Broken Bedrooms
10 REASONS TO AVOID ADULTERY
Exodus 20:14
Intro: Let me ask you something straight. Why would God put adultery in the Top 10? Out of everything He could have said…Out of every possible sin…Out of all the commands He could have carved into stone…He chose this one. Exodus 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery.” That’s not random. That’s not cultural. That’s not outdated. That is intentional. That is protective. Because adultery doesn’t just break a rule…It burns down lives. It’s been called the “commandment that needs no footnote.” We live in a world that shrugs at it. Jokes about it. Builds entire industries around it. Normalizes it. But God steps in and says, “No.” Not because He is trying to limit your life—but because He is trying to protect everything that matters most in your life. Here’s the real question for today: Do you see adultery the way God sees it? Let me show you—clearly, directly, without softening it—10 reasons God says: Don’t go there.
- IT BREAKS A COVENANT THAT GOD IS MONITORING
Malachi 2:14 The LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth… she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
Marriage is not just paperwork. It is more than feelings. It is not just a social arrangement. It is a covenant.
And not just between two people—but before God. God says, “I was there. I heard the vows. I witnessed the promises.”
When adultery happens, it is never only: “I made a mistake.” or “It just happened.” or “We were in a bad place.”
No—God calls it infidelity. You didn’t just break trust with your spouse. You violated something sacred that God Himself was watching. This is not casual in heaven. This is serious.
- IT PREACHES A FALSE GOSPEL
Eph 5:32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”
Whether we realize it or not, our marriages are telling a story.
It is a living photograph of Christ — the faithful Bridegroom…and the Church — His beloved Bride. Marriage is meant to display covenant loyalty and sacrificial love.
But adultery sets fire to that message. It says something completely opposite: faithfulness doesn’t matter; covenant can be broken; love is disposable.
Every marriage preaches a sermon. Adultery turns that sermon into a lie about Jesus.
- IT DEVASTATES THE PERSON YOU BECAME “ONE FLESH” WITH
Gen 2:24 “And the two shall become one flesh.”
When God designed marriage, He didn’t say, “You’ll share a house.” He said, “You become one.” One life. One bond. One union.
Adultery is not something that happens “outside” the marriage. It is something that cuts into the center of it.
It wounds trust. It confuses identity. It deflates emotional security. This is not just a mistake. This is deep betrayal.
You are harming the person who trusted you most, the person who opened their life fully to you. That kind of wound does not heal quickly. And sometimes, it never fully heals at all.
- IT DESTROYS THE FAMILY YOU WERE MEANT TO PROTECT
Prov 5:8 “Remove your way far from her [the immoral woman], and do not go near the door of her house…”
Why does God say “stay far?” Because He knows what’s at stake.
Adultery doesn’t just affect two people. It fractures homes and shakes stability. It steals children’s sense of security.
God didn’t design marriage just to survive—He designed it to flourish. The Bible gives us a picture of that:
Psalm 128:1-3 “Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD… Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine… your children like olive plants all around your table.”
That’s the vision. A strong marriage. A steady home. Kids growing up around the table.
And Scripture tells us why that matters: Malachi 2:15 “He seeks godly offspring.”
God is thinking generationally. He’s not just building a moment—He’s building a legacy.
But adultery doesn’t just interrupt that. It tears into it. The Bible doesn’t soften the language:
Prov 6:32-33 “Whoever commits adultery… destroys his own soul. Wounds and dishonor he will get…”
That word destroys is not exaggeration.
It starts in the heart—but it doesn’t stay there. And it never stays contained. It never does.
illus: Look at King David. One night with another man’s wife. One decision. One moment of compromise. And God tells him:
2 Sam 12:10 “The sword shall never depart from your house…” And it didn’t. His family unraveled: violence, betrayal, rebellion, heartbreak. The damage didn’t stop with him. It moved through his house. Sin doesn’t stop where it starts. It travels. It spreads.
Just like God warned: Ex 20:5 “…visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation…”
That doesn’t mean every child is doomed—but it does mean sin has ripple effects. It reaches farther than you think.
Children don’t just “get over it.” They carry: confusion and fear and emotional scars. One moment of compromise can ripple through an entire generation.
Adultery is as much a social offense as it is a personal one.
Adultery doesn’t stay in the bedroom. It spreads through the house and then to the community. And that’s why this matters so much. Adultery doesn’t just break a moment. It can desecrate a family line and separates close friends.
- YOU WILL LOSE MORE THAN YOU THINK
Prov 5:9-10 “Lest you give your honor to others, and your years to the cruel one; lest aliens be filled with your wealth…”
Let’s make this painfully clear. You build it…someone else enjoys it. You worked for it…someone else benefits from it.
Your honor. Your strength. Your reputation. Your finances. Your future. All of it is now vulnerable.
Adultery is not just immoral. It is self-destruction in slow motion.
John Piper – God is not a killjoy; he just opposes what kills joy.
And adultery kills joy—slowly, painfully, completely. People don’t walk into it thinking, “I want to lose everything.” But that is exactly where it leads.
illus: Let me paint a picture that is not hypothetical. This happens every day in this country. A man spends 15, 20 years building a life.
He works long hours. He builds a home. He raises children. He invests in his future. Then somewhere along the way—a conversation turns into something more. A text message turns into a meeting. A meeting turns into an adulterous affair. And for a while… nothing seems to happen. Life keeps moving. No lightning strikes. No collapse of conscience. Just secrecy. Until the day it all comes out. Exposure almost always arrives. Now fast forward. He’s not in his home anymore. He’s sitting in a courtroom. Across the room is his wife—no longer his partner, now his legal opponent. The judge begins to speak. Assets divided. House reassigned. Accounts split. Custody arranged. Support mandated. And in a matter of minutes, a life that took decades to build is redistributed. Another man will now: sleep in the house he paid for, sit at the table he bought, rule over the children he fathered. And he pay that man to do it every month. And here’s the most frustrating part of regret—he knows it didn’t start in the courtroom. It started with a conversation he thought was innocent.
That’s a preview. Adultery doesn’t just take something from you. It can transfer your entire life to someone else.
- IT TURNS PRIVATE SIN INTO PUBLIC SHAME
Prov 5:14 “I was on the verge of total ruin, in the midst of the assembly.”
You think it’s hidden. It won’t stay that way. Adultery has a way of surfacing, spreading, then finally exploding.
What was private becomes public. What was secret becomes exposed. It fractures churches. It humiliates families.
You don’t control where the fallout lands. And it always lands somewhere.
- IT ENSLAVES FAR MORE THAN IT SATISIFES
Prov 5:22 “His own iniquities entrap the wicked man, and he is caught in the cords of his sin.”
It begins as a choice. Then it becomes a pattern. Then a habit. Then a stronghold.
Sin doesn’t just invite you. It captures you. It hooks you. Then it holds you. Then it hardens you.
Samuel Johnson – The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
And that is exactly how this works. John Owen is even more blunt. John Owen – Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
What started as something you thought you could control becomes something you can’t escape. That’s the nature of sin. It promises freedom—and delivers bondage.
- IT ALWAYS ENDS IN REGRET
Prov 5:11-12 “At the end of your life you will groan… ‘How I have hated instruction!’”
Nobody plans for regret. Nobody walks into adultery thinking, “This will ruin me.” But there is always an “afterwards.”
And it sounds like this: “Why didn’t I listen? What was I thinking? I had everything…”
The pleasure is brief. The regret lingers. And sometimes it follows you for the rest of your life.
One writer said plainly, “Adultery is a walking death.”
- GOD SEES WHAT YOU THINK IS HIDDEN
Prov 5:21 “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his paths.”
You may hide it from people. You may cover your tracks. Delete the messages. Keep up appearances. Will you hide it from God?
Psalm 139:1 “O LORD, You have searched me and known me…”
God sees every stolen glance. He knows every idle thought. He traces every secret pattern. Nothing escapes Him.
There is no such thing as secret sin. Only unseen consequences—for now.
- GOD HAS GIVEN YOU SOMETHING BETTER
Prov 5:15, 18-19 “Drink water from your own cistern… rejoice with the wife of your youth… be captivated always with her love.”
God is not anti-sex. He created it. He designed it. He blessed it. But He placed it within covenant. Not everywhere. Not with everyone. But in marriage—fully, joyfully, rightly.
Marriage is God providing for us in holiness. He is not withholding joy. He is directing it to where it belongs. Adultery is settling for a cheap substitute when God has already prepared something far better.
Conclusion: Let me slow this down…because now this gets personal. In a room like this, this isn’t theory.
Some of you are in it right now. A relationship that doesn’t belong to you. A secret nobody else knows.
And I’m not here to crush you—but to be clear with you: You already know this isn’t right. That tension you feel—that’s God being merciful to you. He’s not exposing you…He’s warning you. Not to shame you—but to spare you.
1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us… and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
You can stop. You can step out. You can be clean again. But don’t delay what you already know you need to do.
Others of you—you’re not in it yet…but you’re drifting. You’re feeding something. Entertaining something. Letting something grow that should’ve been cut off. You don’t fall into adultery—you dive into it.
So hear this: Cut it off now. Shut it down now. Walk away while you still can without wreckage. That’s not loss—that’s wisdom.
Some of you are carrying this from the past. And even now, there’s guilt…regret…shame. Listen carefully: Yes—it was sin. But it is not beyond the grace of God. Romans 5:20 “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.”
Do you think God forgives halfway? No. If you bring it to Him, He meets you with mercy. You don’t have to keep carrying what Jesus already paid for on the cross.
And others of you were wounded by this. You trusted—and were betrayed.
Hear this clearly: God sees what was done to you. God cares about what was done to you.
Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
You are not defined by someone else’s sin. And you don’t have to carry this alone.
So here’s the call—for every one of us: Don’t stay where you are. And don’t walk through this alone.
If the Holy Spirit is putting His finger on something—we dare not ignore it. We must not delay it. Come talk to someone.
Our prayer team is here. Our pastors are here. Your small group leaders are willing to minister to you privately.
Say as much or as little as you need to—but step out of hiding and into the light. Healing doesn’t happen in the dark.
God gave this command to protect you—and when needed, to restore you. And no matter where you are—there is still a path forward with Him.
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------------- Transcript ---------------
Well, this sermon today is going to be in hurry mode, but not Mad Max. We're going to go rapid fire. 10 reasons to avoid adultery. Really? I could just give you one.
God says, don't do it. But he also gives us more reasons in Proverbs 5 and Exodus and others. So let me ask you something straight. Why would God put adultery in the top 10? I mean, out of everything he could have said, out of every possible sin, out of all the commands he could have carboned the stone, he chose this one.
Exodus, chapter 20, verse 14. You shall not commit adultery. That is not random. Neither is it cultural or outdated. It is intentional because adultery doesn't just break a rule, it burns down lives.
It's been called the commandment that needs no footnotes. We live in a world, though, that shrugs at it, jokes about it, and builds industries around it and normalizes it. But God steps in and says no, not because he's trying to limit your life, but because he's trying to protect everything that should matter in your life. So here's the real question today. Do you see adultery the way God sees it?
Let me show you. Clearly, directly, without softening it. 10 reasons. God says, don't go there. Number one, it breaks a covenant that God is monitoring.
Malachi 2:14. The Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth. She is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did you know that marriage is not just paperwork that you file at the courthouse? And it's more than romantic feelings, and it's more than coupling up.
It's more than a social arrangement. It is a covenant that means that both parties have sworn themselves and taken oaths together and made promises, and there were witnesses. But it's not just a covenant between two people. It also includes a third party, and that's God. God says, I was there.
I witnessed the vows. I heard the promises. I mean, you think about our modern weddings. Everyone stands when the bride walks in. Is that right or wrong?
It's right. Why is that? Because something sacred is happening. Are you tracking? Is that true?
When adultery happens, it's never only, I made a mistake. It's never. It just happened or, you know, we were in a bad place in our marriage. No. God calls it infidelity.
The root word for infidelity is fide faith. It's a break of faith and trust. You didn't just break trust with your spouse, though. You violated something sacred that God was watching. It breaks the covenant that God is monitoring.
Number two. Adultery preaches a false gospel, friends. After the Apostle Paul's extended remarks about husbands and wives and marriage In Ephesians chapter 5, he begins his conclusion with this verse. Ephesians 5:32. This is a great mystery.
What? Marriage, husbands and wives. But I speak concerning Christ and the church. Whether we realize it or not, our marriages are telling a story. It's a living photograph of Jesus Christ, who is the faithful bridegroom, and the church which is his bride.
Marriage is meant to display something. You and your wife, you and your husband are painting a picture of covenant, loyalty and sacrificial love, the same kind that Jesus has given for us. But adultery sets fire to that message. It says something completely opposite. Adultery says, faithfulness doesn't matter.
Adultery says that covenant can be broken. Adultery says, love is disposable. You can move on to the next one in the stack. Every marriage, good or bad, preaches a sermon. But adultery turns that sermon into a lie about Jesus.
It preaches a false gospel. Number three. Told you I was moving fast. Got ten of these. It devastates the person you became one flesh with.
Genesis 2:24.
God's comment on marriage, the two shall become one flesh. When God designed marriage, he didn't say, you'll share A house. I mean, you do. That wasn't the point, he said. Even closer, you become one.
One life, one bond, one union. Adultery is not something that happens just outside the marriage. It's something that cuts to the very center of it. Did you know that it wounds trust? Did you know that it confuses identity?
Did you know that it deflates emotional security from your spouse? Did you know that it's not just a mistake. It is deep betrayal.
Even unbelievers think it's wrong. You're harming the person who trusted you most, the person who opened their life fully to you. And that kind of wound doesn't heal quickly. And sometimes, if my experience is true as a pastor, it never fully heals at all in this life. It devastates the person you became one flesh with number four, it destroys the family you were meant to protect.
Now we get to one of our verses in Proverbs 5, where God. God gives this warning to men. Remove your way far from her. Proverbs 5, 8. Who's the her? In Proverbs 5, it's the immoral woman.
And do not go near the door of her house. So why does God say stay far? Because he knows what's at stake.
Friends, adultery doesn't just affect two people. You know that, right? It. You can't keep it from your young children forever. Your friends eventually have to pick you or him, you or her.
It fractures home. It shakes stability, and it steals children's sense of security. I don't think you can wound your children worse than adultery and divorce. God didn't design marriage just to survive, though. He designed it to flourish.
Amen. Amen. Psalm 128, verses 1 to 3. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine.
Your children like olive plants all around your table. There it is. There's the vision. A strong marriage, a steady home, kids growing up around the table. And Scripture tells us why that matters.
Do you know what God says in Malachi 2:15? He seeks godly offspring. The he in that verse is Yahweh. The Lord. You know what he's looking for in his people?
Bunch of babies, bunch of kids. Everywhere. Churches have to add on their buildings to. To contain all the children that are coming that belong to the parents of the believers. God is thinking generationally.
He's not just building you a moment with your marriage. He's building a legacy with you. But adultery doesn't just interrupt that. It tears into it. Proverbs 6, verses 32 and 33.
Whoever commits adultery destroys his own soul. Wounds and dishonor he will get. Can I tell you that word destroys is no exaggeration. It starts in the heart, this temptation to take for yourself someone else's wife or husband. But it doesn't stay there.
And friends, it never stays contained. You cannot box it in this decision you're making. Just like God warned in Exodus, chapter 20, verse 5, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation. That means that your sins hurt your descendants. And it doesn't stop just your children.
Pastor, does that mean every child is doomed? No, but it does mean that every sin has ripple effects. It reaches farther than you think. And everybody, look at me. Children don't just get over it.
They carry confusion and fear and emotional scars when there's unfaithfulness and adultery in their parents marriage. Adultery is as much a social offense as it is a personal offense. In other words, it doesn't just stay in the hotel room. It doesn't just stay in the bedroom. It spreads through the house and then out into the community.
Number five, you will lose more than you think. Proverbs 5, 9, 10.
Here's God's warning about what happens to the man who cheats on his wife. Lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel one. Lest aliens be filled with your wealth. There's a lot in that verse.
Every divorce attorney sees it every day in the rulings that the judges make. So let's make this painfully clear. Here's what happens if you go down the adultery road. You build it and someone else enjoys it. You worked for it and someone else benefits from it.
Your honor and your strength and your reputation and your finances and your future, all of it is now vulnerable. You see, adultery is not just immoral, friends. It is self destruction in slow motion. It moves at glacier speed and you just watch it.
John Piper wrote, God is not a kill joy. He just opposes what kills joy.
And friends, adultery kills joy. Everybody's slowly and painfully and completely. People never walk into it thinking, I want to lose everything today. But that's exactly where it leads. Let me paint a picture that is not hypothetical.
This is composite from our ministry. This happens every day in this nation. A man spends 15, 20 years building a life. He works long hours, he builds a home, he raises children, he invests in his future. And then somewhere along the way, a conversation with a lady, not his wife turns into something more.
A text message turns into a face to face meeting. And that face to face Meeting declines into an adulterous affair. And for a while, nothing seems to happen. Life keeps moving forward. No lightning strikes hit, no collapse of his conscience.
Just secrecy until the day that it all comes out.
Exposure almost always arrives. God said in the chronicles, beware, you're in numbers. Beware your sins will find you out. And now fast forward. After the exposure, this man's not living in his home anymore.
He's sitting in a courtroom. Across the room is his wife, no longer his partner, now his legal opponent. And the judge begins to speak. Assets are now divided. The house is now reassigned or sold.
All the accounts with money in them are split. Custody of the children is now arranged, and nobody likes it. Child support is now mandated. And in a matter of minutes, a life that took decades to build is redistributed at the spoken word of a judge. Another man will now sleep with this man's wife in the house he paid for.
He will sit at the table that this man built, perhaps in his shop. He will rule over the children that this man fathered. And that man who did it will pay the new guy to do it every month. And here's the most frustrating part of regret. He knows that it didn't start in that courtroom.
It started with a conversation that he told himself was innocent.
Friends, that story I just told you is a preview if you're heading down this road. Adultery doesn't just take something from you. It can transfer your entire life to someone else. You will lose more than you think.
Catch your breath for a second.
Number six. It turns private sin into public shame. Well, how do you know, preacher? Because Proverbs 5:14 says I was on the verge of total ruin. Listen, in the midst of the assembly, you think it's hidden, but it won't stay that way.
Adultery always has a way of surfacing and then spreading and then finally exploding. And nobody has the skills to put all the pieces back together. When that grenade goes off, you pull the pin, and you can't affect the outcome. After that, sin whispers, no one will know. And reality answers, just wait.
You don't control where the fallout lands, friend. And it always lands somewhere. Number 7. Adultery enslaves far more than it satisfies.
Proverbs 5:22. By the way, before I go on, I always think, man, how am I going to illustrate this sermon? Do I just tell adultery stories from our church? Sadly, there are far too many. After 26 years, I just elected to not illustrate this sermon.
It enslaves more than it satisfies. Listen. Adultery begins as A choice, and it's all downhill. Then it becomes a pattern, and then a habit, and then a stronghold, and then a dreadful consequence. Sin doesn't just invite you, it captures you.
And then it hooks you. And then it holds you and then it hardens you. Samuel Johnson wrote, the chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
And that's exactly how it works. John Owen is even more blunt. The Puritan. Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
See, friends, what started as something that you thought you could control becomes something you can't escape.
That's the nature of sin. It promises freedom, but it delivers bondage. It enslaves more than it satisfies. Number eight. It always ends in regret.
Proverbs 5, 11, 12. Here's what God said the adulterer can look forward to. At the end of your life, you will groan. How I hated instruction. I think the biggest sin, practically, and this all goes back to pride, but the biggest sin practically that any preacher has to overcome in his own life and in the life of his congregation is this idea of autonomy.
I get to make my own choices. Nobody can tell me what to do. Don't give me a list of do's and don'ts. Stop preaching at me. That's in all of us.
The Christ follower is humbled and says, no. Preach to me more than I ever thought I needed. How I hated instruction. Nobody plans for regret. Nobody walks into adultery thinking, this will ruin me.
But friends, there's always, always. And afterwards. And it sounds like this. Why didn't I listen?
What was I thinking?
I used to have everything.
I dare you.
Talk to someone who's been through this. Talk to an adulterer. Repented. And now walking with Christ again. I guarantee you they won't brag about the pleasure the other woman or the other man brought to them.
They'll talk about the regret. And they'll tell you that sometimes it follows you for the rest of your life. One writer said it plainly, adultery is a walking death. It always ends in regret. Number nine.
God sees what you think is hidden.
Proverbs 5, 21. For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. Your ways are on God's screen. That's what that verse means. And he thinks about your choices, and he ponders the path that you take.
You may hide it from people, friends. You may pay for the hotel room in cash. You may get a burner phone.
You may figure it out so that your Wife won't know.
You might. You might delete all the messages. You might keep up appearances. My question to you is, will you hide it from God?
Psalm 139. 1. O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
God sees every stolen glance. He knows every idle thought. He traces every secret pattern. Nothing escapes him.
There's no such thing as secret sin. Did you know that? Only unseen consequences. For now, God sees what you think is hidden. Number 10.
God has given you something better. Proverbs 5, 15, and 18 and 19. Drink water from your own cistern. Rejoice with the wife of your youth. Be captivated always with her love.
Is God anti sex? Yes or no? No. Pretty sure. He created it.
He designed it, he blessed it. He placed it inside a covenant. Therefore, sex for you and for me and really for all mankind is not everywhere and with everyone. And that's the Corinthian age you live in. And it's the sexual insane culture that we have.
And we live in the greatest nation on Earth. I've been around the globe. It's worse everywhere else. It's just all bad. It's just when you go to the Eastern Hemisphere, women aren't women.
They're possessions. And ladies, you need to thank God you live over here.
It's broken everywhere. But in marriage, God says, this is fully, joyfully, rightly experienced. Drink water from your own sister and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Be captivated always with her love. God is providing for us in holiness with marriage.
He's not withholding joy. He's directing that joy to where it belongs. Adultery, on the other hand, is settling for a cheap substitute when God has already prepared something better for us.
So let me slow this down because I want to talk to four groups as I close this message now. It gets personal in a room like this. This isn't theory, Pastor. Why would you include a sermon and tell us all the bad things about adultery? Because it keeps happening here.
We're not a normal church. That's why we have a membership process so that you can know what you're getting into. We believe the Bible, and the Bible says you don't allow unrepentant sin in the ranks of the believers without dealing with it biblically. Last year, in 2025, we're a church that practices biblical church restoration and church discipline. And last year, we dismissed two members from our church because they committed adultery and would not listen to the church as we compelled them to repent and come back to their spouse.
And Jesus says, If they don't listen to the church, you dismiss them and then you evangelize them. It's just over and over again.
We watch movies and television shows and listen to songs that glorify this stuff. What the enemy can get you shaking your head at and shaking your body at and laughing at, eventually he can get you to do. And so I can't preach to the world and tell them of the joy and the blessing and the covenant of marriage, but I must speak to the church about this. And if there's a 13 year old girl, if there's a 10 year old boy, if there's a 17 year old dating couple in this room, they hear this warning and maybe they get headed off at the pass and it doesn't happen to them. Amen.
But this we preach. So listen very carefully. I'm not here to crush you, but to be clear with you, you already know this isn't right. What are you talking about? Well, some of you are in this right now.
It's a secret, but you're doing it. There's a relationship that you have that doesn't belong to you. There's a secret that nobody else knows except your affair partner you already know. It's not right. That tension you feel right now, that's God being merciful to you.
Your conscience still works. He hasn't allowed the enemy to melt it where it doesn't bother you anymore. He's not exposing you by this sermon. He's warning you not to shame you, but to spare you. You know what First John 1:9 says, and if you're in the middle of adultery, you need it in this moment.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Don't you love the promise of Jesus? You can stop. You can step out of this. You can be clean again.
But don't delay what you already know you need to do. You got to stop this adulteress affair. Others of you, you're not in it yet, but you're drifting and you're toying and you're entertaining it and you're feeding something and you're letting something grow that should have long ago been cut off in your own heart.
You see, friends, listen. You don't fall into adultery, you dive into it. So hear this. Cut it off now. Stop it today.
Shut it down. Walk away while you still can, without all the wreckage. That's not loss, it's wisdom.
Third group. Some of you are carrying this from the Past. You did it. You got away with it. And even now there's guilt and regret and shame.
Listen very carefully. Yes, it was sin, but it is not beyond the grace of God. That cross was horrible for you. Romans 5:20. Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.
There's more grace from God than all of our sins combined. Isn't it Good news? That's why it's called the gospel. So listen, do you think God forgives halfway? Yes or no?
No. If you bring it to him, he meets you with mercy. You don't have to keep carrying what Jesus already paid for on the cross.
And the fourth group is the one I feel the most for. And it's the one I did this sermon for. This is for you. And my heart and my love go out to you. Others of you were wounded by adultery.
You're the betrayed one. You were faithful, he wasn't. You were true, she wasn't. You trusted and you were betrayed. Hear this clearly.
God sees what was done to you.
And God cares about what was done to you. Psalm 147:3. He heals the brokenhearted, and he binds up their wounds. I want you to see the picture of the Son of God stepping off the throne in heaven, coming down in your seat, seeing where you're bleeding from this, and taking rags and cloths and bandages and binding you up. Watch him come do it for you.
This is how he loves us. You are not defined by someone else's sin. And you don't have to carry this alone.
So here's the call for everybody in the room. Don't stay where you are and don't walk through this by yourself. If the spirit of God putting his finger on something, we dare not ignore it.
God says, while it's still called today, we must not delay it. After the service, our prayer ministry teams will be here. Come and talk to somebody. Our pastors are here. Your small group leader is willing to minister to you privately, to any of those groups.
Say as much as you need or as little as you need to, but step out from hiding and into the light, because healing doesn't happen in the dark. God gave this command. You shall not commit adultery to protect you, and he gave it when needed to restore you. So no matter where you are, there's still a path forward with Jesus. You think about that as we pray.
Prayer ministry team leaders, if you'll come to the front. I know it's heavy, but God lives heavy, Father. For those four groups that we just outlined, begin to minister to each person who's in one of those. And Holy Spirit, do your work. Don't let the enemy steal this conviction.
Don't let the enemy steal this truth. Don't let the enemy steal the power of God. In this room, set some people free and begin to heal up the brokenhearted from the disaster of adultery. And God, protect our church from this in the future. This is our prayer.
In Jesus name, amen. I love you guys. Thank you for coming. We're dismissed. The prayer lines are open.
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Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church for a welcoming and uplifting worship experience. If you’ve been searching for a church near you, you’ll discover a warm, authentic church family ready to help you grow in faith.
We are a family-friendly, non-denominational Christian church in Olive Branch, serving individuals and families throughout DeSoto County and the greater Mid-South. People looking for Christian churches in Olive Branch often discover a vibrant community where faith comes alive and lives are transformed through the Gospel.
Whether you’re new to faith or have followed Christ for years, you’ll find welcoming Sunday services, practical Bible teaching, and a place to belong. We are more than a congregation — we are a church family united by a mission to follow Jesus and live out the Great Commission.
A Place for the Whole Family
Families searching for a church with strong children’s programs love our engaging Kids Ministry and safe, caring environments. Students can connect through our Youth Ministry, and adults of every stage can find community through groups, prayer, and discipleship opportunities. As a multi-generational church, we love seeing every age grow in faith together.
Meaningful Worship
Experience contemporary worship with modern Christian music, heartfelt prayer, and Gospel-centered messages designed to help you encounter God personally. If you’re looking for vibrant worship near Memphis, you’ll find a place that feels both authentic and inspiring.
Grow in Your Faith
We offer Bible studies, small groups, and discipleship opportunities that help you understand and apply God’s Word to everyday life. If you’re looking for a place to grow spiritually, you’ll find support and encouragement here.
Connected to Our Community
We are passionate about serving our neighbors through outreach and local partnerships, making a positive impact in Olive Branch and beyond.
Conveniently located in Olive Branch, we serve families from surrounding communities, including Southaven, Germantown, Collierville, Lewisburg, and Byhalia.
You’re Invited
If you’re looking for a church family, meaningful community, and Gospel-centered worship, we would love to welcome you.
Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church — where faith, love, and community come together and lives are changed by Jesus.
