(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Come and live, my Father, live, come to Jesus now and then. Tis reported in His word, hallelujah. It is only that you look and live, like a message from one love, hallelujah, a message, oh, my friend, for you. Tis a message from one love, hallelujah. Tis a saying, and I know it's true. Come and live, my Father, live, come to Jesus now and then. Tis reported in His word, hallelujah. It is only that you look and live, like a message from one love, hallelujah, the eternal life we still shall have. Come and live, my Father, live, come to Jesus now and then. Come and live, my Father, live, come to Jesus now and then. Tis reported in His word, hallelujah. It is only that you look and live, like a message from one love, hallelujah, the eternal life we still shall have. Come and live, my Father, live, come to Jesus now and then. Tis reported in His word, hallelujah. It is only that you look and live, like a message from one love, hallelujah, it is only that you look and live. Jesus is all the world to me, my life, my joy, my all. He is my strength from day to day, without Him I would call. When I am sad, to him I go. No other God can cheer me so. When I am sad, he makes me cry. He's my friend. Jesus is all the world to me, My friend in trial's store. I go to him for blessings, And he gives them o'er and on. He sends the sunshine and the rain, He sends the harvest golden grain, Sunshine and rain, Harvest of grain, He's my friend. Jesus is all the world to me, And true to him I'll be. Oh, how could I this friend deny, When he's so true to me? Following him I know I might, He watches o'er me day and night. Following him by day and night, He's my friend. Jesus is all the world to me, I want no better friend. I trust him now, I'll trust him when, Life's leading day shall end. Beautiful life with such a friend, Beautiful life that has no end. Eternal life, eternal joy, He's my friend. I care not today, but tomorrow may bring, Each shadow or sunshine or rain. The Lord I know will live for everything, And all of my hurry is made. Living by faith, yes, living by faith, In Jesus above, in Jesus above, Trusting the Father, trusting the Almighty, In his great love, in his great love, From all our sins, from all our secrets, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, Living by faith, by faith, by faith, He can fill the world with love. Long tempests may blow, and the storm clouds will rise, During the brightness of night. I've been here alone in the overcast skies, The master was all in the sky. Living by faith, yes, living by faith, In Jesus above, in Jesus above, Trusting the Father, trusting the Almighty, In his great love, yes, living by faith, From all our sins, from all our secrets, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, Living by faith, by faith, by faith, He can fill the world with love. I know that he safely will carry me through, No matter what evil things I, No matter what evil things I, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, Living by faith, yes, living by faith, In Jesus above, in Jesus above, Trusting the Father, trusting the Almighty, In his great love, yes, living by faith, From all our sins, from all our secrets, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, Living by faith, by faith, by faith, He can fill the world with love. All the last now, our Lord will return to this earth some sweet day, Our troubles will then all be old. The last is so gently will lead us away, Beyond the blessed heavenly shore. Living by faith, yes, living by faith, In Jesus above, in Jesus above, Trusting the Father, trusting the Almighty, In his great love, yes, living by faith, From all our sins, from all our secrets, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, Living by faith, by faith, by faith, By faith, yes, living by faith, He shall turn me on, Living by faith, yes, living by faith, In Jesus above, in Jesus above, Trusting the Father, trusting the Almighty, In his great love, yes, living by faith, He shall turn me on, he shall turn me on, God's hand in hand with an almighty God. With God, all things are possible for me. By His grace I can stand and I claim to be He. And when the Lord is on my side, He's as sure as is mine. Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will make it, for I walk with God. Life holds this truth, valleys often appear. God His Word gives this promise that my God's ever near. When my steps are uncertain and my strength's almost gone, I can lift the impossible to an almighty God. With God, all things are possible for me. By His grace I can stand and claim to be He. And when the Lord is on my side, He's as sure as is mine. Though I walk through the fire and the flood, I will make it, for I walk with God. Far away in the depths of my shearing to die, holds a melody sweeter than stone. It's celestial like strains it unceasingly calls, for my soul I can infinitely call. Peace is wonderful, peace in the hand of the Father above, strength of my Spirit forever I pray, in pathless fields of love. What a treasure I have in this wonderful peace, buried deep in the heart of my soul, so secure that all power can bind in you. In the name of the Lord, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. If we can go ahead and find our seats, we will get started. Once you find a seat, go ahead and grab a hymnal, and we can start with song number 170. Song number 170, Hallelujah, What a Savior. Song 170. One of sorrows, what a name, for the Son of God who came, ruined sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah, what a Savior, bearing shame and scoffing root, in my place and in peace stood, sealed my pardon with His blood. Hallelujah, what a Savior, guilty, vile, and helpless we, spotless Lamb of God was He, full atonement can it be. Hallelujah, what a Savior, lifted up was He to die, in His finish was His cry, now in heaven exalted I. Hallelujah, what a Savior, when He comes, our glorious King, all is ransomed, warm to free, then anew this song we'll sing, Hallelujah, what a Savior. Great singing everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer. Lord, we love you and we just thank you again for the soul winning that took place this afternoon and all the works we get to take part of here, Lord, and just blessing us and blessing this church. Lord, we love you and we just ask you to keep blessing it and bless this service and it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, for our next song, let's go to song number 38. Song number 38, Hallelujah, We Shall Rise. Song number 38. All right, sing it out on the first. In the resurrection morning when the trump of God shall sound, we shall rise, we shall rise. Then the saints will come rejoicing and no tears will ever be found, we shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise in the resurrection morning when death's prison bars are broken, we shall rise, we shall rise. In the resurrection morning, what a meaning it will be, we shall rise, we shall rise. When our fathers and our mothers and our loved ones we shall see, we shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise in the resurrection morning when death's prison bars are broken, we shall rise, we shall rise. In the resurrection morning, blessed thought it is to be, we shall rise, we shall rise. I shall see my blessed Savior who so freely died for me, we shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise in the resurrection morning when death's prison bars are broken, we shall rise, we shall rise. In the resurrection morning, we shall meet Him in the air, we shall rise, we shall rise. And be carried up to glory to our home so bright and fair, we shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise, we shall rise. We shall rise in the resurrection morning when the prison bars are broken, we shall rise, we shall rise. Thanks for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you need a bulletin, just lift your hand nice and high. On the front we have Matthew 28 and verse 7 we're working on. Insides of service and so many times. Notice our church stats down below. We had 2,377 salvations reported for 2024 and 19 baptisms. I didn't forget about our baptism competition, but it'll probably be a couple weeks until I reward those who won. And so we will still hand out some prizes for our baptism competition we had for those last few months of the year. On the right we have a list of our expecting ladies and then we have our prayer list. On the back is a note about the upcoming event in Houston at Spring Crest Baptist Church. There's a sign-up sheet if you would like to participate. In that, please, please fill it out. I saw some extra people filled it out. I actually made a little group chat and I put some messages in there. So make sure you check that group chat about that if you're planning on going. A couple church reminders. Again, kids shouldn't be running around or rough playing in the church. Please, no children on their stage. Please, no children in the kitchen, fridges, or ice machine without assistance. Children should also not be in our mother baby rooms without their mothers. Also, our fellowship room area is not a play area. Please make sure you're not using our church supplies as toys are to draw on. Make sure you're cleaning up after yourself. Water bottles are for our soul winning and visitors. Please make sure you're watching your kids. And kids, if an adult gives you an instruction, please be respectful and just do whatever they are saying. Only other thing I was gonna say is tonight, we are having our business meeting. It's an annual business meeting that we have every single year. But I am gonna just talk about a few updates as well about our church. It's gonna be a completely private service as far as we're not having this online. We're not sharing anything online. It's just between us, and it's just our private normal business meeting. So just as an FYI, that will be happening immediately after our service. If you'd like to leave, you can. You don't have to stick around, but you are encouraged to stay, and we'll be sharing some information about just our normal business information. So we try to do those once every six months or every year, and so this is our normal just annual business meeting. So that's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We can sing our psalm of the week. Psalm 139. Psalm 139. All right, that was Psalm 139. Psalm 139. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked. Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me there. We'll slay the wicked, O God. Depart from me there for ye bloody men. Depart from me there for ye bloody men. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me, and am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me, for they speak against thee wickedly, for they speak against thee wickedly. And thine enemies take thy name in vain. And thine enemies take thy name in vain. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me, and am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me. I hate them with perfect hatred. I hate them with perfect hatred. I count them my enemies. I count them my enemies. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me, and am not I grieve with those that rise up against thee. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate me. Great singing, everybody. Now, as the offering plates are being passed around, go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 5. That's the book of 1 Corinthians 5. . . . . 1 Corinthians 5, the Bible says, It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I, verily, as absent in body but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my Spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. With such an one know not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do not ye judge them that are within, but them that are without, God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the word of God. Thank you for the salvation today. I pray that you would open our hearts to receive your word today. Please speak to us through your Holy Spirit. Bless Pastor Shelley as he preaches. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Amen. Here in 1 Corinthians, chapter number 5, we're dealing with a specific issue. It says in verse 1, it is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. Now, here specifically in this chapter, it's dealing with kind of the idea of church discipline. It brings up in verse 10, the idea of, I'm sorry, verse 11 is what I'm really meaning, is it's saying that someone that's guilty of specific sins mentioned here would be asked to either repent or have to leave the church. It says in verse 11, but now I have written unto you not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator. Now, give us a list of other things here. The point that I want to quickly make is this, that if God expects us as a church to discipline people for fornication, then I believe it's reasonable to think that God would want us to understand what fornication is. It seems unreasonable that God would give us an arbitrary word that cannot be defined, and then expect us to then hold people accountable for that particular behavior. So I believe that fornication is something that can be understood, and it's something that needs to be understood, yet today many people want to confuse what fornication means. And so the goal of the sermon this evening is just to really identify the difference between fornication and adultery. The title of my sermon is Fornication versus Adultery, and I believe these two to be separate sins that obviously have some similarities, but generally speaking I believe they're distinct in the Bible one from another, and that when we talk about fornication, it's simply people that are having relations when they're not married, whereas adultery is relations when at least one person is married, and I believe that that's a clear distinction in the Bible. They're different sins. One sin is punished by getting married. One sin is punished by getting killed. So they're definitely very different, and the Bible makes this pretty clear. They're both sins. They both had some even criminal aspect in a sense because one was punished by either having to pay essentially the dowry or having to get married. The other one's punished with the death penalty. So you'd also have to say that the severity of these sins is much different because getting married is much different than being killed. So we have to understand there's a difference here. There's a difference between these situations, and I believe these words are used differently in the Bible. One thing you have to understand, though, is if you look at a dictionary, if you look at other resources, sometimes it's not always going to give you the right definition of a word in the Bible. And I want to make that clear because I could look up the word jealous in the dictionary, and it would almost in some cases provide me a definition of the word envy, and yet the word jealous is never used in the Bible to suggest envy or to teach envy in any kind of way. And so you could look up that word jealous and get the wrong idea from a dictionary. We have to let the words in the Bible define themselves. So could I find the word jealous in the Bible and get the wrong idea if I only use the dictionary definition? Yes. But I believe if you look at it in context, you'll get the right identification of jealous. Jealousy in the Bible is being selfish, not basically being selfish, but being protective of what's yours, basically desiring what's yours and not wanting to share that which is yours with other people when it would be inappropriate. Here's another word the Bible uses like this, terrible. Now we often think of the word terrible as meaning bad, inferior, something wrong with it. The Bible uses the word terrible, and it does not use that in that way. When it uses terrible, it's meaning terrifying or something that strikes terror in the hearts of people. So the Bible talks about God being terrible in the sense that he strikes terror into the hearts of his enemies, not that he's bad or of lesser quality. So if we look up the word dictionary, the word fornication in the dictionary, I could show you where it'll say it means adultery. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's how the Bible's using it, okay? So I personally do not believe that fornication means adultery. I do not believe that they're synonyms, and I do not believe that they overlap. I believe they're completely distinct words. And we're going to look at a lot of verses today, not all of them, but if you look up fornication in the Bible, or its alternatives, it's about 40 different mentions. Now that could be anywhere from a fornicator to fornication. Anything in between is about 40 mentions. We're not going to look at most of those because most mentions of the word fornication or fornicator are simply just putting in a list of several other things and doesn't really provide us any definition. It's just simply just using it in multiple places. But there's a few places where I believe it does give us some clear distinctions that we can kind of see. 1 Corinthians 5 is one of those places that I think is important for us to think about. Now, it talks about a man that has his father's wife. Obviously, if this was an adulterous type situation, the father would probably kill him. There's serious ramifications. So I don't believe that adultery is in view. What this really is talking about is a situation where either they've been divorced, the father has divorced his wife, and now he's having relations with his father's wife, or more likely, it's like an Adonijah and a David situation. So if you study the Bible, David had a wife named Abishag, David died, and then Adonijah wanted to be with his father's wife, Adonijah, and then Solomon puts him to death for wanting something gross. And that's really kind of what I believe is being described here. And it makes sense because David is like 80, Abishag's like 20 or 18 or something like that, and it's probably likely that Adonijah was, you know, 20s, 30 or something like that. So it's like a contemporary in his sense, but at the same time, it's wrong to desire your father's wife, even if they have passed or even if they were divorced. That's wrong, it's sinful, and especially in this case of the fornication, they're not even married, they're just having relations. You kind of see this with another one of David's sons, Absalom specifically lies with his father's wives, and so that's really exactly what's being described here, and it's also a very evil, wicked sin. So I believe that's what's being described in 1 Corinthians 5. In verse number 10, though, here's something to note. Let's read verse 9. I wrote unto you in an epistle not to come into fornicators, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world. And then he brings up some of the other things. But he's saying like, hey, I'm not saying you can't company with fornicators in general. Why? For then must you needs go out of the world. He's basically saying this is something that literally almost everybody's guilty of. If you were to be honest, almost everybody is guilty of fornication. I mean, if you were to look at statistics, statistically speaking, it's like 99% of men are not a virgin when they get married, and it's like 97 or something percent women. So if we're going to talk about something common to man, unfortunately, our society, it's very common. But if we were to look at adultery statistics, that is not every single person in our society. That is not the vast majority of people. It's more like, and I don't know the numbers, but 20, 30%. So it doesn't really follow that we're talking about adulterers. That's one point to make. Here's another point to make. This list in verse 11, fornicator, covetous, idolater, railer, drunker, disorcer. This is not like a bunch of lists of death penalty type sins typically. You could argue that idolatry has a little bit of a flair there, but virtually speaking, this is not saying like rape and murder and kidnapping. It's not like listing all those things, because it's kind of like obvious that if those were happening, you would have to deal with them as a church. It's bringing up lesser sins, which again, I believe, because fornication is in that lesser sin category along with the rest of these, not a bunch of, quote, capital punishment type sins. Here's another thing, is that fornication in general is just more of a public sin. That's what's being referenced here. If you really think about these sins, they're kind of like public sins. Somebody being a drunkard, someone ripping people off, two people living together that aren't married. These kind of things can just be really open and obvious, and it affects a lot of other people. As a result, it's going to leaven the whole lump. It's going to cause other people to go down this bad path. Those are just some indications. For the sake of the sermon, I am going to go through pretty much every meaningful mention of fornication. We're going to come back here in a minute, but go over to Matthew 5 for a moment. I want to show you that, number one, if you substitute adultery with a lot of these passages, it wouldn't make as much sense. It's pretty clear in 1 Corinthians 5, it's not bringing up being with someone that is married necessarily. It's not necessarily bringing up similar type sins. It seems very distinct from adultery. But here's a clear mention where they're used both in a verse. Matthew 5, verse 32, the Bible says, But I say in you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery. So here in Matthew chapter 5, it uses both the words fornication and adultery. Which is showing there's probably some distinction. It wouldn't make sense that this is the exact same word. It also wouldn't make sense that he's really concerned with someone committing the sin of adultery if they already committed adultery. Hey, don't commit adultery because you're causing adultery. It's like, hey, if you put them away, saving for the cause of fornication, you're going to cause adultery. Now, for sake of time, I'm not going to go to the Old Testament yet to describe this, but essentially what the Bible is explaining here is there was a specific caveat in Deuteronomy that talks about the idea of if you got married, you thought your wife was a virgin, you find out that she's not a virgin, then you could put her away. There's actually two different situations. If she lied about being a virgin, she'd actually put to death. But the Bible says in Deuteronomy 24, if you found some uncleanness, then you could put her away. And I'll explain that here in a little bit, but that is the only exception that Jesus Christ is bringing up as a lawful, a lawful exception. But if you actually study this passage and you study it with other passages, you realize Jesus, I don't believe, is actually saying that this is right to do. He's just saying it is technically lawful. Go to Matthew 19. Go to Matthew 19. I'll just read. Matthew 15 also brings this up in verse 19. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murderers, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Why does Matthew bring up all different sins and then literally couple adultery and fornication right next to each other if they're the exact same thing? Right? I mean, it wouldn't make sense logically that he's going to say, like, stealing, lying, adultery, adultery, adultery. Like, he's not just going to keep repeating the same thing because he's bringing up two different things. That would be a logical conclusion that you would make. Matthew 19, look at verse 9. And I say unto whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commit adultery, and whosoever marry her, which is put away, doth commit adultery. So the Bible's saying if you get divorced and you marry someone else while your spouse is alive, it's a form of adultery. So the only exception of this is fornication, which is more of, like, if you think about it in our modern vernacular, it's more of a modern-day context, it's like an annulment kind of. Some people technically get married and then shortly after getting married there's a couple exceptions to where you can kind of annul the marriage and say it's not legit, we're not going to, it's not going to be established and they kind of back out of it. That's more of what's actually being brought up in the Old Testament, and that's what Jesus is alluding to. He's not alluding to what the modern versions would say is just immorality. You could read this in a modern version and just say except for immorality, and then you're like, well, what does that mean? That's just anything you want it to be, basically. It's like a green light. But it's saying fornication and then you're causing adultery. Now, this is important because it's not causing fornication. Right? I mean, if fornication and adultery are synonymous terms, why does it say here that you're causing fornication? Why is it saying adultery? Because adultery is a distinct sin for people that are married, not for people that are unmarried. Let's go to Romans for a moment, go to Romans chapter 7, and I want to show you how the Bible describes this. Any time we have a clear statement, and what I mean by clear is it's clear that one party is married when they're together, it never uses fornication. It always uses adultery, okay? Whereas you have a few mentions that are a little bit like you can't know for sure, you kind of feel a certain way about it, but it's not for sure, and it may use a fornication word there, but it's always, when it's obvious that they're married or it's saying it explicitly, it's using adultery. Romans chapter 7, verse number 2, For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth, but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress, but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, those should be married to another man. So according to the Bible, if you are married to someone, and then you're with someone else ever in the future while they're still alive, it's adultery. Now it's not necessarily the same. I do not personally believe that committing adultery is the same as when you get divorced or not. I'm not saying that it's right. I'm not justifying it. It's still wrong. You shouldn't do it, but I do believe that these are still much different types of sins. Adultery that's punished with the death penalty is when you are in the bounds of marriage and there was no divorce. I believe outside of divorce, while it's still a form of adultery, it would not be a criminal punishment whatsoever, okay? And I would not advocate for that in society. Society has never believed that. So that's not really what's in view, but what is in view is clearly when the husband is alive, if you're married to another person, it's adultery. But think about it. No act was performed out of marriage. They're getting remarried, but the problem is God does not accept your divorce. It's basically like just because you signed a paper divorcing, God didn't divorce you, because what God has joined together, let not man put asunder. So God still views you as married in his eyes, so when you file paperwork, claim you're divorced, and then go marry some other person, God's still saying, well, actually, in my view, you're still married to that person because they're alive, and therefore it's a form of a type of adultery. If you're not married and the other person's not married, it's fornication, okay? Where if one person is married, it is a form of adultery. Go to Mark chapter 7. Go to Mark chapter 7. Like I said, I'm not going to go to every verse just to show you, but I will mention them. John chapter 8, when Jesus is confronting the Jews, he says that they're not of God, and they say, we be not born of fornication. We have one Father. And it's funny that they say they only have one Father. Because what's the idea of the fornication is that they have, like, the mailman. You know, the mailman's really the dad, and they're not really, you know, it's not, like, legit or whatever, and that's kind of where the fornication aspect's coming. But that doesn't really prove my point. It doesn't prove anybody's point. The Bible tells us in Acts 15 and Acts 21 to abstain from fornication. The Bible tells us in Romans chapter number 1 that wicked people are participating in fornication. Again, these don't necessarily provide us any more details as far as what that means. It just simply is a prohibition on that particular sin. Mark chapter 7, though, is similar to Matthew 15, where it brings it up in the list. Look at verse 21. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, and evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within and defile the man. Again, another list, but notice that it's pretty much all unique things. It's not being redundant consistently. It's not saying, like, stealing and thefts and lying and deceit with the tongue. It's pretty much just saying new things consistently, and then it's bringing up adultery and fornication. So, again, there's just another point to show the Bible is using these words in a way that seems very consistently as a different sin, okay? Now, go back to 1 Corinthians, and let's spend a little time in chapter 6, because I think this is where the Bible starts to give us a little bit more clarity. Now, I don't think that there's a verse, there's not really a verse in the Bible that I could just point you to that's just going to say carte blanche, fornication means two people are unmarried. I can't necessarily prove that. What I can do is I can look at every single mention and see that it's consistently pointing that direction and then show that the logic behind that word is consistently talking about unmarried people and that it's different from adultery. Plus, I think that's important, though, because if we don't have a clear distinction, how are we going to enforce 1 Corinthians 5? And I don't think that that's going to be fair if you can't even come up with a definition. Plus, when you mix these two words, then you have the train wreck that most churches have today where they're letting people get divorced for virtually all kinds of different things, all kinds of different reasons, and I'm going to explain why I disagree with that as well. But 1 Corinthians 6, look at verse number 9. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves of mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor restorers, nor shall inherit the kingdom of God. Again, list, all these things are different, both adultery and fornication is brought up again. It says in verse 13, Meats for the belly and bellies for the meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of and harlot God forbid? So he's bringing up this idea of like, we're not supposed to just live our lives to commit fornication. Now, it makes sense that this is going to be talking about fornication and not adultery in one sense. Most of us and all of us are pretty much just tempted with fornication once we hit hormonal age, and it's a natural thing, whereas adultery has a sense of wrongdoing, it doesn't feel right, it's unnatural. There's not as much need, and I'm not saying there isn't need to preach against adultery, but there's definitely an inherent feeling of wrongdoing there, whereas fornication, the whole world is pretty much just like, we want to do it, we're excited about it. And so it makes more sense that in this context, he's trying to say like, hey, this is an important thing to avoid. The Bible's constantly bringing up that context. If you read it specifically in verse 15, it says make them the members of a harlot. Harlots are not married, okay? Now, I want to show you examples of the word harlot in the Bible. Keep your finger coming right back to verse 36. Go to Genesis chapter 34. Go to Genesis chapter number 34. And Genesis chapter 34 is talking about Jacob's children, specifically one of his daughters. In verse number 1, it says this, And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And when Shechem the son of Hamor, the Hivite, the prince of the country, saw her, he took her and lay with her and defiled her. So here is a clear example of fornication by example. What does it say at the end of this chapter? And they said, should he deal with our sister as with... and harlot. So when it's bringing up harlot in this particular chapter about a situation, is it an adulterous situation or is it a fornication type situation? It's a fornication type situation. Now, again, she didn't end up paying, they didn't pay money necessarily, but it's basically they're kind of getting mad and they're like, oh, he's just going to pay us off and just kind of treat our sister like a harlot here has nothing to do with adultery in this particular context. Let me show it even further. Go to Ezekiel chapter 16 and let's look at another mention of the word harlot. But harlots are kind of known for something and it's not necessarily about adultery. Now, it could be adultery if the man was married, but in this story it's clear that she comes not married. We understand in the context of 1 Corinthians 6 it's not really emphasizing just only married men. It's just saying all of us in general should not be exercising fornication. And it makes it abundantly clear in chapter 7 that the whole context was unmarried people because then it tells you, hey, you should get married to avoid this whole situation we've been talking about for the last chapter. Okay, so the context of 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 is unmarried people. The context of Genesis 34 is an unmarried couple. Ezekiel 16, look at verse 31. Notice that the Bible contrasts someone committing adultery with a harlot. I'm not saying you're not a harlot because you're like a wife that commits adultery. Showing that the harlot's not really like an adulterous type situation could be obviously exceptions. I'm just saying generally speaking it's not really about adultery. It's more about higher, okay? And when we look at Genesis 34, not about adultery. When we look at 1 Corinthians 6, it's again talking about fornication and uses the word what? Not a wife that you're lying with and committing adultery, but rather a harlot and is picturing again a fornication type scenario. Go back to 1 Corinthians 6 and let's keep reading here. You say, this isn't a pleasant subject. Well, you know, it's just the Bible. And we need to understand these words and make sure that we have good definitions and we're letting the Bible explain to us these concepts of harlotry. Verse 16 again, what? Is one body? So he's trying to say avoid harlots. Avoid fornication. Flee fornication, which is a common temptation unto man. Verse 1 of chapter 7. So what is the Bible saying is the prescription to cure fornication is getting married. And if you understand what I'm saying and you agree with what I'm saying, think about this. Getting married eliminates you from ever being able to commit fornication ever. Because now if you ever make a mistake, it's adultery. You literally cannot commit fornication after you've gotten married. Because now, unless they die, and then you could be entered into that again. But I'm saying while your spouse is alive, you're not capable of committing fornication. Think about it this way, though. What if fornication meant adultery? By getting married, you do not decrease your chance of committing adultery. In fact, you only increase it if you think about it. Because if you're married, now any time you do that, it's actually adultery. So you're not even reducing necessarily that based on just the circumstances. Now obviously in both cases, hopefully because you are having a marital relationship, that's satisfying your desire and causing you to not do things that you shouldn't, and that should technically help you avoid sinning. But if you think about the reality of the situation, it makes more sense that we're trying to just avoid this particular situation. And the Apostle Paul is bringing up clearly in 1 Corinthians chapter number 7 the contrast of not getting married versus getting married. And he's saying, hey, if you didn't have burning desire, then you could just abstain from getting married altogether. And he says, I think it's even better personally. That's what he says is his personal opinion. That's the whole context of 1 Corinthians chapter 7. But for the 99.9% of us, we need to get married, otherwise we're gonna go into fornication. But what I do not believe is that 99.9% of us are just gonna commit adultery. That's a different type of sin and a different type of circumstance. It's a completely different context. These things are different types of sins and there's a much harsher punishment. Go over to 1 Corinthians chapter number 10 because we're here in 1 Corinthians still, and look at verse number 8. The Bible says, Neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. So the Bible brings up an Old Testament story where 23,000 people were killed. It's in Numbers chapter 25. You can read the entire chapter. It's very clear that in that story, no one was getting married. The children of Israel are being tempted by the Midianite women. They just lay with the Midianite women and they all die. In fact, at some point, one of the men of God, Phinehas, goes in there and literally stabs Cosby. I know you like The Cosby Show, but he gets killed in the Bible. It's a woman, but I'm just saying. Cosby gets killed in the Bible for committing fornication. And again, it's not a marriage type situation. There's no indication of marriage. So all I'm saying is when you read every single story that's mentioning fornication or this subject, they're not married. You don't see it with the Midianite women. You don't see it with Dinah. You don't see it with the harlot. You see it contrasted with the harlot. We're not seeing it in any of these situations. Plus, it wouldn't make as much sense if we were just substituting these words. It would be weird that God's constantly being redundant in all these lists when he's not being redundant in any other situation of those lists. And it's clear in this situation. If you look at Numbers 25, it uses the word horedom, which is kind of similar to harlotry from a definition perspective. Now, I want to go to a couple other mentions, though. Go, if you would, to Revelation chapter 2. Fornication is mentioned in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Galatians 5, Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, multiple times, and it's just kind of saying, like, don't commit fornication. 1 Thessalonians 4-3 says to abstain from fornication. Hebrews 12-16 talks about Esau and how you don't want to be a profane person or be a fornicator or like Esau, which sold his birthright, which, again, doesn't prove anything. I don't even think it's calling Esau a fornicator in that passage. I think he's just saying what he did is like fornication. What does it mean? Like, he's selling something that was special to him, and now he can never get it back. That's kind of like fornication. You have something special called virginity, and some people just waste this on a situation that wasn't really meaningful because they kind of despise it as opposed to treasuring it and treating it special and giving it to their spouse at the right time. And so that's what's the context of Hebrews 12. Jude 1 talks about the people in Sodom giving over to fornication and going after strange flesh. Again, that's not really going to help us with the definition. Revelation 2, though, is where some people maybe get a little bit confused. I want to read the first mention here. It says in verse 14, but I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block for the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed in idols and to commit fornication. Now, again, this is going back to the story in Numbers chapter 25 when they were persuaded to lie with the Midianite-ish women. They were corrupted, deceived, tricked by them. Same thing mentioned here, fornication. Notice, again, the Bible's consistent because we don't have a story about fornication that in the New Testament says adultery. And we don't have a story that it was clearly a husband and wife or someone was married, and then the Bible's mentioning fornication. It's always separate and distinct in that particular situation. Now, here's a situation where people get a little bit confused or they want to know what this means. Look at Revelation chapter 2, verse 20. Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which called herself a prophet, is to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. Verse 21 tells us that Jezebel committed fornication. I mean, there's no way to not agree with that. So what does that mean? If someone commits fornication, what does that mean based on what I've taught so far? She's unmarried. And the person that she slept with is also unmarried, right? Both persons in this relation were unmarried. Now, it says this, Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and then that commit adultery with her in a great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. Now, somebody will say, oh, this sounds like adultery and fornication are used synonymously. But here's the thing. If she's unmarried and she is lying with men, some that are unmarried and some that are married, what would she be guilty of? She'd be guilty of committing fornication and adultery because she is someone like, I don't know, Beth Moore, or she's like one of these women preachers that divorce their husband, and I would argue, I don't know Beth Moore, but in her situation, women are just laying with all kinds of men. I mean, she's already teaching fornication, and so basically she's seducing the single and the married men in their church to lie with her. So she's guilty of what? Fornication. She's guilty of adultery. That's a reasonable explanation of this passage. I believe that's what it's saying. What I'm not going to do is then take every other passage and mention of fornication, which is very clear and distinct, and then flip them all in their head and say fornication means adultery because this woman is mentioned as being guilty of both of these particular sins. I believe that this is very clearly, this could be very clearly understood by that situation, and that's not even an unreasonable situation. That's not even a situation that doesn't happen commonly. Women that are whores lay with married and unmarried men all the time. They're very indiscriminate in who they lie with, and in fact, the Bible says the adulterous will hunt for the precious life. So in fact, many women that are whores like lying with married men specifically, and they'll brag about it and talk about it. That's why as a married man, you should stay away from whores. It's not like only unmarried men should stay away. Both married and unmarried should stay away from her corner, should stay away from the strange woman which flattereth with her words. Now again, this particular passage, I could see maybe on the surface, just reading it by itself, you might think, okay, it sounds like it's the same thing, but it's probably just talking about two groups of men that she has seduced. That's pretty easy to mention. Go over to Deuteronomy 24, and we'll go to a couple other things that are brought up. Honestly, that's all the mentions of fornication expressively. Now there are mentions of fornication as far as situation brought up in specific passages where it's just talking about that generally, like whores and harlots and different things like that, but the word fornication, we've already covered all of them. Now you could say, I don't agree with you. I'm going to look up a dictionary. It says adultery. Therefore, I'm going to get divorced whenever I want or I'm going to do whatever I want, but I want to show you a couple things to think about in the Old Testament law when it comes to this particular situation, okay, because when Jesus was asked about if it was lawful to divorce your spouse or to put away your spouse for every cause, he said, let not man put asunder. What God had joined together, let not man put asunder. That's what he said. Let me interpret that. Don't divorce. Never divorce. I personally believe you should never divorce. I don't believe in a single exception. I know some people do. I will never tell you that. I've never counseled anybody that way. I never will counsel. If you come to me and you say, you don't understand how bad my spouse is, I'll say, I don't, but I still don't think you should divorce them. And I can bring up all kinds of examples in the Bible like Abigail being with Nabal and Nabal is a son of Belial. You know why? You know why they say he's a son of Belial? That a man cannot speak to him. Oh, he's such a son of Belial that a man cannot speak to him. You know, when somebody is just unreasonable and can never take any correction and just won't relent on anything, it's like it's a bad sign. It's like this person's a son of Belial, okay? And that's just what the Bible describes these kind of people like, implacable, okay, in a sense. Well, she didn't do that, but what she did do is she said, hey, I prayed that you would be cursed and die and then God killed him. Okay, so this is what I've taught. If you married a reprobate, okay, own up to your reprobate and pray for your reprobate. Okay, I don't think that you have to stay with them. I don't think you have to necessarily dwell with them. I don't think you don't have to be friendly towards them, but I just don't think you should divorce them. Think about some ramifications of divorcing a reprobate. Number one, you're now freeing them to marry someone else. So you're kind of like almost siccing your reprobate on other people potentially and maybe you should just say, you know what, this is my burden and I don't want to burden anybody else with it. Also, then you're going to tempt yourself to get remarried and yet it doesn't say that, oh, well, if you put away your spouse and you're married to another but they were a reprobate, it's now magically not adultery, it would still technically be adultery. Now, God willing, we live in a righteous society where they would put pedophiles and sodomites and whatever to death and I wish they would, but even when we don't have those laws, I think we have to still do the right thing. Now, maybe that should encourage people to take marriage seriously. Maybe people should actually be careful who they marry. Maybe that's why the disciples literally said if the case be so between a man and his wife, it's good that a man doesn't get married. I mean, he's like, I'm stuck with her no matter what? And he's like, yeah. It's like, well, then the marriage is, you know. And look, this is a major movement in America. There is a major movement in America because there's so many evil women that are just doing horrible wicked evil things and taking advantage of men and divorce is epidemic and child alimony and spousal alimony and women's rights and feminism and all this garbage. And look, I get it that that's horrible and evil and wicked, but the problem is not believing that you should be married until death do us part. The problem is that we have bad laws in America. And again, we shouldn't allow divorce. Divorce should not be legal. Divorce is a wicked device, okay? And the Bible brings up a concept of putting away a divorce, but it's not really what we have in society. What we have in society is very different. This no-fault divorce and this post-marriage, just I don't like you anymore, so we're going to divorce stuff. That is garbage. It's not biblical. It's not what the law taught. The law gave a specific exception about a wife lying about committing fornication and or finding this out later. And I'm going to explain these things. I want to go to Jude 22 first. Look at verse 13. If any man take a wife and go in under her and hate her, and give occasions of speech against her and bring up an evil name upon her and say, I took this woman when I came to her, I found her not a maid. Then shall the father of the damsel and her mother take and bring forth the tokens of the damsels of Virginia and the elders of the city and the gate. And the damsels' father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man a wife and he hateth her. And lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid. And yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity, and they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city, and the elders of the city shall take that man and chastise him, and they shall immerse him in a hundred shekels of silver and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel, and she shall be his wife. He may not put her away all his days. Notice, if a woman is a virgin on their wedding day, can this guy divorce her? What does the Bible say? No. Even if he hates her. Even if he says, I don't like her. This is whatever. If she was truly a virgin on the wedding night, it says he may not put her away all his days. It doesn't say, well, but if she's unfaithful later, but if she does something else later. None of it just says you can't do it, period. That's another proof of the fact that you can't divorce just however, whenever you want. Now, if it was found out that it was true, verse 20, but if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel, then they shall bring out of the damsel the door of the father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones, that she die, because she hath wrought folly in Israel to play the whore in her father's house, so as to put evil away from among you. Again, notice, whoredom there is in reference to fornication. Because of her fornication, prior to the marriage, lying about her virginity status, she has ended up putting death. This does not say, and some people falsely accuse the Bible of saying this, women who committed whoredom are put to death because if she wasn't lying about it, the guy could have chosen just to marry her anyways, and it wouldn't have mattered. It's more about the fact that this man was deceived into marrying this woman, and she's put to death. 24 gives a kind of similar situation. Look at verse 1. When a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house, and when she is departed of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. Here's basically what I believe the Bible's kind of bringing up in Matthew when Jesus is saying, save for the cause of fornication, okay? Now, what would this look like? Well, again, if she lied about it, then I believe you exercise Deuteronomy 22. If she wasn't lying about it, you could still have this particular case. Perhaps he's aware that she's not a virgin or that's the situation. But after getting married, he discovers other things, or it's worse than he thought, or whatever, and he decides, hey, not interested in going that route. Then the Bible says that he could actually divorce his wife in this one specific situation where he's found some uncleanness. And let me tell you something. Fornication's dirty. Fornication can bring some uncleanness. Here's the question. You can't know that prior to getting married. You would have to take the person's word for it. And today, people get tested and all kinds of stuff because you never really know. And I've had somebody come up to me and they said, hey, I'm interested in this girl or this guy, and they told me they're not a virgin. And I told them I want them to get tested before I get married to them. What do you think? And I said, I think that's reasonable. And here's the thing. If you're not willing for that to be the case, then that shows that there's something wrong with you because you should be honest and upfront about the situation because that's unfair, that someone's going to be married to you for life and they can't know prior to and that you would deceive them or trick them about something that's going to permanently alter them because you become one flesh. So if there's some uncleanness, then yeah. Now again, I'm not saying that if you were in that situation, you have to do that because the Bible says for the hardness of your hearts, Moses wrote unto you this precept. I think if you make a vow before God and you're going to marry that person, you're stuck. But technically, lawfully, you have this exception. What it's not saying is just, hey, I just don't like her anymore, so bye. It's basically like, hey, right after you get married, you find out what the situation is, and unless it was a fornication situation, it's not something that you have any exception for for divorcing your spouse whatsoever. Okay? I want to go to a few more passages, and we'll finish this evening. Go if you would to... Well, I don't even think we need to necessarily go to those, those passages. I'm just going to bring up a few more points, okay? Number one, what would I do as a pastor in some of these situations? I'm just going to make a few things clear, and then we'll just kind of move on, because point one is this. Fornication is two unmarried people. Adultery is at least one person's married. I believe that's what the Bible teaches. That's my standard. That's my definition. That's how I always treat it. Some people may ask, okay, what would you do, then, for a situation where someone committed adultery in a church discipline context? If you read our doctrinal statement, I've already answered this question, but if you read our doctrinal statement, forced to have asked Baptist church, which has never changed, I said clearly that people will be thrown out of church for any capital punishment sin or any sin clearly outlined in 1 Corinthians 5. But, of course, all of those, if the person's repentant, is restored. So if someone is repentant, obviously we have the exception for sodomites and pedophiles. They're not repentant. You can kill yourself, okay? But we're just saying, like, some people may commit things that are worthy of death or things that were wrong or adultery or whatever, and I'm not gonna throw them out of church if they're repentant about it. If they're living in open adultery, they will not be welcome to ever come to this church. If they're living in open fornication, they will not be welcome to be a part of our church. If they're open drunkard, they would not be welcome to be a part of the church, okay? They would be treated the exact same, okay? Here's a couple other things to bring up. What about people that do get divorced and remarried? Well, number one, if you're already divorced and remarried, I personally believe the act of adultery was when you got remarried and that you're not living in a perpetual state of adultery. You don't need to feel bad about your current relationship. You should just simply say, hey, that wasn't the best thing to do. I'm not gonna encourage other people to get divorced and remarried, but I'm not gonna also think poorly about my marriage. You should think positive about your marriage. You should be a great spouse. I'm not mad at you. I believe that God can forgive that, and we can move on, but we do not want to encourage other people to do that, and if someone asked you about it, I think it's the wrong attitude to say, yeah, it was a good decision. Yeah, that was the best decision of my life. Yeah, I'm so glad I got away from my ex. Even if you feel that way, I don't want to hear it, okay? And people constantly think like, oh, I got divorced from this psycho, and they get remarried, and then like at first it's like it's so great, it's so wonderful, it's awesome, but then two years later they realize, oh, they're psycho too, and then it's like it's really just your psycho, okay? All right, you're the problem, all right? So, you know, everybody thinks that like if, this is what everybody thinks, man, if I just married the right person, but that's a stupid idea. Did you realize that we're all sinners, number one? There's no such thing as the right person, okay? And the reality is that we all have problems, we all have flaws, and you can't marry the perfect woman because I'm already married to her, huh? Okay, so, but again, I think that everybody has their spouse for them, okay? They have their situation. Stick with the one you got. It's always gonna be the best. Obviously, if they're a psychopath, if there was extreme situations where they're doing extreme ungodly wicked evil sins, yeah, I think there's cause to separate in the sense that for your physical safety or protecting your children from really crazy weird things, but I don't think the divorce is necessary and the divorce complicates things. It's gonna give all your money to lawyers. It's just gonna ruin your finances, ruin your mental health even worse, cause more problems, get more people involved, more drama, like, you know, it just doesn't solve things. It doesn't make things better. God hates the putting away. I mean, the Bible's really clear. God hates putting away in the Bible. I believe God is completely against divorce. This provision, while in the Bible, you have to understand not everything in the Bible is a suggestion. The Old Testament law said, hey, here's what you do when you have multiple wives, not a suggestion, okay? The Bible gives a couple different times, like, advice, like, here's how you handle awkward, difficult, bad situations, but it's not like wink, wink, nod, nod, good idea. It's just like saying, here's how to handle some of these awkward, difficult situations, okay? If someone does get divorced while attending our church, I'm not gonna do anything. I'm obviously not gonna recommend it. I'm not gonna encourage it. I'm not gonna stop preaching that divorce is wrong, but I'm not gonna go and do something to them, okay? That's a stupid decision, but you know what? People in this room, including myself, make bad decisions sometimes, and what I don't do as a pastor is I don't go around and police all of your bad decisions. I would be really busy, okay? I would really not want the church to grow, okay? Like, that's just a weird idea. I'm not someone that follows you around. I don't care what color shirts you wear. I don't care what kind of music you listen to. I'm just gonna preach what the Bible says, and if it offends you, it offends you. If you wanna do right, do right. If you're gonna do wrong, okay. I'm just gonna affect this situation. If someone gets divorced, don't get confused and think that I think that's cool. I never think it's cool. I never think it's right. I'll never give that advice. I'll never encourage someone to do it. Obviously, though, if some woman literally divorced her psycho, reprobate, faggot husband, I'm not gonna be, like, going over there and giving them a hard time about it. I'm gonna be like, I kinda get it, you know? I'm not saying I approve it. I would tell you not to do it, but I'm also not gonna throw stones at you for doing that, okay? I'm not, because it's just a terrible situation, right? Here's the other side of the coin. Let's say someone in here is divorced and they shouldn't get remarried, and they make that decision, and it's the wrong decision, and I don't agree with it. I'm also not gonna do anything. Now, there's nothing stopping me from preaching against you at any point in time, okay? I'm not gonna publicly name them. I'm not gonna publicly name them, but I might preach a sermon on that topic because I disagree with it. But at the same time, I'm not gonna do anything. Think about what Jesus literally says. He says if you put away your spouse, you're causing them to commit adultery. You know what he's basically saying? It's going to happen. Why would I then pile onto someone that's gonna do something that Jesus said was inevitable? I mean, I didn't say it was inevitable. Jesus said it was inevitable. Why would I then come on top of that and just extra punish someone for doing something that's inevitable? But here's the thing. I would never marry someone that's been divorced while their spouse is still alive. Now, if you're like Abigail and, you know, Nabal dies, hey, you're on the market again. You know, just because you got divorced, doesn't mean you can't ever get married again. It's because your spouse is alive. Now, I'm not giving you ideas, okay? Vengeance is the Lord, all right? I'm just saying I'm not gonna really do anything about it. That's just kind of my policy. But I'm not gonna go to the wedding. Not gonna be like congratulations, way to go, good job. Yeah, you really upgraded. I'm not gonna say any of those things. I'm just gonna... Just don't ask my opinion because you probably don't want it, okay? So don't ask me and I won't ask you, all right? But at the end of the day, you know, this is obviously an uncomfortable situation because our society enables so much divorce. So many people are doing it. So many people have bad situations. So many people get saved later in life and they find themselves in awkward situations. You know, think about somebody that is in this situation. Like maybe they were divorced and they just commit fornication all the stinking time because they're divorced as opposed to getting married one time. Like which one is the worst of the two situations? I'm like you can't really... I mean, I just don't want us to sit here and just get mad at people when you would actually make the same decision or worse decisions potentially. You know, we should be careful when we're judging other people who are in really bad awkward situations when we don't even know how we would necessarily handle it. And we can always sit here and say, hey, this is how I would do it and this is the right thing to do. But let's just be honest. Lots of people just don't make the right decision. We're sinners. Praise God we're saved by grace. Praise God that, you know, fornicators can still go to heaven. My wife tells me, it's funny, she says like when she was in Sunday school class as a young girl that the teacher said, anybody that commits fornication is going to hell. No exception. It's just like, what in the world? I mean, America is doomed. I mean, I remember I was going soul winning and I showed a guy like the list in Revelation 21 eight and fornicators and he's like, that's everyone. He said other words with that, but he was just like, man, that's everyone. And I was just thinking like, okay. I was trying to get to a liars. This guy doesn't even need me to get to liars. He just saw fornicators. He's like, that's literally everyone. You know, and again, it's not for us to undermine that sin. You know, I would wish that that's not the case. I would wish that we could live in a society where more people are virgins than not on their wedding day. I would hope that we could set a different trend amongst Baptists and fundamental Baptists and people in this world. But at the same time, you know, I can't just overnight change the entire culture of the world and the society that we live in and was pretty much prevalent everywhere in the Bible. I mean, you kind of notice a theme that even the men of God, the greatest men in the Bible struggled in this area, okay. Find me men that didn't struggle in this area and I'll show you a guy that has a master of the eunuchs ruling over him, okay. You say, what's a eunuch? Well, that's a different story, all right. I mean, it's pretty much just like a major, major temptation. Why do you think the Bible's just constantly warning about fornication and its danger? Because it's a real, real threat. And we want to take it seriously. But we also want to make sure that we're not misinterpreting these words in confusing terms. And, you know, what are some lessons? Don't get divorced. Don't commit a fornication. Don't commit adultery. You know, get married. Rejoice with the wife of thy youth. And then stay married. Please, please stay married. It doesn't matter how bad your marriage gets at times. It's always the best move to just stay married. And I've talked to so many people in my life. I've seen so many people in my life, not even in this church, not even in church at all, way before I became a pastor. I've seen people have horrible marriage situations. I've seen people go through ugly, ugly things. I've seen people literally physically separate. I've seen people do all kinds of horrible, like, bad, bad stuff. And then they fixed it later. And it got better. And if you had said, like, hey, in hindsight, aren't you glad you stayed together? They'd be like, I can't even imagine if I didn't. They would think, like, and they love their spouse, and they have a great marriage again. You know, marriage is going to have ups and downs. Divorce is not the solution. When people get divorced, they get divorced even more likely the next time around. They don't end up becoming a better picker. They're a worse picker. Okay? You already locked down the best person you're going to get probably, okay? It's just, like, it already happened. Because think about it. The person that you have to marry has to be willing to already compromise and say they're willing to marry a divorced person. That already shows a lack of integrity on the surface. Let alone the fact that you're already slim pickings as is, and whatever situations and baggage they're bringing to the party. And, you know, instead of getting divorced and then going and working out, eating right again, being pleasant, being kind, and being gracious to the people you date, why don't you just start doing that with your wife? Why don't you just do that with your spouse? What would happen in your marriage if you started working out again, eating right, giving a lot of grace to them, being sweet about everything, not fighting, not arguing, doing stuff that they like, giving them time, giving them attention, texting them, calling them all the time, giving them flowers. Oh, that sounds like dating. Yeah, that's why you liked each other. Okay? Read Song of Solomon. What do you think they're doing? They're hanging out, eating food, going on picnics. They're calling each other all kinds of sweet names. They're not sitting over here criticizing one another and talking negatively about each other. They're praising one another. Hey, you know, if you want to work on your marriage, why don't you work on you? You get a little bit better. Don't sit here and try to figure out how to twist the words fornication and adultery so you can divorce your spouse. Bad move. Take all that effort and energy and just work on yourself and get a little bit smarter, work a little harder. And, you know, for the people that have made mistakes in these areas, any of these areas, fornication, adultery, divorce, anything, I'm not mad at you, but at the same time, please, please don't have a positive attitude about your sin. Don't get offended about people calling out your sin. Please encourage your children and other people in this room to not make those mistakes and make the best of whatever situation you're in. Love your spouse. Hosea was told when his wife was committing adultery to literally pay her to not commit adultery. It's mind-boggling. It's like, I would just shoot her in the head or something. I mean, I'm just being honest. Like, the Bible says jealousy is the rage of a man. There is a guy that literally, his wife divorced him and he just killed both of them. He killed his wife and himself. And that is not a suggestion. I'm not saying that's right. It's evil, it's wicked, it's horrible, it should never happen. But I'm telling you, it hurts people's hearts so bad that they'll do things like that. Do not divorce your spouse. Do not go out there and commit adultery on your spouse. Do not do these things because it can literally cause people to kill you because it is serious heartbreak. God takes adultery seriously. God says about Jezebel, He says He'll cast her into a bed with them that commit adultery with her and kill her and her children with death. It is serious. Don't do it. Stay far, far away from it. As a man, you should have zero friends that are girls when you're married. As a woman, you don't need any guy friends. You should just say, Hey, I'm not interested in you. I don't want anything to do with you. Stay away from me. In fact, you can offend them. I'll be more happy that you offended them than you're friends with them, okay? Because adultery is a serious issue. And look, people typically don't just trip into adultery. They form inappropriate relationships, friendships with people, and it just is a slippery slope. Just stay away. Just don't even get close to it. People can be tempted with this stuff, and I don't want to see it. And it's going to happen probably, but I want it to be as least amount of times as possible because I don't want to have to deal with it. You don't want to have to deal with it. All right, let's close in prayer. Thank Heavenly Father so much for giving us clear distinctions here so we could understand the seriousness of each of these sins. I pray that you would give us a spirit of soberness. I pray that you would help us to take these things seriously, that we would not take them lightly. I pray that you would help people that maybe they're struggling in their marriage or they've made mistakes in their marriage in the past to move on, to fix those things, to have grace and forgiveness. I pray that you would help people that are struggling to work on themselves and to look at seeing how they can improve in their relationship. I pray that you would help us to be a good example to the young people and the children in this room to be careful about who they get married, to keep themselves pure for marriage, and that they can have a great and blessed marriage. I pray that you would just help our church to set a good example in such a dark and evil world. We just thank you for what you've given us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, in closing, let's go to song number 26. Song number 26, Hallelujah for the Cross. Those that know it well, sing it out. So I'll follow along together on the first. Song number 26. The Cross is standing fast Hallelujah, Hallelujah Defying every last Hallelujah, Hallelujah The winds of hell have blown The world its aid has shown Yet it is not overthrown Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah It shall never suffer Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah It shall never suffer Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah It shall never suffer Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah The Blessed Son Who did worse than a dog Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah It shall never suffer Cross Twas there the debt was made Hallelujah, Hallelujah Our sins on Jesus' lane Hallelujah, Hallelujah So round the Cross we sing Of Christ our offering Of Christ our living King Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah for the Cross Hallelujah, Hallelujah It shall never suffer Cross