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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry.
This is Mike Abendroth, I'm your host. What do we do here at No Compromise Radio Ministry? Well, we want to stand up for truth and we want to stand up against error. Anytime we have the Bible open, we easily see that that's exactly what it does because truth divides, doctrine divides.
It divides truth from error. And we've got to think properly. We need to love Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so we need to have our minds sharpened. And in the world of amusement, muse meaning to think and put an A in front of muse and not thinking, you sit down in front of the TV and you don't think, it is set up for you.
So you don't have to think. And so what I want you to do is to think. I want you to turn on the show and say, man, that was heavy and I've got to listen to the podcast as well. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com if you'd like, or you can send me a letter at info at bbchurch .org if you'd like to do that as well.
We're Bethlehem Bible Church and I've been meeting a lot of people visiting the church who heard about the church from No Compromise Radio Ministry. So if you're looking for a church and you don't have a good Bible teaching church, we'd love to see you.
Today we want to talk about divorce. What does the Bible say about divorce? I've been on the air now for about five months and we have not talked about this topic. Sometimes when this topic comes up, people cringe because it's a painful topic.
It reveals lots of hurts and lots of issues because most people, probably 85, 90 of you have been affected by a divorce in some way, shape or form. Maybe your parents were divorced. Maybe you're divorced.
Maybe your sister or brother is divorced. Certainly people you know at work or at church are divorced. And these days, divorce is just part of our culture. Actually these days, it's not embarrassment that comes up when we have divorce discussions.
Society wants to push it so it's celebrated. Like with adultery, one book said that there's to be healthy adultery. That's what the experts say. E. Lawson said 50 years ago, parents were apt to have lots of kids.
Nowadays, kids are apt to have a lot of parents. And so we have about a million divorces per year in America and that means churches have divorce as well. And what does God think about this? Is there forgiveness for divorce?
Can there be remarriage? Is there a divorce that ever could be biblical? Are any divorces biblical? Are all divorces biblical? What should we do when it comes to our own happiness? The culture will say, if you're not happy, get out.
And God says, if you're not holy, watch out. Holiness versus happiness. Well, I don't have my needs met and he doesn't do this and she doesn't do that. Friends, the vow before God is exactly that. Till death do you part.
It is not to have and to hold as long as your felt needs are being met. I have a question for you. If you are going to go through an unbiblical divorce, will your church even care enough about the scriptures?
And will your church even care enough about the holiness of God to give you church discipline? To tell you, you cannot do that because it reflects upon Christ and his bride, the church. Ephesians chapter five, more on that later.
People just get divorced like it's a sacrament, the sacrament of divorce. Pastors get divorced, well, you know, just not meant to be together and now I can more identify with the people of the church that have struggles and needs and all that.
What is going on? How can we figure out the mess and the mire that we're in now? It's like a beaker full of water but there's all kinds of mud in it, swirled all around, we can't see through the issues.
Well, the way to see through the issues always is back to the Bible. If I had a radio show, maybe I'd call it Back to the Bible. Oh, I do have a show, but that name's already taken. What does the Bible say about divorce?
You can't look to the experts because they're fallen. Psychologists have a bad view of man and bad view of woman and that is they're good. They may be impressionable but they're good deep down. Only the scriptures will acknowledge that man is affected by the fall, his mind is affected, his will is affected and he is bound, enslaved to sin and even his mind doesn't think like it ought to so we need someone's mind who is perfect, holy, comes from the outside and his name is God.
His mind is revealed in the scriptures, much better than going to John Adam and Nancy Williamson's book, Divorce, How and When to Let Go. Just listen how horrible these words are but listen how appealing they are to people who are in a bad marriage.
Your marriage can wear out. People change their values and lifestyles. People want to experience new things. Change is a part of life. Change and personal growth are traits for you to be proud of, indicative of a vital searching mind.
You must accept the reality that in today's multifaceted world, it is especially easy for two persons to grow apart. Letting go of your marriage, if it is no longer fulfilling, can be the most successful thing you have ever done.
Getting a divorce can be a positive, problem-solving, growth-oriented step. It can be a personal triumph. I don't have any words for that. That is gross, that is sinful, that is unbiblical and that is very popular.
People love that. Can't you associate with me? You don't know my pain. Verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, tactical abuse, willful abuse. Friends, I don't want people to be abused and if your husband abuses you physically, you ought to call 911 because when he is in jail, he will not physically abuse you anymore.
But what does the Bible say about divorce? What a relevant topic. How relevant is God? That should be the issue. If God is relevant, his word should be relevant. And so today we want to talk about divorce.
We won't get very far, but that's all right. We've got plenty of time. We want to make sure we understand that there are opposing forces. If God loves marriage, if God loves the sanctity of marriage, there are going to be others like Kate Millett in her book, Sexual Politics, who says the family unit must go because it is the family that has oppressed and enslaved women.
So we have to make sure we understand where the world is pointing us and how we have the unchanging, relevant, eternal word of God. All right, let's start in a large view, broad view, and then we'll focus in.
Let's think about marriage with affirmations. Affirmation number one, God's original plan for marriage was to be lifelong. Before we talk about all the details about marriage and divorce, let's just think big picture first.
This is my solemn vow, till death do us part. That was part of God's original plan for marriage. In spite of what people say are irreconcilable differences, in spite of incompatibility, in spite of I don't love her anymore, I need some more zing, I have no feelings for him, marriage is not meant to be this hard.
No, positively, God has meant marriage to be permanent. God designed it. It's God's creation. It's God's plan. Genesis chapter two, then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.
Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to a man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to the beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. Genesis 2 .21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept, took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh of that place.
The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. And the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called a woman because she was taken out of the man.
So it's part of God's original plan for marriage to be lifelong. God in his mercy though, has given an accommodation for divorce. We would have to affirm that because Matthew 5 .31, Jesus says, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
It's exactly what the text says. How can I say there's not an accommodation when there is? For I say to you who divorces his wife, whoever, everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity or sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.
And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. And so we have to say affirmation number one, even though God's plan was for marriage to be lifelong, in his mercy, he allows an accommodation for divorce.
And that divorce is for immorality. We're going to see today there's only two ways to get divorced if you're a Christian. Two potential righteous ways to get divorced and neither are commanded, but both are allowed.
And the first one is sexual immorality. If your wife cheats on you physically with another woman or with another man, you are able to get divorced. And the second one we'll find in 1 Corinthians 7, and we'll look at that a little bit later.
Let's go to Mark 10 to get a little background of what's going on, to learn more about what the Bible teaches about divorce. Pharisees are going to come and test Jesus, question him, verse two of chapter 10, whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife.
They would debate that topic just like they would debate that topic today. And so was Jesus, you know, a letter of the law kind of guy, or was he a little more forgiving? What do we do? Matthews 19 says, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?
Jesus, please weigh in on this debate. And Jesus answered Mark chapter 10 and said to them, what did Moses command you? Isn't it interesting? What does the Bible say? Let's go back to the Bible. Not permit, but command.
The Pharisees, your approach is all wrong because you're all wrong. You're searching for escape clauses for your sin. You're trying to find a way out already. That's the wrong way to go about it. God has spoken.
God has spoken completely. God has spoken with clarity. What did God say? And so what's going on is they're trying to argue about this Deuteronomy law back in chapter 24. What is this uncleanness that it's okay to get divorced over?
Mark chapter 10, verse four. And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. But Jesus said to them, because of the hardness of heart, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.
Something got in the way between creation and Moses' day, and that was sin. It was an accommodation from God for the human and for the human weakness and for human sin. And so as John MacArthur says, the Pharisees mistook God's gracious provision in permitting divorce under certain circumstances for his ordaining of it.
And so the issue is here in Mark chapter 10, just because there's God's mercy shown, it's not some kind of command. God hates divorce. This accommodation for divorce is no reason to celebrate divorce.
Mark chapter 10, verse nine. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. There's a greater authority needed to separate a man and a woman, greater than God needed. So who's a greater authority than God to separate a man and a woman?
There is no one. God made a helper for Adam. God brought Eve to Adam. God established marriage. Marriage is permanent. Cannot dissolve a union sanctified by God. And if you do, there will be trouble. Feinberg said, marriage is portrayed as a human institution for all mankind.
Unless the marriage involves those who should not marry because of some biblical prohibition, God is involved in forming the union. And so in Moses' day, the adulterer was killed. But in the Jewish day, because of Roman law, the Jews couldn't kill.
So there's some kind of issue there. What do you do? Luther said, I have such a hatred of divorce that I prefer bigamy to divorce. That is something that comes right from Malachi too. For I hate divorce, says the Lord.
Let me give you some practical advice. If you're married, you should be married forever. On this earth, that is. Don't even talk about divorce. Make divorce not even an option. Don't even have it in your vocabulary to your spouse in thinking about divorce.
Quote, love has become a mixture of physical desire and vague sentimentality. Marriage has become a provisional sexual union to be terminated when this pathetic, pathetic pygmy love dissolves. Yow! D .A. Carson.
Yow! So if you've got a pathetic pygmy love and it dissolves over time because it was only sexual in nature or it was only sentimental in nature, then you want to get out. That's a sad commentary on you.
Carson said, marriage is commitment. And far from backing out when the going gets rough, marriage partners are to sort out their difficulties in light of scripture. They're to hang in there, improving their relationship, working at it, precisely because they have vowed before God and man to live together and to love each other for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health until death separates them.
Love has the determined commitment to seek the other's good, to cherish, shelter, nurture, edify, and show patience with one's partner. End quote. D .A. Carson. But that's not what society says. Society says, you know what?
Have a party. I read some time ago, divorce couples in Albuquerque, New Mexico, can celebrate what's called freedom rings, colon, jewelry for the divorced. And so this divorcee, Lynn Peters, has a company and she makes custom jewelry out of old wedding rings.
And so you give her some money and you can actually have a ring smashing ceremony. They provide champagne, they provide music. And the MC says this, end quote. We will now release any remaining ties to your past by transforming your ring, which represents the past, into a token of your new beginning.
Now take the hammer, stop for a moment to consider the transformation that is about to begin your life, your new life. Ready? With this swing, let freedom ring. And down goes the four pound sledgehammer, destroys the ring, and then they reform it.
And the ceremony ends. That's pretty bad. I think Henry Ford, although didn't seem like an evangelical Christian to me, had good advice when asked on his 50th wedding anniversary, what was his rule for marital bliss?
Quote, just the same as in the automobile business, stick to one model. That's true. God's best is lifelong marriage. That is his arena to bless people in the marriage. It's not restricting liberty, it's placing, being in the place where God pours out his wonderful care, provision, where you can enjoy who the Lord is by enjoying your spouse.
Every marriage and every child is a creation of God, one man said, and therefore divorce and abortion share this tragically evil common denominator. They kill a creation of God. Wonder how many people out there, for unbiblical reasons, are thinking about a divorce, but would never think about aborting a child.
What would be the difference? Well, certainly one is a concept, if you will, one's abstract and one's tangible, but the common denominator is both are creations of God. Back to Mark 10, verse six, Jesus said, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
Lots of times Jesus goes right back to Genesis to answer questions. From the beginning, and he didn't say Genesis was a fake, it was a fable, it was false. No, he knew it was true, he knew it was literal, he knew it was what it claimed to be.
No matter what Massachusetts votes for, for marriage and divorce, God has spoken. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, Mark 10, seven, leave him behind, leave them behind, forsake them.
By the way, Adam and Eve had no parents to leave, but given as a pattern for those who would follow, the children, grandchildren, those in Adam and Eve, that marriage takes priority even over parents.
And boy, that was a big deal back in those days, because if you forsook your clan, your family, you'd forsake protection. This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This rules out all mama's boys for those grown men who are married.
And look at the next part, Mark 10, eight, and the two shall become one flesh. Consequently, they are no longer two, but one flesh. They're glued together, they're joined, they are cleaved together. Matthew chapter 19, shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
Sticking together, the closest human bond. Staying with your wife, directing your attention and your affection to her and vice versa. Obviously culminating in a cleaving, in a bonding, in a gluing, in a sexual union.
What's talked about here in this uniting, this one flesh. And by the way, the spouse is not some kind of piece of property, but some of your own flesh. And I think of B .B. Warfield, who was at Princeton Seminary when it was good.
Taught there for 34 years and he was 25 years old. He married Annie Pierce. And what happened? They went on a honeymoon in Germany. She was hit by lightning and paralyzed. He cared for her for 39 years and rarely left his home for more than two hours at a time as he cared for her.
That's the idea of cleaving one flesh. And the opposite for a divorce. The divorce would be like a cutting off, a chopping off. It'd be like taking a hatchet and chopping off your own arm because there's a splinter in your finger.
It doesn't make any sense. You don't try to deal with problems that way. Think about it. We are a reflection in our marriages on how God loves Christ. How Christ loves the church. We have to be very, very careful that we just don't say, it's just no big deal.
No, because the marriage represents Christ loving the church. So Jesus will not keep you secure to the very end is shown when you say, I don't want to have my marriage till death does us part. Till death do you part.
Listen to what Jesus says. Unless you divorce for unchastity, you make your spouse commit adultery. So the Bible does say there is a reason for divorce. One of the reasons that you may divorce is if your spouse was sexually unfaithful.
Sexually unfaithful. And so if you say, well, verbal abuse, that's not a reason. You won't find it there. Emotional abuse, doesn't meet all my needs. No, only thing so far we've seen in the text, there's gonna be one more, is when you have a spouse who's unfaithful, you may get a divorce.
You don't have to, but you may. You may grant forgiveness. There is a French proverb that says, divorce is the sacrament of adultery. That's true. Many times there's a adultery and then divorce comes and Jesus would say, yes, that is fine.
And by the way, the rule is, if you've been unbiblically divorced, you can't remarry biblically. But if you have been biblically divorced, you may remarry biblically. Let me say that again. If you have been unbiblically divorced, you cannot marry biblically, remarry biblically.
And if you have biblically divorced, you may remarry biblically. Whoever divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery. I don't know what else to say. People say, I'm in a bad marriage.
I don't like my spouse. I remember what Kleinbell said. A man was celebrating 50 years of marriage and he was asked by reporters, ever consider divorce? Never divorce, he said. Murder many times, but never divorce.
Well, he was kind of joking around, but he understood. It's not even a consideration. There is one exception clause. And that is, from Jesus' exception clause, that is Matthew chapter five, Matthew chapter 19 and five, and that is for adultery.
Sexual immorality on behalf of one of the spouses, they may get divorced. The second reason for biblical divorce is going to be found in 1 Corinthians chapter seven. And that is if you have an unbelieving spouse and they leave.
So if you're a Christian and you have a Christian husband, there's only one way out. And that is if someone commits immorality. But if you're a Christian and you're married to a spouse who's not a Christian and they don't want to put up with their Christianity anymore we'll see that that's a biblical divorce as well.
So time is already gone. 24 minutes goes by very quickly. My name is Mike Abendroth, info at NoCompromiseRadio .com. What does the Bible say about divorce? We will learn that divorce is a forgivable sin.
We will learn about remarriage. We will learn about marriage. We have learned that so far there are, well, not so far, but in the Bible there are just two reasons for divorce. One, sexual immorality. Two, if you have an unbelieving spouse and they want to leave.
We'll look at that passage more next time. What do you do if you minister to divorced people? You minister to them in love. What do you do if you're considering divorce and there's not a biblical reason to do it?
Repent. Ask God to give you a new love for your spouse. Well, I don't love my spouse. Well, you're commanded to, so you better repent and start now. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I love my wife.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.