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Plainly Speaking
with Karl J. Forehand
Loyalty Lost
by Karl J. Forehand
You shall not commit adultery. (Exodus 20:14)
Tom Smith, of the National Opinion Research Center, says “There
are probably more scientifically worthless facts on extramarital relations
than any other facet of human behavior.”
In researching this message, I got buried in al the opinions and
surveys and statistics. My
conclusion: The reasons why people
commit adultery really don’ matter or come to any consensus. Most people who have committed the physical
act know that it is wrong – if they don’t then there are more serious
problems. Adultery is having sex with
someone other than your mate or before you are married; but it also involves
fantasy and lust. Jesus said:
You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not
commit adultery'; but I say to you,
that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery
with her already in his heart. (Matt.
5:27-28)
Adultery is very simply, misdirected affections. Sexual activity is reserved for our mate
alone. But, Jesus said that sexual thoughts
are also for our mate alone. I could
spend the next week condemning the physical act of adultery. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a terrible
thing. But, if sexual thoughts about
it are as bad as the act, then adultery is wide spread. There is a lot of adultery going on with
Ms. October and Dr What’s His Name on television. Maybe worse is our sexual imagination about people we associate
with every day.
The Hebrew word for adultery also carries the possible meaning
of “apostatize” which means to forsake one’s faith or principles. The problem is with loyalty. William Harley says, “With exclusivity
comes responsibility” and God’s plan is for exclusivity. He wants us to have one God and he wants us
to have one mate.
Adultery is betrayal, even in your mind. God demands a loyalty that says, “No
matter what happens around us or between us, there is no fear, doubt or hurt
that can make me turn away from you.”
To begin, let’s examine our lives today to see if there is
betray. But, let’s not start with our
mate – let us start with God. How
loyal are we to our God?
The first type of loyalty we must have is loyalty to
God. God often spoke of the
Israelites as adulterous because of their disloyalty to Him (Ezek
6:9). In this passage, adultery is
spoken of in light of the first two commandments (no other god, and don’t
worship idols). God continually asks
us to evaluate “Who is number one?”
Is He just number one on Sunday?
What does it take to get you to miss church?
What stops your daily devotions?
What makes you forget about God?
We betray the God we love for things like activities. Often our hobbies and our recreation steal
our loyalty. But just as prevalent is
over-obsession with work. God expects
us to be loyal to Him and not the latest thing that has caught our
fancy. In many ways it is exactly
like infidelity in marriage. We let
our guard down – something else presents itself to us – we wander off to
experiment.
If we are not loyal to
God, we can never hope to be loyal to people. After all, God is easy to love.
We must
also have loyalty to God’s Word.
Paul said, “Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard
from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells
in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.” (II Tim. 1:13-14). We have a responsibility of loyalty to the
Word that has been entrusted to us.
Ayn Rand
said, “Never before has the world been so desperately seeking answers to
crucial questions, and never has the world been so frantically committed to
the idea that no answers exist…to paraphrase, ‘Forgive us for we know not
what we are doing—and please don’t tell us.’”
You see,
it’s not that Scripture is hard to understand – rather, it is hard to
obey. Will Rogers said, “It’s not the
parts that I don’t understand that bother me.” Howard Hendricks said, “We know enough to own a Bible, but the
Bible doesn’t own us. “ God’s Word is
the inspired, inerrant, unchangeable answer to life’s problems, which
begins with the salvation of our souls.
We are
easily led astray by other books (even Christian books). We begin to listen to the experts. We watch television for the answers (even Christian
television does not necessarily have the answers). If God is number one, then what He says matters more than
anyone else. The other day, I had
an interesting dilemma. I actually
was faced with the prospect of throwing a Bible away. We were cleaning out the belongings of
someone and there were several old Bibles – I couldn’t do it. I thought of all the people, in various
parts of the world, who aren’t so blessed.
Worse than throwing one away is to have one on our shelf and not read
it – not study it – not apply it to our lives.
Are you
loyal to God’s Word?
We must
also have loyalty to God’s People.
We usually are fairly loyal to people, until we find out their
faults. Every relationship has
honeymoon stages to it. After we know
someone for a time, we find the things in them that make us say,
“ewwww.”
Churches experience this. Pastors get discouraged by their lousy
sheep. Congregations want to get rid
of pastors when they find out their shepherd isn’t perfect. Loyalty to your pastor means that you
have to be committed to going through some “stuff” together. You don’t have to be best friends, but you
have to be committed to each other and the ministry.
Most people have very few friends because of the
loyalty issue. The trouble with
friendship is that we want someone exactly like us with very few faults. It’s the same reason we don’t reach more
unbelievers – we give up too soon. We
sometimes want to treat our friends however we please, yet we demand they act
a certain way toward us. Loyalty
demands that we stick by our friends, even after we find their faults.
Of course, we must be loyal to our spouse. Being married means we give up the right
to even think about someone of the opposite sex in sexual way. Genesis 2:24 stresses that we are one
person; and forsaking our spouse is really forsaking a part of our selves
(even in our mind).
Are you loyal to God’s people?
Karl J. Forehand
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