Once in a while as I
move through this series, I will talk about the sacredness of marriage. You
see, if we are going to understand the seriousness of divorce, we need to also understand
the sacredness of marriage. We have to compare divorce to God’s ideal of
marriage.
For example, Jesus
said this in Matthew 19:6: “What God has
joined together (in marriage), let no man separate (divorce).”
Since marriage itself
is a divine institution of God, all marriages involving a man and woman in some
sense are from God even if many of them are not spiritual. Therefore, all marriages that are formed and
brought together by God as His divine and holy institution, becomes a default
against God’s law when divorce enters in.
God
never intends for divorce to occur in any marriage. God declares in Malachi
2:16, “I hate divorce!” This is God’s
attitude toward divorce and He does not change (Malachi 3:6).
The
prevailing attitude today is the idea that marriage is designed to make me
happy. God never created marriage to
make people happy! Happiness comes only
by one way – God! You want to be happy, then find your happiness in your
relationship with Christ, and when you are happy in Him, you’ll be happy in
your marriage.
As
a result of not finding happiness and fulfillment in marriage, people look for
ways to jettison the marriage. And the solution often for over half of the
people who are married is to get a divorce.
But
folks, listen to this: Divorce is and
never was God’s solution to a marriage problem.
If divorce was a solution to a marriage problem, then God would have
commanded divorce.
The
Pharisees saw divorce as a solution, so they come to Jesus and said, “Why did
Moses COMMAND divorce” (Matt. 19:7). Jesus’ reply is enlightening, for He
states: “Because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses PERMITTED you to divorce
your wives, but from the beginning (God’s original design and intention), it
has not been this way” (v. 8).
This
is why when you see people who are hard at work in making a troubled marriage
work, they are often viewed by others as freaks of nature. “Just dump the woman,” they say! “Boot the guy out of the house!” But such people need to be encouraged and not
harassed for trying!
Divorce
is like having a splinter in your foot and solving the problem by cutting off
your whole foot. Why not zero in and
focus on the splinter rather than taking off the whole foot?
Now
I know this is easier said than done. But hear me out, I am laying down God’s
mindset on the sacredness of marriage from what the Bible teaches. If we can
understand the sacredness of marriage, then we can also understand the seriousness
of divorce and not be so quick to see divorce as a solution.
Now
let me say this: When Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let no man
separate” is serious. How so? In the Old
Testament, an adulterer was “stoned to death” for breaking the covenant
relationship of their marriage.
“If a man commits
adultery with the wife of his
neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”
(Lev. 20:10).
God intends a marriage to be long lasting and
permanent, and so if it is broken via sexual encounter called “adultery,” God
said, “Put the guilty person to death!” This is how it was back in the Old
Testament. God handed down this law!
Now watch this: “Fornication” is sex between two
unmarried people, right? Do you know that, even though fornication is sin and
God hates that sin too, He never lays down a law to put “fornicators” to death?
Fornicators were “punished” but not killed (cf. Lev. 19:20). You will not find
one law in the Old Testament to stoned fornicators. Why? Because it is a sin between two
unmarried people. But with regard to the sin of adultery, a sin that comes
between a marriage covenant to harm and destroy it, God says, “Put the
adulterer to death!”
What did you say, Jesus? “What God has joined
together, let no man separate!”
For us to see the seriousness of divorce, we must
come to understand the sacredness of the marriage covenant between a man and
woman.
End of Part 4
No comments:
Post a Comment