The Anatomy of Adultery

Introduction Been meaning for some time to prepare a message on adultery and I've never quite gotten around to it, but I'm going to speak something this morning I've never spoken before. It's hardly a message, it's just reading some scripture and commenting as we go. The message that I'm thinking about it's not just expressly designed to speak about the evil of adultery as if it pertains only to adulterers, but something about the anatomy of adultery. Which the real word is “adulteration” - anything that's an admixture, anything that's not pure, any relationship or thing to which we are called to which we've allowed entry of the things and mix the things which are profane and the things which are holy. There are a lot of us who are adulterers who have never committed the act and who need to have the anatomy of adultery open to our understanding. For example in Hebrews, which is not my text this morning, don't turn, for just for a moment here, it has some really interesting words. We are told that we should follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled, lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright for you know how that afterward he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears . And I thought as I read that one time lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau and it really troubled me, because I didn't recall any reference to Esau ever having been a fornicator, but I think that there's a certain anatomy of fornication, there's a certain quintessence, there’s certain constituent elements of fornication or adultery to which many of us are guilty, although we've never committed the express act. I want you to turn to my real text for this morning and I want to pray before we begin to cross our hearts which are beginning to skip already. Right? Who knows what this madman is likely to speak? So let's just commit this to God, because we're on sensitive ground and we certainly need the careful guidance of His Spirit and a Spirit that will open our understanding. Let's not be offended of Him, let's hear what the Spirit speaks this morning. Opening Prayer So precious holy God, Lord have your wonderful way altogether. Shape, mold, perform the things that please The. Help us to have very attentive hearts and ears, oh they we might understand. Gracious God give us a vision of the enormous distance that separation that has subtly and day by day entered into our lives the admixture of things of which we've hardly been conscious that somehow is altogether conspired to rob us of our joy, our power, our peace, our light. Help us Lord to be a holy people, speak to us now by Your Spirit Lord and we'll thank and praise You for it and the wonderful name of Jesus. Amen. Background of the Message Will you turn with me to the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah. The Lord spoke to us recently that we should begin a very earnest searching of the Book of Isaiah and taking Him at His word. We began that and the Lord began to immediately to kindle something in my heart. And this will be the first opportunity this morning to share it with any congregation. The Lord gave Isaiah a vision. I'm a great believer in visions, without a vision that people perish and a vision is something very difficult to communicate it just doesn't lend itself to words. And it requires as much a creative leaning forward on the part of those who hear it as the one who projects it. So I'm going to ask you to exercise your spirits this morning and meet God halfway and read between the spiritual lines and try to catch the vision that the Lord wants to project. And when I know that this pertains to Israel who knows it better than I, a Jew and it's for that reason that my heart smarts over this. You know that there was a big conference at Emanuel Temple in New York City, which I guess would be the St. Patrick's Cathedral of Judaism and they had invited speakers from all of the spectrum of Judaism to speak on the contemporary problems of Judaism. And some men who had been led to the Lord through my ministry, who had been in the habit of attending that great Cathedral he said, “Art you ought to be a speaker there” and I said “I quite agree.” And so I wrote a letter to the Rabbi asking for participation. It was true that I didn't represent Orthodox Judaism or reformed Judaism or Conservative Judaism, but I represented Messianic Judaism and from my point of view I believe that that is the biblical Judaism of God. And I got back a very snotty reply. Excused my pollen and it was just to this the fact he said “since when the problems of Judaism consist of apostasy”, in other words “we don't need an apostate like you to tell us what the problems of Judaism are.” And so I wrote back a lengthy five page reply liberally quoting from the prophets of whom we're going to hear today to suggest “brother apostasy is not only the contemporary problem of Judaism, it is our long-standing problem, it is our chronic condition.” And I concluded this way I said “tell me please when is it ever that our apostasy was healed?” God says the things which befell Israel are written and given to us for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. It's a very painful way to learn a lesson that my people had to experience something the record of which is given to you for your edification. That you who are the wild branch grafted in should not be wise in your own conceits and fall even as the natural branch has fallen. Isaiah 1:2 - Hear! & Rebellious Children Isaiah 1:2 “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me.” I wonder why it is that God has to appeal to the heavens and the earth to hear Him? Perhaps it is that those who have natural ears have shut off their hearing. It's something like the cry of Jesus who said “if you'll not allow these Jewish children to worship Me, the very stones will cry out here.” Hear, O heavens and give ear O earth. God has to appeal to the very natural elements, because men themselves will not listen. I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me. And I suppose that ought to occasion a certain pang in the hearts of those who are in the congregation this morning who have brought up children and have experienced rebellion against themselves. It's becoming the acute manifestation of our age and didn't God warn us that in the last days perilous times will come and children would be disobedient to parents flaunting authority. And many of you have fastidiously cared for your children only to experience the kind of pain which God knows in far greater measure of having taken exquisite and painstaking concern to nourish and to bring up children only to see that they have rebelled against Him. Isaiah 1:3 - Israel does not know Isaiah 1:3 “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider.” The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib dumb brutes, but Israel does not know and what's even far worse my people do not consider. O people that I could just take my heart out before you and ring it, because we don't have the time and I don't have the ability to communicate you the things which perhaps I am uniquely afforded the opportunity to daily see and hear in my ministry to my own Jewish people: dumb indifference, insensitive lack of concern, a running helter skelter for every kind of substitute salvation, but that which was afforded us of God. Even yesterday right in this community a precious Jewish men who belongs to so many committees and is doing so many things in and obtaining Israel bonds and full of human virtue and goodness and ethical concern, but he does not consider he has no knowledge of God and he does not seek Him. Isaiah 1:4 - Corrupters Isaiah 1:4 “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.” Ah sinful nation of people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters that have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger they are gone away backward. And I've read these scriptures before but all of a sudden it dawned upon me they were not just people upon whom evil had fallen, but they were evil doers. And they were not ones who have simply corrupted, but they were corrupters. And I hope you'll not construe this as anti-semitism, but let's face facts, unfortunately instead of being a nation of priests and a light unto the world we are priests of a sort and lights of a sort and messengers of a sort, but were the AV Hoffman's, the Jerry Rubens, were the disseminators of violence and rebellion and obscenity, we're the masters of pornography and contemporary and roguish literature. We’re corrupters. I think with what God is trying to show us is that there's no neutral. You're either for Him or you're against Him. There's no such thing as a middle stance or posture that's respectable, ethical, moral. You're not just going to be corrupted if that's your place you're going to find yourself a corrupter. And that is the melancholy history of lsrael even to this day, because they have forsaken the Lord the Holy One of Israel they've gone away backward spurned and rejected and despised the Lord. Those are very strong words people and you know that it's interesting that while God describes that phenomenon in the same breath he describes that all their religious practices continue to flourish. And I don't think that we should be mindless about that and fail to understand the significance, because in the eleventh verse we read “what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices.” If Israel had not forsaken their sacrifices nearly, because they were apostate they had not abandoned their religious practices. In fact I think it's quite an irony that at the very height of apostasy religious practices are at their zenith. And I don't think it's any accident that in our own land. That religious attendances up, enrollments and synagogues, temples, and churches there seems to be almost a kind of Renaissance of religion, but lest we be wise and taken in our own conceit it's quite possible. In fact I believe that this is a pattern that, while religion flourishes in fact it provides a wonderful cover as apostasy flourishes. Isaiah 1:11- 14 - Heartless Service to God Isaiah 1:11 - 14 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. You know the interesting thing is? Everything which God has just condemned are the very things which He appointed for men to perform. These aren't things that were coined in the imagination of Jewish men who are trying to be religious, they were following the things which were prescribed of God. And He says that they are abhorrence to Him and He hates them, their vain oblations. Why do you tread my courts and trample in the holy place? That's a confusing thing isn't it? And I don't know that I have the answer to explain it. I only have a presentment in my Jewish heart that there is no greater offense to the holiness of God than to continue to perform the prescribed things when our own lives and conduct and speech and hearts contradict them. Imagine some men or some woman continuing to go about the outward forms of marriage, beautiful to put a nice supper before her husband nightly, dutiful to wash his dainty's and his socks and to hang his suit up and do all the kinds of things that pertain to domesticity, but her heart has done a whoring after other things. I tell you if I were the husband I would much rather eat gruel or a box of cornflakes and do my own wash than have a woman continue to mock me with the motions of matrimony whose heart has turned for me and to another. Oh that we could understand the grief and pain of a God who daily has to witness people in His name going through superficial motions of religion whose hearts have forsaken Him. Far better we made no pretense, far better we stopped our mouths and far better we recited no mechanical prayers and singing no dusty hymns than we should grieve a God in that way. I'd rather be a healthy atheist and knot my fists at a God whom I cannot understand than be some mealy-mouthed weasel playing at religion whose heart has gone after fornication after adultery. Isaiah 1:5,6 - A sick and wounded people Isaiah 1:5,6 “Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.” You know what the thing is people? That very condition can exist and yet there'll be no outward physical evidence. How do you like them apples? I just really like that this morning and looking over these scriptures, because I know that it's the exact condition of my people today and all of us who know Jewish people know. Is there are people more fine in outward appearance, is there are people more ethical, more moral, more cultured, more civil, more humane, more awarded by the world for all of these honorific things. And yet God says of them that from the sole of your foot even to your head there's no soundness in it you're full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that have not been closed up nor mollified with ointment. Because God sees not as man sees man looks on the outward parts, but God looks on the heart. And I tell you there are a lot of us who are not Jew who are yet ethical, moral, sensitive, humane, but as God sees us we're full of bruises, rents, tears, putrifying sores, that have not been bound up nor mollified with ointment. Oh to see as God sees and accept that God raised up a prophet that we might hear His cry how then shall we see. He says in the fifteenth verse. Isaiah 1:15-18 - God’s not listening & Getting past “if” Isaiah 1:15 “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” You see this isn't a people who have forsaken praying. They continue to pray, but they pray without effect, it becomes mere ceremony, empty, forsaken, there’s no power or answer from God. Isaiah 1:16-18 “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” And I can't help but note all of the tremendous words that speak to our will and I tell you people that when it comes to theology I'm a bumpkin and I wouldn't begin to express any kind of theological understanding. I'm just a simple man and I don't know the arguments that are Calvinistic or whatever, but it seems to me quite evident that we have an enormous responsibility before God. There are things that are incumbent upon us to do and from my own experience and the places to which God brings me. I hear a lot of people say “well I can't”, what they really mean is “I won't” they mean I can't without a measure of pain. And isn't it fantastic how sophisticated we can be in so many areas and precise in our speech and in our vocations and professions, but when it comes to things which are spiritual all of a sudden we become like babbling infants. It's not that we cannot, it is rather that we will not be because we're unwilling to come to that place of obedience which invariably will bring us to sacrifice and suffering and death. Wash you make you clean you put away the evils of your doings cease to do evil learn to do well relieve judge, come now, praise the Lord. I'm so glad He's not an academic God who just titillates us with a little message on Sunday, but he's the God of now. Come now! Get with it. The time is shortened. I'm not speaking to titillate your ears. Have your eyes open to understand what your responsibility is. Be stir yourself, it's not enough to occupy a pew, it's not enough to go through the motions. It's a God who says that without holiness you shall not see the Lord and no fornicators nor profane person like Esau need think that he can inherit the kingdom of God. If you'd be willing, but you love those “ifs”, “if” little two letter word, my God what a fantastic mammoth obstacle “if”. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature and countless tens of thousands for whom the Bible is a dead book prayer a sweaty exercise and witness a pure flight of agony have to live and suffer these terrible things, because they've never come through that “if”. They take themselves Christians as condescended to accept the Lord is that the language we use today. They've signed up and they're in membership with a certain church of the denomination, but they've never passed through the great “if”. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things have passed away all things have been made new. Maybe that's why it is that you need so desperately hear, I say you I don't mean this particular congregation, I mean Christendom from Jewish men who were enemies of God and had enmity with Him, but who were so powerfully crashed into the kingdom of God that they know what it means to be in Christ. I tell you that if I am not in Christ right now my knees would be knocking. Where does a man come to presume to speak in a way like this? It's only because I have a perfect confidence that it's not a man speaking that I dare lend my voice to what's coming forth. This is what it means to be in Christ. Isaiah 1:19-21 - Faithful to Harlotry Isaiah 1:19,20 “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” And we know the tragic history of Israel when God speaks He means it. Isaiah 1:21 “How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.” I don't know about eternal security and other things which you may believe, but as I read that verse God describes the city which at one time was faithful a city that was filled with justice and with righteousness. Righteousness larged in it, but now murderers. How is it possible to go from that high lofty pure state and swing to the other end of the spectrum and find yourself debased and utterly fallen in the worst work of the flesh that's listed in Galatians. Murder. I tell you if it happened to Israel it is possible it might happen also to us. Is it possible that we might be murderers already not having committed the act, but lending ourselves only to willingly not to obedience, but through anger, resentment, bitterness, unloving spirits. And here's my key verse. I have even come to it yet. Are you patient with me this morning? Isaiah 1:22 - Precious Silver - Character of Christ Isaiah 1:22 “Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water” One little precious verse and I began to do little homework about dross and about silver. Well we know that silver is a precious metal, it's the symbol of righteousness, it's lustrous, and it's white and we know also that it's malleable, it can be fashioned rather easily into different shapes and forms. It's easily molded, it's susceptible, and I tell you once that you've been made into silver by the righteousness of God you are more susceptible to be shaped and to be conformed than you were before you knew Him. You're going to be shaped and conformed to the image of His Son or you're going to find yourself more malleable and more easily conformed to the spirit of this world. Before you came into the dimension of the Spirit it could not touch you, but once you're in it I believe that you're more susceptible to the kinds of spirits that are loose in the world that's the very nature and character of silver itself. What else do we learn about it? It's ductile. That means that silver is a carrier and every engineer and electrician knows that silver is a prime metal for the conducting of electricity, it's a carrier. And I want to suggest to you today that silver can be a carrier for either good or for evil. And I'm just going to quickly turn to second Peter where that spiritual principle is made very clear. In the second chapter in 20th verse (2 Peter 2:20) 2 Peter 2:20,21 “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them” Never to have become silver. Silver is a carrier for good or for evil. It's ductile. It's liable to tarnish when exposed to the air to the atmosphere and especially to sulphur. Buffing Process It needs therefore continuously to be polished which is only another word for being buffeted. And I wonder how many of you are conscious of that process of God's working in your life. I tell you I am buffeted daily and I wonder often the kinds of things to which I'm subjected at the hand of the Lord. Excruciating things and trying things, but I know that except that I submit to that buffeting how then shall I luster forth for the Lord. Isn't interesting how God could give us profound sermons over mundane and Picayune things. We bought a used Volvo and I wanted to polish it. And I'm an old-fashioned guy and I really wanted to do a job and not just put a little thin coat of wax over it. I bought a blue collar cleaner, which I think is the toughest thing to polish a car with on the market, but oh oh what a job it does. And my brother Paul had an electric polisher we poured that stuff on and he began with that thing and I was disappointed nothing was really happening. There just wasn't enough power in that electric machine to do the job and I had to face up with it. It was going to take pure unadulterated elbow grease and so I just rolled up my sleeves. And I went to it and I did a patch at a time and I rubbed that sucker back and forth and the grime was coming out and that luster was beginning to break forth and I stood back like an artist looking at his easel and I appreciated my work. I enjoyed it. I'm an old fashioned depression baby and I want to see the fruit of labor. I like real luster and then I turned to another panel and I began to work on it. And inadvertently my head was turning back to the first panel and I would turn back and turn back and finally threw my rag down. I had to come back to that first panel. It wasn't good enough. I tell you it was heads and shoulders above the shine and sheen of most cars, but it was not yet perfect and I knew it. And there's where I took one more swipe and I poured that stuff out on that panel. And I went to work on it once more that cloth and I buffed it and I wasn't at it for more than one or two minutes when all of a sudden my cloth just began to slide over the surface of that hood. We had arrived. In the last filth and grime which had been insinuated into that pigment, because it had been exposed to the air since 1969 finally was loose. And that rag just slid over that thing and such a luster broke forth as would dazzle the eye. I've got a certain sense about my Jewish God that He is not the God of the second-best. He is not the God of mediocrity. He's a perfect and holy God who says “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”, “be holy as I am holy.” And a lot of us have a thin coat of wax over a lot of grime and it's suffices for the world and it enables us to quote-unquote get by, but we've not yet lusted and shone for the silver that we are that the eyes of the world might be dazzled. Oh precious people are we willing to subject ourselves to the buffetings of a Living God. You can see how gracious and loving He is because for some of us today the buffeting has begun. You know what dross is? When the Lord says thy silver's become as dross. It's that scum, it's that residue and waste that always attends to the making of silver. It's part and parcel, it's got to be, but it doesn't have to remain and it doesn't have to swallow up the precious stuff itself. But I'll tell you what it takes to remove this scum and to remove the dross it takes effort, it takes diligence, it takes an act, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it proceed the issues of life. And I'm amazed continually how diligent we are in every other area of our life: our professions, our business, our properties and our dealings. My. My. How we minutely examine every line, but when it comes to the thing which we are vessels in the house of God. Silver. There we're strip shots forgetful. We neglect to be diligent with the precious thing which has been afforded to us. My brother Paul was an engineer and has left it to serve the Lord with all this heart. Told me, because I don't know a thing about science that, although silver is a great transmitter that when silver is tarnished that it's less effective either than more base metals to transmit the current. Put that in your spiritual pipes and smoke it. We're less capable of transmitting the precious things of God than even base metals. Mixture of Wine with Water And God doesn't just end with thy silver's become dross, thy wine is mixed with water. And I thought Lord, why is that? Why a man willing to mix their wine with water? It's because they have an inadequate supply and they have to complement that by diluting it. And I think we'd Jews are more familiar with wine than you fundamentalist. And I tell you that if you've never tasted it, there's something about wine, which is very special which I don't think is in any way a haphazard. The Lord did it. There's a certain savour, there's a certain bouquet, there's a certain body. We speak about rolling wine on our tongues. You can just lift it to your nose and something exhilarating even begins to penetrate your nostrils. There's no wonder that the Jews equate wine with life, we raise the glass and we say “lehayim” to life. It's the symbol of life, its effervescent, it bubbles, its spirited. Oh Oh pitiful thing that. That such substances is that as ever to be mixed with water to be diluted and admixture. And what about our civilization? Aren't we eminently the adulterous civilization. The fruitcake civilization, Dagwood Bumstead sandwiches, every kind of mixture that human ingenuity can conceive we not only do it, but we relish it. Well I can remember only just a few years back you didn't dream of mixing certain colors like blue and green. Everybody understood your certain laws that are not to be violated and now it seems that we raised up a generation of designers and people of cunning artifice who have taken all of the things which were sacrosanct and not to be violated. And in them they've exploited them and delight themselves in them and has given us every kind of uncanny and berserk combination. You name it, in color and in food. We love to mix mix mix but there was a God who said that we should not mix wool and linen. There's a God who said we should not mix the various seeds with the vineyard. There's a God who said that women should not dress as men and that it's a shame for a man to have long hair. There’s a God who made us male and female, but we've been mixing, mixing, mixing. And I tell you very often you have to study a person for some minutes because before you've determined what their sex actually is. We've come a long way from the holiness of God a long way and those of you whose hair is as short as - morning don't sit there smugly it's because you've been permissive, you've been so tolerant, so nice, you've not raised the voice in protest. You've not heard nor expressed the cry of God at that subtle mixing that's been going on in our civilization life. Yay verily even under your own roofs that we're beginning to reap the kind of harvest that we are. Homosexuality, it's not such a bad thing after all. Listen we should be tolerant and I have a Christian attitude toward homosexuals and after all doesn't hurt anybody. We're coming into that really permissive spirit of the age, anything goes. Any combination, any admixture, our silver becomes dross and our wine is mixed, who loves us. Isaiah 1:25 - Tin saints Isaiah 1:25 “And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin” Because in the 25th verse read. Thank you Lord I've been waiting for that tin to go, because I can't think of any greater abomination than a tin saint. And you know what tin is? It's a cheap counterfeit substitute for silver. It looks like silver. It's white. It lends itself to a shine, but it's much softer, it's not the real thing. There are a lot of us today in Christendom who are tin saints. Tin is used for plating, we're thinly plated over outwardly, but inwardly we're something else again. We're not pure silver and if the Lord threw down our coin it would not ring true it would bend and buckle and crack and reveal the justice in plated coating which we too often unfortunately are.

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The Anatomy of Adultery

Art Katz

Art Katz (1929 – 2007)

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