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The Sad Saga of Jack

SERIES: In Tables of Stone #8 of 11

2008-11-16

PRODUCTION #: 1127

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

The problem is so huge, I’m willing to bet you’ve already experienced it or you know someone who has. Today on It Is Written, we are going to be dealing with a topic that might not be completely appropriate for the younger viewers in your house.

There is this guy—we’ll call him Jack. Jack married his high school sweetheart, Stephanie, the day after graduation. They joked about how Stephanie took off her graduation gown to put on a wedding gown. In their second year of college, Stephanie found herself pregnant and quit school.

By the time Jack graduated, two more babies had arrived. But Jack got a good job with good pay, so Stephanie stayed home, and that was fine by her. From the outside, they looked like a happy, healthy, loving couple with three wonderful children. There was just one problem—a woman named Jan who worked at Jack’s office.

She was younger than Stephanie by eight years. She was always well dressed and sharp looking, in striking contrast to Stephanie, who after a long day of dealing with three kids didn’t always look like a beauty queen. On top of that, Jan was always full of life and, most amazing of all, she loved hockey, which was Jack’s passion, and something that Stephanie hated.

In fact, every time Jack tried to watch hockey at home, Stephanie tried to get him to turn it off. So over time, Jack felt his emotions, not to mention his passions, getting out of control. He was becoming obsessed with Jan, who not only knew it, but also went out of her way to dress provocatively to get his attention. Over and over, Jack would mentally wander into dangerous territory and then quickly pull back, telling himself, “This is wrong.”

Then one day, as Jack was driving his car, listening to an oldies station, this song came on about a married man who fell in love with another woman, and the lyrics said, “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.” Well, that was it. Jack told Jan he loved her, and they both left work early the next day, if you get my drift. It isn’t rocket science to figure out what happened next. Jack and Stephanie’s marriage fell to pieces. He married Jan and life went on. But you know, it didn’t go on like before.

Jack’s kids, angry about the divorce, became really hard to handle, especially the oldest boy, who had a drug habit by the age of 14. Stephanie was forced to work, and between the stress of single motherhood and trying to earn a living, she collapsed with a nervous breakdown that landed her in the hospital. Only she didn’t have any insurance, which made things even tougher.

Finally, one of the girls, a 10-year-old, went to stay with an aunt and uncle, only to find out later that the uncle was abusing her.

That’s only Stephanie’s side of the story. The honeymoon with Jack and Jan didn’t last long, either.

First of all, Stephanie took him to the cleaners for child support, which forced him to find extra work and kept him away from Jan a lot more than he wanted. The kids hated Jan with a passion, so when they came to stay with Jack they made her life an absolute nightmare. Then, over time, with Jack away at work so much, Jan started seeing another man, and within a of a couple of years she left Jack.

Devastated by all these events, Jack couldn’t concentrate on his work. He lost his job, which was something that would have happened anyway, because all that time behind the scenes, it turns out that Jan was working hard to get him fired. And because he was way behind in child support, Jack was dragged into court and faced the prospect of jail time if he didn’t pay. So it’s an ugly end to a really bad story.

Last I heard, Stephanie was living in poverty, using food stamps and other forms of welfare, somewhere in greater Los Angeles. The oldest boy, now 16, dropped out of school and ended up in a drug rehab center. And the daughter, who is now 15, wound up pregnant and got the idea that she and Stephanie could raise the baby together. And Jack? Well, he ended up holding down two dead-end jobs and developing quite a taste for gin and tonic.

Now, lets look at this—all this tragedy and for what? For lust? For passion? A family is utterly destroyed and lives are ruined. And I guarantee you, when Jack visits his 16-year-old son in rehab, or visits his single-mom-15-year-old daughter, I’ll bet he thinks it wasn’t worth it.

It kind of reminds me of this story that somebody wrote a few years ago, about a teenager who committed suicide by drinking chocolate milk laced with cyanide. When the father walks into the room, he sees his boy on the ground and tries to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The only problem with that is that the father gets cyanide on his own lips and he ends up dying, too. Then the mother walks into the room, sees her husband on the floor and does the same thing. Then the daughter comes in and she does the same thing, and before you know it, the whole family is dead.

Now, of course, that never really happened and it’s kind of a silly story, but it makes an important point. When you decide to do something wrong, it almost always has an impact on others, and usually those who are closest to you—the ones you love the most.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of marital infidelity, which is why God has drawn some really clear boundaries around the sacred institution of marriage. In fact, He literally wrote those boundaries in stone, in the Ten Commandments, where God tells us point blank, “You shall not commit adultery.”

Now, if you’ve been following the show, you know that we’ve been talking about the Ten Commandments and how those commandments are still relevant and practical in 21st century living. The moral principles found in this ancient code of law are principles that we really need in a society that seems to think the only rule is that there should be no rules, and that we should have the freedom to do whatever we want.

Over the last few decades in particular, this kind of so-called freedom has found public expression in our rejection of sexual boundaries. Today, we tell ourselves that people with standards are living by Victorian values. We talk about them as being repressed or out of date. The popular media is full of talk about freedom of expression—freedom to be yourself and freedom to march to the beat of your own drummer.

And more often than you’d think, they’re talking about human sexuality. Yet, humbly, I’d like to suggest that in no other area are the consequences of that kind of thinking more devastating, demoralizing and long-lasting.

You know, there is really a good reason God told us not to commit adultery, and its because He has our best interests at heart. If anything proves that God loves to give us what’s good, it’s the arrangement He gave for marriage and family. If you really think about it, God could have created a thousand different ways for babies to make their entrance into this world without making it emotionally and physically pleasing.

He could have made the whole process no more complicated than the process of scratching an itch or some other sort of thoughtless mechanism. We still would have filled the Earth with kids. But that’s not the model God gave us. You have to admit there is more to this than just simple procreation. The marriage relationship adds levels of intimacy, passion and love that clearly demonstrate a God who wanted to give us a wonderful gift.

And of course, what some people are going to say is that it’s not always wonderful. In fact, in some peoples’ experience it’s a huge source of misery and suffering. So if it’s really a gift from God, then why does it turn out wrong so much of the time? Well, frankly, the answer is pretty easy. It’s because we have abused the gift.

Let me see if I can illustrate this. One of the greatest orators of the 20th century, a man with one of the greatest gifts for speaking that was ever known, was Adolph Hitler. He used his remarkable gift to curse the world. He got his start at the end of World War I, when small bitter political groups would meet in the taverns and beer halls of Weimar, Germany, to commiserate about losing the war. Hitler got involved in one of these groups, a marginal band of thugs called the National Socialists.

The group probably would have faded into nothing except for the fact that Hitler started to speak at their meetings, and he had a gift for mesmerizing his audience. Over time, so many people fell under his spell that not only did he rise to the top of the party, but also he dragged the whole nation in his wake. If Hitler had stammered or mumbled, the whole world would have been a different place.

So let me ask you a really easy question: Just because Hitler abused the gift of motivational speech, does that make public speaking in and of itself an evil thing? Well, of course not. From Billy Graham to Winston Churchill, lots of people have used that gift wisely.

The problem isn’t the gift—it’s what you do with it. And the same is true for human sexuality. It’s a wonderful gift, but as the author of that gift, God knows full well that it can be abused.

So He puts a deliberate fence around it to spare us the pain, and that fence is the seventh commandment, which reads, “You shall not commit adultery.” I can’t even begin to tell you about all the ruined lives and marriages caused by breaking this one commandment. But I’m also pretty sure I don’t need to, because I’m guessing you’ve already seen what it does to other people. Or maybe you’ve even had your own life damaged.

Not too long ago, a young woman, probably 25 years of age, talked to a group of young people about her parents’ divorce, all because the mother had found a new boyfriend. Now, here was this young woman, now married with a baby of her own, and as she talked about that divorce, which had happened more than 15 years earlier, you could still hear the pain and devastation in her voice.

The whole thing was haunting her. Here she was, an innocent victim, still suffering the consequences of someone else’s violation of the commandment. She’s been scarred for life because of her mother’s choice to break the marriage vow.

So I have to wonder, just how many homes, how many marriages, how many childhoods have been destroyed by this? How much pain could have been spared? How many homes could have been kept intact? How many lives could have been richer and fuller if only people obeyed God’s boundaries?

If you’ve been thinking about adultery as a way out, I can promise you beyond the shadow of a doubt that you’re wrong. I promise that if you go through with this, whatever pleasure you stand to gain will be offset a thousand fold by the suffering that’s going to follow.

When Ronald Reagan was president, he said something I think was pretty smart, something to the effect of, “If you want to stay a happy man, never cheat on your wife.” You know, I couldn’t agree more.

Now, again, in spite of what some people have been saying, God isn’t opposed to the idea of sexuality. In fact, it was His idea in the first place. He made it for humans to enjoy, but within the boundaries He created, because He knows these boundaries form an important wall of protection. The boundary created by God is remarkably simple.

Sexual relationships are made for a man and a woman, inside the bounds of marriage. Outside of that arrangement, according to the Bible, you’re abusing the gift, and that abuse can bring untold pain and suffering. In case there are some who still don’t believe it, just do a little thinking.

Ask any one of the millions of unwed girls who got pregnant as teenagers if they wished they had obeyed that commandment. Ask any one of the men and women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases, especially those women left barren by the disease. Ask somebody who got AIDS in the course of adultery, or any one of the millions of children whose childhoods have been ruined because of it. Just ask them if they wish their parents had kept the commandment.

The human toll caused by this particular sin is something I’m pretty sure we’ll never really calculate. Back in 1970, at the height of what was called the “Sexual Revolution,” LIFE Magazine ran an article that said, “In the first place, we must rid our minds of the idea that there are any special moral rules for sexual behavior. Sexual pleasure is never wrong.”

Never wrong? Are you kidding? Try telling that to Jack’s kids or to the teenage girl who’s never going to have kids because of the disease she got from a casual encounter. Try reading that to someone who’s dying from AIDS because they chose to have an affair. Is it really never wrong? We know better now.

Western civilization is starting to wake up to what God has said all along, sex outside of marriage is always wrong. And, of course, in a world that’s let go of the moral values that held our civilization together for thousands of years, some people still struggle to figure out why.

God wants you to have something beautiful. He wants you to have the joy, the bliss and wonderment of an intimate physical relationship—not the loss and devastation that comes from abusing it. In fact, far from what some people would have you believe, God wants you to enjoy it a lot.

Just listen to what the Apostle Paul says when he talks about husbands and wives. He says in 1 Corinthians 7:2-3:

“Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.” 

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

It wasn’t me telling you to enjoy your married relationship more. That was the Bible. It basically tells married folks not to deprive each other. When it comes to overdoing it, the only warning the Bible gives is to avoid too much abstinence. So you’re never going to convince me the Bible or Christianity is prudish or repressed. I mean, please, have you ever read the Song of Solomon?

In the right context, the context of godly marriage, the Bible shows us a path to fulfillment you’ll never find somewhere else. Maybe you’ve read some of the studies they’ve done on sexual satisfaction. It turns out that married couples who stay faithful to each other report higher satisfaction than those who practice sex outside of marriage.

Those who enjoy it within the safety and security of marriage are actually more satisfied than the ones who are running around with a bunch of different partners. That’s what God’s been trying to say all along. A married man will find more fulfillment with his wife than a one-night stand he picked up at the bar. Who would have ever known?

Henry Ford and his wife were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. When someone asked him the secret of his marital success, Ford responded, “The formula is the same as I use to make a successful car. Stick to one model.” You know, millions of people could tell you he was right.

Now, of course, sexual temptation can be pretty powerful. But it’s that very power that gives a godly relationship the potential for so much intimacy, so much closeness and love. Only those who have experienced the wonder and the beauty of sexual love within the bounds that God created will know how fulfilling it can really be. Those who step outside of those bounds can tell you how much pain and suffering it causes. Just ask Jack or Stephanie, or their kids.

That’s why Jesus, when He interpreted this commandment, said this (Matthew 5: 27-28):

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Lust in your heart is the same as adultery. You see Jesus knows how powerful our drives can be. And He also knows how devastating the abuse can be. So He tells us to nip it in the bud. Deal with the problem at the level where it always begins—in your mind. Take care of it before it moves into your real life where you’re going to have a lot more trouble controlling it.

If only Jack had listened to what Jesus said. If only those millions of people had stopped the lust before it turned to adultery—if they had done it then, how much better their lives would be today! Try to imagine a world where sex was always practiced within the boundaries that God created.

Let’s be honest. Take away the values of the Playboy Mansion and ask yourself if the world would be better or worse. The answer’s obvious, because as it turns out, God is always right.

Of course, for some of you, you’re thinking it’s too late. You’ve blown it and maybe even more than once. But the news from the Bible is incredibly good. It’s never too late to do the right thing. In fact, in one of the most famous stories in the Bible, a woman caught in the act of adultery is brought to Jesus, and He forgives her—just like that.

And the same Jesus is willing to forgive you, right now. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how much pain you’ve caused, no matter what you’re going through at this moment, you can be forgiven. It’s possible because Jesus has paid the price for what you did in full. But right now you need to admit your guilt and claim His forgiveness for yourself.

Now listen to me very carefully. It’s never too late. The Bible not only promises that you can have forgiveness, but it also says you can have healing. You can have the power to live a different, better kind of life, and you can live without being a slave to your passions. I’m not making you that promise. God makes it in the pages of this Book.

I’m willing to guess that nobody listening today has been absolutely spared from the pain that breaking this commandment brings. Maybe you broke that commandment or someone else did. But you know, the past is over now and you can’t change the mistakes of the past. All you can do is deal with the present, and that’s where you’ll find Jesus, in the present right now. So let me ask you: As Jesus’ hand is stretched out to you in an invitation, what in the world holds you back?

You know, it’s never too late to start a new life with Jesus. Almost everybody has been touched by the issues we’ve been talking about today—and a lot of people want that new beginning. Why don’t we pray together?

PRAYER:
Father in heaven, today as we look at our lives, we know we’ve made a mess of them, and we long to start over. Thank you for offering forgiveness. Thank you for offering us the ability to live a new life in you. We want to lay claim to your promises in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Scriptures Used in “The Sad Saga of Jack”

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
—Matthew 5:27-28

“Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.”
—1 Corinthians 7:2-3