“Betraying Marriage”

Rev. Dustin Largent

Exodus 20:14; Matthew 5:27-32; Mark 7:20-23; Deut. 24:1; Matthew 19:3-9; 1 Timothy 1:9-11

October 19, 2025

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What's biblical marriage? I gave you six words to help you understand it. The first one was complementary, that God in the beginning when He created Adam and Eve, made those that would be married complementary. And by complementary that in a sense has to do with two kinds of people that are able to, because they are different, able to make children.

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So, the first word was complementary, then there was children. And that they are able to consummate. Consummate is something that you do that produces children. I'm not sure if everybody knew that, but other things that people do are not really consummation.

Okay, so they're not married. But consummation is supposed to happen after covenant. Okay, so you have a covenant. And that covenant is not just between just you and your spouse or the person you're marrying, but it's also between you and God. So, I am committing to my wife and that vow I'm making is a vow that I'm not only making to her, but it's a vow I'm making to Him. And so, I've got a commitment that's made both ways, and till death do us part.

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So, it's really serious. And then we finish that off with the purpose of this, even when they were in the garden and God created marriage between a man and a woman. He had in mind that someday His son Jesus would come, and they would have a relationship between the church and Jesus, and that this union would be a picture of Christ as the husband and the wife as the church. And that just like we listen to Jesus, He leads us, He guides us, He protects us, He takes care of us, we listen to Him, we submit to Him. In that same way, that's the nature of the family structure that God provides in Scripture. Okay, now we now live in a fallen world, right? So, it doesn't always work that way, right?

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It doesn't always work that way. We'll find that God made some allowances because of sin, Moses did in particular. But the commandment here that we're going to deal with has to do with marriage, and this is the betraying of that picture of Christ in the church. So, if we go back, if we go back to the first two commandments, remember those commandments, God said there is only one God, right? You shall have no other gods before me, right? So, there's one God, okay?

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The same thing is true here as we start to talk about marriage. There is only one Christ and one church, okay? There's only one. What was the second commandment? Don't create any graven images that are going to depict me as God. Don't get a piece of wood and carve it and say, oh, that represents God because that's a really lousy representation of God that's going to lead people astray because that is scandalous compared to who God actually is. It's a horrible picture of God. Even if it's Michelangelo, it doesn't matter who it is.

If they make something that's picturing Jesus, picturing God, it is so low and incomparable to the actual thing, the actual God, that is an insult. And it leads people astray. We get to this commandment. God has given us the picture, the reality of Christ in the church. He's given us that picture of who Christ in the church is.

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And He says, don't commit adultery. In other words, don't create an image of Christ and the church that is not the true picture of Christ and the church. Don't create a false image.

Don't create a graven image. Don't get into a marriage which is supposed to picture Christ in the church and then not do it the way God said it is, because now you're painting a picture of Christ and the church that is false. You're painting a picture of Christ and the church. You are witnessing, you are testifying to the world as a believer that Christ is not faithful to His church. You are testifying that we don't need to submit to our God. You are testifying that you don't need to be faithful to God. You're testifying that when things get rough, you're going to leave.

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You're going to testify that when you see something better, you're going to rush the other way. Jesus doesn't do that. And so, this is a really serious commandment. And it's not just about the definition that we normally get. The normal definition that people give you for adultery is this. Sexual relations between a married person and someone that is not their spouse. Isn't that the way you always thought adultery was?

Right? I remember watching a Seinfeld episode because I sometimes will watch Seinfeld. You're like, oh, pastor, you're a sinner. But I watch a Seinfeld. Anybody watch Seinfeld? There's this Seinfeld episode where George, He says God bless you when somebody sneezes. Anybody remember that one? And so anyway, the woman then is married to her husband and ends up sleeping. She's married, ends up sleeping with George. And George is laying there in bed after He slept with us and He's in agony because He's like, I just committed adultery. And she looks at Him and she says, “You didn't commit adultery. I did”. Is that true? Did He commit adultery? Or did she only commit adultery? Or did they both commit adultery?

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Or is everybody committing adultery all the time? We've got to kind of figure this out and pass this through and hopefully we won't get too bogged down. So, this morning, what I'm really wanting to do is I want to show you that Jesus clarified the true nature of adultery because it was kind of confusing, right? I mean, it wasn't clarified clearly until Jesus showed up. And so, we're going to look at Jesus and say, what's He say? So, if you grab your Bible, should have one in the pew or you can look at the screen if you don't want to do any work at all. The Sermon on the Mount, that's Matthew chapter five.

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Here's what it says. And this is Jesus. He's on the Sermon on the Mount. So, there's all kinds of people there. There's just like, there's kids, there's people that are just curious about Jesus. There's religious leaders. They're all there. And it says in verse 27, it says, you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. They're like, okay, thank you. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in His heart. And then He doubles down. Listen to this.

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He gives you the serious. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. I think it's interesting. It doesn't say gouge it out and keep it. Right? That would have been kind of an interesting thing to say. Keep it. It says, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.

Throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to go into hell. His point is that this is a really serious thing. Just like the second commandment is very serious. Don't make graven images. This is very serious because it's representing who Christ in the church is. So Jesus clarifies this.

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And He says, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already. That's the word. That's the important word. They've already committed adultery. Like they haven't taken their clothes off. They haven't gone into some secret place. They just looked at them and said, and they've already committed adultery and they haven't even done anything. Like you don't even have to go up to a girl and say, how you doing? You could commit adultery before you haven't talked to her. Trust me, every guy in this room has. We're all a bunch of adulterers because we've all looked at a woman lustfully. And women, I'm not leaving you off the hook because I know how you ladies are. But it says anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery. And you say, well, where? Where did they commit adultery? Like, I don't remember seeing anybody commit adultery. Do it in a bedroom. Is it physically? No, it says in His heart. So adultery at the core is what is in you. And this is related to Mark 7. When Jesus is talking, He says this.

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He went on, He says, what comes out of a person is what defiles them. So you're not a sinner just because of the stuff you do. The stuff you're doing is the result of you being a sinner. Your actions, your committing adultery is the result of already having this sin within you that is causing you to do the act. And He's saying, go back to the beginning. It's what's in you that matters. And so it says, it is from within out of a person's heart that evil thoughts come. Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.

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So you can look really good on the outside, right? So there's religious leaders that are here at the Suriname Mount and they're like, we never committed adultery. We're righteous. Look at me, I stand at attention. I'm so righteous and I don't ever sin. And I never murdered nobody and so I'm righteous there. And they're clicking down the commandments and they're saying, I can get into heaven on my own merit.

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And Jesus says, dude, you guys don't know what you're talking about. You committed adultery before you ever did anything. You're adulterous in your heart. Actually, you're probably more so because you think that you're fine. You think you've done everything okay. So sin starts on the inside. We murder out of anger from the inside. We commit adultery before we commit the physical thing. So the religious leaders, though, they don't like being called adulterers. I don't know. As a general rule, I've found this. If you go up to a pastor or you go up to one of the elders and you say, you know what, you're an adulterer. They say, what?

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What you talking about, Willis? Don't say that about me. Don't say that. I'm not an adulterer. I'm not good. I'm a good guy. 'm a good cat. Don't be calling me an adulterer. And they don't want to believe that they are an adulterer. And so what they did back in the Old Testament, the religious leaders, this is what they did in the time of Jesus they did this. And this is fascinating. They tried to find a loophole. So here's what you do. If you're married, so you get up there till death do us part, you kiss the bride, now you're married.

And then like seven year itch comes and you're like, no, you know what, that one looks better than this one. I'm going to swap. So I'm going to find someone else. But I can't do that because if I do that, I would be committing adultery. Right? I can't be with her because I don't want to commit adultery because I'm stuck with this one. So what am I going to do? Well, they, the religious leaders said, well, you know, we found a loophole back in the book of Deuteronomy. We found a loophole to get us out of the marriage so that we can get out of it and then we can marry somebody else. And so we'll get divorced and then we can sleep with this woman over here and marry her and then we didn't commit adultery.

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Now I'm still righteous. So to get no way to get out of it. So here's the passage that they would use. They went to Deuteronomy 24 and I'm not going to read the whole passage. But to give you the gist of it, it says, if a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to Him, now Deuteronomy is written by Moses. Okay? So this is, this is wilderness activity. This is fantastic. He marries a woman who becomes displeasing to Him because He finds something indecent about her. And He writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from His house. Right? So that's the plan. Then He's able, then He's able to, He's able to marry again. It's all good, right? Well, there, like we have today, there were conservatives and there were liberals. Theologically there's conservatives and there's liberals.

And so, there was one group, the school of Shammai. Okay? And this is the way they interpret it because the question is, what does that mean indecent? If you find indecent in her, hmm, I go to my wife and I come home and you know, she's watching a show and I, oh, you're indecent. That's it. I'm going to marry her. What is indecent is indecent that I catch her with another man is indecent.

What is that? And so the school of Shammai said only serious sexual and moral activity justified divorce. So, so you find somebody that's caught in the act of adultery or you find somebody that is out in front of the public and they're being lewd or your wife participates in prostitution or something major that would give you the right to then give her a certificate of divorce. Now, He said, not dutton. Why would that be?

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Why would I be able to do that? What is the penalty for adultery in the Old Testament? Anybody know? It's death, right?

They would stone you to death. It didn't matter if you were the woman or the man. Both of them, it was the same thing. They both would get killed for adultery. How long is your marriage going to last? Till death do you part, right? So let's say that your wife commits adultery and you go to the people and you say, you know what? She committed adultery and I got witnesses and they say, okay, and then they take her out and they stoner. Are you able to get remarried? Yeah. Because she's dead. Some of you are saying that's great news. I'm just kidding. But there was one school that said it had to be serious. Now there was another school, the school of Hillel.

This school was very liberal, very, very, very liberal. And they said it could be even trivial reasons. Like, she burned the pot roast. Right? Some of you are like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Right? That's the... she burned the pot roast. And that was indecent. And therefore, now I have a right to give her a certificate of divorce. Now I can marry someone else. She's left high and dry, but I can marry somebody else. And now I'm not committing adultery.

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So, I can get out of a marriage for kind of any reason because divorce is the way we try to avoid committing adultery. That's the antidote. Okay? Divorce. And so we get a little further and they start talking to Jesus. And they start asking Jesus about this. And they say, you know, can we divorce for any reason? Right? Because they want to know what school are you in, Jesus? Are you in the school of Shammai? Are you in the school of Hillel? Who's right? Right?

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Because some of us have already divorced like three wives because we just can't get a good pot roast. Right? So we're trying to figure this out. And they're like, I don't... what do you say? And Jesus goes at this whole issue completely different. Turn to Matthew chapter 19. Jesus clarifies a couple things. Verse three, it says, some Pharisees came to Him to test Him. They asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce His wife for any and every reason? Right? That's Hillel. Right? You burn the pot roast. Right? There's a hole in my shirt because you ironed it wrong. Right? The kids talked back to me and it's your job to keep them from doing... you know what I mean? You could divorce for anything. And so they're asking Him, how liberal can we be? And I love this about Jesus. Jesus is into vintage theology. We at sunrise are about vintage theology, not this new, new fendangled theology that's coming about.

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We believe in not just old theology, but vintage old theology. Jesus says, I don't care about what Moses said in this particular case. Yes, Moses said this. You're asking me about Moses, but you're talking about something that's after the fall. He goes back. Look what He does here. He says, when Jesus wants to understand, okay, when He wants you to understand biblical marriage and divorce and adultery, He doesn't turn to Moses for the answer. He goes back to creation. He's not... what allowance did Moses do? He says, how did God create marriage? What did God create marriage to be? Let's go vintage.

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Let's go all out. His theology of marriage is based on God's design and purpose for marriage back in the garden. Okay? So they ask Him, is it lawful for a man to divorce His wife for any and every reason? And He says, haven't you read? He replied. Now, does He go to Deuteronomy? Does He go to Numbers? Does He go to Moses? Does He go to... no. Does He go to Leviticus? No. That in the beginning, the Creator made them male and female. He's talking about marriage. Okay? Very clearly talking about marriage and talking about adultery. In the beginning, God created them male and female and said, for this reason, a man will leave His father and mother and be united to His wife and the two will become one flesh. So the way it was created in creation, the way God created marriage, is that a man and a woman would make vows, they would come together, and then they would become one flesh. They are now one.

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Who made them one? God did. But these religious leaders are saying, how can we break that up? How can we undo what God created? How can we undo through some type of excuse or some kind of reason, get out of this marriage through something else? And so it says, Father and mother, to unite with His wife and the two will become one flesh so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, because God made them one flesh, what God has joined together, let no one separate. So what is His intention for marriage? That there is no divorce. That's His intention. Okay? I'm not saying that's the reality. I'm saying that's the intention. That was the way it was created in the garden. No divorce, husband, wife, forever. That was in chapter 2 of Genesis. Then chapter 3 happens. Sin interests the world. Now we have sin natures. Now things are different. Now things are hard. Now we don't want to be in this relationship. Now we have strife between the man and the woman. Now there's issues, issues, issues, issues. So God created it so it wouldn't be separated.

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That's the design. So it goes on. Verse 7. Jesus is still talking to the Pharisees. Why then they asked? They asked Him a question. Okay, they asked Him a question. And this is a question you might be asking because I asked this question too. If God created marriage to be between a husband and a wife forever and they can never separate, then why even give us the option of divorce? Why even give us the option? Why create that word? Why create that action? Why put stuff in the Old Testament in the time of Moses that says that if this happens, you can divorce?

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Why even do that? And so look at the question they asked in verse 7. Why then they asked, did Moses command that a man give His wife a certificate of divorce and send her away? Now, hold the phone. Did it say in the Deuteronomy passage that if your wife commits adultery or is indecent that you are commanded, commanded to send her away? It didn't say that at all. It didn't say that at all. That's a clear misrepresentation of the text. But He goes on verse 8. Jesus replied, Moses, what's the word that He uses? Permitted. Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because why? Because their hearts are hard. Why are their hearts hard? Their hearts are hard because Adam ate from the wrong tree in the garden and now we all have a sin nature. So now people have hard hearts. They didn't have hard hearts when they were in the garden, when God created it.

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Now there is this hardening of the heart. And so because we're fallen people, it goes on, but it was not that way in the beginning. It wasn't that way in Genesis 2. The model for after man sins in the garden, but before they sin. So it says in verse 9, I tell you that anyone who divorces His wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits adultery. So now that we live in a sinful world, not everybody's going to be faithful to their spouse. So someone's going to violate biblical marriage. So God created this thing called divorce to allow persons that are in that relationship because there's two people in that relationship allowing them the person who is not the true violator of the biblical marriage to not be lumped in as an adulterer with the one who wasn't the violator, who was the violator, right? So you got one person that is kind of, so let's go to verse chapter 5 and it'll explain this to you. Matthew 5 verse 31, it says, it has been said, anyone who divorces His wife must give her a certificate of divorce. That's talking about our passage back there in Deuteronomy. But I tell you that anyone who divorces His wife except for sexual immorality makes her the victim of adultery.

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Okay? So Jesus is saying that there can be a victim of adultery. There can be a victim of this, that one person was home and they weren't cheating, they weren't doing anything wrong, and the other person just went off and they had sex with somebody else and they're having affairs and this person's like, I'm trying to keep this marriage solid and do everything that I can. And so He's saying that person can be a victim of this and it says anyone who marries a divorced woman, so it's the same thing.

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If it's a person who is not able to be separated legally because of divorce, you can't marry that person. So if a woman went off and had an affair and then you said, oh, well they're not married anymore because He divorced her because of that, and then you come marry the woman that was the one that committed the affair, that's adultery now for you. So I'm going to give you a definition of adultery. Alright? In this fun talking about adultery, everybody's like, you know what? You should talk about adultery every week. You know a really fun one to talk about, but we'd have to laugh the kids leave, is a thing on Song of Solomon since we're talking about, oh, I know, since we're talking about marriage, because then you get all the pluses of marriage, you're like, let's talk about that for a while.

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Maybe on a Friday night we'll have to pull that off sometime. So let me give you a definition of adultery that I think takes the whole of Scripture in light of Jesus and what Jesus says that links adultery to biblical marriage as it was created in the garden before the fall. Here adultery is an act or a thought that betrays the sacred design of marriage as established by God. That's a lot broader definition than what we said, but how many commandments are there in the Bible that are about sex? Sex is a big thing, a lot of sexual sin in the world. How many commandments are there of the ten? You say, well, there's two. Well, there's really only one. I mean, one is, don't covet your neighbor's wife, but that's covered in this one by Jesus, right? Really, all the other stuff is like there's a lot of sexual sin that could be involved in that. There's a lot of things that we could look at and say, well, what's going on with that? When I look at a woman that isn't my wife, that's lust. That betrays marriage and it betrays the picture of Christ in the church. It betrays biblical marriage the way He created it.

When you go home, you hop on your computer, guys, you hop on your phone and you start looking at porn. That's betraying the biblical picture of marriage because you are lusting after a woman with your eyes. That's not your wife, right? And you're lusting after her. You've committed adultery with her in your heart and you've never even met her. And so when you consummate your marriage before you got married, or with no intention of getting married, then you did biblical marriage upside down and you didn't do biblical marriage in the order it's supposed to go in. And so now you've consummated without any intention of even being married, or maybe you did, but you still did it wrong. And so you betrayed the picture of Christ in the church you portrayed or you betrayed biblical marriage. When there's more than two people in that union, it betrays it because it's not complementary.

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When you've got two guys that betrays biblical marriage because it's not when it's two women, it betrays biblical marriage because now it's the church with the church or it's Christ with Christ. You're picturing something wrong. But I want to go even a little bit deeper. I want to go into, this will be on my last passage.

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I'm running out of time here. 1st Timothy, this is Paul. So it's not like this isn't talked about with Paul. So this is early church. Jesus is ascended by this time. And the church is laying this out. God is through the Holy Spirit is speaking through Paul. And chapter 1 verse 9, watch what He does here. And this is interesting. I think a lot of people miss this, but He says, we also know that the law is made not for the righteous, but for lawbreakers and rebels. Right. So why do we even have the 10 commandments? Is it so that you'll obey them all and be righteous? No. You're already a sinner by your sin nature. So, there's nothing you can do to be righteous by doing good stuff. Right.

The point of the law is the law is like a mirror. You pointed up to yourself and you're like, I'm a sinner. I thought I was really holy. But now I look at the word of God and I look at the commandments and go, I broke that one. I broke that one. I broke that one too. I broke all these laws. I'm a sinner. Now I'm in despair. I don't know how I can ever be in a relationship with God. And that points us to Jesus. That's the point of the commandments.

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And so, Paul’s understanding that is speaking to us here and watch. He says, we all know that the law is not made for the righteous. Now are they righteous? There aren't even any righteous, but He says it's not made for the righteous. There are some people that think they're righteous. And for those people that think they're righteous, it's not for you. Because it's not going to do anything for you because you think you're good. You think you don't need Jesus. People say all the time to me, they say, well, you think you're better than me because you're Christian and you're a holy.

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I don't think that at all. I think I'm worse than you. You're the one who doesn't think you need a savior. You're the one who thinks that you're good. You're the one that thinks that you've earned your way into heaven. I'm the one that thinks I'm a total mess in the eyes of God and believe that the only way I can have a relationship with you is that God's own son has to die on a cross for me. And after all, I completely on that, nothing that I do. That's the reality of it. I don't think I'm better than you. I think I'm worse. But He goes on, He says, we also know that the law is made not for the righteous, but for the lawbreakers. Which law is He talking about? Which law is He talking about? Ten Commandments, right? The law given to Moses. It was made so that people would see that they're sinners, that they violated God's law and standard.

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It goes on. We also know that the law is made for the righteous, not for the law breakers. The ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious. So what He's doing here is He's just kind of giving a general description of people that are disobedient to God. But then watch this, it gets specific.

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Watch this. For those who kill their fathers and mother, what commandment is that? Father and mother, right? That's the fifth commandment, right? So He starts to go into the commandment and starts listing them out, but He's saying what they are as He lists them, right? So for those who kill their father and mother, that's the fifth commandment, I your father and mother. Then look, what's the next one? For murderers, which commandment's that? Sixth, He went from the fifth commandment, now to the sixth commandment, as He's described it.

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Then look for murderers. So what's the seventh commandment? What's after that? Adultery. So, what does He say? Verse 10, for sexual immorality, for the sexually immoral, for those who practice homosexuality. So, he's lumping all of that in with adultery, okay? Paul is. Then verse 8, what's the next commandment? Says, for slave traders, so people that are stealing, they steal people and enslave them. What's the ninth commandment? Don't bear false witness. It says, and liars and perjurers. And for whatever else is contrary to sound dropped in that conforms to the general, to the Gospel, concerning the glory of the blessed God, which is entrusted to me. So here's the point, Paul is lumping sexual immorality, all sexual immorality and homosexuality as adultery here. So when the Pharisees questioned Jesus about divorce, it was because they wanted to justify themselves.

This is the point. They wanted to justify themselves. They want to say when they're talking to Jesus and asking them, can we divorce for any reason? I'm righteous, right? I think I'm righteous. I think I'm good. I think I'm good with God. I don't think I need your salvation. I don't think I need that, right? I haven't committed adultery. I'm righteous. And perhaps that's some of you that are here. You're looking at these commandments and you're saying, I hope I haven't committed any of these. Because if I have, then what would happen? Is God just gonna forgive me?

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What's gonna go on? Well, God does forgive you, but He forgives us. We have to first come and recognize that what we did is a sin. So one of the great tragedies we have is that we have all kinds of people that have committed adultery. The antidote for committing adultery and getting to heaven has been paid in full by Jesus. But what a lot of churches are trying to tell you and people and what you're trying to justify is to say, but it wasn't really adultery. It wasn't really my fault. It was His fault. It was her fault.

I'm not to blame. I'm righteous. Why are you clinging to your own righteousness? You don't have any righteousness within you at all. You've looked at a woman lustfully. You've been angry. You've committed murder in your heart. You are a sinner. Admit it. You have committed adultery bar none, every one of you. And so we should consider this a support group today. Hello, my name is Dustin. I've committed adultery.

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Right? Hello, my name is Dustin. It's been five minutes since I've committed my last adultery. Right? My dog, we do that all the time. My dog licks all the time and we say, she's in Lycoholics Anonymous. Right? Right? See, hi, my name is Snickers Largent. It's been 30 seconds since my last lick. You and I, like the Pharisees, need to acknowledge that we've committed adultery in our hearts before we ever committed a sexual act. And that means you're not righteous before God.

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And so what do you do? You do what everyone who is a sinner who has broken a commandment, who has sinned at all, we do what all of us have done, who truly have a relation with God, we repent. We repent. We say, yes, I have not followed God the way I should. I have disobeyed God. I thought I was good, but it's obvious from what Jesus says that I'm an adulterer. I'm a murderer. I'm a liar. I'm a thief. I worship other God. I mean, I've got all these sins in me and there is no chance for me to have salvation from my own righteousness. God is not going to save me on that. Right? God looks at me and He says, I love you, but you're not good enough. You're not perfect.

You are not good enough. And so here's what you do if you've committed adultery. Okay? I'm going to give you the thing. You say, I have committed adultery, God. I have sinned. For some of you, there's nothing you can do about it.

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Maybe you've divorced and you shouldn't have divorced and now you're remarried and there's nothing you can do about it. Right? It's done. The answer is not to try to unwind it and somehow make yourself righteous. Right? That's not the answer to these questions. The answer now is to come and acknowledge God.

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And for some of you, this will be very hard. God, I was wrong in the way I handled that. I was wrong. God, I committed adultery. God, I was sinful in that and I am confessing to you that I believe in my own heart that I was wrong. And from this moment forward, I turn away from that type of life, from adultery, from murder, from whatever other sin it is, I turn away from that and I'm embracing God's way for marriage. I mean, I'm embracing God's way for how I should live. I'm going to live that way from this moment on because I don't want to live in the way that got me kicked out of your presence. God, empower me to live this way. And I believe that you have made it all all right that we are having this relationship because I've confessed this to you and you have paid the price for my sin of adultery. You've paid the price for it.

And the reason You paying the price makes a difference. The reason You dying for my adultery because the wages have sinned is death. The cost for adultery, what you deserve is death. Jesus died for your adultery. The reason why it's good, why His death matters is because He never committed adultery. And so what He is going to do when you put your faith in Him is He is going to swap lives with you. It's called imputing His righteousness into you. He is going to swap with you. He's going to say, I on the cross, I'm taking dust into adultery. I'm taking His murder. I'm taking all that. I am paying and I am being killed for what He did. And there is no double jeopardy. He can't be convicted for the crime that I've already died for Him for. So, because I've done that, He took my sin and He gives me my record before God when God looks at His record. He looks at my record says, okay, here you are. Did you commit adultery? Did you keep the commandments and He looks and He sees a perfect record? Never committed adultery. Never murdered, never lied. Always loved the Lord as God with all His heart and all of His soul and all of His mind.

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Always loved His neighbor as himself. It's all there. It's all perfect. Why? Because Jesus swapped His life on the thing for me. And when God looks at me, He doesn't see my nasty life. He sees the life of Christ. I'm saved because of the life of Jesus. So here's what you do. Go live a life in a way that affirms biblical marriage. Turn from there. Live a life that affirms biblical marriage. Those of you that are married, live your marriage out in a way that it paints a picture of Jesus just the way it's supposed to be. A picture of biblical marriage. Live that out. Live that out. If you're single, be very, very careful the way you live. Don't live in a way that is going to taint what biblical marriage is. Wait for that one that God's provided, that one that isn't going to be your husband for like a couple of years. The one that is going to be with you for the rest of your life like in Christ. Look for that person. Wait for that person. Because the best way to do it is always God's way.

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God, I thank you so much for biblical marriage. God, I thank you for my own marriage. Man, I'm married up. You gave me a great wife. And I thank you for her. I thank you for all the marriages that are in here. God, I pray for those that have maybe not done it the way they were supposed to and they recognize that. As they confess, I pray for forgiveness. God, that you would now use them to be great examples of what biblical marriage is. God, that you would use them. That you'd use their testimonies of things that they went through. God, to lead other people to Christ into a biblical relationship with you. That they would enter into the church that is the bride of Christ. And God, I pray that you strengthen every marriage in this church. I pray that you would help every man to lead His family. That they could provide for their families. That they could be a great model of Christ to the church, to their families. God, in Jesus' name, I'm just asking you to bless us. Pour out your spirit. And bless us in Jesus' name. Amen.

 

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