SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/27/2020 9:29 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The Teaching of the Old Testament”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 5:31-32
Message of the verse: “31 “Furthermore it
has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’
32 "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except
sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman
who is divorced commits adultery.”
The
verses that I have posted here in this section are not what we will be going to
look at as we go through what the Old Testament is teaching about this subject
of divorce and re-marriage. Now as we
begin to look more at this subject of divorce we cannot understand it without
understanding what the Bible has to say about marriage. Genesis 2:24 states “For this reason a man
shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they
shall become one flesh.” We can see here
that marriage was God’s plan, and not man’s plan and in the deepest sense every
couple that has ever been married and it makes no difference whether a believer
or not, they participate in the union established by the Creator Himself, as
marriage is God’s institution.
As
we look at that verse from Genesis 2:24 we have to realize that this verse was given
before man sinned, and so without sin then all things would be made easier because
we would not always be tempted to do what is wrong. As I think about this, I want to say that
since the fall of man all men who were born with an earthly father, and
everyone has had an earthly father with the exception of Adam and Eve, and then
the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to ask all
parents this question: “Have you ever
had to teach your children to do something wrong? I know that there are exceptions to this, but
children will do things that are wrong because like all people they were born
wrong. So as we go back to looking at
marriage, and the fact that it was and still is God’s plan there is going to be
struggles when two sinful people live together, but because it is God’s plan
there is always going to be help from the Holy Spirit who lives in all
believers and from the Word of God and also good counseling from church
leaders.
John
MacArthur writes “Cleave to’ carries the idea of firm, permanent attachment, as
in gluing. In marriage a man and woman
are so closely joined that they become ‘one flesh,’ which involves spiritual as
well as physical oneness. In marriage
God brings a husband and wife together in a unique physical and spiritual bond
that reaches to the very depts. Of their souls.
As God designed it, marriage is to be the welding of two people together
into one unit, the blending of two minds, two wills, two sets of emotions, two
spirits. It is a bond the Lord intends
to be indissoluble as long as both partners are alive. The Lord created sex and procreation to be
the fullest expression of that oneness and the intimacies of marriage are not
to be shared with any other human being.”
I
want to go back and talk about some more of the consequences of the fall as man’s
first sin brought a separation from God, a separation of man and of nature, and
also a separation of husband and wife. The
curse that God gave to Eve and consequently to all women after here is found in
Genesis 3:16 “To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in
childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for
your husband, And he will rule over you.’”
Then there was the curse of God on Adam and every other male which is
found in verse 17 “Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the
voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you,
saying, ’You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In
toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.”
We
close with one more quote from John MacArthur “The fall distorted and prevented
the marriage relationship. Henceforth
the wife’s ‘desire’ for her husband would no longer be the desire to help but
the desire to control—the same desire that sin had for Cain (see Gen. 4:7,
where the identical Hebrew construction is used). For the man’s part, his ‘rule’ over his wife
henceforth would be one of stern control, in opposition of her desire to
control him. At the Fall the battle of
the sexes began, and women’s liberation and male chauvinism have ever since
been clouding and corrupting the divine plan for marriage.”
8/27/2020 9:57 AM
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