Marriage, divorce, adultery, gay marriage are top of mind issues. It is amazing, how through the last fifty years, the way people think of marriage has changed. The things that seemed unthinkable a few years ago, have become the norm. Divorce is an everyday occurrence that people do not give it a second thought. Adultery is thought of as a right, if the marriage is not going well, or one spouse is giving the other a hard time. Fornication, or sex before marriage, as the Bible calls it, has become normal. SO much so that it is unthinkable that someone would reach adolescence, let alone adulthood without having had sex or we applaud when someone is abstinent from sex for a week. Then, when these things became ‘normal’, along comes gay marriage, and who knows what else we will have to endure.
Today, as I was reading my Bible, it suddenly hit me that this is a well planned strategy of the enemy- satan (I never write his name in capital letters, because he doesn't deserve it). His plan is to make us feel that all this is just ‘normal’, not only to mess up individuals, marriages, communities, kids, cities, countries and the whole world; but he is doing something very dangerous: when we feel that divorce, adultery, gay marriage is normal, then when we read the Bible, and read about the eternal marriage covenant that God has made with us, we do not take it seriously. The thought that occurs is that these things are non relevant to our lives today. When we read in Isaiah 50. 1-3,
“Thus says the Lord:
“Where is your mother's certificate of divorce,
with which I sent her away?
Or which of my creditors is it
to whom I have sold you?
Behold, for your iniquities you were sold,
and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.
Why, when I came, was there no man;
why, when I called, was there no one to answer?
Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?
Or have I no power to deliver?
Behold, by my rebuke I dry up the sea,
I make the rivers a desert;
their fish stink for lack of water
and die of thirst.
I clothe the heavens with blackness
and make sackcloth their covering”.
Or when we read in Isaiah 62.4-5,
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate,
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you”.
Jeremiah 3.1-8
“If a man divorces his wife
and she goes from him
and becomes another man's wife,
will he return to her?
Which has become normal in our day and age.
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
You have played the whore with many lovers;
and would you return to me?
declares the Lord.
Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!
Where have you not been ravished?
By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers
like an Arab in the wilderness.
You have polluted the land
with your vile whoredom.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore;
you refuse to be ashamed.
Have you not just now called to me,
‘My father, you are the friend of my youth—
will he be angry forever,
will he be indignant to the end? ’
Behold, you have spoken,
but you have done all the evil that you could.”
The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah:“Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord.”
You see that which God used as abhorring, unthinkable examples of our straying away from God, has become a normal way of life today. We do not feel or see that there is anything wrong with a man cheating on his wife, or a wife cheating on her husband.
How can the Lord reach us when sin has become normal? When what He sees as horrific, we see as trivial?
In Hosea 2 and 3
We see how it was unheard of that a man should marry a woman who had sex with another man other than her husband, and God uses this example to show His mercy and love for His people, in accepting them back and showing the mercy once more in spite of the fact that they have committed adultery against God.
In Ezekial 16, the beautiful chapter on God’s grace and mercy, when He passes by and finds that “And … looked on you, and, behold, your time was the time of love. And I spread my skirt over you and covered your nakedness. And I swore to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord Jehovah. And you became Mine”.
The beauty of God’s love to His people.
Having sex with someone other than your spouse, was a big issue.
We read in Leviticus 20.5
“then I will set My face against that man and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go lusting after him to commit adultery with Molech, from among their people”.
Going after other gods was seen as adultery, and because of it God would take away his blessing from a certain person or a certain people.
But this does not stop in the Old Testament, for in the New Testament, Jesus Himself says in Matthew 5.28, and as if to tell His listeners, this is not old stuff, this is still applicable today,
” You have heard that it was said to the ancients, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
He raised the bar, to include not only physical acts, but pornography too.
Mark 10.11-12
“And He said to them, Whoever shall put away his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband and marries to another, she commits adultery”.
Why aren’t we reading our Bible? And if we read it, why aren’t we taking it seriously? Because this is what satan wants, he wants us to take lightly our life away from God, our ‘little’ sins, our ‘little lusts’, our secret desires. When we do not realize that we have broken the covenant with God, when we think lightly of adultery, marriage, divorce, gay marriage, we become so caught up and blinded that we will not see the audacity of what we are doing.
When God wanted to illustrate His relationship with His church, the only example He could think of (that’s an oxymoron) was between a man and His wife, so when this picture is tarnished by divorce, adultery, gay marriage, pornography, or whatever else will come our way, then we cannot understand what God is trying to tell us.
God loves His wife: the Church
Ephesians 5. 23-33
“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself as the glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any such things, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord loves the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two of them shall be one flesh." This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. But also let everyone of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife that she defers to her husband
The church is called the Bride.
Rev 21.12
“And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her Husband”.
Rev 19.7-8
“Let us be glad and rejoice and we will give glory to Him. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has prepared herself. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. For the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints”.
How can we understand and appreciate these verses, if we do not know that white means pure?
Let us wake up, and see that satan’s main goal and strategy, from the beginning of time is to distort everything God has done, and to keep our eyes off His mercy and love lest we be saved.
“Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other”. Isaiah 45.22
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