SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/29/2019
8:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Unbreakable Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
5:31
Message of the
verses: “31
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh’” (NKJV).
We
continue to look at the theme of unbreakable love in this SD. In our last SD we ended up talking about God’s
dealings with Israel, and although He had dealt harshly with that nation He
stilled loved the people of Israel. We
looked at Jeremiah 3:8 at the end of our SD and I want to repeat this verse as
we begin this SD “"And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel,
I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister
Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.” I want to point out that when Jeremiah wrote
his book that it was during the time when Judah and Jerusalem were about to be
defeated by the Babylonians and so it was the end of Judah’s reign when God’s
Spirit spoke through Jeremiah to write what he had written. This divorce that God gave to Israel was not
to say that done with the believers in Israel.
Remember what Paul said in the book of Romans 9:6 But
it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.” Paul is speaking of those who are believers
that come out of Israel are true Israel.
We then quoted three verses from the prophet Mal. who wrote after the
Jews returned from captivity in Babylon:
“16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke
to one another, and the LORD gave attention and heard it, and a book of
remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who esteem His name. 17 “They
will be Mine," says the LORD of hosts, "on the day that I prepare My
own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves
him." 18 So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the
wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him” (Mal.
3:16-18).
John
MacArthur writes “That is the sort of bond God ordained for marriage. It is not everlasting as far as eternity is
concerned, but it is lasting as far as the earthly lives of the husband and
wife are concerned. Though He has made
provision for divorce in the cases of unrepentant and continued adultery (Matt.
5:31-32; 19:4-10) and the departure of an unbelieving spouce (1 Cor. 7:15),
death is God’s only desired dissolution for marriage.
“Just
as the body of Christ is indivisible, God’s ideal design for marriage is that
it be indivisible. As Christ is one with
His church, husbands are one with their wives.
Therefore when a husband harms his wife he harms himself. A husband who violates his marriage violates
himself. A husband who destroys his
marriage destroys a part of himself.”
Jesus
said the following in Matthew 19:5-6 “5 and said, ’FOR THIS REASON A
MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER
AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? 6 “So they are no longer two, but
one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.’” The Pharisees asked Jesus about what Moses
had said about a man divorcing his wife and Jesus replied that he did that
because of the hardness of your hearts, speaking of the husband’s heart. Jesus then goes on to talk about continued
adultery as the only reason for a divorce to be granted. So what we see here is that Jesus made clear
that God, through Moses, only “permitted” divorce and did not ever “commanded” it,
as this is what the Jewish leaders had claimed for many years. MacArthur adds “The bill of divorcement was
to protect the offended wife, who would then be allowed to marry again without
becoming guilty of adultery. That is the
only provision that either Moses or Jesus gives for divorce.”
We
can see from the book of Hosea that it is not God’s will that even adultery
break the marriage relationship. We know
that the book of Hosea is a picture of how God loves Israel as Hosea was to
marry a prostitute and have children with her, and yet his wife Gomer was
unfaithful to Hosea and this pictures Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, and yet
Hosea continues to forgive Gomer even though she was unfaithful to him, so we
can picture that if a wife is unfaithful to her husband, or husband to his wife
that unless the unfaithfulness continues and seems that it will never stop then
Jesus states that a divorce is to be given, but as in the case of Hosea and
Gomer, Hosea continued to forgive his wife just as God continues to forgive
Israel. It was God who restored the
marriage of Hosea and Gomer the same way He will restore Israel as we have
already learned in our study of the book of Revelation, and also when Paul
writes in Romans 9:26 that there is coming a day when all Israel will be saved.
John
MacArthur writes “When a husband sees faults and failures in his wife—even if
she is as unfaithful and wanton as Gomer—he should realize that she has not
offended him to a fraction of the degree to which he has offended God. God has immeasurably more for which to
forgive us than we could ever have for which to forgive others.
We
will continue this subject in our next SD, Lord willing as we will site a quote
from the early church Father John Chrysostom at that time.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When problems come in the marriage it takes
much prayer and patience as God will work things out.
My Steps of Faith for Today: We have been talking about humility in this
section for this entire year, and learned that humility can only be
accomplished in a person’s life as they are filled with the Holy Spirit. It is then when we look at Ephesians 5:18-6:9
that Paul is stating that in order to have a good marriage, and raise your
children right and get along with those you work with you have to be
continually filled with the Holy Spirit.
Today’s quotation from “Love in Action:”
Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
Mercies and
God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
Tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort those who
Are in
any trouble, with the comfort with which
We ourselves
are comforted by God.
II
Corinthians 1:3, 4
Cast
your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.
Ecclesiastes
11:1
8/29/2019 9:50 AM
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