Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but fornicators and adulterers God will judge. I. WHO ARE COMPREHENDED UNDER THIS CHARACTER. Every person will at once perceive that all who live in common fornication, or who defile the marriage-bed, are evidently comprehended in this description. Let those then tremble, and know that this is their true state and name, who, though they disdain the open and more notorious commerce, yet secretly beguile the innocent and unwary, and become the agents of Satan in the ruin of others. Neither let those deceive themselves who, though they may not traverse the ranges of unbounded lust, yet keep up a cursed league with some particular person with whom they live in a state of fornication or adultery; let them not flatter themselves with an idea that this is a small matter, or shelter themselves under the fashion or the opinion of the times; God is not ruled by caprice or fashion, nor does His eternal standard of rectitude and good vary with human desires or modes of action. II. THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORD OF GOD AGAINST THIS SIN. 1. God has directly and expressly forbidden it in His Divine law. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is the seventh of those commandments which stand in the sacred decalogue, as the injunctions of God to mankind. And that every avenue to this sin may be stopped, and His holy displeasure against it plainly testified, He has again enforced it by taking a part of it into the tenth commandment: "Thou shalt not so much as covet thy neighbour's wife." Nor is this law any matter of Jewish obligation only, but equally incumbent upon us; for our Lord Himself in Matthew 5. enjoins this command in a very peculiar manner, and through the whole of the New Testament it is abundantly charged and enforced (1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:2-8; Ephesians 4:19, 20; Ephesians 5:3-5). 2. We may learn God's hatred and displeasure against these sins from the odious and alarming description given of them in the Scriptures. The author of the Book of Proverbs is peculiarly diligent in endeavouring to lay before the thoughtless sinner the snares and delusive temptations which draw men into these evils, as well as the miserable and fatal consequences which attend them. The sixth and seventh chapters are almost entirely taken up with this subject, and part of the second and ninth is employed to the same purpose. Now we must remember that it is the intention of the sacred writers in setting these things thus before us to imprint the same odious image of them on our hearts, that we may know their nature, and flee their practice. Happy if it might but thus succeed! 3. I shall, in the next place, call your attention to the dreadful threatenings which the Word of God denounces against impure sinners. This sin is declared in the Scriptures as the cause of God's controversy with nations and with individuals (Hosea 4:1-3). And Jeremiah (chap. 5.) represents God as ready to give His people up, and to forbid His prophets to reprove them any more. His mercy and forgiveness seem to put, as it were, to a stand. And in 1 Corinthians 3., when the apostle had represented this sin as a defilement of the body, which is the Temple of God, he adds this awful word, "If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy, for the temple of God is (or ought to be) holy," and not made a nest of unclean lusts. St. John, in the Book of the Revelation, declares the doom of whoremongers to be with the rest of notorious sinners, in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. How impiously bold then are those sinners who dare all these terrors for the gratification of a base lust! To such as have been entangled with this sin, and have a real desire to be delivered from it (as well as to those who are anxious to secure their modesty and virtue), I would suggest a few considerations. (1) Seek for a spirit of true and hearty repentance for all the uncleanness of which you have been guilty before God; rest not in a mere wishing you had been more wise, or a dislike of your conduct from prudential maxims; but seek to God to give you true repentance by the grace of His Holy Spirit. (2) Be ever upon your guard against the first appearance of this evil. Keep at a distance from the tempter. If you would be kept from harm, keep out of harm's way. And this caution must be observed, not only respecting any particular person, but also the places and other occasions which may tempt you to sin. (3) Let sinners of this kind think much of death and hell. (4) Apply daily to the mercy-seat for the Divine aid. In the blood of Christ there is virtue to wash away the foulest guilt; in His grace there is sufficiency of power to subdue the most raging sins. (J. King, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. |
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