Seventh Commandment
Seventh Commandment
Exodus 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery”
Extra Reading: Exodus 20:1-21
The world over there is an increase in the number of broken homes, juvenile delinquency and the negative effects of modern psychology. We also discover that the more “modern” theories about marriage are put into practice, the faster the divorce rate climbs and the more little children are doomed to grow up without the blessing of a stable, happy home. We are told a painful fact that one out of three marriages in America ends in divorce courts. The marriages end, but the suffering and anguish and grief do not. You see here that for the little children of such broken homes, the years of frustration and emptiness are only beginning. Questions I ask myself are: “Is there a real meaning to marriage that modern man needs to understand?” “Are there God-given laws and principles that can safeguard a Christian marriage and make it happy and purposeful?”
The Creator God devoted two of His ten commandments to protecting the relationships in the home and family. God gave the seventh commandment to protect the honour and sanctity of marriage. Marriage is the highest earthly relationship, because marriage and home are the basis of all decent society. The words of the commandment forbid adultery as violating the sacred rights of the marriage relation. Its spirit makes evident the fact that all unchaste conduct before marriage is a wrong done to the future marriage, and unfaithfulness before marriage is violating the command as much as adultery committed after marriage. In this permissive modern age, it is important to remind ourselves that God has promised to reward those who break this commandment with the penalty of death. “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife-with the wife of his neighbour-both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). The seventh commandment also covers in principle all other forms of illicit sex, including male and female homosexuality-now an enormous sin in the Western world-which also warranted the death penalty (Leviticus 20:130. Why is the sin of adultery so great as to merit death, and, in God’s judgment, eternal death in the lake of fire-unless really repented of? The answer is this: Marriage is in God’s sight such as a precious, righteous, holy thing that it must not be defiled! The meaning of marriage and its great purpose in God’s plan needs desperately to be understood in this age of unhappy marriages and broken homes.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, help us to keep our marriages pure and undefiled by adultery. In the name of our Lord, Jesus, we pray, Amen.
Rev. Samuel N. Modise 
