HE-BREWS: A Better Blend
Last Monday in our HeBrews Bible study, I left you with a question that had been birthed out of Hebrews chapter 13. The question was:
So, how do we restore honor to marriage? How do we allow our faith in Jesus Christ to help us keep our marriage covenants and our before and during marriage?
I believe there are three things we must do to begin to restore honor to marriage.
1. Understand the importance of covenant
2. Know there will be consequences and blessings attached to our choices
3. Make up our minds to be pure
Let’s look at the first one briefly.
1. Understand the importance of covenant
The issue of covenant is so much bigger and more important than most of us understand. There are several key covenants in the Bible such as the Noahic Covenant (Genesis 6), the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 15), the Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7), and the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31: 31-34). Each of these covenants was initiated by God and had blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience associated with them. The covenants were eternal and remain in effect today.
When we marry, we enter into a marriage covenant before God. In Genesis 2: 24, we find a deliberate order of actions. There is a leaving, a joining, and a staying. The man leaves his parents, joins himself to his wife, and they are one flesh, hence they stay together. It is physically impossible for me to leave my flesh/body/skin behind. It goes where I go. It experiences everything I experience. When others see me, they see my flesh, or body. Other than through physical death, it is impossible to dissociate my flesh from my soul or spirit. This is how God designed the marriage covenant.
What God has joined together, let not man take apart. In our own pride and self-centeredness, we have decided this command is archaic and unnecessary. Our happiness, our comfort, our desires are more important to us than our obedience to God’s command.
Please do not read into this words that I am not writing. I am not saying that a person who is being abused by their spouse should remain with that spouse. They need to remove themselves and their children from harm’s way immediately. They need to get to a safe place and then allow the Lord to deal with their spouse. God is still in the heart-changing business if we will give Him the time and space to work.
Simply because a person ‘falls out of love’ with their spouse is not biblical grounds for breaking the marriage covenant. Only sexual immorality offers biblical grounds for divorce and even then, remarriage is not allowed as long as the spouse lives. We have made marriage more about us than about being obedient to God.
Once again, I have walked this road. I did not make godly choices and I’ve paid a price for it. However, for those who have gone through divorce, I want you to know it is not the unforgivable sin. God’s willingness to forgive us for divorce or adultery or any other sin is because of His grace. All we have to do is ask Him, from the depths of a repentant heart, for forgiveness and it is ours. A word of warning! We should not trample grace and think we can repeatedly marry and divorce to satisfy our happy-meter. Proffered grace should give us the motivation to make better, God-honoring choices in the future about marriage.
MEDITATION MOMENT: GOD is serious about this issue of covenant. The marriage covenant is no different than any of the other covenants in the Bible. God expects us to keep our covenants just as He keeps His.
