Marriage and Divorce - Part 2 — Don Courville

God's Design for One-Flesh Marriage

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him and help me for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be here today.

We ask the blessing of your word that you would speak to us, that we would have ears to hear what you have to say to us. We pray for any that do not know Jesus as their Savior, that you would open up their eyes to see and to understand that you love them, you love all of us.

Your word tells us that you love the world so much that you gave your only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And so we just commit ourselves to you, to be open to what your Spirit says to us.

And if there's one that doesn't know Jesus as their Savior, our prayer is that they would come to know this wonderful Savior. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, last week we started a short little series with you on marriage and divorce, marriage in the home.

The Social Consequences of Rejecting God

One of the things I was noticing on a chart that I have, about four things, this came from David Barton, I think, I don't know where he got it, but four major things that happen when God was taken out of the operation of our country, the Word of God was rejected.

One was teenage pregnancy. This is back in 1963, this chart is. Teenage pregnancy just began to shoot up. And the SAT scores, the scores just began to plummet. And of course now they've readjusted the whole thing so it doesn't look so bad.

Then another thing was the violent crime just began to shoot up on these charts. And then the fourth thing was what happened in the area of the home with the divorce rate. It just began to shoot up. All of this since 1963.

We've accepted some lies. I have a little series that I might work on sometime and maybe give part of it to you, some of it I've already given, but seven major areas in which we as Christians in the church have been deceived.

And one of them is in the area of marriage and divorce. How has this deception come about? How is it that our country is going down so fast? And I believe the result of our economic and our moral situation, the political situation is in direct correlation to what we have done in relation to the Word of God.

How we have neglected, changed, abused, and just flat refused to receive the Word of God. And as we've thrown God out, so we've gone downhill. Last week we started off with a little introduction to you.

Marriage as a Lifelong Foundation

I shared a little story about Henry Ford when he was asked about the success of his marriage and he said that it was this, to stick to one model. To stick to one model. And that's the main key, the main foundation of marriage is that God intended it to be until death.

And I'm taking you through these things because of what the psalmist said, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? In other words, if the foundation of the home is destroyed in our country, what can we do?

Well, there's nothing you can do. God has to destroy a society that rejects the basic foundation, and that is one man, one woman, to a home. Now many do not believe this because they've accepted the lies.

They just don't believe it. You know the next verse after Psalms 11, 3, which says, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? The next verse says, the Lord is in His holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven.

His eyes, behold, His eyelids try the children of men. The Lord trieth the righteous, but the wicked in Him that loveth violence His soul hateth. God will not be mocked. He just will not be played with.

Whatever we sow, we'll reap. And I'm just wondering if we really understand how deeply we've been affected by the false versions that have been coming out over the last, I don't know, they started a long time ago, over 100 years ago, but we don't understand how deeply this has affected our churches.

We don't realize how much intentional deception has gone on in our schools, in our seminaries, to deceive our pastors, to deceive the students when they go in. And then, of course, they're deceived, they believe the lie, and then they teach it, and their students end up being teachers, and it's come on down.

The Word of God and the Permanence of Marriage

But what does the Scripture say? And this is what we said last week. If you're going to build a doctrine about the Scriptures, you start with clear teachings of Scripture, and that's what we did. We just shared some basic Scriptures with you.

Genesis 2, we started off with that, which we just read this morning, how God said that they would be one flesh. Marriage is a type of the church. We shared that with you. And also, we took you over to Romans 7 to show you that God said that the marriage was to be until death.

And we're going to continue on today. I need to probably reestablish the Scriptures for you. This is what the Scripture says, and we're going to go today over to what Jesus said. We're going to look at the teaching of Jesus, the words of Christ on marriage and divorce.

See, I believe that we have a situation now to where our whole society is completely eroding, and we don't realize it, that the foundation is the church. Marriage is the foundation under which the church stands on.

And if you destroy the foundation of the home and the church, you don't have a nation anymore that God can bless. Romans chapter 7, verse 1, Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know the law, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?

For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. This is what God is saying. As long as the man is alive, that woman is married to that man. As long as the woman is alive, that man is married to the woman.

What we have today is people believe that they can go get a piece of paper from a judge, from a court, and have a divorce. But does God say that we can do that? That's what we're looking at today in the Scripture.

We're going to continue on with the teachings of Christ. Another passage that was clear on this, in 1 Corinthians 7, especially verse 39, where Paul repeated what he said in Romans. The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth.

But if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will, only in the Lord. Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time going back over what we did last week, because we want to move on ahead.

But these two passages established the clear teaching of the Word of God. That this was a command from the Lord for us. Only death allows remarriage, and that's only to another believer. Paul said this.

And if we violate this, we bring reproach on our life, and we're going to bring fruit into our life and to our churches that's going to be spoiled. Now, to start off with the teaching of Scripture today, let's go over to Matthew chapter 5, and while you're getting your Bible, get your Bible.

Go get it. I'll wait for you a little bit. I'll stall around here for a little bit, but get your Bible if you have the time. I know some of you may be getting ready to go to church and things like this.

It's a hard time for many, and some try to catch the program as they're doing this and that, and I appreciate it as you tell me that, I understand. But listen, marriage is of the Lord. And before we get into Matthew chapter 5, let me get myself turned over here to it.

Theodore Epp on Divorce and Sin

I wanted to read you a statement from Theodore Epp. See, Theodore Epp was an old-time Bible teacher. He taught the standard. What we have today is we've had a flip-flop on our theology, because we've had a flip-flop in our Bibles, in our teaching.

And we're not accepting what God has given us as clear teaching anymore. But I wanted to give you a statement that Theodore Epp said in a little book entitled Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage. And I was thinking about contacting back to the Bible and seeing if I could get some more of these there.

An excellent, clear presentation of what the Scripture says, and I'm going to use some of his sayings today. But he said, God made no provision whatsoever for divorce, because marriage was instituted before the entrance of sin.

There was no cause or reason for divorce. Sin alone is the underlying cause of lust, greed, selfishness, and hatred, which in turn is the cause of divorce. But inasmuch as marriage was instituted before sin entered the world, and there was no reason to provide for divorce, and God does not change the basic principles He has established, thus divorce is not, and cannot be, a part of God's established program.

Since God does not make provision for man to sin, He did not make provisions for divorce. God is not a partaker of sin, nor does He tempt anyone to sin. James 1 .13 says, Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.

So we must remember, as we consider various passages concerning marriage and divorce, that in the beginning, no provision was made for divorce, because divorce is a result of sin. Mark 10 .4 -12 reveals that God's intent was that there should never be divorce.

Christ stated, Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery. One of the things I just remembered that I shared with you last week, the way this thing got going, was a pastor in another state had asked somebody, he was talking with a friend, and this friend talked to my wife, and then I was asked to do some research on it, and so I'm just going ahead and sharing with you research that I've really covered for years and years and years.

Matthew's Teaching on Divorce and the Exception Clause

And I'm just sharing this with you because I believe that sometimes we lose sight of what God wants. We just lose sight of it, because we're not listening, and we're not really sincere in wanting to get what He has.

And what we're going to do today as we get into these verses, we're going to focus in on the word fornication. This is what many of the theologians will call the exception clause. And we're going to look at this.

We're going to look at some things that God's laid it clear. It's clear. But what we do is we fuzz it up, and we get it out of focus by messing with His Word. And as we do these things, then we lose focus of what God wanted.

We're also going to go back to the commands of Moses, because Jesus talked about the Moses command, because Moses gave them permission to divorce. And we're going to look at what that was. And you have to put that in the clear teaching of Scripture with what Paul said and what Christ said.

One flesh. By the way, one flesh cannot be separated. You take your arm off of your body, and it's going to die. Now as we go to Matthew 5, are you there? First of all, I think what we need to do is just go through these verses and just read them so you get the picture of what the Lord is saying.

And I might just say this again, that you build your doctrines on clear teaching of Scripture. By the way, in this little book by Theodore Epp, that's what I saw he said, too. I didn't even read this book after I'd said that.

Here's what he said. At this point, Theodore Epp said, and he was a wonderful Bible teacher, at this point, I wish to make two very important statements. I'm going to share one of them with you that he said.

But concerning Bible interpretation, first, a true and faithful Bible student will search the Scriptures to find the fundamental principle of any given doctrine. Then if there are any difficulties or seeming contradictions, he will seek to understand them in the light of the basic principle.

This method has not been followed by many Bible students when it comes to the question of divorce. This is dishonest and shows poor scholarship, therefore it is sinful and should never be accepted by honest Bible students.

And of course, our Bible schools, our seminaries, our cemeteries, as Ralph said yesterday, is producing death. That's what a cemetery is involved with, death, if it doesn't produce the Word of God and teach the pure Word of God.

In Matthew 5 and verse 31, first passage on it, it hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, Jesus is speaking here, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.

And whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery. I want you to notice in passing that there are two words, fornication and adultery. Two different words mean two different things. The other basic passage is Matthew 19 and verses 3 through 9.

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and we're going to come back to these and go through these, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female?

Instead for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. This is a covenant relationship. Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.

Go back to Genesis chapter 2, they're one flesh. Jesus says one flesh. That's what the clear teaching of Scripture is. Last week we covered the one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? Now notice what Jesus said. He said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery. And whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery. Now according to the clear teaching of the Word of God, we've got some problems today in our churches because we're not teaching it right.

And those that come to understand the Word of God that have got off track in their life somewhere or another, let me remind you that when God shows you something and it shows that your life is not right, your duty, my duty, is to repent, change our direction, change our mind, and get right with God.

And then we have to live by the grace of God if we've made a mistake in the past. And about all of us have made some kind of mistake in our life that we've regretted, and we carry a scar. And so if you have done this in your marriage, then you live by the grace of God.

We might say something about this a little bit more later on, too. Now let me just keep on going before we get into these passages in detail more. Over in Mark chapter 10, verses 2 through 12, is the teaching of Jesus from the perspective of the Gentiles.

Moses, Hardness of Heart, and the Church's Standard

Here He is again, and the Pharisees came to Him and asked Him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife, tempting him? Notice how they're trying to trick Jesus. That was their occupation, as long as the Lord was around, because He brought light and exposed their darkness.

What did Moses command you? And He answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart He wrote you this precept, but from the beginning of the creation of God, God made them male and female.

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife. By the way, I failed to point out what the New American Standard has been omitting. Cleave to his wife has been omitted by the New American Standard Version.

Why? It's part of the Word of God. It is the Word of God. Why would you leave it out? Well, there's intentions, and it's just like when they're changing on other doctrines. They've got an agenda, and when they're done, there's just no Bible left.

They have the teachings of man, the ideas of man. Now go over to Luke chapter 16, one verse, verse 18. Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery. And whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery.

Now, that's five basic passages. Romans chapter 7, 1 Corinthians 7, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Now, let's go back to Matthew 19, 9. Matthew 19, in verse 9, and Jesus said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication.

Now, let's talk about this for a little bit. New American Standard uses the word, this is where they're changing the Word of God. The Word of God says fornication. But they put in there immorality, or sexual immorality.

The NIV changes it to marital unfaithfulness. That's weak at the best, but it's bad. What does fornication mean? Anyway, go back to Matthew 5 and verse 32. Matthew 5 and verse 32. But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.

There's another word there, adultery, fornication. What does it mean? Mark 10, 2 -12, there's no mention of fornication. Luke 16, 18. Now, the definition of fornication, by Webster's, if you have an 1828 Webster's, it's sex before marriage.

It's the new versions use different words. But adultery would be sex after marriage. And there's some technicalities in there. But the basic teaching is fornication before marriage. Now, to give you an illustration of this, by the way, this area of adultery is what got John the Baptist in jail.

Ended up with him losing his head over this thing. Turn to Matthew chapter 1. Okay. You remember when Joseph found out that Mary was with child? What did the Lord say to him? Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.

Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together. Now, notice the term came together. But yet they were, they were, they, she drank the cup.

You know, when the young man would come courting, they would have the cup there. He would place the cup before her. If she drank, reached out and drank the cup, then they had made an agreement that they would be married.

And that was binding. It was just as binding as the marriage vow. The only thing that would, that would stop that would be to, to break it off and to get a divorce. So if there was a divorce, it happened before they came together.

And that's what Joseph is thinking about doing. In verse 19, So the Lord's got him straightened out. You know, the thing that they accused Jesus of in John 8, 41, We be not born of fornication. They understood this.

Adultery and fornication are different words. If you go through Matthew 5, 32, 15, 19, 19, 9, Mark 7, 21, all through there, they're different words. But what they tried to do today is to make them the same thing.

Adultery refers to sexual sin after marriage. Now let's go over, let me just share with, the Bible says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Second, Seventh Command. In verse 17 of Exodus 20, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, your wife, etc.

You come to 19, 8, Matthew 19, 8, Because of the hardness of their hearts, They were committing adultery, committing fornication. And Moses had to allow them. This is why God gave them the law. We're going to go back to it in just a minute.

Because of their hardness of heart. And we're going to talk about that, hardness of heart. You see, when the Pharisees came to Jesus, They understood that there was no reason for divorce. They understood that.

We don't today. The theologians and a lot of preachers today, They don't understand what the Pharisees did. They understood. But they're wanting to live under the rule of the hardness of the law there of Moses for themselves, So they can carry on their lust.

But the Pharisees understood that there was no reason for divorce. When God first instituted marriage, they understood that. If you look at Matthew 19 and verse 7, They say unto him, Why did Moses then command?

They understood. They just didn't want it. And that's why there's this teaching today. They don't want it. Okay, let's answer the question then. Why did Moses allow it if there was no such thing as divorce in the beginning?

You know, that's an interesting thing. And as you dig around in the scriptures, And you begin to look at these things, You begin to see what they're talking about. You see, God allowed divorce during the time of the law.

And it was permitted for a certain class of people in Israel. What kind of class? Those that were uncircumcised in the heart. They were circumcised in the flesh, but not in the heart. At the best, they were backslidden.

Maybe, at the worst, they were just unbelievers among Israel. Now, that which was allowed for the uncircumcised in the heart of Israel, Now, get this, Should not serve as the rule and the standard for the church today.

But that's what they're trying to do today, By setting this as the standard. We have a different standard. As far as God's Word is concerned, There was no provision for divorce. He gave permission for divorce to the hard-hearted and the uncircumcised in the heart in Israel.

But for those that believe the Word of God, Fundamental Bible-believing Christians, A spiritual Christian, Is not to take what God permitted because of their hard hearts, What was in the hard hearts of Israel, And make it as a rule for the church today.

And that's what they're trying to do. Did Christ subscribe to the original principle of God? Or did He re-establish something new? No, He re-established the O, their one flesh. And that's it. Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause, they said?

The reason for asking that was that they came to Him to tempt Him. And His answer was, Have you not read that He which made them at the beginning, Made them male and female and said, But for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, And shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.

Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. Now, what is Jesus referring to in the Moses Law? Let's go over to Deuteronomy 34 for a minute.

Deuteronomy, Stoning, and the Meaning of Grace

Deuteronomy 24, excuse me, Verse 1, You know how I know this is fornication? It's very simple. If it had been adultery, then they'd have to be stoned. That's the difference between fornication and adultery.

And they're trying to remove this away from us today. Back over in Deuteronomy 22, In verse 22, listen to what the Scripture says, You know, you can understand the teaching of the Word of God if you accept by faith the plain teaching of the principles that was established that God intended that that marriage last till death.

And then there's lots of confusion if you don't. So it's just simple. You set the standard. God set the standard. You stick to one model. You get another model after one of them dies. No exceptions. Now, some want to just, they, I don't understand this.

That's why we want to set our standard by the hardness of Moses' law, but we don't want the stoning part. Just want part of it. You know, law is hard. It's just really hard. I was just looking at that passage, you know, in John 8, when they came to Jesus and they had that woman that was called in adultery, in the very act, they said, What did Jesus teach about adultery?

Well, it was sin. But in 5, John 8, 5, Now Moses in the law, here's what they said. They're trying to tempt him and trick him again. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned, but what sayest thou?

This they said, tempting him. Okay, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. No doubt. The law says death. What did Jesus give that lady, that woman? He gave her grace. Grace comes from the Lord.

Grace is no condemnation because that's what he said. He said, Hath no man condemned thee? And she said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Well, Jesus took care of those guys.

They were hypocrites. But grace says no condemnation, but go and sin no more. Grace does not give license to sin, but God gives us forgiveness. Do you have forgiveness? What did Jesus teach about adultery?

That it was sin. It was wrong. But he offers forgiveness. And as we close down today, you know, the law was given, wherefore then serveth the law. It was added because of transgressions. And that's why that teaching in Deuteronomy back there was given.

Because of the transmissions that were going on. They were so hard. They didn't want the Word of God. And so God was having to give them some kind of guidelines to keep the whole place from being completely polluted.

Well, I'm going to have to shut down now. Next week I'm going to start off and share a story with you. We're going to talk about this at least one more week. We're going to get into the area of what about the church in relation to the pastors in this area.

Well, until next time, I'm asking the Lord to continue to bless you.