10x: 10x Faithfulness with Rev. Caz Minter

Our worship, our worship leaders need to not be as so good. I've been belting it out. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to... I'm... Can't can't, I can't...

I'm losing my voice out here. I I love two things. I love the way they lead us to worship, and I love that the guys in the back don't turn on my mic when I'm down there singing. Those are two really important things to me. We are in this series on the 10 commandments.

We are taking a look today at the seventh commandment. This is a a commandment which which says there shouldn't be any adultery. This is a this is a commandment which talks about intimacy in marriage. So if if you have kids with you in the room, that's great. We always love that.

The conversation might be interesting at lunch today. And so just so you know, just want you to be be ready. I'm gonna pray for us, then we're gonna dive into the word together. God, we give you thanks that this is your holy word and that you would speak to us about issues of all kinds, but issues that are real for our lives. And you have a word for us today.

We wanna be your people. We wanna hear it. Would you would you grab hold of us, grab hold of our hearts so that we would we would get it? And, father, fill us with your Holy Spirit that we might be able to live out your word. We pray this in your holy name.

Amen. So I... As I was looking at this command, I was tempted to make this command about anything besides sex. I was hoping I could I could make it... Know, it's it's about covenant and a promise, and that's true.

It is about covenant. That's really, really important. And it's about faithfulness, and I thought, man, we'll go in the direction of faithfulness. That's important too, and it's a part of this. But actually, this command is just really very clear.

And let's look at it. This is Exodus chapter 20 verse 14. It's real short. You shall not commit adultery. And I wanted this to be about something else.

But the command says, any sex outside of the intimate covenant between a husband and a wife is a boundary that should not be crossed. It's that clear. That's what it is. So then I went to our youth pastor, Mark Ordus, said, would you preach today? And...

Now scripture talks about this. Talks about it clearly and straightforwardly. And so we're going to. When I was a couple... A sophomore in college headed to my sophomore year, my dad was driving me out.

We lived in Washington DC, and we had to drive. I went to school outside of Chicago, so we had this long drive. And about an hour into the drive, my dad turned to me and said, you know, son, before you get a girlfriend that might become a wife, before I have to think about it as a real person, I was wondering if there's anything else you would like to talk about about intimacy. And I was like, what? He was like, know, are there things you wanna know about sex and how that works in a marriage?

And I was like, no. Absolutely not. Like, no way. And he was like, well, while I've gotcha, this stuff's important. So the next eleven hours, that was the most awkward conversation I've ever had and that's what we're doing today.

So buckle up. Right? Here we go. Buckle up. This is so powerful.

It's it's so important. Sex and sexual desire. It's so part of everything around us that every one of us in one way or another has struggled with this at some point in our life. It's used in every bit of marketing that there is. It seems like all desires are in our culture around us are funneled into this one because it's such a powerful thing.

It has such a grip on so many of our hearts whether we like it or not. We know that a huge amount of internet traffic, it's just a statistic, a huge amount of all internet traffic is around this. And we also know that there are women around the world who are exploited in horrific ways because of this. This drives our culture, and it is deep into everything that we see. And in fact, it's it's a wrestling within every one of us.

And because of that, the scripture talks about it. Addresses it. In fact, it would be it'd be ludicrous if it missed it. If we're gonna talk about what does it mean to follow Christ and what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus, and we didn't address this at all, we'd be missing such a big part of of our lives. And so we're given this commandment.

You shall not commit adultery. And right off the bat, I want you to notice two things about this. The first is that God cares about our marriages. You see this command, the command of adultery, it's a it's a marriage commandment. In other places in Scripture, there are commands for people that are single.

That word is used as fornication. And and so fornication is is... There's a command against that as well. But but this one is about the covenant of marriage and not straying outside of that covenant, holding that covenant holy. And so we recognize right from the beginning that God cares about our marriages.

In fact, we get right in the beginning the creation story. Adam and Eve. Adam is created. He says it's not good to be alone. He creates Eve.

He says this this is good. Says the two become one flesh. You see this this covenant, this relationship, our marriages, they're blessed. They're important. God pronounces this relationship good.

And this covenant, this promise, which this is... This command's drawing the boundaries around this promise. This is a gift, this promise. Right? Remember, when the 10 commandments are given, the people of Israel just come out of slavery.

They don't know who they are. They don't know what it means to be a people and and a people that follow God. They don't know what it means to to thrive and flourish as families and a community. God gives these commands to Moses. Moses gives them to the people.

He says, I'll be your God. You'll be my people. And if you live in my way, if you follow my commandments, that's where you'll find flourishing. And right here, there there are lots are lots of laws that come after this, but the 10, these 10 are like set off as important, and right in the middle of them is this one, about our marriage relationships. We talked a couple weeks ago about the relationship, our first relationship between a mother and a father and how God cares about that relationship, but today he gets right into this intimate relationship that is a gift and he says, this should be held in covenant.

Now here's why covenant matters. I spend a lot of time talking to couples that are not married yet. And sometimes we're doing premarital, sometimes they're not Christ followers, and they're just talking to me about life. Whenever they find out I'm a pastor, sometimes they have odd questions for me, you know. And so they'll lean in, but I find myself in this conversation often where somebody says, well, we're not married, but we're thinking about we're going to get married.

We're just kind of trying it out. So we're living together and we're kind of doing all the things that married couple do, but we're not married yet. We're going to see how that, you know, we're going to see how that goes. And it just makes sense. Like financially, we combine two incomes.

We got one rent like that just makes sense. And I get it. That's practical. It makes sense. It's it's it's so common today, But I stop and say, but it actually isn't healthy.

And statistics bear that out, but the reality is that you're trying to experience intimacy without the promise that goes around that. And when things get tough and when things get difficult, if you don't have this covenant, you don't have this promise, if you don't have the boundaries holding it in, all of a sudden you're on very shaky ground. Is this person gonna lead me? Are they gonna be there tomorrow? My wife and I have this promise that we've entered into in marriage and that's a covenant.

And in that covenant we say, we can deal with difficult things tonight. We can talk through really tough stuff. I don't have to hide myself, I can be fully known by her. Why? Because we've promised we'll be there tomorrow.

We're gonna work this out together. That's the way that God designed it. He designed this covenant relationship. That's what marriage is to look like, and God cares. It matters.

It gives you the gift of being able to work through tough things. So many of us think, you know, on the outside, marriage is just supposed to be, hey, the relationship's supposed to be good and it's supposed to be happy and everything's supposed to be smooth. And the sign of a good marriage is a smooth sailing. But that's not the sign of a good marriage. The sign of a good marriage is being able to work out tough things.

Can you do tough things well? You see, that's what God gives us in this covenant of marriage. He says, you have a covenant so you can work through the tough stuff. You have this covenant that you're to remain inside of. God's command puts Him square in the middle of our marriages.

Now, I want to speak to a second a second to those of you that are single, because you're like, well, I got this one off then. I don't have to worry about this command. Let's move on to the next one. But but I want you to know a couple things. One, singleness is celebrated in the scripture.

There's a place where the Apostle Paul says, man, this is a gift that I have. I wish all of you would have that. That's not all of your calling, for many, Singleness is celebrated. And in singleness, we live in faithfulness. And in singleness, you actually point to the ultimate covenant relationship of being totally fulfilled in Christ.

It's a holy thing, and the call of faithfulness is to those who are married and to those who are single. Now, that's the first thing. God cares about these covenant relationships. God cares about our marriages. The second thing I want you to recognize from this simple commandment is that our physical bodies and our actions actually matter to God.

We're not just conceptual beings. It's not just an idea of marriage, but that God has woven into us a sense of like attractiveness and being attracted. He's given us physical desire. It's part of who we are. It is how we're wired.

You know, some Christian communities don't want to talk about this at all. And to be honest with you, it makes me really nervous. This is not the one I was hoping to get to tell. I like telling family stories. I was joking with my son coming in.

I don't think I can share any family stories this week. This is not a it's not a week for that. There's nothing... It's hard to talk about. It's uncomfortable.

And for some Christian communities, they say we just shouldn't talk about it at all. It's just it's just sort of stay away from that area. That's sort of out of bounds. Or there are other Christian communities that have made an idol out of purity, like that is the most important thing. And purity matters as as it is a commitment to the faithfulness in the covenant, but it is it is not the the idol.

It is not the most important thing. And and Christian communities have aired on either side of this so often, and and and I want you to I want you to hear this. We have to talk about it. Like, What we wanna do is have a right view, a right biblical understanding of what sex means to us. You know, one the cultures around us sort of the philosophy that you see, it comes from the Buddhist faith.

And the Buddhist faith would say something like this. It says, what is wrong with the world is desire. And so the thing to do is just get rid of all desire. And you see that current in a in a culture at times around us. You hear that from people.

They say, you know, the big problem is desire. But did you know that that's actually not a Christian approach? Christian approach doesn't say that at all. Christian approach doesn't say what's wrong with the world is desire. A Christian approach says what is wrong with the world is disordered desire.

It's desire that's off track. Desire, when rightly ordered, is actually good and it's powerful and it's given to us from God. And the thing to do is is not to not to just move away from desire, no, it's to understand desire and properly order it. Asking God to work, do the work of ordering our hearts towards a covenant of marriage and relationship, towards this desire that exists within it. When Paul, the apostle Paul, is is teaching, he actually writes to one of the churches, the church in Corinth.

And what we get to see in these letters of Paul is sort of a back and forth conversation. We're just kind of thrown into the middle of it. And so Paul, who planted all these churches and is sort of the bishop over all these churches, he's telling them how to work how to work this out. How do you live as followers of Christ in a real world? And how do you do that as a community?

And what does it look like to be the church? Now they write to him a letter and we get his response. And this is in First Corinthians chapter seven. And I'm going to use the message version. Now the message is a paraphrase.

And sometimes it's helpful just to see this in sort of plain English, a paraphrase version. I'll encourage you to go back and read it in NIV or whatever you would normally use. But this is Paul responding to a group of people. And I want you to listen to what he says. This is first Corinthians seven verses one and two.

Now getting down to the question you ask in your letter to me, first, is it a good thing to have sexual relations? Stop for just second. Is the this is a guy who who planted most of the churches in the New Testament. He is the Apostle Paul wrote half of our New Testament. He is the bishop and there of all the things they're asking him about, this is the question that they write to him about, and he's writing back.

You think this doesn't matter? Like, it matters. So this is how he starts. Is it a good thing to have sexual relations? And listen to his answer.

Certainly. But only within a certain context. It's good for a man to have a wife and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. That's Paul's word to the people in Corinth, and it's a word to us.

Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them. I... You know, the young adult ministries that really only have like three topics that that, you know, this is the joke of of pastors that do young adult ministry. They have like three topics they wanna talk about. Right?

Sex, like how far is too far, The end times. And will there be sex in the end times? Those are the three. You can build a young adult ministry right there. And and so I heard a young adult ministry describing this one day, this this very idea.

I saw it was brilliant. They said, this is the difference between a fire that's in a fireplace or a fire pit. You know, yesterday there were several different fire pits around my neighborhood and it was kind of fun to see all the neighbors out. And those those fires brought people together. People were gathered and having conversation.

They were staying warm. It it really actually wasn't too cold. Right? We're doing alright for Michigan. I'm I'm hearing.

This is doing... This is okay. So but but the fire brings you together for warmth. And we know that fire really in many ways, like one of the one of the essentials to life, could cook over it. You can stay warm.

It's a beautiful thing when it's in the fire pit. But as it jumps outside, that's a that's a wildfire. All right. Wildfires bring destruction and brokenness. Wildfires burn everything up.

That's a great illustration for this, that that this desire that is wired in you, even from the beginning, it is good. God gives it to us when ordered rightly, but when misordered, when it's outside of the bounds, when it jumps out, it brings destruction and it brings it every time. It leads to brokenness and death. But the connection and intimacy of intercourse in marriage is good and valuable. It's a gift of God.

This is sort of the culmination when scripture talks about the two shall become one. That was the Genesis passage. But it's also what Jesus says when he talks about marriage and what that looks like. The two shall become one. There's a bond in this.

There's a closeness that that it brings together. It's an emotional communication, and this is the the physical embodiment of the marriage covenant. It is holy and sacred. It's not to be treated lightly. You should value this.

Over the last few years, my wife and I, we have all kinds of friends in different places in the country. As we talk to couples, we find out often that that we have friends who are in marriages where the intimacy has just sort of been left behind. They sort of forgotten about it, and there's there's not really that kind of intimacy anymore in marriage. And and, you know, they're still good people, and they have a good relationship, and they're married, and they're doing the things, and they're good friends, and stuff's fine. But this intimacy is just not part of their marriage.

And as your pastor, I I want to talk to you as a pastor for a second and tell you that's not good. That that you should actually pay attention to that. It matters even if you don't think so. That this this intimacy between a husband and a wife, is something valuable and precious, and and you should actually pay attention. You you should get help.

If if if you're in a place... I understand. There are all kinds of struggles and and sometimes trauma, and sometimes there's difficulty. Sometimes it's a one-sided thing. I understand that.

Sometimes it's just a loss of interest. I get all the reasons, but I want to encourage you. Pay attention to this. Maybe get help around this. One of the things you're going to have to do is actually talk about it.

And I get how difficult that is. I understand how awkward that feels. But good news today, you can you can tell your spouse, pastor said we had to talk about it. Okay? So you just use me as excuse.

You need to talk about it. You need to pay attention to it. What happens so often is that we actually seek that fulfillment, which is part of who we are as physical beings, and God made us as physical people. We often will seek fulfillment of that desire in other ways. And this is true for those of you that are married and for those of you that are single.

And as we seek to fulfill this any other way outside of the bonds of marriage, it does not lead to health. It leads to brokenness. This is what Jesus talks about when he picks up this commandment. This is Matthew chapter five, and I'll encourage you to turn there. You've got Bibles there in the pews in front of you.

You can go there. You may have it on your phone app. It'll come up on the screens as well. Matthew chapter five verse 27. Jesus says this, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your eye causes you to stumble, 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. Jesus even goes on from there. He...

He's He's taking this command and even going further. Like we talked about last week with murder, Jesus starts at the... He starts with the boundary and then He moves towards the intention. He says, this sets a trajectory for the way that you should live. And he goes, it goes even further and Jesus talks about lust and just real quickly, we could go into it further, but this idea of lust isn't, isn't like a fleeting thought.

This means moving toward embracing this desire for fulfillment outside of the covenant of marriage. Jesus is real straightforward. Sexual intimacy is created for marriage, and anything outside of that leads towards brokenness, and it leads towards it every time. We live in a culture in a world where where pornography is all around us in various forms. I mean, it is everywhere.

And it's so easy to get a hold of and and and you feel like it can be private and it's not gonna hurt anybody, but it always does. It leads towards brokenness every time. It promises easy fulfillment, but is not ultimately fulfilling. What happens with pornography is that it takes our physical desire and it separates it from relationship. That's not a good thing.

That's not how we were created. This deforms us. It deforms our hearts. It twists what is good, and it is a trap. And those of you in the middle of it, you already know that.

You know it's a trap. This leads towards brokenness. And Jesus says, what you need to do is cut it out. Just just move away from it however you can. Get accountability, people around you, use whatever tools you can with Internet and things like that to to move away from this.

Jesus says, cut it out. But ultimately, we know that this takes cutting out of not just the physical places, but this takes cutting it out of our heart. This takes Jesus' kind of work on our heart to move past this. Marriages matter to God and we're called to work on them, to spend time on it, to give ourselves to it, to fight for it, and to pay attention to physical intimacy. Faithfulness is the call of this command.

It's faithfulness towards a covenant, faithfulness towards our relationship with God and a relationship with our spouse. And if you're single, he wants you to hold tightly in his covenant faithfulness to him. But as I talk about this in a room like this, really in any room I go to, I know that almost everyone in here has some story in one way or another of brokenness and failure around this issue. Everybody struggles with this. There's one more place that Jesus teaches on adultery, and I wanna look at it for just the last couple minutes.

This comes from John chapter eight, and we'll pick it up in verse three. This is another teaching of Jesus on this issue. John eight chapter three. This story will be familiar to many of you. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.

You can imagine Jesus is in the middle of this community, and and the Pharisees are kind of gathered around in a crowd, and they throw a woman in towards him. And they made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commands us to stone such women. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him.

Is Jesus gonna respond? But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. And when they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and he said to them, let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her. And again, he stooped down and rode on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time.

The older ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and he asked her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared.

Now go and leave your life of sin. Imagine this moment. Crowd is gathered. Everybody's watching. They throw this woman in front of Jesus.

The most humiliating, embarrassing, exposed moment of her life. The consequences could be unbelievably serious. It's sort of life and death. There she stands in this excruciating moment of knowing her deepest brokenness. The the the the the deepest secret she was hoping to keep, the the deepest place of brokenness in her relationship and her covenant.

She had broken this command, and it was not even questioned. We know it's broken. We know the struggle. And what does Jesus do? And his most powerful moment, it's the posture of Jesus that catches me every time.

He bends down. He gets down in the dirt. What she must have felt with Jesus standing there in front of him, and and he gets low. He comes down to her level and says he he writes something in the sand. We we don't know what he writes.

Then then he says, whoever has without sin cast a stone. Nobody cast a stone. He doesn't can they don't condemn her to death, and he doesn't condemn her to death, but he doesn't ignore it. You see, he sends her to live a new way. He says, go and live a new direction.

Live a new way. But that response that Jesus had to someone that's caught in this kind of brokenness is to get down on her level next to her. And he offers her a new life, a new hope. You see guys, this brokenness that we find is what... It's so difficult.

People, every... Everybody has some story of struggle in this area. And what Jesus says isn't to ignore it. He says, no. No.

No. No. I'm gonna do the work in your heart. I'm gonna work in your life. I'm gonna bring healing so that you can go and live a new way.

This is what it takes to be followers of Christ who followed this commandment. It takes Christ working in our hearts and our lives, offering us new life, doing the work in our heart of what we call sanctification, making me more and more like Him. I'm a pray for us this morning. So we need the father to be at work in our lives. Would you pray with me?

God, as we find ourselves, our lives to have such a gap between who we want to be and how we want to live and what's real. As we find our lives that we we find ourselves in places of brokenness around this all the time. Find ourselves in broken marriages. We find ourselves with broken stories and histories. And, God, what we know is that you heal.

You you you breathe new life into us. You you send us to live a new way. So, God, would you lead us this morning? Would you do this work in me? Would you do this work in us?

We pray your Holy Spirit transform us. We pray this in your name. Amen. We're gonna take communion together. Hopefully, you got one of these got one of these communion cups.

And if you didn't get one, just raise your hand, and we have some people around that'll make sure that you get one. Scripture tells us that it was on the night that he was betrayed, but he took the bread and he broke it. That's really significant. It wasn't a group of people sitting around the table that had everything together that weren't in the midst of brokenness. These were people that were broken, that found themselves often trapped.

Was to people like that that he broke this bread. And he said, this is my body, which is broken for you. And then scripture says in the same way, he took the cup and he poured it out. He said, this is this is my blood poured out. Why?

For the forgiveness of your sins. Places where you you didn't you didn't meet, you didn't uphold the covenant. This is not blood for that, for you. That you might find resurrection, that you'd be invited into this relationship, a relationship where you can be transformed. As we take this, I I just want you to know, it's not a Presbyterian table.

It's not Ward Church's table. This is God's table. If you have faith in Jesus as your Lord and savior, I'm gonna invite you to take communion with us. If that's not where you're at today, it's it's okay. I'm just glad that you're here, and it's okay to sit this one out.

But if you believe in Jesus as your Lord and savior, I invite you to take communion with us. We pray over this. This is a holy moment. God, would you take these common elements, just bread, just juice and set them aside for your holy purposes? God, would you meet us in this?

And as you do, would you begin to do your work in our hearts? We pray this in your name. Amen. And take the the little side up and open that up. Pull out the bread.

So this bread was broken. My body given for you. Take and eat. And he opened the juice side. Christ blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins.

Take and drink. Father, we give you thanks. Meet us today. Pray this in your name. Amen.

Would you stand with me? We're gonna sing...