When we studied the Seventh Commandment’s prohibition against adultery recently (during the sermon series, “Do the Ten Commandments Still Matter?”), I shared with you about the existence of a website named AshleyMadison.com. This website’s sole purpose is to facilitate affairs between married men and married women. Just the past week, a group of hackers made good on a threat they had issued to the website regarding a release of data on more than 30 million users of the site. Not only did the hackers release data such as names, addresses, and phone numbers, but also information that users posted in regards to what they were looking for in these affairs. While divorce lawyers are salivating (one said attorney commented this was the best thing to happen to his profession since the Seventh Commandment), others are deeply concerned about the impact this release will have on the individuals involved. To further underscore the scope of what was released, more than 15,000 of the email addresses of registered users ended in either .gov or .mil domains. Make no mistake: this will have serious and family shattering repercussions. We should deeply mourn yet another spiritual attack on the family.
The first thing we should take away from this news story is a truth God revealed in Numbers 32:23: we should know that no matter how hard we might try to conceal it, our sin will find us out. In a case like this, we cannot condone the actions of the hackers. However, God will use whatever means He chooses to expose sin and discipline those who belong to Him who are living, unrepentant, in it. If God used the Assyrians and Babylonians to bring discipline and judgment on the Israelites, He can use some hackers to bring discipline and judgment on His people today. There is at least one high-profile believer who has admitted to being unfaithful to his wife in the aftermath of his exposure in the data released by the hacking group, and there are, sadly, probably many more professing believers who are included. If we have taken the name of Christ, we cannot expect to mock His name by living sinful lifestyles without receiving the discipline of the Lord.
Another thing we should take away is the realization that when left to our sinful desires, we will stop at nothing to see them satisfied. While some security experts think many of the names, addresses, and emails are falsified (and the accounts paid for with prepaid and therefore untraceable credit cards), the exposure of so many .gov and .mil email addresses reveals many individuals who were so brazen in their pursuit of an affair they were not worried about the potential revelation of their information. Perhaps they trusted the website’s security; perhaps they simply didn’t care. Whatever the reasoning behind their decision to use their actual information, they were so blinded by their sin that they threw all caution to the wind in order to see their lusts fulfilled.
Thankfully, God does not allow His own to continue in the destructive cycle of sin. He knows better than anyone what our sin costs. When He exposes our sin, it is for our own good. When He disciplines us, it is out of His steadfast love. And the purpose of the discipline we receive is to keep us from sinning again in the future by conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ. Just something to think about…
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