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Our topic is: "Is Adultery More Subtle Than We Think?" Part VII of our Ten Commandments Series. Here's Rick and Julie.
[Rick] (0:22 - 0:28) Welcome everyone, I'm Rick. I'm joined by Julie, a longtime contributor. Julie, what's our theme Scripture for this episode?
[Julie] (0:29 - 0:33) Exodus 20:14: "You shall not commit adultery."
[Rick] (0:33 - 1:23) As we continue our Ten Commandments series, we're now to the point of deeply examining the Commandments that directly govern our interpersonal human relationships. This began with honoring our father and mother as a basic tenet for living respectful lives. Next was the clear command to not murder. We found that Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, seriously elevated the responsibilities of that command to not even being angry with, insult, or degrade our brothers or sisters.
Next, we examine the Seventh Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery." As emotional as it was to discuss how Jesus raised the bar for his followers regarding treatment of the brotherhood, this subject breaks entirely new ground for what is required of faithful Christians to live clean and faithful lives.
[Julie] (1:24 - 1:28) If you think the Seventh Commandment is only for married people, you're about to be surprised!
[Rick] (1:29 - 1:50) The Seventh Commandment is another "external instruction." It addresses what we do or don't engage in; something about what we do. This Commandment is the foundation of the human family relationship, as it is based on the sacred marriage covenant between husband and wife.
Julie, let's go to it. Simple. Exodus 20:14:
[Julie] (1:50 - 2:20) "You shall not commit adultery." "Adultery" means a married person engaging in sexual relations outside the marriage, but the Hebrew word goes much further. It also means to betray God by turning away from Him--the spiritual equivalent of adultery--giving your devotion, trust, or worship to someone or something other than God.
That's why every Christian needs to pay attention to the Seventh Commandment, not just those who are married, because we're talking about covenant faithfulness to God, not just misdirected human desire.
[Rick] (2:21 - 2:42) That's a big addition to what many of us might just think of when we hear this command. We need to really, really, really be engaged here. In the Law, it was clear that adultery was defined as a sin that could be committed by both men and women, and as such, the penalty was the same for both.
Let's look at Leviticus 20:10:
[Julie] (2:42 - 3:00) "If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." This is the same "mother-of-all" penalties that we talked about on our last episode for committing murder. Adultery was just as heinous.
[Rick] (3:01 - 3:41) It was, and we have to recognize that God had these very high standards for His chosen people for very specific reasons. It was to maintain the integrity of their social environment. These were critical things, and that's why the penalties were so big.
The societal command has its basis in the marriage covenant expressed at humanity's beginning, and this is where you find the basis for all of our human family relationships; in the Garden, Adam and Eve, Genesis 2:23-24, after Eve is created, and the two now are together.
[Julie] (3:42 - 4:02) "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave (meaning 'cling' or 'adhere') unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
You often hear this "leave and cleave" passage quoted at weddings.
[Rick] (4:03 - 4:33) Yeah, and there's a reason for that. That's the basis, that's where it starts, and there is a powerful, powerful message that we're about to unfold and continue unfolding with that original statement of that marriage covenant. When we look at adultery, it's the exact opposite.
We're talking about sacredness. Adultery can break you to your very, very core. Even if you're never caught, you still suffer consequences.
How do we know? Proverbs 6:32-33:
[Julie] (4:33 - 4:45) "The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; He who would destroy himself does it. Wounds and disgrace he will find, and his reproach will not be blotted out."
[Rick] (4:46 - 5:29) It's a self-destructive action. That's what Proverbs is telling us, and it gives us a sense that we've got to really, really be careful about how we see this. In the Old Testament, Julie, it's very specific, very dynamic, very clear:
Don't cross this line! Very, very plain in terms of the physicality of adultery. Now, on a different Old Testament level, adultery was also considered apostasy, meaning to abandon your faith and beliefs or loyalty. It was considered apostasy when the Jewish nation strayed away from adherence to God's Laws.
They betrayed their covenant relationship with God. That was called "adultery."
[Julie] (5:29 - 5:59) Right, because Israel was described as God's wife. When the nation worshipped idols, the prophets called it adultery because it broke the covenant--that sacred relationship that God had formed with Israel--just like marital unfaithfulness. God describes both Israel and Judah as unfaithful wives. We reference Jeremiah 3:6-8, for example, and in fact it makes a great study just looking at how many times adultery and idolatry is linked in the Old Testament.
[Rick] (6:00 - 7:48) You get this sense that there's a spirituality to adultery that is just as difficult, just as dramatic, just as wrong, because you're violating a relationship with God Himself. When we look at the Old Testament, the dramatic conclusion is when Old Testament adultery is committed, be it on a physical level or a spiritual level, the results were ALWAYS disgraceful and severe consequences would surely follow. That's the Old Testament clarity of that external instruction.
Now, let's fast forward to the New Testament and to Jesus. We now move to the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament where Jesus will teach us the Christian meaning of adultery. Folks, start to pay close attention here because now it's the Christian meaning of adultery.
Remember from our last episode when we were talking about "you shall not murder," that Jesus, in this part of his teaching--this part of Matthew 5 of the Sermon on the Mount--he was addressing what the standards of godliness would look like for his disciples. He's talking to His disciples about, here's how you follow me. He addresses portions of the Law, quoted pieces of the Law, and then he would raise their meaning for his followers with the words, "but I say to you."
Wherever we hear, especially in Matthew 5, when Jesus says such-and-such has been said, "but I say to you..." he's saying, you listen carefully now, because this is what it means to be a disciple of me, of Jesus. Jesus is going to transform this "external instruction," this instruction about things that we do, he's going to take this external instruction Commandment, and he's going to turn it into an "internal instruction" as well. How does he do that?
Matthew 5:27-28.
[Julie] (7:49 - 8:04) This is from the Young's Literal Translation (YLT): "Ye heard that it was said to the ancients: Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I--I say to you, that every one who is looking on a woman to desire her, did already commit adultery with her in his heart."
[Rick] (8:05 - 8:28) Yeah, so Jesus is saying, but I say to you, I, Jesus, am telling you, my disciples, that you are to represent me. He, Jesus, is telling us, he's saying, my teaching regarding what you've always known as adultery is bigger, it's higher, it's stronger, and it violates the marriage covenant in a very, very, very, very disturbing way.
[Julie] (8:28 - 9:25) Remember he said, "every one who looks on a woman to desire her..." That Greek word for "desire" is also often translated as "lust" and it means "to set the heart upon, to long for." Now, interestingly, it can be used in a positive sense. 1 Timothy 3:1 talks about a man desiring to be in service as a servant in the church.
That's good. But in a negative sense, it happens when we allow desire for someone outside our covenant, feigning an emotional or even sexual attachment that we aren't entitled to. As with murder, adultery begins in the mind long before the act itself. This is an intentional, well-fed desire.
I heard a sobering thought: "Lust trains the heart to want what God forbids." This isn't just in a passing or an involuntary thought, "Oh, he's cute." This is a cultivated, intentional desire that you continue to feed.
[Rick] (9:25 - 9:47) The warning is to watch what your heart is focusing on, what it's drawing itself towards, because that can be a desire that brings you down that road. We need to be abundantly careful, abundantly careful of that. That's an important aspect.
Desire can be a really good thing, but it can also bring us into the pit.
[Julie] (9:48 - 10:14) Yeah. When we talk about feeding it, that makes me think of these social media algorithms that make this dangerously easy, because it notices what we pause on and it keeps sending more of it. The whole digital world works this way.
Websites, ads, and apps--they're all tracking our habits, and they keep offering us more of whatever we seem to be interested in. The whole system is designed to feed desire. It's pretty insidious.
[Rick] (10:15 - 10:32) It is, it is. I'll tell you, when I do my preparation for various podcasts, I think twice as I'm going to type in what I'm looking for because everything I'm studying is not the goodness of Scripture, but it's the contrary pieces. When you're studying "demonism," or you're studying...
[Julie] (10:32 - 10:32) Or adultery.
[Rick] (10:33 - 12:07) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you're looking at the results of pornography, all of these things. Now, all of a sudden you are in the sites, and it just comes to you, and it comes to you, and it comes to you.
We've got to be very, very careful, because the algorithms set us up for failure. They really, truly do. What did Jesus mean by--going back to that Scripture in Matthew 5:27-28--"every one who looks on a woman to desire her did already commit adultery with her in his heart"?
What did he mean? First of all, he's saying it's an internal thing. There has not been an action yet.
There is an internal attraction, and he's saying that's where adultery begins. That's where it has its foundation, in the fact that it's an internal attraction that you have been drawn to and are paying attention to. Jesus is speaking plainly here.
For his disciples, looking upon another person with inappropriate desire is to commit a sin of the heart. Remember that phrase, "a sin of the heart." Are you guilty of actually committing adultery?
No. No. Are you guilty of compromising the principles of discipleship?
Yes, absolutely. Are you guilty of severely compromising the principles of the marriage covenant? Yes, you are.
Well, why would we say that? I didn't do anything, so why would we say that? Well, let's look at the following Scripture.
Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees about marriage. Here's what he says; Matthew 19:5-6:
[Julie] (12:08 - 12:37) "And said, FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
Jesus quotes that "leave and cleave" passage of Genesis 2:24. In the Old Testament Hebrew, "cleave" was "to cling or adhere." In the New Testament Greek, "be joined" means "to glue to; (figuratively) to adhere."
[Rick] (12:38 - 13:46) I want to take a little detour here, because whenever I hear these verses, I go back to part of my past. I used to be a fine furniture maker. I went to school for fine furniture making and learning how to do things by hand, and having this accuracy, and this artistry, and all of this. One of the things about gluing a case together, one of the rules that we were taught was, you should build the case in such a way that the case holds itself together without glue.
Cases, drawers, everything included, so that everything can hold itself together, and when you put the glue in, it makes it firm and immovable. So whenever I see this concept of being joined, of being glued to your spouse, I think of the firmness of what you've already interlocked. Your lives are interlocked, and now it's firm, it's solid, and it can't be moved.
The glue, because there's an interlocking, is not stressed. The glue joints don't ever wear out. When you do it this way, and you put that glue in, it's the final piece that makes it something that is unbreakable.
To me, it's a beautiful, beautiful thought.
[Julie] (13:46 - 13:58) That's really good imagery. Adultery violates a union that is meant to be "glued together" at the deepest level, whether it's physical adultery or spiritual adultery. It's attaching yourself where you don't belong.
[Rick] (13:59 - 13:59) Yes.
[Julie] (13:59 - 14:09) Rick, what's your reply to somebody who says, well, I've already committed adultery in my heart, so I might as well do it for real? Sin is a sin.
[Rick] (14:09 - 14:59) Okay, that's a tough statement; a lot of reactions. The reaction that is most appropriate here is to say, look, maybe you have committed adultery in your heart, okay?
Doesn't mean that the door is automatically open to go further. There's a difference between having something happening in your head and having something happening in terms of action; external versus internal.
If we get to that point where I've really messed up in my heart, might as well just give up. No, no. Do not give in to that.
That is satanic thinking, because we're stuck. Instead, go back to looking at this and saying, okay, I need to stop HERE and be repentant and back up. It's like, "I've gotten to the cliff and I've fallen down the first part, I might as well jump off the cliff."
[Julie] (15:00 - 15:01) No, that doesn't make any sense.
[Rick] (15:02 - 15:44) It doesn't. It doesn't. Adultery in the heart is different than physical adultery.
The reparation for the adultery in the heart is an easier process than the reparation for physical adultery. We want to be careful about that. Let's go a little further.
James focuses on the broad picture of what Jesus taught us. He is going to pick up on what Jesus said in a broader way, and he's going to give us the internal to external instruction. Remember, Jesus made "do not commit adultery" as an internal and external thing.
It happens first on the inside. Stop it there, before it happens on the outside where it's even more difficult. Let's look at James 1:14-15:
[Julie] (15:44 - 16:13) "But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death." Lust goes to sin, goes to death--what a progression. James is describing the moment desire stops being a thought and it becomes a "plan."
That's the conception. Lust moves from temptation to this decision to act on it, and you're saying cut it off.
[Rick] (16:13 - 17:09) Yes, you cut it off when it's in the process--the percolation process, okay? That's where we have to be focused, and that's what James is warning us about. He says when desire has conceived, then it gives birth to sin, but it has to have conceived first, which means you have to have entertained it, you have to have fed it.
We can't go down those roads. This is a dangerous process, and this is a process that every one of us is capable. Make no mistake, every one of us is capable of having our desires conceive something that can lead to poor, poor, bad actions--
and if adhered to, it leads to spiritual death and destruction. That's a serious thing, and we need to look at that with great sobriety. Now let's go back to Matthew 5.
Jesus' next statement emphatically teaches us what to do about this dilemma. So you've got this idea of things beginning to percolate. Going back to Matthew 5:29, here's what Jesus says:
[Julie] (17:10 - 17:34) "But, if thy right eye doth cause thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from thee, for it is good to thee that one of thy members may perish, and not thy whole body be cast to Gehenna (meaning utter destruction)."
Jesus isn't saying literally poke out your eye; this is metaphorical. In the ancient world, the right side represented power, honor, and priority. Your right eye was considered your best eye.
[Rick] (17:34 - 17:55) What he's saying is this first instruction is an internal instruction: Stop looking. If what you see draws you to sinful desire, stop looking.
Your spiritual life depends on it. This is an important principle. Stop what is creating something that can go further.
[Julie] (17:55 - 18:10) We deal with the inputs here. Pluck out the eye. Maybe it's time to disable or delete your social media accounts.
Maybe it's time to delete certain apps, and you know what they are because they keep putting temptation in front of you.
[Rick] (18:11 - 18:52) Those are a couple of good "maybe it's times." Folks, if this is something that has been a struggle maybe it's time to look at it differently like this. Here's the thing, Julie. We have, humanity has curiosity, and we tend to wonder about...
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder. The wondering draws these things. Algorithms put them right in front of us, and what happens is "I wonder" can become "I wander." If we feed wondering, we end up wandering, and the wandering is never good based on this kind of wondering. We've got to keep that clear.
[Julie] (18:52 - 18:53) Imagination is strong.
[Rick] (18:54 - 19:03) Yes, so the first thing is that internal instruction: Stop looking! Now Jesus goes further.
Matthew 5:30, the next verse:
[Julie] (19:03 - 19:40) "And, if thy right hand doth cause thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast from thee, for it is good to thee that one of thy members may perish, and not thy whole body be cast to Gehenna." Again, this is a metaphor. This is not actual mutilation, but again, remember it's the right hand, generally the dominant hand.
We're not just putting it behind our backs or putting a big mitten on it, we are cutting off the ability for it to cause us a problem. Remember how lust conceives when we let a desire grow. Don't feed it, don't revisit it, don't consider it, don't imagine it, don't give it any space to develop.
It snowballs down that hill too fast.
[Rick] (19:40 - 20:08) He's talking about your right hand. This is the second piece, the external. First was, stop looking!
Stop the internal. Now don't do it. If what you're doing is bringing you unrighteousness, stop doing it now and cut off the ability to do that.
Your spiritual life depends on it. Jesus breaks it down with very dramatic language. Gouging out eyes, cutting off hand--metaphorically stop looking and stop doing.
[Julie] (20:08 - 20:19) That's right. Here with your actions...I'm going to give you a few "maybe it's times." Maybe it's time for your spouse to set up parental controls on your TV, phone and computer.
[Rick] (20:19 - 20:30) That's interesting. Maybe it's parental controls. I've actually had to suggest that in certain circumstances with those who are struggling and it's a very valuable tool.
[Julie] (20:31 - 20:49) Maybe it's time to install accountability software that sends your browsing history to someone you trust. That exists. That's helped a lot of people.
Maybe it's time to block certain sites entirely even if you think you can handle them. Some good advice. Let me ask you, Rick, a sensitive question.
[Rick] (20:50 - 20:50) Okay.
[Julie] (20:50 - 20:57) In your role as minister, you counsel many people who are often in an emotional or a vulnerable state.
[Rick] (20:57 - 20:57) Yes.
[Julie] (20:58 - 21:06) Attraction can surprise even the most faithful person, if we're being honest.
How do you protect your heart and your ministry from that danger?
[Rick] (21:06 - 22:40) That's a really good question and that is something I will tell you right from the start that you need to be painstaking about every tiny detail. There are several rules in place. First of all, Trish, my wife, knows everybody that I'm talking to.
Those who I'm talking to also know that she knows I'm talking to them. Whatever the sensitive situation is, there's the sense of she knows the general sense of what's going on. Everybody knows that before we embark.
It's really, really an important aspect of our being faithful to one another in this opportunity to help others. There's that transparency with her. She doesn't know all the details, but she knows of a conversation and I make sure that those that I speak with know that ahead of time.
The other thing is being "Brother Rick." Not just "Rick," but being "Brother Rick" in whatever the circumstances because this is a formal, let's spiritually examine a challenge. It never gets down to having fun and joking around.
That doesn't happen because there's too easy a turn that can happen and we just don't want to go there. There's never inappropriate comments. There's never innuendo.
There's never things to be misrepresented. Julie, for me, this is a scary thing and we are very, very, very open with one another. Right after I finish a conversation, I'll usually tell Trish, here's the general gist of what I was talking to so-and-so about because we share everything.
[Julie] (22:40 - 22:42) She must feel very cherished with that.
[Rick] (22:42 - 22:43) I hope so because she is!
[Julie] (22:44 - 22:51) I noticed right before we go on air, I notice something that you do. You take your phone and she comes in the room and you hand her the phone.
[Rick] (22:51 - 22:51) Yep.
[Julie] (22:52 - 23:02) I have one more "maybe it's time." Maybe it's time each spouse has passwords to each other's phones and computers for, again, more transparency and accountability. She has your phone.
She can do whatever she wants with it.
[Rick] (23:03 - 23:42) Yep, yep. She knows my password. She knows my email address, passwords.
Matter of fact, sometimes she sends emails from my email. I don't care. I don't care.
Nothing to hide. Because the two have been joined, we have been glued together, and the two are one. That's the way it is and that makes life free.
There's no second-guessing. It's free. It's such an important thing for us to focus on.
Let's go a little bit further. Let's go to spiritual adultery in the New Testament. Now, James helps us remember that spiritual adultery is also a significant challenge for believers, not just the Jewish nation in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament.
Listen to these Scriptures. James 4:4:
[Julie] (23:43 - 24:09) "You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." That Greek word for "hostility" here is a deep, active opposition.
Let me say this in a different way. Aligning ourselves with the world's values puts us in an adversarial position against God. That's how serious spiritual adultery is.
[Rick] (24:09 - 25:03) Think of Satan-- adversarial condition. That's why he's called the Adversary.
You're joining with him, essentially, okay? Seeking to fulfill sinful desires while being God's child violates our covenant with God, just like you said. Any kind of adultery committed by a Christian, be it spiritual or physical or in our heart or our mind, reveals our choice to open our hearts and minds to sin, giving the sin an open invitation to flourish.
Whenever we do that, we better start to think, because that's where things break down. We want to touch on four basic points to help keep this in order. Three of them are internal, and the last one is external, because Jesus made this an internal and external Commandment for us.
Internally, we may love righteousness, but we truly don't hate iniquity. Psalm 45:7:
[Julie] (25:03 - 25:11) "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy above your fellows."
[Rick] (25:12 - 25:43) Because you love righteousness and hate iniquity, you are raised up to a higher level. if we are in this place, this liminal state of being able to go one way or the other, we have not hated iniquity nearly enough. We have to hate it.
That's an internal thing. Nobody else can see that. That happens inside your heart.
The next internal point; we may hear and appreciate God's word, but we're not fully committed to living it. You hear it, but you're not fully committed to living it. James 1:22:
[Julie] (25:44 - 25:50) "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves."
[Rick] (25:50 - 26:21) Be a doer of what you hear. It's not enough to just go to church and nod and smile and feel good. We have to live it.
Be "doers of the word." Again, we have to decide that what we hear is going to be fully committed to in our lives. The next internal piece is, we may love God, but we haven't permitted our devotion to undo our earthly desires.
This is big. 1 John 2:15-16:
[Julie] (26:21 - 27:08) "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world."
How do you maintain a secret relationship while still genuinely loving your spouse? How can you be a Christian who deeply loves God, yet still participates in contradictory thoughts and actions that He hates? In modern psychology, this is called compartmentalization.
It's putting conflicting parts of your life into separate mental boxes so that they never touch, and it's a way to avoid those feelings of conflict altogether. It's a really scary place to be in for a Christian.
[Rick] (27:09 - 27:47) We can't afford to do that. We have to permit our devotion to God to undo, to dismantle our earthly desires so we can put them away. That's the key here.
We've got these points to look at and say, where am I going potentially wrong on the inside so I can identify where I won't be going wrong on the outside? We've got to work very hard on that. Let's go a little further.
The Apostle Paul taught us about the sin of physical adultery within the context of spirituality, and this is taking all the pieces and putting them together in a slightly different way. Colossians 3:5:
[Julie] (27:48 - 28:26) "Therefore put to death your earthward inclinations—fornication, impurity, sensual passion, unholy desire, and all greed, for that is a form of idolatry." Paul ends this list by calling these desires "idolatry" because they replace God with something else. Adultery and idolatry have the same root problem: misdirected loyalty. We see that same pattern in human relationships. It surprises me, again, how often these two words are found in the same place. If you go back to our episode on idolatry in this Ten Commandments series, it's a really important place to start.
[Rick] (28:27 - 29:04) Idolatry and adultery--they work based on the same things. It's a misdirected loyalty. That's what ends up happening, and in all cases it ends up with misery and difficulty.
We need to understand and put that where it belongs in this external, permitting our knowledge of God to transform us. We may know what's right, but is our knowledge of God actually transforming us into something different? Now, let's go further.
The Apostle Paul taught about the sin of physical adultery in the context of our spirituality. 1 Corinthians 6:15-16:
[Julie] (29:05 - 29:25) "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be!
Or do you not know that one who joins (and that's another word meaning "to glue") himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For he says, THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH."
[Rick] (29:26 - 30:40) We've got this sense of the spirituality, being members of the body of Christ, and corrupting that as well, as potentially our marriage relationship as well. When you glue yourself to a prostitute in such an action, what you've done is you've unglued yourself from your original covenant. I will tell you, as a cabinet maker, if you have done the construction well, to un-glue a joint is to destroy it.
There is no way you can pull the pieces apart. You break them. That's what happens.
You're going to take the brokenness and glue it to something else. It is just a horrific ending place for us to be. This powerful reminder of the original model of marriage fidelity is being written to those whose backgrounds were deeply pagan.
They needed to understand, because many of the Christians that Paul is writing to had no sense of the Jewish Law. They needed to be brought up to speed, so he gives them very blunt, straightforward admonition. They needed to see the clear line of fidelity that God had drawn, both on a physical level and on a spiritual level.
Going a little further in the next verse, the Apostle Paul is following Jesus' example as he raises the standard even higher. Let's go to 1 Corinthians 6:17-18 (first part):
[Julie] (30:41 - 30:47) "But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality..."
[Rick] (30:47 - 31:15) Very, very, very straightforward. The one who joins--glues--glues himself spiritually to the Lord "is one spirit with Him." Therefore, run away from anything that's immoral.
Sensuality-based thinking needs this kind of blunt and unmistakable reminder regarding what is and is not acceptable Christian behavior. That's what it needs. My body is the dwelling place of God's spirit.
That's what I need to be saying. It is sacred!
[Julie] (31:16 - 31:25) Whether it's literal adultery or spiritual adultery, maybe it's time to bring someone into your struggle so that you're not fighting alone.
[Rick] (31:25 - 32:54) Maybe that someone needs to be an individual who has their feet solidly on spiritual ground--scriptural ground--that can really not be afraid to help you walk away from such things. Let's put this all together: Avoiding Every Form of Adultery AT ALL COST: For Christians, "you shall not commit adultery" obviously means having complete fidelity to our spouses, both internally in the heart and externally in what we do.
Even more important is the higher necessity of regarding our internal and external fidelity toward our God, toward our Father in heaven. If we should ever slip, if we should ever fall short, get confused, or be tempted, let's always, always remember that the pathway back to fidelity is always through true repentance, through humility, and a renewed determination to follow Jesus in every experience and everywhere we go. Maybe it's time we put things in order and decide that no matter what happens, no matter what comes our way, I am walking behind Jesus.
If I walk behind him and I see only him, I will not see all of the other things and I can be protected! Think about it. Folks, coming up in our next episode Part VII of our Ten Commandments Series: "Do We Ever Steal Without Realizing It?"
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