Consider the Source of Adultery: The Sixth Commandment
Type of Event: Worship Service: Sermon only
Date Recorded: October 22, 2006
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Topics: Regeneration / Spiritual Growth
"'You shall not commit adultery.'" (Exodus 20:14)
To not commit adultery seems to be one of the commandments that our culture has the most trouble supporting. As a nation, we wouldn't tolerate the sacrifice of animals to Baal in the name of religious freedom. Many states use even the threat of death to deter murders. But we've seen a President of the United States admit to committing adultery and be punished, not for the adultery, but for lying about it. Even if a state does technically have laws against adultery (as Pennsylvania does), no state today could expect a guilty verdict to be upheld. Since 1965, the U. S. Supreme Court has been concluding that consenting adults have a right to privacy in sexual intimacy, making adultery very difficult to punish or deter with civil means.
This is not to say that such laws would be useful or necessary (though perhaps they would). The message we are hearing is that marriage is not valued as it should be. By 1970, every state had no-fault divorce laws, making it easier to get a divorce than get married in some states. Unlike almost every ancient or primitive culture, we no longer consider marriage to be sacred.
But this did not happen in a vacuum. The dishonoring of marriage is not the cause, but is the effect of a much deeper and more terrible problem: the denial of any absolute set of values. We could translate that as the denial of the authority of the Word as the source of instructions for right living. Our post-modern culture tells us that what is "right" for you may not be "right" for me and both are equally "right". But we know that cannot be true. Even in cultures where the Old and New Testament did not exist, there was a set of standards that were considered to be sacred and applied to everyone equally. Sadly, much of the spiritual history of the human race is the story of repeatedly falling away from those standards. In Genesis, Joseph seemed fairly alone in his conviction that lying with his master's wife was wrong, even if they didn't get caught. In the prophets, Israel and Judah are regularly called "harlots" and "adulterers" because of their inability to remain true to the Lord and his laws. In the New Testament, the Pharisees were condemned because of their hypocrisy and their twisting of the laws of Moses to suit their own desire for power and wealth.
This is all spiritual adultery, and it is the source of natural adultery. Denying the holiness of the Word, treating it like any other book and taking from it only the parts that agree with your desires is the essence of spiritual adultery. Natural marriage gets its holiness from its correspondence with the marriage of good and truth, which is heaven itself. Trying to join good to falsity twists that good into evil and destroys the heavenly marriage. Not treating the good and truth of the Word and of religion as heavenly leads only to hell.
Celestial adultery, then, is the denial of the Divinity of the Lord. If you do not believe that the Lord is God, then the things He teaches in the Word are not sacred and become subject to re-interpretation. And if there is no longer any objective truth with which to restrain and reform your life, you are left only with the desires the hells give to you. Belief in the Divinity of the Lord is to behave as if the Lord is God. It means nothing to believe in something if you don't act as if it is living your life in accordance with those truths. Not living this way is to commit adultery in your soul, in your mind, and eventually in your life.
To see that this is true, read Genesis 39:5-10, Revelation 17:1-6, Arcana Caelestia 8904:1-2, listen to the full audio sermon, and then try living your life as if it is true.
This is the sixth Rise Above It sermon on the Ten Commandments. It is archived at http://www.PittsburghNewChurch.org/
Paused:
| # | Title | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Consider the Source of Adultery (Amos Glenn) - Exodus 20:14 (Oct 22, 2006) | 17m 26s | download |
Lessons and text
Gen. 39:5-10; Rev. 17:1-6; AC 8904:1-2; Exo. 20:14.
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