Feb. 24, 2022

171: Bible Questions: What does the Bible say about marriage, divorce, remarriage, and living together?

171: Bible Questions: What does the Bible say about marriage, divorce, remarriage, and living together?

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171: Bible Questions: What does the Bible say about marriage, divorce, remarriage, and living together?

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Show Notes
Transcript

The Bible has much to say about marriage, separation, divorce, remarrying after divorce, and living together

Transcript

Bible Questions: What does the Bible have to say about marriage, separation, divorce, remarriage, and living together?

My city, Rochester, Minnesota is not only known for the Mayo clinic. It's also known for Canadian geese, big ones, 35,000 of them who stay year round Canadian. Geese are one of God's creatures who mate, for life, they join animals like wolves and coyotes, bald Eagles, beavers. And of course, lovebirds one mate for life. That's also true of the approximately 106,000 people that live in our city. Humans made in the image of God. In my 12 years of guiding middle school students through the old and new Testament. We've many times stumbled across this mate for life teaching and examples, both good and bad in this Bible questions episode, we're going to examine together.

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What does the Bible say about marriage divorce, remarriage, or joining the other 97% of God's creatures and skipping this whole mate for life thing altogether in episodes, 15 through 17, we learned God had a special plan for the mammal man, God states, it is not good for them to be alone. Men and women are not complete without each other. In episode 17, we looked at pink and blue and glue male and female glued together for life. At the end of Genesis two, God makes an editorial statement. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.

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And the two shall be one flesh pink and blue glued together for life. The term marriage is not used tale Genesis 34, but it's clear from the beginning chapters, God has a special plan for we mammals made in his image. In episode 20, we looked at some bad news where this whole pink and blue and glue things started to come apart. Genesis chapter three, when sin entered the world, when males and females began to fall short stray outside God's lions and twist God's purposes from that sinful action, man got a sinful nature, a sin rail, and the dominoes fell.

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They experienced guilt shame covering up and hiding, blaming God in each other pain in childbirth and in carrying out God's vocational assignment. And then we're told this partnership began to come apart. Woman's desire was for her husband. There was already a physical desire for each other to mate. So this desire probably meant to covet something that belonged to him. And he in turn now, sinful was said to rule over her from this point, this mating for life turned sour marriage deteriorates. In episode 22, we meet a guy with two wives, frankly.

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He's an arrogant jerk and going forward from Genesis on it's hard to find good examples at all. Abraham to protect himself, puts his wife in jeopardy twice. Isaac, his son and his wife, Rebecca May be one of the worst role models in all of scripture. We find them keeping secrets from each other, playing favorites with their kids and using their boys as pawns to get their way in episode 30, we learn of Jacob and his story. Jacob had sister wives plus made it with their handmaids. And we looked at the baby wars that followed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dubbed the patriarchs, the trunk of God's family tree.

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And if the trunk is that messed up, you can imagine what happens with the branches. In episode 38, we looked at God teaching more on mating for life. It's now 400 years after Abraham, the Israelites are in Egypt at Mount Sinai. God gives the family rules. The 10 commandments family rule number seven was to remind them, do not commit adultery mate for life and make it exclusive. And rule number 10 was don't covet. Your neighbor's wife don't even want to mate with someone else. We move forward to episode 53, where we meet Abigail and her husband.

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Nabel, here's a woman married to a man whose name literally means fool. And we get to hear from her own mouth. What it's like to be married to this guy in episode 58, we looked at Solomon's wisdom to his sons. Why is word? So they don't have to discover life. The hard way throughout this book of Proverbs, there are nuggets of wisdom about mating for life, the positives and the negatives. For example, it's better to live in the corner of an attic than to live in a wide house with a contentious woman. He goes on to go after foolish men, but Proverbs also provides some hope.

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Just look at Proverbs 31 and what a blessing it is to be married to a good virtuous woman. When we get to the new Testament, we get some good news. God intends to restore marriage to its rightful place. As he changes husbands and wives from the inside out in episode 1 29, the letter to the Galatians, Paul writes about the inner qualities that God transforms. He calls them fruits of the spirit. Things like love, patience, gentleness, and self-control. These are qualities that make partnering mating for life. A joy again. Then we get to the letter to the Ephesians. This letter is loaded.

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We looked at it in episode one 30. The theme of Ephesians is how to live as God's wiggly people full of his spirit in chapter five, Paul is talking about being filled with the spirit, basically giving God the key is to all areas of our life. When we give him the keys, we will submit to one another in love. Then he turns to the mate for life relationship of marriage, he says in a spirit filled couple, a wife will model Jesus by arranging herself under her husband. As Jesus arranged himself under God, the father and a husband who will love his wife as Jesus loved the church.

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I have access to an old farmhouse on a beautiful bluff in Southeast Minnesota. One of my favorite activities is watching the deer on one of my trips, our herd of three doze, a couple of funds and a buck came into the field right in front of me. I sat motionless for about 10 minutes. They were 30 or 40 yards away. The buck would not take his eyes off me as the dose and funds grazed in the cornfield. When I finally moved, the buck gave out a snort and the rest of the herd scooted into the woods. He gave me one last look and he tried it after them. You get that same sort of feeling from Paul's teaching in Ephesians five, that vigilant protect.

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Cause my herd is valuable kind of sense that God wants wired into a spirit filled husband. In that episode, we also learned that a man and a woman glued together made it for life being filled and controlled by God's spirit is the greatest illustration of the relationship of Christ and the church. Paul calls it a mystery. The word mystery in the new Testament means something we couldn't know unless God revealed it to us. This made for life as God is transforming. Our inner hearts is majestic. In episode 1 44, we looked at the little letters of first and second Peter in first, Peter chapter three, Peter repeats urging wives to focus on an inner heart.

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That's the renovation of God's spirit and to arrange themselves under their husbands. He urges husbands to live with their wife, with understanding, to treat her as we would a weaker vessel there's deer herd language, and to show her honor as a fellow heir there's Genesis to partnership in creation language, Peter, then warns husbands. If you don't do this, your prayers will be hindered. In other words, God's saying, Hey, go patch things up with the misses. Before talking with me in this broken world, things aren't always fixed so easily, which brings us to the question of divorce.

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Christians fall along a continuum when it comes to his divorce, okay? On the one side, there's a group who believe God is the God of new beginnings and grace. And that divorce is a start over gift from our guide on the other end of the continuum are folks that believe divorces never, right? They point the scripture is teaching about us being image, bearers, male, and female to Paul's comment about the mystery of Christ and the church in a marriage. They also cite verses like Malakai two 16, where God straight up says, quote, I hate divorce on quote, then adds the commentary.

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It's violence and treachery. So they conclude no divorce, but reading cover to cover through the Bible. It doesn't support this. Let's take a look at a few passages in scripture. Divorce happens. Jesus pins. The why on this phrase, because of the hardness of our hearts, that is the heart of one or both mates in Deuteronomy 24, 1 through three. Moses requires a man to get a certificate of divorce. If you look at the context, it's clear, the motive is to protect the woman. So she may remarry. Otherwise it's highly possible. She would become destitute it further states.

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Once he divorces her, he may not remarry her again, even down the road. If she is a widow. In other words, it burns a bridge in Ezra 10, we see the Israelites re gathered back in the land. After the Babylonian captivity, divorcing their foreign wives, they've married foreign women who are leading them away from their God. It's these people's idea to divorce their foreign wives. We're not sure of God agreed with her idea, but they're broken hearted priest as rhe does. Then we get to the new Testament in Matthew 19, we looked at this in episode 1 0 9.

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Jesus is taking on the religious bullies of Jerusalem. They've twisted God's plan in creation. In many ways, one of these religious bullies comes up to Jesus and asks, can Amanda divorce his wife for any reason? Now you could read that two different ways. The first would be, Hey, is there any reason I can divorce my wife? Like give me the one reason or you can read that can demand divorce his wife for any reason from the culture at the time and Jesus answer, we know which one they meant in that culture. A man could divorce his wife for anything. He found offensive in her. Jesus responds firmly.

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You cannot divorce your wife except for adultery here. Jesus gives permission to break the mate for life. Bond of marriage, adultery, physically mating with another person. But if we back the tape up Jesus in the sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five made this statement to lust. After someone in your heart is to commit adultery. This begs the question is divorce permissible. When your spouse's heart belongs to someone else, what if your spouse is addicted to lustful pornography or has had an emotional affair with someone else? Even if they haven't made it physically, I asked my eighth grade girl, students, which do you think would hurt more?

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If you were married, your husband getting physical with another woman or another woman taking over your husband's heart, him sharing with her, his hopes, dreams, and joys. It's clear in man. The mammal God's image. Bearers mating for life is much deeper than physical. In first Corinthians chapter seven, Paul weighs in on divorce. We looked at this in episode 1 33, many in Corinth were coming to Christ and they were already made it to an unbelieving spouse. Paul says if the unbeliever wants to bail out, it's okay in saying that Paul seems to give permission to a second reason for divorce, abandonment of an unbelieving spouse.

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On the other hand, in the same context, Paul writes, Hey, if you can hang in there with that unbeliever, God could redeem that relationship and could lead that unbelieving spouse to faith after all. It's pretty hard to ignore a mate being transformed slowly right before your eyes. But people ask what if the spouse doesn't physically leave? What if they just emotionally leave? Or what if they stay and the abuse you or the kids in Peter's words, they consistently refuse to live with you in an understanding way. I would argue scripture teaches. Many of those actions are straight up sin.

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And the essence, the consequence of sin is separation separation from God. And from one another, which brings up the question instead of divorce. What about separation in first Corinthians chapter five, Paul seems to bring this idea up after giving an example of someone who claimed to be a believer who was acting terribly in this mating situation, he tells the Corinthian church not to associate with this person, not to associate with a person who claims to be a believer, but is sexually immoral. He goes on to say, or is greedy or an idolater.

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He goes on to add, or is a reviler, which means verbally abusive or a drunkard or a swindler. His instructions don't even eat with such a one. People reading this think separation put space between you and that person. Maybe that space will wake them up. That was what Paul was trying to accomplish in first Corinthians chapter five, when it comes to separation. My experience as a pastor has been rather bleak. It's seldom seems to have worked. They seldom seem to get the message. And there's a term in psychology, cognitive dissonance. When somebody comes to you with a difficult message, you have two choices to absorb the message and change or to shoot the messenger.

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My experience has been most separations have led to divorce. People really don't want to own their stuff. And the first step of physically separating makes the rest of the steps of divorce easier. However, I did experience one vivid victory where separation brought brokenness and repentance and amazing healing. We then move to the question of remarriage. If divorced, can you remarry? We already saw from Deuteronomy 24, you can't remarry your first mate. Even if he or she is widowed by the second mate, two wrongs don't make a right in first Corinthians seven, Paul continues.

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He says, if you divorce remain unmarried or be reconciled to your previous mate now, to be fair, some would say, Paul is giving a description for his time and for the Corinthian church, not a prescription for all times. If those two words, description and prescription are foreign to you, please listen to episode 12 because I believe Paul's command is fairly prescriptive. As a pastor, it's been very difficult to bring myself to remarry a person who's been divorced. At least if they're previous is still on married, the final question is this. Why not just skip marriage altogether?

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That's just not the spirit of our age today. That question came up in Jesus' time when Jesus laid down his priority of staying mated for life in Matthew 19, that to be divorced other than for adultery was wrong. His disciples sought him out and said, wow, if that's true, it's better not to marry. That's really a sad commentary. Isn't it? Jesus replies to them. Not everyone can accept that. It's as if Jesus was saying, even in this broken world, it's still not good for most of us to be alone. In first Corinthian seven, Paul explains one reason. It's not easy for many of us to accept that don't mate for life burning with passion, we're still mammals.

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Most of us need to mate, according to scripture, that should be done in an exclusive covenantal relationship, not through liaisons or personal lust, but marriage goes so much deeper than mating. It's companionship. It's being God's image bearers in our work, our decisions, our joy in wonder, it's in creating a fertile and healthy environment for our little seedlings. You might want to listen to episode 1 78. And frankly, it's an amazing laboratory that God uses to sharpen us. I'm coming up on 33 years of being married.

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I have to say I'm a huge fan of God's made for life plan. Sometime during my course with the kids, I draw on the whiteboard, an upside down bell curve. I then take them to first John chapter two verse 14. John is writing about how spiritual growth happens in people. He says this, I write to you little children because you know daddy, the father, I write to you young men because you stand strong in the word and resist the evil one. I write to you old men because you really know the father. I explained to them, I believe that's the typical growth curve for following Jesus, but I also think it's the bell curve for most marriages.

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The beginning of the curve, I label the honeymoon where everything is new and exciting. The bottom of the curve, I label the crucible in the marriage vows. This is where the, for poorer for sickness or for worst part kicks in. This is where the kids become little wedges, prying, moms and dads apart. This is where the different that drew us during courtship is interpreted as defective. This is where we have to dig deep, believe God and fulfill our vows. Then I smile at my students and say, and if you will get through this for poorer in sickness and for worst part, you've got something amazing waiting for you up the other side.

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On the ascending side, I write soulmate. This is what happens when two people made it for life, hang in there through the crucible. They began to look like each other, smell like each other and finish each other's sentences. Now this dear wife rolls her eyes. When the husband's about to say the same joke, he's told 650 times, they're the cute couple holding hands, walking down the street. And they're the couple often who die within weeks or even hours of each other. Their lives are so entwined. Speaking of which with 35,000 geese, that's 17,500 pairs, it's not unusual for one of them to get hit by a car quite frequently in Rochester.

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And when they do, you'll nearly always see it. Their mate is standing next to them and will continue to stand there until they heal or they die.

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