Marriage in a Broken World

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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 7:6-16 Marriage in a Broken World

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled, 1
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Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Recast Church, I'm Don Filsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad that we have the opportunity to gather together here in this place this morning to grow in our faith, and it's our desire to grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service here as a church.
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I'm going to jump right into the introduction to the sermon this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, 6 through 16 is the text that we're going to be looking at, and Corinth ends up being the church that God uses to teach us a lot about the broken world around us.
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That's where we've kind of been at, marching through the book of 1 Corinthians, and it really is a book that also emphasizes the way that the gospel speaks into this fallen world with hope.
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The church in Corinth is full of messed up, jacked up, broken down people, and guess what church?
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Every church is just like that. The instructions and guidelines in the gospel hope are given to a historical church that needs it.
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1 Corinthians needs the messages that we're hearing every week as we're going through that, but it's recorded for us because we need it too, right?
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We need correction, we need the word of God to break into our brokenness, into the places where we know that things are not the way that they're supposed to be, and correct us with gospel truth, which equals gospel hope.
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Last week we saw a very direct teaching about intimacy within marriage, primarily because the
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Corinthians had written to Paul for clarity regarding some misunderstandings surrounding sexual immorality, and that's going to continue on a little bit, a little bit more tame this week, but Paul addresses, is addressing the confusion that continues on to the end of chapter 7 in his, addressing their confusion rather, on into the end of chapter 7.
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Now I have to confess that over the course of my life I've read this chapter, chapter 7 of 1 Corinthians many times, and some of you maybe have read that, maybe you go through the
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Bible in a year or you've read 1 Corinthians in some other study or something like that, but I have to confess
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I have not taken the time to dissect it and really take it apart until now, and in part it's because as I've read it, it's been unclear.
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It's been mildly confusing. It's even seemed like Paul's argumentation throughout this text of chapter 7 of 1
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Corinthians is even a bit complex, like what's he arguing for here, where's he going? On to chapter 8, right?
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We can have a tendency to do that, and my feeling is that many of you have probably not found significant devotional insights from 1
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Corinthians chapter 7. It's not been like, my favorite chapter of the Bible is 1 Corinthians chapter 7.
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It's God's holy word, so it'd be okay if that was the case, but I'm guessing that most of you have not experienced 1
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Corinthians chapter 7 that way, and yet here it is. Here it is, smack dab in the middle of a book revealed by the spirit through the apostle
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Paul for the growing of the faith of a church, a church like us, and what
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I want to point out is a metaphor that I've used before regarding sinful actions in a sinful world.
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Imagine that you take a precious vase and chuck it at a brick wall. What happens?
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It shatters, right? We can picture that in our minds pretty clearly. You can picture the dust cloud and the shards and the pieces flying in every direction.
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It shatters. Now, if you had a strong commitment to put that thing back together, and you had time and resources available, and that was no problem, you spent as much time as you wanted, and the goal was just to put that thing back together again, you may be able to glue a lot of the pieces back together again, right?
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Take a vase, throw it against a wall, the goal, put it back together again. You might be able to, but how many of you know that vase would never be the same, right?
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It would never be the same. It's not going to be the same vase. As a matter of fact, you would recognize that when something like that shatters, when you drop it, a lot of times, some pieces just are unrecoverable, right?
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Like there are some parts of it that are going to be dust, like it just pulverizes. It's just not there anymore.
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You see, God in the church and God in the era in which we live is putting busted up and broken people back together again, amen?
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We're broken, we're busted, we're shattered, but he's putting us back together again. And we look forward to that day when he makes us whole.
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And I would suggest to you that, of course, God has no limitations in his ability to restore things.
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He's not limited. But the testimony of Scripture is that there are some consequences and results from sin that are not going to be restored.
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There are some things that will not be readily, easily, or even put back together again.
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Marital brokenness is a real significant jagged edge in our world. It's good for us all to hear this passage now.
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To hear it for some of you who are single and are on the front end of thinking about marriage or one day planning on getting married, you don't even maybe know who that's going to be.
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Some of you, maybe in the room, I think there's a couple of people here at church that are engaged. Some of you know who you're going to get married to.
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Others of you, kind of figuring that out. Man, it is good to hear a message on marriage now and the significance of it.
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Some of you here in this very room are on the other side of a very, very painful divorce. Some of you are contemplating marriage.
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And some of you are married right now and are in the trenches of slugging it out and figuring out your own flesh and trying to serve each other well with varying levels of success.
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And some of you have been married for 60 plus years, and you've weathered the storms of pain and joy together for years.
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We commend that. This passage highlights for all of us, wherever we're at, that every marriage is a marriage of two sinners.
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The context of this passage matters a ton. Corinth had all kinds of misunderstandings about marriage, sexuality, sin, and God's plan for his people.
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And Paul has been accused throughout the ages of being anti -marriage in chapter 7.
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And yet as we read it and seek to understand how this passage is meant to inform our faith, I hope God opens all of us up to recognizing his glorious plan to work through sinful people just like us.
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Far from being a passage of harsh instructions, as it might strike our ears at first, this is a passage of God meeting with us in some of the hardest and darkest places of human relational turmoil.
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So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices or your apps to 1 Corinthians chapter 7.
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And we're going to read verses starting in verse 6 through 16. So 1 Corinthians 7, 6 through 16.
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Recast, this is God's holy and precious word. This is what he desires for us to take in. This is just the next passage in 1
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Corinthians, but it is holy because it comes from God. Listen for who
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God is as I read this. Now as a concession, not a command,
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I say this, I wish that all were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one of the one kind and one of another.
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To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self -control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
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To the married, I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband should not divorce his wife.
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To the rest, I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.
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If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.
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For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
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But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.
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God has called you to peace, for how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this gathering of your people.
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I thank you for the instructions that you give us about practical day in and day out of everyday life, that you meet us in the midst of relationships, you meet us in the midst of our brokenness, you meet us in the places of darkness, bringing your light with you wherever you go.
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Father, I pray that we would receive this passage, receive this text, receive the revelation of your spirit with joy and gladness, and as we get an opportunity to talk through this passage with increased understanding, with an increased impact on our hearts and lives of what you want to say to each one of us through this passage.
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Father, we thank you for your grand design, for your glorious design of marriage, for the plan that you have for people.
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We also thank you for a way of mending and healing the brokenness that we've all experienced to a person.
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The way that you bring sinners together in a plan of redemption, the way that you bring us together for your honor and glory, even as an image of Christ in the church, has been sacrificing as Christ gave his life for the church, a life following in a respectful way.
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This your plan to reflect redemption. Father, I pray that you would light our hearts up with gladness for the plan that you have made for redemption, that Christ has indeed come in the flesh, sinless, perfect, the lamb who was sacrificed in our place.
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So, Father, I pray that that would be the focus and the center and the core and the engine of our worship, not just now for songs, as we're about to sing some songs, but a life of worship, a life that leaves this place ready and eager to serve our employers well for your honor and glory, to work and minister to others around us for your honor and glory, to the way we interact with our families for your glory, doing all that we do to glorify you who sent your son to die for us.
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And it's in his name that I pray. Amen. All right. Yeah. Go ahead and be seated and reorient yourself to 1
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Corinthians 7, verses 6 through 16. We're going to be walking through that passage together for the most of the remainder of our time.
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But again, 1 Corinthians 7, 6 through 16 is our text. If at any time during the message you want to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, or use the restrooms, take advantage of those back there.
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You don't, you're not going to distract me at all, so just get up and move around. Even if you're uncomfortable there sitting, feel free to get up in the back.
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So when I think about this passage, I think there's something that really comes to my mind and it's context, context, context.
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I was taught in my Bible college classes and in my Bible college training that nothing helps with interpreting a passage of Scripture more than understanding the context of what is written there.
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Words develop usage only within context. Letters are written, the letters particularly of the
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Bible are written into a context. And the internal development of a writing involves a literary context.
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So the context of 1 Corinthians is so important to the understanding of this passage. And I believe that that's why many of us could read it, and even maybe as I read it a minute ago, some of the stuff goes right over us.
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Some of it's confusing. Some of it's kind of like, we could walk away from this passage very deeply confused.
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So let me set some of the historical context together for us so that we can determine from what has already been written in the letter to the church in Corinth, what's already been written here, provides us some significant historical context to this church.
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First, we need to understand they're a divided church. They're very divisive. The first couple of chapters are devoted, really the first several chapters are devoted to the divisions that are the warring factions.
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They're fracturing into different factions. Some are saying, I follow Paul. Some follow Apollos. There's lawsuits that are going on within the body of Christ.
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People suing each other. They've been permissive of obvious and public sexual immorality.
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And Paul had to tell them in no uncertain terms to take sexual sins seriously.
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They haven't been. They are in a systemically immoral culture. And some ancient writings dating to this time actually utilize, not from Corinth, but throughout the
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Roman Empire, they would actually use a verb, Corinthianize, and that was a verb for prostitution.
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So to Corinthianize was to prostitute yourself. That's the overarching, like all throughout the
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Roman Empire, what did they think of the city of Corinth? They thought sexual immorality when they heard that.
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Corinth was not a lightweight community when it came to sexual sin. So for the
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Roman community to see Corinth as particularly immoral is saying a lot, because the
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Roman culture was particularly immoral. And so when we interpret Paul's instructions to this church, we have to keep in mind the real day in and day out lives of real people there, you know, walking the streets of this community of Corinth.
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I think it would be fair to say that the majority of men in Corinth had visited prostitutes or at least had a mistress on the side.
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Wives were subject to their husbands in what was a very patriarchal society. They were seen as almost being owned by their husbands, and the husbands did whatever they wanted.
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This passage is written into a context after, this is important, after Paul has emphatically taught a mutuality in marital intimacy as God's standard last week.
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Paul is not against marriage, but Paul is identifying that much has been broken in Corinth that will not easily be mended.
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That culture is completely jacked up. And so into that context of dire brokenness,
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Paul writes instructions to different people that form our outline, particularly different people in Corinth.
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So the outline is going to be simply this, to the singles and widowed, verses 6 -9, to the married in general, verses 10 -11, and to the unequally yoked, verses 12 -16.
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Now in all of these sections, we can all gain understanding for our faith. It's easy to assume, like for example,
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I'm not single, so verses 6 -9, I can skip that part, I can zone out and play Candy Crush until he gets to my part of life, right?
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And we can have a tendency to think that way, well it's not to me. But as I consider how God speaks to others, when
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I think about that and I observe God speaking to others that are not at the same stage of life that I'm at,
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I still have an opportunity to learn about God, right?
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Even hearing how he addresses others that are not where I'm at is informative to me.
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If we come to Scripture thinking of it merely as an instruction manual for my life, then we'll just pick out the good parts that we think apply to us.
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I've seen it on a church sign recently that the Bible is an acronym, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
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Well, why don't I just zero in on those instructions that have to do with me then, right? If we think of the
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Bible that way, then we'll feel justified skipping the things that seem distant from our circumstances.
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But when we come to Scripture to see God, then we see every passage is teaching us something about the way he rolls with humanity.
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I would point it out as an illustration, I'm sometimes most enamored with my wife when I see her respond in wisdom to someone else.
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I'm interested in the way that my wife works with others. And I see another facet of her when
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I see her interacting with people that are not me. I'm interested in her beyond just her interactions with me.
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Are you interested with God beyond just merely his interactions with you?
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And so, our great God will address singles in Corinth in 1
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Corinthians chapter 7 verses 6 through 9. So, he says to the singles and the widows, let's hear our
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God. I believe that Paul begins this section clarifying that he's not speaking in terms of command in this section, but rather is speaking into principles of life and even some preferences,
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God -ordained preferences on Paul's part. Paul was far from anti -marriage, but he also was very pro -singleness.
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He was not anti -marriage, but he was very pro -singleness. He was single himself. He saw both as a blessed state and even as a gift, as he's going to make clear in verse 7 here in just a moment.
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And I just want to point out that no one can convince me that he disdains marriage when he calls it a gift in verse 7.
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He calls it a gift. He says there's varying kinds of gifts. But at least particularly to the church in Corinth, he wishes, and he does definitively state it, he wishes that all of them were single as he was.
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How can he say this and both say that marriage is a gift? I don't want to be guilty of watering this down with context for my own purposes.
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I'm a married man, and so I obviously want him to elevate marriage to some degree. I want to be seen as obeying
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God, and if he says singleness is better, well then why am I married? And you might start to wrestle with that, those of you that are married in the room.
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But I think his use of the word concession in verse 6, you can see it in the English Standard Version, concession, it identifies that this is a somewhat unique instruction to Corinth.
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Now concerning the matters about which you now as a concession, not a command I say this, he says in verse 6.
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It's a concession that he values singleness among the
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Corinthians. I truly believe that Paul is a Jewish man raised in the Old Testament law, valued marriage as given by God in the
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Torah and the Pentateuch, in the first five books of the Bible. And his other teachings clearly indicate, Paul's other teachings clearly indicate that he was pro -marriage and very strong in instructing men to love their wives in a sacrificial way.
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And he elevated marriage as God's metaphorical design for Christ in the church, she respecting and adoring him and him laying down his life for her.
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A glorious picture of marriage, much more glorious than anything that the world has to offer. But into this context of severe sexual immorality and brokenness, he elevates singleness here.
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It would be great as a concession to your context, Corinthians, if you could remain single like Paul, he says.
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Again, I think a concession to their context. And yet he immediately issues a couple of caveats to that.
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In verse 7 he says, but each has his own gift from God. Don't try to force singleness if that's not your gift, if that's not where you're at.
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We can gain a generalized teaching from this use of the phrase gift from God here in verse 7, that God's gifts are much more varied.
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God's gifts are much more varied than we might think. How many of you have ever taken a spiritual gifts assessment at a church?
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They didn't list all of them, because singleness and marriage probably wasn't even on that list, right? I used to administer those at a previous church that I worked at.
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And I didn't have all the gifts that are mentioned in Scripture. And I think there are other gifts that are not mentioned at all in Scripture.
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Like I think, how many of you know that if you've got a good singing voice, like these people that are up here on stage providing music for us and leading us in worship, it's not mentioned anywhere in Scripture as a gift.
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But how many of you know that's a gift? Like that's a gift that's God given. They didn't just all of a sudden like get that and like just, oh, wow,
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I'm pretty sick at the guitar or something like that. It's still from God, right? The abilities that we have come from Him.
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And so he is very emphatic that here in the text, he says that there are different kinds of gifts.
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He sees singleness and marriage as different kinds of gifts. Singleness is a gift.
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And he does not say rather that singleness is a gift and marriage is a concession. Or that marriage is a gift and singleness is a concession.
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Both are gifts. And as a concession, I believe, due to the particular circumstances at Corinth, he wishes all of them would be able to remain single in their context.
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And he fills this wish out in verse 8 with specific words to the unmarried and the widows in the church. It would be good for them to remain single as Paul is.
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We only need to contrast this with Paul's instructions to Timothy, who was stationed in a different context in Ephesus, where Paul says this to the believers in Ephesus.
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Different than Corinth. Different context, different community, different struggles, different wrestlings. First Timothy 5 .14,
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he says this to the widows, different than what he says in Corinth. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander, for some have already strayed after Satan.
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To the Ephesians, he says, you widows ought to get remarried. To the
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Corinthians, he says, I wish you could all stay single. Different context will call for different instructions.
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The Spirit will teach us in our real contexts. I want to be clear that I'm not at all saying that ethics and morals change according to circumstances.
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By no means. There is not one ethic for Corinth and another ethic for Ephesus. There's not one truth for,
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I mean, the truth for Corinth is singleness and the truth for Ephesus is marriage. No, not at all. Rather, there is one common teaching that requires local application, even personal application.
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And the consistent teaching of Paul is that marriage is good and singleness is good.
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That's the definitive teaching of Scripture. That's the ethic. It's good to be married and it's good to be single.
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Both are good in God's plan. And wisdom comes in knowing which one is the better decision for the time and the place and the person, for yourself.
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In Corinth, he's encouraging singleness. The church is in shambles. And I cannot help but imagine that finding a good man or a woman to marry in Corinth may have been difficult in their culture.
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And so into the Corinthian context, he emphasized singleness as a high value. And yet he doesn't seem to have a high expectation that many will agree with him.
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And he seems to be okay with that. He recognizes that not many are going to be able to take on this teaching. Remember, he's already identified that all of humanity struggles with a scarcity of self -control.
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And only those with a specific gift, which I believe the gift that he mentions here of singleness is indeed an extra measure of self -control.
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Only those who exhibit that and have that in their heart should pursue singleness.
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Because verse 9 ends the instructions to singles with clarity regarding what a call to singleness looks like.
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How does one know that they have this gift? Check your temperature. Check your temperature.
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Are you burning with passion? He's saying, here's a good measuring stick. Here's a good place to check how you're doing.
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And if God is calling you to singleness, are you burning with passion? Is sexual immorality knocking on the door when you wake up?
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And is it there knocking all day long until you fall asleep and your head hits the pillow? Even one with a gift of singleness, hear me carefully, one with a gift of singleness will still have their struggles.
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They will not be without struggle. And yet there seems to be a qualitative difference to the one who is able to take on this teaching from Paul.
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Some will burn hot with passion. While he implies here in the text, clearly, he implies that some will merely smolder and be able to keep the coals from fanning into flames.
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Some will have a measure, an increased gift of self -control in the area of sexuality.
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I think an amazing modern illustration of the calling to singleness is found in the life of the late, and I would call him great,
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John Stott. John Stott, how many of you know the name John Stott? Does that name even ring a bell to some of you?
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Hopefully some of you have heard of him after this message. Now you've all heard of him. Now I'm going to recommend you go read one of his books.
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But anyways, he was Anglican priest over all souls church in London. Lynn and I had the opportunity to visit that church a couple of times.
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And then even when I went back to Europe with my oldest son on a senior trip, we went to All Souls for an evening service there.
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Love that church. It's Anglican and it's evangelistic. They are out on the streets sharing the gospel with anybody who will listen to them.
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They'll often have an evening service and they'll cancel it just to go out into the streets of London and share the gospel with anybody who will listen.
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Fabulous church. In 2005, John Stott was named by Time Magazine. Time Magazine.
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What do they have to do with Christians? Time Magazine. He was one of the top 100 most influential people in the world.
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Not just among, not one of the top 100 Christian influential people, but they named him to the top 100 influential people of the world.
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And he remained celibate his entire life for the cause of Christ. No, he wasn't a priest in the Catholic church.
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Nobody required this of him. Nobody told him, the only way you can be a minister in the church is to be single.
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Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite is the expectation that an evangelical pastor or an evangelistic preacher is married.
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We've kind of flipped the script on the Catholic church. We went through a training session for church planters and one guy, they actually recommended that he doesn't go plant a church because he was single.
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How many of you think that's a little bit, you can understand how that might be off. But it was like, no, we're afraid you might not be qualified because you're not married.
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What's that got to do with anything? How's that fit in? But for John Stott, far from feeling this is a requirement, he clearly saw this as a gift from God and said this in an interview.
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He said, the gift of singleness is more a vocation than merely an empowerment. Although to be sure,
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God is faithful in supporting those that he calls. He used his time to invest in supporting the church.
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He was a prolific author. He wrote the very impressive book that I recommend that everybody should have on their shelf, but not just on their shelf, you should read it.
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It's The Cross of Christ by John Stott, one of the most comprehensive books written on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins.
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Academic in parts, devotional in parts, moving in parts, a book that will both challenge you mentally but challenge you spiritually and even challenge you emotionally.
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I would challenge you to read the book from beginning to end without tears. I don't think you can, not if Christ is alive in you, not if the
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Spirit is alive in you. It is just moving beyond belief in the scope of what Christ did for us on the cross there.
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When John Stott was asked near the end of his life what he would like to do if he was given all of his time back over again, that was kind of a
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British way of putting it. If you were given all of your time back over again, what would you do different? And he said, I would pray more.
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I would pray more. Just a classic guy. I mean, I wish that that would be my answer.
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I'm not confident that that would be the way that I would answer. And yet he says, I would pray more. His life stands as a modern example of the thing that Paul is going on about here regarding singleness.
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To singles who are called and gifted, singleness can be an amazing gift to them and to others around them.
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But also to singles, also to singles by Paul, it is better to get married than burn with passion.
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Marriage is a gift to the married. But now starting in verse 10,
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Paul speaks to the married in general. And he wants to be clear that he's speaking with the authority of Jesus.
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He is referencing Jesus particularly without a direct quotation. And so when he says, not I but the Lord, he's actually saying,
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I'm telling you what the Lord said. Jesus Christ said. And what he says about divorce and remarriage here in these two verses is a mere reiteration of the direct teachings of Christ on marriage, divorce, and remarriage from the gospel accounts.
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He doesn't quote it, but he definitely teaches the same thing here that the Lord taught. And again, it's helpful to remind us all of the context.
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Corinth was confused over sexuality, marriage, and sexual immorality. They were not sure what to do with spouses who had formerly been sexually immoral.
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What was a wife to do when Paul has written to them to no longer associate with the sexually immoral?
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And their own husband has been regularly visiting the prostitutes over the past year. What is she supposed to do?
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Can you imagine that being a real life conundrum? Like I'm being told by the Apostle Paul to not even eat with such a one.
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Don't even spend time with a person like this. And I'm married to him. I'm married to her.
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How in the world am I supposed to live with this? Should they divorce him?
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I get the impression that very few marriages would remain intact in that city of radical immorality. If he gave them just instructions, just go ahead and divorce anyone who has even a hint of sexual immorality around them.
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But he has commanded the husbands to stop the immorality. And now he is encouraging the marriages to stay intact while removing sexual immorality from the menu.
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This charge to stay married is not his own opinion, but it is from the Lord, he says. And he begins by encouraging the wives to stay with their husbands first.
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A very rare thing for Paul to begin with the wives, which is so out of the ordinary that it helps to snap into focus what was going on in the real context.
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It was the wives who were wondering what they were to do about these immoral husbands. That's the context.
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But he says that the wives shouldn't separate from their husbands and the husbands should not divorce their wives. And he reiterates the teaching of Jesus that if a wife just cannot stay with her husband that she needs to weigh the cost.
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The phrase, if she does, at the start of verse 11 shows the Holy Spirit, he acknowledges the brokenness of our real lives.
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There might be a time when a wife may not be able to continue to hang in there with a husband who has sinned so grievously against her.
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In this event, she is to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to her husband. Those are the options given by the
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Lord, reiterated by Paul here. Now this sounds really insensitive to our culture, doesn't it?
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You can't speak to a group where there aren't divorced people. It's just a part of our culture. It's a part of our brokenness.
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It's a part of our reality. Seems insensitive that we live in a culture that both wants to diminish the value of marriage into easy, no fault divorce.
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While speaking out of the other side of our mouths, declaring marriage is a necessary right for all. Right? Do you see how divided our culture is?
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Easy to get out of, but man, shouldn't I just be able to get into it? Isn't it a testimony to our own sinful hearts that we want to know whether we can dissolve our own vows while asking if we can take more vows to another in the same sentence?
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Think it through. Can I get out of this marriage and then can I marry another?
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It doesn't seem like an awkward sentence only because faithlessness and covenant breaking is in our very nature.
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Can I dissolve my vows and make more vows? I've been asked that question before, and it's a bizarre question when you really think about it.
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Can I dissolve my vows and take more vows? Why do you want to take more vows if you're not going to keep your vows?
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Jesus seemed to indicate that where, just to clarify, some of you, your mind's swirling around like exceptions and things like that.
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Jesus definitely indicated that where sexual immorality was the precipitating cause of a divorce, the jilted spouse is free to remarry.
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And in a moment, it's going to be indicated that where an unbelieving spouse abandons a believer, that believer is free to remarry.
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But this passage, it's kind of out of the purview of this passage to be about who can and cannot remarry.
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That's not the point. The passage exists to highlight the messiness of marriage in a broken world.
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My theology professor, Michael Whitmer, proposed that this messiness is quite likely the reason that marriage will not be the same on the new earth.
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There are very few things that cannot be put back together and will not be put back together, but marriage is one of them.
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On the new earth, who will be the husband of the five times married Joan Collins? Or who would be the wife of the six times married
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Henry VIII? Of course, the problem in these situations is whether or not Joan or Henry will even be there on the new earth.
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But the Sadducees brought a scenario to Jesus in which there wasn't necessarily sin involved. A woman had multiple husbands, and in their scenario, it's not due to sin, but it's just death.
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She's had all these husbands, and each one has died in sequence. And then in mockery of resurrection, they asked, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?
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Ha! Checkmate, Jesus. Got him. Right? But it was merely a check.
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It wasn't checkmate. In that passage, we find out a startling truth. It can be hard for those of us that are happily married, that marriage will not carry over into the life that is to come.
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And like I said, my theology professor says, it just can't be put back together. You can't be in a monogamous relationship with many people.
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It's a conundrum. It's a philosophical impossibility. Marriage vows are held high by all of the authors of Scripture Church.
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Divorce is held in very low esteem by all authors of Scripture Church. To the married, he tells them, stay married.
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Even into a context of strong sexual immorality, he's encouraging them to stay together. While he recognizes that some, he gives a concession, some will not be able to hang on.
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The third group addressed in the text seems like a bit of a niche group. He addresses the unequally yoked.
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And by unequally yoked, I just mean like an unbeliever married to a believer is the idea in this third section.
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This is those couples where one has come to believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior and their spouse has not come along.
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Again, we might be tempted to skip this if it doesn't sound close to our situation. But look at the way that God meets people in tough circumstances here, even addressing something as nuanced as this.
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Paul wants us to know that what is written in this section is not found in the teachings of Jesus from the Gospels. He is not saying that this isn't
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Scripture when he says, not the Lord, but I am speaking. He's saying not Jesus. This isn't a direct teaching from Jesus, but this is indeed in Scripture and it is from the
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Holy Spirit because it's from Scripture. But he doesn't want his readers, he wants his readers rather to know that this is indeed a new teaching from the
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Spirit. It's not coming from the Gospels. To the spouses that are willing to stay together, they should remain together, he says, even if it's one believer and an unbeliever.
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It's impossible, I mean, it's important to understand that in the ancient world, idolatry was considered contagious.
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It was considered something that you could catch. So now this question about being together intimately with an unbelieving pagan was a huge question mark over the church in Corinth.
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It was happening regularly. People were coming to faith in Christ and their spouses weren't. Won't their pagan religion rub off on me?
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They go to the temples, they go do this evil stuff, they go do that. And to some degree, we all know that there is indeed a reality to the fear that the believing spouse can indeed be brought down by an unbelieving spouse, right?
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It's easier to sleep in on Sundays, it's easier to stay out of fellowship and eventually it can just go away.
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But as a believer who is married to an unbeliever defiled by them, in verse 14, Paul says, this runs the other way for the one who is made holy by faith in Jesus Christ.
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The holiness that comes through faith in Christ is more powerful than the pollution of pagan immorality and pagan idolatry.
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The unbelieving spouse is to be considered made holy, that is, set apart. When you see the word holy in this passage, think set apart by their believing spouse.
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This is a confusing verse. And the kids are also to be considered clean as well, according to this verse.
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What you need to understand is that in many religions, divorce was expected and children were considered defiled by a pagan parent.
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For example, if there was a child born to a Jew, they were considered to be unclean if the other parent was a
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Gentile. In other words, it went with the defilement was the one that stuck.
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So if one spouse is a Gentile, is a dirty pagan in the
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Jew's mind, then the child is also unclean. Which means not given access to the temple, not given access to the sacrifices, not given the freedom to go into the worship areas of the
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Jewish faith. Pretty substantial, you know, kind of barring from them.
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And so he's correcting a cultural misunderstanding that he doesn't want to be perpetuated in the early church.
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Can a child born to a Gentile and a Christian, a pagan idolater and a
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Christian, are they allowed to come to church? Are they allowed in the fellowship? Are they allowed among the people of God?
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And it's clear that Paul is not saying that an unbelieving spouse is saved by being married to a believing spouse.
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What I believe he means by the phrase they are holy at the end of verse 14 is that they are brought into contact with holy things and given access to the holy community through the believing spouse or parent.
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This is not insignificant. We've seen that over the course of our history here as a church. Unbelieving spouses have in our little church history here 14 years.
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Here at Recast, unbelieving spouses have been brought into the fellowship and saved through the faithfulness of their husband or wife.
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And so too have children been saved through the faithfulness of a single believing parent. Amen? Glory.
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This idea was common in Judaism surrounding the terminology of being made holy at least, as being given access to the temple and the holy community.
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Holiness in this passage is not equal to salvation. Holiness is equal in this text to being set apart to have a unique access to holy things.
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Even the believing spouse or believing parent is an example of holiness within the household, right? As long as the unbelieving spouse can put up with it, they will live in close proximity to one who is seeking to display a
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Christ -like life in all areas. But to this there is also a caveat in verse 15.
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If the unbelieving spouse can't stand living together with the one who has allegiance to Jesus and chooses separation, separation as a means of divorce in the ancient world, then the believer can consider their vows fulfilled.
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They are set free to remarry. There's some debate about the phrase at the end of verse 15, what it goes with.
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At the end of 15 it says, God has called you to peace. But there seem to be some verbal cues that this ties back to everything that he has said to believers who find themselves in a marriage with an unbeliever.
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The entire way they conduct themselves in that marriage is meant to be one of peace. They are to seek to be at peace with their spouse as much as possible.
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And the reason to seek that peace is found in the final verse, verse 16. Because we don't know what
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God plans. Be at peace with your spouse because we don't know what God plans. If your spouse is an unbeliever, live peacefully.
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He may very well use the believing wife or the believing husband to save their spouse.
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This passage ends on a positive note. It ends up, despite the many ways we can break, despite the darkness that can cloud marriages in a broken world, there is hope even for the one who is married to an unbeliever.
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Maybe God will use you in the life of your spouse to bring them to Christ. I will leave the specific applications up to you from this text.
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The spirit in your life this week hopefully will bring some of these things to mind. Maybe you're a single that has just now become aware that it could be
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God's calling on your life like John Stott or the Apostle Paul to remain single for his honor and for his glory.
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Maybe that's you. Maybe you are. Maybe you're single and you're pretending that you have the gift of singleness while passion and your temperature is running away with your heart.
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Maybe you're in a really difficult marriage and you're reminded this morning to stay faithful to the call of Christ over your life in faithfulness.
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But whatever the specifics, let me end with three things that I identify about God from this passage.
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Hearing from God and about him, his character, what is he saying here? The first thing that I want to identify for all of us, and it's a glory, it gives me encouragement, it gives me hope, and that is that God is concerned for human relationships.
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He's concerned for our relationships, church. He spends time here in the middle of 1 Corinthians diving deep into various iterations of the ways that we can be broken in human relationships.
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And I just want to state this emphatically. You are nowhere relationally that God is not.
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You are nowhere in regard to human relationships that God is not present, that God is unaware.
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He knows all that everyone in this room is going through. And he has something to say about all of our interactions because he who commanded us to love him with all that we are also commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
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He is very interested in human interactions and relationships.
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He loves us and wants us to flourish together. Together as a community, together in the world, together as families.
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The second thing is that God joins people together in marriage. When Paul says, not I, but the
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Lord, he highlights the teachings of Jesus on marriage here in the passage. Teaching that reminds us of the fundamental things that Jesus did teach about it in the
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Gospels. Teaching that reminds us that God joins married couples together as he stated in Genesis.
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What God has joined together, let no one separate. What Jesus reiterated, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
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We must hold marriage high, church. While strongly opposing divorce,
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Scripture also leans into real life scenarios of brokenness and heartache, right? And so should we. I want to tell you honestly as your pastor,
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I have a tenacious commitment to marriage and marriages. I will never counsel anyone that divorces your next step.
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Never. I will never, ever, ever counsel that. I will never sit in my office in a counseling session with you and say, you know what?
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You ought to divorce the bum. You know what? You ought to ditch her. It's never going to be my counsel.
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So don't come to me if that's what you're looking for. And I mean sincerely, like I've had people,
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I've stated this. This is not the first time I've said this up front. And then I've had people come into my office and say, but can we just, can we go our own ways?
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Can we just, can we get a divorce? Can I file? I'm not going to endorse that.
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I'm not going to encourage that. You come to my office, you already know what you're going to get. No. Hang in there.
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Fight for your vows. You made an oath before God and witnesses. A binding.
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You don't ever take covenants. And let the singles in the room hear me carefully. You're single now.
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So take marriage seriously now. How many of you are just shocked and surprised at the naivety in your heart and mind when you took your vows?
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I am. I was 22 years old. I didn't know what I was doing. I mean,
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I'm going to be honest. I don't know if I would have got married otherwise. I mean, I'm really grateful for Linda and we have a good relationship. But in all honesty,
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I mean, at that age, how many of you know the best decisions are wasted on the young? Right?
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I did not have a clue that I was marrying somebody with such a tenacious devotion to me.
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Oh, she has had so many reasons to leave me over the years. She has had, I mean, we have had knocked down drag outs.
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Ugly. Ugly arguments. And I know I'm not the only one in the room. I know you have too.
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Maybe come and talk with me you never have. Because I would like to learn from you if that's the case.
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If you've never just like, just like that.
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I know that we do. And I'm really far off my notes. I'm never going to counsel you.
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There we go. That was the connecting point. I'm not going to counsel you to divorce. It's not going to happen. And yet I seek to have as much compassion as possible to those who have endured the tragic ending of a marriage.
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Regardless of reasons. Regardless of reasons. Even the one who was the cause of the divorce.
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Even the one who filed. Even the one who cheated. Can repent of their sins. Praise God that His grace is more.
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We sang it. His mercy is more than our sin. You can't, you can't sin away the power of the blood over your life.
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Praise God for that. Is that an excuse to go file tomorrow? Not at all. The third thing is that God uses people and circumstances to bring salvation.
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We know clearly from scripture that salvation comes from the Lord. But in verse 16 He speaks to spouses.
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And really in a general sense to all of us. That we don't know whether God will save others through us. God has placed you in the lives of others to demonstrate a covenant faithfulness.
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How do you know whether you are the one God will use to save others? Be faithful to the opportunities
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He gives you. Be faithful to the kindness He calls you to. Be faithful to the verbal message of Christ crucified for sins.
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So as we come to communion we take the cracker to remember the very source of our salvation.
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His body broken for us. We take the cup of juice to remember His blood shed for us.
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And if you're at peace with each other and you've asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior. Then feel free to come to the tables to remember
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His sacrifice that makes us whole. Take that cup and cracker back to your seat and after a time of reflection.
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I encourage you to take it with great joy at His rescue of sinners like us.
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Let's pray. Where would we be
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Father without your covenant faithfulness? I can only imagine at times and I know you don't think this way but I think this way about you.
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That you wonder why in the world did I die for Him? But it's for your glory.
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It's for your honor. Because of your great love. I pray that we would reflect that way throughout our week in terms of our relationships.
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In terms of the calling that you have placed on our lives to function in different roles. And in different positions for the singles.
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To single hard for you. To buy back the time of these hours and these days to grow deeper in you.
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To become the people that you want them to be. So that should marriage come down the line for them.
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They are the person that their spouse needs. Who brings honor and glory to you first.
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Father for those that are in tough marriages today. I pray that you would reiterate vows.
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Increase holiness. Increase connection. Increase love. Increase intimacy.
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That husbands would cherish and live with their wives in an understanding way. That wives would adore and respect their husbands.
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Support and help well. Father for those who have endured divorce.
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I know that this can be a very guilt ridden passage. So Father I pray that today even during communion.
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That those who have suffered the end of a marriage. Regardless of for what reason. Regardless of how that ended.
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Father that they would once again come before you in humility.
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Recognizing your forgiveness. Or seeking your forgiveness maybe for the first time. And that you would set all of our feats.
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Set all of our pathways. For worship and glory to you this week. In Jesus name.