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
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