PT-2 "The Teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees" (Matt. 5:31)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2020 11:28 PM

 

My Worship Time                              Focus: PT-2 “The Teaching of the Scribes and Pharieses”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 5:31

 

            Message of the verse:  “31 "Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’”

 

            In our last SD we began to talk about things that were seen in Deuteronomy chapter 24 as that section spoke about the “certificate of dismissal.”  This is key to how the scribes and the Pharisees used that section to show that it was all right to get rid of a wife for any reason, which is not at all what that section in Deuteronomy, was talking about.

 

            MacArthur writes “The Lord’s primary purpose in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 was not to give an excuse for divorce but to show the potential evil of it.  His intention was not to provide for it but to prevent it.  Verses 1-3 are a series of conditional clauses that culminate in the prohibition of a man ever remarrying a woman he has divorced if she marries someone else and is separated from the second husband either by another divorce or by death.  Because her first divorce had no sufficient grounds, could not go back to her first, ‘since she [had] been defiled’ (v. 4).  She was defiled (more literally, ‘disqualified’) because of the adultery brought about by her second marriage—which is the primary point of the passage.  Moses is saying, then, that the divorce for indecency or promiscuity creates and adulterous situation.”

 

            So as we look at God’s eyes here the granting of a certificate did not in itself make a divorce legitimate.  As we continue looking at Deuteronomy 24:1-4 it is not approving divorce, it is a strong warning against it.  Let me once again quote these verses from Deut. 24 “1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, 2  and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3  and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, 4  then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.”   This passage suggests, or even perhaps assumes, that a divorce on proper grounds, accompanied by a certificate, was permitted.  This however does not offer divine provision for divorce, but it rather shows that divorce often leads to adultery.  So even on the grounds of adultery, divorce was tolerated in the Law of Moses only as a gracious alternative to the capital punishment that adultery justly deserved as seen in Lev. 20:10-14.

 

            MacArthur concludes “The most popular school of rabbinic tradition in Jesus’ day, as reflected in the Targum of Palestine (written in the first century a.d.), interpreted Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 24:1 as a command.  What God had provided as reluctant permission had been turned into a legal right.”

8/26/2020 11:50 PM