Faithfulness: Matthew 5:31-37

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

This is the fifth in a series of posts on the Sermon on the Mount.  This series generally runs every Monday, but, due to extenuating circumstances, this week, and next week, the post will come in the middle of the week.

Today’s post deals with faithfulness for followers of Christ, particularly in the areas of marriage and promises.  Given the recent political decisions that have been made, this post is well-timed.

Divorce is a nasty word.  Much like cancer, divorce rips apart families, destroys lives, and leaves scars on multiple people for the remainder of their lives.  Divorce certainly is not the way God intended marriage to end.  Even as fallen humans, we understand that divorce is something we’d rather avoid.  But, unfortunately, it is a reality that impacts not only non-Christians, but also those inside the church.

As someone who comes from a home impacted by divorce, this issue is much more personal and emotional than some other passages of Scripture.  Let me clear the air before diving into Scripture: This post is not intended to attack anyone who has gone through a divorce.  This post is not intended to heap guilt on those who have already repented for an unbiblical (key word alert) divorce.  The purpose of this post, and all my posts, is to shed light on what God’s Word says regarding our lives, and what we need to do in response to it.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

It’s important to understand the background of this passage before drawing out implications.  Jesus is quoting the Pharisees’ interpretation of Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which reads:

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination to the LORD.  And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

In essence, a marriage that ended on the grounds of infidelity ended in the eyes of God, and both parties were allowed to remarry, so long as the woman was given a certificate of divorce.  Here’s how the Pharisees interpreted Moses’ words: I can divorce my wife for any reason, as long as I give her a certificate of divorce.

Before sin corrupted the world, and us, divorce was not a reality.  It was not in God’s original, perfect design for marriage.  It is an evil, unfortunate result of a fallen world.  It is not an issue to be taken lightly.  Jesus calls out those who would seek an easy divorce, simply because their spouse is no longer attractive, no longer as much fun to be around, or they “just don’t love them anymore.”  Understand that the fact that Jesus has to give commands regarding divorce is in itself an indication that everything and everyone is fallen and in need of a Savior.

So what does Jesus say?  When is divorce acceptable?  Jesus echoes Moses’ words, which he received from God the Father: Divorce is acceptable ONLY if sexual immorality has taken place.  Sexual immorality includes any sexual activity outside the marriage relationship.

Both marital infidelity and wrongful divorce are an abomination to God, for God is a God of faithfulness, a God of commitment, a God who puts others needs before His own, and in being unfaithful to our spouse, or in leaving a marriage because it is hard or we just “don’t feel like it anymore,” fails to honor God as those made in His image, as those called to walk as He walked.  Christ did not leave Earth before it was time, even when it got hard.  Christ did not become unfaithful to God, even when tempted by the devil himself.  And so, as His followers, we are commanded to be faithful in our marriage.

I made a note of how this post is timely given the recent political decisions that have been made.  Let me be clear: The Bible clearly states that same-sex “marriage” is sinful, that same-sex behavior is sinful, and that those with same-sex attraction are sinners in need of a Savior.  But lest we forget that God’s law applies to heterosexuals as well, let’s be clear in saying this: Wrongful divorce and pornography are just as much, if not bigger, issues for our world than same-sex “marriage.”  Wrongful divorce rips apart God’s design for marriage and faithfulness, while pornography supports the sex slave industry.  How dare we rage against same-sex “marriage” without raging against the sin in our own lives!  Romans 3:23 says that ALL have sinned and ALL fall short of the glory of God, and praise God, verse 24 says that ALL are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  There is no room for boasting at the cross.  We all need to repent and trust Christ.  We all need to trust Christ to come forgive us and make us new, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

Furthermore, we need to check our attitudes about divorce, and marriage in general.  If our questions to God about marriage and divorce end at “When is divorce okay?,” we’re asking the wrong questions.  We don’t need to be concerned with the bare-minimum.  No, you shouldn’t cheat on your spouse.  No, you shouldn’t get a wrongful divorce.  But there are pagans who abide by those standards.  As believers, clothed in the righteousness of Christ and under His Lordship, shouldn’t we be concerned with honoring God in all things, not just appeasing Him so He doesn’t get mad at us?  We use the example of a “line” in romantic relationships.  We don’t want to cross the “line,” where we fall into sin.  But so often, our attitude is, “We’ll get right up to the line and not cross it,” instead of, “Jesus, what actions/thoughts/beliefs should we take to fully honor you in our relationship?”  That betrays an attitude of still wanting to please self and glorify self, instead of being pleased with God and glorifying Him.  In marriage, I hope we aren’t just satisfied with not crossing the line of infidelity and wrongful divorce.  It would break my heart if, some day in the future when I am married, my wife was asked, “What’s the best thing about your relationship with your husband?” and she answered, “Well…he doesn’t cheat on me, I guess that’s good.”  That would absolutely crush me.  Why?  Because there are awful, evil people who don’t cheat on their wives.  That’s like saying, “At least I’m not like Hitler.”  I would certainly hope you don’t want to exterminate an entire race of people and take over the world, but that doesn’t even come close to making you an ideal man or woman!

We ought to be focused on honoring God in our marriages by being loving, serving, Christlike, forgiving, patient, kind, etc.  I would hope that my wife one day says, “The best thing about our relationship is that he pushes us to trust, love, and look more like Jesus Christ.”  That’s a whole lot better than, “At least he doesn’t cheat on me.”

As believers, the question of, “When is divorce acceptable?” should never come up.  Divorce isn’t an option, because unfaithfulness is not an option.  Should unfaithfulness happen, yes, you have the right to get a divorce (that doesn’t mean you HAVE to get a divorce).  But we shouldn’t even be thinking of unfaithfulness.  We are following Jesus.  We have been completely forgiven, and been declared completely righteous.  We represent the living God, and we are called to commit to, love and serve our spouse as God commits to, loves and serves us.  The only option before us is faithfulness.

Moving on, Jesus discusses the issue of oaths:

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Have you ever been around someone that told a lot of stories, stories that often started with the words, “True story, true story…” or “I swear this one time….” or even, “I promise this really happened?”  Are you more or less likely to believe that person’s story than if he or she had never tried to convince you it really happened in the first place?  For most of us, we’re probably less likely to believe them.  Why?  Because at the end of the day, you’ll either do what you say you’re going to do, or you won’t.  You’re either honest or you’re not.  Adding promises and swearing does not in any way make you more credible.  That’s exactly what Jesus is getting at in these verses.

People in Jesus’ time, and our time, often invoke the name of God in making promises.  “I swear to….I won’t do that again.”  Or, “I swear on all that is holy, that I’ll be there this time.”  Jesus condemns both the flippant use of His name and the worthless use of false promises.  When we attach God’s name to our oaths/promises in the flippant manner that Jesus is addressing, we’re not showing respect for God’s name.  Instead of God’s name being revered as holy, His name serves as a reputation-building tool that somehow makes me more trustworthy.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, followers of Christ don’t need to make oaths.  We ought to have character and integrity that speaks to our trustworthiness, rather than having to make empty promises and take the Lord’s name in vain.  As stated before in talking about marriage, we are to be people who commit to and love others, and people who make good on the promises we make.  We represent a God who always keeps His promises, and so we ought to always keep ours, so long as we can.  That is, when your car breaks down on a busy highway and you won’t make it to lunch, that’s a good excuse (It’s also really annoying).  Extenuating, unavoidable circumstances are one thing–life happens.  That’s not a matter of integrity, that’s a matter of 10-year old cars beginning their slow, expensive journey to the junkyard.  What is NOT a good excuse, as mentioned in relating to wrongful divorce, is “I just didn’t feel like keeping that promise.”  “My attitude changed.”  “I’m just really tired.”  If you are following Christ, you have died to yourself.  What you feel like doing doesn’t matter.  The glory of God is what we live for.

Think about Jesus: He never added, “I swear I’ll do this” to any of His promises.  He did speak under oath, as do some Christians today on a witness stand, but this was not an invoking of God’s name to make up for some lack of integrity on His part, but simply Jesus respecting the law of the land–His integrity and His honesty remain the same, regardless of whether He’s officially under oath or not, and ours should as well.

These are challenging words from Jesus.  And here’s the bad news: We have all failed at being faithful, in some area.  You may not have cheated on your spouse.  But you’ve broken promises.  You’ve not loved your spouse as you know you should have.  You’ve lied to others.  You’ve not been as committed to God and His Word as you should have been.  We are all faithless.

The good news: We don’t have to stay this way.  We can be forgiven.  We can be declared righteous.  And we can be cleansed.  God is faithful, when we are faithless.  The story of the Bible is the good news that God keeps His promises to promise-breakers.  God is loving to those who are least deserving of His love.  The story of the Bible, the heart of Christianity, is not bad people trying to be good, but dead people coming to life, being forgiven of sin, and being changed by God, out of His great love for them, not out of any merit they have in themselves.

We can repent where we see unfaithfulness in our lives.  We can run to the Father and confess that we’re terrible, that we’ve sinned against Him, and that we’re turning to Him because we don’t want to stay this way.  And we can trust that where we failed to obey God, Christ obeyed for us, and we are righteous in Him.  We can trust that the sin we’ve committed, Jesus has already died for, and we are forgiven in Him.  We can trust that when we cannot change ourselves, Christ has made the promise to “cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And He always keeps His promises.  He is always faithful.  And we can trust Him.  And by His grace, we can be faithful.

Lord, may we be faithful because you are faithful.  May we be faithful in our marriages, in our promises, in our walk with you.  May we run to you when we are not faithful, and trust in you for forgiveness and change, and move forward in our walk with you.  May you continue to be faithful to us, even when we are faithless.

God bless,

Neal E.

Sins of Passion: Matt. 5:21-30

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

We continue our walk through the Sermon on the Mount today, examining Jesus’ words about the sins of passion: anger and lust.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.  So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.  First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.  Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.  Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.  You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.  For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.  For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

Last week, we examined Jesus’ relationship with the law, and the relationship His followers now have with the law after receiving salvation.  The last few verses of that passage call for a different kind of relationship: one of internal, God-wrought, Spirit-driven, heartfelt obedience, rather than an external obedience that is only concerned with one’s self-image.

In this passage, Jesus begins showing the different kind of obedience He expects from His followers.  In the Ten Commandments, God commands the people of Israel to not murder others.  So why here does Jesus go a step further and say that it is just as wrong to harbor hatred in the heart as it is to act on it?  Why didn’t God give that command back in Exodus?

The Ten Commandments were given as a way to govern the people of Israel while showing them a general picture of what it means to be faithful to God.  They were never deemed exhaustive, by God or anyone else.  And God made it clear that He cares about the heart more than external rituals.  Psalm 50 makes it clear that God desires obedience that comes from the heart, and the Ten Commandments, along with the rest of His law, reveals His heart, His character.  So the Ten Commandments were meant to point to who God is, and the heart should be affected with a desire not only to keep the letter of the law, but the heart of the law, as well.

The New Testament also speaks of a new work of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant.  Rather than the law being something external that God’s people sought to obey, the law would now be written on people’s hearts (Jer. 31; Ezek. 36).  Where the Ten Commandments serve as an example for a nation to follow, much as the US has laws that govern society, the work of the Spirit changes the heart.

So, in regards to anger: God has established the pretty universal fact that murder is wrong.  People from all kinds of religious belief systems hold that murdering others is a bad thing.  Simple enough, right?  But then Jesus shows up and says, “You hate your brother…that’s just as bad.  You might as well have murdered him.”  According to Jesus, what you do with what’s in your heart isn’t what matters: it’s what’s in your heart.  When deciding your guilt, it matters not, according to Jesus, whether or not you acted on those impulses, whether anger or lust.  God cares about your heart.

I can confidently say that, according to the Ten Commandments and to the law of my country, I have never murdered someone, nor have I committed adultery.  But when I look, when we all look, at Christ’s words in this passage, we’re all leveled: We have all been angry, maybe not to the point of wanting to kill someone, but we have all wished ill on someone, we have all been angry and harbored anger in our hearts.  We have all struggled with lust.  It takes less than a second.  We have all, as Paul says in Romans 3:23, “sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So far from lowering the bar of the law, Jesus tells us that we’re actually worse than we think we are.  That although we may keep the Ten Commandments externally, we are dead inside, because our hearts are disgusting.  But praise God that when we come to Jesus, we get new hearts.  We get the Spirit.  And God changes our hearts, just like He promises in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31.

So, being made new in Christ, how do we fight this sin?  What can we do to put it off?

First and foremost, we trust in the same grace that saves us to sanctify us.  The same grace that led us to trust Christ to come be our Lord and forgive us of our sins, and give us His righteousness, is the same grace that will lead us to walk out that righteousness.  Those whom God justifies, He also sanctifies.  Being holy is not something we can do on our own.  We are always in need of God’s grace.  So in this, praying for God’s work of grace in our lives must be a daily task.  We must daily depend on the work of God to change us, and any pursuit of holiness must begin with faith that God has gone before us and will go with us to make us the men and women we’re called to be.

We also need to use the gospel to fight our sin.  We fight because Jesus is Lord, and He has given us His righteousness, and we want to be who we are in Christ.  But how does who we are in Christ help us fight anger and lust?

You are dearly loved by God in Christ.  The God of the universe has promised to provide all that you need.  You have an inheritance with Christ, provided you continue to walk with Him.  God has promised that when others leave you, when others betray you, He will be faithful.  God has designed sex to be good and holy in the covenant of marriage.  Use these promises of God to fight back against the lies of lust and anger.  Don’t settle for junk! Don’t “set before (your) eyes anything that is worthless!” as Psalm 101:3 says.  We fight back against the lies of sin with the true and awesome promises of God.

In regards to anger, we also need to redirect our anger.  God expects us to hate in some capacity, for He gets angry.  It’s what we get angry at that determines whether or not it’s sinful.  If the injustices committed by ISIS and Boko Haram don’t make us angry, we need to ask God to make us angry.  If the sin in your life doesn’t make us angry, we need to repent of being apathetic toward Christ.  Anger toward what makes God angry is a holy, godly attribute, that should lead us to do what we can to advance the kingdom of God.  As I’ve said before, stealing from author Joe Thorn, we need to “hate well.”

Trust in Jesus.  Be made new.  We won’t be changed overnight, but by God’s grace, we will be changed, if we have put our faith in Christ.

Lord, may we fight our sin by trusting you.  May our faith not make us lazy, but may we pursue you with a holy passion, to know you and be like you.  May you finish what you started in our lives, for your glory and our good.

God bless,

Neal E.