“You shall not commit adultery.” – Exodus 20:14
Q: What is the seventh commandment?
A: You shall not commit adultery.
What does this mean?
Because we worship and love God, we should lead an innocent and good life in words and actions, and we should love and honor our spouse.
Do you have a fireplace in your home? If not, perhaps you have seen one. It’s a safe place for a family to gather around and be warmed by the heat and enjoy being together. The boundary of the fireplace brings freedom to enjoy the fire.
What would happen if you started a fire in the middle of your kitchen? You could burn the whole house down. Why is a fire good in the fireplace and not good in the middle of the kitchen?
It’s because the fireplace provides the proper boundary for the fire to flourish. The middle of the kitchen doesn’t have the proper boundary of brick walls, a chimney for the smoke, and glass doors to protect from sparks.
Sex is kind of like fire in the fireplace. Sex is really good. God created sex. He loves it because he thought it up. But he also loves the proper boundary that he created for sex and that is marriage between one man and one woman for life. If you try and take sex out of the proper boundary of marriage you run the risk of having to deal with a whole lot of destruction.
The boundary brings much freedom to enjoy sex but without that boundary there is only destruction and enslavement. This is why God says in the 7th commandment to not deviate from his proper boundary. He loves us too much to enable us to make a mess of our lives.
Read Genesis 2:21-25:
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
- How do we see God’s boundary in this text?
- Who is the author of the marriage of Adam and Eve?
- Did Adam delight in his wife? Why do you think that was?
- How do we know that God approved of their nakedness together?
Prayer
Our Father, sexual sin is all around us, outside and inside the church. You have promised to give your Holy Spirit to those who trust and follow you. May you fill us with your Holy Spirit such that we desire nothing more than a sexual purity that pleases you. We thank you that you have given us the beautiful marriage boundary for sex. In Jesus’ name, Amen.