Let the husband render to his wife
the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 1 Cor. 7:3
What is it that you want in a mate? In our
minds, we may make a list of physical attributes. Is what a person physically
looks like all that important? Or is the character of a person much more vital?
Perhaps we make a list of character traits. Is his or her spiritual,
intellectual, and cultural similarities more significant than whether or not
the person is into the same sports teams or past-times? If you are like me, you’ve been blessed with a
highly successful system of finding a mate. God brought me my husband at just the
right time of my life. So, how is it that companies can advertise matching
people for marriage based on compatibility algorithms and boast high success
rates, and yet almost half of all marriages end in divorce?
“For the man who does not love his
wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says
the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your
spirit, and do not be faithless.” Mal.2:12 ESV
In our last study, we dealt with the human
heart’s hatred of other people. In this study, we move into next ‘you heard it
said,’ from which Jesus is teaching on the commandments. He is doing an expositional
teaching on the commandments dealing with the relationships man has with each
other. These teachings have become very relevant in our day. The verses on lust
and divorce are extremely pertinent to what has become the cornerstone of the
Judeo-Christian value of marriage. Questions on the definition of marriage loom
large in our society, yet Jesus and the Bible make it very clear what marriage
is, and how He saw marriage. We’ll explore this controversial topic, and in
doing so find it’s not so controversial after all. As with many topics, it’s not
God that complicates them; it is the sinful nature of man’s heart that has
taken something so simply beautiful, and made it complex and confusing.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not
commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for
her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matt.5:27-28
Obviously, this is the seventh commandment
found in Exodus 20. “You shall not commit adultery.” Exodus 20:14 . What is
adultery? It is the will by a married person to have sexual relations with
someone who is not his wife, or for a woman who is not her husband. It is a sin
because of the purpose of the act of intimacy required to become sexually
engaged with another person. Secondly, because of the intended result of that
intimacy by the Creator, which was procreation, that is children. Come on,
people, you got to get naked! That’s embarrassing enough! To be in that
situation with someone who doesn’t care about you as a person, or regard you as
anything more than a way to meet an appetite is to put yourself on the same
level as a cheeseburger or a side of fries. What a way to demean yourself. Yet,
God does not see us that way. His word says, “I have loved you with an everlasting
love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” Isaiah 31:3b“ His commandment is to protect us from the pain of feeling so
rejected, and passing that rejection on to others. Adultery hurts so many
people. It is not just the three involved in the immediate relationship, but
all those around them as well. Its effects are devastating to the families, to
the community, and to society for decades afterward. The fracture of one marriage
is like an earthquake. The epicenter might be far underground, but the damage
can be felt miles away in the small cracks in the surface.
The second thing that we see in Jesus’
initial statement is His expositional statement and the weight that it holds.
He takes the act of adultery even further. He tells the crowd, and the men that
when they even look at woman with lust, they’ve already gone there in their
hearts. They’ve already broken those vows to the wife. Maybe there were wives
in the crowd at that point who were nudging their husbands, and maybe there
were husbands who were shaking their fingers at their wives too. It would have
been very difficult for the first century people to wrap their heads around the
level of lust we live in today. We are inundated with images of ‘sexy beautiful’
people we are supposed to lust after, or be envious of, or want to emulate. We
are pressured into having ‘celebrity’ crushes regardless of our marital status,
and our spouse is supposed to be okay with it. Yet what if the celebrity crush
is nothing like the spouse? How is that going to make a person feel secure in
their marriage? Jesus did understand the human heart and the lengths it could
go to, regardless of the times we are in. “The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” Jer. 17:9
The enemy has not been subtle in
planting this division. He doesn’t need to pretend that lust isn’t accepted in
our society. We practically teach it to both genders by defining what value we
place on expressing immoral sexuality without consequence. It’s in our
television shows, movies, advertisements, and social media. It is an appetite
within us, but just like our appetite for food, we’re not hungry all the time.
We can go without for long periods of time. It’s the enemy making us think we
cannot live without it. When it’s constantly placed before us, we are tricked
into thinking we need it. We begin to desire what is not ours. This is when sin
enters in. “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.
Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is
full-grown, brings forth death.” James 1:14-15 If we would just realize
that we don’t need it, that what we have is better, then we can rest in the
knowledge that God has provided what is truly good for us.
The other thing that we can see in
this verse is that God did indeed intend for marriage to be between one man and
one woman. Some would say that Jesus never said anything against gay marriage.
I would differ to these verses and say here we have proof that He did intend
that marriage was indeed a hetero-sexual union. It’s clear when he uses the
pronouns his and her. We can see that in the following verses as well when he
addresses the issue of divorce. Jesus never spoke of marriage except as being
between a woman and a man. Therefore, we can safely extrapolate that Jesus was
against gay marriage. Now, I know I may get some flack over this from the gay
community, because they will say that just because He didn’t say it doesn’t
mean He was against it, and I will say that Jesus also didn’t say that we should
marry trees or butterflies, or any other created thing, but that would not give
me permission to assume that because He didn’t strictly forbid it I should find
it permissible. Since Jesus was quoting the law here, I could add that He knew
the law as did the crowd, and the reason He took the tone of one man-one woman
in marriage was due to Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a
woman. It is an abomination.” Jesus did say, “Do not think that I came to
destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.”
Matt. 5:17 Jesus is unchanging. “Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
However, that does not mean that we as
Christians should condemn those who are under the bondage of the lifestyle of
homosexuality any more than we should a person who is struggling with any other
sexual sin, or any other sin for that matter. “All have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God.” Rom. 3:23 All of us can fall into
sin in some way. It is only by the goodness and grace of God working through us
that we can overcome the sin nature within us. When I read the following verses,
we could all put our names in some of the places of the sins committed, at
least in our hearts apart from God.
“Do you not know that the unrighteous
will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators,
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor
covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the
kingdom of God.”1 Cor.6:1-10 Thankfully,
that’s not all there is to it. Because of Jesus, there is a hope of redemption. “And such were some of you. But you were
washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Cor. 6:11
How then do we live? Are we supposed to make
our sexual natures convert something we feel to be so unnatural? As Jesus
looked out on the crowd that day He must have seen a lot of distraught faces.
They’d come to hear a message of hope, and he’d just given them a message that
struck them right in the heart. Who among them had not looked at pretty woman
and wondered? Yet, there He was calling them out on their thought life. These
men had thought they were in the clear because they had not acted upon it, and
Jesus just told them they were sinning against their wives, and that wives who
wondered about that man were sinning too. I’m sure it was deftly quiet about
this time as His voice traveled over the hillside. What were they supposed to
do?
“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast if
from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish,
than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes
you to sin, cut if off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that
one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.” Matt.
5: 29-30
Some will read those verses and take them
literally. God is not about self-mutilation. He is saying that if something in
your life is causing us to sin we need to get rid of it. For example, if you
find yourself wanting to be around someone who is not your spouse, then stop
going there. If you talk to someone who puts down your spouse, stop talking to
them. If anyone or anything comes between you and your spouse, then that person
or thing needs to be removed from your life. My husband used to be a big sports
fan. He would watch game after game of his favorite teams. His obsession was
not one I shared. I didn’t dislike sports, but I just didn’t care for them in
the way that he did. After many years of watching his mood swings depend upon
whether his teams won or lost he surprised me by suddenly just giving it all
up. He simply decided that I was much more important to him, and that he was
losing precious joyous times with me just because of a team he wasn’t even a
member of and had no control over. To say that I appreciated it is an
understatement. Now when he watches sports I don’t mind it at all because I
know he’s not all that concerned with the results of the teams. His priority is
me. The idea that what is in first place in your marriage should be your spouse
is ordained by God. This is seen in His other teaching on divorce found in
Matthew 19. “And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made
them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 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’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore,
what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matt. 19:4-6
“Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him
give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his
wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and
whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.” Matt. 5:31-32
The law Jesus was quoting on divorce is found
in Deuteronomy 24. I’m putting it in
because I feel it demonstrates that Jesus did not change on the law. He simply
reiterated it with a stronger line by stating clearly that when divorce takes
place it must be due to adultery, because marriage occurring after divorce is
adultery.
“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 uncleanness in her, and he
writes her a certificate divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his
house, when she has departed from his house, and goes and becomes another man’s
wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce,
puts her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his
wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his
wife after 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 is giving you
as an inheritance.” Deut. 24:1-4
So, what do we do? We either don’t divorce, or
we live as though we are widowed if we do divorce. Those are the choices we
make. Marriage should be taken extremely seriously when entering in, and once
we are in must be cherished, nourished, and worked on as if your life depends
on it. My son said something that I feel is the best advice for newlywed
couples I have ever heard. He said, “if couples would stop trying to see each
other as ‘romantic partners’ or even as each other’s best friend they would
last longer. God set marriage up as the foundation for families. My wife is my
family. You don’t get rid of family. People just need to see each other as
family members and love like they love their family and they can work through
anything.” Having been married for 32 years I know that marriage takes work. It
takes grace and forgiveness, mostly on God’s part toward us. We are a cord of
three strands, not two. God is what holds a marriage together. Without Him, I
don’t know how marriages last.
Let your fountain be blessed, and
rejoice with the wife of your youth. Prov. 5:18
