John Hagee - Intimacy Is Sacred
What do we mean by adultery? The seventh commandment is very simple. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden. Period. It means keep sexually pure. Some of you believe that you are sexually pure, but in just a minute, I’m going to introduce you to the teaching of Jesus Christ in the book of Matthew, and you’re gonna wonder about that. You may not be as pure as you think you are. Stay tuned. Jesus gave his concert of marriage saying, «For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife». Listen to those two words. He shall leave and cleave. Say that with me. «He shall leave and cleave». Fact number one, the only marriages God will ever recognize is between a man and a woman, Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Bruce. Fact two, Jesus said, «For this cause,» what cause? For the cause of sexual union. For the cause of creating a family.
Be fruitful and multiply. That’s God’s primary purpose in marriage. Radical feminists attack marriage and women who have children as empty headed creatures, meaningless and dysfunctional people. That’s not so. There is nothing more holy, there is nothing more sacred, there is nothing more precious in the sight of God than the godly mother caring for her children. God bless every mother committed to her children and to her husband. You are the hope of America. Solomon says your worth is far above rubies. You are priceless. You are precious. Men, can I hear an amen here? Hmm, God bless you. Abraham Lincoln said, «The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world». Fact three, «And they twain shall become one flesh».
One flesh, that’s the sexual union. Sex is the seal of the covenant. In the Bible, the most binding form of covenant required is the shedding of blood. There are three kinds of contract in the Bible, covenants. The salt covenant you know about. The shoe covenant, and the blood covenant. The blood covenant was the greatest covenant. It was unbreakable. When God gave Abraham and his seed the covenant for the Holy Land in Genesis 15, Abraham took a heifer, a ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon and cut them in half. And he walked between the halves with God. The smoking lamp in that scripture is the symbol of God. When a man marries a virgin, the rupturing of the hymen is the shedding of blood. It’s the seal of the covenant and it’s binding for life. Jesus continues with fact four. «Wherefore, they shall no more be twain,» mean two, «But one flesh».
When you get married, God sees both of you, or he sees neither of you. Marriage is like making mashed potatoes, I think is a good illustration. You start out with things that are separate and sovereign, wrapped in their own flesh and just happy about it. Then the honeymoon is over, and life begins. Things like, «If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen». Or «If your mother doesn’t stop calling here every 30 minutes, I’m gonna rip the phone out of the wall». Sweet things like that as your life progresses. Two individual potatoes are skinned alive. Now, they go into the next phase, cut into pieces, and they’re thrown into a boiling hot water where they sweat it out together month after month in intense heat. Hmm.
Now, the cook takes a metal masher and crushes them until you can’t tell one from the other. They look alike. They talk alike. They think alike. They are now one flesh. That’s marriage. It’s not easy. Can I get an amen. That’s the loudest amen I’ve had in a year and a half. Jesus, in fact five says, «Therefore what God has joined together, let no man put asunder». The sexual union seals the covenant. Your marriage is like a tea bag. You don’t know how strong it is until you put it in hot water. One old maid said, «What do I need with a man? I have a stove that smokes, a parrot that curses and a cat that stays out all night». This commandment is not just for married people, it’s for singles as well. Jesus said, listen up, men, «Whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery already». Hmm.
In the Old Testament, you could look and lust, in the New Testament… Wow. She was wearing a dress that went from her chin to her ankles in the Old Testament. You remember the wedding of Jacob when he married the ugly daughter, Leah? He didn’t know what he had until he got in the tent. There’s more to preach there, but I’ll just pass it by. Jesus raised the bar. Think about it. If you look at ms. Beautiful walking down the beach in a bathing suit that leaves her 90% naked. Oh, you say, «Oh Jesus, where are you now? You certainly knocked the lights out, Lord, when you made that creature». Back in the day, it took a cotton gin a whole day to make enough cotton to have enough fabric to make a woman’s dress. Today a silkworm can do it on his lunch break. Under the law of Moses, you could look and lust. Just as long as you did not have sex, you were safe.
When Jesus raised the bar of morality, he said, «If you look and lust, you’ve committed adultery». Wow. On that basis, most of the churches in America need to hear this message because you’re not nearly as pure as you think you are. Why is adultery forbidden? Because it destroys the family. There it is. It destroys the family. Why is America coming apart at the seams? Because the traditional family is falling apart. Why are gangs in the street taking over the cities of America? Because the children of America suffer from the phantom father, father who is absent from them, father who refused to give them leadership, so they went into the street looking for leadership.
The phantom father lives in the same house with the children, but he never spends time with them. That’s wrong. Feminists attack marriage and childbearing as slavery and bondage. The government subsidizes fornication. Have an illegitimate baby and the government will give you a monthly check. The IRS tax laws punish those who are married and reward those who are immoral. Now, 87,000 IRS agents are coming to your house to check to make sure you’re keeping that law. Transgender is an effort to remove masculine leadership from the American society. Think about that. And it’s a war against women. Men who identify as a woman are now allowed to compete against women in athletic events. Thanks to governor Abbott, this is against the law in Texas. I have an idea very soon that’s going to be the law all over America. God’s law demands masculine leadership.
Ephesians 5:23, «For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church». The husband is the spiritual authority of the home, period. Some women say, «Well, I can’t trust my husband to lead because I just can’t trust his decisions». I guess not. Look who he decided to marry. Ooh! In America, child abuse has become a national epidemic. The Bible says children are a gift of God and the fruit of the womb is his reward. Childbearing is an act of love. Many moderns are too wrapped up in themselves. They are too self-infatuated. They are self-centered to spare love for another human being. A poisoned tree bears no fruit. You’re not bearing fruit because you’re sophisticated. It’s because you’re self-centered, arrogant, Godless, and have no care for the next generation.
A civilization that’s sick with humanism, socialism, skepticism, narcissism is producing a small group of societies' most precious treasure, children. America’s birth rate is lower now than in 1944 when seven and a half million men were at war serving this country overseas. Think about that, 7.5 million men at war and the birth rate is lower now than in 1944. Listen up, young people, who will be there to comfort you in your latter years? And your latter years are coming one at a time. You will one day wake up, look in the mirror and say, «Who in God’s name is that»? It’s you. It has been said, and I repeat, grandchildren are God’s reward for not killing your own children when they were teenagers. God’s command to Adam and Eve is valid for the 21st century, «Be fruitful and multiply». Say that. «Be fruitful and multiply».
The true story from a Washington newspaper. It tells of a young morally emancipated couple who defied the seventh commandment, and they were found locked in each other’s arms having committed suicide because they were so disturbed with the quality of their lives. They pried their dead bodies apart and said, «We have learned through our own experience the wages of sin is death. Yes, many times worse than death. Hell on earth as matter of fact». End of quote. They pried their dead bodies apart and buried them. Because you do not break the laws of God, the laws of God will break you. Adultery is forbidden because it produces a child that will never know its father, who will live a life with a hole in its heart, an emotional cripple all the days of his life. America’s streets are asphalt jungles filled with millions of children who do not know their father. They’re burning our cities down. They’re robbing our stores. They’re shooting the police. Why? Because they’ve never been instructed by a godly father over how to conduct themselves.
That’s why. Adultery is forbidden because it drastically reduces your chance of marriage. Listen closely. Sweetheart, the more you give yourself sexually, the less chance you have to capture prince charming. He will dump you and go to other conquests. The unknown is fascinating. Throw that away and you’re out of the game. God did not command us to stay sexually pure because he doesn’t know how much fun it is. He knows. He also knew sexual impurity could destroy you. That’s God’s love, not legalism. Be committed in loyalty to one person for life and you’ll live a joyful, happy life. The Bible position on adultery is very clear. Moses didn’t write it down and then the rest of the Bible authors forget it. Solomon said in Proverbs 6, «Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned»? He’s talking about the sexual fire.
Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6, «Know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind will inherit the Kingdom of God». Without the repentance and God, you are not going to heaven. Why am I preaching sermons like this? Because someday I’m going to stand in front of God and give an account for every sermon I preached, and I don’t want God to look me in the eye, «You didn’t have the nerve to touch on that because it wasn’t congruous to the crooked society in which you were living». And you’re gonna give an account about what you do with what I’m presenting here. Without repentance and God’s forgiveness, none of us are going to go to heaven. I assure you, every night I pray the Lord’s prayer because I’m sure I have done something that day that was wrong.
Let me help you with that. We are all fatally flawed flesh. None of us is perfect. The only perfect person who ever walked on this earth was crucified by the Roman government. The thing we must understand is God has not given us these truths to torment us, he’s given us these truths to reward us so that our life on earth can be rich and our life with him in eternity will be beyond the wildest joy you can possibly imagine. If we will do it God’s way, it’s going to be a wonderful way. Amen. Let’s compare the actions of Joseph in Egypt and king David. Both were mighty men of God. Joseph was a slave in Egypt. He was seduced by Potiphar’s wife. She repeatedly asked Joseph, «Come lie with me».
The reasons why he could have said yes, he was a slave. There was no moral code for slaves. He was out of town. He was in a foreign country. Who are you when you go out of town? Oh, she asked him several times. It’s maybe easy to say no once, but I mean over and over again. His morality saved his life. He rejected every time she offered. «This will be a sin against God,» he said. «I can’t do it». But then consider king David and Bathsheba. Bathsheba was bathing naked on the rooftop. David saw her. He was the king. He could have what he wanted, and he generally got it, and in this case he did. He sent for her and committed adultery. He got her pregnant. He had her husband, Uriah murdered to cover his sin. What was the result of these two decisions?
Joseph rose to become the prime minister of Egypt, the second most powerful man on the face of the earth. He reached his divine destiny. He saved Egypt and the Jewish people from starvation with his interpretation of dreams. Those Jewish people produced Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who produced Jesus Christ, who died for you and me. Joseph’s life affected every person in this room and every person listening on television who has received Jesus Christ, because he was loyal to the moral code of God Almighty. David, on the other hand, was driven to commit murder, and his house was filled with destruction. His daughter was raped by his son. His other son Absalom was a rebel who was slaughtered hanging by his hair from a tree.
When the general in David’s army rode up and saw him hanging and threw three spears through his heart while he screamed. Twenty-two thousand men in David’s army were killed fighting Absalom’s army. Absalom was a brat that didn’t have his father’s attention. David was forbidden to build the temple because he did not reach his potential. He died with the blood of an innocent man on his hands. Those 19 wars he fought counted for very little when it came to his potential. How can we keep clean? «Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers».
Think about that. If you didn’t date her or him to start with, you wouldn’t want to marry them eventually. Don’t date anybody you wouldn’t think about marrying. Oh, that’s my mother’s mantra. I really didn’t like that when I was a teenager, by the way. Love at first sight is generally cured by a second look. There are two periods in a man’s life when he doesn’t understand women. That’s before he’s married and after he’s married. Listen to the statement of an absolute fool. «Oh, he’ll change after he marries me». Wrong. «Oh, she’ll change after she marries me». Wrong, wrong, wrong. Tell him or her to change now or get lost. Get a job now. Go to church now. Receive Jesus now. Don’t marry a promise, marry performance. Not «I’m going to do,» what have you done? That’s what you want.
In closing, remember that you belong to God, and you’re far more precious to him than you know. I think about that on a regular basis, how much God loved us that he would send his only son to the cross to die to save me and every one of you. The Bible says, «Know you not that your body’s the temple of the Holy Spirit»?
The true story. One day in South Africa, a man stopped to watch young boys who were playing marbles. He noticed that the marbles flashed and sparkled in the sunlight. His curiosity was aroused. He stopped his car. He got out, and upon investigation, he discovered to his amazement that the boys were playing marbles with diamonds. They were worth a fortune. They had no idea how valuable they were. You have no idea how precious you are to God. You are his child. His son gave his life to save you. You are God’s treasure. He wants to show you his love now. He wants to show you his miracle working power for your life. He wants to give you a pure and holy life. He wants you to have joy that’s unspeakable. He wants you to have peace that surpasses understanding. He wants you to have hope for the future. He wants you to have prosperity in every dimension of your life, but it’s up to you. It’s up to you to do it God’s way to have what God has.
Can we stand? How many of you know the Lord’s prayer? I want us to say that together today. This is the prayer I pray every night before I go to bed because I’m sure I have done something God didn’t really like that day. Say the Lord’s prayer:
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and forever. Amen.