Living in the Will of God – 07 Divorce

Living in the Will of God – 07 Divorce

Lamb of God

Lamb of God

Sometimes religious leaders change or exploit the true intent of God in order to satisfy themselves or others. This is the case with marriage and divorce, as in Matthew 19:3-9, when Jesus is tested by some Pharisees about divorce.

3. And some Pharisees came to Him, testing Him, and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”

4. And He answered and said, “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

5. and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’?

6. “Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Jesus is explaining clearly the creation intent of God, by which we are to live, but the Pharisees still pushed the issue so they could justify the worldly ways in which they and the people were living.

7. They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8. He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

Jesus is emphatically stating that the permission for a man to divorce his wife was granted, as a reluctant concession, only because of the hardness of heart of the people. And Jesus even makes it personal by stating, “because of your hardness of heart,” and not their hardness of heart.

Jesus continues…

9. “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
NASB

We also find it quite interesting that Jesus lays the fault clearly at the feet of the male population, and not the women, and yet it was these religious leaders who brought the woman caught in the very act of adultery, without the man who was obviously with her, to be condemned in another attempt to test Jesus (John 8:3-4). This is another example of the corruption in the religious leadership.

God does not want us to live in concessions granted by God and religious leaders. He wants us to be obedient and live according to His heavenly will.

Go on to: Living in the Will of God – 08 Hardness of Heart

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