Divorce (Re-posted)

/
[As we discussed divorce on Salty Believer Unscripted, I thought I would repost and article from SaltyBeliever.com that was written more than two years ago.  If you're not subscribed to Salty Believer Unscripted, find it on iTunes or subscribe here.  You can listen to our podcast on divorce here.]  


Not too long ago, I was asked "Is it okay to get divorced?"  This is a huge question.

We first need to ask what is meant by "okay." If okay means entry or exclusion from heaven, I want to be very clear: getting a divorce or staying married has no baring on entrance to heaven or hell or one's ability to pray to God.  Even one sin without Christ's grace will keep a person out of heaven. Faith and surrender to Jesus Christ, who he says he is, and in his death and resurrection dictates entering heaven or being cast to hell.  This is the key to entry in to heaven, not any work, like staying married. Without Christ, even one sin is "not okay." However, we all sin (act in ways that are contrary to God's wishes for us), a lot. If we need to discuss this in more detail, please feel free to contact me.

So then the real question is if you were considering divorce, and God were sitting with us having coffee, how would he advise you in your situation. If this is you, I recommend you put lots of time to honest prayer, just as if he were sitting with you having coffee. Ask him what you might do to improve your marriage. Ask him to show you areas in your own life that may need repentance.  Ask him how you can show your spouse grace.  Ask him to fix your marriage. After you've had that conversation for a while, and if you feel that his involvement and advice is making no difference, ask him why. If you are already praying about this, pray more.

In the Bible, God presents his ideal. His ideal is that people remain married. And if not for humanity's ugly brokenness, we'd all meet this ideal with little effort. But because of the mess that we are, we have to work at it--some much more than others. The entire Bible is full of stories about people trying to work together in some kind of relationship. Paul writes letters to entire churches trying to help them have healthy relationships in work, play, marriage, etc. Obviously, it's hard and it's messy to meet this ideal.

God wants us to meet his ideal, but we won't, we can't. We are too messed up. This is why Christ died. So now we can find grace in our mess, through Jesus.

The overly religious people of Jesus' day, the Pharisees, came to Jesus and asked him if it was okay for anybody to get a divorce. (You can read about this in Matthew 19:1-9 and Mark 10:1-11.) Here's how it went down (I'm greatly paraphrasing):
Religious people: Is it against God's Law to divorce your wife for any reason?

Jesus: Haven't you read the Law? [He's referring to the Scriptures, specifically to what the Jews called The Law, the first 5 books of the Old Testament, written by Moses. These 5 books include lots of stories; it is not just a book of rules like we think of the law today]. God created men and women to be together. A man should leave his family and get married. He should hold fast to his wife. [Paul once wrote that a man should love his wife like Christ loves the church, and Christ died for the church!] God has joined them together so nobody should separate them. (See Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:6, Ephesians 5:23-33.)

[Jesus pointed out the ideal and expressed that it should be taken seriously.]

Religious people: Oh really, than why did Moses say a man can divorce his wife? [They were trying to trap Jesus or demonstrate that he was teaching counter to the Scriptures.]

Jesus: It's because you have a hard heart. [This is his way of pointing out our ugly, brokenness.] But it was not intended to be this way from the beginning. But you should know, anyone who gets divorced outside of infidelity will commit adultery.

Jesus also explained that even the very act of looking with lust at another person is committing adultery with that person (Matthew 5:28). I am not saying that committing adultery is okay with God; in fact, the opposite is true and society's definition of adultery and God's definition are quite different.  However, you should understand how it's being discussed in the Bible. And ultimately, the religious people were asking if a person will still be okay with God if they got divorced. Jesus is our intermediary so we can always be right with God through Jesus, divorced or not.

That being said, divorce is against the ideal; it's against God's desires for us. God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The Bible teaches that we should not take the matter lightly; and if you are considering divorce, you should try at all cost to work through the messiness.

Maybe this is not the answer you wanted to hear, and that's okay.  I realize I didn't give a simple yes or no, but that's because it is not a simple matter. I suggest that you go back to that table at the coffeehouse and talk with God often.  Read his Word in the Bible.  Pray. Communicate with your spouse. And pray together.

*Photo taken by Flickr user, jcoterhals, is registered under a Creative Commons license.


Is it 'Okay' to Get Divorced?

/
Not too long ago, I was asked "Is it okay to get divorced?"  This is a huge question.

We first need to ask what is meant by "okay." If okay means entry or exclusion from heaven, I want to be very clear: getting a divorce or staying married has no baring on entrance to heaven or hell or one's ability to pray to God.  Even one sin without Christ's grace will keep a person out of heaven. Faith and surrender to Jesus Christ, who he says he is, and in his death and resurrection dictates entering heaven or being cast to hell.  This is the key to entry in to heaven, not any work, like staying married. Without Christ, even one sin is "not okay." However, we all sin (act in ways that are contrary to God's wishes for us), a lot. If we need to discuss this in more detail, please feel free to contact me.

So then the real question is if you were considering divorce, and God were sitting with us having coffee, how would he advise you in your situation. If this is you, I recommend you put lots of time to honest prayer, just as if he were sitting with you having coffee. Ask him what you might do to improve your marriage. Ask him to show you areas in your own life that may need repentance.  Ask him how you can show your spouse grace.  Ask him to fix your marriage. After you've had that conversation for a while, and if you feel that his involvement and advice is making no difference, ask him why. If you are already praying about this, pray more.

In the Bible, God presents his ideal. His ideal is that people remain married. And if not for humanity's ugly brokenness, we'd all meet this ideal with little effort. But because of the mess that we are, we have to work at it--some much more than others. The entire Bible is full of stories about people trying to work together in some kind of relationship. Paul writes letters to entire churches trying to help them have healthy relationships in work, play, marriage, etc. Obviously, it's hard and it's messy to meet this ideal.

God wants us to meet his ideal, but we won't, we can't. We are too messed up. This is why Christ died. So now we can find grace in our mess, through Jesus.

The overly religious people of Jesus' day, the Pharisees, came to Jesus and asked him if it was okay for anybody to get a divorce. (You can read about this in Matthew 19:1-9 and Mark 10:1-11.) Here's how it went down (I'm greatly paraphrasing):
Religious people: Is it against God's Law to divorce your wife for any reason?

Jesus: Haven't you read the Law? [He's referring to the Scriptures, specifically to what the Jews called The Law, the first 5 books of the Old Testament, written by Moses. These 5 books include lots of stories; it is not just a book of rules like we think of the law today]. God created men and women to be together. A man should leave his family and get married. He should hold fast to his wife. [Paul once wrote that a man should love his wife like Christ loves the church, and Christ died for the church!] God has joined them together so nobody should separate them. (See Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:6, Ephesians 5:23-33.)

[Jesus pointed out the ideal and expressed that it should be taken seriously.]

Religious people: Oh really, than why did Moses say a man can divorce his wife? [They were trying to trap Jesus or demonstrate that he was teaching counter to the Scriptures.]

Jesus: It's because you have a hard heart. [This is his way of pointing out our ugly, brokenness.] But it was not intended to be this way from the beginning. But you should know, anyone who gets divorced outside of infidelity will commit adultery.

Jesus also explained that even the very act of looking with lust at another person is committing adultery with that person (Matthew 5:28). I am not saying that committing adultery is okay with God; in fact, the opposite is true and society's definition of adultery and God's definition are quite different.  However, you should understand how it's being discussed in the Bible. And ultimately, the religious people were asking if a person will still be okay with God if they got divorced. Jesus is our intermediary so we can always be right with God through Jesus, divorced or not.

That being said, divorce is against the ideal; it's against God's desires for us. God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). The Bible teaches that we should not take the matter lightly; and if you are considering divorce, you should try at all cost to work through the messiness.

Maybe this is not the answer you wanted to hear, and that's okay.  I realize I didn't give a simple yes or no, but that's because it is not a simple matter. I suggest that you go back to that table at the coffeehouse and talk with God often.  Read his Word in the Bible.  Pray. Communicate with your spouse. And pray together.

*Photo taken by Flickr user, jcoterhals, is registered under a Creative Commons license.

Tithing: It's About Heart

/
Introduction.  In First Corinthians, Paul writes (in part) to the church in Corinth about a collection that is being taken up (16:1-4).  The money will support and care for the believers in Jerusalem who were likely in hiding during a time of persecution.  Malachi 3:10a says “Bring the full tithe to the storehouse.”  Twice Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4, that “you shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading the grain” (ESV), and in his first letter to Timothy he says, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” (ESV), making an argument that ministers of the gospel should be paid.  While all of these passages are used in support of giving or tithing to God through the Church, the means of ministry funds is not what God is after.  God, as the Bible teaches, is after the believer’s affection.   Giving the first fruits, be it money or otherwise, is more a work happening within the believer than anything else.

God does not NEED your money.   It is a mistake to think the work of God’s desire will not happen if we, the Church, do not raise the money for his will.  While reflecting on God and his own life, Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.  The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21, ESV).  Job understood that he came into the world with nothing.  All that he had and all that he lost was a blessing from God, but he did not have a greater claim than God to any of it because it was all God’s to give and take.  Leviticus 27:30 teaches that every tithe, whether it is willfully given to God or not belongs to God, and the rest of Malachi 3:10 says that withholding this tithe is actually stealing from God.  Psalm 50:8-12 reads, "I have not complaint about your sacrifices or the burnt offerings you constantly offer.  But I do not the bulls from your barns or the goats from your pens.  For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.  I know every bird on the mountains, and all the animals of the field are mine.  If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for all the world is mine and everything in it" (NLT).
   
When the King Ahasuerus’ edict demanded to have all the Jews killed, Mordecai asked Esther to appeal to her husband, the king, in order to save the Jews from genocide.  In verses 4:13-14, Mordecai says to Ester, "Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.  For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish.  And who knows whether your have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”  (Esther 4:13-14, ESV, emphasis added)  Mordecai understood that God will have it his way whether it works through Esther or through some other avenue or person, but Esther had the opportunity in that moment to be faithful and obedient to God.  Giving to the Church is much the same way—we can be obedient to the Bible and give or not, but our disobedience will not keep our Sovereign from accomplishing his will.  However, this is not a reason not to give our tithes and offering to God as he as instructed. 
 
It is about the heart.  In the 18th chapter of Luke (also Matthew 19 and Mark 10), a rich man asked Jesus what he must do to have eternal life.  Jesus asked him if was he had kept the last five Commandments.  The man had since his youth.  But then Jesus went after the real issue—the man's idol, that is, the love of his great wealth.  The rich man had placed his love of money above his love of God, thus violating the First Commandment.  Every sin we commit can generally be tied back to placing something above God, worshiping an idol rather than the living God.  One of the most prevalent idols in the West today is money. 
 
Money itself is not bad; but both Hebrews 13:5 and First Timothy 6:10 say that the love of it is.  Like the rich man, the believer must strip away the idolatry and the love of money if he is going to follow Christ.  This, at times, comes with resistance.  Criswell writes, “The true gospel preacher is confronted today by a new-time antinomian. . . . Where stewardship of money is concerned they are antinomians; elsewhere they are satisfied to preach the moral code of Jehovah” (Criswell 1980, 148-149).  However, the gospel preacher must continue to call men and woman to give cheerfully, not because God needs the money, because God wants the heart. 

References:
Criswell, W.A. Criswell's Guidebook for Pastors. Nashville, Tenn: Broadman Press, 1980.

*Photo is licensed under a creative commons license.  This post was, in its entirety or in part, originally written in seminary in partial fulfillment of a M.Div. It may have been redacted or modified for this website.

The Setting of the Early Church

/
         After the Old Testament book called Malachi closed, it seems that God was quiet for 400 years—nothing of God's revelation of himself was recorded until the books collected into what we call the New Testament.[1]  However, these 400 years were not inactive or unimportant.  It is in these years that the setting of the early Christian Church was forming.  Elements of geography, language, politics, and religion collided, making way for the explosive growth of Christ’s Church.
 
            The first key aspect is geography.  Justo Gonzalez states that Palestine was “at the crossroads of the great trade routes that joined Egypt with Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor with Arabia.”[2]  The land of the Jews was seen as a strategic key for any concurring empire.  Avenues of approach into any other empire required travel through Palestine.  Trade traversed this area by land and sea.  But while this plot of real estate was the subject of wars, hostilities, and invasions, its connection to the trade routes and well-paved roads afforded the early Church opportunities like never before.[3]  As armies of soldiers and trade merchants moved through the area, the Gospel hitched a ride.

            Language, specifically a common language introduced by Alexander’s efforts to Hellenize the lands, and the loss of language by the Jews in Diaspora, is the second significant aspect of the setting of the early Church.  Alexander sought to unite the lands he conquered through culture and language, and as a result, many people started speaking the similar language of Koine Greek.[4]  Somewhat like English today, this was the common second language among business people, that is, if it wasn’t their first language.  In addition, the Jews living away from Jerusalem slowly lost their native Hebrew language and needed the Scriptures translated into a language they could read.  While there was likely a diversity of native languages, the common language of the day—Greek—was the translation language of choice in the West.  The Septuagint (also called the LXX, meaning “seventy”) became a common translation used by the dispersed people and was regularly quoted by the Apostles.  Gonzalez calls it “a ready-made means of communicating their message to the Gentiles.”[5]  William Mounce takes it a step further stating, “God used the common language to communicate the Gospel.”[6]


           In an effort to maintain political unity the Roman Empire kept the unnecessary violence to a minimum, and this is the third significant aspect of the setting of early Church.  “The political unity wrought by the Roman Empire,” writes Gonzalez, “allowed the early Christians to travel without having to fear bandits or local wars.”[7]  And the fourth aspect—closely associated with the political landscape—was the aspect of religion.  The Romans incorporated the religion of the locals into their own religious system, something that allowed the early Church to function with little problem.[8]  The early Church was seen as simply a Jewish sect, and the Jewish religion was already accepted as an acceptable (all though somewhat rebellious) religion.  However, this was not to last and eventually the Romans took issue with Christianity’s exclusive views and failure to worship the Roman emperor.[9]
  
            Many, including this author, argue that these aspects were brought together through God’s providence.  The 400 silent years were not inactive years; instead, they were the foundation building that allowed a small group of common people to take the gospel of Jesus to the world. The location in respect to major cities and trade routes, the common language, the relative safety on the roads, the politics, and the synthetic religion of the Roman Empire came together in just such a way that the early Church could get a foothold that might have been impossible at any earlier time.
          
BIBLIOGRAPHY
González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984.

Mounce, William D. Greek for the Rest of Us: Using Greek Tools Without Mastering 
     Biblical Languages. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2003.

     [1] The Apocrypha and other writings of the period record the historical events of the period but the Church has no canonical documents from this time that carry the authority of God.  
     [2] Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 7.
     [3] Ibid, 14.   
     [4] Ibid, 8, 14.
     [5] Ibid, 12. 
     [6] William D. Mounce, Greek for the Rest of Us: Using Greek Tools Without Mastering Biblical Languages (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2003), 3.  
     [7] Gonzalez, 14.
     [8] Ibid, 15.
     [9] Ibid.  

*This post was, in its entirety or in part, originally written in seminary in partial fulfillment of a M.Div. It may have been redacted or modified for this website. 

** Photo is in the public domain, photographer is unknown.