What God has joined together

Matt 19:3-6: “The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?"4 And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,'5 "and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?6 "So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

Is there ever a reason to break your promise before God? Is there any way around the reality of what God’s law says? From the day we are born we as humans try to look for ways around doing the hard things in life. Anyone with kids can vouch for this fact, in that kids will always find exceptions and backdoors to circumvent what you tell them. You may tell a child, “clean your room”. Hours go by and the room is remains unclean; however, their excuse is, “you did not specifically tell me when to clean the room.” Children always have a rebellious streak in them. The problem is that adults do too. Adults are just big versions of kids that also want things their way and will twist the circumstance or the scriptures to meet their own needs. It is like saying, I am going to treat you anyway I want to because the scripture says you have to forgive me. No, God will not be mocked and the love of Jesus would never manifest itself that way in a Christ-follower.

The Pharisees ask Jesus about the sacred covenant of marriage and wanted to see if there was anyway around the word of God. They were trying to trick Jesus into going against what the Law of Moses said. If Jesus would say that disregarding the wife of their youth was an acceptable practice, then He would have gone against the word of God. God’s word is to be simply followed. The more we try to rationalize our behavior the deeper into sin we get. We think that we might outsmart God, as if we are justified to disobey. Oswald Chambers quipped, "Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey It." Even Jesus asked the question, have you not read? They knew what God’s word said, and after Jesus answered the question they asked then why did God allow divorce? Jesus answered, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery."

Jesus answered the crowd with the very sin that they were committing. It was because of their hard hearts that they tried to trick Jesus, and it was because of their hard hearts that God granted divorce. God’s word is not to be used and twisted for our own gain, it is to be followed. Andrew Murray said, "Just as a servant knows that he must first obey his master in all things, so the surrender to an implicit and unquestionable obedience must become the essential characteristic of our lives."

Tomorrows Readings:
Old Testament: Exod. 16-18 New Testament Matt 19:16-30