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Moses-worship, Polygyny and “Paperwork” : Beware of Today’s Judaizers

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PolygynyII
by Standerinfamilycourt.com

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.

 Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision;  for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,  although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh.
(PHILIPPIANS 3:1-4)

When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’  you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman.   Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’   He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.
(DEUTERONOMY 17:14-17)

There are those so deeply wounded by the disintegration of morality, culture and society that they don’t join the rest of us in believing that the arrival of the Messianic Covenant through Christ’s baptism, ministry, death and resurrection is such a good thing.   Perhaps they didn’t get the memo that the Mosaic Covenant was only conditional (with Israel and Judah both flunking the test) and was established on a temporary basis, to be fully replaced by a far superior unconditional covenant that cannot be broken by God, no matter how many times we humans fail to keep up our end.    You cannot tell these people this, however — and we’ve exhaustively tried, Lord knows!   If they accept the idea of the Messianic Covenant completely replacing the Mosaic Covenant at all, they insist that it wasn’t in effect until after Christ’s resurrection, therefore He couldn’t possibly have been abrogating any part of the law of Moses, especially  the part where Jesus flatly stated that it is not possible for men to dissolve holy matrimony, nor has it ever been possible for men to do so.  (Matthew 19:6,8)

These folks are easy enough to spot.   They read the Sermon on the Mount as though Matt. 5:17 is the only verse contained therein.   They piously call El Elyon, “YAH”, and behave as though it’s an unspeakable abomination for the rest of us uncircumcised Philistines to do otherwise.   Whereas, Jesus ben Joseph repeatedly told the assembled crowd on the hill, “it is written….BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…” on everything from taking one’s own revenge, to adultery and divorce, to character assassination and swearing oaths,  their synthesized  “Yashua” couldn’t possibly have contradicted Moses, nor have countermanded that rock-striker with any higher authority which abrogated one jot or tittle of Mosaic regulations.    They are all things Jewish at all times, except when it comes to kiddushin tradition and the ketubah (curiously enough).

To date, we’ve discovered that these neo-Judaizers come in two varieties, both of which stand in utter rebellion to Christ’s authority to change the morals of marriage (more accurately, to enforce what was from the beginning, from the Garden, but was distorted over the centuries following Moses’ death by the same sort of Pharisees.)

The Paperwork Crowd
The first group insists that Jesus was not re-establishing the absolute, no-excuses prohibition on divorce and remarriage that the Pharisees had ignored from Malachi’s mouth.    Citing Deuteronomy 24:1-4, Jeremiah 3:8 and Isaiah 50:1, they claim that’s it’s simply a matter of not “neglecting the paperwork”,  whereby they claim (without scriptural support) that the holy matrimony bond is “dissolved” by  said paper.     We’ll take a closer look at that theory in a moment.    This group rejects outright what Jesus said in Matthew 19:6, 8 and Paul echoed in Romans 7:2-3 and 1 Corinthians 7:39 about the holy matrimony not being severable by any act of men other than physical death.   They are, in effect,  creating a state of serial polygamy based on Torah, while not necessarily embracing the practice of concurrent polygamy.

The Polygyny Crowd
The second group says it is not necessary to disobey God and divorce the wife of your youth in order to take another because there’s supposedly no prohibition against men who are not clergy taking more than one wife in concurrent polygamy.    They, of course point to Abraham, Jacob, Elkanah, David and Solomon, and make a couple of unsupported claims about Old Testament saints, including the prophets Ezra and Hosea.  This group mostly accepts that holy matrimony bonds are indissoluble by men, but  they refuse to accept Christ’s description in Matthew 19:6 and Paul’s echoing description in Ephesians 5:31 that the one-flesh state is supernatural and instantaneous (instead of gradual and physical), created only by God, and exists only with one living partner at a time, one’s first (or covenant) partner, until death.

( FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC: Our “hat-tip” to Jan, a commenter on one of our previous blog posts for this example link.  Whenever we link to heretical pieces like this, we do so with much fear and trembling,  but we believe most readers are readily able to see that in five tedious installments, this ear-tickling blogger utterly failed to prove that polygyny is “biblical” with actual scripture, as opposed to mere narrative examples, in a way that overcomes all that Jesus and Paul taught to the contrary.   He makes several unsupported historical statements as well.)

Normally, when we have debunked the appeals to Old Testament polygamy in the past, it was in response to conventional Christians seeking to rationalize remarriage adultery, a la David and Bathsheba.    They personally have no intent to engage in concurrent polygamy themselves.   They much prefer the serial variety of polygamy as their way of avoiding taking up the cross of Christ and carrying it, when the secular dissolution machine purports to “dissolve” their covenant marriage, or when they wish that machine really had the power to do so, due to some actual or perceived deficiency in the spouse of their youth.   Obviously, most of the same scriptural principles apply, regardless of the motives for appealing to Old Testament polygamy practices, except that in the conventional group they infer that the “permission” or “grace” is on a unisex basis, when in fact, it’s Christ’s absolute prohibition that is on a unisex basis.   (But those are volatile “fighting words” to the randy Judaizer who is the actual subject of this post, who insists that the rules of morality remain looser for men than for women, since it’s hard to deny that they were so under Moses.)

So, to what type of person are these cultish Torah-based twin  theories more attractive than the gospel and commandments of Jesus Christ?    We have a pretty good feel for this, because so many of them have trolled our pages from their earliest days, challenging our message.   Most of them are young males whose covenant wife has unilaterally divorced them for another man.   They feel humiliated (one even referred to himself as “cuckolded”) and feel the only way to rectify that humiliation is to enter into an adulterous relationship in retaliation.   Only, that offends their spirituality, so they shop for a system that accommodates their lust “scripturally”.   When you inform them that their covenant marriage tie is only severed by death, not their wife’s court papers, you hear, “that’s OK, she divorced me, I didn’t divorce her.   I now have a second wife by common law, and my bible says it’s OK since she (#2) has never been another man’s wife.”    They point out that because women were made by God for men, and not the other way around, men have more liberty to replace their wife than women have to replace their husband.   They insist that adultery by men has always been defined according to Deuteronomy, as marrying  another man’s estranged wife, while adultery for women is defined as remarrying at all (since Jesus didn’t specifically say “whoever marries a divorced man commits adultery.”)

The polygyny heresy also appeals to a handful of wounded women.   Typically they are young women standing for their covenant marriage which is intact but hanging by a thread, whose husband won’t live with them (or has threatened to abandon them) unless they tolerate his ongoing adultery with this second “wife” with whom he’s cohabiting.    These women are being literally blackmailed emotionally, and they so lack in a real relationship with the Bridegroom that their lecherous husband remains their idol.   Finding false comfort in “Torah” seems less demanding than persevering in the spiritual battle of prayer and fasting necessary to wrestle their husband out of his lascivious self-worship.
In an even  stranger twist, we recently encountered an adult child raised in a remarriage adultery home whose parent is now under conviction to divorce out of that immoral union, and remain unmarried or be reconciled to their covenant spouse.    This child is resentful of the repenting divorce, and since the genders fit, is insisting that the second “marriage” isn’t adulterous because Jesus “never condemned polygyny.”    With more false teachers cutting heretic videos and posting them to youtube (such as this one – who needs to publicly apologize for his recent “public apology”),  and as the numbers of repenting prodigals continues to grow, the emotional upheaval experienced by their young adult children is likely to cause us to see even more deceived Torah observers.

A closer look at the “paperwork” heresy….
Adherents to this theory claim that with what Matthew quoted Jesus as saying in chapters 5 and 19, He was only condemning the “putting away” of the wife of one’s youth if she was not given a certificate of divorce so that she would be legally and morally able to remarry.   According to them, Jesus was counting it “cruel” not to leave the rejected wife in a position to have another husband.   They base this theory on what they claim is a difference in word usage, i.e. that the Hebrew “shalach” / Greek “apoluo” is immoral abandonment or enslavement to polygyny which exploits the wife, but the Hebrew “kerithuth” / Greek “apostasion” is the “compassionate divorce” of which Jesus “approves.”    They are fond of claiming that Jesus only used the term “shalach” when condemning divorce and calling subsequent remarriage adultery, since the Greek translated word is “apoluo” in the passages of the three gospels that recorded His teaching on this.

It should be readily apparent what is wrong with this heresy without going too deeply into the word study, but we’ll do so anyway.

Here is an inventory of all the Hebrew and Greek words for “divorce” or “putting away” used in either the Old or New Testaments, along with their bible dictionary meanings.

Etymology of Divorce

If according to Paul Simon, there’s “50 ways to leave your lover”, Sharon Henry points out that there’s a good 65 ways the Greeks divorced….
65 Greek Ways to Divorce

Sharon further points out that in Graeco-Roman society, a document was not strictly necessary for civil dissolution.    This information might reasonably be seen as supporting the theory that Jesus was rebuking this practice, but here are the top ten reasons it’s more clear that this was NOT Christ’s intended message:

10.  Jesus was speaking in either Aramaic or Hebrew when He delivered this message, not Greek, to which His words were later translated.  We do not have the Hebrew manuscript, only the Greek translation, but even so….

9.   As noted by the asterisks (*) in the chart above, Jesus apparently used the Hebrew equivalents of BOTH terms in each of the Matthew passages, as well as the Mark 10 passage, based on the same logic as 10.  and the translated Greek words that appear there….

8.  Which would make perfect sense, inasmuchas  “shalach” is the verb or action,  and  “kerithuth” is (properly speaking) the instrument by which the “shalach” is carried out in Hebrew culture.

7.  The entire context of Matthew 5:31-32 is being shamelessly ignored by this “putting away” theory:

“It was said, ‘Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce’;  BUT I SAY TO YOU that EVERYONE who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

(Notice that Jesus did not say, “whoever marries a divorced woman who lacks a writ of divorcement commits adultery.”   Also notice that no marriage can possibly be half-adulterous.   If it’s adulterous for the gander, it’s equally adulterous for the (adequately-papered) goose and vice-versa.   “BUT I SAY TO  YOU” should speak for itself coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ.)

6.  Ditto for the entire context of  Matthew 19:8-9, which we’ll have to look at in the King James Version due to bible translation fraud in all the contemporary English versions….

He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but FROM THE BEGINNING IT WAS NOT [ever] SO.   And I SAY UNTO YOU, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

5.  Matthew makes it clear to the unbiased reader that Jesus was neither agreeing with Rabbi Hillel nor with Rabbi Shammai, per the disciples’ astounded reaction in verse 10,  yet this heresy would actually be confirming both erring Pharisees.

The disciples *said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”

4.  That said, women were never empowered under Hebrew law to issue a “get” or a writ of divorcement, but that doesn’t stop the neo-Judaizers from insisting that this heresy applies equally to both genders.

3.  One of the professed justifications of this paperwork theory is that Jesus purportedly agreed with Moses that it was “inhumane” to prevent a repudiated, discarded wife from finding another husband.  This is in direct conflict with Matthew 19:12.

For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.

(The T.O.’s would naturally argue here that with the proper paperwork, there’s still a loophole for those who are unable to “accept this”. )

2.  While it’s clear the only verse in Matthew 5 the T.O.’s are “feeling” is verse 17, this heresy denies the entire context of Christ’s abrogation of less-than-moral, less-than-holy Mosaic regulations of every type, and His intrinsic authority to change the rules.

…and finally, the Number 1 reason Jesus never said people could “paper over” their covenant-breaking…

1.  The paperwork heresy directly conflicts with the Creational truth Jesus called us back to in Matthew 19:6, bypassing Moses altogether:

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Man’s paper never severs the one-flesh state.   Only death does that.

 

…And, a  closer look at the polygyny heresy:
Today’s neo-Judaizers are indeed correct about one thing, at least:   Centuries of Hebrew natural law permitted polygyny while forbidding polyandry.   Bloodlines and inheritance were important issues in Hebrew society, as was the importance of male heirs to continue the family line.    It does not follow from this, however, that Jesus agreed with Moses,  nor does it follow that He did not radically change the sexual morality necessary to claim an inheritance in the kingdom of God.    It was He, after all,  who bluntly stated:

For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:20)

 

As pointed out in an earlier post,  according to Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda,  “as the civilization of the people reached a higher plateau and, especially under the teaching of the prophets, the Jewish people’s moral and religious consciousness developed, the polygamous marriage system gradually declined. This is noticeable in Israel after the return from the Exile.”

None of this stops those who push the serial polygamy of legalized adultery from appealing to the concurrent polygyny system of ancient Hebrew society, while being so bold as to seek to justify adulterous remarriage  equally for both genders while their covenant spouses still live!

We should understand that as morally repugnant as concurrent polygamy is,  it is legalized adultery without the additional immoralities of economic abandonment and ongoing unforgiveness that is intrinsic to serial polygamy.

For some time, we’ve been following the case of the Mormon polygamous family featured on the reality show “Sister Wives” because, emboldened by the immoral state and Federal court rulings that installed sodomous “marriage” as a protected legal status,  they brought a religious discrimination lawsuit seeking to change the bigamy laws of the state where they reside.    This case appeared to have much stronger constitutional merit than the gay cases, but just this past week the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the appeal from a lower court who tossed the case because they said that Kody Brown was in no danger of being arrested due to general non-enforcement of the relevant laws in that state.     Had it gone the other way, the Mormons and the Muslims would soon lead the way for the final destruction of U.S. society as we’ve known it.    The legalized adulterers who glibly appeal to this system to justify their own sinful state will have received far more than they bargained for, were it not for God’s extreme mercy to the nation this week.

It actually turns out that the #1 slap-down of the polygyny heresy is the same as that for the “paperwork” heresy discussed above.    When confronted by the divorce-and-remarriage-happy Pharisees who were also hoping to inflame the adulterous King Herod against Him,  Jesus was asked to choose whether He would side with the liberal followers of Rabbi Hillel, or with the conservative followers of Rabbi Shammai — both of whom were wrong for presuming that anything but death dissolves a one-flesh, God-joined state of holy matrimony, and were appealing to Moses’ attempts to regulate the various deviancies that surfaced (concubinage, polygyny, etc.)
Jesus would have none of it, including the appeal to Mosaic law.   It was as if the Pharisees weren’t listening to a thing He had earlier said when He delivered the Sermon on the Mount.    He had already declared a new order,  which God ordained would replace the Mosaic Covenant entirely with the Messianic Covenant which His ministry had ushered in, beginning with His cousin, John-the-Baptizer who had recently called out Herod’s remarriage adultery on this same basis and authority.

Jesus, as we know, refused to couch the conversation in anything Moses had to say at all about regulating marriage, since most of it was irrelevant to the new Messianic order in which He had come to restore things back to the way they were before the fall of man in the Garden.     Hence, He declared both Hillel and Shammai  wrong, and referred back instead to Moses’ account of the first wedding in Genesis 2:21-24.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.   The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Jesus echoed Moses in His response to those He called the “blind guides” (whom the Judaizers insist we should still be following)…

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

In Mark 10:11-12, Jesus went a step further in abolishing even the gender-based aspects of the morally-bankrupt Mosaic system, when He declared lifelong indissoluble, monogamous holy matrimony henceforth to be a unisex proposition:

And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her;  and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

Paul, who tells us in Galatians 1:11-18, that he spent 3 years with the resurrected Jesus in the Arabian desert, echoed Jesus (Galatians 3:28)  in eliminating the gender-based differences in sexual morality:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.


How then can any form of polygamy fit with what Christ and Paul both said concerning the one-flesh aspect of the holy matrimony of our youth, that being a supernatural bond which is not replicated in subsequent unions for as long as our covenant spouse is alive?     Jesus told us this was “from the beginning”, hence it is not compatible with the practice of any form of polygamy.   Indeed, the supernatural, God-joined one-flesh state, which is severable only by death, is what gives rise to all subsequent unions constituting serial polygamy.   In the case of the bible’s concurrent polygynists such as Jacob, David, Solomon, Elkanah, etc. , they were only made one-flesh with their original wife, and each lived in carnality with all of the others, from the beginning.

We should say before wrapping up, that Messianic congregations which celebrate the rich Hebrew heritage and which stick to their very valid mission of drawing Jewish people to true Christian discipleship add so much to our modern walk.    Even though most follow Rabbi Shammai instead of Jesus Christ when it comes to man’s divorce and attempts at “remarriage”, they are not who we’re talking about in this post.    The sins of those Messianic congregations are remarkably similar to the Baptists or Pentecostals in that regard, and we’ve blogged extensively on such. Whereas neo-Judaizers tend to be churchless altogether, some even vainly imagining that their website is a “church”,  because they not only will not submit to Christ’s authority, they will not submit to any human authority.    

Both varieties of neo-Judaizers reject Christ’s message from the Sermon on the Mount, but they hide behind Matthew 5:17  as a mechanism for denying that this is what they are actually doing.  Those who hold to Torah Observance  (a.k.a the “Hebrew Roots Movement”) for the purpose of justifying these lustful practices cannot truthfully claim to be following Christ at all – the One Who said,

 If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.   If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.
(Matthew 5:29-30)

Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.  If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.
(Matthew 18:7-10, repeated, Mark 9:42-47 in the same context)

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.  But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.  Accordingly, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed upon the housetops.

I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!
(Luke 12:1-5)

They are, in fact, thoroughly denying and rebelling against His authority in these matters.    So how exactly did Jesus Christ fulfill the law in a way that sharply contrasts with the heresy of the neo-Judaizers who worship their distorted view of Moses?   We leave the reader with these words of Jesus:

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.  One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him,   “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 

 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the great and foremost commandment.   The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
(Matthew 22: 34-41)

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:  We humbly submit that a significant portion of loving our neighbor as ourselves includes an overriding concern for where they will spend their eternity,  for snatching them from the hell flames, far above any concern for their temporal “happiness” or emotions.   Isn’t that what we would ultimately want for ourselves?

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall   |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Church Discipline, citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Divorce, Equal Protection, family law, Fundamental Rights, Lost culture, marriage, Marriage Restoration, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

Let’s Take an AUTHENTIC Stand for Marriage, Christian Right

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NatMarriageWkby Standerinfamilycourt

February 7 – 14 is National Marriage Week.
During this week, there will be much going on that is vital and valuable to our nation, but there will be no getting away from the fact that in the corrupted culture of contemporary evangelicaldom, it will be “finders keepers”, and millions in faux “marriages” which are not holy matrimony, will be encouraged to stay there at the peril of their very souls.  The excellent organization, Breakpoint.org promotes it in this audio link dated January 5, 2017.

Talking about marriage “permanence” is politically acceptable to this crowd, but it will not resolve the nation’s problems because it will not touch the root issue.   Rather, the message needs to be around the far more relevant and offensive topic of holy matrimony indissolubility, according to Matt.19:6,8 and Luke 16:18. This needs to be in the heaven-or-hell terms that Jesus and Paul unflinchingly cast it.

Some crucial topics not likely to be on this year’s agenda:

– When will pastors stop performing weddings that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous (and tell the congregation why) ?

– When will pastors stop signing civil marriage licenses that reflect the only unenforceable contract in American history, and which since 1970, in no way corresponds to Christ’s Matt. 19:4-6 definition of marriage?

– When will pastors stop smearing and stigmatizing the growing stream of true disciples of Jesus Christ who are coming out of adulterous civil unions in order to recover their inheritance in the kingdom of God?
[1 Cor. 6:9-10; Mal. 5:19-21-KJV)

– When will repealing unilateral divorce in all 50 states become as high a moral priority as outlawing the slave trade, or repealing Roe v. Wade, or ending sodomous “marriages” ?

Given what Jesus and Paul both had to say about remarriage adultery (repeatedly by each), true revival when it arrives, is going to look horrifying to the organizers of National Marriage Week, but it will be pleasing to God.   The horror will not be due to the repenting prodigals, but due to five decades of false, hireling shepherds not doing the job the Owner of the fold gave them to safeguard souls first, and then covenant families.

ignatius-antioch

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, Marriage Restoration, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Does Defending Remarriage Adultery Justify Matthew 14:4 Murkiness, Dr. Piper?

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jp_jtbby Standerinfamilycourt

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the news about Jesus,  and said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”

For when Herod had John arrested, he bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip.   For John had been saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.”   Although Herod wanted to put him to death, he feared the crowd, because they regarded John as a prophet.   But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before them and pleased Herod,  so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked.  Having been prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.”    Although he was grieved, the king commanded it to be given because of his oaths, and because of his dinner guests.  He sent and had John beheaded in the prison.   And his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother.   His disciples came and took away the body and buried it; and they went and reported to Jesus.   – Matthew 14: 1-12

This is not the first time it’s seemed necessary to rebut a John Piper blog due to its wrong premises, “creative” scripture interpretation  and erroneous conclusions.    This is unfortunate, because Dr. Piper is one of the few who is adamant that divorce is never justified and that remarriage after divorce is adultery in all cases.    The problem is,  he deems all marriages to be morally equivalent and interchangeable once they do occur, hence he deems it to be a “repeated sin” for a repenting prodigal spouse to divorce out of an adulterous union and reconcile with their true spouse.    This time we find a very interesting Piper theory concerning Matthw 14:4 in his blog post dated January 3, 2017:

Piper writes:

We get a lot of emails on relationships, everything from dating, engagement, marriage, and of course divorce and remarriage. This genre of email dominates all the other questions we get. And we get a lot of good push back emails and follow-up questions in search of greater clarity, like this one from a listener named Matthew: “Pastor John, I have a follow-up to you on episode 920 on divorce. Didn’t John the Baptists want Herod to ditch his wife? Because John had been saying to him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her’ (present tense). See Matthew 14:4. He did not say, ‘It is not lawful for you to have taken her’ (past tense). And we all know how important tense is interpreting the Bible. She is called his wife. So how do you reconcile this seemingly clear call for a married couple to divorce?”

Piper responds:

 There are at least three things in this passage that are unknown to us and that keep me from using the passage to justify divorce. I admit that sometimes divorce for a faithful believer is inevitable, because Paul says so in 1 Corinthians 7:15 when an unbeliever insists on leaving a believer who does everything he or she can to make the marriage work. You can’t stop an unbeliever from doing that and, therefore, divorce as they carry it through may be inevitable. Remarriage in that situation is another issue. We are not talking about that.

(We don’t disagree! — although, all concerned should bear in mind that all divorce is man-made and dissolves precisely nothing, unless the marriage was adulterous to begin with.)

Here come the highly imaginative arguments:

 John the Baptist may have been telling Herod “Get out of the relationship,” not “Get out of the marriage.”

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  Fair enough – the relationship is immoral, and the civil-only purported  “marriage” does not exist in God’s eyes.   We do disagree with the premise of the question, So how do you reconcile this seemingly clear call for a married couple to divorce?”   The objection, of course, is to the loose usage of the term “married couple” for an adulterous union that God didn’t participate in and will never recognize as a marriage.   To claim otherwise accuses a holy God of breaking covenant with the undissolved true marriage, and covenanting with that which His Son repeatedly called adultery.   Both are completely foreign to the holy character of God.
 

 So, let’s go back to this text. The text says, “For Herod had seized John” — John the Baptist — “and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been saying to him, ‘It is not lawful for you to have her’” (Matthew 14:3–4). That is a good translation, by the way. “It is not lawful for you to have her.”

 1. The first thing that is unknown to me is when Herod married his brother’s wife — or if he actually married her.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  We recommend reading the account of the historian, Josephus (Antiquities 18.5.1 109-115), who informs us that Herod divorced his covenant wife to legalize his adultery with Herodias, and Herodias divorced Philip, if you’re at all curious about this.    Why would the king of Judea bother to divorce his true wife if there wasn’t a pressing need to keep up the appearance of “respectability” by legalizing his adultery?


When John says “it is not lawful for you to have her,” is he definitively saying that they are married? Or only that they are sleeping together or living in some kind of common law situation — kind of a situation that looks like marriage just to avoid legal issues? Most commentators document that they were married, but nobody seems to actually put a date on it in relationship to this event. If they weren’t married, then John is saying: Get out of the relationship. Stop sleeping together. Not, get out of a marriage. I don’t know.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  Although most commentators are not entirely trustworthy these days, especially with passages that deal with sexual ethics, or that so much as hint at the sanctity of marriage, in this instance however they are clearly not pulling a speculation out of the air, due to the historical records.    It is you, Dr. Piper, who is doing the unnecessary speculating.   And adulterous remarriage is not actually “marriage”.

 

 2. The second thing that is uncertain is this: let’s just suppose they were married. The second thing that is uncertain is whether John is actually saying that the marriage should end. He is saying: It is unlawful for you to have her. You sinned in marrying her, if he married her. But it may also be unlawful to throw her out after she had been married to another man and therefore make her destitute on Jewish principle since she can’t go back to that first husband. It is not crystal clear from this text that John is saying ditch her.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  The man didn’t lose his head for saying, “that’s OK, we’ll work it out somehow.   Why don’t you just repent in your heart?  It will be fine, don’t worry.”   Nor did he risk his head for something trivial that wasn’t a heaven-or-hell issue.    John the Baptist, we know from scripture, was filled with the Holy Spirit while still in the womb.   Surely he would have known that Jesus would be abrogating the limited-application Mosaic regulation that prohibited some Jewish husbands from taking some Jewish wives back.   Even if he didn’t, there’s strong evidence that post-marital adultery was never in the scope of this rule under Moses.

 

 3. But now, let us suppose that John was actually saying: end the marriage. And let’s suppose they were married. So, two uncertainties — we will just assume both of them are true.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  We must respectfully disagree that either of the two items referenced are “uncertainties”, so it’s good that you are assuming they are both true !

The third thing that is uncertain is whether he is saying this because the unlawfulness of the marriage is owing to the fact that she was married before or at the same time or that she was the wife of his brother which, according to Old Testament law, would make the second marriage incestuous, like marrying your sister or your sister-in-law or your daughter. So, Leviticus 18:16 says, “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife; it is your brother’s nakedness.” Or Leviticus 20:21, “If a man lies with his uncle’s wife, he has uncovered his uncle’s nakedness; they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless.”

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  Now here’s where it makes sense to presume that both assumptions are true because they both actually are true, and both clearly create unlawful conditions.   At the same time, incest is not a reason specifically cited by Paul as costing one’s inheritance in the kingdom of God, though most surely it does.   But Jesus defined adultery three different times as marrying someone else’s God-joined spouse, while both 1 Corinthian 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 tell us explicitly that adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God.   How can John reasonably be seen as NOT telling them to terminate this immoral relationship?

 

 Piper: “I don’t think Matthew 14:4 can be used in any ordinary situation to justify divorce.”

 Frankly — and this kind of boils down to the practical reality — I have never in all my pastoral life been confronted with a situation in which a man had married his sister or sister-in-law. It is difficult to know what I would say about the ongoing reality and propriety of that marriage. My inclination, not having faced it and not having thought more than a little about it, is that I probably would say the marriage should end, the way I would if the man was found to have married his own daughter. But those are such extraordinary cases that I would be very hesitant to build a case in favor of divorce in general upon them.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  Red herring (and nice deflection)!   See above.   (And Lord, for the sake of the very souls of our prodigal spouses, on the day they are moving toward genuine repentance, please, in Jesus’ name, keep them out of Dr. Piper’s counseling seat.   You, Lord, have clearly stated that no ongoing adulterer will have any inheritance in the kingdom of God.) 

 

 So, in view of those three uncertainties at least, I don’t think Matthew 14:4 can be used in any ordinary situation to justify divorce.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC:  It should be clear that there are no actual uncertainties here, and certainly none that aren’t completely moot.   Man’s divorce is meaningless when there is no holy matrimony  in God’s eyes to actually dissolve.   Rather, it’s repentance, which restores full fellowship with God.  To obfuscate the clear meaning of this passage is irresponsible and cowardly, Dr. Piper.   It shows zero regard for the eternities of the souls involved, unlike the other John who laid down his very life to try to rescue those souls!

It’s understandable that men like Piper fear, and do everything they can to forestall the mass-repentance that will one day explode in this area when true revival reaches the shores of America (and other divorce-happy nations) where the church as been an active accomplice in driving up demand for marriage dissolution by rewarding its foul fruit.   That inevitable day will reflect badly on pastors and denominational leadership who created this complex mess, just like it did on the priests in the book of Ezra when they were forced to confront the negative impact of unlawful marriages and purge them.

Dr. Piper’s rhetorical question is the equivalent of asking whether we can use Exodus 20, verses 15 and 17 to justify the return of stolen goods!

Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.  From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.  For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John.   –  Matthew 11:11-13

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Yes, the Tide Indeed Turns in God’s House: Even More Pastoral Courage

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by Standerinfamilycourt

Whom have you so dreaded and feared that you have not been true to Me, and have neither remembered Me nor taken this to heart?   Is it not because I have long been silent that you do not fear Me?
– Isaiah 57:11

The Lord is not being silent any longer on the abomination of serial polygamy, nor legalized adultery in the church.    Just about this time last year, we were delighted to highlight an unusually courageous pastor in Florida, and run his entire 10-week sermon series with only one significant disclaimer.    We became aware of another similarly courageous pastor of a small church in Ohio around the same time, and we corresponded with both these gentlemen on behalf of the marriage permanence community, which is international and growing.    At the time, we thought debunking all the excuses for marrying another person while having a living, estranged spouse, calling it what Jesus called it – adultery, saying there are no “biblical” exceptions, and urging people to sever those false marriages as a matter of heaven or hell, was about as courageous as it gets.

That is, until we caught up with Pastor Phil Schlamp, of Maranatha Evangelical Church in Alberta, Canada.    We believe Pastor Schlamp is the first to go beyond the uncompromised truth on this matter, as addressed to the individuals, to actually take strong exception to  the condoning behavior of Christians who surround remarriage adulterers, including their church family and their extended family who call themselves by the name of Christ.  Indeed, Paul had some rather pointed instructions for these folks, too, which is substantially ignored today.

We are just delighted to bring you Pastor Schlamp’s 5-part sermon series “Divorce: Meet Goliath“, with just a bit of commentary on each installment.

Sermon 1  (10/9/2016) –  Based on Deut. 24:1-4 and Matt. 19: 1-9

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FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

(+)  Refers to the worthy book by Dr. E.S. Williams, The Great Divorce Controversy on relevant church history around sanctity of marriage.

(+)  Is straightforward in pointing out that divorce and remarriage is a sin that sends many to hell.  

(+)  Points out that “allowing” any “exceptions” to the absolute indissolubility of holy matrimony opens the door wide to endless exceptions.

(+) Accurate and concise integration of kiddushin (Hebrew betrothal), whereas most theologians ignore or are dishonestly biased against its relevance to God’s marriage commandments.

(+) Points out accurately from Deut. 22 that even in the Mosaic system (at least while Moses governed)  that consummated holy matrimony cannot be dissolved – in a metaphysical sense as well as a moral sense.

(+) Addresses the contentious issue of whether Moses’ limited divorce allowance was inspired or not, in a way that is compatible with other scripture.

(+) Acknowledges the rampant scripture revision in all of the contemporary English translations, including the mistranslation of “porneia”.

(+) Makes the truthful point that separation is not biblically equivalent to marriage dissolution, in correctly rendering1 Cor. 7.

(+) Emphasizes the crucial hermeneutic principle that unclear scriptures must yield to the clear scriptures, not the other way around.

(+) Accurately refutes the false claim that remarriage is only a one-time act of adultery rather than an ongoing state of sin.

( – )  Failed to consider other types of “some uncleanness” (ervat dabar) in Deut. 24 that would have also led to legal cancellation of the betrothal contract –  for example, consanguinity, or a contacting a disease of uncleanness (leprosy, bleeding disorder, etc. ) that would have been a non-capital reason to have a different law outside Deut. 22 — a minor point.

FB profile 7xtjw SIFC Pointout:   Pastor Schlamp begins to point out at approximately  42 minutes what it is “to meet Goliath” on this journey.

 

 

Sermon 2 (10/16/2016) – Based on Matthew 14:1-12

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FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

(+) Points out that both the conservative and the liberal views of a matter may each fail to reflect the true biblical view.

(+) Explains permissive theology on divorce and remarriage as humanistic,  and contrasts that with theism, the faithful approach which is God-centered.

(+) Accommodations and exceptions allowing divorce eventually have led to unilateral divorce.

(+) Rabbi Hillel was considered “kind” and “compassionate” – he was liberal on divorce and was a humanist.    Points out (correctly) that both Hillel and Shammai were wrong.

(+) Suggests that divorce and remarriage led to the great decline of Judaism.

(+) Gives important church history from the 1st century to the Reformation and its relevance to the apostasy of allowing remarriage in the contemporary evangelical church.

(+) Warns of the corrosive effect Pope Francis is having on the sexual morality of the Roman Catholic Church.

(+) Explains why marriage should not be owned by the civil state, and why the Reformers were wrong to claim that holy matrimony is not a sacrament.

(+) Explains why the Reformation didn’t change the mass practice in the church until the 1950’s.

(+) Accurately connects the high rate of cohabitation with unilateral divorce- on-demand, and with the church’s failure to defend the sanctity of holy matrimony.

( – ) Appears to accept without close examination the view of E.S. Williams that there was a significant time difference between the U.S. and the UK in adopting legalized adultery as a matter of public policy and church doctrine.

 


Sermon 3 (10/30/2016) – Based on Malachi 2:1-16

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FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

(+) Reviews hermeneutics and relevance to rightly dividing God’s word on this topic

(+) Points out the immense contrast between the 1st century church vs. Judaism, which held until 1500 A.D. and the rise of Protestantism.

(+) Re-emphasizes that remarriage after divorce is a state of continual, ongoing adultery.

(+)  Sociological fallout – destruction of  family,  church, culture and finally the country.   High crime against children, the church and the state.

(+)  Younger adults now afraid of marriage as a result of non-binding marriage.  Troubled, drifting and under-achieving.

(+)  How does the bible deal with “blended families”?   Repent!

(+)  Divorce and remarriage literally invites Satan into the church.   Relates the purging of unlawful marriages in the book of Ezra.

(+) Did God reject Israel because of divorce and remarriage?   Malachi 2.

(+)  Last 500 years has put U.S. and western countries back where apostate Israel was in Malachi’s day.   God’s curse is here and now.

(+) Connects modern barbarism with current political quagmire in the U.S. and Canada.   Even animals don’t normally destroy their young.

(+) “Donald Trump wants to make America great again, but doesn’t want to go back to what made America great.”

(+) Correctly diagnoses divorce and remarriage as the root cause of the rise of homosexualism, and blames the Protestant church.

(+) Israel and Rome both fell due to rampant legalized adultery – per Edward Gibbon who was not a Christian.   Britain is in decline along with the U.S. for the same reason.

 

Sermon 4 (11/06/2016) – based on 1 Corinthians 5

P_Schlamp4

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

(+) Explains the connection between legalized adultery and idolatry  – failure to tear down the “high places”.

(+) Admits that conquering “Goliath” will only come through personal suffering.

(+)  Carrying out our responsibility to do something about abominations will rouse “Goliath” against us.

(+)  Renounces civil state authority over marriage – which belongs exclusively to God.

(+/ – )  Deals biblically with the need for the adulterously-“married” to separate from the non-covenant relationship…then proposes that the invalidity of it eliminates the need to get a second divorce, but the relationship itself must be terminated.

(+ / – ) Similarly, reconciling with one’s God-joined spouse does not necessitate civil remarriage because the original joining has never been dissolved.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s additional observation:  Pastor Schlamp is technically correct, according to scripture, in the above two points.    However, we are to look out for our witness and not cause others to stumble, including the covenant and non-covenant children impacted by the reconciliation.  We are also to obey the civil authorities to the extent that doing so does not disobey God.    If unilateral divorce is repealed according the current prayers of the saints, there could be some instances where it may not be possible to obtain a civil divorce from a partner Jesus says is adulterous, and from whom the repenting prodigal has permanently separated in the fear of God.   That partner may well argue, “God hates divorce” without understanding that He said this through Malachi only of the original husband or wife of our youth.   They may be unwilling to enter into a mutually-agreed petition, and may be falsely advised by their pastor that the union is not adultery.    In such cases,  brother Phil’s advice on these points will become very pertinent.    Similarly, in reconciling with the true spouse of our youth, such a pastor is likely to be unwilling to perform a recommitment ceremony, which is, in our opinion, very important for public witness of the righteous reconciliation, not necessarily a “re-joining” of what was never actually severed.     Such a pastor may be unwilling to issue a church certificate without a state license.   State marriage licenses are a bad idea in today’s so-called “no-fault” environment because they become de-facto warrants for state intrusion into the home.   They would be more acceptable under repeal of unilateral divorce, but they would still cede false authority to the state over what belongs exclusively to God.      Where a pastor will not agree to solemnize a recommitment ceremony over the original God-joined holy matrimony vows, we recommend public witnesses, and possibly a house church pastor (although the latter is not strictly necessary).

(+)  Affirms the sure doom and judgment of a nation that refuses to kill “Goliath.”

(+) Affirms that if a repenting spouse’s true husband or wife has civilly remarried, it does not change the imperative to sever their own adultery and remain single or reconcile with the true spouse .

(+)  1 Cor. 7:14 – so powerful is the covenant marriage bond that the laws of holiness and contamination are reversed when one of the partners is in Christ.

(+)  When discipling  new believers who are divorced and remarried, they should not be taken into the church as a couple.  They should be instructed that their marriage is not valid in God’s sight.

(+)  Only reason to divorce is to be civilly eligible to commit adultery through remarriage.

(+) Low morality in the church is almost exclusively due to unwillingness to excommunicate people who violate their covenant marriage.

(+) When church discipline leaves a church, Christ departs with it.

(+)  Family members are not exempt from the instructions in 1 Cor. 5 not to even eat or associate with remarried adulterers, whether the church does so or not.   (This is meeting Goliath).

(+)  Treats as fallacy those who claim that it’s necessary not to shun / separate friends and family members living in sin on the excuse of “winning them back” to Christ.   Freedom to talk about it only diminishes in the absence of shunning — it constitutes the de facto “acceptance” they seek.

(+) Don’t take on Goliath unless you are very sure that what you believe aligns with what God demands.   Be prepared for cursing, slander and rage, and possible wrongful excommunication.

“You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. ”   – 1 Samuel 17


Sermon 5 (11/13/2016) – Ezra 9-10

P_Schlamp5

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s Observations:

In this final installment, we learn what “happening” in Phil’s church triggered this sermon series.   It wasn’t at all what you might think!

(+) Reiterates the need for strong hermeneutics to avoid delusion  — unclear passages must give way to clear passages.

(+) False teachers are gathered by the adulterous to deflect from clear biblical prohibition of excuses and exceptions to marry another after man’s divorce. (“Silence the whistle of our conscience.”)

(+)  Evangelists from D.L. Moody to Ray Comfort won’t address the issue of remarriage being adultery, and this is a fatal flaw in contemporary evangelism.

(+) Hardest sin to remove from the church of any other.   Disdain and contempt for the obedient in separating from these adulterers by the fangs of Goliath.

(+) We no longer tremble at the word of God as Ezra and the priests did.
Action would then follow.   Non-widowed remarriage is today’s unlawful marriage per the commandment of Christ.

(+) Pointed out that the sin was repeated in Nehemiah’s day, only twenty-five years later, then seventy-five years after that in Malachi’s time.   God sent no more prophets for the next 400 years until John the Baptist.

(+) Relates personal extended family circumstances, accused of “inflicting pain” on his family (adulterous siblings).   “Each one of my siblings could change their sinful state in a moment, while I can’t change it no matter how much I want so.  Yet I’m at fault [for the division in the family]?”
(Matthew 10:34-37)

(+) Goliath is a master of emotional manipulation and gas-lighting, once someone crosses the line to take a real stand that costs something.

( – )  Does not suggest some other practical steps that the church could and should take beyond severing fellowship, corporately or as individuals, with remarriage adulterers, such as:  (1) not performing such weddings and (2) not signing civil marriage licenses, with a view toward influencing the repeal of unilateral divorce by boycott.   Pastor Schlamp  probably does not officiate over weddings that Jesus would call adulterous.    However, since the law tends to drive culture “for better or worse”, we would prefer to see pastors also taking an active role in driving repeal of immoral laws beyond abortion and sodomous “marriage”. 

Triggering incident account at 33:50 minutes:   A 16-year old  young  lady from brother Phil’s Canadian church visited an American family whom she had met during an earlier trip to Israel.   Two ladies were taking her to Branson to a retreat, when conversation came up about their American pastor’s brave stand against homosexuality, preaching against it, when the young lady asked what stand the pastor took on divorce and remarriage.   The response was that their pastor hadn’t studied or preached on it, and the revelation came that one of these ladies was divorced and remarried.   When asked what her church thinks about it, she had to say, “we believe it’s wrong”.
Church lady #1 : “That’s between Mrs. ___ and the Lord.”
Church lady #2:  “Well, I’m the one who’s going to have to stand before the Lord’s judgment for that sin.”   (conscious of the sin, but not at all concerned about the clear biblical consequences of it).    Quick change of subject ensued, and attempts to ignore that the exchange had occurred.   They were giving the girl an opportunity to also ignore it and thereby not take a stand….
The young lady asked to stop the car and not continue on [consistent with 1 Cor. 5]…and the backlash from Church lady #1 followed for “judging” Church lady #2 in the face of God’s “forgiveness” (of ongoing sin).   Listen in for the rest of the story….

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC’s additional observation:  How refreshing to hear that the triggering incident for this sermon series was not some tawdry episode in the Canadian home church, say, the clamor for an adulterous wedding ceremony — along with backlash for refusing,  but one of a young lady’s polite and firm saltiness abroad!

On top of this being by far the most integrity-filled treatment of this topic by any preacher SIFC has ever heard, this young lady’s ability in a high pressure situation to handle it with TRUE mercy speaks incredibly well of how the biblical truth is handled in this Canadian congregation on a consistent ongoing basis.   Such is “caught” more than it is “taught” when it comes to teenagers.

Our last observation is probably the most encouraging of all:  these courageous pastors seem to be emerging in a wide variety of denominations and geographic regions as the Lord anoints them.    In Jesus’ name, may the trend continue to build.    We have yet another gutsy pastor to highlight in a future post…stay tuned.

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!

 

 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Tithing Mint, Dill and Cumin…the Hollow Censure of Billy Graham’s Grandson

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legalized-adultery_tchivby Standerinfamilycourt

And now this commandment is for you, O priests.  If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name,” says the Lord of hosts, “then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings; and indeed, I have cursed them already, because you are not taking it to heart.  Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it….For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.  But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have [m]corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord of hosts.  So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction

“Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother so as to profane the covenant of our fathers?  Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord which He loves and has married the daughter of a foreign god.  As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob everyone who awakes and answers, or who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts.

This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand.   Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she IS your companion and your wife by covenant.  But not one has done so who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring?
 – Malachi, chapter 2

 

Billy Graham’s grandson got “married” last month – to another man’s wife, while forsaking the companion and children of his own marriage covenant.   Reportedly, Tullian is not the first pastoral violator of Luke 16:18 in the Tchividjian / Graham families, only the most famous.    What God had to say in Malachi 2 about generational sin rings true once again.

There was a widely-reported attempt at what currently passes for “church discipline” in contemporary evangelicaldom, in an effort to reconcile the covenant Tchividjian family, which we know  fell short.    A few days ago, several pastors involved in that failed disciplinary effort signed and released a letter of rebuke addressed to Tchividjian following further witness accounts of the abuse of Tchividjian’s senior pastorate at megachurch Coral Ridge Presbyterian.   Amazingly, that letter appeared to be a pastoral admission that sanctity (if not exceptionless indissolubility) of God-joined holy matrimony is indeed a heaven-or-hell matter,

“For the sake of his eternal soul, we implore Tullian Tchividjian to repent of his wickedness and demonstrate his repentance by submitting himself to the leadership of his church of membership, pursuing forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation with those whom he has sinned against.”

Certainly, what constitutes “pursuing forgiveness, healing and reconciliation” may not necessarily align with the rightly-divided word of God, but it’s a glimmer of hope that such pastors merely admit that one can indeed walk away from the faith.    Once saved, guard your heart!

Separately, it turns out that Tullian’s uncle and brother are both board members for a pastoral counseling organization, “Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE)”  aimed at preventing sexual abuse in pastoral counseling settings,  as several counselees of Tullian Tchividjian in the 2014-2015 time frame came forward with lurid details of attempted seduction.   From the Christian Post article covering this development:

“The GRACE board is deeply disturbed about the revelations of sexual misconduct by Tullian Tchividjian. As an organization that deals with the abuse of God’s lambs and the damage silence causes we feel compelled to speak,” the GRACE board said, in part.

Tullian Tchividjian lost his job at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as well as his marriage to his now ex-wife, Kim, in the summer of 2015 after the church discovered an adulterous affair between him and a parishioner on the church’s server.

“We were caught by the IT department of CRPC on the second week of June (2015). Tullian received a phone call from a staff member at the church saying that the contents of his phone could be read on the church’s public server. Tullian asked the staff member to delete everything,” according to a recent confessional by the [married] parishioner who gave her name only as Rachel.

Standerinfamilycourt  left this commentary response to the Christian Post article on their Facebook page:

“Firstly, according to scripture (Matt. 19:6 and 8; Rom. 7:2-3 and 1 Cor.7:39), there is no such thing as an “ex” covenant wife, in reference to Kim Tchividjian,  whom Tullian  “divorced” in utter disobedience to #LukeSixteenEighteen..  Nor is there any such thing as a legitimate “wife” in remarriage following man’s divorce.   Jesus repeatedly stated with zero exceptions and zero ambiguity that EVERYONE who ‘marries’ a divorced person enters into an ongoing state of adultery.”

 

How many of those clergy signing onto the (deserved) censures of Tullian Tchividjian nevertheless turn right around and contribute to the perverse incentives by routinely performing weddings that Jesus called adulterous?   Or by tolerating remarriage adulterers in their pastoral ranks?   Or by preferring an adulterously “married” clergyman to run a church over an involuntarily “divorced” shepherd who is now celibate in obedience to Christ (Matt. 19:12)?

 

Jesus, in a sense, rebuked Moses (Matt. 19:8) for choosing the cowardly path of regulating and “managing” marital desecration in the desert wilderness, instead of rooting it out and removing its perverse incentives, in order to remain faithful to the 7th through 10th commandments. Here we see the GRACE organization attempting to do the same thing in doubling down on standard, coventional counseling ethics rather than the sort of much-earlier biblical screening Paul described and insisted upon in the first place:

 

1 Timothy 3:2

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach….

 

Titus 1:6

namely, if any man is above reproach, THE HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

 

In the decades since the church opted to get in (literal) bed with the Sexual Revolution, we now popularly “understand” that phrase to mean “faithful to my current serial polygamy partner” – despite the one-way trip to hell that Paul repeatedly warned about for one dying in that ongoing sinful state.

 

What does this have to do with Tchividjian who committed his pastoral crimes while literally the husband of the God-joined wife of his youth?    Simple: his calculus looked at the Kent Hovinds, Shane Idelmans, Jim Bakkers and Israel Houghtons among his ministry peers, and he reached the perfectly rational conclusion that his career would suffer no meaningful long term damage from forsaking his covenant family and indulging his lusts.

By all means, take the common-sense secondary precautions described within to protect the lambs in the counseling office, but don’t expect these things to be the ultimate solution, if the same rotten pastoral foundation is left undisturbed.
As Jesus Himself stated to a group of earlier Pharisees,
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”
– Matt. 23:23

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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce! 

Church Discipline, Discipleship, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

What? The Bride of Christ Deputized as “Gods’ Coroner” ?

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RumorsOfby Standerinfamilycourt

Now He was also saying to the disciples,  “There was a rich man who had a manager, and this manager was reported to him as squandering his possessions.   And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you?   Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’   The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my    master is taking the management away from me?   I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg.   I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the management people will welcome me into their homes.’    And he summoned each one of his master’s debtors, and he began saying to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’   And he said, ‘A hundred  measures of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’   Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘A hundred  measures of wheat.’ He *said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’  And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own  kind than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings.     –  Luke 16:1-9

Could Jesus have been speaking in Luke 16 about turncoat shepherds such as Dr. Tony Evans?    Let’s examine one of his articles on divorce and remarriage, and you decide….we will add comments as necessary to critique Dr. Evans’ assertions by holding them up to the true light of scripture.

Christians in Divorce Court

When it comes to the issue of Divorce and Remarriage, God has a court.   Because the question comes, “Who decides when there are or are not legitimate grounds?”

There are 3 spheres that allow one to be divorced:

• When immorality enters into a relationship —it is an allowance by God.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   We respectfully disagree, since God’s word makes it abundantly plain that man’s divorce,  (and  his infidelities) dissolves nothing in “God’s courthouse”, which only issues dissolutions of covenant in the form of physical death.   Beyond that,  “God’s courthouse” is merely a divine registrar.


• When there is a non-Christian married to a Christian and the non-Christian deserts the Christian —then that is an allowance for the Christian to proceed with a divorce allowed by God…

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   Again, we must respectfully disagree, for much the same reasons.   At a bare minimum, this claim is a clear and blatant rejection of Paul’s instructions in 1 Cor. 6:1-8, and 1 Cor. 7:10-11.    God is not the author of confusion, and His word never contradicts itself when rightly divided.  Hence there can be no “allowance” to do what His word forbids.

• Removal from the fellowship of God to be excommunicated as to be under Spiritual death (1 Corinthians 5) (where there’s immorality, beating, or being a “striker,” being a violent person, for a person who’s not taking care of his family, etc.). It’s where the “supposed” Christian will not come under authority.

To sum it all up —a death must occur. For a woman is bound to her husband as long as the both shall live, as the Scriptures says. But when one dies, she is no longer bound. So a person can die physically —therefore, the Covenant has been broken. Or they can die Spiritually and therefore, the Covenant can be broken.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   It would be helpful if Dr. Evans backed up what he says here with actual scripture, especially where he makes some limited points rather validly.    Since he did so only in part, we will attempt to fill in from whence he is deriving his inferences, although we cannot vouch (with scripture) any reference to a “striker” — other than in reference to disqualifying a man from church leadership (1 Tim. 3:3, and Titus 1:7) – yet living in a state of remarriage adultery with another man’s God-joined one-flesh wife is certainly equivalent scripturally to such.    In addition to 1 Cor. 5  which is specifically about fornication between two unmarried persons (a young man and his likely widowed stepmother), he is also alluding to Matthew 18:15-18 and 1 Tim. 5:8.
He’s quite right that only death breaks God’s covenants, as Paul twice confirms.    However,  since in most cases of a wounded spouse,  God’s mercy and desire to see the offender repent and recover his or her inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, our Lord does not oblige by striking the offender dead, Nabal-style.     That presents a bit of a dilemma, which Dr. Evans (like his 16th century predecessor, Martin Luther), is quite eager to resolve in sympathy for the “innocent spouse”  –  so, a heavenly “hit contract” should take care of it.   Much less wasteful than waiting for the prodigal to repent on God’s timetable is deciding that he or she is beyond repentance, so declare them spiritually dead and on that basis, allow the  one-flesh (sarx mia) partner to become hen soma with a brother or sister in the church, presuming that subsequent union to be “morally superior” to the one Paul discussed in 1 Cor. 5.

But the whole point of an unconditional covenant of God is precisely that God always keeps His end of it even when the human participants do not!    Dr. Evans speaks of “excommunication”, a decidedly Roman Catholic concept which implies loss of salvation due to the sacraments being withheld (an erroneous concept, most Protestants would agree).   It is one thing to administer biblical church discipline, dis-fellowshipping the serious backslider who is toxic to the whole of the body of Christ, removing the support and protection of the church.   It is another to declare a state of permanent apostasy that may or may not turn around with the chastisement of the grieved and quenched Holy Spirit within.

CWs_Martin Luther_TEvans

“…Since now death alone dissolves marriages and releases from obligation, an adulterer is already divorced, not by man but by God himself, and not only cut loose from his spouse, but from this life…because now God here divorces, the other party is fully released, so that he or she is not bound to keep the spouse that has proved unfaithful, however he or she may desire it.”    – Martin Luther, circa 1522

“…If they are alive and you go marry another, then you’re still married.  If they are dead, then you’re free to marry another.  And one of the reasons I want to stay married has nothing to do with me but with the generations after me….unless God the Coroner pronounces death.”
 –  Dr. Tony Evans, May 2012

Continuing….

So the question is: WHO determines (the legitimate grounds), and HOW is it determined —who decides? After discussing this whole issue of “removing people” from the fellowship in 1 Corinthians 5, it then continues in chapter 6 to explain HOW it’s to be done. (So chapter 6 is the continuation of chapter 5.)

God has set you up to judge the “whole world.” Judgment is a part of the role of the people of God. They render decisions on behalf of God Himself. Kingdom decisions are to be rendered by Kingdom People, because only Kingdom People obligate themselves to Kingdom rules. The Church was never intended to be a “2-hour building” that you went to for services once a week. It was intended to be an “expression of the Kingdom intentions” of the King. That’s why when Jesus prayed He said, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.“

So like it or not, judgment is a part of the role of the people of God.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   Dr. Evans takes some considerable liberties here!   Yes, chapter 6 is a continuation of chapter 5, specifically with respect to the church’s responsibility to discipline sexual immorality among its members , including adultery and divorce filings undertaken to cover up or to legalize an adulterous relationship, and that is likely to result in dis-fellowshipping if the prodigal refuses to repent (or refuses to even meet, as will typically be the case).    That said, Dr. Evans ignores the fact that a 2-ton elephant is now standing in the room as a direct result of 1 Cor. 6:1-8.    A brother or sister in the Lord is not to take another brother or sister before a pagan judge – but rather be defrauded.   We presume this would apply to the sole person to whom God has joined them as one-flesh.  We know of no way to obtain a civil divorce without doing so, since the day that Martin Luther handed over to Caesar the regulation of holy matrimony which God says belongs exclusively to Him.   Dr. Evans appears to be saying that it’s OK to violate 1 Cor. 6:1-8 for deemed “biblical grounds”.     (We’re going to go out on a limb and say that the only truly biblical grounds for man’s divorce is to repent of a “marriage” that Jesus repeatedly called adulterous, so that both partners can seek reconciliation with their true spouse, and even then, to protect the witness of the church and obey God under man’s immoral laws, such cases should only be by agreed mutual petition.)

And what of Dr. Evans’ alleged “exception” for abandonment by an unbelieving spouse?   Or adultery by an unbelieving spouse?    Judgment may indeed be the role of the people of God, but 1 Cor. 5 specifically says the church is not to judge outsiders, contrary to the stretch Dr. Evans suggests here.    Once we’re done mangling (but not specifically naming) 1 Cor. 7:15, it begs the question, how can a church declare someone “spiritually dead” who hasn’t been born into that realm to begin with?    Didn’t  Jesus highly commend John the Baptist’s fierce defense of Herod’s and Herodias’ (respective) covenant marriages even though both abandoned their true spouses?    Didn’t  John tell Herod, “it is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife’  ?

A couple that decides that they want a divorce for “irreconcilable differences” (which there’s no such divorce for) needs to realize that everybody is irreconcilable to everybody else. You are very different than your mate. You’re supposed to be. God intentionally made you different. The issue is not the differences —we’re to turn them into “complements rather than conflicts.” But His point is, that you don’t go to the unrighteous, who have no Kingdom view of marriage, and don’t understand that God is the author of marriage. They’ll simply grant you (because you agree on your own terms) a no-fault divorce.

He’s not putting down judges, because you must have Civil Government. But when it comes to matters of the Kingdom, they’re to be decided within the Kingdom, and then they can be confirmed in the government.

In verse 7 (of 1 Corinthians 6), he says if you go to a Secular Law Court —you’ve already lost. You’ve lost for 2 reasons: number 1 you’ve destroyed your testimony, and number 2, God is against your process.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:    We all know this is not the way it happens in practice, but the other way around.    Furthermore, Dr. Evans would point his remarks above not exclusively to the covenant couple, but to those whose civil-only unions Jesus repeatedly called ongoing, continuous adultery, who need to actually flee their counterfeit union, both for the witness of the church and to avoid the consequences described in 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21, forfeiture of their participation in the kingdom of God.     Being “married” to someone else’s God-joined one-flesh mate is about as irreconcilable a difference as anyone could have, especially in terms of reconciliation with God’s kingdom.   God is all for the process of a repenting divorce to sever an adulterous union, provided a slanderous grounds trial is not involved, nor theft of assets, nor parental alienation so common these days to “family court”.

It seems to us that any pastor who is halfway serious about wanting church jurisdiction over marriage and divorce should at the very least stop signing civil marriage licenses when performing weddings, and should cease performing any wedding they’d be embarrassed to do with Jesus co-officiating.    We note that Dr. Evans is not among the 800+ pastors who have signed the First Things Marriage Pledge which began circulating in 2014..

 

And so he raises the point here that the church is to act as God’s judging agency. Now this ought to solve a very important issue that many Christians are very confused about whenever you hear a person say, “Well, you’re not supposed to judge.” They are wrong! You are supposed to judge. The Bible tells us to judge. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 “to render a judgment in the Church.”

Christians are supposed to judge. In fact, Christians who are right related to God, are the best judges because they’re going to judge predicated on a righteous standard. And the righteous standard is God Himself, manifested in and through His word! Because Christians have access to Truth, we can render judgment.

In Matthew 7 (verse 1), people misinterpret the passage where it says “Do not judge, lest you’ll be judged.” Is that because you aren’t to judge? No, in verse 2 it says, “for in the same way you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.” He’s not saying, “don’t judge” but, BE CAREFUL, WHEN YOU JUDGE. Because the same judgment you use against another will be the very same judgment God uses against you. So think twice before you jump out there judgmentally. In other words, he’s saying, “judge carefully ” —not don’t judge at all!

How do you judge carefully? (Look at Matthew 7:3). Don’t judge folks who have something wrong with them “speck-sized” when you’ve got a tree-trunk hanging out of your eyeballs!

The problem today is, we have people judging other people when they’re as “messed up” as the folks they’re judging. Don’t condemn somebody else for something you’re doing and can’t get a handle on. (This can be further illustrated in John 8 with the woman who’s condemned for committing adultery.)

In the scriptures, when God established His courts, they carried authority with them. Deuteronomy 17, (starting with verse eight) shows that God’s court systems were to be taken seriously. And how powerful they were! (Numbers 5, starting with verse 12 illustrates this.) 1 Corinthians 10:11 says, “these things were written for our example.“

The Old Testament, you can use it —NOT for it’s REGULATIONS, but for it’s REVELATIONS. That is, the principles still applies even though the specific way of carrying it out —God may not use that anymore. And the principle is —that God wants his people to render judgment, on God’s behalf, related to any kind of litigation issues. And we’re constantly dealing with them. Do you go and sue them downtown? God’s clear —you take it to the church.

What’s the process? It’s in Matthew 18 (starting with verse 15). So the first thing you do is, you handle it personally. If your brother has hurt you (or your mate has hurt you) the very first thing that you do is try to fix it privately. YOU NEVER CARRY A PROBLEM BEYOND ITS NEED, TO BE KNOWN. What makes it a need to be known? Matthew 18:16 —if he doesn’t listen to you. He’s not open for correction. He is not repentant. But it’s a legitimate thing. He says, by then, with 2 or 3 witnesses, every fact is confirmed. Two or 3 witnesses would mean that there would be a legality attached to the process now. It became official… it had witnesses.

So you take 2 or 3 witnesses to confirm that you tried and they won’t —that you are trying to fix this marriage, but they won’t —that you’re trying to heal this relationship, but they won’t. This is so that it’s not your word against their word, that you can VALIDATE that there is a sin and that that mate is not willing to correct it.

What happens then? In Matthew 18:17 it says, “tell it to the church.” Why do you tell it to the church? Because that’s the extended family —that’s the environment where God’s decisions are rendered.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:    Up to this point, we have no major dispute, but a couple of really important caveats:
(1) due to the corruption of most English language bible translations for the past 150 years, courtesy of Universalists / occultist / New World Order “scholars” Westcott & Hort in the 1880’s (about the time the masses were becoming literate enough to realize that the Westminster Confession of Faith was heretical with respect to divorce and remarriage),  before applying “scripture” to any matter involving marriage,  the judges in the church need to go back to the original texts, and preferably the Antioch texts.   This is the reason the King James version, while not perfect, contains far fewer apparent “contradications” than any of the more contemporary translations — this was by design.   The NIV, in particular, becomes more liberal and less scriptural with each new edition!    Online tools make the original texts and related tools readily accessible at no cost.

(2) focusing in on the issue of the log and the splinter, many of the pastoral “judges” will indeed be in a state of ongoing adultery themselves by Jesus’ (Luke 16:18) definition of adultery, due to the widespread marriage heresies that prevail in the contemporary church, including the blatant violation of 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:6. Such men lack the moral authority to render judgment.   In some churches there is a further violation in that those offices are unscripturally held by women!

“And if he will not listen to the church, LET HIM BE TO YOU, AS A GENTILE and TAX-GATHERER.” In other words, HE IS TO BE VIEWED AS SPIRITUALLY DEAD! He is rendered a gentile, or a tax collector. Not only were tax collectors sinners… they were also ostracized because of their occupation. Jews didn’t have fellowship with tax collectors. In other words, they are spiritually dead. They, may be a Christian… but you can now relate to them… as though they are spiritually dead.

Why? Verse 18. God gives the church the ability to act as His earthly court, rendering His heavenly decisions. “Whatever you loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven, whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven.” The church’s job is to bind and loose. That simply means to “exercise authority on behalf of God.” AND IF YOU WANT TO BE BLESSED, THAT’S THE COURT YOU GO TO.

In verse 19, He says whenever you gather together to render decisions, “I’ll be in the midst of you.“ “When you gather together to make judgments using My word, applying them to the situations of life —that’s when the rubber meets the road.” The church is God’s extended family court. And just like you don’t want your children taking your family business out to the street, God doesn’t want His children carrying out kingdom business in the street to people who don’t have a Kingdom mentality.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:    Just because Martin Luther declared “spiritual death” doesn’t make it so!   (Luther also declared “replacement theology” without it making that so, after all.)   Shall a man of God follow another man, or shall he instead follow Christ?    Cutting off the fellowship of he body of Christ does not remove the Holy Spirit from inside the wayward born-again prodigal (thanks be to God!).    We’ve already raised a strong caveat about which version of the Word to apply in making those judgments, since various translation manipulations have retrofitted the sacred word of God to match Luther’s heresies, as can readily be seen by contrasting them with the original Greek and Hebrew texts with literal translations, also with the unanimous teachings for 400-some years of all those discipled by those who walked directly with Jesus, and those whom the disciples discipled, all the way until the corrupting time of Constantine.

 

But here’s why people don’t want to come to the church. They don’t want to come to the church because they don’t want to subject themselves to God. They want to go to somebody who will agree with them. They don’t want to be rendered a “righteous decision,” they only want to be rendered THEIR decision.

So, how does this relate to marriage and divorce? 1 Corinthians 7:39. As long as the mate is alive… either physically or covenantally… then you are bound to that person and the most you can do (1 Corinthians 7:10), is separate and remain unmarried or be reconciled. You don’t have grounds for a divorce as long as they’re alive.

If they are dead, they must be dead by God’s coroner. And God’s coroner is the church. Once they’re declared dead, then a declaration of death is always a freedom to remarry —because a woman is only bound to her husband, as long as he lives. So once he either dies, or is declared to be such (as a tax gatherer or a sinner) or as 1 Corinthians 5:5 says, “put him in the realm of Satan.” At that point, the party is free to remarry. Why? It’s because God has canceled out the previous marriage.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:    Not so fast, Dr. Evans!   That log seems to be creeping back into that eye again!    During the Kim Davis fracas  in September, 2015 it seemed every liberal journalist in the country was grabbing their Gideon bible out of the motel dresser drawer and noting, quite accurately that Mrs. [Bailey Wallace Davis McIntyre ]”Davis” had been living in serial adultery, and that after she was born again, she didn’t repent of that relationship.    They pointed out to the world that often the safest place for serial polygamist to hide out is the front pew of many an evangelical church.    And, Dr. Evans, if a person continues to draw breath, their opportunity to repent remains undiminished…and not subject to any man’s judgment.  If that person happens to be born again, the continuing presence of the cajoling Holy Spirit within them is proof enough,  as if God’s holy character in covenant isn’t, that there is no such thing as being “covenentally” dead, unless perhaps one attributes God’s miracles to Satan, i.e. blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.  (It should be duly noted that some of God’s shepherds come perilously close to this when one of the sheep is seeking a repenting divorce in order to reconcile with the only person on the face of the earth with whom God’s hand joined tem in sarx mia, and these pastors  attribute this repentance to “violating”  Deut. 24:4. )

 

God hates divorce. He never demands divorce. He only permits it. But He does allow it, when death occurs in order to preserve and protect the innocent.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   What God hates is the “putting / sending away” of any one-llesh covenant spouse, but Mal. 2 advocates only for that spouse, and against the counterfeit that Dr. Evans would shield and attempt to justify.  Jesus made it plain in Matt. 19:6, 8 that not only does God not “permit” anyone to divorce the spouse of their youth, there is actually no act of men that makes it even possible.   That’s why Jesus repeatedly declared any marriage between even an innocent person and a divorced person ongoing, continuous adultery.    Man cannot sever God-joined sarx mia, nor remove God from HIS OWN covenant, only death does that.   It seems obvious that if actual death has occurred,, the only type that God acknowledges, the whole remarriage conversation is moot,

There are 3 options the Christian has (and by the way, the reason God says to be married “only in the Lord” is because GOD DOESN’T WANT IT TO BE HEAVEN and HELL EXPERIENCE TO BE MARRIED, if they can help it), a person whose mate commits covenantal death has 3 choices:

• To restore them to the relationship based on restitution. In fact, that always ought to be the 1st option, to see if we can fix what got broke. What if your mate does something that causes covenantal death, but they’re sincerely repentant? And how do you know they’re sincerely repentant? The Bible says “let them bring forth fruits of repentance.” There must be a demonstration or restitution that pays back the offended party, that lets them know they’re serious in their heart about what they just verbalized with their mouth as demonstrated by their actions.

They must be restored based on “their fruits of repentance.” And if they’re sincerely repentant, then the goal should be, if at all possible, to seek to restore them. (And that’s the reason why God accepted the marriage of David to Bathsheba. God took restitution out on David. He lost four of his sons as David had declared that the man who did this crime should be punished four-fold. So he lost four of his sons as payment back to God. He set him free to marry only after he had received restitution.) So if you’ve offended your mate, you need to pay them back.

• To divorce —when your mate has become covenantally dead, that is, to have them declared so by the church, which frees you up. (This was the option Joseph was going to take with Mary. He decided to put her away privately, when he thought the mother of Jesus had been immoral.)

• You can choose to live continually with your covenantally dead spouse —even though they’ve committed an act and even though they’re unrepentant for their sin. (1 Corinthian 7:13-15) Here he sets the scenario, that the covenantally dead person or the unbeliever (he’s either an unbeliever, or he’s functioning as an unbeliever), wants to stay in the marriage relationship. If he’s willing to function, as her husband, and she’s willing to function as his wife —He says don’t leave.

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   No mate “commits covenantal death” before their actual physical death, Dr. Evans, though a great many commit covenantal violations, including the violation of someone else’s holy matrimony covenant.    Departing from a covenant union does nothing to actually dissolve it in God’s courthouse, no matter how much civil paper is gathered!     That effectively reduces the options to two:  1 Cor. 7:12-13 or 1 Cor. 7:11.     Incidentally, God only accepted the “marriage” of David and Bathsheba because she was a widow (albeit at David’s hand), and because both concurrent and serial polygamy were atoned for on a daily basis with bloody animal sacrifices, a plan that is no longer on offer with the coming of Christ.    Even so, just as God took only one rib from Adam at creation who became “bone-of-his-bones and flesh-of-his flesh, God only made David one-flesh (sarx mia) with MIchal — all the other sundry wives and concubines were only hen soma partners, only legally and carnally joined in the same fashion as noncovenant spouses today.   Even a casual reading of Matthew 5 or the book of Hebrews ought to make a man shudder at suggesting Christ’s disciples deliberately emulate David and Bathsheba!

You need to LOOK AT IT AS AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY. He’s not saying you’re staying there and he’s beating on you. He’s not saying you’re staying there, and he won’t work. He’s talking about his willingness to stay there under the covenant of the family. Even if you have grounds (for divorce), if they’re willing to function properly, even though they’re not spiritually on track, then you “sanctify them.” If you love them and care about them, but they’re not on track, you may want to stay, pray, and watch God work through you to bring about a change —to bring that person back.

What do you do if you’re already coventally dead? GOOD NEWS —God has the ability to raise people from the dead!

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC:   Even better news — God-joined one-flesh covenant spouses sanctify the other by prayer, fasting and the recognition that the one-flesh entity is a God-given, God-protected spiritual weapon that only exists in the ongoing state of  indissoluble holy matrimony if God’s word is being obeyed in full, and it requires no physical presence, nor state sanction to operate in full.    This reformed prodigal is so grateful that Jesus did not treat me the way Dr. Evans and Martin Luther fantasized about in order to whitewash serial polygamy.   Given that it’s GOD, not humans who decides and clearly communicates the heaven-or-hell consequences thereof, it makes no sense at all to play these games with the Most High.    Instead there should be a holy fear of God, and an overriding concern for the souls involved.

The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.    – 2 Peter 3:9

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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, morality, Prayer, Spiritual Warfare

“Nana, Why Did You and Papaw Split Up?”

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420_grandma_child_imgcache_rev1285259918902

by  Standerinfamilycourt

“You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.   You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,  so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.”
– Deuteronomy 11: 18-21

SIFC was down in Arkansas for our eldest granddaughter’s eighth birthday, having not seen them for almost 2 years, due to some exaggerated circumstances brought about by man’s divorce.   I was trying to take a short nap on a recent afternoon when our little one plops herself down on my guest bed and says, “Nana, why did you split up with Papaw?”   I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask her until later where she had heard that.   Her 5 year old sister was in the room at the time as well.

Nana responded,

“Oh, baby. Nana never wanted that, and loves Papaw very much.  It’s not possible to get a divorce like that in God’s eyes!  Nana’s wedding ring is still on, because Papaw will always be Nana’s husband until one of us dies, and it’s sinful to go into a courtroom and get a piece of paper that says differently.   We have to pray for Papaw to stop living in sin so that he won’t go to hell — we don’t want Papaw to go to hell, do we?”

(Trigger alert:   those who do not walk with Christ, and who think obedience to His stated word is optional WILL be offended by this post.   It is already well-established that SIFC “lacks grace”, is “judgmental” and is “legalistic”.     Nolo contendre :  so was John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul and James!)

I was able to talk to this precious one about how God created one-flesh when her mommy and daddy got married, when her uncle and aunt got married (she was the flower girl in that wedding at age 3), and when Nana and Papaw got married, about how God looks and sees only one person instead of two for as long as both are alive.   She repeated it back to me with a real sense of relief, and grasped it perfectly – that only death unglues people who are really married, (“right, Nana?”).   Right, baby.

Later in the evening, her parents decided to take advantage of my visit to squeeze in a date.   Caitlin has always loved bible stories right from her big-girl bible when tucking the girls in, so I decided to tell her the story of John the Baptist, Herod and Herodias, and said Herod had a real wife once (“like you, Nana?”) and Herodias had a real husband whose name was Philip.   They both thought they could divorce their real wife and real husband and be married to each other – but how come, Caitlin,  did God not join Herod and Herodias? (she got the reason right following our earlier talk about one-flesh).  We talked about why John the Baptist cared so much about whether Herod and Herodias went to heaven that he was willing to risk having his head cut off.   It went really well, but before I did the bible story, she asked me why Papaw’s bible was in my suitcase and why Papaw didn’t want his bible any more.   I was able to explain that when someone has made up his mind that he doesn’t want to obey Jesus anymore, they can’t stand what the bible says, but we can pray that God will make them really hungry again for His word.   She wanted to know why her daddy always got mad every time she visited with Papaw on skype, and why can’t she ever see him in person.   I did my best to say her daddy just wants to protect her from Papaw’s bad friends.    Good friends help you be closer to Jesus, but bad friends make you ashamed of Jesus and make you want run away from Him.

The next day, Caitlin’s mother expressed her angry displeasure that Nana had told their daughter about hell and what sort of things send people there if they die in the same.    Nana endured the indignity of being upbraided by the child she birthed and raised and discipled,  who deems all talk of hell to be a manipulation and control mechanism, to which she will not tolerate her daughter being exposed.    How could I not “respect her beliefs”?    (This “belief” seems to be a bit late-developing, to such an extent that it was a bit shocking to hear it coming out of her mouth.   More likely, the one-flesh discussion was equally offensive to her because it inherently discredits her husband’s aunt who is in a longtime lesbian union, and it violates her liberal politics in every possible way.)

They say that God has no “grandchildren”,  only “children”.    May the telling of this family story comfort many standers who are surely going through the same struggles in their own covenant families.

The morning after that, it was the son-in-law’s turn to suggest that imposing Nana’s  “belief system”  on others was causing chaos in their family,  was directly responsible for daily strife between them, and was causing him to question Nana’s emotional stability.    We had a lengthy exchange on the infallibility of rightly-divided scripture, and the fact that there are not multiple correct alternatives when comes to rightly dividing the same.    He suggested I was not “extending grace” to my prodigal husband of 40+ years in insisting his non-covenant marriage is what Jesus called it –  ongoing adultery.     I warned him that retreating on his prior resolve not to expose his daughters to that immoral relationship will not produce the relief he craves, nor will it end the barrage of emotional blackmail the family has been receiving from my husband, who refuses to see his granddaughters unless the family embraces his adulteress.

Can admitted non-believers convey “grace” to backslidden believers? Isn’t “grace” something that flows FROM GOD THROUGH those who are exclusively His? Isn’t the “grace” of non-believers false because they themselves reject God’s grace in their own lives because they reject the idea of repentance and obedience that is attached? Aren’t they the ones who love to point to Jesus saying “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”…but they look at you stupefied when you remind them of Christ’s next sentence: “Go and sin no more!”

If one denies or doubts that there is a real hell and people send themselves there by refusing to repent and obey Christ’s commandments (the bible says in Heb. 10 that this is insulting the spirit of grace) what can the purpose of grace even be?

“Grace” without love for God’s word or His order is certainly human kindness — so long as eternity isn’t considered.   It is sympathy and empathy — making fellow travelers on a journey to the same fiery destination feel better about their unrepented sin.   Such “grace”, however, is false because it cannot supply the ingredient that restores the kingdom of God and turns that traveler around on his or her wayward road.   You cannot convey to another that which you reject for yourself, due to its high price tag, can you?

Has Nana given up on God’s ability to redeem her entire household?    Not on her life!   Over the past eleven years, the devil has launched a series of fiery attacks against various other family members, and God has always shown up and shown off.    This time last year, another son was having a massive faith crisis to which Nana’s stand was also contributing, and an even more devastating reaction issued forth from this adult married son.    It is not for nothing that Paul wrote about taking up the full armor of God while shaking up the princedom of the power of the air in the name of Jesus Christ.    Nana will be praying against any exposure of our granddaughters to Papaw’s unrepented mockery of marriage, but if it occurs, at least Caitlin will have heard the truth about it.    We will have prayed together with our arms around each other for Papaw to repent and return to the Lord, then to his covenant family.   Nana makes no apologies whatsoever for not saying something  more culturally acceptable, like…

“Sometimes people who love each other try as hard as they can, but in the end, they realize they can’t live together.   It’s nobody’s fault, so we just ‘trust God’ and move on…”       (No such pablum for this Nana!)

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.   For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.”     – Matthew 10:34-36

 

 

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Discipleship, Divorce, Lost culture, morality, Spiritual Warfare

Focus On The Family’s “Summer Shortfall”

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FOTF_Summer_ShortFall

by Standerinfamilycourt

Yours truly has been receiving urgent, pleading emails over the past month or so because the giving rate is down at mega-media ministries such as FOTF.     The last one was signed by Jim Daly, himself.    It arrived on the worst possible day – on a day when I was already incensed at their broadcast pushing a book by two remarriage adulterers, Gil and Brenda whose faux union was combining 7 children from two ruptured covenant families, parading their hell-bound adultery in front of them on a daily basis.

He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come!     –  Luke 17:1

Very sorry, Mr. Daly

I am among a large and growing number of Christ-followers who cannot conscionably donate to a “ministry” that promotes (and encourages remaining in) “marriages” that Jesus clearly and repeatedly called adulterous – Matt. 5:32b; 19:9b (KJV); Luke 16:18.   This is not discipleship.   It is contributing to open rebellion against Christ’s commandments, and given the ongoing lawlessness in our nation of unilateral civil-only divorce, FOTF is pointing far more souls toward hell than those being in any way snatched from the flames.   I cannot be a party to such.

Many of us have written to you, pointing out the unpopular truth which FOTF continues to ignore, fearing the loss of unrighteous mammon.  Adulterous unions have so proliferated in both pew and pulpit, that when (or if ever) true revival reaches America’s shores, the civil divorce rate is going to spike, as millions repent of living in adultery with the God-joined, one-flesh spouse of another, and only after this will it recede within the body of Christ.  All the evangelical hand-wringing over “rebuilding a culture of ‘marriage’  will not bring revival nor have the slightest impact on the culture until church and ministry leadership repents in this unsavory matter.  Glorifying legalized adulterers on your broadcasts, and promoting shamelessly apostate church wolves such as Dr. John MacArthur — none of whom care one whit about what God’s word actually says, nor about the souls of the lost prodigal spouses (which includes anyone “married” to someone else’s God-joined true spouse – such as Gil and Brenda), is an offensive use of God’s resources for those of us who truly follow Christ.   Using God’s resources to pay a legalized adulterer on staff who, according to Paul’s crystal clear instructions, should not even be considered qualified to be a pastor (much less a “blended family pastor”), I would suggest openly mocks God.    R. A. Torrey said it well during the early years of the last century when there was no carnally-driven confusion whatsoever of God’s truth about this, at least within Christ’s church:

“Look at the legalized adultery we call divorce.”

“Men marry one wife after another and are still admitted into good society; and women do likewise. There are thousands of supposedly respectable men in America living with other men’s wives, and thousands of supposedly respectable women living with other women’s husbands.”
From R.A. Torrey’s book How to Pray, pages 94-95

Why do you suppose a former Moody Bible Institute president said, this, Mr. Daly?   Jesus was very clear on the reason, with what He declared in Matt. 19:6, 8 – God cannot be removed by man’s civil paper from His own unconditional covenant (Mal.2:13-14), nor can the God-joined supernatural one-flesh entity be severed by anything but death.   No act of men created the authentic one-flesh entity, according to Jesus, and no act of men, good or bad, can sever it.   There is, however, a counterfeit entity from Satan (hen soma, 1 Cor. 6:15-16) that not only can be severed, it must be severed to avoid the eternal consequences of 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and Gal. 5:19-21, that no unrepentant adulterer has any inheritance in the kingdom of God / heaven.    A kingdom is a place where the King is OBEYED!

On no less than three distinct occasions, the Lord Jesus Christ repeated, “EVERYONE (πᾶς – http://biblehub.com/greek/pas_3956.htm) who marries a divorced person, enters into a state of ongoing, continuous adultery.”   By the Greek verb tense “present indicative”, Jesus was referring to a state of sin, not an act of sin as Dr. MacArthur claims in his conscious intellectual dishonesty.  It is clear that any claimed “exceptions” to EVERYONE cannot be true, regardless of how cleverly “porneia” is retranslated by apostate lexiconographers and bible translators to condone the taking of one’s own unforgiving vengeance against their exclusive living one-flesh.   As a reminder, not only will adulterers have no inheritance in the kingdom of God, Jesus repeatedly warned that neither will non-forgivers who have conveniently forgotten that their own spiritual adultery against Him was forgiven.

With unilateral divorce literally forcing divorce on some 800,000 unconsenting people a year in the U.S. alone, if only 5% of them hold faithful to an untainted biblical view of the absolute indissolubility of holy matrimony, that’s 40,000 believers a year who find marriage permanence ministries and thereby gain the detailed biblical scholarship to publicly rebuke ministries like FOTF who stand for the sort of legalized adultery which Jesus explicitly defined.   It is going to become ever more difficult to dodge this issue in churches or media vehicles such as yours.   Covenant marriage standers are rapidly becoming the conscience of the evangelical church, just as Ezra and Malachi were under the old covenant.

I will purpose to pray for your ministry, and will be happy to support FOTF again financially if there is repentance and a godly change of direction.

Blessings, In Christ,

“standerinfamilycourt”

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |   Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

Church Discipline, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, Lost culture, morality, Religious freedom, Spiritual Warfare

What if This Had Been Dr. Brown’s Stream Article in 1972?

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Sorry, But We Won’t Rewrite the Bible for Divorced People Who Have “Remarried”
two-rings-in-a-bible-900-AskDrBrown
by Standerinfamilycourt

Dr. Michael Brown has written an article for The Stream in response to a letter he says he received from a self-professed bi-sexual Christian, and another man’s commentary on his Facebook page, entitled, “Sorry, But We Won’t Re-Write the Bible for Gays and Lesbians“.   Knowing what we do about the extensive history of biblical revisionism and man-voted “culturally-relevant” revision of denominational doctrines / practice, we couldn’t help doing what it immediately comes to mind to do when such articles come out, goring the other guy’s ox but leaving our sacred cow untouched.   Had there been a fiery Dr. Brown to take up an equally-vigorous defense of the Matt. 19:6-end of God’s definition of marriage, would we be where we are today?

 

FB profile 7xtjw  SIFC Notes:  Dr. Michael Brown is an Assembly of God ordained pastor, who by his own testimony, came to faith in 1971 after growing up in a Jewish heritage.   In 1973, about 2-1/2 years after the first blatantly-unconstitutional unilateral divorce law was signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan in California (1969), the AOG in their annual General Assembly voted to abandon their 60 year old “bylaws” that prohibited all AOG pastors from performing a wedding involving anyone with a prior living spouse, and banned from pastoral credentials anyone who was remarried with a prior living spouse on either side of the remarriage.    We have blogged about this 1973 event previously.   Dr. Brown’s biography doesn’t indicate the year of his AOG credentials, but it seems clear the earliest possible date would have been late-1970’s.   He married Nancy Gurian Conway Brown in 1976 at age 21, recently passing his 40th wedding anniversary.   (We know Nancy’s maiden name is Gurian, but we do not know where the Conway name comes from.)  FB profile 7xtjw

 

In response to my open letter to I.M. Sanctified, who describes himself as a divorced and remarried Christian,  Mr. Sanctified posted a lengthy comment on my personal Facebook page, including this statement: “The logical conclusion to your theology (remarried people can’t physically repent from their ongoing state of sin, if they do, it must be because they don’t have faith or are deceived) is extremely damaging to the souls of people who have been through divorce and have married somebody else. That was the point of I.M.’s letter.  No amount of nice words will erase the damage [of implying that his 2nd, 3rd or 4th “marriages” were adultery].   Only honest reconsideration of your theology will bring healing.  Please don’t discount/deny the faith of your divorced and remarried brothers and sisters. They have much to contribute to the church.”

Of course, I.M. has completely misstated what conservative Christians believe (we don’t say or believe that if adulterously- married “Christians” don’t exit those immoral unions “it must be because they don’t have faith or are deceived”), just as other parts of his comment (not quoted here) were also based on serious misunderstandings.

But that is secondary to the bigger issue, and  Mr. Sanctified is one of many who are telling serious Bible believers that, “Only honest reconsideration of your theology will bring healing.”

He could not be more wrong.

First, what Scripture says on marrying somebody else’s inseverable one-flesh spouse while they remain alive is not negotiable, and no amount of new books or videos or personal stories will change that.

As I explained in my book “Can You Be Married to Somebody Else’s Spouse and be Christian?“  no new textual, archeological, sociological, anthropological or philological discoveries have been made in the last fifty years that would cause us to read any of these biblical texts differently.  Put another way, it is not that we have gained some new insights into what the biblical text means based on the study of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Instead, people’s interaction with the divorced and remarried community has caused them to understand the biblical text differently.”

Simply stated, if not for the sexual revolution, no one would be reexamining what the Scriptures state about God’s intention for His creation. No one would be wondering if two divorced people could “marry” or if a husband could be joined by God to both a covenant and a non-covenant wife.   No one would be doubting that the Lord made men for women for life, and that any deviation from that pattern was contrary to His design and intent.

As one New Testament scholar was candid enough to admit, it was clear to him that the Bible forbade marrying another while having a living, estranged spouse, but when his own daughter came out as  the fiancée of such a man, he changed his opinion on the subject.

That’s why I’ve often stated that there is not a single argument that can be brought from God’s Word to defend the practice of marrying adulterously after man’s divorce, but there are powerful emotional arguments that can be brought. In that context, I’m often reminded of Jesus’ words that, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”  (Luke 14:26).

Second, if there was something to reconsider in our theology we would gladly do it. The truth be told, as impossible as the “adulterously remarried Christian” arguments struck me, I went to the Lord about them, buying the books that defended this new way of reading Scripture, reading the stories (and listening to the stories) of professing adulterously remarried Christians, allowing my heart to be torn and my mind to be challenged.

At the end of the day, as a biblical scholar, a lover of Jesus, and a lover of people, it was impossible for me to accept their arguments. The Word is just too clear on this, and without some kind of emotional or social or other pressure to reconsider what Scripture states, no one would deny this.

Third, those who argue that Christians agree to disagree on lots of things without denying each other’s faith fail to realize that they do not agree to disagree on behaviors that Scripture strongly condemns — unless they themselves are living in some kind of moral compromise.

We’re not dealing here with a question of whether speaking in tongues is for today or whether Christians are required to tithe or whether Jesus is coming before the tribulation. We’re dealing with redefining the very meaning of marriage and claiming that a behavior that is plainly condemned in the New Testament — I’m talking about cohabitation with someone else’s God-joined one-flesh spouse— is now blessed by God.

And while God alone is the judge of every professing Christian, be that person gay or straight, we cannot embrace as fellow brothers and sisters those who are affirming, practicing, and even celebrating sanctified, legalized adultery.

We will put our arms around everyone who struggles with lusting after someone else’s spouse and refusing to forgive or reconcile with their own spouse, loving them and embracing them and encouraging them in their walk with the Lord, whether their walk entails transformation from unforgiving to forgiving life partner or whether it entails celibacy. But we will not and cannot affirm and bless what the Lord Himself opposes. To do so is to do a disservice to those perishing in the divorced and remarried community.

Fourth, God’s message of grace and truth brings healing and wholeness and deliverance and freedom, as millions of people from every walk of life can attest, including large numbers of people who once were in adulterous “marriages” which they’ve now exited to reconcile with their own spouse.

I’m quite aware that there are genuine haters of “standing” covenant spouses in the Church (I plan to address this yet again in the coming days; God is their judge as well), and I’m quite aware that Christians have often failed to demonstrate Christlike love and compassion to the divorced-against-their-conscience community (to put it mildly).

But I’m also quite aware that when we speak the truth in love and people actually hear what we’re saying (not the interpretation they put on our words but the real message of our words), if that message is received it will bring life not death.

To all of you reading this article who say, “I’m divorced and remarried, I’m Christian, I’m involved in a union with someone else’s covenant spouse, and we’re thriving in the Lord,” I invite you to call my radio show or to send me your story or, if you live in my city, to get together with me and some of your friends — not for the purpose of debate but for the purpose of honest, loving, heartfelt interaction.

And if you have time, would you watch my video, “Can You Be ‘Married to Someone Else’s Spouse and Christian?” and tell me what I don’t understand and where I don’t display genuine empathy?

And if you’d like to read my book by the same title and you genuinely can’t afford it, email me your story, include your address, and I’ll send you a copy for free. You will not find a hateful word in the book, but you will find someone who cares.

In the end, though, your issue is with the Lord not with me. I can assure you that He understands and He will provide everything you need if you truly entrust your life to Him.
{END]

 

You [adulterers and ] adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James 4:4

 

Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.  Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.
1 Corinthians 6:16-18

 

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:

“I will live with them
    and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.”

 Therefore,

“Come out from them
    and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
    and I will receive you.”

And,

“I will be a Father to you,
    and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”
2 Corinthians 6:16-18

 


www.standerinfamilycourt.com

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!

citizenship, Connection of Unilateral Divorce to SSM, Discipleship, family law, Lost culture, marriage, morality, Spiritual Warfare

The Obstructed View from 2002: Debating One-Flesh and Covenant From the Pulpit

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FoundersBaptby Standerinfamilycourt

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?   For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.   For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom;  but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness,  but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.   Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.    1 Corinthians 1:19-24

Sometimes in this ministry, the Lord puts an unexpected enlightenment in our hands which allows us to get a very interesting glimpse of what has gone before in the history of the remarriage debate within the evangelical Protestant church.    A late-night instant message linked SIFC to a very interesting recorded sermon where in late 2002, a Baptist pastor from Spring, TX was doing an excellent job of debunking 1 Corinthians 7, faithfully setting the record straight, section by section, on just who Paul was addressing with his various pieces of instruction, and methodically closing the door on the various evangelical heresies that proliferate (like mold) from the humanist propensity to “run with” advice that Paul meant for a different group, while ignoring the context (and even the content) of what he wrote within the same chapter.    We have also blogged recently on this 1 Cor. 7 topic.

Despite the excellent insights this man of God was bringing forward in his message, around 25 minutes in he attempted to use the term “agamos” [ἄγαμος] , as in “let her remain unmarried” per 1 Cor. 7:11,  to assert that man’s divorce was real in God’s eyes and that it indeed “dissolved” what both Jesus and Paul asserted could only be dissolved by death and by God’s hand.   If according to Paul, she (Mrs. Verse 11) is “no longer married”,  he argued,  how can her marriage not actually be dissolved in God’s eyes?   Overlooked is the fact that this passage is silent as to whether a civil divorce is actually undertaken by either spouse,  rather than a mere separation.    “Gamos” can mean either wedding or marriage, i.e. uniting with a spouse, so Paul’s usage could simply mean in a literal sense, “without a new spouse / wedding” while remaining perfectly consistent with Paul’s overall message about indissolubility except by death.   This presumption on Rev. Caldwell’s part that man’s divorce dissolved holy matrimony was troubling, and since this message was part of a 12-part series,  SIFC couldn’t help but wonder how this pastor treated the topic of God’s character in covenant, as well as the crucial topic of the one-flesh state and its severability or inseverability by acts of men short of dying.

Fortunately, this entire sermon series is available online, so a listen to the very first installment of the series proved a bit infuriating, but still very worthwhile for gleaning some insights into the development of evangelical heresies in both of those two pivotal matters, treatment of covenant, and treatment of the one-flesh state joined by God’s hand.    So pivotal and central is a correct understanding of these, that if that foundation isn’t rock-solid, there is no adequate foundation for discerning or refuting the full range of divorce and remarriage heresies.    (The only thing that’s equally pivotal in this regard is a correct understanding of the betrothal nature of our salvation, binding on heaven, but revocable by us through choosing to die in a persistent state of willful disobedience to His commandments.)   Naturally, a Calvinist-leaning Baptist pastor is far more likely to temper his marriage permanence views on  the notion of “once saved, always saved”,  especially when faced with the discomfort of needing to admonish those who are living in a state of being adulterously “married” to someone else’s one-flesh partner, or when faced with the need to refuse to perform such a wedding.    We know of only one (part-time) Baptist pastor whose “pastoral care” is biblically faithful to that extent.

Why did SIFC find the content of that first sermon on Genesis 2:18-24 infuriating as well as enlightening?    First, it strikes us as highly unusual for a pastor, already brave enough to do a 12-part sermon series on marriage,  divorce and remarriage,  to do any sort of a studious “deep dive” into the supernatural nature of the one-flesh state.   It far better serves the evangelical marriage revisionists to claim that the one-flesh state is a gradual human process accruing over the course of the union, rendering counterfeit spouses   interchangeable  with covenant spouses, with the passage of time.   Even the very commendable, and far more accurate series by Church of Christ pastor David Sproule  in 2013 didn’t linger long on the topic of one-flesh.   What was triggering this in 2002, and why have we heard so little about it from any pulpits since?

Secondly, Rev. Caldwell of Spring, TX seemed to be coming up with a very novel treatment of Jesus’ command in Matthew 19:6, “therefore what God has joined, let no man separate.”   He argues, while stating that John MacArthur also makes this point (but we must have missed it), that Jesus was not referring to individual couples in His commandment, but to the institution of holy matrimony as a whole.   This, of course, implies that God covenants with an institution, but with regard to any given pair that He has joined, it’s a sliding covenant, that is, it is in bearer form.    The sole biblical “support” offered for this idea is tenuous at best.   Caldwell argues that Jesus’ use of the word translated “what” was deliberately chosen not to mean “whom“.   That word in the original text shows as  ὃ   ( 3739 [e]
ho ), according to both www.biblehub.com and www.scripture4all.org.    As we drill into the concordance reference, we find that it can mean either “what” or “whom”, depending on the context.    We feel the context of Jesus’ words argues far more strongly for “whom“,  otherwise Jesus would have been agreeing with the Pharisees and Moses, which He obviously did not do.    If Caldwell got the notion and its support solely from MacArthur, it’s no surprise, the latter being notorious for the liberties he takes with his scriptural eisogesis when it comes to defending marriages that Jesus and Paul repeatedly called adulterous.   Many denominations prefer, post-1970’s, to treat this verse as though it isn’t there – ignore it.   Caldwell and MacArthur apparently prefer to redefine it.   This appears to be a concept that didn’t develop the traction to go anywhere after that. 

With regard to the first thing that’s noteworthy about Caldwell’s sermon, he mentions the work of Dr. William Heth of Taylor University in Indiana, an interdenominational Christian college.  Caldwell is impressed (as are we) with Heth’s insight in his 1985 book, co-authored with Dr. Gordon Wenham,  Jesus and Divorce:  The Problem with the Evangelical Consensus, specifically, that the one-flesh joining of holy matrimony is a point-in-time event effected by God’s hand, and not a gradually-accruing process.

It turns out that the year 2002 produced quite a lot of scholarship (and pseudo-scholarship) on marriage ethics that apparently triggered Caldwell’s sermon series.   That was the year that Dr. David Instone-Brewer published his studious, but thoroughly heretical book,  Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible

CWs_coverDRinBible
and it was a few years before Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary wrote an excellent scholarly paper rebutting that book.   In 2002, the first of the tyrannical same-sex marriage lawsuits was surfacing in Massachusetts resulting in court-ordered legalization of sodomous nuptials the following year, and several years before the hypocritical implications of fighting off this development and its totalitarian fallout while cleaving fiercely to its entrenched system of legalized institutionalized adultery would begin to plague the evangelical church.   In that same year, 2002, the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology published opposing pieces by  Heth, who had now decided to align with Instone-Brewer in a reversal of conviction,  and his former co-author Dr. Gordon Wenham who held true to the biblical position.    This journal edition was also just beginning to grapple with the political rise of the homosexualist lobby.    It is fairly likely that these 2002 developments were at least the backdrop, if not the actual trigger for Caldwell’s unusual deep-dive into one-flesh joining and God’s role in it.

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.    –  Galatians 1:10

As mentioned before, Heth had recently been influenced to change his earlier position to the liberal position of Instone-Brewer, a journey he describes in this journal article.    This 2002 article reveals that Heth was not only swayed by the pseudo-scholarship of Instone-Brewer but also by two of the scholars mentioned  (and quite convincingly rebutted) by Drs. Jones and Tarwater in their 2005 paper,  Are Biblical Covenants Dissoluble?  : Toward A Theology of Marriage.   That scholar was  G. Hugenberger, author of Marriage as a Covenant,  in which he purported to cite Old Testament instances where God abandoned various covenants as evidence that the marriage covenant was dissoluble if one of the human parties declared it dissolved.
[FB profile 7xtjw SIFC  note:  If Hugenberger’s  rationale truly reflected God’s reality, this would greatly blunt the Christian community’s motivation to set aside their carnal proclivities and take a strong moral, political stand against the constitutionality of unilateral (“no-fault”) divorce, would it not?   Instead, we have religious freedom legal defense ministries shamefully adopting a blanket policy not to get involved in such cases, claiming there’s only an “incidental” violation.]

To be clear, both Heth and Wenham had always taken the politically-correct Protestant position that divorce was “allowed” for so-called biblical grounds, hence that it was recognized by God and effectual in dissolving covenant marriage, but prior to Heth’s change of heart, both men agreed that remarriage while that “former”  covenant spouse lived was forbidden by scripture.    If a premise is incorrect in some respect, it’s really difficult to be on-target in the scholarly discussion that falls out from that.    If divorce is indeed deemed to dissolve the marriage bond in God’s eyes (as per Hugenberger), what basis actually remains at the end of the day for forbidding remarriage?    Indeed if either choice, to remarry or not to remarry, has no effect on either spouse’s eternal destination, why does the debate matter at all, in the first place, against that Calvinist backdrop?   Heth  journeyed to this new place, he tells us, under “concern” for the opinion of other renowned scholars toward his earlier work (fear of man exceeding the  fear of God), and because Instone-Brewer’s arguments seemed compelling to him, as did Hugenberger’s.

What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it?  May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written,
“That You may be justified in Your words,
And prevail when You re judged.”    –  Romans 3:3-4

From the Jones & Tarwater 2005 rebuttal to Hugenberger and Heth, page 10:

“…both Köstenberger and Heth appeal to the work of Gordon Hugenberger as the basis for their belief that covenants may be dissolved. Hugenberger contends that covenants can be both violated and dissolved, asserting that these ideas are conveyed by the same Hebrew expression (Hiphil of parar + berith).32 In order to corroborate this claim, Hugenberger cites fourteen scriptural examples of covenants that were ostensibly dissolved (Gen. 17:14; Lev. 26:44; Deut. 31:20; 1 Kgs. 15:19; Isa. 33:8; 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 14:21; 31:32; 33:20; Ezek. 16:59; 17:15; 44:7; Zech. 11:10-11).33

Despite Hugenberger’s monumental contribution to the study of biblical covenants, we are not persuaded by his evidence for dissolubility. While Hugenberger correctly notes that the Hebrew word parar may be translated with the English term “broken” or “annulled”34 — connoting violation or dissolution — parar does not necessarily carry both meanings at the same time. Imposing more than one meaning simultaneously upon parar is what James Barr calls the error of “illegitimate totality transfer.”35 In other words, it is wrong to conclude that because a covenant was “broken” it was, therefore, “dissolved.” An examination of the fourteen aforementioned examples, we believe, sufficiently demonstrates this truth.

First, three of the passages (1 Kgs. 15:19; Isa. 33:8; Ezek. 17:15) cited by Hugenberger refer to treaties between men where God is clearly not a covenanting party. Thus, even if these agreements were dissolved, they would have no bearing upon this study, for we are solely concerned with covenants in which God is a part.  With that stated, it is not even certain that any of these three examples constitute an occasion on which a covenant was dissolved. In fact, the example from Ezekiel seems to illustrate the exact opposite as the prophet asks, “Can Israel break her sworn treaties like that and get away with it” (Ezek. 17:15)? The Lord answers with a resounding, “No!” (Ezek. 17:16). By allowing Israel to be punished, then, the Lord demonstrated the applicability and enduring nature of the terms of the covenant. Thus, these three examples fail to demonstrate that covenants in which God participates can be dissolved.

Second, two of Hugenberger’s examples (Jer. 14:21; 33:20) deal with the prophet Jeremiah’s consideration of whether or not the Lord will dissolve his covenant with Israel. Jeremiah records a prayer on behalf of Judah,

LORD, we confess our wickedness and that of our ancestors, too. We all have sinned against you. For the sake of your own name, LORD, do not disgrace yourself and the throne of your glory. Do not break your covenant with us (Jer. 14:20-21).

While it could be argued from this prayer that Jeremiah believed it was possible for God to dissolve his covenant, later God revealed that annulment of the covenant was not possible, not even theoretically, as he declared, “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself. I will rebuild you” (Jer. 31:3-4). Furthermore, in Hugenberger’s second example from Jeremiah, God demonstrates the permanence of his covenant by comparing it to the times of night and day: “If you can break my covenant with the day and the night so that they do not come on their usual schedule, only then will my covenant with David, my servant, be broken” (Jer. 33:20). Thus, these two examples fail to demonstrate that biblical covenants in which God participates can be dissolved — indeed, they seem to indicate the exact opposite.

Third, eight examples mentioned by Hugenberger (Gen. 17:14; Lev. 26:44; Deut. 31:20; Isa. 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 31:32; Ezek. 16:59; 44:7) refer to God’s people violating the terms of a covenant. A careful reading of these texts, however, reveals that such violations did not dissolve the covenants in question. For example, are we to believe that the Abrahamic covenant was dissolved (Gen. 17:14)? To the contrary, Scripture evidences that God’s covenant with Abraham was “forever” and “eternal” (Gen. 13:15; 17:8). Moreover, on at least eight different occasions, Scripture affirms that God “remembered” his covenant with Abraham.36 Thus, Gen. 17:14 cannot represent a dissolved covenant.

Contrary to Hugenberger’s interpretation, these eight examples of Israel “breaking” their covenant with the Lord beautifully illustrate God’s attitude toward the nature of covenants in which he participates. For example, Moses prophesied that the people would rebel and break God’s covenant (Deut. 31:20), and Scripture repeatedly records the fulfillment of this prophecy and its subsequent consequences (Isa. 24:5; Jer. 11:10; 31:32; Ezek. 16:59; 44:7). Yet, as we have argued above, the Lord’s punishment of his people for covenant violations is itself a de facto demonstration of the enduring nature of these arrangements. Ralph Alexander writes that the Lord’s punishment of his people affirms “his immutable faithfulness to his covenants.”37 Similarly, Andersen and Freedman comment on God’s wrath toward covenant disobedience noting that, “The punishment is not an expression of a broken relationship. On the contrary, it is enforced within the relationship; punishment maintains the covenant.”38 Therefore, as with the previous examples, these eight citations fail to demonstrate that biblical covenants in which God participates can be dissolved.

The prophet Zechariah presents the final example (Zech. 11:10-11) cited by Hugenberger. When Israel returned from exile, God implored the people not to act like their fathers had before them (Zech. 1:1-6), because real blessings, Zechariah records, will come only when God’s people obey him and walk in righteousness (3:7; 6:15; 7:9-14; 8:14-17). Sadly, however, the people acted as did their ancestors whose behavior had caused them to be exiled (Zech. 7:1-14). The people of Zechariah’s day had rejected the pleas of the righteous and consequently, writes the prophet, the Lord would withhold his covenant protection if there was no repentance (Zech. 11:10) — that is, God would “break” his covenant. Did the Lord, therefore, dissolve the covenant he had made? Certainly not, as the last three chapters of the book present an eschatological picture of God pouring out his grace upon the nation in the end times (12:10-14:11). Once again, far from dissolution, God’s judgment demonstrates his faithfulness to the covenant.

In addition to the fourteen examples cited by Hugenberger, we surveyed every example of berith in the Old Testament (267 examples), as well as of diatheke and suntheke in the New Testament (34 examples), and were unable to discover a single example of a dissolved covenant in which God participated. Like the language used to describe the nature of biblical covenants, the manner in which covenants are established, and the way in which God deals with covenant violations, the absence of any dissolved covenants in which God participates provides evidence that points to the indissoluble nature of biblical covenants.


Since Rev. Caldwell especially highlighted Dr. Heth’s writings about the nature of the one-flesh relationship, and to Rev. Caldwell’s credit he noted God’s hand in creating it instantaneously, we looked forward to seeing firsthand how Dr. Heth treated the topic of one-flesh and how he could possibly reconcile his new liberal views with what Jesus said in Matt. 19:6 about it being inseverable except by death.    It turns out that Dr. Heth’s revised view fails to mention God’s hand at all, nor the supernatural, instantaneous event.    He instead chooses to degrade  sarx mia to hen soma, citing Gen. 29:14; 37:27; Lev. 18:6; 2 Samuel 5:1; Isaiah 58:7), and steers well clear of the enlightening New Testament descriptions delivered by Jesus and by Paul, for example, Eph. 5:28-30.

“I had argued that the covenant and consummation of marriage made two totally unrelated people as closely related as they will be to their own flesh and blood children.   However, the unity between unrelated persons established by the marriage covenant is not the same as the vertical blood relationship between a parent and a child nor the horizontal blood relationship that exists between siblings. The Genesis 2:24 phrase, “they become one flesh,” refers “to the bondedness which results from and is expressed by sexual union” and “refers to the establishment of a new family unit”..

(Dr. Heth, that’s not what Jesus said and you know it.)
Today we know that even sodomists claim to form a sexual union and a “new family unit” under the sanction of the civil state, but today Dr. Heth might well be the first to protest that there’s no one-flesh relationship since God’s hand isn’t joining them, given the correct views he once held but “repented” of with regard to heterosexual unions.

Heth’s co-author, Dr. Wenham, on the other hand, in his countering article tragically fails to address the one-flesh relationship at all, and only touches on the nature of covenant in passing, leaving Heth’s newly-embraced fallacies unrebutted scripturally.    Instead, Wenham embarks on a much-needed contextual argument for the invalidity of concluding that one may remarry after divorce.    He does a masterful job of starting with ante-Nicene church fathers, then working back in time to the apostles’ positions, then the person of Jesus, and finally Judaic tradition, showing quite effectively how none of these support the Erasmean view that the innocent party in adultery or abandonment may remarry.    At one point in the article, Dr. Wenham says this:

“The same is true of the second half of the statement in both gospels: “He who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18b); “If she divorces her husband and marriesanother, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:12). The Lukan form of the statement is almost the same as Matthew 5:32b.  The Markan form is unusual in envisaging a woman taking the initiative in divorce proceedings, which rarely happened in first century Palestine.   But what is striking about both forms of the saying is the implication that divorce does not break the marriage bond, so that sexual relations with anyone but one’s first spouse is adultery.

Unfortunately, this is the closest Wenham ever comes to deducing that divorce is entirely man-made and not recognized by God, i.e. that only death dissolves a God-joined union, or that not all civilly-sanctioned heterosexual unions are God-joined for that very reason.    In other words, he never brings his accurate observations to their full inevitable conclusion, and never makes the heaven-or-hell linkage with 1 Cor. 6:9-10 or with Galatians 5:19-21.   Perhaps if he had, he’d have never been published in a Southern Baptist scholarly journal.

Dr. Al Moehler was the editor-in-chief of that 2002 journal edition.    In 2010,  Dr. Moehler went on to write a convicting and influential article,  Divorce – the Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience.   How much more convicting and influential might this piece have been if the deceiver hadn’t wooed away Dr. Heth and broken up the collaboration with Dr. Wenham, curtailing their further studies into the divine and inseverable nature of the one-flesh relationship that God has now revealed to so many in the common laity.

 

(Our previous posts on the topics of one-flesh and God’s character in covenants with men are here and here.)

www.standerinfamilycourt.com

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