I am divorced and remarried, so am I living in adultery?
Hi.
Welcome to today's little lesson.
We're talking about divorce and remarriage.
Let me say right from the start that I'm not having to come up with any kind of a doctrine
to justify my own self.
I'm very blessed and fortunate in that I married a wonderful woman 38 years ago, and I'm still
married her, and there is no end in sight.
It was 'til death do us part, and due in large part to her long suffering, we're still together.
Both of us are Christians under construction.
I kind of jokingly say we've never had an argument in 38 years.
We have had some very intense fellowship at times and then of course we've never, ever
considered divorce in any of those 38 years.
We certainly have thought about murder, but not divorce.
Okay, so I am blessed.
We need to be very careful in casting the first stone towards people who haven't been
so fortunate.
You need to ask yourself the question before you do that, how would I have done if I was
married to their spouse?
All right.
Just something at the beginning to start off with here.
Okay.
Now, I've run into some folks who believe that if you have been married and divorced,
and then you're remarried, then you're living in an adulterous relationship.
The remedy for that is to divorce again and then remain single until your original spouse
dies, and then you're no longer, quote, unquote, married in God's eyes.
Then at that time, you would be free to remarry, but not until.
I'm surprised I had never heard of this particular doctrine in the 40 or so years that I've been
a Christian until just recently.
I thought I'd seen it all, but no, this is something new.
It seems to be gaining some degree of popularity.
You can probably guess right off the bat that, for some people, it's a very attractive doctrine
because of their unhappily married and they have been previously married and divorced.
Well, now, they've got a justifiable excuse to divorce and get out of that unhappy marriage.
Now, they won't be allowed to remarry again, but for people who are on horrible marriages,
singleness sounds better than being miserably married.
In fact, I think even the Bible says that in Proverbs.
It's better to live on a corner of a roof than with a contentious woman is found in
Proverbs.
All right, so let's think about this.
Where do they come up with this idea?
Well, they came up with it from the Bible.
As we've said before, all spurious doctrine has some source within the scripture, but
the mistake is always the same.
Isolating a few verses at the expense of the rest of the Bible.
The Bible has I think 33,000 verses in it.
Your interpretation of any one verse needs to harmonize with all the rest of the verses,
particularly on relevant topics.
So, it behoove us to spend some time looking at everything the Bible has to say about divorce
and remarriage before we come to any conclusions.
But some folks have taken the statements of Jesus, they're recorded in three of the Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, all three synoptic Gospel [inaudible 00:03:42] where Jesus said whoever
divorces and remarries commits adultery.
He actually elaborated to extend that adultery to the one who has been divorced and who has
been a victim of a divorce, and the one who marries the victim of the divorce, and so
forth.
You could study that for yourself.
We're not going to take that time in this little lesson to do that.
That would be Matthew, chapter 5; Matthew, chapter 19; Mark, chapter 10; and Luke, chapter
16.
You find these similar statements.
From those statements, those who adhere to this doctrine of divine divorce have concluded
that since you're living in an adulterous relationship, that's what Jesus said, you
need to repent.
The only way that you could repent is if you divorce your current spouse.
If it's possible to remarry your original spouse, if that is a possibility, then you
should get back to the person to whom you are married in God's eyes.
These folks claim that marriage is unconditionally unbreakable and only death is what breaks
the covenant of marriage, and so this all sounds logical, and people are buying into
it.
But the question that we ought to ask is, is that interpretation of what Jesus said
supported by the rest of scripture, both the New Testament and Old Testament?
Now, some would say, "Well, we don't have to worry about the Old Testament because Jesus
brought a new law."
Well, I submit to you that concerning divorce and marriage, Jesus endorsed the old covenant
law, in fact, if you'll take some time and read in Matthew, chapter 19, the scribes and
Pharisees ... Or, actually, just the Pharisees, came to Christ and asked Him this question.
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?
That's obviously what they believed.
We could go into the history it.
There was a prominent teaching by a prominent rabbi some years before Christ that basically
said that it was lawful under the law of Moses to divorce your wife for any reason at all.
They even developed a list of reasons.
If your wife burnt your food.
If your wife talked to another man in public.
Probably the worst one on that list is if you see a woman who's more attractive than
your wife, you could lawfully divorce her.
That's the background of what these Pharisees were asking Jesus.
Is it lawful to divorce your wife for any cause at all?
They're saying it in respect to the law of Moses.
That was their law that God gave them.
Jesus, I'm going to just summarize what he said, no, it's not.
He said if you divorce your wife for any cause other than immorality and you marry another,
you're committing adultery.
He's just simply endorsing what the law of Moses actually said.
The whole basis of the Pharisees' belief that they could divorce their wife for any cause
at all was the scripture found in Deuteronomy, chapter 24, about if a man finds some indecency
in his wife and he gives her a certificate of dismissal, and so forth, a divorce, and
it goes on from there.
We'll have to wait until our next little lesson to take a look at that particular scripture.
But please don't forget what I've said in this little lesson.
Then the very next one that we have, I'm recording it, so it'll be tomorrow, we'll go into further
detail, are you living in adultery if you've been remarried after a previous marriage and
divorce.
That's the subject.
Okay.
Thank you so much for joining me.
See you next time.