PT-4 "The Teaching of the Old Testament:"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/30/2020 9:08 PM

 

My Worship Time                                           Focus:  PT-4 “The Teaching of the Old Testament”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Various OT Passages

 

            Message of the verses:  Now we have been talking about what God’s plan for marriage was from the start of human history, and that was one man for one woman for life, but sin get into the way and sin is the biggest part of what we have been looking at, at the end of our Spiritual Diaries when I quote from Rev. John Linton’s booklet “The Battle of the Ages.” 

 

            So with this being said we can concur that the man who puts away his wife does what God hates.  If we go back to the passage that we ended with in our last SD, which was Malachi 2:13-16 we find in verse “16 “For I hate divorce," says the LORD, the God of Israel, "and him who covers his garment with wrong," says the LORD of hosts. "So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.’”  John MacArthur states “a literal rendering of which would be, ‘he covers his garment with violence.  It brings to mind the picture of a man who murders someone and is caught with the blood of his victim spattered on his clothes.  ‘Not one has done so [divorced] who has a remnant of the Spirit,’ Malachi tells us.  That sentence represents a Hebrew phrase that is difficult to translate, but I believe that rendering gives the right sense of it.  God’s Holy Spirit is never a party to divorce.” 

 

            I have heard stories that come from different Pastors who say that people come to them and say that the Lord is leading them to get a divorce so that they can have peace after they leave their spouses.  This is not true because of what we read from our passage in Malachi where God says “I hate divorce.”  Without any exception, divorce is a product of sin, and so God hates it.  God never commands it, endorses it, or blesses it.

 

            John MacArthur writes “The Pharisees used an erroneous interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 to defend their idea of divorce, conveniently interpreting that passage as a command for divorce (Matt. 19:7).  If fact, the passage neither commands nor condones divorce.  It simply recognizes it as a reality, as do other Old Testament passage.  In Isaiah 50:1, for example, God challenges the nation of Israel for their spiritual fornication:  ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘Where is the certificate of divorce, by which I have sent your mother away?  Or to whom of my creditors did I sell you?  Behold you were sold for your iniquities, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.’”  In Jeremiah 3:1 we read something similar “God says, "If a husband divorces his wife And she goes from him And belongs to another man, Will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? But you are a harlot with many lovers; Yet you turn to Me," declares the LORD.”

 

            The Old Testament does not encourage divorce as most references to divorce in the Old Testament put restrictions on it.  Let us look at Deuteronomy 22:14 and 19 as verse 14  talks about a husband who falsely accuses his bride of “shameful deeds.”  14 and charges her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says, ’I took this woman, but when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin.’”  Verse 19 says “19 and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give it to the girl’s father, because he publicly defamed a virgin of Israel. And she shall remain his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.”  Now I want to move onto look at verses 28-29 of this same chapter:  “28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.”

 

            Now I want to move onto our quotation from “The Battle of the Ages” and look at a few paragraphs from the next section from this booklet entitled:

 

II. The Battle of Man.

 

            “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him.’  To this man God gave dominion over the earth.  Man was monarch of all he surveyed.  ‘And God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it…and have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth.  And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.’  Into this beautiful environment God placed Adam.  ‘And the Lord God commanded the man saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it:  for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.’

 

            “The third chapter of Genesis opens with ‘Now the serpent,’ and here begins the Battle of Man.  ‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, Yea, hath God said?’  He raises a question in the woman’s mind as to the integrity of God’s command.  Did God really say that?  Are you quite sure it was God who said it?  And if you are certain God spoke, are you quite sure He said just that?  May I say in passing for your thoughtful consideration, that the stock question of Modernism is exactly this, ‘Yea, hath God said?’’  The Modernist Professor smiles his sweetest, looks his wisest, and in dulcet tones says concerning God’s Word, ‘Are you quite sure it was God who said it.”  Granted that God did speak, how can we know that we have an infallible record of what God said?’”

 

            Lord willing we will continue to look at this second section from our booklet in our next SD.

 

8/30/2020 9:47 PM