PT-2 "The Appropriation" (Matt. 19:10-12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/19/2023 7:54 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                      Focus:  PT-2 “The Appropriation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matt. 19:10-12

 

            Message of the verses:  “10 The disciples said to Him, "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry." 11 But He said to them, "Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.’”

 

            We continue to talk about the response that Jesus’ disciples had over what He had just said to the Pharisees, and stated in our last SD that this goes against everything that the disciples had been taught about marriage and divorce and then re-marriage.  As we look at the response of the disciples we can say that it was well thought out, as it shows that they rightly understood what Jesus was saying.  They realized that what the Lord was saying was declaring that marriage was for a lifetime; a lifetime commitment that can legitimately be broken only by death of continued adultery, and that even adultery does not require getting a divorce.  The idea of “for better or worse” was more than they could accept.  Before they thought, not to marry at all. 

 

            The disciples really had a difficult time in accepting the idea of a lifelong marital commitment because of the existing shallow and unbiblical view of marriage that they had been taught all their lives.  The problem is that they had not really paid attention to what the Scriptures said about marriage compared to the traditions that the Pharisees had said.  Let us look at Matthew 15:5-6 at this time “5 "But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, "Whatever I have that would help you has been given to God," 6 he is not to honor his father or his mother.’ And by this you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition.’”  (Notice the highlighted portion of verse six.)  What the disciples were missing, along with the Pharisees is that God instituted marriage as the epitome of pleasant, joyful, and fulfilling human relationships.  Proverbs 5:18-19 speaks of this:  “18 Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice in the wife of your youth. Verse 19 As a loving kind and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; Be exhilarated always with her love.”  It was in this same book of Proverbs that they read in 18:22 “He who finds a wife finds a good thing And obtains favor from the LORD.”  One more from Proverbs “House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, But a prudent wife is from the LORD” (Proverbs 19:14).

 

            We conclude this SD with a quotation from MacArthur’s commentary:  “Like most people of both sexes today, many Jewish men in the New Testament times looked on marriage only as a means of gratifying their own lusts and of fulfilling their own purposes.  Marriage was the accepted means of sexual indulgence and of procreating children, and it also provided a convenient cook and housekeeper.  Unlike modern people, however, most Jewish men appear to have been little concerned about romance.”

 

2/19/2023 8:21 AM

PT-1 "The Appropriation" (Matt. 19:10-12)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/18/2023 4:52 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                   PT-1 “The Appropriation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                    Reference:  Matt. 19:10-12

 

            Message of the verses:  “10 The disciples said to Him, "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry." 11 But He said to them, "Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.’”

 

            I think that we can be assured that by this time the Pharisees had left the scene as it was only Jesus and His disciples who were involved in this conversation.  I think it is also true that by this time that the Pharisees were enraged, both because they hand not succeeded in making Jesus contradict Moses and also because, on the contrary, Jesus succeeded in showing that they themselves were condemned by Moses in their illegitimate divorces and consequent adulteries. 

 

            I mentioned that Jesus was now alone with His disciples and this can be confirmed by looking at Mark 10:10 “In the house the disciples began questioning Him about this again.”  It seems that the disciples felt free to talk to Jesus about the subject of divorce now because they were alone with Him.  It is possible that the disciples had earlier spoken to Jesus about the subject of divorce, but now would be the time to do it again as the subject has come up with the Pharisees.  One has to remember that the disciples were taught by what the Pharisees were teaching and may have then had trouble with what Jesus was saying to them because of that earlier teaching.  So the disciples said to Jesus "If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry."

 

            John MacArthur quotes from the Talmudic writings to give us an idea of what the disciples may have learned from:  “A bad wife is like leprosy to her husband.  What is the remedy?  Let him divorce her and be cured of his leprosy.”  “Another rabbi wrote, ‘If a man has a bad wife, it is a religious duty to divorce her.’”

 

            Today is Saturday and my SD’s are usually shorter on both Saturday and Sunday’s and so I will end this quotation with a paragraph from John MacArthur’s commentary. 

            “The difference between what the disciples had been taught all their lives and what Jesus was teaching was so radical that they were completely bewildered.  It is probable that they had looked on marriage like most of their Jewish male counterparts—and like many people today—believing that if things did not work out, there was always divorce as an out.  But if adultery is the only justification for divorce, they concluded, it is better not to marry.”

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I have to say that after listening to MacArthur’s sermons on this subject, and there was about four hours of sermons on this subject, that I know a lot more about marriage and divorce, and for that I am thankful.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Learn to be a better husband to my wife of almost 50 years.

 

2/18/2023 5:14 PM

PT-4 "The Affirmation" (Matt. 19:8-9)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/17/2023 9:23 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                         Focus:  PT-4 “The Affirmation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 19:8-9

 

            Message of the verses:  “8 He *said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’”

 

            It is my desire to conclude this section on divorce in today’s SD, although this will not be the end to writing about divorce, just the end in this section.  I have to say that divorce is something that is not new to me, as I myself went through it before I became a believer in Jesus Christ for my salvation.  I have been married to my wife now for almost 50 years and God has blessed our time together as I became a believer some 6 months after my wife and I were married.  My divorce happened just like what Jesus said in that there was infidelity that could not have been resolved.  The man that my ex-wife married died a few years ago rather suddenly, and then a couple of years later my ex-wife also died.  I was with her a few weeks before she died and she told me that she was sorry about what she did to me.  I told her that the most important thing for her was to become a believer just like I am and spent a short time explaining the gospel to her.  I went to her funeral and it is my hope that she became a believer, but after listening to the “woman” preacher I have my doubts though.  It was a difficult time for me after we divorced, but God had a plan for my life and has blessed my wife and I with two children and seven grand-children all of whom are believers.

 

            John MacArthur speaks to what happened to me when he writes “A divorce on any other grounds than immorality, that is, adultery by one of the spouses, is always illegitimate, regardless of which one initiates the divorce.  Jesus here uses immorality and adultery synonymously.  He is saying that divorce that does not result from adultery results in adultery if there is remarriage.”

 

            We have learned that in the OT that death results in adultery, but also that God is gracious, as that is part of His attributes, and so since He is gracious to the sinning spouse by tolerating divorce instead of requiring execution.  God would surely also be gracious to the innocent spouse by permitting remarriage, which was permissible when a spouse died (cf. Rom 7:2-3).  MacArthur adds “The purpose of permitting divorce is to show mercy to the sinning spouse, not to condemn the innocent one to a lifetime of singleness and loneliness that would not be required if the Lord had the sinning executed.  Should His grace to the sinner penalize the innocent?  The Lord allows divorce in order that the adulterer might have opportunity to repent rather than be put to death.  And both here and in Matthew 5:32 Jesus specifically allows remarriage by the innocent spouse in order that he or she might have opportunity to enjoy again the blessings of marriage that were destroyed by the other partner’s adultery.  The qualification except for immorality clearly permits the innocent party who marries another to do so without committing adultery.”

 

            As we see that what Jesus states about marriage and remarriage for the spouse who was not the sinful one has reinforced His previous teaching about divorce and remarriage but this was also a devastating indictment of the Pharisees who were then trying to devastate Him.  I have to say that even when they were a large part of having Jesus Christ put to death that that in no way was devastating to Him, for it was in the predetermined plan of God.  Let us look at a couple of verses from the Sermon on the Mount at this time.  “"For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).  “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:28).  Verse 20 contrasts true righteousness with the false righteousness that the scribes and the Pharisees had.  Verse 28 gives the true meaning of adultery that is it takes place in the mind before it takes place with the body.  As we have already mentioned that divorce on any grounds but immorality also resulted in adultery when there was remarriage, as was almost always the case, and so this strong implication of that statement, which the self-righteous Pharisees could not have missed, was that they themselves were guilty of proliferating adultery.

 

            MacArthur concludes this rather long section by writing “It should be noted that the Holy Spirit adds one other gracious concession by also allowing divorce and remarriage as an option for a believer who is deserted by an unbeliever.”  If you are looking at a full treatment of this issue you can look at MacArthur’s commentary on 1 Corinthians.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I am thankful for this study on divorce and remarriage, and other things that the Lord is teaching me through it.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Putting on and using the Spiritual armor is a key in not giving into temptation.  “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

 

2/17/2023 10:03 AM

PT-3 "The Affirmation (Matt. 19:8-9)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/16/2023 9:56 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                         Focus:  PT-3 “The Affirmation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 19:8-9

 

            Message of the verses:  “8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’”

 

            I said that we would begin this SD by looking at the words “hardness of heart” and this suggests the condition where adultery was prolonged and the sinning spouse was unrepentant, and this makes reconciliation and a normal marriage relationship impossible.  MacArthur writes “When an adulterous husband or wife became totally insensitive to marital fidelity, God through Moses indirectly and reluctantly permitted…divorce.”

 

            Jesus is reminding those Pharisees, His adversaries again of the Genesis teaching about God’s plan for marriage.  They rarely listened to Him, and although they supposedly studied the Scriptures, they only used them to make their case, and not what God was really speaking of in His Word.  So Jesus reminded them that from the beginning it has not been this way.  Divorce was never in God’s original, ideal design for mankind and will never be.  God is immutable, meaning He never changes His mind, but God is also gracious, and grace is what we all need.

 

            Whenever a man obtains a divorce for any reason except for immorality, and marries another woman [he] commits adultery.’” Jesus gave the same basic teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, He emphasized that the divorced wife and her new husband would be led to commit adultery.  “but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:32).  In other words, the message that Jesus wanted to get across to those exponents of easy divorce and remarriage is that illegitimate divorce followed by remarriage makes adulterers of everyone who is involved.

 

            MacArthur writes “Poreia, here translated immorality, is a broad term that encompasses all illicit sexual activity.  In the context of marriage it always constituted adultery, which, by definition, is illicit sex by a married person.  The verb form of the term is used by Paul to describe the immorality for which 23,000 (of the total 24,000) Israelites were killed by a plague in one day (1 Cor. 10:8; cf. Num. 25:9).  Because the majority, if not all, of those slain were probably married, poreia clearly includes adultery.”

 

            In what Jesus is saying in both Matthew 19 and Matthew 5 about adultery, He is speaking of a man divorcing a wife.  However because it was not really that common for a woman to divorce her husband in that day the truth is that this applies to both men divorcing wife’s, and woman divorcing their husbands, as that is much more common in today’s world, especially in our country today.

 

            It is my desire to finish this section in our next SD as we have a bit more to cover.

 

2/16/2023 10:27 AM

 

PT-2 "The Affirmation" (Matt. 19:8-9)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/15/2023 9:13 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                         Focus:  PT-2 “The Affirmation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 19:8-9

 

            Message of the verses:  “8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’”

 

            The story of Hosea and his unfaithful wife Gomer speaks to what the children of Israel had been doing to the Lord, as the Lord had taken Israel as a wife, and she was unfaithful to the Lord by worshiping pagan gods and worthless idols.  Isaiah 50:1 says “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.” Now we want to answer the question which is in the highlighted portion of Isaiah 5:1: “The answer, of course, was that God had not given such a certificate, because, just as Hosea with Gomer, God was not ready to put Israel away, despite her constant spiritual adultery committed against Him.  She had no freedom from her relationship to God that would allow her to consummate relations with other gods” (MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew).

 

            God had been pleading with Israel for 700 years not to commit adultery against Him by worshiping other gods, and to return to Him.  It was now the time of Jeremiah’s prophecy to be written and in the beginning of his book the Lord told him to prophecy to the children of Israel, and in this case it was the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and the Lord told him to speak to them, but that they would not listen to him, and as you read through this rather long OT book you find that they did not listen to him.  We see something rather startling in Jeremiah 3:6-8 where we read “6 Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, "Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there. 7 “I thought, ‘After she has done all these things she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 “And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.”  God did finally give a certificate of divorce to Israel (the Northern Kingdom), and after that He thought that Judah would see what happened to them and would not worship idols, but Judah learned nothing, and did continue to worship idols.

 

            When Judah returned to their land some 70 years after being taken captive to Babylon they finally did learn not to worship idols, and to this day they have not done that.  In a very important prophecy from Jeremiah 31:31-33 we see what will happen to the house of Judah:  “31 “Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

 

            I will conclude this SD with a quotation from John MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew:  “In light of God’s spiritual divorce and eventual remarriage to Israel, it is surely not possible to claim that Scripture recognizes  no grounds at all for divorce and remarriage, and some ancient rabbis claimed and as some Christians still claim today God does not give us illustrations of His own righteous behavior that we cannot follow.  If He finally divorced idolatrous and unrepentant Israel, after long years of forgiveness and mercy, it cannot be wrong for a man or woman to divorce a continually adulterous and unrepentant partner after long years of tolerance.

            “Before Joseph realized that Mary ‘was with child by the Holy Spirit…being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her [he] desired to put her away secretly’ (Matt. 1:18-19).  Had his assumption about her been correct, that is, that she was pregnant by another man and therefore an adulteress, Joseph, who was only engaged to her, knew he had legitimate grounds for divorce.  The engagement was by a legal and binding contract, though the union was not yet physically consummated.  The context suggests that, because he was ‘a righteous man,’ he felt he was obligated to divorce her.  To protect her reputation, however, not to mention her life, he planned to do it privately.”

 

            Lord willing in tomorrow’s SD we will look at the meaning of “Hardness of Heart.”

 

2/15/2023 9:46 AM

 

  

PT-1 "The Affirmation" (Matt. 19:8-9)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2023 10:20 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                         Focus:  PT-1 “The Affirmation”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 19:8-9

 

            Message of the verses:  “8 He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9 “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’”

 

            We looked at what the Mosaic Law stated about divorce in recent SD’s stating that  it did not commend, much less command divorce, Jesus affirmed that it permitted divorce under certain conditions.  Jesus then tells these Pharisees that it was because of the hardness of heart that Moses permitted you to divorce your wives.

 

            MacArthur adds “As noted above, even the scriptural permission for divorce is implied rather than explicitly taught.  In no Old Testament passage, including the Deuteronomy 24:1-4 text to which the Pharisees no doubt were referring, is specific permission for divorce given.  One reason is not hard to surmise.  If the Israelites so abused implied permission for divorce, how much more would they have abused explicit permission?”

 

            We mentioned earlier that the penalty for adultery under the Mosaic covenant was death, and we read about this happening in the early chapters of the Bible, but God in His loving grace did not always exact the death penalty for adultery under the OT Law.  If that were the case then David, Solomon and other OT characters would have been in a great deal of trouble.  Think about David’s adultery with Bathsheba and then actually having her husband killed, and although David was severely rebuked by the Lord, God did not put him to death. It was because of Solomon’s hundreds of wives that he was in virtual unremitting adultery on the basis of the one-man, one-woman standard of Genesis 1-2.  Yet like his father David, he did not suffer the death penalty.  God is indeed gracious.

 

            In Ezra’s OT book we find that after the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon to live in Jerusalem that they desired to live like the OT covenant and therefore they had to put away their foreign wives and the children that were born to them because they had broken the Law of God.  "So now let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and their children, according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law” (Ezra 10:3).

 

            John MacArthur writes about this :  “There is no record that this action was specifically approved by God, but lack of any condemnation implies that the resulting divorces were permitted by Him.  And the historical context supports the idea that those divorces were on the grounds of adultery.  Not only were all pagans of that day idolatrous, which Scripture repeatedly refers to as spiritual adultery (see, e.g., Jer. 3:8; 13:27; Ezek. 16:32), but most pagan religious systems involved gross immorality as an integral part of their rites and ceremonies.  It is therefore likely that most, if not all, of the foreign wives the Israelite men had married were both physical and spiritual adulterers, thereby giving their husbands legitimate grounds for divorce.”

 

            Lord willing we will continue looking at this section in our next SD.

 

2/14/2023 10:46 AM

"The Argument" (Matt. 19:7)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2023 9:39 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                     Focus:  “The Argument”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                      Reference:  Matthew 19:7

 

            Message of the verse:  “They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and divorce her?’”

 

            I believe that as we look through this section on divorce that what we will be seeing from the Pharisees is the wrong thing, the wrong teaching on divorce as they liked what they were doing and believed that they had the right to do what they were doing.  One of the things that I don’t see in their argument is any reason for a wife to divorce her husband as it was all one sided during that time period, unlike what it is today in our own society.

 

            The other part of their goal was to discredit Jesus in order to make Him look bad in front of the following that He had.  The Pharisees were not interested in what the divine teaching of divorce was at all, as mentioned they liked the way that they interpreted it. The Pharisees were classic examples of the natural man looking for moral and spiritual loopholes to accommodate his sin.

 

            The Pharisees were looking for help from the Scriptures and so they went to Moses whom they said that Moses had given them the right to write a certificate of divorce to their wives for any reason.  I think that their goal in doing this was to pit God’s great law giver against Jesus.  MacArthur writes “Because it is the only passage in the five books of Moses that mentions any grounds for divorce, the passage to which the Pharisees referred had to be Deuteronomy 24:1-4.  But the passage clearly does not command divorce, as the Pharisees claimed.  And all the other Pentateuch passages that mention divorce simply acknowledge its existence (see Lev. 21:7, 14; Deut. 22:19, 29).” 

 

            I want to  look at Deuteronomy 24:1-4 at this time:  “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.”

 

            Here is what the word “indecency” means in the Hebrew: 

“1) nakedness, nudity, shame, pudenda

1a) pudenda (implying shameful exposure)

1b) nakedness of a thing, indecency, improper behaviour

1c) exposed, undefended (fig.)”

            I am going to try and look at this in the Septuagint:

 

 24: 1 Now if anyone takes a wife and lives with her, and it shall be, if she does not find favor before him because he found a shameful thing in her, then he shall write her a bill of divorce and shall give it into her hands and shall send her out of his house, 2 and if, having gone out, she becomes another man’s 3 and the last man hates her, then he will write her a bill of divorce and give it in her hands and send her out of his house, or if the last man who took her for himself as wife dies, 4 the former man, who sent her away, shall not be able, having returned, to take her for himself as his wife after she has been defiled, for it is an abomination before the Lord your God, and you shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an allotment.

 

            The highlighted part of verse one helps us to better understand what is written in the NASB95 version because that version translates the Hebrew into the English, while the Septuagint has translated the Hebrew into the Greek, and then into the English.  I want to focus in on “because he found a shameful thing in her.”  I think if you combine “a shameful thing in her” with what the Hebrew meaning of “indecency” we can conclude that the shameful thing has something to do with sexuality, perhaps the woman was not a virgin. 

 

            MacArthur writes “A careful reading of the Deuteronomy 24 text shows that, far from commanding divorce, the passage does not teach about divorce at all.  Moses was giving a command with regard to a particular case of remarriage.  That passage neither commends nor condemns the reason and procedure for the divorce mentioned there.  It states that the reason was ‘indecency,’ without detailing what that might involve, and it then mentions the giving of a certificated of divorce, without commenting on the propriety of that procedure.  The only command in the passage relates to the issue of remarriage, not divorce.  The command is simply that, if a divorced woman remarries and that husband divorces her or dies, her first ‘former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled’ (v. 4).  It is to that commandment regarding remarriage, not a commandment to divorce, as some have supposed, that Jesus refers here and in Mark 10:5.”

 

            As I mentioned earlier it was my opinion that there was something that was wrong with the woman as far as a sexual thing, and that was because of what the Hebrew word for indecency meant and then looking at in the Septuagint and how the Greek word was translated, but certainly agreeing with MacArthur the passage does not mean that one can divorce a wife for anything, but the point of the passage was that of remarriage.

 

            Let me just say that from the beginning it was God’s plan for one man to marry one woman for life, but after sin entered the universe God states that adultery was the one reason for divorce.  It doesn’t mean a onetime case of adultery, but a consistent action of adultery.  I can say that this happened to me in my first marriage a very long time ago.  I can also say that it was a very difficult time in my life, but that was a long time ago and my former wife has since died along with the person she married.  I did have an opportunity to speak with her a few weeks before she died and she said that she was sorry, but I then told her that the important thing we needed to discuss was where she would spend eternity.  I gave her the full gospel message, and am not sure if she received Christ or not, but I am thankful that God gave me the opportunity to talk to her.

 

            As I look at this last paragraph in MacArthur’s commentary I find that he has something to say that causes me to think that he is agreeing with what I wrote.  “Because the penalty for adultery was death, the indecency mentioned here obviously referred to some kind of sexual looseness or lewdness that came short of adultery.  And it was because such indecency, vile as it might have been, was not sufficient grounds for divorce that the divorced wife was defiled by remarriage and could not be taken back by her first husband.  Because here divorce from her fist husband had no sufficient grounds and thus was invalid, she became an adulteress, and therefore defiled, when she married again.  That is why John the Baptist declared that Herod and Herodias were living in adultery.  In God’s sight, she was still ‘the wife of his brother Philip’ (Matt. 14:3-4).  For the first husband to take back a defiled woman would be unholy.”

 

2/13/2023 10:32 AM