Adultery: Saying No And Knowing Why!
Sermon
Stephen M. Crotts
Verse By Verse Through The Sermon On The Mount
Object:
You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery."
-- Matthew 5:27
Cheating has become America's national pastime. Statistically, 65% of men have affairs by age forty. For women, it's 35%.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quotes Exodus 20:14, "You shall not commit adultery." Why? What's so wrong with sexual adventuring: Why must we live within single or wedded boundaries? Clearly, Jesus wants us to say, "No" to adultery and know why.
Talking with a pastor who had demitted the ministry due to sexual misconduct, he confided, "I never thought it could happen to me. But it did. For fifteen minutes of rolling in the sheets I sacrificed everything precious in my life -- wife, children, reputation, ministry, even my health."
Another friend confided in me after adultery, "Stephen, it just happened! It just happened!" I said, "No, it didn't just happen. You let it happen!" In every affair there is a choice, steps taken, roadblocks crashed, and red lights run. For a very poignant look at the process that leads to an affair, read 2 Samuel 6-12. There the anatomy of David and Bathsheba's affair is laid bare before one's eyes.
In walking through this epic story of wrong, I want to make my points with all "E's" The point is, an affair is easy.
Estrangement
The first step is estrangement. David and his wife, Michal, are on the outs. He is excited about bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem. He danced for joy, but Michal belittled him. "My, how the king has lowered himself before the people today, dancing half naked like an ape!" From that day on, Michal and David barely spoke.
Most marriages that fail do so not from a blow out but from a slow leak. We get into marriage with such high expectations. We're in love, choosing to act in one another's best interests. "Forsaking all others I will keep myself only unto you so long as we both shall live." Early marriage is exciting, and we pursue it with verve!
Then there is a fight, some disappointment, and resentment settles in. A slow leak.
As a poet has written, "'Twas not love's going hurt my days, but that it went in little ways." The snap is gone. Sex becomes routine. She can't remember a tender time. He can't recall her support. So they quit trying together.
Two single men were talking. One remarked, "If I ever get married, I want a wife who is an economist in the kitchen, a lady in the living room, and a bobcat in the bedroom." He did marry several years later, and his friend asked him if he got what he had wanted in a woman. "Yes, but garbled," he replied. "My wife is a lady in the kitchen, a bobcat in the living room, and an economist in the bedroom."
Syracuse University has spent considerable time researching marriage. Of the ten most important things couples say they want in a marriage, sex is ninth. Caring, a sense of humor, and communication are tops.
Among men, the top five things they want in a wife are:
1. Respect -- "She makes me feel capable." "She is proud of me!" "She is willing to follow my lead."
2. Domestic support -- a home that is a refuge from the stress of the world; a home that's fun, pleasant, and tasteful.
3. Companionship -- as in walks and talks, entering one another's world.
4. Sexual fulfillment -- "She responds to me. She studies what is mutually pleasing, gets good at it, makes time for me, and takes sex seriously."
5. Attractiveness -- clean, does her hair, cares how she looks, stays in the best shape she can.
Naturally, all of these values are constantly coming in and out of focus; but a good wife is always monitoring, adjusting, caring, and trying. She keeps her marriage fresh.
If these are what a man wants of a wife in marriage, what does a woman want of a husband?
1. Affection. According to Genesis 1-2, the first thing God didn't make out of dirt was a woman. Ephesians 5 explains that wives are made to be "cherished." This means romance, a steady stream of hugs, pats, compliments, kisses, and courtesies. At an airport, I saw a woman wearing a button that read, "This is my husband's idea of jewelry." Contrast that with William Jennings Bryan's hair over his ears. When asked why he wore it so since it was unfashionable, he said, "When I was courting my wife, she thought my ears stuck out funny and asked me to grow my hair long to cover them, so I did." To which his pal replied, "But that was years ago!" "Sure," Bryan said, "but the romance is still going on!"
2. Conversation on a "feeling" and emotional level.
3. Honesty and openness, not sullenness -- "A person who won't close the door on me."
4. Financial support.
5. Family commitment -- not a Dagwood Bumstead who passively sleeps and eats, but an active man who puts time and energy into the marriage, the children, the family.
On my wedding day, Joseph Paul Aiken, my grandfather, said to me, "Stephen, if you treat your wife like a queen, you'll get to be the king." He was paraphrasing the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Such does not come naturally. We have to work at it, strive to keep the marriage pumped up.
This is why happily married couples read, study, talk, and ask, "How am I doing?" They listen, acquire role models, and keep marriage among their top priorities. Without such action, the marriage develops a slow leak, until, like David and Michal, an ice age sets in, and they make the perfect couple -- he's a pill and she's a headache!
Encounter
David and Michal were estranged. Next in the anatomy of an affair comes the encounter.
King David is middle-aged. He's lost a step on the battlefield, so he stays home while the whole army marches to war. Having slept late, he broodily walks his patio, and from there spies his neighbor's wife, Bathsheba, immodestly bathing in her rooftop garden.
Don Wharton, a friend of mine who is a songwriter and performer, told me other musicians constantly tell stories about how women throw themselves at them. Don said it never happens to him. He first thought he must be ugly or unsexy or something like that. Then he realized how in every one of his concerts he mentions his wife, how much in love they are, and sings some love song about her, Don realized how he is sending out signals to other women. "I'm spoken for." "No chance with me!" "I've got what I want!" His love for his wife simply jams other women's radar.
Some experts believe man has a hormonal lack only his wife can provide with respect. And similarly, woman has a hormonal lack only her husband can provide with cherishing. If the spouse does not provide it, a hunger sets in. And according to 1 Corinthians 7:5, Satan will try to provide it with an affair. This is what you have in the text. David is estranged from Michal, while Bathsheba's husband is absent, away at war. Both have pent up anger, sending out signals of their lonely dissatisfaction, and they encounter one another.
Empathy
Next on the list comes empathy. Look at the action verbs in 2 Samuel 11:1-5. David saw. David sent. David inquired.
It used to be that women were quite sheltered. They never went out in public without a chaperone and only then with their hair up and veiled. Now, with women joining the work force, dressing to show off their figures, and their hair down, encounters are much easier.
Two starved people meet, sparks fly in their looks, in a whiff of perfume, in a chance touch. In and of itself, these things are not bad. But if the sparks land in dry lives, then a flame is quickly kindled.
What we are talking about is a bonding or a meeting of needs between two people never meant to relate on such a level. It may be a hand on the shoulder or words like, "Sometimes I don't want to go home" or "You have a nice figure." He volleys in her court. She responds. The two begin to flirt and to look for opportunities to be around each other at the desk, on the phone, or at the water cooler. Feelings sent. Feelings received. The hook is set. He makes her feel cherished. She makes him feel respected.
Enjoyment
David "saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful." The Bible says he enjoyed it and wanted more. So, "he sent messengers."
This is the adventurism, the flirtation, the infatuation of an illicit romance. The deceptive sweetness of forbidden fruit. Like a moth drawn to a flame, we fly closer. "I'll just carry her bags up to the hotel room. That's all." "I'll just stay ten minutes and leave. I can handle it."
We now begin to live in a fantasy world. We wonder how it might be. We undress them in our minds. Our thoughts are ripe with the pleasure of them.
Expedition
Romans 13:14 warns, "Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." This is a roadblock we crash quite brazenly. It began with estrangement, encounter, empathy, enjoyment, and now, expedition. David actually sent for Bathsheba and she came to his palace. It was like granting Satan an easement across his property.
We decide to go to a weekend business conference. She is there, too. We arrange to stay in the same hotel. Go out to dinner together and share a couple of drinks.
Or we decide to ask her to work late at the office.
"I'll just drive her home."
Bolder and bolder we become. "You have nice shoulders."
"Why, thank you. I sure could use a back rub."
Expression
The next step is expression. The text says, "So David ... took her ... and he lay with her." They stepped over the line. Thoughts became action. Fantasy turned into sex.
Now the two adulterers become obsessed, totally addicted, so that they often lose all sense of judgment. Nothing else matters but to be together -- not spouse, not children, not church, not reputation. She swills in the cherished feelings. He is inebriated with her respect.
In a nearby town, a certain banker was having an affair with his secretary. At lunch he would go out to her car backed against the shrubs and stealthily climb into the trunk and close the lid. She would come out ten minutes later and drive the Cadillac out to a secluded woods where he would pop the trunk, climb out, and join her for an amorous time. Well, as fate would have it, she was low on gas one day, stopped at a filling station, and he, thinking they were at their rendezvous, popped the trunk lid and climbed out, to an audience of laughing customers and attendants. What fools adultery makes of us!
It's easy. Estrangement, encounter, empathy, enjoyment, expedition, and then expression, then suddenly, you're a fool!
Adultery is not purely a sexual sin. It is at the root the inability to deal with normal feelings of romance toward someone who was never meant to meet those needs. The problem is not between two people, but in two people. They will not nurture a relationship so that it lasts.
Effects
An affair is not over with the sexual experience. There is one step further: the effects. Second Samuel 12:7-14 explains how Bathsheba became pregnant, how David murdered her husband, Uriah, and lived a cover-up for a good year. "I can get away with it," David thought. "Nobody will have to know." Ah, but God knew! And he judged.
David and Bathsheba's child died, and Nathan, the prophet, said to David, "Because you have utterly spurned the Lord, the sword shall not depart from out of your house."
David's daughter, Tamar, was raped. His son, Amnon, was murdered. His boy, Absalom, rebelled and was slain. His next-in-line-for-the-throne, Adonijah, was killed. Solomon wed over 1,000 wives and they turned his heart away from the Lord. My, my! What an awful legacy of immorality David thrust upon his children.
A man utterly broken from the effects of adultery once moaned to me, "If I knew how far down it would take me, how long it would hold me, and how deeply it would hurt me, I would never have done it." Adultery is like a rat nibbling the cheese in a trap. The food is great but the service is terrible. Just how terrible adultery can be is eloquently described in the following quote, written by the husband of an unfaithful wife.
One reason it feels so good to be married is the sense of being chosen. Out of all the people in the world, she chose me. Me to touch. Me to express intimacy. Me to share life's deepest sighs and groans. When I'm with her, I keep thinking what a gift she is. I keep telling myself, "No one else gets to see this, to feel this. This relationship is exclusively ours." I feel confidence because I can please her, satisfy her. And when I wake up in the morning, she's still in my arms. She brushes her hair back and smiles at me and soothes, "I love you." And I know all is right with the world.
After she had the affair, I felt de-chosen. My entire confidence was shaken. Could I not please her? How could she take what was exclusively ours and give it to another? The thought of her in another's embrace, another man seeing her, holding her, inside her, left me so hurt, so confused, so suspicious, so angry, so emotionally eviscerated I wanted to die. But I wasn't even sure death could remove the pain. I still torture myself, asking, "Where did I go wrong? How did I fail her? Why was I not enough?"
Shakespeare's Othello called being victimized by adultery "cuckolded." I call it the great betrayal. It's like taking two who've become one and making them a diluted three. Like walking with a rock in your shoe, adultery leaves a sharp object in your marriage bed, in your memory, in your loins.
Now when I hold my wife, I'm tormented by the thought she's comparing me with another lover. What used to be a mutual embrace of exclusive intimacy is now so much less.
Conclusion
A poll of 250 ministers who admitted having affairs discovered they only had one thing in common. They all thought, "It can't happen to me."
I once met Billy Graham. It happened to be during the televangelist sex scandals. He was asked, "Mr. Graham, thank you for all your years of purity in ministry. How is it you have managed to stay scandal free?" To which Mr. Graham replied, "It's because I constantly run scared."
That's not bad advice for you and for me. Never say, "Never!" An affair is all too easy, and it begins when we allow our own marriages to grow stale.
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should you spill your springs of water in the streets? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth, a loving doe, a graceful deer -- may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love. Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife? For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of the wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.
-- Proverbs 5:15-23 (NIV)
Suggested Prayer
Lord, keep me true! For Christ's sake. Amen.
-- Matthew 5:27
Cheating has become America's national pastime. Statistically, 65% of men have affairs by age forty. For women, it's 35%.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus quotes Exodus 20:14, "You shall not commit adultery." Why? What's so wrong with sexual adventuring: Why must we live within single or wedded boundaries? Clearly, Jesus wants us to say, "No" to adultery and know why.
Talking with a pastor who had demitted the ministry due to sexual misconduct, he confided, "I never thought it could happen to me. But it did. For fifteen minutes of rolling in the sheets I sacrificed everything precious in my life -- wife, children, reputation, ministry, even my health."
Another friend confided in me after adultery, "Stephen, it just happened! It just happened!" I said, "No, it didn't just happen. You let it happen!" In every affair there is a choice, steps taken, roadblocks crashed, and red lights run. For a very poignant look at the process that leads to an affair, read 2 Samuel 6-12. There the anatomy of David and Bathsheba's affair is laid bare before one's eyes.
In walking through this epic story of wrong, I want to make my points with all "E's" The point is, an affair is easy.
Estrangement
The first step is estrangement. David and his wife, Michal, are on the outs. He is excited about bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem. He danced for joy, but Michal belittled him. "My, how the king has lowered himself before the people today, dancing half naked like an ape!" From that day on, Michal and David barely spoke.
Most marriages that fail do so not from a blow out but from a slow leak. We get into marriage with such high expectations. We're in love, choosing to act in one another's best interests. "Forsaking all others I will keep myself only unto you so long as we both shall live." Early marriage is exciting, and we pursue it with verve!
Then there is a fight, some disappointment, and resentment settles in. A slow leak.
As a poet has written, "'Twas not love's going hurt my days, but that it went in little ways." The snap is gone. Sex becomes routine. She can't remember a tender time. He can't recall her support. So they quit trying together.
Two single men were talking. One remarked, "If I ever get married, I want a wife who is an economist in the kitchen, a lady in the living room, and a bobcat in the bedroom." He did marry several years later, and his friend asked him if he got what he had wanted in a woman. "Yes, but garbled," he replied. "My wife is a lady in the kitchen, a bobcat in the living room, and an economist in the bedroom."
Syracuse University has spent considerable time researching marriage. Of the ten most important things couples say they want in a marriage, sex is ninth. Caring, a sense of humor, and communication are tops.
Among men, the top five things they want in a wife are:
1. Respect -- "She makes me feel capable." "She is proud of me!" "She is willing to follow my lead."
2. Domestic support -- a home that is a refuge from the stress of the world; a home that's fun, pleasant, and tasteful.
3. Companionship -- as in walks and talks, entering one another's world.
4. Sexual fulfillment -- "She responds to me. She studies what is mutually pleasing, gets good at it, makes time for me, and takes sex seriously."
5. Attractiveness -- clean, does her hair, cares how she looks, stays in the best shape she can.
Naturally, all of these values are constantly coming in and out of focus; but a good wife is always monitoring, adjusting, caring, and trying. She keeps her marriage fresh.
If these are what a man wants of a wife in marriage, what does a woman want of a husband?
1. Affection. According to Genesis 1-2, the first thing God didn't make out of dirt was a woman. Ephesians 5 explains that wives are made to be "cherished." This means romance, a steady stream of hugs, pats, compliments, kisses, and courtesies. At an airport, I saw a woman wearing a button that read, "This is my husband's idea of jewelry." Contrast that with William Jennings Bryan's hair over his ears. When asked why he wore it so since it was unfashionable, he said, "When I was courting my wife, she thought my ears stuck out funny and asked me to grow my hair long to cover them, so I did." To which his pal replied, "But that was years ago!" "Sure," Bryan said, "but the romance is still going on!"
2. Conversation on a "feeling" and emotional level.
3. Honesty and openness, not sullenness -- "A person who won't close the door on me."
4. Financial support.
5. Family commitment -- not a Dagwood Bumstead who passively sleeps and eats, but an active man who puts time and energy into the marriage, the children, the family.
On my wedding day, Joseph Paul Aiken, my grandfather, said to me, "Stephen, if you treat your wife like a queen, you'll get to be the king." He was paraphrasing the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Such does not come naturally. We have to work at it, strive to keep the marriage pumped up.
This is why happily married couples read, study, talk, and ask, "How am I doing?" They listen, acquire role models, and keep marriage among their top priorities. Without such action, the marriage develops a slow leak, until, like David and Michal, an ice age sets in, and they make the perfect couple -- he's a pill and she's a headache!
Encounter
David and Michal were estranged. Next in the anatomy of an affair comes the encounter.
King David is middle-aged. He's lost a step on the battlefield, so he stays home while the whole army marches to war. Having slept late, he broodily walks his patio, and from there spies his neighbor's wife, Bathsheba, immodestly bathing in her rooftop garden.
Don Wharton, a friend of mine who is a songwriter and performer, told me other musicians constantly tell stories about how women throw themselves at them. Don said it never happens to him. He first thought he must be ugly or unsexy or something like that. Then he realized how in every one of his concerts he mentions his wife, how much in love they are, and sings some love song about her, Don realized how he is sending out signals to other women. "I'm spoken for." "No chance with me!" "I've got what I want!" His love for his wife simply jams other women's radar.
Some experts believe man has a hormonal lack only his wife can provide with respect. And similarly, woman has a hormonal lack only her husband can provide with cherishing. If the spouse does not provide it, a hunger sets in. And according to 1 Corinthians 7:5, Satan will try to provide it with an affair. This is what you have in the text. David is estranged from Michal, while Bathsheba's husband is absent, away at war. Both have pent up anger, sending out signals of their lonely dissatisfaction, and they encounter one another.
Empathy
Next on the list comes empathy. Look at the action verbs in 2 Samuel 11:1-5. David saw. David sent. David inquired.
It used to be that women were quite sheltered. They never went out in public without a chaperone and only then with their hair up and veiled. Now, with women joining the work force, dressing to show off their figures, and their hair down, encounters are much easier.
Two starved people meet, sparks fly in their looks, in a whiff of perfume, in a chance touch. In and of itself, these things are not bad. But if the sparks land in dry lives, then a flame is quickly kindled.
What we are talking about is a bonding or a meeting of needs between two people never meant to relate on such a level. It may be a hand on the shoulder or words like, "Sometimes I don't want to go home" or "You have a nice figure." He volleys in her court. She responds. The two begin to flirt and to look for opportunities to be around each other at the desk, on the phone, or at the water cooler. Feelings sent. Feelings received. The hook is set. He makes her feel cherished. She makes him feel respected.
Enjoyment
David "saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful." The Bible says he enjoyed it and wanted more. So, "he sent messengers."
This is the adventurism, the flirtation, the infatuation of an illicit romance. The deceptive sweetness of forbidden fruit. Like a moth drawn to a flame, we fly closer. "I'll just carry her bags up to the hotel room. That's all." "I'll just stay ten minutes and leave. I can handle it."
We now begin to live in a fantasy world. We wonder how it might be. We undress them in our minds. Our thoughts are ripe with the pleasure of them.
Expedition
Romans 13:14 warns, "Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." This is a roadblock we crash quite brazenly. It began with estrangement, encounter, empathy, enjoyment, and now, expedition. David actually sent for Bathsheba and she came to his palace. It was like granting Satan an easement across his property.
We decide to go to a weekend business conference. She is there, too. We arrange to stay in the same hotel. Go out to dinner together and share a couple of drinks.
Or we decide to ask her to work late at the office.
"I'll just drive her home."
Bolder and bolder we become. "You have nice shoulders."
"Why, thank you. I sure could use a back rub."
Expression
The next step is expression. The text says, "So David ... took her ... and he lay with her." They stepped over the line. Thoughts became action. Fantasy turned into sex.
Now the two adulterers become obsessed, totally addicted, so that they often lose all sense of judgment. Nothing else matters but to be together -- not spouse, not children, not church, not reputation. She swills in the cherished feelings. He is inebriated with her respect.
In a nearby town, a certain banker was having an affair with his secretary. At lunch he would go out to her car backed against the shrubs and stealthily climb into the trunk and close the lid. She would come out ten minutes later and drive the Cadillac out to a secluded woods where he would pop the trunk, climb out, and join her for an amorous time. Well, as fate would have it, she was low on gas one day, stopped at a filling station, and he, thinking they were at their rendezvous, popped the trunk lid and climbed out, to an audience of laughing customers and attendants. What fools adultery makes of us!
It's easy. Estrangement, encounter, empathy, enjoyment, expedition, and then expression, then suddenly, you're a fool!
Adultery is not purely a sexual sin. It is at the root the inability to deal with normal feelings of romance toward someone who was never meant to meet those needs. The problem is not between two people, but in two people. They will not nurture a relationship so that it lasts.
Effects
An affair is not over with the sexual experience. There is one step further: the effects. Second Samuel 12:7-14 explains how Bathsheba became pregnant, how David murdered her husband, Uriah, and lived a cover-up for a good year. "I can get away with it," David thought. "Nobody will have to know." Ah, but God knew! And he judged.
David and Bathsheba's child died, and Nathan, the prophet, said to David, "Because you have utterly spurned the Lord, the sword shall not depart from out of your house."
David's daughter, Tamar, was raped. His son, Amnon, was murdered. His boy, Absalom, rebelled and was slain. His next-in-line-for-the-throne, Adonijah, was killed. Solomon wed over 1,000 wives and they turned his heart away from the Lord. My, my! What an awful legacy of immorality David thrust upon his children.
A man utterly broken from the effects of adultery once moaned to me, "If I knew how far down it would take me, how long it would hold me, and how deeply it would hurt me, I would never have done it." Adultery is like a rat nibbling the cheese in a trap. The food is great but the service is terrible. Just how terrible adultery can be is eloquently described in the following quote, written by the husband of an unfaithful wife.
One reason it feels so good to be married is the sense of being chosen. Out of all the people in the world, she chose me. Me to touch. Me to express intimacy. Me to share life's deepest sighs and groans. When I'm with her, I keep thinking what a gift she is. I keep telling myself, "No one else gets to see this, to feel this. This relationship is exclusively ours." I feel confidence because I can please her, satisfy her. And when I wake up in the morning, she's still in my arms. She brushes her hair back and smiles at me and soothes, "I love you." And I know all is right with the world.
After she had the affair, I felt de-chosen. My entire confidence was shaken. Could I not please her? How could she take what was exclusively ours and give it to another? The thought of her in another's embrace, another man seeing her, holding her, inside her, left me so hurt, so confused, so suspicious, so angry, so emotionally eviscerated I wanted to die. But I wasn't even sure death could remove the pain. I still torture myself, asking, "Where did I go wrong? How did I fail her? Why was I not enough?"
Shakespeare's Othello called being victimized by adultery "cuckolded." I call it the great betrayal. It's like taking two who've become one and making them a diluted three. Like walking with a rock in your shoe, adultery leaves a sharp object in your marriage bed, in your memory, in your loins.
Now when I hold my wife, I'm tormented by the thought she's comparing me with another lover. What used to be a mutual embrace of exclusive intimacy is now so much less.
Conclusion
A poll of 250 ministers who admitted having affairs discovered they only had one thing in common. They all thought, "It can't happen to me."
I once met Billy Graham. It happened to be during the televangelist sex scandals. He was asked, "Mr. Graham, thank you for all your years of purity in ministry. How is it you have managed to stay scandal free?" To which Mr. Graham replied, "It's because I constantly run scared."
That's not bad advice for you and for me. Never say, "Never!" An affair is all too easy, and it begins when we allow our own marriages to grow stale.
Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should you spill your springs of water in the streets? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth, a loving doe, a graceful deer -- may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love. Why be captivated, my son, by an adulteress? Why embrace the bosom of another man's wife? For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths. The evil deeds of the wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast. He will die for lack of discipline, led astray by his own great folly.
-- Proverbs 5:15-23 (NIV)
Suggested Prayer
Lord, keep me true! For Christ's sake. Amen.
