7th Commandment: Do Not Commit Adultery

We are at word seven of the Ten Commandments, which is don't commit adultery. Two words in Hebrew, lo tin af, from the Hebrew root is na'af. What it means is to have sex with someone that is in a marriage covenant with another person. And then it raises a question of why? Does that matter? Yeah. So Genesis 1 verse 27, God created Adam, human, in his image. In the image of God he, that is God, created him, that is humanity. Male and female he created them. The phrase image of God has gotten swapped out for male and female. So one of the ways humans image God is that we are different but yet also one. The second story that really focuses on this is then in the Eden narrative where you have a singular human, Adam, but then when God puts the human in the garden to work it and to keep it, God says it is not good for the Adam to be alone. So what God says is I will make a ezer k'nekdo. So the word ezer means the one who brings about deliverance from the bad situation. So rescuer. And the phrase k'nekdo means corresponding to. So a delivering ally that matches but not matches by being identical, matches by being precisely different. So God becomes an anesthesiologist, knocks the human out, puts Adam to sleep with a deep sleep, and takes one of his sides. The one becomes two. And when the human wakes up and he sees, he's like oh my goodness this is bone of my bone, flesh in my flesh, this one shall be called Isha woman because she was taken from Ish, man. And then the narrator steps in in Genesis 2 24 and says okay dear reader, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and mother and then joins, literally clings, grabs on to his wife and they become one flesh. The two will become one flesh. One flesh is a way of talking about a family bond. Okay. Something really special, important that God's behind. It is also interesting that marriage is one of the main metaphors to talk about God's covenant with Israel. Right. This has to be why the Apostle Paul sees sex and marriage as having cosmic implications. Most famously is in his letter to the Ephesians where he says husbands are to love their wives because when they love their wives they love their own bodies. He's for sure meditating on the one flesh, the Eden narrative, that the two are one. And then he starts talking about the Messiah and the church. The Messiah

loves the church. Yeah. And you're like what? And he says this is a great mystery. Now just clarify, the mystery I'm talking about? Yeah, explain this mystery to me. Well Paul says that when he reads in Genesis about the two, the man and the woman becoming one, that it's ultimately a picture of Jesus and his people. That is God and humanity becoming one. Okay, so that's what human marriage is meant to symbolize. Apparently, yes. Yeah, marriage is a picture of God's relentless love and loyal pursuit to become one with his human creatures, with his partners. It's remarkable. Yeah. Okay, flip over, don't commit adultery. If you see a married couple in your community, their marriage is the most important context where they're learning to become fully loving human beings towards each other. Protect that, help them, honor that. Yeah. That's where they're working it out. And of course, I guess we're not saying in all your other relationships and then love doesn't matter. Exactly, yeah. But there's this focusing. There's this focusing in a marriage covenant that is unique, significant, it's difficult. Don't shatter the marriage of another couple because of your sexual desire. Don't commit adultery.