Tag: divorce

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Missional detour to talk divorce.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

“When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went down to the region of Judea east of the Jordan River. Large crowds followed him there, and he healed their sick. Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason?” Matthew‬ ‭19‬:‭1‬-‭3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Matthew, being a disciple of Christ, and the “disciple of detail,” captures and compares the moments of Jesus’ mission and contrasts that with our incessant need to preserve our loopholes.

We all have our heart detours to get around the principles and the will of God. What do I mean? Matthew clearly tells us that Jesus was busy fulfilling his purpose and mission from God. Jesus stated before, he was here for the sick – and were not talking purely physical illness. “Large crowds followed!” Why? Because humanity has a lot of needs – we suffer! And, Jesus being Jesus, He healed them. On mission – exhausting work, but WORTH IT! The very next scene appears to be in direct conflict with Jesus’ mission. But maybe it’s not?

Religious leaders also show up, but they don’t show up needy or appear to be suffering. They are sick as well, but don’t know it. They come with tests, traps and spiritual controversies. They have obviously thought through their questions carefully, choosing the ones that would catch Jesus conflicting or twisting God’s own rules.

The Pharisees bring up an interesting question, one that is both very old, yet very current even today! DIVORCE. Oh, the learned, crafty men don’t ask about the pain and suffering of divorce. They don’t ask about the division of families or leaving women destitute after the marriage ends. They don’t even talk about the deep shame of relational failure – when one or both men and women have to live with or hide away in their souls. They want to know if it is permissible, if it’s acceptable to get around or get away with breaking one of God’s earliest relationship rules. That’s why Jesus made a quick joke about the question. “Oh, you haven’t read the scriptures,” Jesus says, trying not to smirk a wry smile. Oh, they knew the one Jesus was referring to. The Genesis 2:24 reference, the “leave and cleave” idea, often still used in many marriage ceremonies. The whole idea of marriage between a man and a woman is this idea of becoming one! They are united, together, a beautiful blending of wills and ways in body and soul. One can imagine the pain and suffering after tearing a whole and unified person apart. Physically, it would be excruciating and it would be a miracle if both halves survived. It is as dangerous and rare as separating conjoined twins! However, that’s not what the Pharisee’s were asking. And that’s not what they wanted Jesus to talk about. No, they were more interested in Moses’ loophole around God’s will, His intent in marital relationships.

Moses, the superhero, the patriarch and leader who brought Israel out of slavery. The man who met with God, talked with God and brought the “big-ten” commands of God down from the mountain. It was this Moses that gave the “command,” allowing a bill of divorce. Yep, in Deuteronomy 24:1 Moses writes his own commentary on getting out of a marriage! Of course, Moses had just finished telling the Israelites about the seriousness of making a vow and keeping a promise. But then he immediately tells the men how to get out of their own marriage vow. For starters, Moses may have referred to fraud in the marriage vow, it certainly wasn’t adultery because that was punishable by death! If you read the verse, it does seem very pro-male and disrespectful to women, “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…”

The Pharisees mistakenly quote Moses’ allowance as a LAW! Jesus, who is the best possible authority on giving truth and commentary about all things, corrects the misinformation that permeated the religious culture in that day. Jesus takes time away from one mission, while the crowd has gathered, seeking and hoping for healing, to another mission. To try to admonish and correct faulty theology and practices of the religious leaders. This was grace extended, to them and corrective truth, to any who would be trying to use the Moses’ loophole to hastily justify divorce and destruction of families.

Jesus spoke right to their own hearts, saying, “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” Notice the liberal use of “you,” and “your”? It was absolutely true then as it is still today – divorce is awful, messy and expensive for husbands and wives. It is devastating when children are involved. If you, family or friends have been through divorce, you know it’s true. There is no need for shame, but we should quit pretending it’s a good thing, an easy thing. Please don’t minimize or idolize divorce. It’s hard. It’s emotional. It’s traumatic. But it should never be trivialized! I don’t just say this just because it’s true. I say this because I am the product of multiple divorces in my family – both birth family and adoptive family. I count four of them!

Prayer

Dad,
You’ve tried explaining that we hard hearts and stubborn desires to get what we want. But it feels so odd that in this story, Jesus us healing those in pain on one hand and begging people to quit causing pain on the other! We must be quite the oblivious spectacle to look down on. Help us. Forgive us. Thank you that your mercies are new every morning, because we are a big bunch of sin-spenders!

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Is God a prude?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

“You have heard the law that says, ‘A man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a written notice of divorce.’ But I say that a man who divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman also commits adultery.” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭31‬-‭32‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Only God would go where mortal men fear. This is Jesus, the revolutionary, speaking out on issues that were never spoken about in public. Jesus, being the light of the world, drags the deeds only done in darkness, only whispered behind closed doors, out into the open. No one exposes sin better than God. Is God a prude? Hardly.

He not only created us, but he also gave humans the free will to be and explore everything on the planet as well as everything about our own human body, soul and spirit. However, freedom doesn’t mean exploitation. Freedom doesn’t mean satisfying oneself at the expense and destruction of another. God is far more like a parent than he is catholic school teacher. He loves us.

Jesus dives into the most destructive side of our free will, exposing the dark and callous desires of our unbridled souls. Jesus just finished talking about adultery and put a hard stop on the issue of “thoughts verses physical deeds.” We all know that thoughts, good or bad, lead to behaviors. We do as we think about doing.

Here’s a thought Jesus pulled from our secret souls, “we don’t get to fantasize about destroying relationships by ‘having your way’ with whatever we set our eyes on!” Boom. That’s right. There are selfish sins against God and there’s a bunch of them against each other. The big TEN commandments were boundaries to PROTECT and preserve our relationship with God and one another. In fact four of the rules are about God, six are about each other.

These discussions in Matthew about relationship in sexual desire and covenant commitments in marriage are both about boundaries and behaviors. Yes, men were primarily called out and held responsible because, at that time, they were in power and the main offenders of these rules. God seriously and deeply cares about relationships, and Jesus highlights a couple of our major missteps in how we handle each other. No, a man or woman does not get to mentally strip, invade and exploit another human being just for fun! Neither do we get to make cheap promises.

Jesus goes after the frivolous way we treat our commitments, our covenants between a man and a woman. Moses wrote about a legal way to dissolve a marriage (Deut 24‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭NLT‬‬), although we’ve got to keep in mind, God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16). He HATES everything that is destructive to our relationships! Come on, are we not smart enough to figure out the never ending cycles of pain, suffering and financial ruin of our lives that come with divorce? Have we not seen the massive, deep hurts we deposit into children’s lives by dismembering their most trusted bond between their parents? Do we not recognize an entire generation of fatherless children because our parents were so self absorbed to just do whatever they felt like doing? Why are we mad at God and blame him for being a prude when we are obviously so foolish and blind to our own destructive desires and behaviors?

I am not an expert on divorce by any means. However, I had to pick up the broken shards of fragile glass in my own soul. My family, my heritage is littered with divorce and remarriage! My own adopted mother, searching for true love, safety and belonging went shopping for a man FOUR times. With her last attempt at relationship, she just gave up on the covenant of marriage and allowed a live-in looser to suck her life and finances dry for over a decade! I believe that Jesus is not only speaking TRUTH, he is also saving us from the LIES we tell ourselves and others. Here’s the facts, adultery and divorce destroys relationships and are toxic and deadly to everyone involved.

Prayer

Dad,
Forgive us oh God for we know what we do and what harm it causes, but we want to do it anyways. Save our children from our selfish foolishness.

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What Jesus saw.

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue, he saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!” Then he touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God! But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” Luke‬ ‭13:10-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. He sees a woman walking, bent over, making her way through the people. She was there to listen to the word of God on the Sabbath as well. Doctor Luke, extraordinarily writes a diagnosis IN the storyline. The woman was crippled, not from a physical cause, nor from some genetic disposition, but from an evil spirit who had wormed their way in to torture her EVERYDAY for 18 years. She had not stood up straight because of a demon messing with her for all this time – who knew? Jesus did. Jesus sees this stuff. No one else saw it. Get this, this gal was most likely a regular at the synagogue! Wait, I thought demons couldn’t stand being in church, being around the reading of God’s word? Well this one did and he had been getting away with it for a very long time.

Think about something terrible that happened 18 years ago. A broken bone that never healed. An abuse or attack on your body that no one ever knew about. You’ve carried it, bent over in soul and spirit, You’ve got a noticeable, physical limp. Or, even deep emotional limp that people can’t see. You go about your life, secretly carrying this ailment, but no one even knows about it. Jesus does. Jesus sees stuff we don’t! Jesus notices a limp, a broken heart, a damaged soul. We look around and see a woman bent over, struggling and feel pity, maybe even nicknaming her, “there’s ol’ doubled-over-Donna,” or something similar.

Jesus saw her and called her over. He made her hobble over to himself. Jesus did not want this to be a quiet, don’t draw attention to her moment. She had to shuffle over to him! No one knew the cause of her problem, they didn’t need to. Jesus, gently speaks to her and tells her she is healed of her sickness. Jesus uses this word, apoluó, release (discharge). Like Jesus was setting her free. Interestingly enough, this word is normally used in a DIVORCE context! It’s like Jesus told her and the evil spirit, “I am pronouncing a divorce from this demon! Take a hike, split, un-cleave, leave and never return – demon! Then he touched her and immediately she stood up straight.

Would you show up to church if this was going on in the service? What if you’d been tormented by physical or spiritual harassment? I’d go for that.

The synagogue leader was furious and said the wildest thing ever, “I don’t want anyone coming in here on the Sabbath to “work” a healing. You can come any of the other six days, but this day is so holy, God doesn’t want to stoop down to take time on HIS day off!” This religious guy is WHACK! The synagogue is for the sick and the healthy. And, the gathering of God’s people, the Church, is the perfect and appropriate place for the broken and the well! We should not only see hurting people as Jesus sees them, we should call them over and speak DISCHARGE from spirits or physical ailments dragging them down and holding them hostage.

Prayer

Dad,
Wow. We’ve really drifted off your ways. Our gatherings, our church services don’t even have time to really SEE people. We could have a doubled-over Donna in our church and just barely have pity, let alone have the faith to release them from their pain and tortured life. Help us God! Help us to get back to seeing things as you see them. And give us faith to make them look more like heaven than earth. The Kingdom of God is here, we should act like it.

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Sister wives and impolite dinner conversations.

Reading Time: 3 minutes 
“During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what fickle Israel has done? Like a wife who commits adultery, Israel has worshiped other gods on every hill and under every green tree. I thought, ‘After she has done all this, she will return to me.’ But she did not return, and her faithless sister Judah saw this. She saw that I divorced faithless Israel because of her adultery. But that treacherous sister Judah had no fear, and now she, too, has left me and given herself to prostitution.” Jeremiah‬ ‭3:6-8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God speaks to Jeremiah and it sounds like an episode from Sister Wives. God uses massive marriage, family and sisterhood language to explain just how inappropriate and hurtful are His own people, His chosen people are behaving towards him.

This passage reminds me of a couple of other Bible stories where the writers use very real, very course language to describe Israel’s sin. One is in Ezekiel 23, the other is the book of Hosea. It is interesting and disturbing that God would use and had to use such vivid, x-rated imagery to communicate Israel’s complete rejection of His love and care for them.

This was NOT polite dinner conversations! Oftentimes, parents today will not let their children read these Bible stories until they are old enough to understand the true consequences of choices and real and long lasting effects of sin.

God says, Israel has been having open love affairs with idols – actual wooden poles and stone figurines. Now, they weren’t having physical sex, but they were certainly giving themselves away in every other way. These idols, although dead, inanimate objects someone had a reputation for being really needy. They needed cash, fresh fruits, veggies and meat. They needed constant attention and in extreme cases demanded a human sacrifice for time to time, normally one of their children.

God told Jeremiah he thought Israel would go off, sow some wild oats and then come home, come back to Himself. Well Israel didn’t return and God served them divorce papers – God was done with that side of the family. But worse, Judah, the “other sister,” copied Israel’s behavior and just gave up the monogamous relationship all together.

It was through this long history of heartbreak that God shows us who we really are when we have full free choice! We all, like dogs in heat, just run off to find pleasure or “freedom” anywhere we can. This is Us! Read the rest of this story and you’ll see just how tiring it was for God to continue to pursue a people who were constantly running away from Him – not towards Him. These cycles of selfish pursuit are stories of God’s own chosen group, not some Philistine, Canaanite or Assyrian folks. Those people were KNOWN violent, brutal, highly immoral people. Yet, they weren’t any worse than Israel and Judah! When there’s no clear difference in the way God’s people live from the non-believers of God, there’s a serious problem, right?

Prayer

Dad,
Wow. We are a piece of work! History certainly does repeat itself. All I can think of is this impolite dinner talk being the real picture of what Paul said to the churches in Rome, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Oftentimes I think of the small sins and offenses and think, “I’m not that bad.” Then I read of the folks who regularly cheated on you and profaned your gifts of mercy, and remember “oh yeah, that’s in my heart as well.” I’m really humbled that I have to be reminded of how bad, how desperately wicked is my wandering soul, unchecked by your Holy Spirit! Forgive me. Forgive us as the Church.