Saturday, September 5, 2020

PT-4 "The Teaching of Jesus" (Matt. 5:31-32)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/5/2020 10:37 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                Focus:  PT-5 “The Teaching of Jesus”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                Reference:  Matthew 5:31-32

 

            Message of the verses:  31 "It hath been said, ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement.’ 32 But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery” (KJ21).

 

            God has never commanded divorce, even for adultery.  As we have looked at the prophet Hosea and what he went through with his wife Gomer we can determine that if anyone had the right to divorce his wife it was him.  My understanding of this topic of divorcing because of adultery is that the affair must be a continual relationship with no hope of it ever not ending, and so it is not just for as said “a one night fling.”

 

            John MacArthur writes about divorce and remarriage in the following paragraph:  “If God permitted divorce rather than death as a merciful concession to man’s sinfulness, why would He not also permit remarriage, since remarriage would be perfectly allowable under the original law of death for the adulterer?  After, all the purpose of divorce was to show mercy to the guilty party, not to sentence the innocent party to a life of loneliness and misery.”

 

            The word “Unchastity” (porneia) refers to any illicit sexual intercourse, whether or not either of the parties is married.  This was a broad term that also included adultery, as other texts that used a form of porneia indicates.  This can be seen in 1 Cor. 10:8 with the use of the word “immorally” or “immorality.”  Let us look at Revelation 2:14 “’But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.”  1 Cor. 5:1 “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.”  MacArthur adds “Because Matthew 5:31-32 focuses on marriage and divorce, the primary ‘unchastity’ involved here would be adultery.  But porneia also included incest, prostitution, homosexuality, and bestiality—all of the sexual acts for which the Old Testament demanded the death penalty (Lev. 20:10-14).  In other words, any of those corrupt and perverted sexual activities was a permissible ground for divorce.”

 

            Jesus was not advocating divorce here He was simply saying that divorce and remarriage on the any other grounds always leads to adultery.  According to Mal. 2:16 we have seen that God, Jesus hates divorce, but by implication He acknowledges that there are times when it does not result in adultery, so the innocent party who has made every effort to maintain the marriage is free to remarry if his or her spouse insists on continued adultery or divorce.

 

            Jesus sets the record straight that God hates divorce, but in the case of divorce on the single ground of unchastity.

 

            We conclude this SD by quoting the last paragraph in this section, which is the last paragraph in this 29th chapter of MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew chapters 1-7.

 

            “In 1 Corinthians, Paul adds one more legitimate ground for divorce and subsequent remarriage.  ‘But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, let him not send her away.  And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, let her not send her husband away” (7:12-13).  After giving the reason for that instruction, he adds, ‘Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace’ (v. 15).  The Greek word translated ‘leave’ (chdrizo) was often used for divorce.  Thus if any unbelieving spouse deserts or divorces a believer, the believer is no longer bound and is free to remarry.”

 

THE BATTLE OF THE AGES

 

            “4. The fourth attack upon the promise was Athaliah’s Destruction of the Seed Royal of the House of Judah.

 

            “The promise of the Christ had been narrowed down to the Tribe of Judah and the House of David, and some one of the seventy royal sons was destined to be the lineal progenitor of the Christ.  ‘But when Athaliah saw that her son was dead she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.  But Jehoshabeath, the daughter of the King, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king’s sons that were slain, and put him and his nurse in a bedchamber.  So Jehoshabeath hid him from Athaliah, so that she slew him not’ (II Chron. 22:10-11).

 

            “Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel and certainly qualified for the title, and offspring of vipers.  She was the Bloody Mary of the Old Testament.  Her unnatural crime was without doubt a Satan-inspired plot to hinder the coming of the long-promised deliverer.  Athaliah succeeded in slaying sixty-nine of the royal sons, but the seventieth escaped.  The fulfillment of the momentous promise hung upon the preservation of the life of the infant Joash.  It was a slender thread, but God was holding it.  Once more Satan’s design has failed and the line runs through Joash to Christ.”

 

9/5/2020 11:17 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment