Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: divorce

  • but from the beginning it was not so

    but from the beginning it was not so

    Teaching About Divorce

    3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

    4 He answered,“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

    The question of the Pharisees is justification that could easily come from the deceitful tongue of an unfaithful 21st c. christian.

    ‘How can I get out of my marriage vows?’ one might ask.

    A ‘vow’ may be permanent or vows may have a clause of completion by a given date or event. Here is announced INTENTION of the marriage vow I made with my wife and she with me:

    DECLARATION OF INTENTION
    Pastor [sister in the Lord and mayor, Judith Piper] to the persons who are to marry:

    I ask you now, in the presence of God and these people, to declare your intention to enter into union with
    each other through the grace of Jesus Christ, who calls you into union with himself [as acknowledged in
    your baptism.]

    Pastor to the woman: 2
    Lissette, will you have Roger, to be your husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love him,
    comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to him as
    long as you both shall live?
    Woman: I will.

    Pastor to the man:
    Roger, will you have Lissette, to be your wife, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her,
    comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her as
    long as you both shall live?

    I will.

    Although we have spent some time in the Old Testament and marriage problems from the beginning, let’s take a brief look at the Law and perspective of marriage before these last days.

    As a reminder, a woman (virgin) was given in marriage from her father to another family, typically by agreement to the father for his son. (How different this is from the boiling emotions of attraction of the flesh of those choosing marriage in these last days as a confirmation of what has already taken place.)

    The Bible speaks to men, because by their authority from God men are to speak to and for the woman in their care and responsibility.

    For a brief look at this, see Numbers 30.

    Not only is it NOT Biblical that in most instances a man may NOT divorce a woman, it is NOT Biblical that a woman would even have the legal right to divorce her husband! (However, in these last days, the world and the church have allowed and condoned this.)

    Divorce by christian women ‘putting away their Christian husbands for any reason’ is all too prevalent and unconfessed by the church.

    A few startling statistics which ought to convict christians and those married claiming Christ:

    • Percent of men 15-44 years of age who have had 15 or more female sexual partners, 2006-2010: 21.6%
    • Percent of women 15-44 years of age who have had 15 or more male sexual partners, 2006-2010: 9.0% source

    I have confessed that the number of sexual partners in my life may be counted on one hand, but trends show that now many teens have had more sexual partners by their early 20’s, and that without marriage (in most cases), than I have had in over 40 years since first having intercourse (in my 20’s).

    • By age 18, 9% of women aged 15–44 in 2006–2010 had ever cohabited.
    • By age 20, 26% of women in 2006–2010 had cohabited, compared with 23% in 2002 and 19% in 1995.
    WhyGetMarried2Our 18 year old son will graduate from high school this year. These stats mean that 9 of the 100 young women graduates in his class have already lived with their boyfriend (possibly in the home of her parent).
    —
    I can guarantee you that our ‘christian’ sons and daughters (who often resist church participation at that age) are included in the parental hypocrisy of these well-hidden facts. (See the difference in christian marriages, below.)
    —
    In just two years, one of every four young women in his 2014 graduation class will be “in a relationship” with their boyfriend. (No need of marriage here.)
    One of four women by age 20.
    • By age 25, over one-half of women (55%) in 2006–2010 had cohabited. source

    So what is our Christian witness for marriage?

    We do not make a very good case for it by our witness.

    • adults (78%) have been married at least once, the Barna study revealed that an even higher proportion of born again Christians (84%) tie the knot.
    • 25% have gone through a marital split
    • In fact, when evangelicals and non-evangelical born again Christians are combined into an aggregate class of born again adults, their divorce figure is statistically identical to that of non-born again adults: 32% versus 33%, respectively. source

    Christian witness: Number of divorces is the SAME as non-christians.

    Continuing in what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees about divorce:

    Jesus said:  6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

    7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

    8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

    Is this not so with christians who divorce? Is this not so with christian wives who call themselves, ‘single moms?”

    9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

    And ought we also say, in these last days where the hardness of a woman’s heart will no more submit to her husband, than she will to the Lord:

    “Whoever divorces her husband, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

    From the beginning, it was not so.

    Marriage: to be continued?  … Next: Why Biblical marriage matters

     

     

  • The Wife of your Youth

    The Wife of your Youth

    I have some marital confessions to make. First:

    • I Love Lissette Harned, my Blessing.

    Lissette is not the wife of my youth, but she is the wife of my vows and covenant and continued pouring out of love.

    Song of Solomon 4

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Solomon Admires His Bride’s Beauty

    Behold, you are beautiful, my love,
    behold, you are beautiful!
    Your eyes are doves
    behind your veil…

    Your lips are like a scarlet thread,
    and your mouth is lovely.
    Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate
    behind your veil…

    Your two breasts are like two fawns,
    twins of a gazelle,
    that graze among the lilies…

    I will go away to the mountain of myrrh
    and the hill of frankincense.

    You are altogether beautiful, my love;
    there is no flaw in you…

    Let my beloved come to his garden,
    and eat its choicest fruits.

    BEAUTIFUL! The intimate, romantic, sexual love of a husband and his wife is beautiful.

    I must confess that I am too easily lured to the romance of this ideal love. The lost beauty of the love of my wife causes my heart to remember sadly an ideal of love that should have been, yet can never fully be realized in marriage.

    For even in Christ, two sinners are joined as one.

    Marriages are not perfect, but preferred.

    My wife was a professed Christian when we married in 2007. Her witness is not against me, but against the Lord in divorcing me last year. (More on that later.)

    Solomon, too, had the luxury of love. Though he is known for the reputation of his wisdom, Solomon had a problem: too many wives.

    1 Kings 3:13 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

    For any one man (or any one wife) it takes only one other to turn our heart away.

    In fact, the heart of a man and the heart of a woman are joined inseparably from the moment they have sexual intercourse – married, or not.

    Hear the advice of Proverbs 5, the advice of a wise father to his son:

    3 For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil,
    4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
    sharp as a two-edged sword.

    18 Let your fountain be blessed,
    and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
    19     a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
    Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
    be intoxicated always in her love.
    20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
    and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

    •  Adultery? A sin against your husband or wife.
    • Sex before marriage? A sin against your family and theirs; sin against each other: the sin of no commitment.
    • ALL (other than marital intercourse) a sin against God, who is our Father of intimate relationship;
    • And also, for Christians, a sin against Christ Jesus. (More about that later, too.)

    So you see that by example, though I have never been an adulterer, I am not an example for you of a Christian husband. In marriage I have failed miserably.

    • Another confession: a previous wife (who also claimed to be a christian) forced divorce on us as well. In both cases, the children were of another father, previously divorced  by these christian women. My child, was of yet another wife.
    • The mother of my daughter was taken by the Lord (and cancer) after twenty-three years of marriage. She had been a virgin; I was not.
    • The wife of my youth (who did not claim Christ, though I did while I lusted after her) divorced me after just one year of the marriage of our youth.

    How could Solomon have possibly handled all those wives? I could not even handle one at a time.

    The concern for Christian marriage and threat to marriage in these last days is real, hardly confessed, and rarely preached (beyond the ideal).

    Love, sexual love between a husband and a wife – the wife of your youth – was God’s intention from the beginning. Love and marriage are more encompassing for a man and a woman than what we will humbly allow God to full receive credit.

    I would NEVER put away my wife! I will never choose my wife or children or any family over Christ Jesus. For my wife or other beloved family members to receive me, they must also know that they receive Christ in me.

    Please pray for my wife, Lissette, and other family members of ours who have turned their back on the Lord. For Jesus loves us, this we know.

    God blesses the marriage of two committed to Christ.

    God does not break His covenants and the Lord looks for your return, for which I also pray.

    We have it backwards. We have missed God’s standards, ignored the commands of God and turned away from God’s Laws of love for our marriages and families.

    Next:  christian marriages… to be continued?

     

     

  • In the beginning, Marriage

    In the beginning, Marriage

    God’s true intention for marriage preceded original sin.

    Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

    I must confirm from a terrible emptiness and great incompleteness: It is not good for a man to be alone… so alone without God’s help meet (mate).

    22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,

    “This at last is bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
    she shall be called Woman,
    because she was taken out of Man.”

    24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

    What a joy! What promise – and this, before sin.

    Genesis 4:1 Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”

    Genesis 4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch…

    Genesis 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

    In the beginning, marriage.

    Genesis 5:6 When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. 7 Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters.

    The Bible does not mention the names of the wife of Seth or the names of the help meets of most of these ancestors of Noah, but they had wives and sons and daughters – family, with a husband and a wife and their children.

    Noah was married. Noah’s sons, who were also grown men and had the faith to obey God and Noah, had wives who were saved along with them.

    In the beginning, marriage. Not one whisper of any relationship of family other than marriage. Not one mention of any end of marriage, even for these first forefathers who lived hundreds of years with their wife and grown children. Not one mention of any alternative, until further sin of compromise entered into the lives of Abram, Jacob and others. (We will address the issues of their multiple wives later.)

    In the beginning, God ordains that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” And yes, it’s okay that they are naked and unashamed in their own bed chamber; for as it was in the beginning, they are now one.

    A man desires to know a woman. A husband desires to know his wife. A wife is a part of her husband, not to be torn away any more than a man would tear out his own rib.

    I am witness that a wife torn away from our oneness is more deeply painful than the tearing out of any rib. For by divorce she has cut away with anger into your heart.

    I too am witness to a wife being torn away by death.  As for most husbands and wives, most shall part one prior to the other in the death of their beloved ‘other half.’  Your wife torn away, her soul separated from you for a time, is a pouring out of your own heart.

    Husbands and wives this is the temporal end of the vows of your earthly commitment; but union with the soul and the uniting of these souls to God is quite something more.

    It is not good that man (or woman) should be alone.

    Are you a blessing to your husband? (Are you a blessing to your wife?)

    What is your daily witness to your covenant of marriage before God?

    What is the witness of your marriage to Christ?

    In the beginning, marriage.

     Marriage: To be continued…