What is and what is not Moral

Matthew 5:27-30

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

The author of Life, the Creator, the One who spoke the world and all that is into being, is the only one with authority to establish rules or laws that control what is and what is not moral.  Lust for what one does not have and is not rightfully theirs but the property of another is not a new problem, it began in the garden.

As a person who has entered into Christ and He has entered into you, you have something in common with Adam and Eve before the fall.  In that Christ paid in full the price of your sin, God sees you “as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)  Now Adam and Eve had not sinned, but the same one that Jesus calls the thief in John 10:10, and also calls him a serpent or the devil, is the one that had this conversation with Eve; “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.  He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”  (Genesis 3:1)  One should always be alert for the deceptive channel that my friend Bill called Channel One, for it worked to cause the rebellion that introduced sin into the world.  It may not come as a shock, but it was the desire to get what someone else had, even if that someone was your Creator, the God of heaven and earth.  This is how it happen; “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3:4-6)  Did you get that last part, Adam was with his woman, but he did nothing to protect her, and we should not wonder why, he also wanted what God never intended him to have.

Many who go by the title Christian, pay little or no attention to what Jesus has said in Matthew 5:27-32.  If they did the church would be a light to those looking from the outside, but many of us have not listened to Jesus, but to that crafty serpent, the one who can mimic your voice in Channel One?

In the last part of John 10:10, after Jesus has told us the thief comes to kill, steal and destroy, listen to what Jesus has to say; “I came that they may (you and me) have life and have it abundantly.”  Any man or any woman who thinks sneaking around and cheating on your family, your bride, or husband, your children and the vows you made to God and many witnesses, is a choice that will bring curses and not blessings, is a very foolish person.  When we look to the Father and understand He loves us and has a wonderful plan for life; then and only then will we be open to waiting for the abundance that Jesus has promised.  The most precious things are often what we were willing to discard, at a moment of emotion and greed.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice