Synoptic Gospels - Matthew 19: 4-12

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Matthew 19, we got to get out of here someday. Maybe today
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I will finally stop chasing every theological rabbit known to man and get through this.
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But it's, I don't know, it's an important text and so I've not wanted to rush through it like we've rushed through the rest of the
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Synoptic Gospels over the past eight years or something like that. You know, the term rushing for Reformed Baptists is different than back in my old days in the
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Southern Baptist Church where we had this thing called a quarterly. And it was sort of, it sort of told you what you had to do.
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And I remember being so excited when I got the quarterly once. I was the master teacher and we were going to do the
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Book of Romans, but we were going to do it in one shot. And for example, it had us covering
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Romans 9, 10, 11 in one lesson. So cover, you couldn't even read the entire text you're supposed to be covering in one lesson, you know.
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So we don't rush quite like that in any way shape or form. So, but most people would feel we were a little bit too far on the other end of the spectrum of speed, but that's okay.
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So we are back in Matthew chapter 19. The parallel is in Mark chapter 10.
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There is a brief parallel in Luke chapter 16 as well.
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But once again, the text, the Pharisees came up to him and test him asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
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He answered, have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made the 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.
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There are no longer two but one flesh, but therefore God is joined together. The old man put asunder. They said to him, why then did
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Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and put her away? He said to them, for your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
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And I say to you whoever divorces his wife except for unchastity and marries another commits adultery. The disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.
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But he said to them, not all men can receive this thing, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have been made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
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He who is able to receive this, let him receive it. Now we have looked at a number of the important elements of this particular text.
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The background, the creative order. We've talked about how people in our society struggle to understand these things because of the values that are instilled in them from a secular society.
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We have looked at the fact that God is the one who joins a man and woman in marriage.
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We saw that this is based upon male and female. We have mentioned, of course, the fact that what this means then is that from the
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Christian worldview, marriage can only be defined as a man and a woman.
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Those systems of law, and we all know that in the not too distant future,
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I think if you had asked any of us five years ago how far down the road this would be, we probably would have put it farther away than it has become.
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But in the not too distant future, probably through the legal system, through the judicial avenue, probably not through legislation, there will be some kind of a decision made in our society regarding this matter of perverting the meaning of marriage so that it is something that includes two women, two men.
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I would argue that if that happens that there is really no logical basis beyond that for this to not include a man and two women or three women, one woman and three men.
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And given the ethical or anti -ethical systems of people like Peter Singer and others in our society, evil, evil men, that's the only way they can be described, that you would then open the door to discussions of marriages including non -humans.
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We already have people pushing speciesism, the idea that you're a speciesist if you think that humans have rights that animals do not.
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There are radicals out there and for many, many years we've just laughed at them. But they are there and they are very serious and they've got money.
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And once the foundations are destroyed, what's the basis for even, what has been the basis for defining marriage in our society but the
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Judeo -Christian ethic? Once that has been openly and utterly repudiated, what's the basis for not saying that you can't marry your dog or your horse or a chimpanzee?
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There are some women that would find a chimpanzee a cleaner person to live with than some husbands.
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So what could be the argument? It all becomes a matter of taste at that point.
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And so that time is coming and obviously that means we have opportunity of giving testimony to the fact that as God is our creator, then he knows how we are to function.
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And he knows what is right and is wrong for us. And that to, you know, people are always asking, well who's being hurt by this anyways?
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Have you ever heard the moral relativists in our society? Why should you care what
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I do in the privacy of my own home? Why should you care if two men get married or two women get married?
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And aside from the obvious things, we see together, we see for example, not only the first divorces of homosexuals happening now, but the massive issue of adoption of, because of course these unions cannot produce children because they're unnatural.
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They're a perversion of the created order. And so you have children, and I would argue without any embarrassment whatsoever, this is an abuse of children.
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It is one thing for a child to be raised in a situation without a father because that father has been killed in war, killed in an accident.
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The scripture talks to us about orphans and widows and the fact that society is to, a faithful society, a society that fears
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God, is to be involved in helping in those situations.
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But there is a vast difference, a vast difference between a recognition of the fact that there is death, there is war, there is disease, there is what we call the accident that takes the life of a father or a mother, or even of both parents.
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There is a vast difference between that recognition and the blessing and establishment of situations where a child is specifically put in a situation where they are deprived of a father or a mother or both, or even worse, given the example of two fathers and two mothers, which of course neither one is a father or a mother to begin with.
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Vast difference. One is a recognition of the fallen world we live in. The other is a rejoicing in rebellion against God.
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God will not bless a society that is so perverted in its thought and so perverted in its action that it would engage in this.
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It will bring without question the judgment of God and I cannot believe that it will not be swift.
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The destruction to the children, the destruction to the lives of the individuals.
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I've mentioned this before, you never hear it because in our society there is no longer almost anyone that I would call a serious journalist that actually seeks to speak truth no matter what that truth is, but you will almost never hear a discussion of the fact that the life expectancy of the practicing homosexual is significantly less than the life expectancy of the heterosexual.
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For both men and women, it is a life destroying behavior. I think partially, to be perfectly honest with you, due to the constant suppression of the conscience that is required.
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This is why we see the homosexuals so very frequently using that language of shame, shame, shame because they know shame so well.
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It's something they experience internally and they hate those very clearly who by their life and by their profession remind them of the very things they're having to suppress.
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We say these things realizing that our place of fellowship here is only a matter of hundreds of yards from a gay bar up on Indian School Road.
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Some of us have had the misfortune of having to drive past there during certain demonstrations they're having and it's just, the lifestyle is amazing.
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I don't know if any of you saw this story, we're going to be hearing more about it, but the Alliance Defense Fund, I had one of their chief people in one of the classes that I taught last year on this one at Golden Gate and one of their folks contacted me, sent me information about a legal situation they've become involved in where a woman back east at Augusta State University, I think was the name,
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I think it's in Georgia, has been told by the university she's getting her master's degree in counseling and she has been told by the university that if she does not abandon her
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Christian views on homosexuality she will be expelled. She has to take remedial classes, do remedial reading and report on how that remedial reading changes her beliefs.
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She will not be allowed to receive a master's degree as a Christian in that university, won't be allowed.
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All because it has now become the dogma and the orthodoxy of our society to embrace and promote, even though it remains about 3 % of the population, embrace and promote not just the acceptability of this lifestyle but the moral virtue of homosexuality.
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This is not the first time this has happened. It happened in Rome and look what happened to them. And every society in which this has become a predominant, not activity, it's never a predominant activity.
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It is grossly unnatural. It is a perversion and is disgusting to the vast majority of us.
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But when it becomes something that is promoted and accepted, every single society in which that has happened has been destroyed.
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That is just simply a fact of history. And we cannot expect...
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Kate Smith can sing God Bless America till she turns blue in the face. The only thing that we should be saying
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God bless America about these days is God bless America with heartfelt repentance because that is absolutely what is necessary.
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But this situation once again gives us many opportunities of giving testimony to the fact that when we go against what
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God's word says, we destroy our own lives. This isn't a matter of personal opinion.
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That's what everyone wants... the secularism around us wants to say that especially in the area of religion, this is the one area where every single person's opinion is equal to any other person's opinion.
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And see what we're doing is we're taking from the pluralism of the society that says that you can believe what you wish and no one can come along and force you.
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We then transfer that uncritically, not thinking clearly, not thinking logically into meaning every single opinion in this field is equal.
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Well, there's no logical connection between those two things. You know, let's use another field that isn't so fraught with emotion.
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You can have an opinion about the greatest basketball player of our age and you'll have people who will sit around forever and a day arguing those issues and they find it to be enjoyable and a pleasant way to pass time.
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But it does not follow that because you can have all sorts of different opinions that there are not some opinions that are just simply absurd.
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I mean, you can argue Jordan and LeBron and Kobe and so on and so forth, but anybody who would say that I'm the greatest basketball player of all ages is nuts.
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Okay, I mean that's just stupid. That is not an equal opinion to any others.
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So the freedom to have opinions does not mean that every person's opinion is equal to somebody else's.
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And so when it comes to this matter of religion, then all of a sudden, well, everyone's opinions equal.
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Therefore, there is no truth in this field. It's all just subjective. It's just me, me, me, me, me.
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The reality is that if God has spoken, then he has spoken with clarity. And on this matter, there is no question.
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Oh, yeah. You know, when I co -authored the book with Jeff Neal on the subject of homosexuality,
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I was amazed even at that time. And this was a number of years ago now. This came out in 2001 -2002.
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2001. I was amazed even then how many books were flying into bookstores from pro -homosexual advocates just perverting scripture.
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And you could buy an entire library, have over a shelf worth of books perverting the scriptures and giving you every possibility.
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Many of the books giving you four or five contradictory possibilities. Just desperation to try to get around what the text of scripture is.
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Others are just straightforward in saying it's a homophobic text, therefore it should be illegal. And there are people saying that.
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That you shouldn't, you should, that the Bible should be banned because of these types of things.
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They at least admit what it actually is saying. But to be able to enunciate in our society from a clearly thought -out
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Christian worldview why homosexuality is wrong and why it does impact you. Why what people do in the privacy of their own homes does impact the rest of society.
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The person sitting in his own home shooting up or getting or blasting his mind on whatever drugs or drink he's using.
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It's easy to see that when he leaves his home and runs into my car and kills me and my family, how that whole idea of no man is an island is very clearly the case.
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But there's so many other things. Now that the government has decided to be our nanny from birth until death, then the government gets to start deciding what kind of behaviors it's going to reward and which kind of behaviors it's going to punish.
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And so we get to start paying for other people's behaviors, etc. etc.
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The whole thing requires us to think through what a Christian worldview is about, and especially when it comes to this issue of marriage.
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Yes, my marriage is impacted by the society in which I live constantly denigrating what marriage is supposed to be all about.
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It's not just homosexuality, but the attitude of our society toward marriage as a whole, toward the family as a whole.
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Now the question then becomes, the question is asked of Jesus. Well, Moses allowed for divorce, and Jesus says it was because of sin.
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It was because of the hardness of your heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
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In other words, the creation ordinance is one man and one woman.
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But then we have the whole argument about, well, what is the grounds for divorce?
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I'm not going to spend too much time here. I think that it is a huge subject and a difficult subject, but I do want to bring something up that actually the first person who ever pointed out to me was our beloved pastor.
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And he did so in the context of how often we do tend to interpret the
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New Testament as people ignorant of the Old Testament. If I've been pounding anything home recently in the sermons, it has been the necessity of knowing
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Old Testament backgrounds and thinking as the writers in the
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New Testament would have been thinking as people who know the Old Testament. You know that in Matthew 19 we have the very important phrase, except for in this translation it says unchastity.
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The term is pornia. And the term has a general connection to sexual sin of some sort, but even wider to simply uncleanness.
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And I was, you know, I've heard all the arguments.
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I've heard people trying to say that this doesn't actually mean anything.
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And I've heard people attacking the phrase and saying it shouldn't be there because you don't find it in Mark and Luke and blah, blah, blah.
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But I think what lies behind that phrase in Matthew is a recognition that would certainly have been a given for Mark and Luke, which is why they don't include it.
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Think about the Old Testament law with me for just a moment. Under the
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Old Testament law, Moses allowed for a certificate of divorce.
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What were the other situations, and I'd never heard anyone discuss this before, what were the other situations in which what would be called a de facto divorce would come into existence under the
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Old Testament law? I said, what? Well, think about it. What were the laws or the penalties for being found in the congregation to be a homosexual?
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What's the Old Testament law regarding homosexuals? Execution. What is the
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Old Testament law regarding idolatry? Execution.
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So, if you were married, let's say you're a woman and you are married to a
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Jewish man who decides that he's going to become a worshipper of Moloch.
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Under the Old Testament law, if he is seen entering into the shrine of Moloch by two witnesses, he is to be brought before the elders of the people, a trial is to be held, and upon being found guilty, what is going to happen to him?
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He's going to be stoned. He's going to be executed. He's going to be taken out of the congregation, not just excluded from the congregation, but he is going to be executed.
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What happens upon death to a marriage? It's dissolved.
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And the woman whose husband is executed, what is her situation now?
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Well, she's a widow, but is she allowed to marry?
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Yeah. So, has a divorce taken place? Yeah. In essence, it's not, it's a divorce due to death, but it is not just natural death.
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There were certain laws. So, if you were married to a woman and you discovered that she had become involved in homosexuality, what would happen to her?
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Well, we already went through the whole process there. There would be, in essence, a divorce granted via the law's penalty coming to bear upon that particular individual.
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And so, there were a number of situations that, under the
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Old Testament law, would have resulted in an individual who had been married being eligible for marriage again, because the penalty of the law would be brought to bear upon an individual.
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And, of course, we know that one of the reasons that the prophets condemned the people of Israel in later times is because they stopped following the law in these areas.
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There were people going to the temple prostitutes in the shrines, and going up the Asherim, the high places, and so on and so forth, and profaning the worship of Yahweh, and bringing degradation upon the people very, very regularly.
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And so, we see the same degradation in view of marriage along at the same time with that degradation of the people of Israel.
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And so, I guess the question would then be, is that what is in mind in verse 9, when you refer to this pornia?
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Do we have to limit it solely to a very limited, narrow band of sexual sin, so that under the
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Old Covenant, if you are married to a person who becomes a homosexual, that the law provided a just and righteous end to that marriage, but no longer?
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You just have to live with it. You have to be exposed to the disease and the degradation that is a part of that.
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I struggle with that. Obviously, when we include with this the statement from Paul in 1
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Corinthians in regards to the unbeliever leaving, it would certainly strike me that an unbeliever who would do something like that, become engaged in homosexuality or something like that, has left the marriage covenant.
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Especially today, when you have AIDS and all the other diseases, and that was one of the most horrific elements of having to study that for that book, was
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I was raised in a very sheltered way, and I'm thankful for that.
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But the types of diseases and sicknesses that are rampant, rampant in the homosexual community, which you can't talk about.
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Politically correct. Can't talk about that. Just, you know,
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I mean, I was in my late 30s. Late 30s? Yeah. Late 30s. Early 40s.
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Somewhere around there. Late 30s. When I wrote that book, and there was there were things I had to read that I just like, never thought of that.
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Okay. Wow. Okay. Wow. Well, I didn't know the depravity of man was quite that deep, but hey, there you go.
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Does that mean that a person has to be exposed to that? I personally think the poor
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Naya here in Matthew 19 would have to have that Old Testament background. And would have to have those things in mind that the law had provided for a ipso facto divorce by the law coming to bear upon the one who was guilty of those things.
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At the same time, very clearly, this text and Jesus's words as interpreted by the disciples was very much out of line with the understanding of the day.
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Very much out of line. Listen to the disciples in him. As such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry.
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Wow. Wow. Can you imagine how deeply impacted even these
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Jewish men, and at least the Jewish view of marriage was somewhat superior to what was, you know, around them.
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And yet, even in their context, even in the light of the arguments between Shammai and Hilal and the schools of Jewish thought, and, you know, one had a very liberal policy, you know, if your wife burns the toast, you can divorce her type situation.
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Which is still rampant in Middle Eastern cultures, primarily
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Islamic cultures today. And even the more conservative that had at least a little higher view, still, these disciples saw this as, in essence, some kind of a non -expedient thing to do.
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A binding in a way that was far stronger than what they were comfortable with.
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And it's striking to us, in light of what we have in Ephesians and in completed
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New Testament Revelation, to hear this kind of language. Now, Jesus' response is likewise confusing to a lot of people.
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And I think you need to understand the abuse of this text as well. A lot of people do abuse this text.
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And what I mean by that is this discussion of eunuchs.
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Now, we know that historically there was such a thing as a eunuch. The kings who would have large harems of women, the most beautiful women of the kingdom, etc.,
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etc., would have eunuchs who were in charge of these women, who would actually literally physically be castrated so that they would not be able to engage in any type of sexual intercourse with the women in the harem.
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And so some people, even in early church history, like Origen, read the three different groups.
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You have, there are eunuchs who have been so from birth. There are men who are never able to have children or engage in sexual activity.
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There are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, either accidentally or purposefully.
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And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. There are those in early church history, such as Origen, who took this text and took it.
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And this is what's amazing to me, given how Origen was the father of allegorical interpretation.
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He would have been much better off if he had used allegorical interpretation here too. But he did not.
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He took it literally and did not have himself made a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
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He did it himself. And the problem is that I think that misses the fact that there are three groups here.
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There are those who are naturally made eunuchs from birth. There are those who are unnaturally made eunuchs by men.
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And there are those who choose a life of celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God, especially in the sense of service.
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I mean, let me give you an example. When I was in Italy a number of years ago,
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I don't know, I guess I do know why I was saying that. How many of you have been to Italy?
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Okay, just a couple of people. The smallest showers in the world.
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It was amazing. I mean, I've been on a lot of cruise ships, and cruise ships tend to have very small showers because, you know, you've got to pack 4 ,000 people onto a boat.
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Italy has smaller showers in their bathrooms than you have on a cruise ship. Now, some of you may recall, in 2005 when
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I was there, I was the heaviest that I got during my I -want -to -look -like -Brick -and -George days, and I weighed 254 pounds.
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I've got a picture of me staying by the Tiber River, and I'm like, wow, big man.
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And that was 65 pounds ago.
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So, I've changed a little bit, but over there in Italy, I lost the illustration.
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I was using from, from, what was, what was that? Yeah, I know, but that was the second part of it.
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Oh, I do hate when that happens. What was that? Yeah, I know, I know. It was a really good illustration, too.
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Give me a second here. Yeah, origin, origin, origin.
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Yes, indeed, origin. Italy. What was it? It was a great illustration, too.
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I hate when that happens. Just pops right out of your head. I can't get it back. If I remember next week, maybe
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I can, I can get back to you, but it was a great illustration, too. I hate that. Oh, well, we'll press on from there.
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Sorry, scratched that one, but it was, it was a good one. So, there are three groups here that are in line, and I was talking about the allegorical interpretation, wasn't
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I? Yeah, that really bugs me. You know, it's like trying to remember somebody's name.
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It's right on the tip of your tongue, and it's just like, where did it go? I can't know where it went. I thought it had something to do with translation or something.
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Well, guess not. Oh, well, we will have to skip on from there. So, anyways, origin did this, and interestingly enough, after his time, it was made illegal to do this in the, in the church.
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There were laws passed against it, but there were people who thought this somehow made you more spiritual, and we do recognize that the early church was infected very early on with an extremely unbiblical view of sexuality in marriage, so much so that you have the development of the celibate clergy, and what has that led to today in Roman Catholicism?
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Did you remember what my illustration was there, Jim? Oh, well, and right now, neither am
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I. It's my own mind. That's the hard part. Man. If the spouse, if the unbelieving spouse is willing to stay, then the believer is not to leave, but if that unbelieving spouse then becomes involved in something like homosexuality or something like that, or something along those lines, that again,
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I think, would raise the very same issue in regards to what the marriage covenant is, and I think there are simply certain,
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I think what the law is recognizing is there are certain behaviors. I mean, I have a hard time when someone says, look, if your husband, if you're married to a husband and he doesn't become a homosexual, and but he's beating you daily, you just have to put up with it.
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I don't see that, because the law would have brought a penalty to bear upon that man for what he was doing, and I think we just, we skip most of the discussions of that phrase in Matthew 19 take place in a complete vacuum separated from the
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Old Testament law, but the New Testament writers would have had all that stuff in their mind, and if we don't, then
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I think we have an issue there in missing the range in which pornia can have application.
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Now, don't get me wrong, if a, there are happily married couples,
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Christian couples today, that have testimony of having gone through extremely difficult circumstances where the man was abusive, but in God's grace, the woman stayed with him and saw him through that, maybe through drunkenness or drug addiction or depression or whatever else it was, resulting eventually in his salvation.
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Okay, great, fine, wonderful, but if some guy is, you know, ranting and raving and holding a gun on the kids, it's time to have that man put into the place where people like that are supposed to live, and I have a hard time seeing if that wouldn't fall into the same thing, because that would result in that person's coming under the law in the
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Old Testament and receiving the penalty thereof. So, but yeah, obviously
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Paul addresses that same issue because there were people in the early church that the the wife becomes a
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Christian and is no longer willing to do the things the husband wanted to do as a pagan, and he says, out of here, and what
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Paul is saying is, let the unbeliever go. You are not bound in that situation, but if that person chooses to stay, you now become a testimony to the grace of God in their lives, and this may be the means by which
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God draws them to himself as well. So, yeah, that was a situation that the early church had to face that the people of Israel had not, because you weren't to marry outside the people of Israel anyways.
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So, it was a unique and new situation as the gospel went out into the world that the the church has to deal with, and it's, we know this, the constant force of the world will be against a godly marriage and a godly home.
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That's just, it doesn't matter what society you're in, there will be different ways in which that's done.
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The pressures on a Christian marriage in Ghana will take different forms than the pressures against Christian marriage in the
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United Kingdom or France, the United States. There will be different specifics, but there will always be that pressure, and I would say that the, there is a direct correlation between a nation's and a society's promotion of proper marriage and the blessing of God upon that nation and vice versa, and that means we're going the wrong direction, big time in Western culture.
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So, let's close our time with the Word of God. Indeed, our gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us to understand your
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Word, that we would see it in its full context, that we would walk in light of it.
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Lord, that you would give us understanding, that we might speak to those around us, and that we might indeed encourage one another in living in a godly fashion before your sight.