Committing Adultery [Part 3: Considering the Consequences]

WARNING

READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED...

THE FOLLOWING IS AN INCOMPLETE LIST of what you have in store after your immorality is found out.

· Your mate will experience the anguish of betrayal, shame, rejection, heartache, and loneliness. No amount of repentance will soften those blows.

· Your mate can never again say that you are a model of fidelity. Suspicion will rob her or him of trust.

· Your escapade(s) will introduce to your life and your mate’s life the very real probability of a sexually transmitted disease.

· The total devastation your sinful actions will bring to your children is immeasurable. Their growth, innocence, trust and healthy outlook on life will be severely and permanently damaged.

· The heartache you will cause your parents, your family, and your peers is indescribable.

· The embarrassment of facing other Christians, who once appreciated you, respected you, and trusted you, will be overwhelming.

· If you are engaged in the Lord’s work, you will suffer immediate loss of the support of those with whom you worked.

· Your fall will give others license to do the same.

· The inner peace you enjoyed will be gone.

· You will never be able to erase the fall from your (or others’) mind. This will remain indelibly etched on your life’s record, regardless of your later return to your senses.

· The name of Jesus Christ, whom you once honored, will be tarnished, giving the enemies of the faith further reason to sneer and jeer.

AND IN CASE YOU NEED A REMINDER that God is serious about fidelity, I ask you to consider this true story. It could save you from some tragedy that could be just around the corner. The names are fictitious, but the story is true.

Clara and Chester's twenty-eight-year-old marriage was a good one. Not the most idyllic, but good. By now they had three grown children who loved them dearly. They were also blessed with sufficient financial security to allow them room to dream about a retirement home, so they began looking for one. A widower we'll call Sam was selling his place. They liked it a lot and they returned home to talk and to make their plans. Months passed.

Last fall Clara told Chester she wanted a divorce. He went numb. After all these years, why? How could she deceive him? How could she have been nursing such a scheme while they were looking at a retirement home? She said she hadn't been . . . not for that long. Actually, this was a recent decision now that she had found another man. Who? Clara admitted it was Sam, the owner of the house they were considering. She had inadvertently run into him several weeks after they had discussed the sale. They had a cup of coffee together; later the next week they went out to dinner. For several weeks they had been seeing each other privately and were now sexually involved. Since they were now "in love," there was no turning back. Not even the kids, who hated the idea, could dissuade their mother.

On the day Clara was to leave, Chester walked through the kitchen toward the garage. Realizing Clara would be gone when he returned, he hesitated, "Well, hon I guess this is the last time . . ." and his voice dissolved as he broke into sobs. She felt awkward, so she hurriedly got her things together, backed out of the driveway, and never looked back. She drove north to meet Sam. Less than two weeks after she moved in with her new lover, Sam was seized with a heart attack and lingered a few hours. The following morning Sam died.

When it comes to morality, God is serious . . . as serious as a heart attack.

I have said for years that If God moved that swiftly in every case, most folks I know would think again before they started an affair. If God moved now like He did in the days of Ananias and Sapphira, I wonder if you'd have to build a morgue in the basement of every church.

--C.S.

Ephesians 4:17-19

¹⁷This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

¹⁸Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

¹⁹Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

Committing Adultery [Part 2 : Careless Whispers]

WARNING

READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED...

I HAD AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE many years ago, January 1990. I had been invited to speak in New Orleans at the Super Bowl breakfast sponsored by Athletes in Action. En route from Los Angeles to New Orleans, I had to change planes in another city. The connecting flight was packed, naturally, and there was a festive spirit on board since everyone was headed for Super Bowl XXIV. I noticed an empty seat behind mine… the only empty seat on the plane. Only minutes before we backed away from the terminal, one final passenger hurried on board. Her plane had been late in arriving, making it questionable if she could make her New Orleans connection. She did. As she hurried on, a bit harried, she immediately broke into a broad smile as her eyes met those of the man sitting next to the sea she would occupy. She didn’t simply sit down—she fell into his arms as they kissed, giggled, and embraced for the next ten minutes.

My immediate thought was, Now there’s a happily married couple! How wrong I was. They were both married . . . but not to each other. Because they sat right behind me, I got the full scoop. I must confess to some eavesdropping. Their carefully arranged plan was to rendezvous on the plane, then spend the weekend together in New Orleans. Their conversation, mixed with frequent kisses, included all kinds of comments about the fun they had in front of them, the intimate ecstasy of being together for a couple of nights, along with attending the Super Bowl. Both laughed and joked as they talked about how each other’s mate knew nothing of it. I might add here that neither made any mention of the possible consequences—the loss of reputation, of the depression that was sure to follow, the possibility of unexpected pregnancy, the embarrassing humiliation when their mates (not if, but when) would find out. Why, of course not! This couple was on fire. Their full focus turned to the delightful time they would have together. They just couldn’t talk about anything else.

All the while I’m sitting there in front of them, working on a chapter on sexual temptation, thirty-six inches behind me is a living illustration of lust in action. There flashed through my mind these words Solomon once wrote: “Stolen waters are sweet.” No doubt about it. Unbridled, blinding lust is running over with the sweet ecstasy of sensual pleasure—at least for a weekend. Laughter, creativity, and excitement abound in such sexual escapades, It is not until later that the fog lifts and reality returns with its Monday-morning-depression.

--C.S.

Proverbs 9:17 . . . Stolen waters are sweet . . .

Committing Adultery [Part 1: The Boss and the Secretary]

WARNING

READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED...

Dr. Donald Barnhouse shares this story about a man falling into the temptation of lust with his secretary.

One day I was visited by a young man in his thirties, who had a personal problem. He told his story something like this: “I work for such-and-such company, and I have a private office. Several months ago my secretary was absent and I had to use another girl. One day she brought papers for my perusal; she got too close, and when she leaned over my desk, she let her hair trail across my face. I fought it down, but after all, I am a man, and toward the end of the day I put my hand on her and she came right back to be kissed. Even while kissing her, I was visualizing my two children running to meet me and my wife standing in the door. I hated what I was doing, but I kept on. I had the greatest desire to push her from me, but I kept pulling her to me; my body was doing one thing and my mind was doing another.

“When I went home that night, I hugged my children so hard that one of them cried, and when we got him to laughing, I told them that it was because I loved them so much. I had tears in my eyes and my wife’s eyes were shining. We all clung together in one of those moments that are indescribable. My wife was extremely happy, because I walked around the house that evening, touching familiar things that we had scrimped to buy, expressing my love for the home and for her, and before God I was never more true. Next day, the office intrigue began all over again. I was never more miserable in my life.

“Before a month had gone by I realized that my lust and my love were in a terrible battle. When I came home, there was everything I wanted in life. When I went to the office, the machine of my body seemed geared to something terrible that was purely mechanical, and which I wanted to get out of more than any fly ever wanted to get off flypaper. I heard my wife tell someone that I was becoming more and more of a homebody, and that all I wanted to do was stay at home. And it is true. I follow her around the house, talk with her in the kitchen where she is working, and watch her as she puts the children to bed.

“This morning, when I left the house, she told me that she thought she was the happiest woman in the world, because I showed so much that I loved her alone. I could hardly talk. In fact tears came to my eyes, and when I lifted a lock of her hair to dry them, I said to her, ‘I love you more than life itself.’ She cried and I crushed her to me until she screamed and smiled at the same time. Then I ran off to my train. But now what shall I do?”

With the husband’s consent, I called the wife to my office and told her the story. Fear leaped to her eyes. But I reassured her. We took a taxi and went to his office. He was expecting us, and I stood by as they embraced and she said, “I know, I know, I understand, it’s all right.” Then I called the other girl into the office. The scene that followed typified the mortal struggle between the flesh and the spirit, both striving for the mastery of the body. But the wife was not striving; she knew that the mind, soul, and heart of her husband had never been away from her. She understood the glandular warfare of his body, and that his lust had sprung to life in response to the lure of strange flesh. She looked at him with complete understanding and love.

The secretary stood there speechless. I said to her, “She knows all about it. She loves him and he loves her completely; he has never had any thought toward you except one of animal lust. You were never wanted except physically, and you are not wanted at all from now on. Do you understand?” I asked her to wait in the hall while I prayed with the couple. As I left, I saw the secretary dabbing at her eyes; I stopped and talked to her about her need of Jesus Christ.

John 8

¹Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

²And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

³And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

⁴They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

⁵Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

⁶This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

⁷So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

⁸And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

⁹And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

¹⁰When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

¹¹She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

¹²Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.