Lesson 53
The Divorce Issue – 24:1-9
As we have worked through this book there is a common theme that runs
through the entire book. The theme is
loving the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. The heart, loving the Lord with your heart,
by means of your heart, means by means of the inner mental attitude. This is what goes on inside your soul. It’s
what goes on in the inner that basically is the situation as far as God is
concerned. “Heart” is used for the
mentality. However, the Bible also uses
the word “soul” here but “soul” in the context meaning the details of
life. So with one you have the inner
mental attitude, loving the Lord with all your heart, which is the inside,
chapters 5-11 dealt with this; now we have chapter 12-26 going through various
areas of your life and showing that if a person is following the Lord then the
behavior pattern will fall within these limits.
Now this is vital to see this because tonight we’re going to get into
the divorce issue and the divorce issue and the divorce issue is very tricky
because the Law gives you what you can do as unto the Law, but it doesn’t tell
you what you what you can do as unto the Lord and the two are different in this
context. So we have to be careful that
what we have here are illustrations of possibilities
of a person who lives, who “loves the Lord with all his heart” it’s going to
show in the various details of his life under the Old Testament economy.
Since we do not live under the Old Testament economy but live under the
Church Age there are certain things different and we’ve noted this as we’ve
gone along, but one thing is not different, that is that if we do love the Lord
with our heart, we do follow Him, for the word “love” in the Old Testament
means loyalty. And we quoted this; we
went through a document of
Now when we come to the various sections of chapters 12-26 we have
noticed it has naturally divided itself up.
We worked this section which begins in
So therefore these examples are only examples, they are not the complete
Law. Don’t think, for example, when we
come to Deut. 24, the temptation is to say that these four verses completely
explain the position of Moses on divorce.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Moses’ objective here is not to discuss divorce. Moses’ objective in this section is to just
give one quick example of the doctrine that the individual has certain rights
and is not to be in bondage.
Now the point that he’s trying to make by giving this illustration in
the area of divorce, verses 1-4, is the illustration of freedom from marital
bullying. This goes for both
parties. We’re going to give you the
example Moses gave, and then I’m going to go to Moses’ own life and show you
where the tables were reversed and Moses had one of the greatest marital problems
a man has ever faced, which should dispel in some of your minds that people who
are spiritual can’t have marital problems.
That’s nonsense, Moses had one of the greatest ones going and we don’t
even know how he resolved it, it’s a big mystery. But in verses 1-4 the point he is trying to
make is this, that this is one area, in the area of marriage, and he says “if,”
that starts the clause, that “when” that you see in verse 1 is actually an
“if,” it could be translated “whenever,” whenever this is so.
Now to catch this, whenever you deal with an “if” clause in the Bible
you’ve got to watch how far the clause goes before you get to the “then.” If, then, now watch carefully because the
whole interpretation of this passage hinges on correctly identifying what
grammarians call a protasis and the apodosis.
What is this, the protasis and the apodosis? The protasis, “pro” before, that is the
clause that goes before, the “if” clause.
The apodosis, from, that which proceeds from, that’s the second
clause. This used to be taught when they
taught English in public schools before they started replacing with sex
education and basket weaving and everything else. In case you have never been taught this in
grammar, these are two ways of dividing up an “if” clause, a conditional
sentence if you will—protasis and apodosis.
Now let’s look at this. What is
the “if” clause in this passage, because everything hinges on correctly finding
the limits of the “if” clause. Let’s
read it through and see if we can find it.
“When a man has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that
she find no favor in his eyes, because he has found some uncleanness in her;
then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send
hr out of his house.” Now it sounds when
reading the English that that’s it, that’s the complete sentence, if such and
such happens and then such and such. But
such is not the case. The “if” clause actually
continues and this should read “If a man” or “Whenever a man has taken a wife
and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes because
he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement
and he gives it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, [2] And when she
is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife. [3] And if
the latter husband hate her,” etc. this is all part of the “if” clause and the
“if” clause does not end until the end of verse 3. Verse 4 is the final apodosis. So your “if” clause extends through the first
three verses and then the apodosis is verse 4; verse 4 is your conclusion. Verses 1-3 give the initial condition, under
which conditions verse 4 would be true, but verses 1-3, all of those conditions
in verses 1-3 have to be true in order for verse 4 to be true. That’s just simple grammar, that doesn’t
involve any theology, doesn’t involve any doctrine, doesn’t involve any
presuppositions, that’s simply the grammar of the language.
Now let’s look at a problem that is often faced with this book. The
great problem, of course, is Deut. 24 that was argued for generation after
generation, it was argued down through the centuries, even to the time of our
Lord Jesus Christ was what is the condition of “uncleanness” mentioned in verse
1? And in that the rabbis in Jesus day
differed. There was a strict school and
the strict school said the only uncleanness that Moses allowed was the sin of
adultery. And then there was a very
amusing liberal school. By the way, Paul
came out of the liberal school in this particular question and they even
granted divorce on the basis if the woman burned the man’s breakfast, and you
can find that in the extra-Biblical literature.
That was considered unclean by the liberal interpreters of Deut.
24. Since this has been such a great
debate the problem is, under what conditions did Moses allow divorce? Do you remember when the debate was
flowering, the Lord Jesus Christ came along, they said look, here comes Jesus
of Nazareth, certainly if this man is a prophet He should be able to tell us
the conditions that Moses set for divorce.
So let’s turn to Matt. 19:3 and see that dialogue. That introduces us to the interpretation
problem that we face tonight. We can
terminate on the very amused reaction of the disciples. “The Pharisees also came unto Him, testing
Him, and saying, unto Him,” the “Him” is Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to put
away his wife for every cause?” In other
words, these Pharisees were testing the Lord Jesus Christ, are you siding with
the strict interpretatives of Deut. 24 or do you side with the liberal
interpretatives of Deut. 24, which is it?
So they said to him, “is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every
cause? [4] And He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that He who
made them at the beginning, made them male and female. [5] And said, For this cause shall a man
leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one
flesh? [6] Wherefore, they are no more two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together,
let not man put asunder. [7] They said unto Him, Why did Moses then command to
give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?”
Now there are two things wrong with this statement that the Pharisees
made just then. Moses did not command
them to put the woman away, but what Moses did say was that if this condition
is fulfilled, then you can, but Moses did not command it, so therefore verse 8,
“Jesus said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed
[permitted] you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
[9] And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whosoever
marrieth her who is put away doth commit adultery.” And of course the disciples
picked this up immediately in verse 10 and say, “His disciples say unto Him, If
the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.” I think you detect a little sense of humor,
the disciples caught on very fast. Are
you serious Lord?
Now the question we have to face is, and this hinges back on Deut. 24,
is what has Jesus told us about what Moses allowed? Jesus now is narrowing down and He says I say
unto you, unless there’s the sin of adultery, then and only then can the
marriage bond be broken. Now if that
represents a narrowing of Moses restriction, what was Moses restriction? It couldn’t have been just adultery; it
couldn’t have been just adultery! But
here’s our problem. The Lord Jesus,
here’s Jesus, He obviously is being more strict than Moses. It’s quite obvious in the passage He’s being
more strict because His disciples are obviously taught the same way of the
Pharisees, that divorce was legitimate on many, many grounds. And then Jesus comes out with this remark and
they say well, I just forget marriage then if that’s the case.
So therefore it’s quite obvious that Jesus was more strict than
Moses. But what was the one condition
Jesus granted? “Except fornication,”
fornication, pornea or adultery. All right, then if that’s the case, and Jesus
is more strict than Moses don’t you see that Moses must have allowed other
situations other than adultery to precipitate divorce. If Jesus is more strict and Jesus Himself
allows divorce on the basis of adultery, then Moses must have allowed divorce
on many other bases. The problem is that
in our passage in Deut. 24 we are going to find out in verses 1-4 that in this
particular case Moses is talking about adultery. So therefore the tendency is to think well
look, in Deut. 24:1-4 it says if a woman commits adultery, then divorce her.
That’s Moses’ commandment and yet we come down to the New Testament and Jesus
says I’m going to be more strict than Moses, you can’t divorce a woman unless
there’s an adultery involved. That
doesn’t sound like He’s being more strict.
What’s the problem? The problem
is going back to what I started with, namely that Deut. 24 does not give you
the entire Mosaic opinion on divorce.
This represents only one way in which a woman and a man could be
divorced who were married in the Old Testament.
There were many other ways but Moses, in Deut. 24:1-4 is not interested
in giving a complete critique on the problem of divorce. He’s only interested in illustrating another
principle, in fact, it has nothing to do with divorce, namely the independence
of a redeemed person. That’s his
principle. And so incidentally he brings
the divorce thing in here to show how it operates in this area. So don’t think that once we’ve gone through
verses 1-4 we’ve completely scoped the whole teaching of Moses on divorce, we
haven’t. In fact, no one really knows
what it was. Divorce was granted in the
Old Testament on many, many grounds; what those grounds were we do not know but
they were grounds greater than just the single issue of adultery.
Now go back to Deut. 24 having understood that this was not an all
encompassing Mosaic opinion. This is
only one illustration that Moses has given and we cannot deduce the whole
doctrine of divorce from the Old Testament from four verses in Deut. 24,
absolutely impossible, you can’t do it.
So let’s start at verse 1 and now we come to this phrase, “when a man
has taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor
in his eyes, because he has found some uncleanness in her,” now the question
is, what is the uncleanness? What can be
the uncleanness here? The uncleanness
is never defined; in fact, this is the whole point why we’ve had this big
debate. What does this word “unclean”
mean? The word “unclean” actually means
nakedness of a thing and the only other place that it occurs in the near
context, remember principle of Bible study, if you don’t know what a word is,
find it in its nearest context. The nearest context we have is verse 23:15,
“For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to
give up thine enemies before thee; therefore thy camp be holy, that he see no
unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.” The word “unclean” actually means a shameful
thing, having to pertain either to the bodily functions of excretion or
reproduction.
Therefore what are we going to say?
What does the word “unclean” here mean? People have argued it couldn’t be adultery
because adultery as we look back in the previous chapter, adultery was treated
by killing the offenders. For example,
if you turn to Deut. 22:22, “If a man be found lying with a woman married to an
husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the
woman, and the woman. So shalt thou put away evil from Israel.” Certainly that’s adultery but those people
who committed the adultery wouldn’t be alive to divorce, the marriage was
broken by the capital punishment, and so people have argued that proves that
Deut. 24:1 cannot refer to adultery.
But, they haven’t read Deut. 22:22 very clearly because what is the
condition? If they be caught in the act of committing adultery and that’s the
issue. In Deut. 22:22 capital punishment
was only authorized when the people were caught in the act of adultery, not in
the general case of adultery.
To show you that there were other ways of handling the situation so that
a person could be engaged in adultery and not killed, turn to Num. 5:12. Here is the proof that in the Old Testament
adultery could be committed with no capital punishment, in other words, the
offending parties still would be living.
“Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man’s wife
go aside, and commit a trespass against him, [13] And a man lie with her
carnally, and it be hidden from the eyes of her husband,” in other words, they
are not found, “and be kept secret, and she be defiled, and there is not
witness against her,” therefore you cannot have a trial, remember capital
punishment in the Bible, only true if two or more witnesses saw it, therefore
capital punishment cannot be true here, “there is no witness against her,
neither she be taken in any manner.” But
in verse 14 something happens, “And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and
he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy
come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled,” the
point here is that the man begins to suspect that the woman has been engaged in
adultery. Perhaps he becomes aware of
her response to him, etc. We dealt with
this passage on sex in Deut. 22 this influences response patterns, etc. and so
therefore for some reason the man begins to get jealous, he begins to suspect
his wife.
Now beginning at verse 15 we have one of the most interesting trials by
ordeal in history. This is the only
trial by ordeal ordained in the Word of God.
Now many times, and many pagan religions have the trial by ordeal, yet
this is the only time the Word of God comes close to the trial by ordeal. It was an objective test that God worked out
to prove the guilt or the innocence of this suspected woman. Verse 15, “Then shall the man bring his wife
unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an
ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense
thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing
iniquity to remembrance. [16] And the priest shall bring her near, and set her
before the LORD.” This is done in the
presence of God Himself at the Tabernacle.
Now verse 19, “And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto
the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to
uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter
water that causeth the curse. [20] But if thou hast gone aside to another
instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with
thee beside thine husband; [21] Then the priest shall charge the woman with an
oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a
curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot,
and thine belly to swell.’ [22] And this water that causeth the curse shall go
into thy bowels, to make thine belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot. And the woman shall say, Amen, Amen.” This is her acknowledgement that she is
willing to undergo this trial.
Verse 27, “And when he has made her drink the water, then it shall come
to pass, if she be defiled and have done trespass against her husband, that the
water that causes the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her
belly,” this is the word for womb, “the womb shall swell and her thighs shall
rot; and the woman shall be a curse among her people.” This simply means that
what this water did was destroy permanently that woman’s ability to have
children and so from this point on her complete reproductive system was destroyed
by the water of cursing. This is what it
means when it says “she shall be a curst to her people,” for a barren woman who
could not bear children was a curse to the people on the Old Testament,
picturing of course the fruitfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New
Testament. But the point here is that
the woman becomes a curse because the waters of cursing have destroyed her
organs of reproduction. Now this was an
objective test. And it would indicate
whether the woman was guilty or not.
Verse 28, “And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall
be free, and shall conceive seed.” In
other words, she will be unharmed by the water of cursing. So this test, why go through this test? Simple, it shows you that the woman could
have engaged in adultery and not be killed.
In other words, after the test is over she still would be married to
this person.
Therefore coming back to Deut. 14:1 we now take up the situation. The man at this point, the uncleanness is a
result of the trial of Numbers 5; the uncleanness has been found in her and now
it is up to the man. He has the right
under the Mosaic Law at that point to divorce the woman because adultery has
been proven by the test of Numbers 5. He
doesn’t have to, notice, he doesn’t have to but he can if he wishes. Therefore Deut. 24:1, “then let him write her
a bill of divorcement,” now the bill of divorcement is an interesting word in
the Hebrew because it means actually a writing of cutting. What does this mean? It means that the “one flesh”, which is
marriage, is cut by this document. There
are certain safeguards to marriage here.
Notice that the man first has to prove the uncleanness; secondly he has
to have it legalized, and has to “write her a bill of divorcement and give it
in her hand, and send her out of his house.
Verse 2, “And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be
another man’s wife.” Now verse 2 defines
for you what divorce means. We’re going
to conclude with the difference between divorce and separation. The two differ at this point. Separation does not convey the right of
verse 2; divorce does. Verse 2 describes
what divorce means, the woman is free to marry, the man is free to marry; they
are free to remarry without sin in God’s sight. But, separation does not convey
that right; divorce does.
Verse 3, “And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of
divorcement,” in other words, this woman appears to be an all-time loser, “and
gives it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; or if the latter husband
die, who took her to be his wife, [4] Her former husband, who sent her away,
may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is
abomination before the LORD.” Now I want
to, before we get involved in the details of the divorce question, I want you
to first see the thrust of this passage because it’s not divorce. The point Moses is trying to make is that the
individual who is redeemed should not be in bondage to anyone. His point in this passage is that this woman
is not a plaything to be tossed around, and the man doesn’t like her one day so
he divorces her. And then she remarries
somebody else and she’s around loose again and he says well I’ll take you back
in again and marry you. In other words,
she becomes a play thing in the hands of this man. And what Moses says, if you are serious
enough to divorce your wife, verse 4, then you’ve got to make sure once
divorced always divorced; that’s his point.
He says if you’ve engaged in this tremendous momentous decision of
marriage and then you’ve engaged in another decision to break your vows,
destroy the marriage, you shouldn’t do it a third time and change it again
because in so doing, in and out, in and out, in and out you destroy and break
down divine institution number two so it has no respect any more. So what Moses’ real point is here is to show
that this is serious and if you going to divorce, then it’s divorce, period. And if this woman is married to another man,
she’s his wife and then he dies or something happens, her former husband can’t
take her back again. In other words,
this would curtail frivolous divorce under the Mosaic economy. That’s the point
Moses is trying to make, to protect the woman from being a play thing and
bullying in marriage, and likewise the man.
Let’s look at the word “defiled,” this word, why is this woman
defiled? It’s an interesting word
because the word “defiled” here is only used elsewhere for adultery. Now why is the woman said to be defiled in
verse 4. First she marries husband
number one, she divorces him and goes to husband number 2, he dies, something
happens and now she wants to come back to husband number one but she is now
defiled relative to number one.
Why? Because she has engaged in a
sexual relationship with another man, which as we have explained in Deut. 22
changes her response patterns, etc. so therefore she now becomes less than she
was when she left that man; she becomes less responsive to him potentially in all
other ways. Therefore this marriage is
not to be condoned in the Word of God.
Remember these rules of Scripture are not God way of slapping your hand
and saying you can’t have a good time. They are actually given to us that we
may increase happiness within legitimate boundaries. That’s the meaning of the
rules.
Now let’s look at Moses wife and see the problem that Moses himself had
with his wife and you can gain an appreciation for why he had the divorce
provision written in his law. Exodus
2:16, here he meets his woman. When we
went through Deut. 22 we said there is a certain series of models, if you want
to put it that way, a model behavior pattern, and to me the thing that
summarizes marriage and makes sense to a lot of young people is simply say
this: look, think of Adam and think of Eve and then think of the plan of
God. Now which came first, the plan of
God for Adam or Eve? Answer: the plan of
God, therefore what is marriage?
Marriage is the man who is to take the spiritual leadership, discern the
will of God for his life. The woman
comes in to compliment that plan.
I was talking to a young fellow that has his eyes on a couple of girls
and he can’t decide which one, so he said how do you make up your mind,
everyone tells me that I’m supposed to know just automatically,
intuitively. He had a tremendous problem
of indecision in all areas of his life.
It was very obvious to me, so I asked him one thing. I said what do you know about God’s will for
your life, forget the girls for a minute, just in general what is God’s plan
for your life? He couldn’t answer the
question and it became very obvious why he couldn’t make up his mind because he
didn’t have any sense of the plan of God of his life. How do you tell which woman it’s going to be
unless… for example, with Adam, you remember God carefully told Adam what He
wanted Adam to do, then He brought Eve along, then Adam recognized, this is my
helpmate, this is the woman that God has made for me to help me follow His plan
for my life. That’s a very simple model
of marriage, but basically that’s a Scriptural emphasis.
Therefore the point is that the man recognizes the woman as to how does
she or does she not fit into what I know of God’s plan for my life. That’s the basis for which the decision is
made, and it gets the decision away from all the emotions that go on and it
gets it down to the real key issues of life.
Does this woman or does she not fit with I know now of God’s plan for my
life. That’s the point. Now here Moses makes a tragic mistake for he
fails to adopt this principle.
Exodus 2:16, this is after Moses has gone out into the wilderness. God has called Moses to a job; God said to
Moses listen, I’ve got a tremendous job for you, probably one of the most
exciting jobs I’ve ever passed out to any man, and that is, Moses, you’re going
to be the redeemer of a nation, you’re going to lead a nation out of bondage,
out of slavery and I’ve chosen you to do it Moses. And Moses goes back to Egypt, but Moses has a
little problem. Moses can’t get rid of
his fat fleshy soul, and so therefore he tries to do it on the energy of the
flesh, tries to do it with human good, he sees an Egyptian there and Moses is a
strong man, probably a very skilled fighter, he probably learned how to fight, because
he was the son of Pharaoh he learned in Pharaoh’s court and he just grabbed one
of these Egyptians and clobbered him, he said that’s how I’m going to lead my
people, and God said no, I don’t work that way.
There’s a time for clobbering people but now is not the time because if
this nation gets redeemed from Egypt it’s not going to be redeemed because you
went around and clobbered the Egyptian soldiers, it’s going to be redeemed
because I clobbered the Egyptian soldiers, not you Moses.
So what happened? God has to
assign Moses to forty years in the wilderness.
Moses has a little tour of duty, remote station, and he’s out there to
learn something. He is to learn the
grace of God, he is to learn to realize so that when later on, 40 years later
Moses comes back he’s a changed man, he’s a mature man, he no longer comes up
to the nearest Egyptian and clobbers him.
He comes up to an Egyptian and he goes to the Pharaoh and tells Pharaoh
exactly what God tells him and nothing more.
Moses is a disciplined man; he’s learned it in these 40 years of
testing.
Now what happens? This passage in
2:16 occurs during this time of testing.
Moses is an immature man, God has a job for him, tremendous job for him,
but Moses isn’t man enough to fit into the job yet and so God is making him
into the man that He wants. In verse 16
he’s out there and “the priest of Midian had seven daughters; and they came and
drew water,” this is out in the desert area where he’s wandering around, “and
filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. [17] And the shepherds came
and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their
flock.” Now watch how good things can lead to problems. Moses does a good turn, perfectly all right
what he does in verse 17.
Verse 18, “And when they came to Reuel, their father, he said, How is it
that you are come so soon today? [19] And they said, An Egyptian delivered us
out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and
watered the flock. [20] And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? Why is
it that ye have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” The very fact that this man, who has these
seven daughters, says that tells you something.
It tells you perhaps that the daughters did invite Moses but he didn’t
come, because he was out in the desert minding God’s business. And so Reuel goes back and he issues an
invitation to Moses.
Verse 21, “And Moses was content to dwell with the man; and he gave
Moses Zipporah, his daughter. [22] And she bore him a son, and he called his
name Gershom; for he said,” that’s the word ger,
the word for a foreigner, remember we saw this word several times, there it is,
ger, and he named his son “Gershom;
for he said, I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” There’s no intimations here, but we suspect
from the later behavior pattern of this woman that she is an unbeliever, and
Moses had no business fooling around with this woman. He went to this man, this man offered him
help, etc. but he should have kept his hands off the daughters. He should have left them, if he offered him
his daughter he should have just said look, I don’t mind drawing water but
that’s as far as I go, sorry. But no, he
took this woman and he called the first son a very strange name, Gershom,
meaning that he is the stranger, Moses is the stranger.
Now let’s see what happens in the later relationship between Moses and
Zipporah. Exodus 4:24, “And it came to
pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him,” now Moses is on his way
back to redeem the nation Egypt, he’s about to enter into the job that God
originally called him to. Now look what
happens, he’s on his way back, just about ready to do the job that God called
him to do, this is God’s plan for his life.
Now ask yourself the question as you read the next few verses, does
Zipporah or does she not fit with the plan of God for Moses life? You see, when Moses picked his woman he
should have asked the Lord first, does she or does she not fit with God’s plan
for my life. So in verse 24 what does he
say, “And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him and
sought to kill him.” Why? Why does the Lord have this attitude toward
Moses? It’s simple; Moses almost
committed the sin unto death at this point. Do you know what it was? He forgot the circumcision seal. God says Moses, I hold you responsible.
It’s very interesting this sin unto death, it’s never defined in
Scripture. Every one of us evidently has
some way we can sin and God will kill us, but we don’t know what the sin
is. The sin is probably proportionate to
your understanding of the Word of God. Evidently the more responsibility that
God has laid upon your life for His plan for you the more He holds you
responsible to do certain things. And He
evidently held Moses tremendously responsible because you remember Moses
finally committed the sin unto death; it was hitting the rock and got water out
of it. The water still came but that was
the grace of God. Just a simple thing
like that, he got mad, and you can imagine if you were out forty years
traipsing around with a group of two million complaining people, all they were
doing is complain, complain, complain, don’t think you’d lose your temper once
in a while? Moses lost it once and that
was the sin unto death. Now that gives
you an idea of how strict God was with this man Moses. God wanted Moses to do a job.
And so in verse 24 Moses had forgotten circumcision for his children. He is attempting to bring back a Gentile wife
and he is attempting to bring back Gentile children and he has gone out in the
desert with this woman and in her family and in her Gentile relationships he’s
completely forgot God’s plan for his life, the details of it anyway, one of
which was to respect the covenant of circumcision.
Verse 25, “And then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin
of her son, and cast it as his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou
to me. [26] So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because
oaf the circumcision.” You see, that was
her attitude, it’s an attitude of unbelief.
This is a desecration; this is an utter desecration of the covenant seal
of Jehovah’s redemption. Here you have the
circumcision covenant which is to be honored and respected and this woman says
“you’re a bloody husband” and she throws the thing back at him, and it shows
you her attitude. This woman was a rank
Gentile unbeliever and Moses had no business fiddling around this woman, ever,
in his life. But he got on with the
wrong woman and he had problems the rest of his life because of this woman,
because he made a wrong decision.
Now some Christians have the attitude, well all I have to do is just
yield and God’s going to steer me around life like a robot. God never assumes responsibility that you
bear. Don’t ever forget that, God never
shorts out volition. Remember the soul
has volition, personal affections and mentality, and God never destroys any of
them. This is why the tongues movement
is so blasphemous, it destroys all of them.
God always expects you to use your volition; He never twists your arm,
God is a gentleman and He will never break into your life and guide you around
like a robot. He expects you to find out
His will and He expects you to positively respond to it. He is not going to do the choosing for
you. Oftentimes I’ve been in situations
where I’ve shared the gospel with an unbeliever and I’ve sat there and
literally wanted to choose for that person but I can’t. And God can’t either and He’s not going
to. And there’s only one person at the
point of gospel hearing that can choose and that’s the unbeliever and that goes
for every decision you’ll ever make as a Christian. You may have your pastor out there, you may
have somebody else out there and they may be tearing their insides out, God let
me choose for this person, but God says no, that person chooses or he fail
to.
And Moses blew it; Moses had the opportunity to choose or reject and he
chose, and it was wrong. So now he has
problems with this woman. And evidently at this point he said, he finally got
smart at this point, verse 26, as we deduce from the next reference, he said
okay honey, you don’t like the covenant of circumcision, we’ll see you around
because God has called me to this ministry and I intend to redeem the nation
and if you don’t like to live with me then just go out and pick cactus. So he dismissed her, if you don’t want to go my
way then fine, you just go your way and I’ll go mine but I happen to be
following the Lord’s will. I may have
made a mistake at this point but from this point on I’m going to follow God’s
will and if you don’t like it woman, you can just leave the premises. And she left and went back to daddy and you
see this in the next reference, chapter 18.
This is about a year later now, Moses has gone into Egypt, the nation
has been redeemed, the nation comes back out into the desert, now look what
happens. [18:1] “When Jethro, the priest
of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and
for Israel his people, and that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt; [2]
Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had
sent her back.” That shows you that Moses just told her to just take off,
you’re not responsible, if you don’t want to go my way, forget it, just leave,
the door is open. Verse 3, “And her two
sons, of which the name of one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien
in a foreign land: [4] And the name of the other was Eliezer; for the God of my
father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh. [5]
And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses
into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God.”
Now wouldn’t it be thrilling if you read the next few verses and
Zipporah comes out and she says oh Moses, I’m so sorry and she gets with the
plan of God and Moses says fine, has a grace attitude and everything’s fine,
they live happily ever after. And yet
you read back through chapter 18 and you can’t find one mention of
Zipporah. His father comes out and makes
many suggestions to Moses, does all sorts of things for Moses. [6, “And he said unto Moses, I, thy
father-in-law Jethro, am come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with
her.”] Verse 7, “And Moses went out to
meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him,” he respected his
father-in-law, but you can’t find a shred in this chapter about reconciling
with Zipporah. Do you know why? Because he didn’t. He was out there on a plan for God and he was
going to do God’s plan and if Zipporah didn’t like it, she could lump it, that
was his attitude, it’s as simple as that.
And that’s the attitude that should be involved, you do God’s will first
and you worry about the consequences later.
So, that’s the end of Zipporah, you never read of her again, verse 27,
“And Moses let his father-in-law depart; and he went his way into his own
land.” And never again in Scripture do
you ever read a word about what happened to Zipporah.
But Moses had another wife and we find this in Numbers 12 and this is
right around the same time, so obviously either Zipporah died and Moses
remarried, or he didn’t wait for her to die and he remarried anyway, but Moses
remarried and he had a problem with the second woman, but his problem with the
second woman was not with the woman, it was with his own family. I hope you see in going through these things that
these saints of God in the Bible aren’t some plaster people that had no
problems in life and you can’t live the way they did because you’re so and
so. Nonsense! These people had the life
and the loves and the hates that we all have and they all had the same problem,
but the great men of the Bible were different from flaky Christians in one
respect, they knew how to handle their problems. Not that they didn’t have your problems or
mine, they had them, they had them by the carload but they knew how to respond
to their problems.
Num. 12:1, “And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the
Ethiopian woman whom he had married,” now there’s problems here. Moses has a family and one of the family is a
sister. This sister is probably six or
seven years older than he is, Miriam.
Then he has a brother, Aaron and he is three years older, and here’s
little Moses, little baby brother, and Miriam is his big sister and all during
Moses ministry this sister can’t keep her mouth shut. She’s the one down in the bulrushes in Egypt;
she’s the one that makes the arrangements for Pharaoh’s daughter to take Moses
in, that’s fine. But it seems like she
has to be Moses’ mother. Every time
Moses turns around Miriam is at his right hand telling him what to do. Little baby brother doesn’t know what to do
so Miriam is going to tell him. And then he has Aaron telling him what to do;
Aaron is three years older, he says this little kid brother of mine doesn’t
know what’s going on so he needs me around.
See, Moses didn’t need any of them around; it was just by grace that
Moses happened to include Aaron and Miriam.
But nevertheless, big sister Aaron and older brother started telling
Moses what to do and they got together, brother and sister in chapter 12, and
had a conference in verse 1, they said look what our little brother did now, he
not only had trouble with Zipporah, now he’s gone off and married this
Ethiopian woman, and the Ethiopian woman, we don’t know what race she was, she
could be a colored woman, she could be a white woman, it doesn’t make any difference.
We rather suspect the way the scholarship is that she’s white; it was a dark
race, something like the modern Indian in India, that they were dark, something
like Haile Selassie in Ethiopia today, generally of the Caucasoid race but they
have a very dark skin and this was evidently offensive to Miriam and Aaron,
they couldn’t stand it, they said now look what the kid has done, now he’s gone
off and gotten himself stuck with this Ethiopian woman. So now they start gossiping behind the
scenes. See, all this starts with
gossip, never can confront someone with the truth, always has to nit behind the
back. Fortunately for Moses they didn’t
have telephones in that day. So Miriam
and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman.
Verse 2, “And they said, Has the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? Has
he not spoken also by us?” You can see
naturally how they thought this. Here’s
little baby brother, he’s goofed again.
Now God, if you just turn the program over to us we could handle it fine,
we don’t need Moses around, why always hang everything on Moses, every time you
do he blows it. So why not give us a
part in the deal. And so Miriam and
Aaron essentially are telling God how to operate. Now God does not appreciate being told how to
operate; that’s one thing that evidently burns Him more than anything else as
far as [blank spot]…
So watch what happens, they get clobbered in a beautiful way. Verse 2, the last part, “And the LORD heard
it.” See Moses evidently didn’t even hear it, but the Lord did. Now verse 3, the most mysterious verse of the
Old Testament as far as Moses is concerned. “(Now the man Moses was very meek,
above all the men who were upon the face of the earth.)” Now why does that happen to be stuck in here
just at this point? Because can you
think of a better test of meekness? What
does meekness mean? Meekness, for those
of you who think so, meekness does not equal weakness. They are not synonyms, they may be anonyms
but they’re not synonyms. They may sound
alike and they may rhyme but they’re not the same as far as meaning is
concerned. Meekness means simply this:
you know your place on the team. That’s the simple definition of meekness and
if you’re a back you don’t try to be on the line, and if God has assigned you a
tackle job you don’t be quarterback.
Just because the quarterback makes a bad play doesn’t mean that he wants
you to be quarterback; you just stay on the line where God put you and do your
job. And that’s what Moses says in verse
3, Moses said Lord, he just relaxed in the Lord’s hand and said God, I know
you’ve called me to this job, I’m doing it the best I know how and I know this
is my position, etc. Moses just simply
went along with his position. And what
happened?
Moses had a temptation at this point to snap back at his brother and
sister, he could have told them off, you guys take a long walk through the
Sinai Desert, just get out of here, I’m the commander of this camp, you just
head south and in about 40 or 50 days you’ll walk into the Red Sea. He could have said that very easily but he
didn’t He just relaxed and said all
right Lord, these people but me to death, but I’m not going to let them get the
better of me, I’m going to put it in your hands. And so instead of worrying about it, everybody
talking behind his back, Moses relaxed.
He had an RMA, he just relaxed in the filling of the Spirit as known in
his day and he just simply said God’s going to take care of it. These people are lipping off and they’re
insulting not Moses but they are insulting God.
One of the first things I was told when I went into the service was that
somebody could come up to me as an officer and say anything they wanted to
except if they added the word Lieutenant, and then it was quite a different
matter because then they were insulting not me personally but the office I
held, and if anybody ever dared to do that they’d better watch out.
That’s the difference, they are insulting not Moses, they are insulting
Moses’ rank at this point. And so watch
how God handles this little problem.
Verse 4, “And the LORD spoke suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and
unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out.” Can you imagine,
they were sitting in there gossiping about this marital situation? See, the
woman isn’t even there; they’re just talking behind her back. And all of a sudden they hear this voice, all
right you three, get out here. And you
can imagine they did an about face and forward march, quick. [5] And the LORD came down in the pillar of
the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and
Miriam, and they both came forth.” All
right, Aaron and Miriam, front and center.
Verse 6, “And He said, hear now My words: If there be a prophet among
you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak
unto him in a dream. [7] My servant, Moses, is not so, who is faithful in all
Mine house. [8] With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even plainly, and not in
dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall behold. Wherefore, then,
were ye not afraid to speak against My servant, Moses.” Verse 9, “And the anger of the LORD was
kindled against them; and He departed. [10] And the cloud departed from off the
tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and Aaron,
looked upon Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. [11] And Aaron said unto
Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have
done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned.”
Now watch that, there’s the change in mental attitude, Aaron didn’t have
to be disciplined at this point, he said “lord” to his younger brother, do you
know what that means? He recognized
Moses’ position at this point and he said all right Moses, I see, you’re number
one here and I’m not number one, I may be from a natural viewpoint, from the
human viewpoint I may be your older brother but in the Lord I am not, you are
my lord. And so he turned around and he
straightened up in verse 11, “wherein we have sinned,” he confesses his sin.
Verse 12, he intercedes for his sister, “Let her not be as one dead, of
whom the flesh is half consumed when he comes out of his mother’s womb. [13]
And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee.” Here again you see the meekness of
Moses. You know, if I’d been Moses it
would have been a temptation to say ha-ha, you just stand here and watch. That’s how I would have handled the
situation, but in verse 13 Moses went right with and he said “Heal her now, O
God, I beseech you.” And Moses got new grace; Moses realized it was the
discipline of God and he handled his sister in a gracious attitude. He could have exercised revenge tactics and
said ah-ha. So that’s Moses’ experience
and it all came about because he married the wrong woman and finally he got
with the right woman and you don’t hear much about her but at least you see
that she’s not blocking his ministry. So
this is the way it goes and you’ll see this again and again in marriage, one
partner or the other makes a wrong decision and it leads to misery, misery,
misery.
Turn back to Deut. 24, what are we to say of this point of divorce?
Let’s summarize what we have covered. Verses 1-4 have given us an example; the
point of the example is to show that neither the woman nor the man are to be
bullied by promiscuous divorce proceedings.
They are to be protected and not to be shoved around as sort of pieces
on a legal chess board. That’s the point
of verses 1-4. But included in this is
the fact that Moses did grant divorce on many grounds, one of which included
here is this uncleanness which we have defined as adultery. Now to show you that it’s not really God’s
will that this happen, turn to the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi
2:13. Here we have depicted God’s
attitude toward divorce. Even though under the Mosaic economy He allowed it to
occur, here is His attitude.
Verse 13, “And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD
with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regards not the
offering any more, or receives it with good will at your hand.” Now what’s happened here in the nation Israel
at this point, down in 400-450 BC, is that the nation Israel has gotten to the
point where they have no fellowship with God.
They pray to God, they make the offerings to God, nothing happens. God
does not answer their prayers and so they are out of fellowship. Same thing
with us, no prayers answered, miserable, horrible, no worship, everything is
frustration, confusion, instability, absolute confusion, etc. And that’s what the state of the nation is in
verse 13, everybody is crying on the altar, God, O God, why did you let this
happen to me, God O God, how did this happen and why is it You never answer my
prayers, etc. This is all going on. And
in verse 14 God tells them the answer.
Why is this going on? “Because the LORD has been witness between thee
and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet is
she still thy companion, and the wife of the covenant.” Now in verse 14 we have some vital elements
of the divine institution of marriage.
We have four divine institutions in the human race, divine institution
one, volition; divine institution two, marriage; divine institution three,
family; divine institution four, government.
All these divine institutions are for believers and unbelievers alike,
their objective is to stabilize the human race.
Now in verse 14 God gives His attitude, God “the LORD has been witness,”
now when is God witness to the divine institution of marriage? When the vows
are exchanged, when the vows are exchanged before God, it’s a promise before
Him and you may regret it and you may forget it but God never does, He’s
omniscient. So therefore in verse 14 He says I have been witness, I’ve watched
you, I was there when you vowed to love this person for better or worse, and I
remember what you said; you may have forgotten it but I never forget a
thing. So God says I’ve been witness “between
thee and the wife of thy youth,” and the “wife of thy youth” were the young
women that were being married at this time in history, this time is 450 BC, the
nation Israel had the practice of late teenager marriages, that was their
problem, late teen marriages, usually one out of ten survive. So we have these late teenage marriages going
on, early teenage marriage is the problem basically from what we know of
history. And they’d go on and as usual
teenage marriages last about three or four years if that and finally they fall
apart and then they marry somebody else and try to get their kicks out of
somebody else.
So God says look, I’ve been the “witness between thee and the wife of
thy youth,” the first woman you married, I’m the witness of your relationship
with her and “you have dealt treacherously” with her. Why? Because these people were getting
divorced promiscuously, they were distorting the Law of Moses. Anytime, as I said, this is no joke, it was
written in the extra-Biblical literature, if the woman burned the man’s
breakfast it was sufficient case for divorce.
Now it sounds very amusing but it shows you how far this divorce thing
had gotten. So therefore God is about to
call a halt to it. And he says “you
dealt treacherously,” you haven’t even got a basis of divorce and yet you go
ahead blindly and break up this marriage that I’ve made one. “… yet
is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant,” and the word “covenant”
here refers to the marriage contract that actually you make before God with
your marriage partner at the point of the vow.
And God says as far as I’m concerned that contract is still in effect;
you may think you have a divorce and yet you really don’t.
Verse 15 is why, and I think here you see why God hates this. “And did He not make one?” You see this goes
back, just the same way the Lord Jesus did when He answered the question of the
divorce situation, He said didn’t you read back in Genesis 2 that He made
one. Now isn’t it interesting, when God
created, did He create Adam and then Eve as two separate people? No, he created Adam only and how did Eve come
about? Out of Adam, He could have
created two people instantaneously, but He didn’t. He created first Adam and then the woman out
of him to show and stress the unity under Adam of the entire human race and of
course marriage, the oneness He provided.
So in verse 15, “And did not He make one? Yet had he the residue of the
spirit.” Now this refers back again to the Genesis narrative and it says God
didn’t run out of breathe, He had enough breathe left to make two people, He
didn’t have to make just one, as this would have been the objection, it’s
sarcasm that the prophet is using. “And
did he not make one?” And don’t come to me that God ran out of breathe, He had enough
breath to make all sorts of people. “And
why one?” and here you have one of the reasons why God insists on this unity,
this oneness here is the oneness we’ve described in Deut. 22, the oneness of
the right man plus the right woman. The
fact that God has made, for every male God has made a perfect woman for you to
fulfill His plan for you and for every woman God has made a perfect man for you
with a plan that you can fulfill. Now
that’s the oneness mentioned here.
Verse 15, “That he might seek a godly seed,” that’s why. In other words, divine institution number two
exists not only to structure the male and the female but it exists to bring
into the earth a godly seed. You see
this in at least two respects, a stable home environment for children. A recent study done in 1968 reported in the
American Journal of Psychiatry said this: “In 62% of nursery children of
divorced parents the divorce had a significant impact and represented a major
crisis. There was often an initial
period of shock and acute depressive reactions.
The immediate effects of divorce are manifested by the impairment of the
capacity to master anxiety and depression through play.” Now if it has this effect to the little kids
who can’t even understand it, what effect would it have for older
children? That’s the point, and he says
you cannot raise a stable godly seed when the homes are shredding like they are
in the United States in 1970. And this
nation is going to be very sorry about this whole situation because we are
breeding a next generation of monsters from the unstable homes that have been
created by divorce and liberal court policies in this area.
Verse 15 also shows us another reason, not only is it to seek a godly
seed in the sense of a stable home, but it’s to seek a godly seed in the sense
of discipline of the parents. In other
words, a man and a woman come together in marriage, both of them have a sin
nature, that’s something that some Christians just discover after marriage,
that he has an old sin nature and she has an old sin nature and you get two old
sin natures together and guess what you’ve got.
That’s the doctrine of the fall, and don’t come up with this jazz about
so and so is not compatible with so and so, listen, since the fall nobody has
been compatible with anybody; everybody has a sin nature, big news that you’ve
got problems. Do you know why, old sin
nature that’s why. There’s never a
marriage that doesn’t have it, you have two sin natures as close as you live in
marriage you’re going to have problems, always.
The issue is, what do you do when you have them.
Now you take two people and instead of running away from the problems
they use it like fire to make them pure and to develop them and mature them and
out of this marriage and out of these struggles come two mature, one a mature
man and one a mature woman and that helps the godly seed because now the godly
seed has a mature parents instead of these weak parents that we have in our
society, the teenagers that get married and can’t stick it out for six months. They haven’t got the stick-to-it-iveness and
the depth of character to handle their problems. Christians have all the assets God has given
through the filling of the Holy Spirit.
You have things that the unbeliever never will have, never can have, and
yet we find Christian marriages falling apart.
There’s no excuse, the filling of the Holy Spirit is sufficient for
every and any problem.
Now, what does he say in verse 15, “Therefore, take heed to your
spirit,” and that goes back to what we saw this morning with the area of the
soul, God is saying that in the human spirit is your conscience, you take heed
to that, you listen to that, “and let none deal treacherously against the wife
of his youth.” With this we have an
interesting point that is made here, and that is that although divorce is
possible, it is never commanded in Scripture, and it goes back to this concept
that we dealt with about dealing with a person and his soul. Here you have a person filled with the Holy
Spirit, you have his soul, you have his body and you have his human
spirit. Here’s your human spirit, here
are the functions of your human spirit, you can actually sense if you are a
mature Christian, later on in the Christian life you can sense your human
spirit when it begins to function because you can sense your conscience telling
you something. When you have that
sensation that is actually the sensation of your human spirit operating.
So you have conscience, you have guidance, you have worship, the
functions of the human conscience, the filling of the Holy Spirit bangs this
over into the soul and it transforms volition, personal affections, mentality
and bodily affections; it increases and stabilizes volition, it takes personal
affections and keeps them under control, it makes you occupied with Christ so
that the things that emotionally stimulate you now are the things of the Lord,
and you have mentality meaning that now the mentality of your brain begins to
live in the Word of God, begins to take in the Word of God, digest the Word of
God, think through the Word of God, you have a relaxed mental attitude. That’s
what the filling of the Holy Spirit does.
And in verse 15, “take heed according to your spirit” means listen to
the conscience of your spirit so you can be guided. In other words what Moses is saying, you may
come onto a situation where divorce is possible under the Law, this is the Old
Testament, you may have the right under the Law but Malachi says I want you to
do something, when this happens take heed to your spirit. What does this mean? It means that you are guided; God’s plan
personally for you may not be divorce, even though you have legitimate grounds
for divorce. You see, a Christian can’t
go through life and say now look, the Word of God allows me the right of
divorce in this situation. Oh no, it’s
not that easy. What the Word of God says
is those who are led by the Spirit of God, the Christian in this situation,
although divorce may be possible, has an added obligation beyond that. He has the added obligation of asking
himself, I know divorce is possible but is that God’s will for me.
And that’s what it means here, “take heed to your spirit,” seek divine
guidance, “let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth,” and
verse 16, “For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that He hates” divorce, the
word “putting away” here in verse 16 is the word for divorce, “I hate divorce,”
that is God’s attitude toward the divorce issue, I hate it. Now that should stimulate Christians who are
involved in situations like this, even though God’s Word says it, is it God’s
will for you?
Now briefly in summary, what are the Biblical bases for divorce? There
are three grounds for divorce in God’s Word.
One is a pseudo ground in the sense that it’s not a divorce. One of course is physical death, obviously at
physical death the marriage is dissolved and so there’s no debate about that,
that’s Rom. 7:3, it says the marriage union is dissolved upon death. And by the way for people who die, for
example a woman whose husband dies in Vietnam or a man whose wife dies in an
automobile accident or something like that, God always takes up the slack and
what we said back with the woman intermarrying, etc. committing fornication and
adultery in Deut. 22 does not apply in that case because if a Christian loses
their mate God has another mate prepared just for them with their particular
response pattern that they gained from the other person. So all the prohibitions against adultery have
no effect whatever upon a second mate under these conditions.
The second basis for Biblical divorce is adultery, Matt. 19:6.
The third basis for divorce is found in 1 Cor. 7:12-15 and in this
section of Scripture it says this, if you have a believer and an unbeliever,
and the unbeliever does not choose to live with the believer and initiates
divorce proceedings at that point the believer is free unto God to go out and
marry someone else. That’s what Paul gives in 1 Cor. 7 and obviously you can
see why because in the gospel era, you see these two basically are Old Testament,
but in the gospel era you have the problem of a marriage that’s already formed,
here’s the one union, and now say the man accepts Jesus Christ as Savior, he
goes on positive volition, but the woman goes on negative volition, he’s got a
Zipporah on his hands just like Moses had and she throws the rock and despises
the covenant and so on, what is the man supposed to do. Actually it’s interesting but the New
Testament says let the unbeliever initiate the divorce proceedings; if the
unbeliever initiates fine, just go ahead and let him have it, you’re free to
marry.
So those are three areas of divorce in the New Testament and now the
Biblical basis for separation to show you the contrast. The Biblical basis of separation is deduced
from God’s Word on the basis of certain basic principles of life. Separation means that the man and the woman
mutually agree or at least one party agrees not to live with the other
martially for a certain period of time.
Why? There are several reasons given in Scripture. One is a threat to physical life; if a mate
becomes belligerent and begins, say the man for example begins to shove his
woman around, any man who does that probably is a mouse anyway, he can’t shove
another man around so he shoves his wife around, and so any person that
involves a physical threat… maybe the woman or the man might be threatened,
maybe she poisons his food or something, so you have this problem, there’s a
threat to physical life. Now in that
case separation obviously is necessary.
What are some other situations that have come up that we can deduce from
the Scripture? A threat to spiritual
life, same thing; a threat to spiritual life in this sense, where you will have
often times in certain areas of the country, certain cases you will have a husband
or a wife, usually it works more with the man in some cases where he will say I
forbid you to study the Word of God, I forbid you to go to church, I forbid you
to do certain things in this. At that
point the woman is under no obligation whatever to listen to her husband. Why? Because of the doctrine of God and
Caesar, whenever any other fear of authority intrudes upon God’s authority it
invalidates itself. The God and Caesar
issue, the government itself cannot come to you and tell you to do something to
deny Jesus Christ. If it does, the
authority that it has from God is immediately removed; you are under no
obligation to respect it. A man’s
authority he has not because of who and what he is but he has by virtue of his
position in the marriage relationship before God. If he, then, decrees something that is in
violation in this sense of a forceful stopping of Bible doctrine, such as we
now have, bullying into principle acts of sin such as wife-swapping, stealing
and drunkenness, this kind of activity, any time that happens the woman is
under no obligation to follow her husband, definitely and visa versa. So in this
situation we do have cases in the Word of God, but remember, final word, the
solution is always “take heed to thy spirit that you deal not treacherously”
and “take heed” means that you seek divine guidance which can only come as your
human spirit plus the Word of God works in your life to give you the confidence
that God is leading you in this direction, and only you can find that. As pastor I can help people, I can counsel
with them, but the decision is not mine, I can’t have the divine guidance for
them and this is one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever run into in the
ministry, that’s something I despise about the ministry, and that is when you
have believers in trouble who have not bothered in the past to take in Bible
doctrine and put it in their human spirit, then they get in a jam, come to you
and expect you to stop the hurt. You
feel for them, you feel sorrowful for them, you want to help them and there’s
nothing you can do, I know of no more frustrating feeling than that. You know the answer and you know they should
know the answer, they’ve heard it and heard it and heard it but they’ve never
paid attention until the time of crisis and then they come to you and look to
you as though here at last is someone that solve our problems. And you have to say I’m sorry, God alone can
solve your problems. All I can do is
give you principles, point certain aspects out to the Word of God out to you, I
can pray with you but that’s all, the decisions are yours and I can’t do your
leading for you.
Moral to the lesson: follow divine guidance and perfect it so that you
know God’s will for your life.