A Word About Marriage and Divorce

 

I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

 

Heb 13:4 Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

 

I find it interesting that God considers marriage “honorable among all.” Marriage was God’s idea (His institution) for all, from the very beginning!

 

When the religious leaders of the day pushed Jesus on the matter of divorce, note His reply, He took them right back to the beginning with Adam and Eve!

Mt 19:3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?"

 4 And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,'

 5 "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'?

 6 "So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

 

Think of marriage between a man and woman this way. Ideally two undefiled garments (baptized believers) mystically yet virtually made into one seamless garment in God-ordained marriage. God does the uniting and man is not to rip this garment apart in divorce or spot it with sexual unfaithfulness before marriage (fornication) or after marriage (adultery.)

 

For the most part the church has allowed the world to redefine marriage and we have lost or neglected what God intended it to be. Namely a picture of the faithful relationship between Jesus and His church.

 

Honorable, undefiled, and faithful to the end.

 

Knowing that marriage is to be a reflection of Christ’s relationship with His bride, the church, what then do we do with His assertion that He will never leave or forsake her. (Heb 13:5)

 

We must go and do likewise. Stop tearing asunder, what God has joined together.

 

Divorce is not an unforgiveable sin, but the church needs to recapture all that God’s Word says about marriage and divorce.

 

Let us relearn that marriage is God’s institution that he loves!

 

Mal 2:11 Judah has dealt treacherously, And an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, For Judah has profaned The LORD'S holy institution which He loves: He has married the daughter of a foreign god.

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word