Divorce and Remarriage - Theological Discussion

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Welcome to Theology Throne Room! We, the

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Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

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This is a ministry called Striving for Eternity. Welcome to another

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Theology Throwdown. We are glad to have you with us. It was fun to watch as we were going through and starting this off, and having the intro go, and I'm watching

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Jamal start throwing some punches there. Yeah, he scares me. I'm afraid that one of those punches may have come through the monitor.

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So, if you're new to this podcast or this video, whichever one you're watching or listening, this is a ministry of the

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Christian podcast community. What we're going to have is different Christian podcasters that are part of the

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Christian podcast community. We gather together, we discuss our differences with love, with charity for one another, and to basically discuss theology.

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The goal has always been that we would discuss our differences, but so far, this is number four, and so far we've come to complete agreement on everything, which is really hard to discuss our differences when we're all agreeing.

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So we figured we would come up with a topic, thanks to Jamal Bandy of the Prescribed Truth podcast, that there's no way we could all possibly agree.

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And then I thought about it when we chose this topic, and went, yikes, this one may get too emotional, because this is a very emotional topic, and we're going to talk about divorce and remarriage.

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We're going to talk about whether God allows divorce, whether God allows remarriage, who can remarry.

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We're going to talk about those who are in leadership. Can they be divorced? So these are the things that we're going to be discussing, and as we discuss these things, there may be some of you who are listening that have been through divorce or are remarried.

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There's going to be some things that maybe they get emotional, they may get too close to home.

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Just keep in mind, we don't know who's listening, so we're not saying anything that we're saying with you in mind.

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And we do, though, want to try to give some biblical answers to these issues and have good discussions on this.

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So we want to, I just want to preface, I don't typically preface this podcast with this, but I know that this is a topic for many of you who are listening that could be very emotional.

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And so we want you to think about what's being said by each of the people. Not everyone's going to agree,

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I'm sure. And if there's any things that you would like to reach out to us and discuss, maybe when we do something like this, sometimes there are some things where you have people who want to discuss things.

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And so the thing is, is when we discuss this, if you want to reach out to us,

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I want to make that available. We have several pastors who are here tonight discussing this.

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So if you do have issues that need, just contact me at info at striving for eternity dot

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O -R -G, info at striving for eternity dot O -R -G. And we'll try to make sure if you have a question for a specific person here, let us know and we'll try to get that to that person.

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So with that, I guess since we have a number of folks in, I'll give the order in which we're all going to introduce ourselves and our podcast.

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And what I'll do is just because we have so many and people aren't going to remember the order, probably including me,

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I'll just go one by one and ask each to introduce yourself. But the order I'm going to do, just so you know,

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I'll start off with Keith, Daniel, Eve, James, Phil, and then Jamal.

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So I'll start off with you, Keith, if you want to introduce yourself and your podcast.

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Yeah, this is Keith Heltsley and I'm a host of Quest for Truth. And it's a podcast where we try to talk about worldviews and how it relates to Christian Bible theology, to have it in a nutshell.

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We also, once a month, do an audio drama or try to. And we try to be casual at times.

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We try to dig in deep when we need to, to discuss the Bible. All right, Daniel. Daniel is one of the newer members of the

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Christian Podcast Community. So Daniel, introduce yourself and your podcast. Well, hello, my name is

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Daniel Minnick and I am the host of the Truthspresso podcast. And in the Truthspresso podcast, we talk about the

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Word of God. We go deep into the Word of God on theological topics. And we'd also talk about some political topics and challenging the conventional wisdom of mainstream politics with a fine -toothed comb.

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And I know that kind of sounds like a rather vanilla description of a

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Christian podcast, but I'll add some spice to it and, you know, make it chocolate too and so on like that.

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But that's pretty much Truthspresso in a nutshell. So I invite you all to listen. And clearly he's got that radio voice.

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Now, we'll have to see what Jamal's going to say, but was that a throw, a shout out there to our chocolate brother here,

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Jamal? I don't know. I'm just saying. I got excited about that. I'm like, yeah. I saw you going like this in the air.

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Eve, you want to introduce yourself and your podcast? Yes, I'm Eve Franklin and I'm co -host of Are You Just Watching?

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along with my co -host Tim Martin. And we talk about movies from a Christian worldview, not just general reviews, but dig into the depth of movies and try to apply

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Scripture to what we're viewing and not just turn our brain off. And I told you, Eve, that I watched a movie recently and I tried to comment about it on Facebook and I got the name of the movie wrong.

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That's how into the movie I was. I was trying to mention Overcomer and instead I called it Courageous.

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So at least I got the Kindred Brothers movies right, at least that much. But I think

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I messed up the order here, but we'll go with James D.

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White, not James R. Well, first off, Andrew, I think all Christian movies are about the same, so I could see where you'd mix up the names there.

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But James White, one of the co -hosts at the Everyday Ministry podcast, and we're simply a podcast that just talks about ministry on various different perspectives within the church, pastoral, youth ministry, church member, whatever the case may be, and just address different topics in the church and ministry as a whole.

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Okay, let's see. We got Phil. Let's stop and think about it,

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Phil. Yes, let's stop and think about it. It's a very important thing to do. My name is

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Phil Sessa, and I co -host Stop and Think About It podcast with Glenroy Clark, who is also known as the

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West Indian wordsmith. And so our podcast is trying to challenge

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Christians to think critically about what they believe and how it aligns with scripture. So we talk about things, theological things happening in the culture, social issues, and the like, and try to look at everything through the lens of God's word.

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And Phil, also with Stop and Think About It is one of the newer additions to the Christian podcast community.

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So if you have not been listening to True Espresso or Stop and Think About It, those are two new podcasts to go check out.

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Lastly is, I guess, the chocolate brother. Is that what we're now going with? I thought it was woke brother.

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Yeah, that's woke brother. He corrected me. He corrected me. It's woke brother.

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You've been doing good lately. I'm proud of you. But as you said, my name is Jamal Bandy.

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I'm with Prescribed Truth Podcast. And simply with Prescribed Truth Podcast, I just seek to distribute truth that a doctor prescribes to the church and the world today.

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The doctor being God, not myself. I just distribute it to this world that is full of errors. And so that's it.

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He had to throw that in because he knew I was going to let you all know he's the doctor. You know, he's the one prescribing truth here.

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So, you know, he must think he's the doctor. All right. All right.

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So let's get into this topic and let's start. I'll throw this out for anyone to answer first.

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We also want to try to make sure everyone gets a chance to answer. So I know we have two pastors in here.

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You got to restrict. It's not a sermon. OK, we got three pastors in here, technically.

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All right. So is divorce allowed in the Bible? Who wants to go first on that one?

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I believe it's allowed in certain instances. OK. Now, I should mention this, that the reason we're doing this is a topic

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Jamal was off of. You did three episodes on divorce and remarriage. Yeah. Well, this is a topic of divorce.

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I didn't touch on remarriage just yet. That's coming. So we do want to make sure you go back and listen to those episodes.

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They will be linked in the show notes for this. So you'll have that there. So you think that divorce could be allowed in certain circumstances.

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Which ones? I think there's a, and I would love to hear input on this, but in the scripture where Paul talks about in the case of being married to an unbeliever who desires to leave, he mentions how if there's a, if you're married to an unbeliever, and he does make a, he does give a point to say, you know, that this is something that he's saying, but not the

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Lord, even though we know all scripture is God breathed. But he says that if the unbeliever desires to live with you, then don't divorce them.

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But if they desire to leave, then let them go for the sake of peace. I'm just paraphrasing with that.

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So I think in an instance like that, that would be the case. A case of abandonment and stuff like that.

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Yeah. Abandonment. Yeah. I would agree with Jamal on that as well.

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First Corinthians seven, I believe. Abandonment. So if somebody wants to leave, they don't want to stay in it and they just take off.

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You know, it's not the bond chain. They don't have to stay in the marriage.

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So, so I'd like to, I'm sorry. Okay. So I just like to bring up what we probably,

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I hope we would probably all agree on that. The bottom line is that divorce is always considered a negative thing in the

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Bible. And unlike what Hollywood might portray, it is not a prize to be won or a reward to be gained.

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It's always a tragic thing. And as it is at best, the least evil to remedy a difficult situation.

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And we know that marriage was established by God in the garden of Eden. When he created

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Adam and Eve, it's an institution that he established as a picture of the, it's a mystery to point toward Christ and the church.

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According to Ephesians five 32, that this marriage between Christ and the church is perfect and will never end in divorce.

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So we keep that in mind. But unfortunately, as fallen humans, we can mess up God's pictures with our sin problem.

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But to answer the question, is divorce permitted? I would to appeal back to the law.

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Yes, according to the law, there is the permission for a bill of divorce meant in Deuteronomy 24 one.

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It mentions that if the man takes a wife and he finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorce meant.

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And then Jesus kind of appealed to this in Matthew 19 in verse eight, that Moses granted the bill of divorce meant, but it is because of the hardness of our hearts.

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And I'd like to maybe get some feedback on what the grounds for divorce.

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What does this verse mean about the man finds uncleanness in her?

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Okay, so which verse are we going to go to? Matthew five? Possibly the

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Hebrew meaning of the word for what the man finds the uncleanness in her.

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And it seems that Jesus appeals to this verse and defines it in Matthew 19 eight when discussing with the disciples why

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Moses granted the bill of divorce meant, but also the exception that Jesus gives.

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Oh yeah, the exception, the grounds for divorce. Okay, so the passage says this, just so we can get folks to know what it says.

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And we should always read context. So we'll start in Matthew 19 verse three.

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I think we're going to spend some time, I'm sure, in Matthew five and Matthew 19. Matthew 19 three to 11 says this.

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And the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by 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 created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore

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God has joined together, let no man separate. They said this to him while they said to him, why then did

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Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce to send her away?

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And he said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.

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But from the beginning, it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another commits sexual immorality.

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The disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

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But he said to them, not everyone can receive the same, but only those to whom it was given for, well, and then he goes on to start changing topics.

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So that's the passage that you wanted to discuss. So this passage, let me ask this.

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This passage seems to allow for divorce in the case of sexual immorality.

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Do you guys, anyone, I guess the question is, does everyone agree or disagree with that? I said it,

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I don't think it matters whether we believe it or not. Yeah, I think, well, this particular passage, that's why

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I really want to bring this up. I'm in a position where I don't think it's talking about sexual immorality for an actual married couple.

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And I want to give a preface for that. In this text, I really want to hear this because this is something, when my pastor went over this at our church, when he went through Matthew 19, this is something that he brought up.

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And it was the first time I've heard this position. And I've read it in a couple of other articles. And I really would like to get to take on this.

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And it seemed to make sense to me. And so in that portion where he talks about the exception clause, as far as I say to whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality and marriage, another woman commits adultery.

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The claim that was made was that in the case of, if you think about in this

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Jewish context, that even the engagement was just as serious as the marriage itself, whereas both parties would be considered each other's spouses, though yet they have not yet consummated the marriage.

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An example he gave was dealing with Mary and Joseph, how when

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Mary was found with child, this Bible tells us that Joseph sought to divorce her quietly.

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And my question then, you know, think about, especially in our context, like, okay, you got somebody who just gets engaged, they just propose and they give a ring.

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You know, if you want to leave, you ain't got to divorce them. You just come off the marriage. And get the ring back.

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And get the ring back. You hear the Bronx coming through.

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But in this case, it was like, okay, she's found with child in Joseph's mind. She committed adultery.

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She was sexually immoral. And therefore he sought to divorce her quietly. Yet, you know, he was told by the angel not to, and that, you know, she was pregnant with Jesus.

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And so, but, you know, but he still referred to her as his wife and him as her husband.

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And I always thought that was interesting, the scripture, because then we know later on that after he went,

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He went forward and married Mary. And then he sent it not to sleep with her until Jesus was born.

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And so, you know, just thinking about that, guys, that's something that my pastor brought up. I looked into a little bit and I was like, okay, you know, this seems to make sense to me, but I really would like that.

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So in my stance to answer the question, Andrew, is that based on my understanding of this, I would say that even in the case of sexual morality, that I feel like two people who are married to still make it through that, you know, two

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Christians who believe in Christians, can make it through that and survive. Well, I guess

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I'll give my position. I believe that I, so first off when it comes to the,

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I think most of the issues, not so much with the divorce, as much as it is with remarriage. I believe there's cases that can be made for separation.

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Like if someone's life is at risk, you have, you have someone who's being violent. For safety's sake, you know, separation may be necessary.

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But when it comes to the divorce, I take a position that if someone initiates the divorce, they're not the victim if they're the one asking for the divorce.

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And therefore, I would argue if they're not the victim, they never get a right to remarry, I don't believe.

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I believe that what you see with the exception clauses that we'd see, we've mentioned sexual immorality and abandonment.

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I would argue that those are ones where the other person has made a, has to make a permanent change where there's, so in other words,

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I would say if someone commits sexual adultery, that's not grounds for you to go and ask for a divorce and then remarry someone else.

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But if they go and commit adultery and leave you because of that adultery or marry someone else, when they marry someone else, that's a permanent thing.

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I think I would argue then at that case, the victim in that, the person who was abandoned or they were the one that got the, the other person divorced them over this issue, then therefore

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I think a person can remarry. They're abandoned for the faith because of Christianity and they go off and start a relationship or marry someone else.

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Again, I would say that someone can. Now, with this, I'm going to preface something and give a little bit of a caveat to my view.

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As a, as someone who, you know, as a pastor, as someone who's done counseling, the issue that I would have is there's never a time when you can just take one person's side and give counsel in an area like this.

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There's far too many times that you're going to have two sides of an issue and both sides make themselves out to be the victims.

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So anytime that someone comes to me and has in the past come to me wanting to be remarried, having been divorced, one of the things

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I've always sought to do is talk to the other person to get both sides because I cannot say to someone, especially if they're asking me to marry them,

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I would not be able to do that without ensuring that they weren't the one that caused it.

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Let me give the example. In Mormonism, you know, it's very important who you're married to.

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I used to work with a Mormon. In Mormonism, they allowed for divorce with sexual immorality.

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So what ended up happening was the woman I worked with, because she was a Mormon and her husband wasn't, and that meant she couldn't get to the celestial kingdom without him, she refused him any physical relationship for two years until he went out and had an affair.

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And as soon as he had an affair, she divorced him and said she was the victim because he had the affair.

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But yet, in my discussing it with her, she knew what he was going to do by withholding that.

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And so she actually is, I would say, in the wrong for purposely causing the affair so she could have the way out.

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And I say that to say just because someone says they had that my spouse had sexual immorality doesn't mean that that's the whole story.

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So that's my position. Whose position haven't we gone through yet?

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James? Oh, sorry. Jamal, just a quick question. So on the aspect you mentioned with engagement being as if you're married, does it have to be an either or?

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Can it be both and? It could very well be, and I'm open to that being the case.

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And there's something I haven't said. Okay, so the position, and this is, like I said, this is something I disagree with MacArthur a little bit about, because in this situation he was saying, well, in the case of divorce, then there should be no remarriage, period.

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But when he came across this passage and he laid that out as far as the understanding goes,

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I saw how it could make sense. But then I looked at the passage we read before that and Jesus basically saying, like, we'll go back to what

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Andrew had read. He says, okay, verse four is like, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

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So they are no longer two, but one flesh, what therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

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So I think in a case like that, it's like, okay, well, who's causing the separation is, you know, Jesus is referring to, asking about the law.

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I think the Pharisees are understanding Jesus to mean that, okay, you're telling us we shouldn't get a divorce at all.

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So like, why did we have this certificate of divorce? And because of the hardness of heart. And so I'm thinking the point here is he's making it like, divorce should be out of the question, you know, but then we have this case that comes up later on where we have this exception clause.

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And just, I'm just thinking about, like I said, we see an example with Mary and Joseph and it's clear there.

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And it's like, okay, well, these two, obviously they aren't yet married, but he was betrothed yet.

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Scripture referred to her as his wife and he sought to divorce her quietly, which there'll be no fault on his part for doing so, you know, and I was just,

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I was just running through that. So it could very well be both in, you know, I just, yeah. It's interesting because they go back to creation from before the law was even given.

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And I would understand that to be that Adam and Eve were married. And just the language that's used there, that the

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Lord brought her to the man, almost as if we would see in a wedding ceremony, the father walks the bride down the aisle.

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And so, again, it wasn't that they were betrothed, they were already married and it does point back to creation, but then it does go into the law.

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So it may be either or there. I don't think I've ever heard that view before that your pastor brought up, but I don't think that need be like making either or a deal breaker.

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It's got to be this or that, but it's definitely food to ponder. Well, let's do one thing.

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Let's look at context because this is, there's one key thing that we have to look at in verse three. And the

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Pharisees came to him and tested him. So this is something that they were trying to test him with.

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Well, why would it be a test? It's only going to be a test because I believe that they knew what the scriptures say about divorce.

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And they also knew what the culture said about divorce at that time, divorce, I mean, you could divorce your wife for burnt toast.

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You could divorce her for anything. Burnt falafels. Yes. Yeah. Okay. The philosophers, but you, you know, for any reason you could, you can issue a divorce in a culture where if you divorce a wife and she doesn't remarry, she's got no way of providing for herself.

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Right. So I understand the context. Go ahead, Daniel. Oh yeah.

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And I'd like to bring up the, the culture that Jesus lived in. I'm sure Andrew, as a

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Jew, you're probably familiar with the houses of Hillel and Shammai, the different schools of thought on basically the interpretation of the law, understanding of the

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Mishnah and the Talmud, the Palestinian and Babylonian variants of the

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Talmud. But the school, the house of Hillel would understand that divorce was permitted for trivial matters such as, you know, messing up dinner, as you, as you said, and the house of Shammai was more strict on divorce only for serious offenses.

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And it seems like both of these schools would have to deal with Deuteronomy 24 one.

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And I think that's what Jesus was addressing that. And I think the disciples were probably brought up under the, the ideas of the house of Hillel, the more permissive view of divorce.

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And it seems that Jesus would have been more along the lines of this, the house of Shammai regarding interpreting that verse.

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And that's why the verse in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 24 one seems to be that same exception clause.

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So I was wondering if there's any like cultural way of understanding that verse and the exception clause and how

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Jesus corrected them to that more conservative understanding. If I may, one thing

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I noticed about the phrasing of the verse is they came to him and says, is there any reason?

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Then it says, but Moses commanded. And what I see in that text is

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Moses allowed. And they're kind of, they're definitely putting a twist to it. They're taking something that was allowed.

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And now they're saying, oh, Moses allowed us to do this. Therefore now it becomes a command to do this.

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And it's not for any reason, clearly in the Bible it was what impurity, which most often would be promiscuity, but it's not for any reason.

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I mean, in the ideal world, you're married and you're married for life and that's it. But unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world.

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I mean, that's a real fast my slant on it. To answer the question asked

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Deuteronomy 24, which says when a man takes a wife and marries her, if he then sees no favor in his eyes, because he found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house and she departs out of the house.

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And then she goes and becomes another man's wife and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house.

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Or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, then the former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be a wife after she has been defiled for that is an abomination before the

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Lord. And you shall not bring the sin upon the land that the Lord, your

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God is given you for an inheritance. Now, here's the thing. As we look through that, what is the point he's making?

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He's not trying to answer the question. What are the exception clauses for divorce?

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He's trying to address someone who puts away his wife and then wants to take her back.

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The idea of the finding no favor and indecency from the study I had done years ago, it seems to indicate the fact that he would basically get into the marriage bed and discover she had already been with somebody.

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And so for that reason, he puts her out. But the issue here is if he divorces her and she marries someone else, he's not to marry her again.

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That's what this is the context of. So this is not necessarily answering a question of, is there an exception clause for divorce?

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But the case of someone who did divorce, whether it's sinful or not, he does divorce her and someone else marries her.

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And whether that person divorces her or dies, the first husband, the former husband's not allowed to marry her again.

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That's what that one is saying. So let me ask this because I haven't gotten everyone's view.

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Anyone here believe that divorce is always wrong? There's no exceptions.

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I used to have that view and I grew up as a really hyper fundamentalist type, but I've kind of softened on that a little bit.

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Hey, don't be ripping on our fundamentalist roots here. Okay.

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So we may end up all agreeing again on something. This diverse, there's no way that could be.

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Okay. So does everybody, everyone, I'm going to assume there's no one here that believes divorce for any reason is okay.

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Right. Well, I would say for any reason, it's kind of broad. And I would say no, not for any reason.

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It has to be a specific reason. Okay. Well, that's why I was trying to take the two extremes first. So does, does everyone here, does anyone here not agree with being able to be divorced when it comes to sexual immorality and abandonment because of the faith?

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Okay. So we're all agreeing so far. So. Well, what

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I would say with that too is it's, those are terms that would be allowable.

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You know, if your spouse was to cheat on you and that would, people would not condemn you if you said

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I want a divorce, but it doesn't mean you have to be, because I think someone mentioned earlier, maybe you could work it out with some counseling, with some, you know, making amends.

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It's very rare, but I have heard of people doing that once in a while where they will work through it and make it work.

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I, I, my position is I think the Christian test that the Christian view is reconciliation is always best and we aren't promised your best life now.

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And therefore, you know, I think, I think it's an American thing that we should all be happy and live this happy life.

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But I don't think that that's guaranteed. Yes. My view on this,

34:06

I have been kind of quiet, but I believe that it should be separation, not necessarily divorce under, you know, under such circumstances, but then we'll get into my view on remarriage later.

34:19

So. And that's interesting too, because on the, I've had an idea of when it comes to separation,

34:26

I know some people feel like you're sitting to separate and I feel like separation can be used for, for sake of discipline or for a better term for the hope of reconciliation.

34:36

But I've also heard people go counter with, you know, people use separation as a stance to be, to get used to living without the individual, which

34:45

I can understand it. Cause some people do, you know, and I said from this in our hearts, you know, we, we get used to being without that person and just feeling quote unquote free.

34:54

So I can definitely understand that. We live in a culture where of no fault divorce.

35:00

So one person can really want the marriage and the other person can leave. And I get that as the point of, you know, the abandonment.

35:08

And, uh, but I don't know that, that, that, that you can be divorced and you not want the divorce.

35:17

That's kind of the whole point of no fault divorce. And that's the sad thing about our culture. But I don't know that I've, if I were in that situation,

35:25

I would feel free to act like that relationship never happened. Yeah. Yeah.

35:31

See, like I had mentioned in my podcast, I spent some time to be a little transparent because it's, this is a subject

35:37

I'm actually in my second marriage. My first marriage ended in divorce where I left my ex wife.

35:46

Our marriage was volatile. There was infidelity. So I had plenty of times where I could have left, but I decided to stay.

35:52

I made the time I was a believer. Well, I was in church. I was in my, in my, in the time

35:57

I was in a lot of false teaching and stuff like that. So I really didn't understand the commitment of marriage and everything else. My idea of reconciliation or my idea of pushing through was praying and anointing, anointing our home with oil and hoping that, uh, gotta deliver us of our demons causing our trouble.

36:15

And so, um, after my divorce is back in 2013, that was, that was the same year the

36:20

Lord saved me like later on in that year. And then I realized how wicked I was as far as leaving.

36:26

Cause I had told my ex wife, I was like, I'm leaving because we're not working anything. I was not working. I'm done going.

36:32

And I told her just based on our culture, that I'll come back if I feel like I miss you. And if I feel like I miss you,

36:40

I feel, if I have this overwhelming feeling that I have to come back, then I'll come back. And, um, I remember as the

36:45

Lord saved me, I felt horrible about it. I remember crying at night, thinking about what I had done. She had already been with someone else and so she moved fast.

36:55

And so, uh, so it wasn't like I could go back, but then I called her and apologized to her as to forgive me and everything else.

37:03

So work that out. Um, but when we had this conversation in my church, we talked about remarriage and so I had got remarried in 2015 to my wife now.

37:13

And, um, when we had this subject, I thought, I think about, okay, well, am I in sin? No, because you know,

37:19

I'm remarried now, you know, and what my pastor told me then a couple of those was like, well, you weren't saved then.

37:26

But we see as a lot of things we see in the scriptures, a lot of commands that are given in scripture is saying, regardless of if you were saved or unsaved, it's sin, you know?

37:34

And so that, that answer didn't really sit right with me, you know, as far as, okay, I wasn't like,

37:39

I wasn't a believer when I was committing adultery yet. I'm still the victim of adultery, you know? And so anyway, so this is why on separation thing is like,

37:49

I have a different view of it now, as far as I think it can be used. But like you said, our culture of no fault divorce, it makes it very, very untouchy.

37:59

Well, there's no sin that can't be forgiven and washed in the blood. So you don't, once Christ is taking care of that sin, you don't need to dwell on it and think you're still living in sin.

38:10

Oh yeah. Well, amen. I got, I really do believe now, by God's grace, that that's forgiven, you know,

38:16

I moved forward from that. But still, you know, this, this, this conversation brings it out, you know, others who are dealing with the same thing.

38:25

And I think this brings up an interesting thing is, okay. So is someone who gets divorced and remarried, and I guess we'll move into the question of can people get remarried, but there are people that treat folks as if, if you are divorced and then you remarry, you're forever in sin.

38:46

What do you guys, what's your view? What would be your view on that? Do you think that someone who remarries? That would make it an unforgivable sin.

38:54

And we're told in scripture that the only unforgivable sin is the rejection of Christ. Well, I think the thought process would be a lack of repentance because you're staying within the sin.

39:05

Yeah. I mean, I don't agree with that thought process, but I would say that would be the counter argument there is that because you've never removed yourself from the sin, there wasn't a true repentance there.

39:17

Yeah. But then let's give the counter argument. Wouldn't that be what Paul says? If you've been, if you're bound, don't seek to be unbound, right?

39:25

Don't seek to be loosed. If you're, if you're remarried, you don't seek to be divorced to go back to the person that, you know, that the two wrongs aren't going to make the right.

39:36

Yeah. Yeah. That's the point I was, I was about to make, but you made it,

39:42

Andrew. It'd be kind of a strange thing to say that someone would be living in sin, being married, and the only option would be to divorce and then that seemed to be two wrongs making a right.

39:56

And I don't think that God would operate that way. Especially when we just read the scripture in Deuteronomy that says not to do that.

40:06

I thought it was interesting. You stopped in verse 11 because you said that Jesus changed the subject, but I don't think he actually changed the subject because if you keep reading in Matthew 19, 11, it says,

40:18

Jesus replied, not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given for. There are eunuchs who were born that way and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others.

40:26

And then there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.

40:33

And I think that on the topic of remarriage, I think that that is a continuation of the same subject because the, the disciples asked him in the situation of the husband and wife, would it be better not to marry?

40:45

And he's actually agreeing with them. He's saying that for some, it's probably better to live like a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom.

40:54

You're right. I shouldn't have stopped. What was it you said about with Justin?

41:05

How did you word that? That I'd been schooled? Yes. I guess I've just been schooled.

41:11

Okay, thank you. Andrew, if you would have just stopped and think about it. Yeah. So there was a pastor here in New York and, uh, he had a view that if you were divorced and remarried, then you have to, you have to divorce the woman that you remarried.

41:32

And like a banding, if you had kids with that person who you remarried, like you have to forget about them and go back to your, a lot of people left this church.

41:44

I can imagine. I mean, yeah, a lot of people left this church. It was called the mustard seed.

41:51

I don't know. I think it was the smallest of all churches. Well, in my opinion on remarriage on one level is it's actually more biblically correct probably to remarry.

42:10

And I say that because if you look at why people had multiple wives,

42:16

I'm thinking in particularly, uh, uh, Sam, uh, Samuel's parents, I can't even think of the names,

42:22

Hannah and whoever the husband's name was another, another wife. And he had the second wife because Hannah could not have children.

42:31

He did divorce her, but he did remarry. And he was able to support both.

42:40

So biblically speaking, in some cases, it could be okay to remarry as long as you don't divorce, which makes it weird in today's society.

42:53

We're also talking about the culture that makes a rapist marry or the victim of a rapist, marry her rapist.

43:04

Yeah. And that's kind of one of those weird lies, but in its own strange iron age way of thought, it actually protected the woman.

43:14

So she wouldn't be damaged goods from other. I definitely, I agree with that. And that, that the issue is is that it's more of a protection thing where women had to be supported by a man in that culture and our culture, that's not the case.

43:28

So I'm not entirely sure that what you're saying applies in, in the case of immigrant culture. No, I'm just saying on one level, it would be more biblically correct to remarry, but, but not divorce and that we, you know, put the multiple wives in today's society.

43:46

I would say when it comes to remarriage becomes difficult for, I know I'm, have a relative who was married to someone and it didn't work out.

43:59

So they split up. Then later he married someone else and her first husband, it didn't work out and they split up.

44:07

So now they've both been married to each other after being married to someone else, which puts them both in a situation of living in sin,

44:17

I guess you would say by what we've discussed. But the thing is their marriage they have now is better than, than either of their marriages before.

44:26

And this lasted, I mean, I don't know how much longer, but you know, maybe 20 years. And then the first marriage is maybe one lasted five or 10 or less.

44:37

But they actually had better, a better relationship second time around.

44:44

But technically speaking, they're both, you know, continuously living in sin because they both married somebody who had been divorced.

44:53

Well, let me, let me ask this question. Is there anyone here who thinks that someone can get divorced since we've all said that there are exceptions to divorce?

45:02

Can someone, anyone here believe that someone can be divorced but can never remarry? So everyone here believes in some remarriage.

45:13

I don't think that there's any times that you can't remarry, but I do think that if you do remarry, if you're really concerned about spirituality that it pays to,

45:28

I mean find somebody who maybe hadn't been divorced or maybe they're widowed or something.

45:34

Spiritually speaking, that will be best. But I, but if someone does make that choice and Hey, maybe

45:40

I get divorced and a married divorced person. Yeah, I can't say,

45:45

I mean, I've never been divorced, so it'd be tough, tough decision. So Andrew, how would you understand?

45:52

We looked at Deuteronomy 24 and you read verses two through three, so it talks about that the divorced woman may go and be another man's wife.

46:04

So apparently a divorced woman can be remarried. Could the divorced man be remarried according to the same idea or is that different?

46:17

Well, I guess, like I said, I wouldn't use a Deuteronomy 24 for an argument for either because what we often see people do is they take a passage of scripture because it's saying something they think that supports their view and they use it that way.

46:33

I think what we see in that passage, as I said, it's about a specific, it's answering a specific thing.

46:39

Can a guy divorce his wife, whether sinfully or not, she remarries someone, then whatever the case, she's now available again and he takes her back.

46:51

That is what it's addressing. That case can't happen.

46:57

That case would be a sin. So all I could do with Deuteronomy 24 is say that if someone divorces someone, even whether there's a exception clause or not, he divorces her, she marries someone else, that guy dies or divorces her, the former husband can't take her back.

47:13

That's all that's focusing on. So what you want to do is take a scripture beyond what it's trying to answer just because it seems like it answers something else.

47:23

So I wouldn't look at that passage to say that the man who divorced her could be married. However, my position would be, no, he can't.

47:32

Because he's the one initiating it. He's not seeking reconciliation. He's seeking to end it.

47:39

Now, if where there may be a caveat, I could see someone arguing my view against me and I'd have to concede some is if say, say a guy divorces his wife, neither one of them marry for a time, there's still a period of reconciliation.

47:59

Maybe he starts to realize he did wrong, but like Jamal was saying, you know, he starts to realize that's wrong, but she already went off and married someone else.

48:09

In that case, even though he initiated it, the reconciliation's over there.

48:14

Once she remarried, there's no way to reconcile. Can he remarry? Maybe I'd have to think through that one.

48:22

And that's the, and to me, I think that's the kicker there when I'm caught with some stuff like this, like regardless of whether someone was saved or unsaved in the moment of that, of that situation that has happened today is when that person initiated the divorce.

48:37

You know, I like what, uh, what Ms. Daniel said then is a minute I was trying to pronounce the name right minute.

48:43

Thank you. And so when you had the, um, the situation where, you know, a woman who, you know, who's been divorced, has been, uh, let go.

48:51

She can, she remarried, but what about the one who initiates? I know we're not talking about using the run 24 one in that context, but just in general, is there a scripture that leads us to understand that when there's, uh, the one who initiates the divorce for whatever reason should not marry, should not go back and marry again, um, versus the one who was addicted.

49:17

So, yeah, I, uh, I mean, I know I'm kind of being a little provocative somewhat with some of my questions, but yeah,

49:24

I would definitely say that, you know, the, the goal for Christians especially should be to reconcile as much as depends on you.

49:32

And, and as you mentioned Jamal about the one who initiates the divorce, especially for, you know, like selfish reasons,

49:40

I think it would be wrong for that person to initiate the divorce. And then with the intention of going and remarrying and, um, but mostly

49:49

I'm trying to figure out the, you know, what the law here meant as I think Andrew gave a good explanation.

49:55

And then how we are to understand application, if any, in, uh, the new covenant age.

50:04

And this is the point I made. Well, one thing I about to be legalistic is what the

50:11

Bible is. Divorce laws, only the man could write a certificate. There is no figure out who initiated what in the

50:19

Bible. It's clear. Only the man could initiate the certificate. In our modern day, we have a problem because either party could.

50:27

Yeah, I was actually kind of, I was actually prepared to bring that, you know, up as kind of a wrench to throw in things because like, you know, to ask the question, why is it in the

50:39

Bible that, um, you never really see a woman writing a bill of divorce when it's always the man.

50:46

So then we have to kind of understand the context of how was a marriage defined in the law and how do we apply it to the way marriage is handled by, uh, the laws of cultures today where either the wife or the husband can, you know, do the bill of divorcement and like what's the equivalent today so we can understand how to, to apply things in, uh, today's cultures.

51:15

Right. I find it interesting. And 1 Corinthians 7 is interesting here. Um, I'll read,

51:22

I'll read further to get some context. Uh, I've already started verse seven.

51:28

I just found this interesting as far as like who initiates. And so while Paul says, yeah, I wish that all men were even as myself am.

51:35

However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I, but if they do not have self -control, let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

51:50

But to the married, I give instructions, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not leave her husband, but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

52:05

But to the rest, I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.

52:15

And a woman who has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.

52:23

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband.

52:30

Otherwise, the children aren't clean, but now they are holy. So here I was seeing if even like it could be, let me just say from this context,

52:37

I'm not saying, I'm not sure, maybe you'll help me if this is even speaking to that point, if that could be the case. But here we have,

52:43

I'll give you an example where it could be the case for a woman who sends her husband away in this, in this context versus, or versus and I know that, and this is why

52:52

I mentioned my podcast, like this here, this contrast is dealing with a couple who is one is married, one is saved and the other is unsaved, you know, believing spouse of leaving husband or an unbelieving spouse.

53:05

And then you have where they live with you, then you don't seek to divorce them, you know, but if they don't want to live with you, they don't want to be with you.

53:14

Then you let them go. But then it says here, you know, a woman who has an unbelieving husband and he consists of her, she must not send her husband away.

53:22

And so it could just be an argument for, and I don't know this where we want to go that route or turn that corner, but I mean, could this be a case where we can say, okay, well, this is a, this is a contest.

53:31

It could be a context where women could have possibly initiated the divorce, even though they may not have written the bill or could,

53:39

I don't know. I prefer to read it going both directions because we live in a culture that sees the spouses as being equal in a marriage.

53:50

I know that there, that in that culture, it may have only been the one way. And, but I think it would be really hard to try and force that to work in a culture where spouses are equal.

54:03

And even I like to, you know, kind of bring up like translating things from the

54:10

Jewish culture to today marriage could have been, you know, could have had different kind of aspects to it than what it has today with the, you know, husband and wife being equal as you said, because like maybe the, the equivalent of say like a, you know, since a woman didn't put away a man in under the law there, that was kind of a way to protect the wife, such because the obligation of the husband was to provide for the woman and only the woman's unfaithfulness was to, would, could be grounds to dissolve the marriage and the equivalent of say someone like a couple being technically still married under the law for the man to provide for the woman would be kind of translated today into what is a legal divorce with the man paying alimony.

55:09

I mean, you know, that's, that's just my understanding of it. Like, so under the law, they're still married under the law, even though they could be separated, but it's the equivalent because he has to provide for her wellbeing.

55:22

Whereas if, you know, he's at fault today, he's paying alimony.

55:28

I don't know if that makes sense. Is that a question for me?

55:39

I wasn't sure if that would make sense. Whoever wants to chime in and see if I'm totally off my rock.

55:44

I wasn't sure I understood the question. So. Well, I, I don't know.

55:50

I mean, I, I know that there were cultural reasons for marriage above and beyond what God established it to be.

55:56

But if we go back to the original establishment of marriage, but God didn't necessarily, you know, establish

56:05

Adam and Eve as being one where, you know, he was obviously providing for her and she was subject to him and all matters and had no choice in, in anything.

56:17

They were of one body. They joined together and became one body. And I think that's the perfect, the picture of the perfect and ideal marriage is where each provides equally in the marriage.

56:27

And I, I think that culturally the laws that we see that, that came after that were established because of cultural reasons.

56:37

You know, the women couldn't provide for themselves. So they had to go straight from their father's house to their husband's house because there were no professions that they could, could live on them by themselves.

56:48

And so they were required by culture for men to take care of them. But that's not the case anymore.

56:54

And I think being a liberated woman, but not a liberal, I believe that, that, that women are equal in marriage and I'm the only woman here, so I have to speak for us.

57:08

We, we bring, we bring something equally to a marriage and, and it may, that doesn't mean that we are, are the same.

57:17

It just means that we each contribute equally to the marriage and, and women are capable in our culture of living on their own.

57:25

They don't need a man to take care of themselves. So I think that changes slightly the way a biblical marriage would look.

57:31

Well, let me, let me throw something into the text. That's was discussed in first Corinthians seven some background here.

57:39

First off, Paul, the person who's writing this was a Pharisee. Okay. Why is that of interest?

57:45

One of the things that is interesting with Pharisees is they had to be married. So how did Paul become a

57:51

Pharisee without being married? Paul being a very well -respected rabbi, being, being taught by, you know,

58:00

Gamaliel being, having the, all that he had being the Pharisee, he would have typically been, remember, marriages would have been arranged.

58:12

And so the thought is that he would have had an arranged marriage with someone who had some money.

58:19

And so probably someone with clout, someone with some influence in the community.

58:25

If that's the case, as some think that maybe what it is, is his wife abandoned him when he became a

58:35

Christian. There is that possibility that, I mean, we, we assume he had to have been married to be a

58:43

Pharisee. So the thing is what happened to his wife? Well, if, if she was of a, you know, it was an arranged marriage in a well -to -do family, that family may have be able to, you know, put some influence to have her abandon him.

59:00

And some people say that's what, that this is, the argument that you'll get, you know, for Daniel bringing up the fundamentals there, this is a, an argument that some fundamentalists would end up making is that this is actually

59:14

Paul's position because that's what happened to him. And they would say that that doesn't mean divorce.

59:19

You could get divorced. It's Paul trying to make excuse for it, which I've totally bigger issue with, because that's basically saying that the

59:26

Holy spirit didn't write this. Right. So I don't, I don't even necessarily read that passages as allowing divorce either.

59:36

He doesn't ever actually say divorce anywhere in that package package passage. He says if she goes right.

59:45

Yeah. But he doesn't necessarily say he doesn't use the term divorce unless it's in the

59:51

Greek and didn't get translated that way. But we'll see. But, but, and your point is if, if the spouse goes, that doesn't mean you have to be divorced and it doesn't mean you have to remarry the assumption though, for a wife in that culture.

01:00:07

And I think that's the context of it for, for a wife in that culture, she's got no choice but to remarry because it's a culture where she didn't have a way of providing for herself outside of returning home to her father or finding someone to marry.

01:00:26

So, okay. We, I think, we all end up agreeing again on remarriage pretty much.

01:00:35

This is not a, this is, you know, not working well with our disagreements. We're just not disagreeing where We're not willing to die on any of these hills.

01:00:45

Yeah. Okay. I think to me, just most likely it's just like, like you were saying, like,

01:00:51

I don't know if this is going to be a hill I die on, but it's like, but like the, so the position

01:00:56

I made in my podcast, I'll throw this out there because I was, I was really hard on this. Is that when it comes to Christians as believers,

01:01:04

I don't think that Christians should divorce each other, which I don't think we would all, we would disagree with that.

01:01:11

But then we have the case of people will bring up to me, well, what about the case of abandonment? And what about in the cases of, of abuse and stuff like that?

01:01:18

I'm like, well, we're talking about Christians here, you know, saying like this, a believing husband and a believing spouse.

01:01:23

I'm like, okay. Yeah. There's sin in all of us. I said, but a believing husband, a one who has

01:01:29

Christ at the forefront of his heart. And who's, you know, I'm not saying he's not going to have mistakes or mess up, but he's not going to be beating on his wife.

01:01:37

You know, like he's not going to be like unrepentantly just attacking his wife. And then a believing husband is not just going to abandon his wife and children, you know, and just have them offend for themselves.

01:01:48

You know, the Holy spirit will convict, you know, like that has to happen, you know what

01:01:54

I'm saying? And so that's, that was the case I was making then. And so I was like, well, if you, if you're a wife, if you're, and this is all we, this may have to, we may have some pushback we're here, but this is why

01:02:03

I stood in a podcast here is that if there's a Christian home, a believing husband, a believing spouse, and there may have been sexual immorality with one of them,

01:02:12

I don't necessarily mean, I don't necessarily take that as one of them being an unbeliever automatically, but as sin was involved,

01:02:18

I don't believe that there should be divorced. I don't believe the spouse should divorce that husband because of the order husband about divorce his wife because of that, you know, because of reconciliation, you know, and repentance in the gospel.

01:02:31

And if, and if somebody separates, you know, okay, well, I think it's a conversation you go on.

01:02:36

It's like, what will actually entail abandonment? Like, okay. So a man leaves for a month, at least for a week, a few days, or at least for two years,

01:02:45

I think two years would probably be an abandonment, you know, but you know, and those kinds of questions have to be asked and stuff like that.

01:02:52

But, and I think in those cases like that, when it kind of shows and proves what a person's heart truly is, if they have, if they will consent to abandon their wife and children or consent to abusing his wife and children, you know?

01:03:06

And so, yeah, well, let me, I'm going to jump in real quick because there's some things that you said that I really want to make sure we make clear.

01:03:14

One, if there is physical abuse, okay. Separation.

01:03:21

All right. This is the problem that I have is just because people say they're a believer, people want to take that at face value.

01:03:30

I've known way too many cases where churches will tell, you know, a husband is abusing his wife physically.

01:03:38

Or even mentally. Well, mentally, but I'm thinking specifically of a case where, you know, the wife brought her husband to the pastor saying that he's beating me.

01:03:49

And he, he basically said, well, I repent of that. And the pastor's told her to go back home and he beat her to death.

01:03:58

Oh man. So, so my position would be really clear. If there's physical abuse, there's definite separation.

01:04:06

And that person has to show that there's some, something radically changed in his behavior before she goes back.

01:04:15

Okay. The, for, for a pastor to send a woman back into an abusive relationship just because he goes, well,

01:04:22

I repented. If she doesn't feel safe, you know, besides the fact that the pastors are supposed to report that to the police.

01:04:30

So, you know, totally different thing there. But the, the issue that you end up having, and I should mention,

01:04:38

I mean, there is a thing that as, as pastors, you know, people come to me and say, oh,

01:04:43

I had this at a church. I was speaking at a church in California and a woman came up to me because I was speaking.

01:04:50

And she said, she said, you know, can I talk to you? I need some counsel, but I need you to promise that you won't tell anybody.

01:04:57

I said, I can't make that promise. If you tell me something that I'm a mandatory reporter,

01:05:02

I have to report it. If you tell me that someone sexually abused you or is physically abusing you,

01:05:08

I have to report that. So just know that. And we never did talk. So I don't know if that was what it is, which is, which is sad.

01:05:16

Cause you know, it's like she, she might need help, but I can't, I personally can't make that promise now.

01:05:23

I'll say that if someone is being physically abused and I, and I'm not saying that you were saying Jamal, I think you, you gave a caveat there and I just wanted to emphasize it.

01:05:32

And I know that this is what Eve said earlier. Okay. You can separate, you don't have to divorce.

01:05:38

And you said that Jamal, that there could be that. Now I just think that when there's certain things that should be almost an immediate separation, if there's physical abuse there, we, it's not that we say, well, okay, that happened.

01:05:54

You know, it's, it was a freak thing. It's the first time it happened. It's never happened before.

01:06:00

Maybe there's some, you know, circumstances that could be explained maybe. Right. But if this is the fourth, fifth, sixth time that's happened, then no, no, there's, there's a pattern there and the pattern will get worse.

01:06:13

And so, so I think the one thing we've, we've all said is separation is okay. There can be a reason and, and separation is not divorce.

01:06:23

The goal for Christians is reconciliation. So as Christians, we should all be looking to get back together.

01:06:29

So I think what you said, Jamal, if there's, if they're both Christian professing to be believers well, obviously they're not going to abandon them for the faith.

01:06:38

So it would have to be sexual immorality, right? So in the case of the physical abuse,

01:06:45

I think Andrew alluded to even getting the police involved. This is not a one -time thing.

01:06:52

And normally it isn't. Normally it's something that's repeated. And so to let that other person feel this thing of their sin, by getting the government involved, i .e.

01:07:03

the police, I think is, you know, I don't see too many ladies beating up on the guys.

01:07:10

It's usually the reverse. There are cases I have dealt with. And so that's not where you take martial arts, is it,

01:07:21

Andrew? No, I'm kidding. No, that's because I hang out with you. My wife is tough.

01:07:29

I'm scared of her, I admit it. I won't tell anybody she beat you up. But, you know, in our reality,

01:07:38

I mean, if a man is smacking his wife around, I think it's, I think the separation, but I mean,

01:07:46

I think there definitely comes to a point where you have to put that person in jail.

01:07:53

And I think the pastor has to support and encourage that woman to do that. And then at times, in all fairness, there may be that the church may have to help that woman out at that point, be it financially or whatever other ways the church might have to bless, bless that woman and help them.

01:08:14

Because like in our church, we have an elders fund. And so if something like that takes place, and we've had issues in the church as far as, you know, men taking off on their wives, but we've had to bless the woman and help her out.

01:08:31

And I think that sometimes that is maybe not said as well. I think, yeah,

01:08:38

I mean, I think that when it, one of the things if anyone's listening and your spouse has hit you once, that it, you know, if it was once 10 years ago, maybe that was a one -time thing, but these things escalate.

01:08:58

Someone who gets away with that once they use it, it becomes more and more. And a lot of times

01:09:05

I've done way too much counseling with people who they will make excuses for their spouse to explain away what happened.

01:09:14

And it, it, it's not something that you should be explaining away. I mean, this is off topic now of divorce and remarriage, but yeah,

01:09:21

I do. I just want to make clear for folks, because I don't want anyone to think that because I'm not hearing anyone saying this.

01:09:29

And actually I think everyone's agreeing with, with what I'm going to say, but I think that we don't want anyone thinking that, well, because I'm married to someone and he professes to be a believer and he's beating me,

01:09:40

I should try to reconcile with him and stay in this house and stay in danger.

01:09:46

We're not, I'm not saying that. And I'm not hearing that from anyone else. All right. And I would say, you know, it's one thing to hold a black and white view and say,

01:09:56

Oh, divorce is bad. Never do it. But we do live in a fallen world. And sometimes people get married for the wrong reasons without realizing it, you end up with a bad place.

01:10:06

And there are times like, you know, especially life being threatened. I don't think anybody would point a finger at you.

01:10:14

And if they do, they don't understand and being an outsider, they don't know what you're going through.

01:10:22

Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's go to, this was an interesting, and I'll have to try to find the article again and put it in the show notes.

01:10:31

But Eve, you had had found an article that you provided to me that was interesting because it was a perspective

01:10:37

I had never heard of before or never thought of, I should say. And that is the question from a single perspective, on whether a single person should marry a divorced person.

01:10:52

So we're saying we we've all kind of agreed. Divorce is allowed in some circumstances.

01:10:58

Remarriage is allowed in some circumstances. So that was an interesting article from the question of, okay, if I'm single, should

01:11:08

I consider marrying someone who's divorced? Which I guess it's really not just if you're like, even if you're a divorcee, should you consider marrying someone who's divorced?

01:11:21

What do you guys think on that? So Andrew, oh, sorry.

01:11:26

I was just going to say, I agree with the article. So. Maybe you want to explain the article more before Daniel jumps in.

01:11:33

Maybe I didn't explain enough, but. I think you got it. I think that the point of the article was that if, if you're single and, or when you read scripture, it's kind of says, if you,

01:11:47

Jesus said that if you marry somebody who is divorced, you commit adultery or commit sexual sin.

01:11:53

Then you become the person that prevents reconciliation between that person and the person they divorced or divorced them.

01:12:02

And as a single person, I don't want to be the one that comes in between that ruins the chance of reconciliation between a separated couple.

01:12:11

And I'll say for the record before Daniel jumps in, I'll say for the record that a married person shouldn't marry a divorced person.

01:12:20

Just saying. Bad choice. Well, Hey, look with in America now, anything is, you know, we've, they've redefined it.

01:12:31

I mean, they're, they're now discussing as was expected, you know, polyandrous relationships and tuplets or triplets or whatever they're called.

01:12:39

So Daniel, you were starting to say something. I think that's just called polygamy. It's just called sin.

01:12:47

There you go. It's just called sin. So Andrea, maybe, can you repeat that question again?

01:12:52

Cause maybe I was misunderstanding it. So should, should a, so if someone is single and let's take it they're single because they've been divorced or they're single cause they've never been married, should they seek like, so should they marry someone who is already been divorced?

01:13:10

You know, so like Eve had said, so you have someone who is in a relationship or should they, you know, maybe they, they don't start a relationship because if, if they marry someone who's been divorced, that, that cuts off the chance.

01:13:31

The article was written by a woman who was single and never married.

01:13:36

And she had thought about dating and divorced man.

01:13:42

And she felt that it wouldn't be right because him being divorced and formerly married to someone else, it would automatically make her be an adulteress.

01:13:55

And even if she didn't think of herself that way, I think whoever said she would stand in the way of this man and his former wife having a chance to reconcile, should they just want to do that down the road?

01:14:10

So either way, she's kind of in the way or she is setting herself up as being an adulterous relationship.

01:14:20

And the only, the only thing I thought of in the, in that that could be a caveat would be what if the, the other spouse in this case was married and now you have the divorced person, he can't reconcile anyway because they, they married.

01:14:35

I wonder how that would be. Is that a help answer what the question was, Daniel? Yeah. I mean,

01:14:42

I think I was misunderstanding the question because then I was thinking like, okay, so if a divorced person could remarry and, and the question was, could the divorce person marry a single person?

01:14:55

I was like thinking, well, you mean the divorced person could only remarry another divorced person, which

01:15:03

I was like scratching my head like thinking, okay, only divorced people can marry other divorced people.

01:15:10

Like, okay. But it was more the, it's more the idea of if you marry anyone, really if anyone marries someone who has been divorced, it, it immediately limits the reconciliation because if you marry that person now the reconciliation is over.

01:15:29

So, and it sets you up, especially if you've never been married as being an adulterous situation because you're not divorced.

01:15:37

You just never been married. That was the other problem with the article and this lady who wrote it decided she would just rather not get married or if there was a widower around for her to marry, but she would not, was not going to date a divorced person.

01:15:58

Yeah. So I think based off, based off of this is it seems like you could, we can take it and make it general.

01:16:05

Like what you said is like, okay, because what scripture says, which is something I'm kind of moved to earlier was that when someone marries someone who's been divorced or in that situation, then they commit adultery.

01:16:19

So basically it was okay. Well, you don't want to tell someone, Hey, it's okay to go into sin because it is now, is it a sin?

01:16:25

So I understand on the wisdom side of it, but then like Andrew brought up was a question I automatically thought in my head was,

01:16:31

I think Daniel brought it up too, was the, the case. Okay. Well, you just have a divorced person can only remarry a divorced person.

01:16:39

That's the only one who's going to be looking for him if they're trying to see who it should happen. And so, so my straight answer to that, to the initial question, as far as should someone who's single, whether it be a divorcee or someone who's never been married, consider marrying someone who's been divorced.

01:16:54

I think it would come with extreme caution. You know, with all of these things that are being brought out, as far as, you know, what took place, what is happening currently, you know, is there a possible, is there a possibility for reconciliation or not possibly for reconciliation?

01:17:08

And so on and so forth. And, you know, and what happened with the divorce, everything else. But I don't,

01:17:13

I wouldn't necessarily say that it was, it should be a no thing completely across the board. I don't think

01:17:21

I took the article as saying that this was a policy that should be made across the board. Yeah.

01:17:26

I think it, this woman was wanting it to be a consideration, a personal consideration between her and the

01:17:34

Holy spirit and not something that she was going to be legalistic about. Yeah. I took it. When I read it myself,

01:17:40

I took it as a, her just wanting to use wisdom, you know, is wanting to be, wanting to be wise and just wanting to walk carefully, you know, you know, considering these things and which is nothing wrong with that.

01:17:50

As I read it, I was like, okay, that's being, I don't see nothing at all wrong with that. I wouldn't follow someone who put that stance.

01:17:56

I know, I know women, single women who are on that stance as far as like, no, I'm not anybody who's divorced.

01:18:02

No, you know? And I, and I agree with, I understand them completely, you know?

01:18:08

So what if, what if the, so you have two people, they get divorced. One person remarries.

01:18:16

Can that other, can, if I'm single, can I remarry, can

01:18:21

I marry the person who is now, I mean, because, because if I'm following the argument, right, the, the reason not to marry the divorced person is because you're ending the opportunity for reconciliation.

01:18:34

But if the other partner already ended it, would that change anything? What do you guys think of that?

01:18:42

I think that's a matter of conscience for the person that, that's considering marrying that person.

01:18:48

And I think it's a matter of perspective too. In that, you know, in this case, it was a woman writing the article and she saw herself, even if let's say the, and this, the wife was running around and she's the one who was at fault.

01:19:05

The guy had nothing to do with it. She still didn't feel comfortable because she felt that he still was married to someone else.

01:19:16

And that still would be inappropriate for her. At least that's why I took the article.

01:19:23

And that to me, that may be the right kind of situation to marry, especially if the guy wasn't at fault, a little woman did the running around to me, that may be a different, but you know, it's one of those things that everyone has to come to their own conscious or own conclusions about.

01:19:43

I concur. Okay. So let's get to a fun discussion.

01:19:57

I mean, this hasn't been fun yet. It's been very complicated, very complicated talk.

01:20:06

It is, it is complicated. And so when we look at the qualifications, of a pastor, we see, so let me read a couple of passages.

01:20:23

I want to, they're a little, you know, to read first Timothy three.

01:20:30

Okay. This is dealing with someone who aspires the office of an, of an overseer, which would be a pastor

01:20:36

Bishop. It's all the same. It's just different titles, but it says that that person must be above reproach, husband of one wife.

01:20:48

So reminded so on. And then in verse four, it'll say he must manage his own house.

01:20:54

Well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive for if someone doesn't know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God's church?

01:21:07

Now you have a similar thing. In, in Titus where in Titus, it is against speaking of, of pastors.

01:21:18

And it's going to say in verse six, if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

01:21:32

So when it comes to deacons, it's going to say that they must be the husband of one wife managing their children and their own husbands or their own households.

01:21:47

so can a, so the question is, can a divorced person be a pastor or deacon?

01:21:57

And the reason this question comes up is that in those passages, it says the husband of one wife, does this eliminate someone who's been divorced?

01:22:11

Go. Well, let me kind of borrow from my cohost. I haven't read his statement yet.

01:22:17

The first part of it, he pretty much is, I would say in my own home, we talked about the worship, the infidelity, but he also goes on to say that when it comes to a pastor, if his spouse was to leave him for whatever reason, some might say that he's not managing his house.

01:22:37

Well, because why did she cheat on him to begin with? Or where's that effect?

01:22:42

I don't have any to read verbatim. But on top of the fact of being that one wife and that he brings up, maybe he's not managing his house or his wife wasn't cheated.

01:22:59

Which is a concept, which I hadn't thought of before. Yeah, that could,

01:23:06

I think that can just go either way. Cause I mean, you know, the matter of our heart, as far as being as simple as we are, you can have a man or a woman doing, you know what they can do as far as man leading is.

01:23:18

This is the thing too. Like as men, we're called to lead our homes, but we're not called to drag our spouses or drag our children.

01:23:24

You know what we are called to lead. And it's not always that your spouse will follow.

01:23:29

You know, it's what Paul talks about as far as believing, even when there's,

01:23:34

I know there's some believing spouses that have no issue with stuff like that, but anyway, so I don't necessarily think that it's bad if a, if a wife left her husband say she cheated or just left in general, that necessarily would mean that he didn't manage his household.

01:23:49

Well, it couldn't be a matter of a sin issue, a heart issue in the one who left.

01:23:56

But it is. And this is one of the things I guess, like it's been like this whole conversation, the complicated is it takes some factors to be really drawn out, really say, but to my end,

01:24:06

I would say just the answer question. I think a divorce man could be a pastor, but it's the thing

01:24:13

I have to, I have to ask this question to really go into this. Could we also say that a single man can be an elder or a pastor?

01:24:23

Cause I know the reason why I asked, because here we're talking about a divorcee, which the person who's, who's been divorced, but are we talking about a person who's divorced and was married, but now divorced or divorced and then remarried.

01:24:37

Now they're becoming a pastor because of the argument. As far as the husband being a one wife,

01:24:43

I'm taking it as just somebody who believes in monogamy versus polygamy and the managers on household.

01:24:49

Well, some people argue that even as a single man, you manage household, which I don't necessarily agree with, but I just want to just throw that out there.

01:24:55

So could we say this, could we say that as well, as far as a single man being an elder? I know that's not part of the argument,

01:25:01

I think that it kind of goes into a divorcee. Yeah, Jamal, I know that there's like a,

01:25:07

I don't know if you ever encountered the hardline church of Christ and they will believe that, yeah, you have to be married and you have to have children to be a pastor.

01:25:17

Like, even if you're married and you don't have children, you're not qualified to be an elder.

01:25:23

And so, yeah, like there's, I guess there's, you have to use some interpretation to figure out like, is

01:25:29

Paul giving, you know, strong guidelines or really hard line qualifications such that no one can be an overseer unless he has all of the features.

01:25:42

He has to be married and he has to have children in his house. And like, so what happens if, you know, if, if he's married and then the wife, you know, is infertile and can't have children?

01:25:56

Does that mean like he can never be a pastor because he can't divorce? He can't, he can't have children, you know, like, oh no, you know, but he desires the good work of being a bishop.

01:26:07

He's forever denied that opportunity. Yeah. I mean, and what if the wife dies?

01:26:14

What if the child dies? What if the child dies? I mean, What if the child dies? Did they cease being a pastor? That's like saying, because we had an issue at one time.

01:26:24

Where before I was an elder. We went from two elders to one elder.

01:26:30

And so one person said, because we only had one elder in the church. We're no longer church.

01:26:36

And we wrote to Vody on that, and Vody said, you know, if there were two parents and one parent died, does that mean the other one ceases to be a parent?

01:26:47

So, yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, we have to look at the reality of, and use a logical mind in these kinds of things.

01:27:00

I think we can't make laws where there is no law. Okay, so.

01:27:07

Could it possibly mean no more than one wife? Well, see, and this is, so I'll get into my view.

01:27:18

This is not the view, this is Andrew's view. This is the biblical view. There you go.

01:27:27

And if you disagree with me, you will soon agree, no. No, I think,

01:27:33

I mean, there's, excuse me, there's people that make the argument of husband and one wife means that a person can't get divorced.

01:27:39

And when I get people that argue that, here's the questions I ask. What if he never gets remarried? He's always had one wife, right?

01:27:48

Can he then be a deacon or a pastor? And they say no, but why?

01:27:54

If you take this in the literal sense in the English to say husband of one wife, meaning they can only have one wife, because some will say that like divorce, as it was discussed, divorce before you were saved.

01:28:12

So you didn't know that anything about divorce or remarriage, you get saved, but you never remarried.

01:28:20

Can you become a pastor or deacon? They're gonna say no because they wanna say divorce itself is the problem.

01:28:26

Were they managing their own house well? Well, at the time they weren't because they weren't saved. Now they might be because they're saved, right?

01:28:35

So the question is, are they managing their house well now? So if the other thing to ask is, okay, husband and one wife, if the guy's wife dies and he remarries, can he be a pastor?

01:28:52

Now that's becomes an issue. That would be a definite yes, because death is what breaks the bonds of marriage.

01:28:58

It says so right in the vow. Well, but here's becomes the problem. If you take this in a literal sense of saying husband of one wife, well, he's had two wives.

01:29:08

You see the dilemma. Because what I'm doing in framing it is taking a case where it's like you said, clearly that's a yes, that a widower can remarry.

01:29:19

And it's not a sin in any way. There's no verse that says that, that that's wrong.

01:29:25

So, but yet he's had two wives. That would, in the literal sense, negate this. However, the other one where they wanna say it's against divorce and you have the guy who divorces but never remarries, he's only had one wife for life.

01:29:38

Why can't he? Right? It's a way of exposing the, you know, what the real issue is.

01:29:45

Now. Is this a good time to bring up Ezra Tan? We could, let me just, let me give what the

01:29:51

Greek is here to explain this text. Yes. What we have in the

01:29:57

Greek, in this verse, it actually says a one woman man.

01:30:03

That's actually what it is. So looking at the context here, it's a bunch of characteristics above reproach.

01:30:14

Husband and one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respect, hospitality.

01:30:21

All those are character issues. So if this is speaking of something other than a character issue, it's different than everything else in the context.

01:30:32

So I would say that the context is talking about a characteristic. If it's talking about a characteristic,

01:30:39

I'm gonna say, well, one woman man is different than husband and one wife.

01:30:46

One woman man has more to do with, do you got a straying eye? You know, how are you viewing the relationship with your wife?

01:30:56

Okay, you can have a guy who is married, but his mind is elsewhere with every other woman.

01:31:08

That, I think, would end up disqualifying. So in other words, I know of a pastor who got too intimate with a, he was bivocational, he got too intimate with a woman at work.

01:31:21

Nothing sexual, no physical contact. They were too emotionally close, and he had to resign because he was no longer a one woman man.

01:31:34

He had split emotions for another woman, and that disqualified him by that verse.

01:31:42

You see, that's not a divorce, and there was no physical relationship, but taking this passage to be referring to the character of having your heart devoted to one woman.

01:31:55

I can see that too, because if you take it literally to be a man of one wife, and then technically a man can have a wife, but have his mistress, it'd still be qualified because he still only has one wife.

01:32:08

Yeah. Yeah, the other one's not married to him. But the way that I interpret this, it wouldn't be qualified.

01:32:13

You can't have a mistress. No, no, no, I wouldn't. Absolutely. He was agreeing with you,

01:32:19

Andrew. Yes, I'm just making it sure that... Yeah. I mean,

01:32:25

I don't want his black privilege coming out on me or something. I know, yeah. I think we should go back to what the

01:32:31

New Testament definition of marriage is, because it is supposed to be a picture of Christ and the church.

01:32:37

And so if we're thinking about what Christ did for the church in his focus on bringing the church in right relationship with God in this supernatural marriage between his people and Christ, then there's only the one church, the global church, the body believers for Christ, and there's no other woman for him.

01:33:04

I guess we're gonna have to disagree, Eve. Because I would argue that it's not the church, but the people of God.

01:33:19

Because I don't think the Old Testament was the church, but that's a totally different one. We can debate it. Yeah.

01:33:25

To me, that's kind of the church is a generic term for the people of God.

01:33:31

But I concede your point there. I concede. And I know this could be fun to do, but we will have

01:33:41

Bud and I on the Wrap Report podcast, which by the way, I just realized, I never introduced myself for my podcast.

01:33:46

Yikes. Everybody knows who you are, Andrew. Yeah. I'm the host of this one.

01:33:53

But on my Wrap Report podcast in March, we're gonna do,

01:33:59

Bud and I'll do a series on the church. And we will get into the distinction that I was just bringing up about whether Old Testament Israel is the church and things like that.

01:34:11

So we'll deal with that in the first and the last of the episodes in that series. And so that, but that was the, it had nothing to do with divorce or remarriage, but someone was bringing something up.

01:34:25

Keith, you were gonna bring up Ezra. Yeah, Ezra 10. Because it seems to, that God is telling priests that they must divorce.

01:34:36

To summarize, they had been in captivity. Some of the priests had remarried foreign wives, even had foreign kids that come back.

01:34:44

And Ezra says, you guys have to get divorced. You can't have these wives.

01:34:50

And there's a couple who didn't divorce, but I suppose that meant they could no longer be serving priests.

01:34:56

And all the ones who wanted to continue serving in their job had to be divorced. Okay. Okay, so I'm gonna put my hermeneutical hat on.

01:35:07

Hermeneutics, science of interpretation. You've already heard me using some of these tools, these skills earlier, but there is a principle of interpretation by prescriptive versus descriptive.

01:35:21

Let me explain this real quick. Descriptive is when you have a text that describes something.

01:35:26

Prescriptive is when it gives a command for something. So this is a descriptive text.

01:35:35

This is describing what actually happened. And so the Bible's 100 % accurate in recording what actually happened.

01:35:44

So the question is, in Ezra 10, does God say that they should divorce?

01:35:54

That's a good question. I don't have the script handy at the moment. My thought on this is, as I've been thinking about this, is that the priests were commanded that they could only marry a virgin from the house of Levi.

01:36:10

They couldn't marry any other tribe, and they couldn't, they couldn't even marry a widow, even if she was in the house of Levi.

01:36:17

So the priest had some really strict marriage laws. Other people, not so much.

01:36:26

And so my kind of pickings meet here is the priests were commanded to do this because they did go outside what they were commanded to do by law.

01:36:39

And they had to get rid of the foreign influence. Now, whether they were married or not, it's silent on that, but.

01:36:48

So could I read it real quick, the passage? Sure, yeah. I don't know, it'd be better to read it slowly.

01:36:55

Okay, how slow you wanna go here? And so,

01:37:01

I'm gonna start at verse one. This whole, it seems like a lot of this chapter is dealing with this issue.

01:37:09

So it says, now while Ezra was praying and making confession, weeping and prostrating himself before the house of God, a very large assembly, men, women, and children gathered to him for Israel, for the people wept bitterly.

01:37:21

Shekeniah, the son of Jehel, one of the sons of Elam, said to Ezra, we have been unfaithful to our

01:37:27

God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land. Yet now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.

01:37:36

Yeah, and so he says, so now let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and their children according to the counsel of my

01:37:44

Lord and those who tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law. So this was something that people were wanting to do, seeking to do at this point.

01:37:54

Then it says, arise, for this matter is your responsibility but we will be with you, be courageous and act.

01:38:01

Then Ezra rose and made the leading priest, the Levites and all Israel take oath that they would do according to this proposal.

01:38:09

So they took the oath. Then Ezra rose from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Jehel, I just said that all wrong, the son of Elisha.

01:38:19

Although he went there, he did not eat bread or drink water for he was mourning over the unfaithfulness of the exiles.

01:38:27

They made a proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem to all the exiles that they should assemble at Jerusalem and that whoever would not come within three days according to the counsel of the leaders and the elders, all his possessions should be forfeited and he himself excluded from the assembly of the exiles.

01:38:43

So all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days. It was the ninth month on the 20th of the month and all the people sat in the open square before the house of God trembling because of this matter and the heavy rain.

01:38:58

Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, you have been unfaithful and have married foreign wives adding to the guilt of Israel.

01:39:05

Now, therefore make confession to the Lord, your God of your fathers and do his will and separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.

01:39:15

Then all the assembly replied with a loud voice, that's right. As you have said, so it is our duty to do.

01:39:22

There are many people, it is a rainy season and we are not able to stand in the open nor can the task be done in one or two days for we have transgressed greatly in this matter.

01:39:33

That's all, I'll just stop there. But what I'm seeing from just reading it is that this is something that the people set out to do, they made a, this is what they set out to do, something that God did himself command that they set out to do.

01:39:48

And the fact that they're being foreign wives, I think the focus here is that these were idolatrous, you know, women of idolatry, which was the case.

01:39:56

I think a lot of cases, a lot of times in Old Testament where Ezra would pair themselves with people who were of different, had worshiped other gods and they were, and they always ran the risk if they didn't already do, end up worshiping other gods with their spouses.

01:40:13

Yeah, and that's the thing I was pointing out as well because this is something that you don't see God commending nor condemning this.

01:40:21

It's just, this is what happened, it's descriptive. So again, I wouldn't want to base a doctrine off this, but Jamal, you brought up the point.

01:40:33

Keith is right with the restriction on the Levites. One of those laws

01:40:39

I kind of broke because I married a Gentile, I married a foreign wife, but I shouldn't go divorce her, right?

01:40:49

So the issue here is I think the focus seems to be on the foreign wives, not just that they're not

01:40:56

Levite wives. It's something that the people have come up with.

01:41:02

So is God commanding this, them to be divorced? I don't see anything in the text that says that.

01:41:10

I think they knew that God had told them not to do it in the first place. And I think this might go back to a comment you made earlier is that two wrongs don't make a right.

01:41:19

So they'd already married all of these women. I don't know that putting them away,

01:41:25

I guess it may depend on how they meant to put them away, but at the same point, that is a double wrong.

01:41:32

I don't know that a double wrong necessarily makes, they'd already married them. They'd already committed that sin. Yeah, and I don't know whether they remarried.

01:41:41

Um, that's on, I haven't checked. Did they remarry? I don't think it says that they did or they did not.

01:41:48

And honestly, I think that for the foreign wife issue, if you think about it, wasn't

01:41:55

O .S. the truth, she was a true foreign wife. It wasn't a great, great, great foreign wife.

01:42:02

Keith, you're breaking up. Sounds like God's speaking from heaven and telling us how it is. I'm sorry,

01:42:08

I'm sorry. The son of your, maybe you're, maybe the grandchildren are on the internet.

01:42:15

I don't know. I don't know. Last time I turned on it was like 20. Yeah, we can't hear you at all now. Yeah, it's really bad.

01:42:23

Sorry. But, so let me just answer this because we have about 20 minutes left anyway, but we can keep going for a bit.

01:42:31

So let's see, the issue I would say here is because it's descriptive, we can't say that God is saying that they should have done this.

01:42:41

I don't see where they've remarried. Maybe there is a passage that explains that, proves that they remarried.

01:42:48

But again, did God commend that? Did they put away the wives but still care for them, still have the responsibility to take care of them?

01:42:59

That's something we would need to consider. So these are the different things that come up with this passage. That I think, did someone say something?

01:43:12

No. So, I mean, I think that's some of the things we have to take into account and think about with this.

01:43:20

Yeah, I'd like to add, I think there could be some wiggle room with this passage either to understand it as whether they were doing something that wasn't explicitly commanded or if there were a special allowance for the

01:43:38

Levites in particular that they would have to do this to put them away.

01:43:44

And as you mentioned, maybe there is some provision for putting them away but still caring for them.

01:43:50

But whatever the case, it seemed to be that these foreign wives, like the problem in particular wasn't just that they were foreign by blood but that they were pagans.

01:44:03

And so these priests were being influenced to worship idols. And maybe the best thing for them to be able to get back to the faith would be to get the influence of idolatry out of their house.

01:44:20

And maybe that was the form of divorce or putting them away was to get them out of the house so that they'd stop worshiping the idols and maybe continue to care for these women and children.

01:44:31

That's possible. Yeah, I mean, the chapter before it, chapter nine goes into talking about, it makes it the issue was that these people were idolaters, and they were told, and I think even in the law,

01:44:46

God has warned Israel as far as marrying people who worshiped other gods and stuff like that.

01:44:54

But they went and did it anyway. But even it's interesting, something Eve brought up as far as not being told like, okay, doing the double wrong was interesting.

01:45:04

At the end of Ezra 10, he talks about how even some of the men who had married foreign wives, or in case when the scripture says foreign wives, they even had children by them.

01:45:14

So they had been married to them for some time. They had children by them, and they left because they were foreign, because of this vow they made.

01:45:28

So this might be dragging us away from this topic, but I'm just curious, and I know none of us are Catholic, but maybe someone has some

01:45:35

Catholic background. What is the Catholic position for why their priests must be unmarried?

01:45:44

They read it in Timothy, where one of the false teachers, not eating of meat and not, oh, wait, no, that wouldn't be.

01:45:52

I think that it went back to not getting the land that, like the popes had land and the priests had land, and then if they got divorced, then the wife would have the land, and then it would no longer be land for the church.

01:46:15

Because obviously we know Peter was married, and if he was considered to be the first pope, according to their false theology, we know.

01:46:23

They just deny he was married. Yeah. Jesus healed his mother -in -law. I don't know how that one worked out.

01:46:30

It's like where they say, brother means cousin for the brother in Christ. I'm sorry, that was off topic, but I was just curious.

01:46:39

So the way it came about actually historically was more of a political thing. Yeah. The emperor had realized that when, as the

01:46:46

Catholic, as the church, because it wasn't really the Catholic church at that time, as the church was gaining in power and influence, people would, basically, people were, the, when, basically, when

01:47:04

Constantine decided the whole nation is Christian, okay, they, he established that if you were part of the church, the church property was paid for by the government, if you became a pastor, your salary was paid by the government, your housing was paid by the government, and it became something where you, these guys were accumulating a large amount of wealth, and so the fastest way to being, becoming a noble was to become a priest.

01:47:40

So the two ways to become noble is military and surviving years in military, becoming a general and then retiring, and being able to build that that way, or become a pastor or a priest, and go that route, much safer.

01:47:59

And that, obviously, without the death rate, has a greater chance of survival, and they would pass on generation to generation, they started accumulating a lot of wealth.

01:48:10

It was actually the emperors who started to restrict that, and were, as Phil was saying, was restricting it because of land.

01:48:21

Their argument, you know, would be that they would argue from Paul, the passage we looked at with Paul, he'd rather be single.

01:48:31

You're married to the Lord. So that would be their argument. I sort of see that being a single person, that you have more time and energy to dedicate to the

01:48:42

Lord, but it seems to me, especially for the Catholic Church, that it has led to a lot of room for abuse because the men who go into those roles are not necessarily dedicated to celibacy.

01:48:54

Even though they do a vow of it. Well, I had a conversation with a family member who is

01:49:02

Catholic, and their focus was on, if Protestants can make their own rules, so to speak, about marriage, and why can't

01:49:12

Catholics make their own rules? And he went to First Corinthians, and I said, you know, the thing is that's not focused on being a shepherd of a church.

01:49:26

Like, anybody could be single or married, per se, as it wasn't focused on leadership, per se. Yeah, I mean, especially if, in the

01:49:35

Old Testament, in Genesis, it says, be fruitful and multiply, and that's a really good thing.

01:49:43

Okay, so let me throw the last monkey wrench into this. I really thought there was no way we would all agree on this, but we've agreed quite a bit.

01:49:55

All right, I guess we're just, I guess what it is is those of us at the Christian Podcast community are just very biblical, and therefore, we all agree.

01:50:04

We go back to the scriptures, and we have the answers. Let me throw this out at you, Exodus chapter 21.

01:50:12

You know where I'm going. Now, these are the rules that you shall set before them, when you buy a

01:50:21

Hebrew slave. He shall serve six years, and in the seventh year, he shall go free for nothing.

01:50:29

If he comes in single, he will go out single. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go with him.

01:50:38

If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons and daughters, the wife and children shall be her masters, and he shall go out alone.

01:50:53

But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife, and my children,

01:50:59

I will not go free, then the master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door, or the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be a slave forever.

01:51:19

So there, guys can wear earrings, right? That's what that's. I heard a youth pastor say that once.

01:51:25

Yeah, okay, that's, well, I've already explained in other passages why that's not the, but what's the purpose of this?

01:51:32

So a distinction between Hebrew slaves and foreign slaves. Hebrew slaves, seven years is the most they could be a slave.

01:51:40

They're set free, but this whole idea that the master gives the wife, they have sons and daughters, he has to leave without his wife is, and this is, these are laws coming that are instructional from God, right?

01:51:56

Now, this is, these are rules from God, and so this would be more prescriptive, not descriptive.

01:52:04

That being the case, is God creating a scenario for, is

01:52:10

God saying to divorce in this case? Andrew, I think if I understand this passage, it's kind of hard to understand the, like the shalls and stuff like that, but it seems to me in verse four about the master giving the wife, she bears him children, and the wife and her children, she'll be the masters.

01:52:33

I think this is basically provision, like, okay, if the master gives a servant who has no means to take care of his wife and children, then it means that the master can, well, it's permissible then for the husband to understand that the master takes care of the wife and children, provides as if they're members of his own household, and then he's allowed to,

01:53:01

I guess, go out to be freed from the obligation after seven years, and it's basically saying that the master has the obligation to care for them.

01:53:13

I don't think this is really talking about a divorce, but I could be wrong.

01:53:18

That's just how I understand that, but then verse five is saying that, okay, now that if the servant is married and he wants to stay in the house there for the sake of continuing to care for the wife and children, he can choose to continue to work there if he can contribute to that,

01:53:44

I guess. I mean, I could be off my rocker in that, but that's how I understand that. And it's interesting.

01:53:51

I think it's really good you brought up, Andrew. I was like, as I'm reading this through, I never really paid attention to this portion of it as much, honestly, and when

01:54:01

I'm reading this, it's just saying, okay, you said in Hebrew custom, the

01:54:07

Jewish custom, that was six years was the most, right? The seventh year they're set free, yeah.

01:54:14

The jubilee. They're set free. So in this case where a master gave a wife, it could be that this wife isn't yet free yet.

01:54:21

This is not yet her time. But then I think about it, and I'm like, well, it said that if the man decides that he wants to be with his wife and children, that he says,

01:54:29

I love my master, my wife, and my children, I would not go out as a free man. So he's consented not to be free for the sake of leaving behind his wife and children.

01:54:37

So I'm gonna go ahead and say, I don't think this is talking about divorce, but I do think it's saying, but he goes on and instead of having that seven year being free, now he's basically agreeing to be the slave forever, being a servant forever.

01:54:53

Is that the case here? Like from this point? It's interesting because in verse seven, it says, if a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do.

01:55:02

So it's almost like the year of Jubilee is only for men, not for women. Okay, okay. All right, so thank you, thank you.

01:55:09

I didn't read a couple of verses down to see that part. Well, but there's another aspect to it. There's another aspect to it.

01:55:16

We go back to verse two. When you buy a Hebrew slave.

01:55:24

So there is a distinction. One of the clear things that is made is the Hebrew versus Gentile slave.

01:55:30

Okay. The Hebrew slave has six years and he's set free. Now, here's the thing with verse seven.

01:55:38

Let me give the, so here's the, there's a lot not understood about the culture of the time and the slavery that's being discussed.

01:55:47

Cause we always think of it as the African slave trade and the slavery in the Bible was not the

01:55:52

African slave trade. People were not kidnapped. This, it's clearly in the first couple of verses, we're seeing someone that puts themselves into slavery.

01:56:02

They owe someone, it's they owe the money and they're working off a debt. But for the

01:56:07

Hebrew slave, seven years and they're set free. That wasn't always the case for the

01:56:14

Gentile slaves. They didn't have a seven year rule. Now in verse seven, Eve, the thing here is, we look at the context, this is more than just a slave.

01:56:27

It's more of a concubine, shall we say. When it says, when a man sells his daughter as a slave and she shall not go out as the male slaves do, if she does not please her master who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed.

01:56:54

He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people since he's broken faith with her.

01:57:02

Okay, so what ends up being seen here is that he's basically, she's being sold basically as a wife or as a concubine really.

01:57:11

Not because she's not having all the rights as a wife. Now they had concubines back then.

01:57:18

And so this is instructions if you don't have means of paying for, if you have a daughter who has no means of being able to get married or something like that, you could sell her and she's to be treated as a wife and there's restrictions on the guy.

01:57:39

If he's not happy with her, he can't go treat her like a slave. Okay, he can't resell her.

01:57:46

He has to take care of her. Okay, so there's,

01:57:52

I don't know that it's male females much in that sense with verse seven, because I think that's dealing with a different type of the slave relationship.

01:58:02

In the first couple of verses though, I think it's the Gentile Jew, Gentile Hebrew thing. Okay, so going back to what

01:58:10

I was saying earlier then, I appreciate that. Eve, you could disagree with me if you want. It's not a hill

01:58:17

I'm willing to die on. So in the country we were talking about earlier in the chapter then.

01:58:27

And so is this a case where then, was it like I was saying earlier, and I'm trying to form this question the right way.

01:58:35

Well, too bad we're out of time. You can't form your question. Well, darn. Thank you everybody for listening.

01:58:44

That'd be horrible to just end on this one without answering it, huh? Jamal Bandy with Prescribed Truth.

01:58:53

Over and out. Bill, will you just stop and think about it? I mean,

01:58:59

Jamal's asking a question here. I will try. We're inserting our weight on him.

01:59:07

You know, it's really enough there. I'm really trying to strive for eternity right here, but I don't know what I'm gonna do. I knew you couldn't get a rap report in there.

01:59:18

I just got a question for you, Jamal. Are you just watching? Yes. Well, it's getting late.

01:59:24

It's getting late there, Andrew, right? In the East Coast, maybe you need some truth spresso. I was wondering how we're gonna work that one in.

01:59:36

That was good, that was good. You know, I think we just need to have a quest. I think we need to have a quest for truth here.

01:59:42

Can we please just let Jamal get his question out? We might have to type your question in the chat.

01:59:49

Yeah, I might have to. I might have to just wait to put in the show notes later. So, like, could this be,

01:59:58

I know you see the man, he's saying he'll go back because he loves his wife and his children, so he's saying he'll go back and be a slave forever, but could it be in the initial part when a man goes out as a free man?

02:00:07

It's not that we already addressed the part that it's not necessarily come out of divorce, but could it be because it's just not her time yet?

02:00:13

Because you mentioned, Andrew, that the verse 7, that lets us talk about male and female to that point as far as, so the

02:00:19

Hebrew slave, whether it be male or female, will be let free in seven years? Is that the case?

02:00:25

Yeah, so my, and I actually had to study this out for someone that was challenged with it and going through it.

02:00:32

So, my understanding is you have two, you have the Hebrew slaves, they get set free after seven years. The Gentile slaves do not.

02:00:38

So this woman, in this case, would be a Gentile slave. Now, what it seems to be, and the key seems to be in verse 4, that the master gives the wife.

02:00:52

So it's not that the guy is, you know, it's an arranged marriage, but it's an arranged marriage that the master is making where it is, it's basically reproducing more helpers for him, more people to work for him.

02:01:09

And that, you know, he's got the responsibility to care for them. It's a different economic system. And so we got to get away from the idea of what we think of with the slavery and understand the slavery of the time.

02:01:21

But it seems that they're married, so this is an adultery. It's not an adulterous.

02:01:27

But when he goes free, goes, this is back to what we started talking about with this episode, there's a separation.

02:01:37

Okay, so I don't think this is a divorce. He goes free. They're still married but separated.

02:01:44

But if he doesn't want to be separated, he would remain with her and his children as a slave for that master forever.

02:01:53

And so, you know, that would then put him under that position of remaining a slave, a choice he has.

02:02:01

If he so wants to do that. If he doesn't want to do that, he leaves.

02:02:08

And he, you know, whether he can continue marriage relationships here, it doesn't say.

02:02:16

But it just says he goes out. So the key is, it's not saying he's not still married to her.

02:02:23

He could be separated from her. But it could mean that they're still married. But what's that issue here?

02:02:30

Is whether they can go free. So in other words, the issue here is that just because the master arranges a marriage, doesn't mean that the

02:02:41

Gentile wife and children get to go free under the Jubilee year. She's still a

02:02:47

Gentile and he's still a Hebrew. And therefore, the law of being of Jubilee would account for him.

02:02:57

And so the issue being the freedom. I have a question. And maybe it's a moot point.

02:03:03

Now, because the bride was given, now isn't it normal that they pay a bride price, a dowry?

02:03:12

Would it be possible for this freed person to come up with the bride price and pay the master?

02:03:19

I'm guessing probably not, because he was poor. Otherwise he wouldn't have sold himself into being obligated for money.

02:03:25

But it could be, maybe a possibility. And he can't work off more because after seven years, he's set free, right?

02:03:32

So it's not like, oh, well, I can just keep working as a slave to pay off the dowry.

02:03:40

Right. It almost sounds to me with your explanation that this is something kind of like that she can't inherit his rights through marriage.

02:03:48

It's kind of like here in the United States, if you marry a foreign person, they can then become citizens of the

02:03:56

US through that marriage. They could apply through citizenship because they're married to a citizen.

02:04:02

And this almost sounds like it's saying that that can't happen for the Jewish nation. They can't take a woman from, like you said, a

02:04:12

Gentile woman who's in slavery. They can't inherit the freedom of being a Hebrew by marrying somebody who is a

02:04:19

Hebrew and then freed. Well, that is my point. And that is an outstanding illustration that I'm gonna start using because that's exactly the point is that in America, it'd be like saying in America that,

02:04:35

I mean, how much do we see people get abused the fact that, oh, if I marry an American, actually my daughter had this when she was engaged, but she had someone in a park come up to her and asked her if she'd be willing to marry him so he could stay in the country, okay?

02:04:52

That does happen. And so this is saying that if he, he has the right to be set free, but she does not.

02:05:03

So yeah. So that was the last one I wanted to bring up because I know that one brings up a lot of issues with people trying to argue that that's a divorce.

02:05:13

But again, we don't see the divorce in the text. It just says he can be free. It's talking about his freedom.

02:05:19

And so again, we haven't disagreed too much. We're gonna have to find some better topics or we're just all biblical.

02:05:28

I don't know which, but we're going to, we're gonna sign off for tonight.

02:05:35

And I hope this has been helpful for you folks who have been watching, listening. Encourage you guys to go to christianpodcastcommunity .org

02:05:45

to check out all of the podcasts that we have. Over 21, 22 podcasts as of today, it keeps growing.

02:05:56

So very good, solid podcasts that you can trust. So check them all out. Also, this is the last time

02:06:03

I can mention that we're having the giveaway contest. Over $1 ,000 worth of materials.

02:06:08

I got the box all packed. It is 30 pounds of books,

02:06:14

DVDs, CDs, flash drives, dealing with topics of theology and evangelism.

02:06:22

Ton of books in there. Okay, not literally a ton. Jamal's gonna get on me for me saying there's only 30 pounds and not a ton.

02:06:30

It's not 2 ,000 pounds, okay, Jamal? Don't be ripping on me, bruh.

02:06:36

You gotta get it right. All right, I got it right. I need to get the hair now, you know.

02:06:47

So, you know, if you want to enter, go to christianpodcastcommunity .org and right in the banner is the page for the contest.

02:06:55

And so I want to encourage you to check that out. Enter, you can enter quite a bit, enter a lot.

02:07:02

Keith is desperately trying to win. He enters like every day, sharing things every day.

02:07:07

So, you know, but the more times you enter, the more entries you have. We are gonna give the, announce it.

02:07:14

The plan is to announce it at the end of February. And that was the plan. And then

02:07:20

I realized, I'm in California in February.

02:07:28

So the plan is February 29th, we're gonna declare, we're gonna call a winner. I'm gonna have to do it from California.

02:07:35

But I'll be out at Shepherd's Conference where I'll be having to look to buy new books to fill my empty shelves.

02:07:42

Sorry about the fact that my voice sounds so echoey here, folks. But I had 8 ,000 volumes of books in this office that are now gone and they are not absorbing the sound.

02:07:53

So I'm very echoey now. But I'll go to Shepherd's Conference and try to get some replacement books for the books that are now in boxes waiting for me to move.

02:08:00

But enter the contest, go to, one way you can enter the contest is go to bit .ly .com slash

02:08:07

CPC contest. So B -I -T -L -Y .com slash CPC, that stands for Christian Podcast Community, contest.

02:08:15

So if you go there, there's also a link in the show notes so you can do that, another way to do it.

02:08:22

So if you wanna do any of those, we'll draw the winner at the end of February.

02:08:29

And that person will get a large amount of books and things like that. So that's a way to help promote for you guys to listen and promote the different podcasts in the community.

02:08:40

Hope that you check them all out. And since we talked so much about harmonetics, I'll give this as a plug.

02:08:47

If any of you listening would want to have us, us being Striving for Eternity, come to your church and do a

02:08:54

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar where we go through the principles of harmonetics like I employed tonight.

02:09:01

You can contact us, just contact Speaker at strivingforeternity .org.

02:09:06

Speaker at strivingforeternity .org and let them know you would like a Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar at your church.

02:09:13

With that, we're gonna sign out because basically we just didn't disagree enough.

02:09:21

Maybe next time we'll find some topic to disagree on more. I agree we should sign out.

02:09:32

And my woke brother with that smile seconds the motion. So we'll be back next month for another

02:09:40

Theology Throwdown. So we'll see you then.