The toughest challenge: Number 7

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303

By JOHN HATCHER
Contributing Writer

Joke: Moses comes down from the mountain to make an announcement to the Hebrew children; Moses says, “I have gotten God to reduce the number of commandments from ten to six, but the bad news is that ‘You shall not commit adultery’ is still one of them.”

I hope that joke gets perhaps a little chuckle from you for every time I have told it previously, it has bombed. I like it, however. Perhaps even God permits himself a chuckle over something that has been one of his creation’s toughest challenges: purity.

You can remember the seventh commandment as the one dealing with adultery because seven is the number of completion and perfection. Adultery is just the opposite. Literally, adultery is the pollution of something you have with something that does not belong.

Exodus 20:14 is the Biblical address of the adultery prohibition. But I hear many brothers and sisters say, “I am a New Testament Christian,” perhaps suggesting that to live under the New Covenant enunciated by the New Testament disallows the laws of the Old Covenant.

Not. Never. Won’t happen. Hasn’t happened. Jesus said, “No, no.” What husband do you know who would dare defend his adultery by saying, “I am a New Testament Christian.” In fact, Jesus took the Old Testament commandments, sharpened them up a bit, and expected his followers to live by a higher standard than the Old Covenant.

When first promulgated as law, the Seventh Commandment was intent on protecting the property rights of the husband. When a man was married, no man was allowed to come and take his wife. The law provided security for a man when it came to his wife. A man could not personally supervise his wife 24/7, so there had to be some sort of law protecting his wife when he was not around. Adultery in the Old Testament had more of a liking to stealing than to committing immorality.

When he came preaching, Jesus broke the Seventh Commandment down for the brothers, however. Jesus said (according to The Message Bible’s paraphrase), “You know the next commandment pretty well, too. ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you have preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices — they also corrupt. Let’s not pretend this is easier than it really is. If you want to live a morally pure life, here’s what you have to do: You have to blind your right eye the moment you catch it in a lustful leer. You have to choose to live one-eyed or else be dumped on a moral trash pile.”

Jesus took the matter of the Seventh Commandment from one of property rights to a matter of spiritual and moral propriety. Jesus, fully a man as any, knew that adultery did not begin with unzipping one’s pants, but with unbridling one’s mind. So much has happened before flesh touches flesh. Reality has been rehearsed in the mind many times before the act is committed.

Jesus bids his followers to live beyond the power of lust. He fully accepted the understanding that men and women could find one another attractive on a fleshly level and at a moment’s notice. He knew that men were made by God with a lust actuated merely by looking. He knew that God made women to be responsive to the caring ways of a man. That’s the way his Father made us. Without the strong drive to have sex, the human race would dwindle away. So, sex is God’s idea. Sex is good and beautiful. The Bible clearly spells out that God has given us sex not only for procreation, but also for enjoyment and intimacy.

Yet, everything that God made good can become Godless. The fulfillment of the Seventh Commandment would return moral purity to married couples, and between our children with other children. The Seventh Commandment goes to the back of the bus and calls for purity among children who have a hard time spelling the word adultery. It reaches to the White House and to our humble homes that are now accessed by Hollywood, Times Square, and every pocket of filth on earth. Never before has there been a time when moral filth can get so easily into our homes.

Sexual perversion has often been given birth at the boob tube. Pornography invites men to treat women as sexual objects and toys, demeaning the value of God’s gift that erases loneliness from our separate lives. No longer is it a matter of dirty magazines. Moral perversion has been educated, dressed up, and can be delivered by advanced electronics of telephone wire or satellite.

Don’t mean to be so negative: but we must begin to stand up and tell the devil and his demons, “No more. We ain’t going to take it no more.” But if we step up with that kind of conviction, we must be willing to teach about sex and morality in our homes and churches. Too long we churches have shied away from even saying the word “sex” much less naming the body parts. But, we must.

Sex is from God. Sex is good and beautiful. Yet, if we wait for the world and every toilet stall to educate our children, they will have a different view and be at immorality’s tyranny.

God expects purity from his people. But it won’t come without our work.