“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” (Eph 5:25)

I am thankful I find it easy to love my loveable wife… well, most of the time.
But to love her all the time “as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” – that is the challenge!

Likewise, my wife tells me she finds it easy to “love her husband” (Tit 2:4)… well, maybe not so easy when sadly I am only thinking about me.
But to love “and submit to her husband, as to the Lord” (Eph 5:22) – when she is my equal, an “heir together of the grace of life” (1 Pet 3:7) – that can be a challenge.

Marriage is wonderful. Married to Eileen is wonderful – all the more after almost 50 years.
This is because marriage was originally designed to reflect the highest expression of divine love (Eph 5:32).

Yet, it is evident that the institution of marriage is in trouble today.
And not only among unbelievers. Almost every week I hear of another marriage where the “Christian” husband doesn’t love his wife and cruelly deserts her, leaving behind pain and devastation.
Or, it is a wife deserting her husband.

What happened to love that perseveres?

Why are we in trouble?

The basic reason the institution of marriage is in trouble, has been the wholesale and reckless abandonment of the Biblical standard of marriage, especially in Western society, ever since the sexual revolution of the 60’s – culminating in recent times in the West’s flagrant perverting of God’s law by embracing same sex “marriage”.

“In the ’60s and the early ’70s, on the heels of the sexual revolution, psychiatrists and sociologists began to give a measure of intellectual sophistication to old-fashioned sin, began to justify the activities of men and women and to render the claims and cries of Scripture – from their perspective, at least – null and void.” (Alistair Begg)

By the ”activities of men and women” is meant adultery: “More than half of our nation’s [United States’] men are reputed to have been or are involved in extramarital affairs” as well as “a third of the women also.”

This is becoming even more of a problem as so many now spend more time working on interesting projects with colleagues of the opposite sex at work than they do enjoying working and playing together with their spouse at home.

Also, with a flood of pornography now pouring forth, readily accessible on the Internet, there is increasing acceptance of engaging in the act of sex apart from marriage (where it alone belongs), or even apart from any long term commitment to the exclusive love that marriage requires. (See further here)

This divorce between casual sex and real love was painfully portrayed in the emptiness of Roger McGough’s poem, with the sadly sardonic title, “The Act of Love”:

The Act of Love lies somewhere
Between the belly and the mind
I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind .

Brought her home from a party
Don’t bother swapping names
Identities not needed
When you’re only playing games

High on bedroom darkness
As we endure the pantomine
Ships that go bang in the night
Run aground on the sands of time

Saved in the nick of time
It’s cornflakes and then goodbye
Another notch on the headboard
Another day wondering why

The act of love lies somewhere
Between the belly and the mind
I lost the love sometime ago
Now I’ve only the act to grind.

The following helpful comments are from Alistair Begg, on The Seventh Commandment, Part 1 and Part 2:

“You shall not commit adultery”

Rather than accommodating ourselves to a lifestyle which is warped, the Scriptures – the Ten Commandments, in particular – call us to line up against a perfect standard of righteousness, call us to bring ourselves, with the enabling of God’s Spirit, into a line which, far from tyrannizing and destroying, releases us in perfect freedom.
It is the ultimate freedom to become a bondslave to Christ and to his Word. It is the ultimate enjoyment to live in obedience to God’s truth… What does the Bible say in the midst of this confusion?
Well, the good news is that as confused as things are around us, the Bible is really clear. And what I’d like to do is address with you the clarity with which the Bible speaks concerning the sanctity of marriage and therefore the heinous nature of adultery.

Let’s be very, very clear that every time the Bible speaks about marriage, it makes it obvious that it has a high view of marriage, and all that is part and parcel of marriage God has ordained and loves and is committed to, including all the physical enjoyment that that union contains…

In marriage, two people are not entering into a contract. In marriage, two people are entering into a divine covenant.
It is a great mystery. They “become one.” (Gen 2:24) It is one plus one equals one.
They become interwoven with one another emotionally and psychologically and physiologically, and in every dimension, and it is this great union of all this that makes marriage what it is.
That is the monstrosity of removing one element of marriage from the context in which it is set – namely, the sexual element of marriage. When you remove sex from the context of marriage, it becomes a monstrous thing. It becomes a disappointing thing. It becomes a devastating thing. It becomes less than what God has intended…
The sacred union in marriage is not to be intruded upon by anybody. It is not to be arbitrarily broken by anyone…

A Call to Radical Witness

The prevalent attitudes towards marriage and towards togetherness are so far removed from what the Bible says that to read the Bible and to think these issues out as we try to do now is so radical. It’s so radical. I am excited about how radical it is, I’ve got to tell you…
I don’t think we’re going to need plastic noses or funny suits as we go into the end of the twentieth century. I don’t think we’ll need to do very much as Christians except live in moral purity before you get married and live in marital fidelity afterwards.
That will be enough to mark us out as some of the weirdest people that ever walked the streets of the latter part of America in the twentieth century…

When we commit adultery, there’s a fivefold dimension to it. In the committing of adultery:

1) We sin against God
2) We sin against our bodies
3) We sin against our partner
4) We sin against our spouse
5) We sin against our partner’s spouse…

…in other words, we create a huge chain reaction of tragedy.

Hedges and Walls

Let me conclude by saying three things.

1) Don’t fall into the trap…

… which woolly thinking leads to, which concludes that there is no difference between mental and actual adultery.

This I hear all the time. The equation goes like this: “Well, I’ve thought it, so I guess I’ve done it, so I suppose I should just go ahead and do it.”
Okay? Jesus said, “If you do it here [in thought], you’ve done it.” So people say, “Well, I thought it; I must have done it. So I guess we just complete the process.”
That is from the pit. That is a devilish equation. He wants to drag you down to the very abyss of moral uselessness.
There is a substantive difference between thinking about and committing adultery. There is no difference, says Jesus, in terms of the punishment that He will mete out. Therefore, we cannot play fast and loose with things in our minds.
However, there is a difference between what I think about and what I actually do.

We don’t have time to go through it all, but let me tell you this:

• Adultery – the act of adultery – breaks the marriage covenant. Adulterous thoughts do not.
• Adultery provides ground for divorce. Adulterous thoughts do not.
• Adultery violates and defiles each other’s bodies. Its mental counterpart does not.
• Adultery is the vehicle for sexually transmitted disease, whereas the mind does not transmit sexual disease.

2) A Word of Warning…

…to all of us who are tempted to believe that this is a message for Mr. So-and-So who lives down the street or the guy who just left our church.

It goes like this:
“We’re just good friends,” said Jack.
Who did he say that to? He said it to himself when he was driving in the car. He was driving in the car, and he was thinking about this girl who works with him. Her name is Thelma. And as he drove in the car and he thought about Thelma, he said to himself, “We’re just good friends. I respect her for her mind. I like her as a business associate. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
No. But eight months later, Jack and Thelma were waking up together in the morning, and Jack was no longer waking up in the morning with his wife.
Why? Because Jack and Thelma were terrible moral reprobates? No, they were just like you and me. They were sitting in church.
Eight months ago, they were in church. Eight months ago, they had nothing in their minds about being involved in cheating on their spouse. Eight months ago, they were listening to messages like this, taking notes, and saying amen.
But something went wrong.

“Impossible!” you say. “It couldn’t be!”
Listen, be careful! That’s what Jack and Thelma thought.
What happened was simply this: that because they believed they were invincible, because they believed they were above it or beyond it, they didn’t put up any hedges around them to protect against the possibility of them falling into sin.
It all started innocently enough, but then slowly, imperceptibly, gradually, they began to depend upon one another emotionally.
They began to confide in one another with little secrets and private plans and shared ambitions.
They began to justify their lunches together – and extended lunches together.
They exchanged physical touches, which they said were “brotherly” and “sisterly.”
They liked each other. They became special to each other.
They became enamored with each other.
And they gave themselves to one another.

“Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he falls.”(1 Cor 10:12).
Have you planted hedges, men, about this? Do you have hedges?
Do you still go out for lunches with your secretary? I think you’re nuts.
“Well,” you say, “I have to. I’d get fired.” Get fired. Better to go into heaven fired than go into hell unfired?
“Oh, she came in, she was upset. I just went around the desk and I gave her a hug. I didn’t mean to be hugging her four minutes after I started hugging her.” Well, you can be sure you won’t if you don’t ever hug her first of all.
Don’t linger. Plant hedges.
Build walls.
Let me give you three walls:

• Number one: Practise the presence of God – reminding yourself all the time that Jesus is with you wherever you are.
• Secondly: Memorize the Word of God. Fill your mind with Scripture: Psa 119:9, 11.
• Thirdly: Stick with the people of God – in large groups in worship, in small groups in accountability.

3) A Word of Encouragement

For some of us here this message is so painful. Some of us have probably decided that our past is actually unforgivable.
We believe we have sinned ourselves outside the love of God. We’ve broken the seventh commandment so badly, maybe so continually, and we believe that we’re done.

Well, I want to tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, that it’s not so.
If you do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, if you do truly and earnestly cast yourself upon God’s mercy and upon his grace, you may be forgiven, you may be pardoned, you may be cleansed, you may be set free.

But hear the word which Jesus spoke to the woman in John ch 8 as she went. What did he say to her? “Go… and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11)
Unless you know that you are prepared to walk out of here this morning and never pick up the phone to him or her again, then don’t bank for six seconds on the forgiveness of Christ being ministered to you.

For our forsaking is the evidence of our being forgiven.

This is the Word of God.