substance to a fire that causes it to be combustible. Thank you, brother. I also think it's important to. I mean, we need to hear the restrictions and warnings, but it's also good to think positively about what the Bible says concerning our relationship to our spouse. For instance, I think of Proverbs 5, 15 through 20. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman? and embrace the bosom of an adulteress. Of course, there's a warning there to stay away from the strange woman, but also some very positive teaching, some interesting teaching on how we should relate to our spouse. She's like this fountain, and she is to be the source of all of our sexual delight and pleasure. She's like this lovely deer, a graceful doe, and you think about bucks in mating season, they're very excited and enthusiastic about these does, we're supposed to be like that. I mean, we're even supposed to be intoxicated always in the love of our spouse, which that word at other times literally refers to people getting drunk. That's not what we're being told here, but in some ways we're to be so wrapped up in the love of our spouses, that we have no time or interest for anyone else. And so I think we need to hear these warnings. We need to see the guardrails. We also need to see the broad space that God has given us to enjoy our wives or wives who enjoy your husbands and to think positively about this topic as well. Yeah. Should we go to go to question five and six and that is because this is more relevant for the type of discussions that we're having in our day. Yeah, so this question is based off of a question that a church member asked, but it's, how do I know when a thought or a desire which is forbidden in the seventh commandment comes from the devil as a temptation or comes from the depravity still remaining within my own heart? And I think the specific example was even in our dreams. at times, but how do we discern that? And it could be both, of course, but is this coming from the devil as a temptation? Is this just something that's coming out of my own wicked heart to drag me and lead me to this sin? How do we discern these things, brother? One difference, if you're very, very, ask God for wisdom when you're discerning this, but a single thought. comes to you and it suddenly starts up and your mind will show that the enemy is near and is suggesting such thoughts as without its agency you could not else account for. You say, man, where did that come from? And it shocks you. There's an element of shock to it because it wasn't inbred from the indwelling sin remaining in your heart. Samuel Pike, Samuel Haber's Cases of Conscience, case 13, how may we distinguish the suggestions of Satan from the corruptions of our own hearts? When the temptation is unnatural or contrary to the general bias or temper of our minds, we know that every person has a disposition to some sin more than others, and this is a sin that most easily besets us as it arises from our natural temper. But sometimes persons are tempted to what is directly contrary to this general bias. When the temptation is opposite to the present frame of the mind, the present disposition of the heart, then there is reason to think that Satan has had a hand in it. The soul of a believer, we know, is in very different frames and different seasons. Sometimes he's more carnal, sometimes more spiritual. And if a profane or a blasphemous thought is injected into the mind when we are in a devotional frame, or if presumptuous thoughts come in while we are in a disconsolate frame, or despairing thoughts are injected in our minds when we are in a comfortable frame, in any of these cases, it seems evident from the nature of that temptation, that fiery dart, that Satan has a chief influence in introducing them into the mind. Thank you. I don't know which Puritan said this, but I think one of them said, you would probably know, Brother Tom, but we can't stop the bird from landing on our head, but we can prevent him from building a nest there. Isn't that Martin Luther? Okay, well, all right. Anyway, yeah, if it's a fiery dart of the devil and not from ourselves, one way to know is, do we entertain it? Do we let them build a nest there? Do we continue to think about what has been suggested to us, or are we horrified and do we seek to run from it? Question five, the one about— Yeah, I messed up the ordering. But I think it would be instructive for the people to hear that one, and I think that was a very good question that you wrote down. Well, here's a couple very relevant issues when it comes to the Seventh Commandment. There's two of them. The first one is this. What should Christians think about attending a LGBTQ plus wedding, in quotation marks? Well, the first thought that came to my mind when I was reading this is how would that be consistent with you being salt and light in the world? And if the salt has lost its savor, it is fit for the Donquill. But we also have to consider a wedding ceremony. In the Christian tradition, it's first of all a worship service. So if the union being celebrated in the service cannot be biblically sanctioned as an act of worship, we believe the service lends credence to a lie. And I'm helped somewhat here by a statement from Ligonier Ministries. We cannot in good conscience participate in a service of false worship. I understand that does not sound very nice, but conclusion follows from the premise, namely, that the marriage being celebrated is not in fact a marriage and should not be celebrated. As well, there has long been an understanding that those present at a marriage ceremony are not just casual observers. We're not passive as professing Christians if you attend such a wedding, but they are the Christian professor that is there, witnesses who are granting their approval and support for the vows that are to be made. That's why the traditional language speaks of gathering here in the sight of God when the pastor is about to marry two together and in the face of this congregation. Yeah, and of course, there's been a prominent pastor and theologian who gave advice to a grandmother recently, though he opposes same sex weddings. But the question was, do I attend my grandchild's transgender wedding? And the advice was, though you can be opposed to this wedding, you can still go and even bring a gift. And the rationale was we need to take risks to love and show compassion to even the enemies of Jesus Christ. And he is still stood by that advice. So I guess how would you I mean, that's that's the rationale. Hey, we need to be loving to even our enemies. And this is one way that we can love our enemies is by going to this ceremony and giving a gift and showing some sort of support. How do we how do we answer that? Indeed, we are being loving and compassionate, and this is the most loving and compassionate thing we can do is by not going. and not showing our support of this so-called union? I'm going to answer that kind of in a different way because I think your answer is already very, very helpful. But this is from my experience. You can disagree with me on this. But if you do not go, from my experience, I have found that if you write a five or six page letter and you start to preach to the people that went there, it doesn't have the desired effect that you mean for it to have. There's such a thing as showing Christian love without being really preachy about it, and the experiences that I've seen where somebody has taken a stand and then they write them a letter and the people read it they're usually not in the best frame to improve the things that you are saying. You may actually turn them away. Those kind of counsels are appropriate if afterwards they come to you because you didn't go and you give a reason of the hope that is within you, but to do so very, very cautiously. You're dealing with people that are unconverted, that by nature already are at enmity against God. We want to be very, very cautious that we don't turn on a fire hose and just let them have it with all this information. That's my own personal conviction about that. While I do agree that we have to be cautious, there definitely though is a time when we have to be faithful and we have to tell them the truth. A good reason not to go to one of these weddings is have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness and that's exactly what homosexual weddings are, but rather reprove them. So sometimes we do want to be careful, and I agree with you, Tom, to avoid the fire hose thing, but it's also good to be faithful to people and in some ways let them know, either before or after, This is why and just tell them what the Bible says. Yeah, and and and you know, our actions sometimes speak louder than words, I think, especially if the the couple knows that we're Christians and they understand our convictions as simply not being there. We'll speak very loudly to them, but. But but certainly there are those times where I feel like, yes, we do have to just explicitly tell them why, especially if they ask us. Can't beat around the bush forever. And we just need to speak the truth and love. But I think all of us as pastors are agreed that we would not recommend anyone, any professing Christian, to go to any sort of these ceremonies, weddings, whatever you want to call them. And to keep in mind, if there were a hypothetical situation where a Christian in good conscience might be asking, well, they're getting quote married with a civil servant, the justice of the peace or whatever. It's not a quote worship service or whatever. They're just standing up, exchanging some promises and that's it. The issue is that marriage is a creation institution, not merely a church institution. And the rules, therefore, for marriage are rooted in creation from the beginning and not just the church. We may only have time left if we were to take any questions from the audience for number six, which I think would be the other question that I think could be helpful. Yeah, so the second relevant question is, what are some principles to consider when dealing with the issue of modest apparel for both men and women? In a way, I'm at a disadvantage not having daughters but sons, and I have a very, very good wife who you know, would ask me if something that she was wearing was modest. But I want to ask you a question. Did any of you remember the movie, The Time Changer, 2002, the Christian movie? It's built on the supposition that This professor named Russell Carlyle can be time transported from the 19th century into the 20th century. And do you remember, if you saw the movie, this line? He's with professing Christians. He's brought into this movie, starts watching the movie and Russell Carlyle says, stop the movie. You must stop this movie. The man on the screen just blasphemed the name of the Lord. There must be some mistake. You must stop this movie. This is an abomination. Now his words. are contingent on the fact that a person coming from the early 19th century into the 20th century was shocked by what we would call the desensitization of modesty and other topics. I mentioned last week a book called The Public Undressing of America by Jeff Pollard and Christian Modesty, and so we're going to get into this time-changing machine and go backward and try to trace it, maybe from 1850 to the present, how much these things have changed. This can only carry so much weight, but it is at least educational to establish that we have, in our day, become desensitized to the things. So, Jeff Pollard did the historical groundwork, and it is interesting to read the things, how much things have changed since the 1850s. One, woman's arms were exposed in clothing between 1900 and 1910. So the arm from the shoulder down, before that, it would have been a rare occurrence to see that in public dress. So this may seem laughable to some in our day. This is a major shift in thought in the first decade of the 1900s. Number two, the first clothes that revealed cleavage appeared in the 1930s. Number three, between 1930 and 1940, the fabric used for swimsuits exposed more of the body's curves and for a purpose. They wanted to go against what they call Puritan norms that warned against immodest dress and nakedness. And so they wanted to desensitize the people and they didn't do it down in Central Park in New York City. They started with the clothing that was worn in mixed bathing. Number four, the first two-piece swimsuit appeared in magazines in 1935, Harper's Bazaar. Number five, during the 1940s and 1950s, two-piece suits bared the midriff. Number six, the navel first became exposed in the 1960s. Number seven, when the new molded fit swimsuits were introduced in 1933 in Harper's Bazaar magazine, they were actually touted as the answer to nude bathing. It would have been too presumptuous for people to bathe in the nude, so let's Do the next best thing. We will fit the clothing or cloth that is made in these swimsuits to expose the things. And number eight, the retreat to the beach, as it is called, is so deeply entrenched in the American psyche that many of us are probably unaware that men and women frolicking together in the surf was virtually unknown in human history until the mid-1800s. I mean, that's some pretty interesting stuff. I just studied it again this week, and I said, I didn't know. Pastor Ben. Brother Tom, I was thrilled, and I figured you would, when you put up Pastor Pollard's work. I read that work years ago. And while I may want to nuance some of his applications at the end, overall is an incredible work, and he's done the church a great service by doing it. I would recommend it for every one of our members here. That being said, on our topic of adultery, I think men and women both need to realize what you have already stated in your points, that clothing matters, or the lack thereof matters, or the presence thereof, but the shape thereof matters. All these things matter. And back to the preconditions we were talking about earlier, you just have to, you know, if you know you've been invited to attend a function and the people aren't going to be dressed appropriately of either gender, you may decide that you might not want to attend that function. Or public beaches, you may decide that that's not the best place for you or your family to go to. Maybe you get a private pool or something of that nature. There's all kinds of applications to prevent us from entering into a situation where adultery, the trap is set related to clothing and modesty. Another thing that Pastor Pollard pointed out is in the 1950s when pornography was first introduced to the public, women were shocked that men would be looking at this stuff. And he says that in our day, statistics shows that women are looking at pornography as much as men in our day, buying it and so on. Yeah, and just in terms of modest dress, I just encourage everybody not to just go with the flow of the culture. It's real easy to just dress like your neighbor dresses or the person you work out with, you know, at a gym or whatever. But just think, like Pastor Eddie said, our clothing, our lack of clothing matters. And I think often we just don't think about what we're wearing and what it is saying to other people and what it's revealing to other people. But really, especially if you're married, consider what your spouse thinks about how you dress. It's just a real easy thing to ask your spouse, honey, how does this look on me? What do you think about this? It can save a lot of heartache just simply by asking that question. I'll leave it up to you if there's time to ask questions from the audience. Yes, we don't have a hymn of the month, so yeah, we've got six minutes if anybody wants to ask any questions. The flip side of this, of course, back to the positive is, and for the encouragement especially of Christian ladies, it doesn't mean the Christian version of a burka. It doesn't mean you have to wear a outdoor patio umbrella as a matter of clothing. You don't have to. That's such an excellent point because the fundamentalist Baptists actually did. You know, I mean, they almost put wives in a potato sack, you know, and they they meant well, but that's the other extreme, you know. So first of all, you're going to drown. So the great Christian opportunity there is especially using verses like Philippians 4, 8 as a guide is to educate your conscience on on beauty versus allurement. Those are two different things. Allurement on the surface may, quote, look beautiful, but it's allurement. It's designed to allure, whereas beauty is beauty, and beauty is beauty for God's sake and others' sake. On that note, then, I remember when Donna was raising the daughters in particular, but we also worked together on this. There were actually times in public and coming home and talking about it as a family or with a JCPenney catalog or Sears catalog. Acceptable, not acceptable. Acceptable, not acceptable. Acceptable, not acceptable. And training their appetite, so to speak, to desire those things which we deemed as parents in the spirit of Hebrews 12 that seemed right to us to discipline our childrens with and teach them to call this beautiful and this off limits. Go ahead, Blake. Thank you. So this is kind of a experimental question regarding this whole topic. There are some situations where the husband and wife have to work because they can barely make ends meet. Because of this, the couple is spending less time with each other because of their busyness of schedules. The question then is, how does the husband and wife stay pure in this season of life? Anybody want to take that question? Yeah, I mean obviously there are a lot of difficulties with that sort of situation. Hopefully you guys can find, the couple can find some opportunities to spend time together. But obviously you have to be very watchful. I don't think it's ever a good thing to spend long periods of time away from your spouse, whether it's due to work or other situations. I wouldn't probably, if the jobs were necessary, I wouldn't say go quit your job because of that, but I would just encourage the couple to be very watchful and be very intentional in their marriage to find ways to spend time together. to pray for one another daily, to keep your communication up. Maybe it's on your lunch break or something like that to make sure that you're talking with your spouse. If you can't see him face to face, at least on your phone. Any other questions out here? Go ahead, Alex. When I went to Moody Bible Institute, we had a specific dress code, particularly when we went to work out. And I've noticed that both the men and the women dressed how they wanted to, and they didn't necessarily consider the other person. And even though, in their minds, they didn't see themselves as trying to be immodest. I have had discussions with men who have had difficulty because of what the women are dressing and the women having difficulty because of what the men are dressing. And it made me realize we should be really considerate of who's in the room and the hearts of the people that we're with. Because even though to us it may not seem immodest, it may really hurt the other person spiritually. No, that was a good point. Thank you, Alex. Do we have time for another question? Yeah, maybe one more. One more question. Anybody with a question out here? So if you're a single man, and you say maybe live on your own, and it's just like late at night, but sometimes like these, just set themselves upon you for whatever reason, you're just minding your own business or whatever, what are some good ways to flee from that? before it starts pulling you in? I don't know that the term flee from it is as applicable in that case, but in the mortification of sin by John Owen, he says that the way you're going to deal with these kind of temptations, and he talks about sin's importunity in a treatise on den-dwelling sin, is to be in the means of grace so that you can lessen the vigor and the power of the temptation, that it doesn't have such a grasp upon you. But I'm just speaking from my experience in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When I attended that church, I came there as a single man, and the pastors, when I joined the church, did not want me living in in an apartment alone. They were very, very cautious. So immediately they were able to find a family for me to rent a room from. And they thought that that was more a desirable atmosphere for a young man of 28, 29 when I got to Grand Rapids. And I think that there is some wisdom in that. Pastors? Pray right away. Seek the face of God. Have some accountability partners. Some people that you're close with that you can trust. And maybe you can give them a call after you pray. That they can pray for you. They can give you counsel. Sometimes fleeing, I mean, maybe you flee by just taking a drive in your car. Getting out of the situation for a little bit. and then coming back, but even as Pastor Eddie just told me, make sure you're working, make sure you're busy. Diligent labor and our callings is one of the things that are commanded in the Seventh Commandment according to the Westminster larger catechism. There's a reason for that. What's the old adage? The idleness is the devil's playground. He finds mischief for idle hands to do. I better close, brother. Okay. Thank you so much for your attention these last four weeks. Holy Father, we are always in continual need of your help, and may none of us get to the place that says, I can't fall. Lord, we can. Lord, we need your help. Lord, we need to be strengthened with might by your Holy Spirit in the inner man. Lord, we need to make a covenant with our eyes, Job 31, verse 1. We continually need you to keep us in the way because, again, we are targets of the enemy. So we commit the rest of our morning to you and be with us in your Holy Spirit and the worship service. In Jesus' name, amen.