Can I pray for you in any way?
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk
** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of
The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn
** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command
that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to
divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from
the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual
immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
The disciples said to Him, “If this is the
situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
Matthew 19:7-10
Jesus then left that place and went into
the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to Him,
and as was His custom, He taught them.
Some Pharisees came and tested Him by
asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
“What did Moses command you?” He replied.
They said, “Moses permitted a man to write
a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
“It was because your hearts were hard that
Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.
When they were in the
house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who
divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And
if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
Mark 10:1-5, 10-12
“Anyone
who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man
who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Luke 16:18
This ends
today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
In addressing a question about divorce from
a group of Pharisees who had approached Him while in the region of Judea, we
found Jesus changing the subject to marriage in yesterday’s devotion titled “One
Flesh.” That message concluded with these words of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark:
“Therefore
what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Did you catch that?
It was a command that no one should ever
separate anything that God has joined together.
The operative words here are “no one.”
Keep that in mind now as Jesus gets back to
the question at hand in our continuing study of Matthew 19:
“Why
then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of
divorce and send her away?”
Jesus
replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were
hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who
divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman
commits adultery.”
The
disciples said to Him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it
is better not to marry.” Matthew 19:7-10
The Pharisees couldn’t help themselves.
They couldn’t.
Over and over again in the scriptures, we
find them blinded by their own legalism. They were so focused on a law that man
had put in place that they were unable to grasp what God had established at the
very beginning of mankind.
Jesus had just got done taking them back to
the earliest of scriptures, back to the time when everything was created by the
one true God, the one and only God, the God they were supposed to be obedient
to.
This was the God who felt man should not be
alone and so He created a partner for him, Eve who was fashioned from a part of
Adam. They would become the first couple, the progenitors of every other man
and woman ever born, the first who were one flesh. Using them as an example,
God set the rules for matrimonial living as soon as He made man and woman:
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his
wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24
One flesh. United. Bound together for what
was to be forever, for as long as God would grant life.
Set by their Creator, this was the model
for men and women who would join together in marriage from the time of Adam and
Eve on. It was the model which had God’s stamp of approval. It was the model
everyone was supposed to follow. No one was to separate what God brought
together.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t obeyed. Man
decided that it would be permissible to put vehicles in place to do away with
their wives and break the marital covenant.
And so Moses wrote direction on how a
divorce was to take place. It wasn’t that Moses was saying divorce was allowed
to happen but in order to ensure it was done in reasonable fashion, he wrote
guidance on how it should be carried out:
“If
a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something
indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her
and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the
wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a
certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he
dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her
again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord.
Do not bring sin upon the land the Lord your God is giving you as an
inheritance.” Deuteronomy 24:1-4
This is what the Pharisees were referring
to. It was as if they weren’t listening or weren’t willing to receive the
wisdom Jesus was imparting on them before. Such was their fixation on Moses and
the law.
Did I mention the Pharisees couldn’t help
themselves?
Well, Jesus was ready with a response, just
as He always was, and, equally typical, it wasn’t one the Pharisees were going
to like.
“Moses
permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was
not this way from the beginning.”
Here again we find Jesus putting the matter
of divorce on man, not God. It was man who hardened their hearts, forcing God
out of the picture, the One who was the very glue that made them one flesh with
their wife. Men were ready to get rid of their wives by whatever way they
could, even killing them if necessary, and so Moses wrote the divorce laws to
regulate sinful behavior. It was as simple as that.
Divorce was not there at the beginning. It
wasn’t an institution that God established. It was a practice man put in place
to break forever bonds ordained by their Lord.
It’s as plain and simple as that.
Fast forward today and look how this matter
of divorce has evolved. It’s disheartening and heartbreaking to see how far
mankind has fallen, not just in the matter of people just arbitrarily ending
the covenants they vow to maintain but in how marriage itself has been sinfully
twisted from the way God intended it to be.
If it saddens me, I can’t help but think
what God thinks about it. My sense is that His emotion is not as much sadness
as burning anger at the sinful disintegration of the marital institution He
created and ordained.
Back to the scriptures where we find Jesus
laying down new direction on the matter of divorce. In it, He sets only one
reason someone would be permitted to consider divorce.
“I
tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and
marries another woman commits adultery.”
Here Jesus sets the grounds for divorce and
the stipulations are miniscule. For the only reason a divorce would be
acceptable is if infidelity entered into the marriage. One of the two partners
in the union, the one flesh, would have to sinned and shared their flesh with a
third party. The sanctity of the one flesh would be broken after one of the two
partners decided to separate what God had joined together.
It would only be in this instance that a
divorce would be approved. It was the only endorsed and supported reason for
divorce to happen. It was true in Jesus’ time, it’s true today, and it will be
true until that day when Jesus returns to judge the earth.
Friends, we need this message today.
Marital relationships were meant to be a man and a woman together forever with
no one separating what God had brought together.
It’s time to get back to basics. It’s time
to get back to marriage the way God designed it to be.
It’s time to get rid of divorce.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
No comments:
Post a Comment