Flourish: The Insufficiency of Adultery

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Let's pray together.

Father, we uh when we stand next to or close to big and good things, the smallness and the not goodness of what we have settled for gets exposed.

And so when we open the Bible, we are exposing ourselves to a great thing.

It's full of big things and it casts a shadow on all the small things, the less wild lovers, and the small idols that we've settled for.

And yet we're gonna open the Bible again this morning and ask that you would expose the unnecessary so we could see the necessary.

This is our prayer today, God.

We ask you to make it our experience.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, I think I'm on page 61 of the Bible that's on your road there.

You're welcome to take that and just kind of follow along.

We're in a series on the Ten Commandments that we call Flourish.

The reason we call it Flourish is because we believe by obeying what God's Word says that you experience the life that you were created for.

Some of what Rick was talking about, Rick Callahan, our connections pastor, was talking about earlier.

And so uh we're gonna just jump in.

I'm gonna start reading in Exodus chapter 20, verse 1, and I want to talk to you this morning about the insufficiency of adultery.

Exodus 20:1

The insufficiency of adultery.

Now let me acknowledge, and now that I say that, because let me just acknowledge, just by the sheer number of people that are on our campus on a given Sunday, there's a good chance there's people in every service that have that have fallen, that have made that mistake, that made that sinful choice.

And so if you're in the room right now, I don't want you to brace like, oh great, I'm just gonna take my whip my whooping and get it over with.

I'm not here for that, and God's not here for that, okay?

Uh I want to I want to read from the Bible, and then I'm gonna give you four reasons why it's insufficient, okay?

Fair enough?

Uh Exodus chapter 20, verse 1.

Exodus 20:1

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You should not make for yourself the carved image or any likeness or anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You should not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and then sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you.

You shall not murder.

Verse 14, you shall not commit adultery.

Five words that we're going to think about this morning.

You shall not commit adultery.

And I want to start with a very simple question.

Have you ever asked yourself why God made this one of the Ten Commandments?

One of the ten things that God says, hey, write this down and never forget this.

He chooses five words.

You shall not commit adultery.

Now, it's not to make people feel bad.

Matter of fact, I want to begin with a quote.

It's a rather lengthy quote, so uh it'll come up on the screen uh to help us kind of understand uh what God is getting at.

And this is a quote by a man named C.S.

Lewis, a great thinker and Christian writer.

He said this.

He said the Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and his wife are to be regarded as a single organism.

The male and the female were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on a sexual level, but totally combined.

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union, the sexual, from all other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.

The Christian attitude does not mean that there's anything wrong with sexual pleasure any more than the pleasure of eating.

If it means that you must not isolate the pleasure and try to get it by itself any more than you ought to try to get the pleasure of taste without swallowing and digesting by chewing things and spitting them out again.

Now, let me begin with a question.

If I could reach in my pocket and pull out any amount of money and said, you could eat lunch anywhere in the world, where would you want to go eat lunch when we're done this morning?

Just somebody blurt it out.

Italy.

Yes.

And when you went to Italy, what would you eat?

Italian.

Italian food.

And now, with the Italian food, would you have like a nice bottle of wine?

Or would you?

Of course, you gotta go to Italy.

Yeah, you're in Italy and you got a nice bottle of wine and you got great Italian food.

And here's the one caveat, Denise.

What if I said you can chew it up and taste it, but you can't swallow it.

You gotta spit it out.

You don't want to go to Italy anymore.

What I'm saying to you, and what the Bible says, is what C.S.

Lewis captures here for me.

I'm not that, I don't have that in refined taste.

I would just be content to go to Rudy's and get some moist brisket and some of that sweet cream corn.

Have you ever had the cream corn at Rudy's?

Can I see your hands?

We'll dismiss right now.

Are you with me?

Can you imagine if I went up to you and said, hey, my family and I are going to Rudy's, you want to go?

And we go to Rudy's and your first buy, it's kind of that moist brisket and just explodes in your mouth with that seared outside edge.

It's kind of crispy, and all of a sudden it's just like meat candy.

You're like, oh, this is awesome.

And then I said, now spit it out.

And you're like, mm-mm, I'm burning out.

The Bible says, when we, and you'll see this unpacked, and Lewis captures it.

If you take this the sexual component of a relationship and that's all you want, you're never going to be nourished by that.

It's like tasting delicious food and never swallowing it and digesting it and being nourished by it, which is why people that commit adultery are typically prone to continue to commit adultery.

Why?

Because they never swallow it and they're never nourished by it.

They just taste something that they were created for and they spit it out.

And the Bible says we weren't created for that.

So when I say the insufficiency of adultery, that's what I mean.

And I want to give you four reasons for this.

Number one, it violates God's design for marriage.

It violates God's design for marriage.

And so naturally you ought to think, so what do you mean by God's design for marriage?

So I brought a statement, I want to put up on the screen.

Don't try to write it all down.

I'll refer to it all throughout so you can get a little bit every time it comes up.

Here's what I believe the Bible teaches is God's design for marriage.

You were created by God to be in a mutually satisfying heterosexual marriage relationship, which is characterized by consistent physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, satisfaction, and enjoyment.

Now just think about that for a minute.

Now, if you're 17 right now, you ought to read that and think, okay, if that's true, then what can I say no to between now and then?

If you're 40 and you're married, you've got to be thinking, what else can I say yes to?

I want to add something to that.

I love that my church is full of people that are all smarter than me.

There's a counselor that's in our last service.

He came up and he said, hey, that physical, emotional, spiritual is good, but you forgot the I.

He said, when I meet with couples, I talk about pies, P-I-E-S.

The I is intellectual.

He said, because when you first meet a woman as a man, that's the first arena of your relationship is intellectual.

You're curious about your wife.

You want to get to know her.

He said, Neil, the problem with marriage is we stop being curious about each other.

And I thought to myself, oh, my wife needs to hear this.

I'm going to remember this so I can tell her at lunch.

No, that's exactly right now.

If I gave you a pen and I said, circle the part of that that stands out, most men in this room would circle that part consistent, physical.

That's what we would circle.

Yes, you would just circle that.

If I gave most women a pen, typically they would circle emotional right there.

My wife walked behind me.

I was standing at the sink, brushing my teeth.

She walked behind me this weekend, goosed me, and I turned around and said, I need you to come on to me emotionally first.

And she turned around and she said, There's a phrase that's never come out of a man's mouth.

And I was like, What?

Are you kidding me?

But this altogether, you can't isolate just one.

Altogether, this is what you were created for.

So when I say that adultery violates God's design for marriage, you say, What now let me ask you a question.

What could you say no to if you really believe that?

What could you say no to?

Because if you're 17, if you're 14, you're gonna have to say no to some things.

Your friends at school are gonna break out a phone and go, hey, can I show you something?

And you're gonna have to say no to that.

Not because you're a prude or you're not hip or cool or down with whatever, but because you believe that something better and bigger awaits you when you get married.

Now, where do I get that?

From the Bible.

Let me read three different passages.

The first one's from Genesis chapter 1, verse 27.

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them, and God blessed them.

And then by the way, often when the Bible talks about man and woman in the context of marriage, it has in there God blessing them.

And God blessed them.

And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Ask yourself this question today.

Do you feel like you you you've got God's blessing on your marriage?

Or is it always just hard work?

Is this one plus one equal two?

Or is there some holy momentum of God's blessing that's manifesting itself in your marriage relationship?

Now, I make a big deal out of that because the Bible's unapologetic and that this is the kind of relationship that God blesses.

Nowhere do you see God blessing any relationship that it's not male and female.

It's never happened and it never will.

Now, you say, what do you mean?

The Bible says that male and female, he created them and God blessed them, and God said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

When you're in a same-sex relationship, how can you be fruitful and multiply?

No, we're not, we're not mad at people that live that lifestyle.

We're not shaking our fists, we're not taking signs and picketing and protesting.

We're just very intentionally just kind of saying, Hey, this is not what you were created for.

And by the way, notice the Bible says, and God, in the image of God, He created them.

Male and female, He created them.

We live in such a culture that is so perverse, so coarse, and so off the rails in the way God designed it.

It's no longer called gender reassignment surgery, it's called gender confirmation surgery.

When Bruce Jenner, who's a man, says, I think I want to be a woman, our culture says, Yes, that's who you are.

So you're just confirming who you're supposed to be.

Now, what we're really saying is we get to be God.

We get to decide if we want to be a man or a woman.

Yet the Bible says male and female, he created them.

So when a man, let's just take Bruce Jenner, for example, uh, because he's on the cover of Vanity Fair and he's kind of the poster child for this, and our culture applauds.

Now, I'm not saying scream and rant and rave and hate.

I'm saying just take note that we are slowly casting ourselves in the role of creator.

We are saying, hey, I know that God, male and female, he created them, but I don't like being a man.

I want to be a woman.

So this is who I am.

You all need to confirm and affirm and applaud my confirmation.

And I would just say to that, no.

No.

No.

Because we're not God.

See, this is the kind of relationship God blesses.

Second thing I want to point to in this passage is this when he says, hey, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and every living thing that moves on the earth.

Having dominion over anything starts with having dominion over yourself.

Having dominion over anything starts with having dominion over yourself.

You live, a wise man lives according to his understanding.

The foolish person is ruled by his appetites.

He doesn't have dominion.

God created you to have dominion over things.

Second passage where this understanding of God's design for marriage comes from is uh Proverbs chapter 5.

Proverbs 5 · chapter mention

The Bible says this 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.

You do not share your husband or your wife with anybody.

That just you.

Let your fountain be blessed.

There's God again saying, Hey, not only do I want you to have somebody that you're monogamously committed to, I want that to be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breast 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?

Men ask yourself, how drunk are you right now on your wife's love?

The Bible uses command language in the Greek and says, be intoxicated with her love.

Be intoxicated.

In other words, you never get out from under the influence of the way your wife loves you.

Third passage that this design for marriage comes from is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 3 to 5.

1 Corinthians 7:3–5

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a little time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come back together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

So, going back to our definition, our statement that we started off with in the very beginning, that the reason that it's insufficient, that adultery is like relational anorexia.

You you you taste things, but you never digest them and you aren't nourished by them.

Here's why.

Because you were created by God to be in a mutually satisfying heterosexual marriage relationship, which is characterized by consistent physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, satisfaction, and enjoyment.

And again, I say to all the teenagers in the room, of which I've got two, if you really believe that, what could you say no to?

If you really believe that, if that's God's design, see, because this is the first reason that adultery is insufficient.

Second reason is it misrepresents God's covenant with his bride, the church.

It misrepresents God's covenant with his bride, the church.

Now, stay with me.

Let me let me kind of make a statement that hopefully help us get our head around that.

Unless we keep marriage in this bigger context, it gets small and it stays small, and it's hard to find motivation for the necessary things in a small marriage.

Let me say that again.

Unless you can put marriage in a bigger context.

Like in a minute, I'll read from Ephesians chapter 5, and it says, Husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

That is a big context.

That is husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.

It means the standard by which I love my wife is not the way I feel.

It's not what I think, it's not what I want.

Like I just out myself this past week.

Uh, we go through milk in our house.

We drink a lot of milk.

I don't know who drinks it all, but milk consistently disappears.

We have a refrigerator, you open it up, and the milk's the milk compartment's in the door.

It's about six inches from the handle.

And it consistently surprises the women I work with that we we don't have milk that I live with.

And so uh this past week, I was doing, I think I was actually cleaning the kitchen.

Clap now, okay?

Uh and I opened the refrigerator, put something up, and I saw that there was a void where the milk goes.

And I thought, by the way, I'm so rich, I have two refrigerators.

I have one in my kitchen and one in the garage.

And so I thought, I'll just go to the garage and get some more milk.

I walk out there, open it up, no milk.

And I had two thoughts simultaneously.

Are you kidding me?

Why can we not keep up with this?

And we always discover it.

Not at nine in the morning, not at lunchtime.

I don't get a text.

Hey, if you go by the store, pick up some milk.

It's 9.36 at night.

I am watching the Golden State Warriors play small ball.

I'm on the couch, got my feet up.

I'm living the life.

And I just hop and open the refrigerator because my wife, you're like, guess I'm in the morning.

No, no, no, no, no.

Every night about 9:45, my wife has a little soup cup of cereal.

It's either honey butches of oats with almonds or it's honey nut Cheerios.

We're gonna have that cereal.

I've been with her, I've been married to her 23 years.

We've been we dated for a couple years, so 25 years.

And so when I opened the refrigerator, I didn't just see no milk and thought, ah, I have milk.

Because I try to do my marriage in the context of not just how I feel, but husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church, that's a huge content, and gave himself up for her.

What that means is that those of us who lead have to be the first to sacrifice for the sake of those we lead.

So I went in the bathroom, put my flip-flops on, paused the TV, and I thought, I'll come back and she'll be watching chopped or something.

I'll never get back to the basketball game.

Do you see the sacrifices I made for this woman?

I thought that all in a nanosecond.

And I was walking out, my wife said, What are you doing?

I said, I'm going to get milk.

She goes, I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it.

And I said, You're not leaving the house at 9 40 at night to go get milk.

Now, is my wife a grown woman?

Yes.

Can she handle herself?

Yes.

It's my responsibility to sacrifice for my wife.

So I go, and by the way, I don't go to the convenience store in our neighborhood because it's like$5 a gallon.

The man's got his foot on my neck.

It ain't that convenient.

I got to go to Kroger on Highway 6.

And it did happen the other night, but every once in a while my wife's like, hey, since you're going to Kroger, here's a list of stuff I need.

Hmm.

What makes that doable?

Hey, look at me.

Don't miss this.

The only thing, if my marriage is just me and her, then here's what I do.

I know you don't do this, but I keep score.

If it's just me and her, because that's a small context.

I think, hey, look what I've done for you.

Look what I did for you.

I unloaded the dishwasher, I loaded the dishwasher, I went and got milk.

Are you kidding me?

What are you gonna do to repay me?

Let me give you a list of ideas.

But if the context within which I do marriage is simply, hey, I gotta love my wife like Christ loves the church, guess what?

I don't have a leg to stand on.

I just get up, shut up, and go get the milk.

And by the way, when I come home, she never claps.

They're not standing.

I want my wife and daughters to be standing at the door with swords held up, and I walk underneath them.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Or I'd be like Steph Curry.

Why do they now have to give them that lo-fi?

Hey, look, dad got milk.

No.

My wife just gets up and says, Oh, thanks, honey.

Now I can have my cereal.

And guess what makes it okay?

Because I have to love her like Christ loved the church and gave myself up for her.

They might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way.

See, the Bible prescribes something, and then that's the standard men by which we have to relate to our wives.

That's why he says, in the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we're members of his body.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

However, let each of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

By the way, ladies, you fall out of respect with your husband before you stop loving your husband.

You should ask yourself, do I still respect my husband?

I mean, we should ask ourselves, do I conduct myself in a respectable manner?

And by the way, one of the things that helps me be a better husband, I'm I try to be a good husband.

I think I'm an okay husband.

I'm not perfect by far.

But I get around other men and the way they love their wives, like for example, there's a man that uh used to go to our church, uh, he and his wife, he was in his 90s when I met him.

The cat lived till he was 100.

I think he's like 94 when I met him.

He and his wife are in the nursing home together.

And to quote that great theologian Jerry Maguire, it was a pride-swallowing siege to go see him.

Because he would be in his bed, and I'd come in, I'd say, Hey Don, how you doing?

And he would, oh, Pastor, he would sit up, swing his legs over and get in his wheelchair, and his wife's like right there, four feet across the room in the other bed, and he'd wheel over and just pet her like a little kitty, and she'd be laying there with oxygen on, sound asleep, and he'd go, Isn't she beautiful?

Look at her, Pastor, isn't she beautiful?

And it was simultaneously magical and creepy all at the same time.

And I'm like, You are 94 years old, stop petting your wife like that.

And he said to me one day, I think he Saw me kind of looking like, this is awkward.

And he said, I wish I could get up in bed with her and just hold her.

You ever you can you feel when you're fixing a cry?

I just felt it come on me.

And I was like, I'm going to the ugly cry in any minute now.

I started doing Lamas breathing.

He's like, Pastor, are you okay?

Yeah.

And he said, I counted one time, he said it seven times.

Here's the exact phrase, Isn't she beautiful?

Just look at her.

We talk a little bit and he'd go, Isn't she beautiful?

Just look at her.

Finally, I was like, Yes, yes, she's beautiful.

Here's what's indict about that.

That woman could do nothing for him.

And she was still as beautiful as she'd always been to him.

He would tell me stories about how they met, how they owned a mill and somewhere in Indiana, somewhere, and how God had blessed them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the first time he saw her, and I was just like, one time I was with him and he kissed her on the lips.

And I kind of threw up in my mouth.

And I was like, y'all shouldn't do that.

But then I thought, well, you've been married like 68 years.

Do what you want.

Why do I tell you that?

Because here's why.

There's two words.

The Bible says, hey, no man ever hated his own body, but he nourishes it and cherishes it.

That word nourish in the Greek is a Greek word ectrapho.

Ectrafo, and it means to feed to maturity.

That word cherish is thalpo, and it means to keep warm.

Let me ask you two questions.

Number one, what's malnourished in your marriage relationship right now?

What's malnourished?

Because you have to feed things to maturity.

Secondly, what's grown cold in your relationship?

There was not a time that I didn't spend time with Don and his beautiful wife that I walked out and I thought, man, this is a very warm relationship.

This man loves this woman.

This man serves this woman.

This man, I mean, every time I was around him, he was going out of his way to make sure she was comfortable.

And I would walk to my truck every time and think, I gotta step my game up in the way I love Marcy.

I think I'm doing a good job until I go to the nursing home and I'm around Don.

Do I mention Don's 94?

And I was just like, just like a swift kick in the face.

Third reason adultery is insufficient is it's a sin against the Trinity.

It's a sin against the Trinity.

Now I know that can sound ethereal, and like, what do you mean?

Let me bring this down to where we live, okay?

We we only think horizontally about our sin.

We only think horizontally about our sin.

What do you mean?

Here's what I hear people say when when they get found out, they say, oh, well, we're not hurting anybody.

We're two consenting adults.

And I always think the same thing, but let me just say to you, beloved, we lost sight of the fact that sin is sin, not because of how people think about it, but because of who God is.

The issue is not what you can agree upon, but what is God established.

Let me say that again.

The issue is not what you can agree upon, because you can get people to agree with you about anything.

We got a lot of people in America that agree that Donald Trump would make a great president.

Are you kidding me?

He's a vulgar, spoiled, rich kid.

We are in deep weeds there, beloved, okay?

Wake up, America.

This concludes the Fox News portion of the sermon.

I mean, so getting people to agree with you.

We're consenting adults.

I said to a man one time, what do you want, a cookie?

You got a woman who's as stupid as you are, and you're sleeping with her.

That's that means nothing.

Well, I wish you wouldn't use the word stupid.

Oh, help me.

See, here's what I'm trying to say.

There would be no right or wrong if it was left up to humanity.

But there's not a human being that's ever lived, that's ever been in a world where there wasn't right and wrong.

Back in the garden, God established very clearly there's right, there's wrong, he decides.

And when man violates what God has decided, there is a consequence.

And so when I say, hey, it's a sin against the Trinity, I'll show you that in the Bible in just a minute.

But let me just tell you about the guy David.

Remember David, King David in the Old Testament?

David had an affair with a woman named Bathsheba.

She got pregnant, gave birth to a child.

David tried to cover himself up, so he had her husband murdered.

So David committed adultery and David murdered.

And when David was confronted, David broke and confessed his sin.

And he said to God in Psalm 51, Against thee and thee only have I sinned.

Sin is against God before it's against anybody else.

God is the first offended party in sin, beloved.

Stop saying we're consenting adults.

You're two people who've conspired to sin together and you've sinned against the holy God, and he is not happy.

He's just not.

And I know that makes me sound like I'm some mean-spirited judgmental jerk.

I'm not.

I love you enough to tell you that you're gonna stand before God on judgment day, not the people who agreed with you that you deserve this.

Not your coworkers who are cowards, who are moral cowards and go, well, God wants you to be happy.

Not gonna happen.

And so when I say it's a sin against the Trinity, here's what I mean.

1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 2 to 8, for you know that, you know what instruction we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 4:2–8

For this is the will of God.

This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things.

As we told you before, hand, and we solemnly warned you, for God has not called us to impurity, but in holiness.

Therefore, hear this: whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives you, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

I've had so many people look at me and say, Well, that's just your opinion.

I mean, you're supposed to, you're a preacher.

I'm like, this is not my opinion.

This is God's word, this is God's will.

You're not disregarding me, you're disregarding God.

One person said to me, Can you show me that in the Bible?

Absolutely.

And after I opened my Bible to 1 Thessalonians 4 and read what I just read to you, he said, Well, I mean, the Bible's written by men, so that's just really another man talking.

And I said to this man, If you don't repent, you're gonna go to hell when you die.

And I'll I'll show you what I mean by that in just a minute.

The Bible goes on to say this in 1 Corinthians 6.

It's not just a sin against God, it's a sin against Christ, and it's a sin against the Holy Spirit.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never.

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one with her?

For it is written, the two will become one flesh.

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit with whom you whom you have from God?

You're not your own, for you're bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.

When you say adultery is a sin against the Trinity, it's a violation of the will of God.

You take Christ and you join to a prostitute and you grieve the Spirit of God with whom you were sealed.

Fourthly and finally, it's insufficient.

Adultery is insufficient because it has eternal consequences.

That's what I said to them to the gentleman in my office.

I told you all about four or five months ago about I was at a wedding and a lady, an attractive older woman, she came up and she, you ever be in public?

You know, you got the public bubble, and someone kind of gets in your space and you're like, oh, excuse me, that's a little too close.

Let's lay at the wedding.

I'm standing there, uh, and and and and she kind of gets close to me, and I excuse me.

And she goes, Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry.

And I said, Well, do you know the bride?

I didn't know what to talk about.

So I was like, Well, do you know the bride or groom?

And she goes, Well, I kind of work in a department with the bride.

I think she said, Bye, blah.

I said, So if you don't know the people, why do you come?

And she said, out loud, I like to come to events like this and seduce married men.

Okay.

Yeah.

See, there's a boldness to depravity that you don't need to be shocked by.

And she looked at me and she goes, What do you think about that, Pastor?

And I said, I think unless you repent, you're gonna go to hell when you die.

And she looked at me, she didn't clap, and she looked at me, and she's like, excuse me.

And I said, I don't say any pleasure in that, but she says, Well, I don't, I mean, my God's a God of love and blah, blah, blah.

I said, The God of the Bible sends adulterers to hell.

Now, let me be clear.

I'm not saying if you've committed adultery, you're going to hell on a slip and slide.

No, no, no, no.

You should have more tongues than anybody in the room.

What I'm saying is, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9 and 10.

1 Corinthians 6:9

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greet, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

The Bible is, again, let me be clear.

It doesn't say if you've ever committed adultery, you're automatically going to hell.

However, the Bible does say without apology that the adulterer, the person who persists in this lifestyle, has no hope of heaven.

If you're in this room today and you think you're getting over on your spouse and getting over on God and getting over on everybody, and nobody knows, you will stand before God on judgment day and you will be pronounced to hell.

Not because God's not a loving God, but because you're hard-hearted and stiff-necked and you persisted in sin.

The adulterer will not, the person who habitually lives this lifestyle, cannot, the Bible says, inherit the kingdom of God.

Why?

Because it's inconsistent with a relationship with Christ.

So when the gay community says, oh, why are Christians always picking on gay?

The Bible's against sin in all its manifestations.

Nobody can say, well, why is the Bible picking on me?

The greedy, the swindler, the people that cook the books and the housing market crashed in 2008.

They're not going to get away with that.

The CEO that gets the golden parachute and goes off to Monaco, so you don't have to pay taxes.

It's going to stand before God on judgment day and it's not going to be good.

But I don't want to stop there.

Paul says, and such were some of you.

Listen to this, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that the hope of the gospel applies to the adulterer and the swindler and the greedy and the homosexual and everybody in this category.

But just to bring it down to you shall not commit adultery, if you're living today in an adulterous relationship, the hope of the gospel is held out to you today.

And I say to you, repent.

You've not outsinned the grace of God.

It's not too late for you to turn back.

There's a man lived years ago named Charles Wesley.

He became a Christian, and a year after his conversion, he got up on the one-year anniversary of his conversion.

He picked up a pen and he wrote these words.

This was a poem that became a hymn.

It goes like this Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of his grace.

He breaks the power of canceled sin.

He sets the prisoner free.

His blood can make the fowlest clean.

His blood availed for me.

That's what I meant when I said, I want you to walk out with more tongues than when you walked in.

People that I he says, Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise.

Look at me, beloved.

I'm almost done.

You still with me?

Nobody thinks that way unless they know what they've been redeemed from.

Martin Luther said, if your sin is great, your Savior has to be great.

Good news, your Savior's great.

And he breaks the power of canceled sin.

Anyone here carrying around your phone bill from November?

You got it in your purse?

With marked on there the day you paid and your confirmation number?

Of course not.

Why?

Because it's been canceled.

And the Bible says what Wesley wrote about.

What he said when he says, Oh, for a thousand tongues to say, it's a man poetically saying, God, I wish I had a thousand tongues so I could tell people how great you are.

The glories of my God and King, the triumph of his grace.

The Bible says, where sin did abound, grace did abound all the more.

He breaks the power of canceled sin.

He sets the prisoner free.

His blood can make the foulest clean.

His blood availed for me.

The blood of Christ will avail for you, my friend.

If you're living in an adulterous relationship right now, this morning, and just by the sheer number of people have been on our campus today, there's a good chance somebody is.

I say to you, you can be forgiven for that.

You can change, but you gotta repent.

That's what I mean when I say I want you to walk out with more tongues than you walk in.

You ought to be forgiven people that have been redeemed from any of those sins or any sin have this infinite capacity to praise and worship God for the fact that they've been forgiven.

I'm gonna go back to where we started.

About this it's it adultery is insufficient, and here's why you were created by God to be in a mutually satisfying heterosexual marriage relationship, which is characterized by consistent physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy, satisfaction, and enjoyment.

I did a wedding right here on the stage last night, and I told the people, the couple, great Doug and Christa, great couple, they're young, they're excited.

They said, I said, Well, you guys, has any verses been meaningful?

And they picked a couple verses that were great, and then I picked a verse.

And they're like, What are you gonna pick?

I said, I don't know.

We'll just see.

I'll get the Bible out and I'll just thumb it open.

I'll just go, uh, stop.

I picked, I didn't do that.

I picked Ecclesiastes chapter 4, verse 9 to 12.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–12

Part of that says to them, I told them right here, with her grandmother right there and his grandmother right there.

I read to them from Ecclesiastes where it said, if one lies down alone, how will he keep warm?

But if two lie down together, they'll keep warm.

And I said to them, as your pastor, I command you to lie down together and stay warm.

Light such a fire of physical intimacy that everything else pells in comparison.

Someone comes on to you at work and it's like them whipping out a little big lighter and saying, What are you doing Friday night?

And you scoff at that because you're like, I got a burning bonfire of physical satisfaction waiting for me at home.

That doesn't interest me at all.

And his ears were glowing red.

And I said, over and over and over.

I I almost slipped and told him, I want you to go at each other like rednecks, go after bacon.

But I told him, I said, if I made this awkward enough, and he goes, Yes, it's awkward enough.

Yes, thank you.

Have you ever noticed it's awkward when we talk about sex the way the Bible talks about it?

It's never awkward when we talk the smut that the world talks.

You don't ever, you're not ever like, are you kidding me?

Are you are you what?

What am I saying?

I'm saying that's what you were created for.

And everything else is insufficient.

Anything you see on the internet, anything your high school romance, your college romance, your single people want to get you involved in pales in comparison.

You are got 50 people standing around a big lighter and it's getting hot and no one can keep their thumb on it.

And God says, This right here is a raging inferno of pleasure.

Explain that to your kids on the ride home.

And it's what you were created for, and it's God's idea.

Let's pray together.

Just take a moment.

If you're our guest, we like to just teach the Bible and then think about it.

We like to say this is what the Bible says.

And so, therefore, let's kind of wrap our thoughts around this.

Let's crucify our appetites on the altar of this.

Let's crack open our hardened hearts on the durability of God's promises.

And as I said in the beginning, I'm laboring today that you walk out with more tongues than when you walked in with.

That you have a deep appreciation of all you've been forgiven for, and what you've worked hard for.

I told that couple last night from Ecclesiastes 4, I said, hey, work hard, toil, toil.

Why?

Because when you toil, there's great reward, the Bible says.

The great reward of working hard in your marriage is living with somebody and doing life with somebody that knows you and gets you and accepts you.

And you can't pour water in between that.

Somebody that says to you, I'm your sure thing.

I'm the woman that you ain't got to impress.

And that's what we were made for.

And that the Bible says of God that he will quiet you with his love.

The love of the right man if you're a woman, and the love of the right woman if you're a man quiets you.

Just puts to bed all those unnecessary, insecure thoughts.

That's God's design for marriage.

Let's think about that for a moment.

Lord, we sat here this morning as a covered-up people.

Because someone knew that we were meant for someone.

And so someone stood sovereignly over all the small and sometimes sinful choices we made and made sure we got to the person we were intended for.

And for many of us, we stood there like a box of Cracker Jacks with no prize left in it.

And here's how we knew we got to the right person, the person that you intended us for.

They looked at us and said, You're the prize.

Because grace has triumphed over sin.

We need a thousand tongues to be able to tell people how merciful you are.

Because you're our redeemer.

You gave your son to give us back what we forfeited through disobedience.

We've never gotten over that.

So give us some tongues to add expression and volume to that.

And thank you for men like Jason Isabel that write songs that aren't in the hymnal about loving your wife and loving your husband in a way that covers them up.

We're grateful and we say thank you.

We believe that in whatever realm we find, truth, it's God's truth.

So we just put a stake on that and we say, we're gonna claim that for God.

Thank you that you healed him of his alcoholism and gave him a second wife that has helped him stay sober.

And then he writes songs that are thought-provoking.

We're grateful for that.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Stand to your feet.

Hold your hands out.

Your sin has been canceled.

It no longer has power over you.

You who were once guilty are now innocent by and because of the blood of Jesus.

Grace has triumphed.

Get some tongues.

Ask God for a thousand tongues.

And it still wouldn't be enough to declare your Redeemer's praise.

But get out of here and declare it anyway.

In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.