Our Extreme Home Makeover is moving right along, but there is one thing we have not yet mentioned and that is – building codes. As you know, before you can occupy a home, it has to meet standard building codes. Building codes are developed by people who are actively involved in the construction industry. Their purpose is, "To provide minimum standards for the protection of life, limb, property and environment and for the safety and welfare of the consumer, general public and the owners and occupants of residential buildings regulated by such codes."
God has certain building codes that we must follow if we want our homes to be as strong as our houses. Today, we are going to deal with one of the greatest dangers to the structure and stability of both marriage and family. It is the danger of sexual immorality.
An English teacher was giving a grammar lesson one day and she said to one of her students, "Sam, what is it when I say, one quote, ‘I love you, comma, you love me, comma, he loves me, question mark?'" Sam said, "That is one of those triangles where somebody gets shot!"
Some people do get shot in those kinds of situations, but the danger is even greater. Jesus had some tough words to say on this subject, far tougher than you will hear from most preachers today and most churches. I want to say at the outset this message is going to create tension for some of you, anger in a few of you, bitterness and rejection in others.
The subject of marriage and sexual purity is so important we simply cannot pass over it, even though it will create tension. If this message helps to prevent one affair, one divorce, one broken heart or one shattered family, it will be well worth the time we spend today.
There is nothing more devastating to a marriage than sexual immorality. There is nothing more damaging to the teenage psyche than sexual immorality. There is nothing more destructive to the home than sexual immorality. If you want your marriage, your home and your family to be all that God wants them to be, you need to meet these three building codes.
I. Code 1: Get The Truth
"You have heard that it was said, 'You Shall Not Commit Adultery.'" (Matthew 5:27, NASB)
The word "adultery" technically refers to having sexual relations with a person who is not your spouse. In actuality, it is a word that forbids all kinds of sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman.
In I Corinthians 6, Paul lists practically every type of sexual immorality you can imagine when he says..."Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites...will inherit the kingdom of God. (I Corinthians 6:9, NKJV) The scripture is unequivocal. Any sex outside of marriage, for whatever the reason, is wrong.
I have to take this opportunity to deal with the problem that in some ways has become even greater than adultery, which I define as any married person having sex with anyone outside of his or her marriage. Even though it is a form of adultery and it is the problem of what is now known as "co-habitation." It is what our grandparents used to call "living in sin." It has reached epidemic proportions.
In 1960, a half million couples were living outside of marriage. In 2000, there was an 11-fold increase to 5.5 million couples. During the 1990's alone the number of cohabiting households increased by more than 70%. About 40% of all children born outside of marriage are born to cohabiting couples.
Half of all adults under the age of 30 will live with someone before they get married; 60% of first time married couples now acknowledge living together before they get married and the same thing is true of 66% of re-marriages.
One of the main reasons couples give for doing this is because they believe it is a great preparation for marriage. If you are one of these couples, let me warn you of what the evidence really says. Those who live with a partner before marriage are 46% more likely to divorce if they get married than those who did not. [[1]] In fact, the news is even worse. Cohabitation does not help to preserve relationships, it helps to destroy them. Only one 1 out of 6 couples who cohabit stay together at least 3 years and only 1 out of 10 lasts 5 years or more. [[2]]
Let me just say a word to high schoolers here. High school is frequently the stage of life when people forfeit their sexual purity. If students realize two important facts about teenage relationships, they not might be so casual about sex. Only 1 out of 1,000 high school relationships will end up in marriage. The average person will fall in love 7 times before they get married. If you were to have sex with each person that you said you were in love with, on average, your spouse would be the 7th person with whom you would share life's most intimate experience. [[3]]
Something very little talked about is the tremendous negative impact cohabitation has on children. By the age of 10, nearly 63% of children of cohabitation will experience the breakup of their household compared to about 14% of children whose parents are married. [[4]]
What does all this mean? Simply that God knew what He was doing when He gave the 7th commandment about adultery. It also means the best thing the church can do for a couple that is dating and the first message we need to give dating couples is – if you want a good marriage, avoid pre-marital sexual relations. The National Survey of Family Growth found that women who were not virgins when they got married, have a 71% higher divorce rate than those who were. Saying "no" to premarital sex and adultery means saying "yes" to a stronger marriage.
Dealing with the matter of adultery itself or extra marital sex, let me just say a word to all you men and women out there. The grass on the other side of the fence may start off green, but it usually ends up brown. 80% of all men who have had an affair end up staying with or returning to their wives and of those who do divorce their wives, only 10% married the woman with whom they had the affair. [[5]]
Keep one other thing in mind. Of the 10% of men who actually do marry the person with whom they have an affair, 70% of them get another divorce. Simple math tells you the chances of staying married to the person for whom you leave your spouse are about 3 in 100. No wonder God said, "You shall not commit adultery."
I want to give you right now some danger signals, some warning signs, that you are vulnerable to committing adultery:
When there is a lack of intimacy in your marriage.
When you experience grief or depression.
When there is a long period of separation.
When you spend a lot of time alone with a person of the opposite sex.
When you are successful.
II. Code II: Guard Your Heart
Jesus went deeper than just prohibiting adultery. He went to the center of the problem which is the heart. He says, "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:28, NASB)
The Bible calls the soul of our being, our innermost thoughts, the heart. The Bible talks of all kinds of hearts – a pure heart, a contrite heart, a deceitful heart, and a proud heart. The heart is where the core of the problem of adultery begins. That is why Jesus did something no one else had ever done concerning adultery – He goes to the heart of the problem, because the problem with adultery is in the heart. In other words, Jesus said long before adultery takes place in the bed, it has already been visualized in the head.
That is one of the ways you can assure a lasting, loving marriage and assure that you stay out of sexual immorality is to guard your heart. Maintain pure thoughts. Don't give Satan a foot-hold in fantasy.
The word for "look" in verse 28 is in the present tense. It is talking about a continuous look, not a glance, but a gaze. Jesus said the problem with lust is not the sight of a beautiful woman or a good looking man, but the stare.
There is a difference between a look and a lustful look. C. S. Lewis once said, "If you look upon ham and eggs and lust, you have already committed breakfast in your heart!" His point was simple. There is a difference between looking and looking with lust.
Lust is looking at a person for the purpose of deliberately stimulating desire. It is not just appreciating someone's beauty. John Maxwell describes lust as, "Any thought, that if you actually carried it out, would be a sin."
Incidentally, if I could say this to the women, it is one thing to make yourself attractive. It is another thing to make yourself deliberately seductive. There is nothing wrong with a woman looking "hot" in her physical beauty, but there is something wrong with her dressing in such a way that she tries to make herself look even hotter, in a lurid, seductive type way.
I want to emphasize again, it is not wrong for a man to notice a beautiful woman, nor is it wrong for a woman to notice a good looking man. What we cannot do is look at another woman in a way that would diminish our commitment to our wife or to look at a man in such a way that would diminish our commitment to our husband.
There is nothing in modern day society today that more incites the danger of lusting and corrupting the heart than pornography? Lust is big time business in America today.
- Over $10 billion dollars is spent on porn annually.
- The revenue of pornography is larger than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball combined.
- There are over 2 million known porn site URL's on the internet.
- More than 2, 500 new sites are coming online every week.
- 9 out of 10 children ages between 8 and 16 have viewed pornography on the internet.
- 25 million Americans visit cyber-sex sites between 1-10 hours per week.
- Another 4.7 million visit cyber-sex sites in excess of 11 hours per week. [[6]]
That is why I want you to write down 3 websites to go to that will help you conquer the problem of internet pornography. One is the website that I use. It is called Max.com. It is a great internet filter that will not only weed out pornography, but will automatically keep you accountable to someone else.
Whether it is your computer, your DVD player or even the way you interact with members of the opposite sex, I want you to remember this. Mistake number one with adultery comes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time usually with the wrong person. I can make that negative into a positive. You cannot make a wrong move if you are not in the wrong place with the wrong person at the wrong time. You cannot get hooked on cocaine if you never use it. You cannot become an alcoholic if you never drink it. You cannot commit sexual sin if you do not allow yourself to get into the wrong situation.
What goes for the parents goes for the kids. Psychologist Henry Brandt tells the story of his son getting upset with him when he would not permit him to go out alone in a car with a girl down to the lake after dark. The son said, "What's wrong dad? Don't you trust me?"
Dr. Brandt said, "In a car – alone at night – in front of a lake – with a beautiful girl?" He said, "I wouldn't trust me. Why should I trust you?" [[7]] Above all else, guard your heart.
III. Code 3: Grow Your Love
"If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell." (Matthew 5:29-30, NASB) Obviously, Jesus did not mean this literally. If He did, we would all be blind and we would all be crippled.
In Jewish culture, the right eye represented the person's best eye and the right hand represented the person's strongest hand. What Jesus was saying was, "You give up anything you have to, to protect your heart, your body, your soul, your purity, and if you are married, your marriage.
The word for "sin" in verse 29 is a word that was used to describe a bait stick that would spring a trap whenever an animal would touch it. The idea is that anything that would morally trap you or cause you to fall into sexual sin should be eliminated from your life.
To put it another way, if you have ever had a garden, you know the one thing that is necessary for your garden to grow is you must keep the garden weeded, because weeds can kill any plant. There are certain kinds of weeds that can kill love and can kill marriages and can kill purity – weeds of flirtation, weeds of fantasizing, weeds of neglect, or weeds of indifference.
I encourage you to hear these next four words. Don't buy the lie. You say, "What lie?" Here are a few of them. Everybody is doing it. That simply isn't true. A September 1990 study from the Public Health Service of the Department of Health and Human Services showed that nearly 65% of all American females under the age of 18 are still virgins. Even the age 15-19, nearly 50% of the girls had never had sex. [[8]]
Here is lie number two. I can handle it. The lie here is that if you can't see the harm in doing something, it must not be harmful. If you think about it, that simply isn't true. Next lie – One time won't hurt. Only a person who believes that there are no consequences, for sins that are committed only once, would believe that. It only takes one time to get venereal disease. It only takes one time to get someone pregnant. It only takes one time to lose your purity forever.
Here is the last line. Nobody will know. There are always at least two who will know. You will know and God will know. Furthermore, that implies that what God says is right and wrong, is only right and wrong, if someone else is watching, but we also know that is not true.
The final lie is - But we love each other. The only thing wrong with that is – you can never use love to justify sin. Love is the polar opposite of sin. Don't ever mistake love for lust.
If you are here today and you are living together out of wedlock or you are in the middle of an affair, or you have had an affair, or you are thinking about having an affair, let me give you some good news, because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, not only can any past sin be forgiven, but any present sin can be overcome. You can stop living together. You can get out of that affair. You can be forgiven.
For those of you who have never gone down any of those roads, I hope your testimony could be that of the 2nd President of the United States, who said this about all the girls he dated before he got married. "This I will say [of the girls I went with] they were all modest and virtuous girls and always maintained that character through life. No virgin or matron ever had cause to blush at the sight of me, or to regret her acquaintance with me. No father, brother, son, or friend ever had cause of grief or resentment for any intercourse between me and any daughter, sister, mother or any other relation of the female sex. My children may be assured that no illegitimate brother or sister exists or ever existed." [[9]] What a great testimony. May that be your testimony through life, because that will meet God's Standard Building Codes.
[1] "A Bad Start?", Newsweek, January, 1999.
[2] William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, p.77.
[3] "Why Purity Matters", Joe White, Focus On The Family, 3/26/2001.
[4] "Divorce:Can We Do Better?", Denyse O'Leary, Faith Today, Nov-Dec. 1998, (Vol. 16), #6, pp. 20-27.
[5] "In Other Words", May-June, 1994.
[6] MSNBC/Stanford/Duquesen Study, Washington Times, 1/26/00.
[7] Elizabeth Elliott, Passion and Purity, (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1983), p.147.
[8] Michael Medved, Hollywood Vs. America, New York: Harper Publishers, Inc., 1992, pp. 116-117.
[9] David McCullough, John Adams, p. 36.