Audio Forthcoming: Elder’s Preface to On the Mischance of an Adulterous Wife
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Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness:
(Proverbs 30:20)
Good morning.
On the Mischance of an Adulterous Wife is focused on matters of adultery, divorce, and reconciliation; it is argued as if it were a legal proceeding in the court of Almighty God and argued according to the Word of God.
Originally, these words were spoken in a single day’s lesson in morning, afternoon, and evening services, given to address the controversy that faced Rye Chapel in southwest Texas—the controversy of whether its minister should or should not remain in the pulpit following the departure of his wife. While the address was one of the minister’s divorce, the words were more aimed at the hypocrisy that filled the hearts of so many in the church.
The series is no less applicable to those in congregations today than it was to its former recipients, and is given so that our particular Assembly would understand how our primary external ministry—devoted to the development, preservation, and restoration of the Christian marriage—came to be established.
Many will scoff and contend that both “the world” and even “the church” allow for divorce and that neither the world nor the church calls for reconciliation after a divorce; many divorced, even as they’ve come for this morning’s worship, simply wish to “leave it behind.” After all, the Bible does call: “Come as you are.”
No, Beloved. While God does indeed call: “Come as you are,” He does not call: “Stay as you are.”
Christ did not come to call us to salvation. Christ came to call us to conviction and repentance and change so that we might then—and only then—be called to salvation. One cannot receive the latter without the former.
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On this very morning, many of you sit on the edge of eternal damnation, for no matter how you would convince yourself otherwise it will become clear that you do not truly believe in God, nor in Heaven or Hell, nor in a God who has the right to meddle in your behavior. For if you did believe , you would have already come to your knees to ask God to give you the occasion and the strength to make right that which you have made wrong.
Today will call you to that obedience.
May the Holy Spirit take the veil from your eyes and give you the courage to choose eternal life over eternal death.
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Today’s lesson is not one of what God “suggests” but one of what God commands may or may not be done in the matter of divorce, of what must be done if a divorce occurs, and under what conditions the departing spouse must be received back into Covenant no matter how difficult that reconciliation might be.
The lesson is one of how you must move forward in the work that is to be done in spite of yourself. It is a work that you are called to do and a work that may seem impossible to do but which, in fact, is not so impossible and—even if the work were to be so impossible and is work you think cannot be done . . . it is work that you are still called to do.
It is not that God is unjust. It is that you have sinned and that you must now choose to either make right the wrong or to suffer eternity in the fire of Hell.
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The words of the morning’s lesson—”A Covenant Which Can Be Neither Undone Nor Altered”—give warning to the adultress[1] who has broken her Covenant—a Covenant promise made before Almighty God—of the sure and certain punishment that will come to her no matter how she excuses her behavior.
Its words will remind her of the punishment that remains reserved for her soul—even should she remarry to move on with her life in the misguided assumption that God will “forgive and forget.” Such is never the case in Scripture. Ever. It is always the opposite.
Set aside this nonsense about how “God is Love”! Scripture equally and consistently demonstrates the unfailing justice and punishment of God. And no matter how we attempt to flee from God’s wrath and no matter which ship we take to whatever place we hope to hide from our punishment, God’s Hand will always find us in our Tarshish (Jonah 1:3).
The words of the afternoon’s lesson—”Seasons of the Fall and Her Excuses Rejected”—offer a rebuttal to common arguments made by the adultress who has given what was not hers to give, arguing to be judged with a reduced responsibility and thus receive a lesser punishment, given on various grounds.
The words of the evening’s lesson—”Adultery Shared and the Recourse Demanded”—offers a rebuttal to common excuses made by he who would lie in the arms of a divorced, now condemned in his own adultery for taking what is not his to take and who likewise seeks a reduced responsibility on various grounds . . . with a warning to those who would support the illegal disunion of her Covenant, and of their Christian duty to publicly denounce her remarriage lest they, too, be at fault before the Lord.
The words of these lessons will be stinging words of death and of eternal darkness. And they are meant to be so.
Are you so deceived by the Father of Lies to think that you will not be held accountable?
Fool!
Even in man’s imperfect criminal and civil law, if you aid or abet the commission of a crime you are held responsible and you do receive punishment; how does it now escape you that it will not be so in the perfect Court of Almighty God?
To end this series, “Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Manner of the Father” will offer the hope of unimaginable forgiveness and reconciliation after adultery and divorce, and even after the murder of an unborn—a path so often thought necessary because of the adultery.
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O Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44), your leprous skin reeks of a culture of adultery, abortion, and divorce and still you think you will be excused?
Your Bible—the one sitting on your nightstand and the one you occasionally dust off and take for a walk so that other church-goers can see that “you own one”—is both a catalog of warnings about your current state of sexual failing and a catalog of promises that you will not be forgiven lest you repair the damage you have done . . . and repair that damage in the manner that God demands it be done.
And yet many will turn away to damnation—complaining that God’s call to obedience is outdated or too difficult, or that they never heard the Word of God explained to them in such a manner . . . given today in these lessons using the very words of Scripture!
In truth, those who will turn away do not believe in God and take their pleasures of dalliance and adultery with no concern that their sin is being acted out in the very sight of God’s angels, standing at the bedside.
Many will argue that our society, by way of “the state,” allows divorce and that we should now somehow consider both adultery and abortion to be lesser sins . . . as if man’s “desire” and civil referendum can supplant the immutable Law of God.
Many will argue that they do not “feel” that divorce is wrong or will argue that a divorce can be justified for so many reasons beyond those reasons given by God . . . as if to argue “my perception is my reality.”
No, Loved One. Reality is reality. God is reality. Your perception is what you want to believe so that you can remain comfortable and persistent in your state of sin.
“Perception” is what Satan whispers in your ear so that He can keep you in His grasp.
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If you are troubled or offended or made angry by the words of the day’s pulpit, know that it is because you have sinned grievously against the Law of God. Fall to your knees in thanksgiving that your heart is being called by the Holy Spirit to repentance and reconciliation while there is still time.
Your life will all-too-soon be followed by death, the line of “no more chances.”
No one knows the hour, but all will die. And then all will rise from our temporary sleep to that most terrifying moment when each of us will stand before our Creator, naked and alone, to answer for our disobedience.
And many, in the righteousness and wrath of the Father, will be cast into the Lake of Fire.
How that terrible end may be avoided by the adultress, by her lovers, and by her champions of disunion is through—and through only—the difficult and often humiliating trial of seeking forgiveness and of undoing the wrong.
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O Beloved, take comfort in knowing that God is willing to forgive all that you have done and that He is able (and desires!) to make new all that you and your former spouse have made wrong.
And you may rest comfortably in knowing that God likewise requires much of your injured spouse—perhaps more than God requires of you!; he, now, is required to forgive the adultery that is known and to forgive the unknowns of whatever else has taken place during your time of separation—even if there was murdered a child so that your sin might not be exposed.
No matter how unkind the words or how many the adulteries or how deep the fall, all things must be wiped clean by the injured spouse . . . never to be remembered . . . never to be discussed . . . with all things made clean (Matthew 6:14-15; Matthew 7:1-2; Matthew 18:21-22).
“But”—the most terrible word in Scripture—your forgiveness must begin with acknowledging that you have sinned against both your spouse and Almighty God. And it must be accompanied by not only the desire to make right that which was made wrong but by the work to make it so.
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[1] The pulpit at First Puritan makes no attempt to be “politically correct” or artificially inclusive to soothe the artificially offended and argues that, before the reader can assign any merit whatsoever to what is being said in the pulpit, the reader must first have a sufficient facility with the language as well as the accompanying willingness to comprehend what is being said in the pulpit.
In Scripture, the term “adultery” (as are “divorce,” “harlotry,” and “whoredom”) is used in metaphor for a turning away from one’s First Love, God. It is used less in reference to the physical adultery of a spouse and more-oft directed toward the female bride (the Church) leaving the male bridegroom (Christ).
“Adultress” (the archaically unused but technically correct spelling of “adulteress,” often confused with the homophone “adulterous”) is used to reference the female Church as she stands before the male Bridegroom. Here, the “female” adultress has nothing to do with a sexual hierarchy or to insinuate that “she” is any more or less guilty than “he”; its use is merely to conform to the speech pattern used by the Church for thousands of years. It is a speech pattern that may offend today’s overly sensitive dullard but is a speech pattern that sheds light on the theological analogy—an analogy used throughout both the Old and New Testaments and an analogy used by Christ Himself.
In preserving the grammatical practice of Scripture and to avoid the cumbersome wife/husband vs. man/woman and “she to him and in like manner he to her,” the text is presented in the style that “she” commits the adultery against both God and her husband and we leave it to the sensible reader to understand that the situation could just as easily be reversed. It is not that the man does not commit adultery; in the text, “she” takes the generic blame for the physical adultery against her husband merely because we follow the word pattern of Scripture.