Idolatry and Adultery

As we come to the end of this most solemn, yet sacred week, a time for showing our Sovereign, Heavenly Father, as He who is never to be scorned, brushed aside or resisted, we give unending praise and thanks for His never failing mercies. It is through His Love and His Love alone, that we are given opportunity to see our ways and turn back to Him. Here’s our text again.

And the LORD said to me, I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! Deuteronomy 9: 13.

Here’s my other question. Do idolatry and adultery go hand in hand? During the week, rather, on each day of the week, we have seen idolatry in clear, bright colours. There has been no kind of doubting or wondering about whether or not the children of Father God, like ourselves, have been stiff-necked. God describes His children as stiff-necked because they refuse to turn from worshipping, following, listening to and respecting other ways. They found other ways to be more enticing, more exciting, more lucrative and more acceptable to them. Much more than that, they have found these ways to suit themselves – their pride and egos. Such practised idol worshipping, has become so natural and normal to the children of God, they don’t even realise the wickedness and utter disobedience of their ways.

This is indeed scary, because it means that you, I and many believers, God’s elect, God’s Church, do not even know that as stiffed-necked people, we are not just worshipping idols, but we are an adulterous people. Let’s have this reasoned to us most simply. We are looking at Romans 7: 3 NKJV. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.

Here is a common everyday, earthly fact. A woman is married to a man, therefore she is committed to him only. Whether she is happy in the marriage or not, as long as she has taken vows, under God, to be faithful to her husband, to go with any other man is adultery. Whether she goes with one man, or seven men - one for each day of the week - her life is an adulterous one. In other words, for her to turn to any other man, is sin. Do you know that you and I, the Church, we are the Bride of Christ? Do you know that we committed our lives to Jesus, to have one God and serve Him only? Do you know that when you denied self, you took up your cross and followed Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life? But alas, you have joined yourself to many of the world’s ways and that is pure adultery.

Whether we have embraced one thing of the world, or seven things of the world, we are dead guilty of the sin of adultery. To have any other gods, along with God, is sin. When we obey and uphold the devices and desires of our sinfully arrogant and ignorant hearts and minds, and continue to live that way, even in the smallest of things, we are being most unfaithful to our Bridegroom, Jesus. Why? Because we are still married to Him.

He is not dead!

Let’s turn to this part of the above quoted text. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. It tells us of the only way we can go with another and not be guilty of adultery, although we are married. The one and only way is death. Just as the text states, if a woman’s husband dies, she’s then free from all her vows of commitment to her husband, so it is with us. We are free of any law of commitment, obligation, faithfulness, chastity and loyalty, to our husband Jesus, if He is dead.