Spiritual Adultery
RO78-02

In Romans 6:18, the apostle Paul has declared that Christians are no longer slaves of the old sin nature, but are now enslaved to God's righteousness. In this one verse, we see that there are two lifestyles here on planet earth. And everybody is engaged in one lifestyle or the other: enslavement to the sin nature; or, enslavement to divine righteousness.

In contrast to the Christians that Paul is describing here in verse 18, the unbeliever is a total slave to his sin nature. In his finest hour, the unbeliever is a slave to the sin nature.

In any given society, people are of one type or the other. And whichever type predominates in a society sets the tenor of the national character. In our society today, our national character is determined by the fact that most Americans are slaves of sin nature. Consequently, the institutions of our society, and the functioning of our society, are in that same tradition of enslavement to the sin nature.

When most people of a nation are slaves to the sin nature, then evil predominates in the form of sins and of human good activities. These are the accepted norm. And if you do not pursue a life of sin, and a life of human good, then you are considered a strange oddball type of person. Sex degenerates in this kind of a society to a barnyard animal relationship. No one has to look very far to see that sex in the United States is a barnyard animal relationship. And not only is it that, but that is strongly promoted as being the normative expression.

People become coarse in speech and actions when the majority are slaves of the sin nature. It is no secret that coarseness predominates. It is amazing what people will say. It is amazing to me what I hear young people sometimes say (even Christian kids say them) – the cracks and the remarks they will make that are coarse. And instead of embarrassing them, they have become acclimated to a society that is dominated by the sin nature. So, what is coarse and ugly is not so offensive to them that they simply would have nothing to do with it.

Personal honor and integrity becomes merely a pretense to cover deceit. There is again a front of honor. There is a front of integrity, but it is just usually to cover some personal deceit. The kingdom of man is promoted in opposition to the kingdom of God, and life becomes ugly and embarrassing for those with kingdom-of-God sensitivities. The kingdom of man is what we are building in this nation without any apologies whatsoever.

American society, in the last quarter of the 20th century, has to all practical effects, divorced itself from the God of the Bible and the authority of Scripture, and that's where the problem lies. So, American society increasingly is demonstrating, because of this viewpoint, its enslavement to the evils of the old sin nature. Americans try to cover up their rebellion against God with a variety of religious expressions. And nobody can deny that we have lots of religion in our society today, but these religions, even those who claim to be based on the Bible, are in fact, merely the consensus again of what human viewpoint man thinks. The religions themselves are human viewpoint expressions, and they are expressions of the sin nature, and they have no relationship to reality whatsoever. So, we have religion, which, again, is detached from the reality of the God who is there and Who has spoken to us. This enslavement is gradually resulting in the loss of personal freedom; in the retreat from national greatness; and, in the dehumanization of the American people.

Evolutionary Humanism

Materialism

No Hope

No Value on Human Life

Make no mistake about it that that is the viewpoint of this country. The result of this thinking has been a steady descent downward into repulsive practices which are tolerated and dignified by American society today. The institutions of our society have actually become instruments of degeneration of the people.

We've looked in our previous sessions at a variety of those in a number of ways that that is being expressed in our previous sessions. All of them are reducing man to the inhuman. Government recognizes this problem, and government regularly tries to do something that it was never designed by God to do, to try to stop this suffering, and to try to stop the evils which are resulting from the fact that man has cut himself off from God and from the revelation of Scripture.

Enslavement to the sin nature, inwardly, however, is increasingly expressed outwardly by one factor that is becoming more and more evident. And that is that, as we lose personal freedom, we become ruled by an elite group (ruled by elitists). And that is what has happened in this country today. Oh, we still talk about government for the people, by the people, etc., but we don't have that basically. There are certain powerful, important, all-controlling people who govern what happens to the people of this country. And it is the direct result of the fact that we have abandoned our Reformation Christian heritage that placed freedom in the hands of the individual citizen.

Abortion

Yet, interestingly enough, society bemoans the consequences of abortion, and the debasing of human life in the child abuse syndrome, which has developed considerably, in a precipitous way, since abortion was legalized. The child is not important before he's born, and he's not all that important after he's born.

This ultimate enslavement is evident everywhere. And the final enslavement is the one we're coming to today – the final enslavement to the sin nature which has historically been evident in societies, when you finally get down to the lowest level of enslavement to the sin nature. And remember that even pagan societies began with high ideals. As you study ancient history, you'll find that societies that were powerful, strong, prosperous, effective societies had biblical concepts. They picked it up from the fact that this drained down (this filtered down) from the fact that man once had a great knowledge of God. And great nations arose, and great rulers arose.

Sexual Immorality

We have pointed out that God's holy character has determined that sex is legitimate only within monogamous heterosexual marriage – one man to one woman for life. It is never any other way, and it has never been any other way. This was, from the very beginning, with Adam and Eve. It was monogamous heterosexual marriage.

Illicit

Infidelity

Reality is only what is compatible with the character of God. And unfaithfulness is not compatible with the character of God. And this is what God is going to judge. Everything in the universe, which is incompatible with the character of God, and with His essence, in time, is going to be judged. That's what the millennium is going to do. It's going to funnel everything back toward the channel of being compatible with the character of God, and it won't do it all the way. And finally, after the final judgment of the unsaved, and of Satan, and the demonic angels, and the final closing up of hell with all these created beings, then we'll begin eternity, and everything will be right back in perfect alignment with God. You yourself will never deviate a shadow's degree from the character of God. That is what God is driving toward. That is what Christians are aspiring for now.

Sexual immorality violates that, and it is very serious with God. It also violates and undermines the divine institution number two of marriage, which is for the preservation of the human race during the era of the angelic conflict. Therefore, it's a serious matter on that account. Anytime you undermine a divine institution, it's a very serious matter. God is no fool, and He does not have to play around with anybody at all, and tolerate any human being's rejection of how He has set the world to work. And He's not going to take any nation, no matter what its heritage has been, that's going to undermine the protection of the human race. That's what Satan has been out to destroy, and God's not going to let it happen. And He's going to preserve these divine institutions.

So, the divine institution marriage is going to be protected. Illicit sex is also a problem because it disrupts the normal way that man was created to function. This is the only normal way that a human being was created to function – monogamous heterosexual marriage. And if you do not operate that way, you interject physical and emotional disruptions of intense and various kinds that we won't go into today.

Jesus Christ and the Church

So, violations of biblical sexual standards are today treated in American society as perfectly acceptable, and that these are perfectly normative. It is hard, as a matter of fact (I want to warn you as Christians), not to lose sight of the heinousness of sexual sin in the sight of God. It is very hard for you, as a Christian, not to lose sight of this, because we have this double-barreled condoning of sexual evils on the part of American society, and on the part of our sin nature. Your sin nature tells you that sexual morality is all right. It's not all that bad. Our society certainly tells you it's all right, and that it's not all that bad. And the problem is to keep your divine viewpoint perspective on this thing.

Keep a Biblical Perspective

I'm talking about a prolonged social relationship. I'm not talking about you coming to them and saying, "I want to tell you about God," or "I want to tell you about salvation. I'm talking about you falling into relationships of business; falling into relationships of marriage; and, falling into relationships of one kind and another that are going to contaminate your outlook toward God's viewpoint. You have to be very careful about the fact that you get acclimated to what is wrong – to what is evil. And every time you watch television, you're constantly being told things on television that are wrong, just in the very programs you see. If you as a young person, do not find yourself just recoiling within yourself over something that you've seen portrayed, or something you've heard on television, then you better start worrying about yourself. And you better turn the television off, because there are some things constantly coming through to which your mind to say, "That's wrong, and I condemn that, and I reject that.

When you associate with other people (kids at school, or your adults at work), and you hear them say something that you know violates the Bible, you say, "That's wrong." Don't ever be conned by the idea that this is just what churches talk about; that this is old-fashioned; or, that this is outdated. You have to make your decision on the very thing we're talking about. We've been trying to show you that enslavement to the sin nature begins with the idea that there is no God out there who has brought it all about, and this God has not told us anything in order to guide us. Now either that is true: He is there, and He has spoken; or else, it is not true. But if it's true, then don't act as if these people that you associate with are smarter and superior to God, and smarter and superior to His revelation. Don't let yourself get used to what is evil.

I'm not talking about loathsome evil. I'm talking about nice evil and good evil – the evil of good works. That is the hardest thing for you not to permit yourself to get used to. It's a constant hazard in the Christian life – getting acclimated to the pool of evil through which you and I have to make our way every day.

Spiritual Adultery

God views the matter of physical adultery very seriously. And if you are a Christian and engaged in that, you will be disciplined very seriously, and maybe even destroyed. But if you are guilty of spiritual adultery, then you have compounded your problem about 100 times. I can tell you that there is an infinite degree of seriousness on spiritual adultery greater than upon physical adultery.

You can think of some great personalities of the Bible who were guilty of physical adultery, which God dealt with and straightened out the problem. And they went on to some of their finest hours in Christian work and Christian service – in some of their finest moments of serving God. But you look at people in the Bible who have been guilty of spiritual adultery, and there was no place to go with them but destruction. And the rage and the anger of God was a thousandfold greater than toward physical adultery.

So, right away, what have we come to? Well, here we have the Bible again. The Bible suddenly becomes a very serious book. You thought that your body was a very serious matter. God says, "It's serious, but what you do with the Bible and its contents is a whole lot more serious with Me than what you do with your body. If you violate what is within the contents of Scripture, there is no tomorrow. There is no return." If you violate God's standards with your body, and generally there's a tomorrow, and there's a return, but not with spiritual adultery.

Let's take a look at this. Grab your Bible. Start with the book of Exodus. What does God think about spiritual adultery? Exodus 34:12-15: "Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you go, lets it be for a snare in your midst." The Jewish people have come into the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan is filled with physical adultery. The land of Canaan is filled with human viewpoint concepts toward God:

"But You shall destroy their altars; break their images; and, cut down their idols (their places of worship). For you shall worship No other God, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God; lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods, and do sacrifice until their gods, and one call you, and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters unto your sons, and their daughters play the harlot with their gods, and make these sons play the harlot with their gods. You shall make no melted gods."

You will notice in this passage that what God is warning these people about is: "Do not have an accommodation (a relationship) with the people of Canaan. These are evil people. If you enter into social relationships with them, you will very easily step over into religious relationships with them. Your social relationships with them will include marriage, and it will include their practices of immorality (sexual immorality). This was part of their worship practices. You will enter into their religious experience with sexual morality, and when you have done that, you have violated My Word; you have violated My character; and, you have now entered spiritual adultery. The sexual adultery was bad, but where it led for you, into spiritual adultery, is infinitely worse. And for that I will destroy you."

So, right off the bat, God tried to make it clear to the people of Israel that sexual immorality very, very easily leads to spiritual immorality.

Leviticus 20:5-6: "Then I will set My face against that man and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that play the harlot after him, to commit harlotry with Molech, from among their people, and the soul that turns after such, as have familiar spirits, and after wizards to play the harlot after them. I will even set My face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people."

Buddha

Molech

You might say, "The people of Israel stood there, and they heard God talking to Moses." That was one of the great things that Israel said: "We heard God speak from heaven." This is the same gang. And you might say, "Whatever possessed you? Have you forgotten all that? Have you forgotten the Red Sea? Have you forgotten the 40 years of the manna? Have you forgotten your clothes on your back never getting old for the 40 years you wondered? Have you forgotten this God who took care of you and manifested Himself? What is wrong with you?"

That is where you come when you forget that God has spoken in the Word of God. That is where you come when you are willing to violate what He has said about sexual morality. From sexual immorality, you go to spiritual immorality. From sexual adultery, you go to spiritual adultery. It follows as night follow day.

Is it any wonder that our country today is one mass of spiritual adultery? That's because we have become a mass of sexual adultery.

Judges 2:17: "And yet they would not hearken onto their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed themselves onto them. They turned quickly out of the way, which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord, but they did not so." Here are the children now. The parents were guilty of sexual immorality, and thus of spiritual immorality in time. Now here are their children. And look at the strong language that God uses. Here their descendants would not hearken unto their judges – to their spiritual leader – to their pastor-teachers (to their teachers): "But they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed themselves onto them."

That, in the Hebrew, describes the position of normal sex: "Bowed themselves unto them." And here you have the picture of God's people in a sexual relationship with the heathen gods (spiritual adultery). And they turned from the ways of their fathers (which were the ways of Scripture) in obeying the commandments of the Lord. They did not do so." They did not obey Bible doctrine. They went from physical adultery to spiritual adultery to violations of the principles of the Word of God. Don't kid yourself that God does not think that spiritual adultery is infinitely worse than physical adultery, though that is bad enough.

Move ahead through the Old Testament to Psalms 73:27: "For lo, they that are far from You shall perish. You have destroyed all those who play the harlot departing from You." Here, in so many words, the psalmist says, "Those who play the harlot in departing from You." This this is talking about spiritual adultery – adultery in departing from God, and from faithfulness to God. And remember that Israel was in the relationship to God as His wife. Jehovah God called Israel his wife. Here she is departing from her true husband to these false gods. And what's the future? "Lo, they that are far from You shall perish. You have destroyed all those who are guilty of spiritual adultery."

Do you see why we say that the bottom line for the nation is spiritual adultery? But inevitably, physical adultery leads to spiritual adultery.

Move on to the great prophet of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 3:1: "'They say if a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and shall become another man's, shall he returned unto her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again to Me,' said the Lord." If you left the husband by divorce, and married another man, and then that man died, or you left him, you could not go back to the first husband under the Old Testament theocracy. That was a polluting of the land. Yet God says, "What have you my people done? You played the harlot with many lovers and with many false gods. You've gone from one to the other.

Jeremiah 3:6: "And the Lord said unto me, in the days of Josiah the King: 'Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up upon every high mountain, and under every green tree, and there have played the harlot." These high groves were the place of sexual immorality in the worship of gods. So, here you have, again, physical immorality expressing spiritual immorality.

Jeremiah 3:9: "And it came to pass, through the lightness of her harlotry, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with trees." Do I have to explain that Scripture to you? Some of you are getting to look a little traumatic. This is how debased the people of Israel became, such that they performed their sexual immorality with material objects. And if you know what's going on in American society today, that's the coming and the upbeat thing. Israel doesn't have an exclusive call upon that (enslavement to the sin nature).

Let's move on to the next prophet. Ezekiel 6:9: "And they that escape of you shall remember Me among the nations, to which they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their adulterous heart." Did you know you could make God sad? Here is an Old Testament expression of God's sadness over what is done to Him. It is the sadness of a husband who has found that His wife has been unfaithful: "Because I'm broken with their adulterous heart, which has departed from Me, and with their eyes which play the harlot with their idols. And they shall loathe themselves for the evil which they have committed in all their abominations." God Himself is grieved with spiritual adultery.

Ezekiel 16:30: "'How weak is your heart,' says the Lord God, 'seeing that you do us all these things?' (You do) the work of an imperious harlot, in that you build your eminent place in the head of every way (that is, her brothels), and make your high place in every street (houses of prostitution), and has not been as a harlot in that you scorn higher, but like a wife that commits adultery, who takes strangers instead of her husband." Here, the prophet is describing how degraded Israel has become in her spiritual adultery – as degraded as a wife who doesn't even have, the prophet says, the self-respect that a prostitute has to sell her services. Here is a wife who has degenerated to such a position that she gives it away without even charging.

Turn to the prophet Isaiah 4:12: "My people ask council of their idols, and their staff declare unto them. For the spirit of harlot has caused them to err, and they have played the harlot, departing from under their God." And there you have again that expression "from under their God" – that expression connoting the normal position of normal sex.

Hosea 4:13: "They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow of them is good. Therefore, your daughters shall commit harlotry, and your spouses shall commit harlotry." Remember that a generation of spiritual adultery is always followed in the next generation by physical adultery. Why is it that physical adultery is so prominent in America today? Because the parents of these people were guilty of spiritual adultery. Spiritual adultery always leads to physical adultery, as physical adultery enhances, or leads to, spiritual adultery, if you haven't already gotten there.

Degradation

Let's go to the end of the Bible to tie it up. And please remember that we're talking about the expression of enslavement of the sin nature. And what we are talking about is what (thank God) you and I have been freed from. We're no longer slaves to this sort of thing. Now we can enslave ourselves, and we can act like we're that sort of thing and receive divine discipline. But we are not that kind of helpless slave. But your average American citizen is. Revelation 17:1-5: "And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, and talked with me, saying unto me, 'Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great harlot that sits upon many waters." This is the final world church. The harlot here is the world church, based probably upon the Roman Catholic Church, and incorporating liberal Christendom.

"With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication." This is spiritual fornication: So, he carried me away into the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. Upon her forehead was a name written: 'Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.'"

You and I have studied enough about the ancient Babylonian mystery religious cult to know what their practices are. We've been studying that in our series in Revelation, and all of that system of sexual immorality and of spiritual immorality that was incorporated in the Babylonian mystery cults was simply absorbed into what is today the Roman Catholic Church, and will be expressed out in the tribulation in that ultimate church organization of the antichrist world.

Spiritual adultery, then, is an enslavement to the sin nature. It's a very serious matter then, isn't it, that there's such widespread indifference today to the preaching of doctrine and to expository teaching? The charismatic religious experience, minus doctrinal content, is the norm. Emotional domination of the soul is equated with walking with God. Spiritual adultery, you see, is far worse than physical adultery. But this spiritual adultery is the product of liberal theology – when humanism was substituted for divine revelation, and when a god that didn't exist was created to replace the God who is actually there, a god of the liberal theologian's imagination for the God who actually was revealed in Scripture. Rebellion against God resulted in complete enslavement to the sin nature.

You can use polite terminology if you want. You can use sophisticated good manners, but you cannot dignify the playboy philosophy of spiritual adultery that permeates this land. Our country has sacrificed itself to Satan because it is the slave of sin. Our country has become the parents who are offering their children to the god Molech just as much as Israel of old did. Every drug trip; every act of illicit sex; every abortion; every act of terrorism; and every abuse of a child – never forget that these are connected ultimately with this spiritual adultery.

The United States Today

However, God says, "Yes, you have. And because you have, and because you have descended to the enslavement of sexual immorality with its consequent expression of spiritual immorality, I will destroy you." The time will come to the United States, indeed, will remember the splendid opportunity of its heritage, and it will look back and say, "Whatever possessed us to turn our backs upon it; to abandon that God; to abandon Scripture; to belittle doctrine; to abandon the expository preacher; and, to turn to these people who are giving us inspiration and challenge, and who are undermining the Word of God itself, and telling us that the Bible is not the book that it claims to be.

Enslavement to God's righteousness is our natural element. And it should be the ground of monumental joy for you, and of monumental fulfillment. Every one of these loathsome pictures we've looked at today doesn't have to touch you at all. Anyone outside the family of God is in the grips of that picture. That's what Paul means. I hope you have a lot more appreciation for this verse. When he says, "Being then made free from sin" (from enslavement to the sin nature, he means), you became the slaves of the righteousness of God.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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