Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1748
September 20, 2026
Deuteronomy 5.18 Click here for audio recording of worship.
Dr. Ed Pettus
(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)
“Seventh Commandment – What is Forbidden”
“And you shall not commit adultery.”
What is Forbidden:
- All Unnatural Desires
The first thing to be said about what the Seventh Commandment forbids is it forbids failing to do what is required. I take it that is obvious and goes without saying. But the Larger Catechism says it so I thought I should too! We looked last Sunday at the main thought of purity. We are required to have purity in sexuality, purity in life, and purity with and in Christ. If we fail in any of these areas of purity we have broken the Seventh Commandment. We are encouraged all through the Scriptures to do what is required of the Commandments by keeping our focus on God’ s Word. One passage that exhorts obedience to God’s Word is Proverbs 4.20-27, 20My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. 22For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. 23Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. 24Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. 25Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. 26Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. 27Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.
Before we get into any further matters on the Seventh Commandment, let’s take a moment to examine Proverbs 4. Notice the commands toward God’s Word: be attentive, incline your ear, do not let them escape your sight, keep them in your heart. And why should we do this? For they are life! Healing for the flesh, and from God’s Commandments and His wisdom flow the springs of life. You see, keeping God’s Word not only keeps us from going too far right or too far left, but it also opens the springs of life to those around us. One of the best devotional books you might ever read is My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. In the August 30 devotional thought he writes,
Jesus Christ says, in effect, don't rejoice in successful service, but rejoice because you are rightly related to Me. The snare in Christian work is to rejoice in successful service, to rejoice in the fact that God has used you. You never can measure what God will do through you if you are rightly related to Jesus Christ. Keep your relationship right with Him, then whatever circumstances you are in, and whoever you meet day by day, He is pouring rivers of living water through you, and it is of His mercy that He does not let you know it. When once you are rightly related to God by salvation and sanctification, remember that wherever you are, you are put there by God; and by the reaction of your life on the circumstances around you, you will fulfill God's purpose, as long as you keep in the light as God is in the light.
Proverbs 4 speaks of the spring of life and Chambers relates how keeping our relationship right with Jesus means He will be pouring out living water through us. And most important, we will not even be aware of it. It was Jesus who said, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love” (John 15.10). Keeping Commandment is for the good of our lives and the lives of others as God pours out living water through us.
Okay, that is enough introduction! What is forbidden in the Seventh Commandment are all unnatural desires of the heart. Romans 1 has been quoted quite a bit over the last few years because of all the unnatural desires that have been manifested in our culture in those years. But we also recognize that these unnatural desires in our time are not unique to our time. The Word of God has dealt with these unnatural desires since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden. All the stories where sin is punished are primarily due to unnatural desires. The flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, all these dealt with sexual sins related to the Seventh Commandment. In Romans 1 Paul summarizes a particular era but it could reflect any time in history:
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
The sinful lusts of the heart led God to leave them to their own impurity and dishonorable passions. One wonders if that is not the case today. Has God given people over to their own foolishness? In the letter of James we see the difference between those who live steadfast in God’s way and those who lured and enticed by their own desires,
James 1.12-15, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Jesus reminds us that the Seventh Commandment goes deeper than we might have thought as it condemns even our intent. Matthew 5.27-28, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” And Jesus says later in Matthew 15.19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” In essence Jesus is marking the cause of breaking all the Commandments. It starts in our hearts. The unnatural desires lure people into temptation and it gives birth to sin and death.
- All Unnatural Activities
The Seventh Commandment forbids unnatural desires and forbids unnatural activities or actions. Adultery would be number one by virtue of the obvious meaning of the Commandment. Fornication, sex outside of marriage, and any other sexual actions are forbidden. Now, to keep us away from any thoughts in that direction, we are also forbidden to speak about or listen to or view anything sexually immoral. Paul writes in Ephesians 5.3-4, But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
I spoke in the previous sermon about how difficult it is to avoid hearing or seeing sexually immoral content whether obvious or subtle in our culture. The common denominator among some advertisers and entertainment moguls is that sex sells. We have to be all the more diligent to keep our eyes and ears and hearts and minds focused on the Lord and His Word.
Just as it was in biblical times, no longer do people seek to hide their immorality in darkness or behind closed doors. 2 Peter 2.13b-16, They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you. 14They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children! 15Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, 16but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
Our way to combat and defeat the enemy outside and inside it to focus on God and His ways. As Paul describes it, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (Romans 13.14). Or in Colossians 3.5, 12-14, “5Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 12Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
We are to “clothe” ourselves in Christ and in His attributes of humility, forgiveness, and most of all, love. This is how we, with God’s help, obey God’s Commandments.
- All That Opposes God’s Natural Design
All of this, all the Commandments, all the redemption, all the reason for sending Jesus Christ, all the Bible starts with God’s natural design that has been unnaturally twisted by sin. Some theologians argue that what we do and say or not do and not say all relates back to the creation narrative of Genesis.
Genesis 1.26-31, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Everything was very good until it was not, until Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s Command. Sin entered into the DNA of humanity and we all fall short of God’s glory. Everything is affected by sin. We are affected, creation is affected, and only by God’s steadfast love and immeasurable grace are we set right with God and with the created order. But all things will not be fully restored until Christ comes again. We look forward to that day and until then we do all we can by the power of the Holy Spirit to obey God’s Commandments. We do all we can to fulfill the new mandate to love as Christ has loved us. We do all we can, never by our own strength, to do God’s will in keeping His Word. We were and are created male and female and to claim any other sex or gender is to deny God’s creation and God as Creator. We are created male and female and within that created order resides the order of sexuality and fidelity that is known by God’s Commandments.
When we break God’s Commandments, we become fools and God will likely leave is to our own devices and desires as Paul notes in Romans 1. In the end, adultery, murder, stealing, and the like are all modes of idolatry. And because that is true, breaking the Seventh Commandment is also breaking the First and Second commandments. Paul makes this clear in Colossians 3.5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” We can only put these things to death when we yield ourselves to Jesus and join in His death, crucifying our sin on the cross. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2.20).
Come unto Jesus, for in Him alone is life and purity and fidelity. Amen.
