Thus Sayeth The Lord - Be Faithful

In this message from guest speaker Nicholas Lewis out of Exodus 20:14, we see that God’s command against adultery reveals far more than a rule to avoid - it reveals the very heart of His faithfulness. As we confront our own unfaithfulness, we’re invited to delight not in the law itself, but in the God whose perfect loyalty and love are fulfilled in Christ. 

Transcript

like being back here and being on campus, I've just really learned in the last couple of years, even more so how valuable it is that we can be on a secular campus and represent the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And tonight to be able to be here and express and talk about God's word, and specifically even the Ten Commandments. And so I'm just excited to be here with you all. I am excited to dive into this topic. Yes, it's crazy. It sounds about adultery, kind of heavy, right? Just a little bit. But if you have your Bibles, we are going to be eating 20 of Exodus, chapter 20, verse 14. Exodus 20, verse 14. Just one verse, not super long. So don't worry, not going to be the whole chapter over again. But God commands that we should not commit adultery. And I kind of want to focus a little bit. One of the things that I really hope for you guys tonight, and I really want to get across that we would grow to delight and know who God is and cherish and obey His laws more closely. That's really something that I hope tonight that in something as difficult as a topic as this, that you walk away with a greater understanding of what this command means and who commands it and that you find energy and motivation to fulfill that in your own life. And so when I think about the commandments, the 10 words, the deck of law, the 10 commandments here in Exodus, always kind of go and think about what David says about the law of the Lord. And Psalm chapter 1, "Leave it to verse 2," he says, "I delight in the law of the Lord." And I can tell you, for the longest time, growing up in a Christian home and reading that, I always add the question, what on earth is he thinking? Who delights in a law? How does David delight in the law of the Lord? What exactly does that mean to delight in something? When you think about the 10 commandments here, it's really hard for us sometimes to be like, yeah, Exodus 2014, you shall not commit adultery, I delight in that. I delight in that role. And we especially live in a culture where any sort of limitations, any sort of restrictions, any sort of regulations or stipulations is not really cool, right? We don't like authority. And especially when it comes to sexual morality, we struggle to accept these limitations or these restrictions. And dare say culturally today, we would call it, or I've heard it very often, oppressive. It's oppressive. It's not what, God's just trying to keep me from something good. And so when I go to David and he says, I delight in the law of the Lord, it just seems kind of strange. I mean, how many of you guys delight in law? Anybody here really delight in that? When you are in the CCH and that housing contract comes across, you're just like, I delight. I delight in the rules of this ministry. When you get that code of conduct or your, you know, Reslife, R.A.s tell you what the rules are. You're like, I delight in that law. I love it. It's my favorite thing ever. Nobody ever says that. It's the strangest thing in the world. I used to work, I had a short-standing engineering firm where I was in charge of compliance and regulation, okay? You engineers, you're gonna have to put up with some of these people when you go into these companies. And they are the sticklers, okay? And one of the things that I always had to go into in research whenever there was a new R&D project or whenever we had to find out, you know, whether we can do this legally, I had to look at what is called the Code of Federal Regulations. If you've never read it or looked it up online, you should do so. It is one of the most soul-sucking experiences you will ever have. I would sit for hours and the owner of the company would be like, can we do this? And I'd be pouring over the CFR 45.18.75.35. And my mind would just be mush. And so when I hear David say I'd delight in the law of the Lord, I'm just like, you're crazy, man. I don't know what you're talking about. You guys likewise, when it comes to your professors and the syllabus and the rubrics that you guys face in your classes, right? Are those fun? Not always, right? And one of the things I wanna point out about that, specifically, and some of you guys who are freshmen now entering into S&T, you've kind of started to figure out that S&T's not high school, which is shocking, right? And there's all these stipulations that come with your professors. Like, you know, in high school, it's kind of like, I just gotta pass this test, right? But with your professors and specific schools, they have certain expectations. When they lay out the syllabus of the rubric, it's about meeting their preferences. And they have these sort of ideas of what attendance is, right? And every professor's got a different idea of what attendance means, or what completion means, or what it means to actually complete your homework, or how to actually do the right method that they want you to do, or maybe some of them don't care at all, right? And so every time you enter a class, there's these rules that come with your class, and those expectations are set by your professors, or by your teachers. And what I wanna get across here is that that's because those rules of them reveal what they value, right? Your physics professor's gonna have a different idea of what your class is gonna look like, and what your homework looks like, compared to your differential equations professor, right? Or you business majors might not have any expectations, but, you know, so, sorry, I gotta rag any guys. I gotta guy a friend who's a business major and I make fun of them all the time. But the idea is, each of these classes, they have a rubric and a syllabus, and those rules reveal what they value, what they find in their class to be most important. And my master class is I gotta, a pastoral counselor is a professor. You know what he cared about mostly? That my heart was right. That I understood the material when I was talking about, you know, the Bible and everything. And then I had a military chaplain guy as a professor. You know what he cared about? Formatting. It didn't matter what the content was. He's like, your two spaces off in your citation, right? You know, it's just frustrating. But anyhow, the point is, is that these professors have different rules, and those rules reveal what they value. And that's why I wanna get across tonight when we look at this command. It's not just a negative imperative of what not to do. It's also, as Ray Orton who's a pastor would say, he calls it a revelation of who God is. The command is a revelation of who God is. Because God's rules, God's law, reveals what He values, and what He values is who He is. And so when we go to this specific command, I want us to understand what is this command revealing to us? And that's the first point for tonight. I think you guys even have it in your YouVersion notes. Number one, this command reveals God's faithfulness. This command reveals God's faithfulness. You can go through each of the commands, and you can actually see each of God's attributes shining through each of them. That shall not murder. I think you say I'm covered it last week. It means God values life. He is a God of life. When he says, "Thou shalt not lie," he is a God of truth. When he says, "Thou shalt not covet," he's a God of contentment, a God who doesn't lack. And when it comes to adultery, Thou shalt not commit adultery. He is a God of faithfulness. And that's what I really wanna emphasize tonight. Because oftentimes when we come to the rules and the laws of these things, we focus on what you shouldn't do. Don't do this. Don't do that. The negative imperative, right? But there is a lot more being said in that command than just what not to do. In fact, it can be argued that not only is it not what you ought not to do, but it's also what you should do that's also revealed in tandem. For instance, when I say, "The sky is blue," okay? That's a positive statement. Do you also know I'm saying a thousand other negative statements? I'm saying the sky is not purple. The sky is not black. And it's the same thing when God says, "Don't commit adultery." He's also saying, "Be faithful." And that's really important. That's really, really critical when it comes into some of the application we'll get here in a minute. But this faithfulness is kind of actually seen all throughout the commandments. In fact, it makes sense because in the first four commands that you guys have covered, it's all about being loyal and faithful to God alone. And why? Because God was faithful to Israel. He brought them out of slavery out of Egypt. And that's kind of where he sets the baseline for the whole commandments. I, the Lord your God, brought you out of Egypt. Thus, the right response would be to be faithful back to him. Don't worship any other gods, right? He alone is the one that we're loyal to. If he rests, we rest like we follow after him. So this command means not only should this faithfulness be practiced vertically, okay? But horizontally. Meaning it ought to apply to our relationships and specifically this one talks about sexual morality, specifically defending, protecting, safeguarding the covenant of marriage. One woman, one man, together, one, inseparable, and keeping that covenant faithfulness. In fact, it's interesting if you go through the Old Testament, what's the major motif or metaphor that's used to describe God in Israel? Marriage, marriage. In fact, you see it in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. You definitely see it in the Prophet of Isaiah, right? And what it describes is Israel. Whenever they don't follow after God, it's like someone committing adultery. It's being unfaithful. Which means that marriage is meant to highlight sexual faithfulness, sexual morality is meant to highlight the faithfulness of God to his people. So we're not just talking about the rules. We'll get into some of that in a minute, but what we're focusing on is the why behind the command, the why. Any of you guys ever had a parent tell you to go do something, right, take up the trash, do this, do that, don't do this. And what's every kid's question, come on, why? My kid's wake up at 6 a.m., every morning. That's right, I've never woken up before 8 o'clock for the last, I don't know how many years. The wake up at 6 a.m., and my daughter, she's four years old, her name's Amelia, she's the sweetest thing ever. The man's 6 a.m., she's like, we're gonna watch cartoons right now. I'm like, no, we're not gonna be watching cartoons. Why? Why, right? Why are you doing this? And what is the parent response? Because I said so, exactly, because I said so. And I think the thing is, when we look at God's command, to be really honest, I don't think God just says because I said so, He does in a way, but He's also telling us why, and it's because that's what He values. It's because that's who He is. Morality is derived from who God is. And so, when we look at this command, and we think about how to apply it, it's super, super important that we understand the principle underneath all of this. 'Cause some of us, and we're gonna get into an element here, are gonna try to wiggle out of these commands. We're gonna wanna try to create some ambiguity, but when we look at the principle, and Jesus does this, we're not gonna get into that 'cause you guys have that for next spring, but when Jesus gets into it, He gets to the principle, and what that means, and its faithfulness at the bottom of it. Sexual immorality is unholy because it's unlike God. Sexual immorality affects your relationship with God because human sexuality in the confines of marriage is one of the sacred analogies God uses to describe His covenantal relationship to His people. Marriage, sexuality, it's not just about you. It's not really about what it says about you, it's about what it says about God, and that's why we follow these commands, because we want to picture and make sure that we defend and safeguard who God was to us. Sexual immorality disparages that image of His faithfulness, while marriage faithfulness illustrates that for the world to see. So it's important to recognize the purpose of marriage, and also the purpose of this law. And I really just want to get across because some of us have always known the tink commandments as instructions, things to do, things not to do. But what I really want to get across is there's more there, it's a revelation of the God you serve, and He is a faithful God. Now, point number two, it doesn't just reveal God's faithfulness, it also reveals our unfaithfulness. You see, when you know who God is, and you see how He's been faithful, and you compare that to what you're doing, we don't measure up. And that's what you see in the Old Testament with Israel, as people who are unfaithful to God. And when they get this law, it's unequivocally stated, look, you have fallen short of God's standards. You're not like God. So it's not just I did wrong, that's one part of it. It's more than that, it's I'm not like God. That's what the laws meant to reveal. So when it comes to this issue of faithfulness, we need to ask ourselves and looking to God and who He is and what He's done, are we really faithfully portraying that? Not just in not committing adultery specifically, but also in the principle itself. And knowing who God is, we discover who we are, sinful and unfaithful. Now, the wrong way to read this law is for you to ignore the principle and kind of try to clear yourself, because you state to yourself, I just break the specific rule. For instance, I knew one of the things going into this is, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Okay, how many of you are married? Anyone, you? Okay, so if you're not married, then I guess it doesn't apply to you, right? Right? I mean, 'cause you can only commit adultery if like you're in a married relationship, right? You see, but that's where we're missing the principle of the law, but yet, and you think that's a silly one, but we'll get into a couple other ones of how we justify that we miss, that we make the mark. And I think the idea what Paul tells us is that the law isn't to look at and say, "Man, I got five out of 10, where I got eight out of 10, "and maybe I'm not doing so good in these other ones, "but I did really good in these ones." My spiritual 10 Commandments GPA is 10.0, right? That's not the purpose of it. The purpose isn't to come up to it and be like, "I'm doing a good job," right? Now, the point is to show us, to thoroughly, in a sense, do a biopsy on us, that shows what's really there. And when it comes to this issue of adultery, this one is where things can get a little uncomfortable at times, because some of us don't want to know what's really deep down. We don't want the bad news. I work as a healthcare chaplain full time, and I work with patients all the time and we have to wait on test results, scans, biopsies. And there is an anxiety in knowing what's gonna happen, what's it gonna show? And I think the same thing happens when we sit under the scalpel of God's word, we're super worried about what it's going to reveal. And what we tend to do is try to soften the blow of these commands, maybe create an ambiguity here. The reason adultery, though, is specified here, is because it is the most negative and heightened example of infidelity, but it would be wrong to conclude that anything less than that is permissible. You'd be missing the point. God will be telling you if you is staying here audibly to you, you don't miss it, okay? That's not what I intended. The point is the principle of faithfulness. Adultery is the tragic end of a story beginning with lust. Just as murder is the tragic end of a story beginning with hate. And Jesus captures this very wellness firm in the mountain. He says, "If you lust with your eyes, you've committed adultery." Because those things that led to that heightened form of unfaithfulness began with lust. So if we live by the principle, and we seek to abide by God's character of faithfulness, then the question isn't what is and is not specifically adultery, but what acts are actually faithful versus not faithful to God's design in order. As one commentator describes that this is a representative of the principle of this command, but it's not exhaustive. And if you don't believe me, you can write down these two passages. We're not going to read through them all. But Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 30, Leviticus 18, 1 through 30, lays out very clearly through this command, that incest, beastiality, homosexuality, adultery, pre-marital sex, every form of sexual morality you can imagine is considered sin. Not just adultery between two spouses. And that goes back to, "Do we really accept what is being revealed here?" And so I would commend to you guys to make sure that you are willing to allow this law to search out your heart. But I think what happens is, when we look at these restrictions and these limitations, we struggle to see the beauty and the meaning behind the law. And so what we do is we create what I call gray morality, super morality. Well, this isn't really what the law means, or maybe, now I think I'm doing okay, like, I don't think I broke this commandment specifically. I don't think I've violated this. And so we tend to split hairs on the actions and behaviors we have. And specifically with sexual morality, this can be something we often do. And the problem is that we're not interested in what God intended to say. It's more so that we're more interested in what we would like it to say. Dietrich Bonhoff who is a famous pastor, he writes, "People are torn away from the clear commandment and from simple childlike obedience by what he calls ethical doubt. By asserting that the commandment still needs interpretation and explanation." Did God say, "People are made to decide by the power of their own knowledge of good and evil, by the power of their conscience to know what is good?" In other words, the commandment is ambiguous. God intends for people to interpret it and decide about it freely. And he says, "The answer to this predicament is simple obedience, the commandment itself that calls you to be faithful, to uphold God's character." So, how does this look like introducing this ethical doubt? Let's think about this. I'm going to be real with you guys, okay? We're going to apply this. Is pornography really a sin? Like, when is something I'm watching qualify as pornography or not? How much needs to be showing? Is it a video? Is it a picture? We start to split hairs. We tell ourselves, "No, I think this is okay." We try to introduce this super morality. I'm single, so I can't commit adultery, because adultery must mean I'm in a committed relationship. So, sure, I may be sexually moral in these areas, but I'm not that. I'm not like that bad. Is it adultery if me and my significant other are committed to each other, even if we're not married? I mean, what does it matter if we sleep together? Surely this doesn't include us, right? This command. It's again, splitting the hairs. I'm only looking, I'm not even flirting. I'm not even fantasizing. I'm just glancing at the other person on social media here in a public setting. What does it matter? I'm not doing anything. I have a good emotional connection with one of those of the opposite sex. It doesn't threaten my relationship with my significant other. It doesn't mean anything. It's okay for me to have an emotionally intimate connection as long as it's not physically intimate, right? That's what the command means. Or we might even start justifying certain acts. Why didn't technically lose my virginity? Yeah, now we're like, "Oh, it's not really in." That was really hard. I bring these up because when we do come across God's law, it is confrontational. It is confrontational. We come against it, and we see who God is. And here's the reality, spoiler alert. All of us fail. All of us have failed in some degree. You can talk to your ministers. You can talk to people who are further along this journey if they come to you and they say, "No, bypass with flying colors when we went through the Ten Commandments." They know what they're talking about. You can talk to any of them. They can tell you, "No, when I come up against the law of God, I'm not faithful." So the question I need to pose to you then, when we look at these commands, and the question we have to ask is, do you think that whatever you're doing right now, and you know what it is, right? We all know it. You know it in your heart, what you're struggling with. Let me ask you, do you feel like that's really what God intended when he wrote Exodus 2014? The answer to that is that really what you're doing, is that what you really think he meant for you to do. And is what you're doing, upholding the faithfulness that God was to you. You see, you don't have to be married in order to safeguard. There's everybody's call to safeguard the order and design of marriage as it stands. It is a good, it's a beautiful thing. It's meant to be mutually exclusive. It's not that sexuality is bad, but it's dangerous if it's outside the wrong context. And the question is, are we trying to be faithful to that? And as single people, you guys have the opportunity to safeguard that just as much as the married person. I'm making sure that what you're doing isn't violating that command. So I wanna encourage in reading the law, I know this is kind of intense. Stick with me. Third part's pretty good. But you can't enjoy the third part without understanding the bad news. This is bad news, bad. So whatever you're struggling with, whatever you've felt in, it's okay to simply come to God and say, I have felt and I acknowledge that to you today. I don't meet the qualifications. And I'm not gonna try to defend myself. I'm not gonna try to create this ambiguity. Lord, I have felt in this regard. And it's so important. I've done this not just in preaching, but in counseling as well. In pastoral counseling, I've done this. Unless we put it on the table and accept our failures, we will never be positioned to accept grace that is offered to us. Dane Ortlund, he's a pastor and writer, writes, "Failures are precisely the kind of people God is looking for. For failures instinctively understand how to open the windows of their heart to let in help." Those you think they have made a success of their lives invariably turn in on themselves and self-satisfied reliance. Then he says this, "Penitent hookers, repentant hookers, enter heaven ahead of smug virgins." I love that saying. We cannot accept the grace of God unless we first accept where we have failed and where we need that grace. And that includes the sexual morality that we might have found ourselves in. Which means this command does another thing. Okay, so I brought us to this really dark point where it's like, and he just kind of shattering me, like what the heck, I hope this guy never comes back here. The law of God is a mirror by which we see our filth, but it is not the fountain by which we wash ourselves. It reveals who we are. But you can't fulfill it, you're not, I mean, how do we get out of this cycle continuously? Not only does the law reveal where we failed, but think of it this way. Now we know what perfection looks like. Now we know what true faithfulness is meant to look like. Meaning, if there was theoretically a perfect being out there that walked around, we would have a way to verify that. We can have a way to verify if someone is actually truly like God, not me and you, right? So in some ways, in acknowledging where we have failed and who we are, we also acknowledging who God is and what it looks like to be like God truly. And what's the Sunday school answer? Who is that? Jesus, there you go, Sunday school answer. Boom, there. So I'm going to note here that the law of God not only reveals the depth of our spiritual unfaithfulness, but it sets us up to recognize and treasure the righteousness of Christ. And having the law, we see how much we fall short of the glory of God, but then in seeing Christ, we see how much He measured up to the glory of God. And here's the cool part. In the Old Testament, you have Israel and God in a marriage covenant relationship. And that motif, that metaphor was used to describe the unfaithfulness of Israel to God. But in the New Testament, it changes. Marriage now becomes a metaphor for Christ's faithfulness to the church. Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5 verses 22 through 23, and in case you think I'm pulling out of my hat, I'm not. Okay, I promise. I'll read the passage here. Ephesians 5, 22 through 23. Paul says the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also why I have to submit in everything to their husbands, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her. And then on where he goes, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast, loyal, faithful, never separating, always there for them, unconditional, hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And he says explicitly here, the mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. So when we pursue sexual morality, the goal is to highlight what Christ has done for us as the church. Do you benefit from Christ's faithfulness to you? Yes or no? Yes. And yet, how shocking that we don't want to reciprocate that to God or others. The very thing that we say is such a restrictive rule is something you and I have all benefited from. That's why it's so heinous. That's why this is a problem. But what I encourage you is how do you find the motivation and the energy to fulfill this? I've worked with many people before who struggle with sexual sin. Where do you find the energy and the motivation? And I tell him, look no further than the cross. He was faithful to you. It's because God kept his promises to Abraham and that he let him out his slavery and that they got this law. It's the fact that we're here today being able to talk about truth and talk about a God who is faithful. That's because he kept his promises all those years ago and was willing to lay down his life on the cross. The purpose of marriage and the purpose of sexuality is to reflect back the exclusive faithful and loyal sacrifice of Christ for his church. I've told a lot of men and premarital counseling. I've told them this, I said, look Paul is saying that your marriage is not about you guys. It's actually about revealing Christ in the church to the world around you. In other words, if you're unfaithful, which you're preaching, which you're actually saying, whether you realize it or not, is Christ is unfaithful to his church. And boy, in our culture today, that has been preached and preached and preached. A lot of you have experienced that brokenness. The brokenness of unfaithfulness and marriages. The brokenness maybe that you've brought on or someone brought against you. You know the pain of that. And but we can look to what is the perfect marriage of Christ in his church. But it doesn't mean marriage is a bad thing. Just because someone plays a cover of Beethoven really poorly doesn't mean that Beethoven sucks, right? There's some pretty bad covers out there. But it's the same thing. Just because people do marriage poorly doesn't mean that the idea of it and the meaning of it isn't your worth less valuable. Especially when you see that ultimately it points to Christ faithful to us. So the motivation and the power to live and obedience to this command comes from relational trusting God who is faithful in his covenant promises to you, faithful unto death. So sometimes I say the simple reality, the simple application, if you're struggling they fulfill this command. Maybe after we gone through tonight you've realized I actually have a lot more I need to deal with. And I would encourage you how are you gonna be inspired and motivated and energized to live that out? You need to go back and ask how have I benefited from Christ's faithfulness to me? How has he kept his promises to me? And then look for a vision in which in your singleness, in your marriage, you have the opportunity by what you do with your bodies. You have the opportunity either to defame and profane or take the name of God and vane with what you do physically or you have the opportunity to showcase how faithful and loyal he is to us. And I am begging you, the world needs to see that. 'Cause I know it was a hard word tonight, okay? I don't think anyone should walk away and be like, oh, I'm not convicted. I'm think a lot of us are convicted at the end of tonight. But what I wanna express to you is you don't have to stay there because Christ did die for you. Live that out in every way possible. Rules sometimes aren't fun, but you know it's by rules that we even have beauty and goodness in the first place. It's really hard to write a beautiful piece of music with that musical theory and restrictions, right? On how to actually produce and write music. They're certain things you had to abide by. You guys sing in a different key, each of you. It sounds pretty bad, right? Yeah, gonna sound bad. When it comes to the innovation you guys will do in your jobs, it's because of the laws of physics and the restrictions of your methodology that enable you to create some of the most imaginative innovations possible. Rules and laws help produce actual freedom and actual beauty and goodness. And my prayer for you all tonight is that you might see that when it comes to sexual morality and the covenant, the order and the design of marriage. I wholeheartedly believe it is good because God is good and I know that because he lay down his life for you and for me. So seek to protect that faithfulness of marriage. I'll read this one last quote and then we'll close in prayer. Dane Orland or Gavin, Dane Orland. There's too many brothers, there's several writers. Dane Orland writes, progressive growth and holiness is energized not by graduating on from the gospel of God's free grace but by a deeper reflection on the very gospel that captured us in the first place. Let's pray. Heavenly gracious Father, I lift up all the students here today, Lord. God, I pray that through your word and through the clarity of your scriptures, God that we would come away with a delight in your law not because it's just a rule that you've chosen, but Lord, because it reveals your heart to your people and to your church. God, as you have been faithful to us, I pray, Lord, that that would capture the young men and women's hearts here tonight, that they would see how they benefited from your faithfulness to your promises all those years. And Lord, God, that would inspire them to pursue faithfulness in their sexual morality, Lord, in their relationships and in their marriages. God, I pray this in your holy name. Jesus' name, amen.