Articles - Bulletin
Take Heed To You Spirit
In Mark 10, as was His custom, Jesus was teaching the crowds that were following Him. A group of Pharisees came up to Him seeking to test Him and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife.
Whether or not it is lawful for a man to divorce a wife is a question that had been dealt with long before Jesus’s days here on this earth and long after His ascension back to the Father, even still today.
We’ve all seen the numbers in the media regarding the divorce rate in just the United States alone. At one point we read that 50% of all marriages result in divorce. A recent report was optimistic when reviewing more current statistics sowing the divorce rate is improving.
I’ve been called pessimistic but I prefer a realist. With the direction our nation has been heading and continues to head with approving of same sex marriage I’m not so sure that the decline in our divorce rates are positive.
More and more people today are more open about and of course condoning of acting like they are married all the while not actually being married. Call it common law, living together, a trial run, whatever else they name it, bottom line is instead of marrying people are content with just living together.
It’s obvious why the divorce rate has dropped because I would argue that fewer are getting married. This is no real shocking news to you I know. Our country is long past the shamefacedness of divorce and not only condones it but encourages it.
As Christians I believe that we need to do two things in regards to this state of our culture today.
(1) We need to spend time learning how to and teaching how to preserve and strengthen marriages. If we’re not careful we find ourselves spending almost all our time talking about divorce and what Scripture has to say about it and drawing out all the possibilities and scenarios etc. and never really spend any time talking about how to save and strengthen our marriages.
Doesn’t it make logical sense that if we put just as much if not more constant emphasis on how to strengthen and build Godly marriages then we wouldn’t have to spend as much time talking about the right to divorce? Spend time teaching about each one’s roles in the relationship like in Ephesians 5:22-33. What makes a good husband, a virtuous wife, Communication, Submission, the sexual relationship, provision, love, etc.
I would suggest that God has more to say about those things than dissolving marriages. And that makes sense because it is clear that our Father desires Godly marriages committed to one another and to Him.
(2) Secondly we do need to remind ourselves often and teach others what God has to say about divorce. While there may not be as much text regarding it what we do have is boldly and plainly clear. “For I hate divorce,” Says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says the Lord of hosts. “So take heed to your spirit, that you did not deal treacherously.”
Since the time of Moses God’s people have been dealing with this and trying to find loopholes with God’s law to justify their wants and desires. Jesus made it very clear in Mark 10 that it is not what our God wants. “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate…Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
Despite what our society choses to do and even what the religious world would want their followers to believe our Heavenly Father, the Creator of all things and author of marriage does care and it does matter.
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