SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/3/2020 9:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The Teaching of Jesus”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
5:31-32
Message of the verses: “31 “You have heard the law that says, ’A man can divorce
his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce.’ 32 But I say that a man who divorces his wife,
unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who
marries a divorced woman also commits adultery” (NLT).
We continue to talk about divorce
and remarriage in this section. If a man
divorces his wife for any other reason than adultery he is then the husband
makes his innocent wife commit adultery if she remarries, and we can assume
that she will remarry, especially if she is young. Jesus makes the following explicit statement
in Mark 10:11-12 “11 And He
said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits
adultery against her; 12 and if she herself divorces her husband and marries
another man, she is committing adultery.’”
Jesus’ statement that ‘whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery
and this can also be seen in Luke 16:18 “"Everyone who divorces his wife
and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced
from a husband commits adultery.” So we
see in these verses a complete picture from the lips of our Lord. John MacArthur adds to this by writing “”To
do so initiates a whole chain of adultery, because remarriage after
illegitimate divorce results in illegitimate and adulterous relationships for
all parties involved.”
Now
if everyone would practice what the Bible teaches about marriage then there
would not be such awful problems in our world and in our nation today,
especially on the children of divorced parents.
Divorce is a very big problem as it lies in the beginning of problems
that stem from it as one goes from generation to generation, the problems can surely
get bigger.
We
now want to move to what Jesus stated in Matthew 19:5 as He is quoting Genesis
2:24 in that verse: “"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’?”
We want to continue looking in Matthew 19 as we quote all the way down
to verse eight. “6 “So then, they are no
longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."
7 They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of
divorce, and to put her away?" 8 He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness
of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it
was not so.” God never commanded
divorce, but only permitted divorce as a concession to sinful, self-willed
mankind. MacArthur adds “It is true that
in Mark 10:5 Jesus speaks of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 as a commandment. But the teaching there is not a command to
divorce but a command not to remarry the defiled person who has been divorced.”
Now
we want to look at the condition “except for unchastity” as it is not a way out
that God provides, but is the only grounds for divorce that God will
recognize. MacArthur writes “Some say
that this ‘exception clause’ allows divorce for Jews only, and only in the case
of the sin of consanguinity (marrying a near relative, a practice forbidden in
Lev. 18). This view is propounded by
those who wish to believe that there are no biblical grounds at all for divorce
by Christians. They point out that the
exception clause appears only in Matthew and maintain that to interpret it
otherwise would be to contradict or add to the law governing the sin of
adultery.”
We
see that the exception clause is only in Matthew and God only has to say
something once for it to be true, and so the fact that the exception clause
appears only here in Matthew has no bearing on the proper interaction. The fact is that this exception clause would
have not been appropriate in the contexts of Mark 10 and also in Luke 16. As we look at Matthew 5 and 19 we can see
that the clause is included in order to correct the Pharisees’
misrepresentation of God’s law regarding adultery. “The exception clause in those passages
amplifies Jesus’ teaching on divorce in Mark 10 and Luke 16—it does not contradict
it.”
Now
I want to move on to continue to look at “The Battle of the Ages” as we
continue looking at the third point in this little booklet entitled “The Third
Battle is the Battle of the Promised Seed.”
We will be looking at point two under this third section for today.
“The second attempt to break the Edenic
promise was The Attempt Destruction of
the Antediluvian Race.
“This was an effort on the part of Satan
to introduce such moral corruption and degeneracy into the civilization of the
old world as to force God’s hand to destroy the entire human race and thus
break the promise of the Coming One. And
so great became the moral degeneracy of the earth that God indeed was compelled
to destroy that adulterous generation from the face of the earth, sparing only
Noah and his household, for Noah walked with God. And thus upon the rock of Noah’s godly life
the devilish purpose of the Destroyer was dashed to pieces, and the promise
runs through Abel’s substitute and Noah.”
(Lord willing we will look at point three in our next SD.)
9/3/2020 10:32 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment