We'll be reading a few passages from the latter part of Isaiah, beginning in Isaiah 50. We're going to be considering marriage, divorce, and remarriage, but focusing on divorce and remarriage. And one thing that is not often considered is that God is a divorced person. God has been divorced and remarried. And so the stigma that often attaches to divorce and the assumptions of misbehavior that are sometimes justified, but often not, if they attach to humans, they attach to God. God had an unfaithful wife and rebellious children. And so when we see couples who, you know, a Christian person who has an unfaithful spouse and are divorced, we should not think down on them. And we see parents who have rebellious children, should not necessarily think down on them. So consequences for us too will be considered. So the first passage is Isaiah 50 verse 1. You'll see in your bulletin and also on the top of your outline the passage that I'll be reading, but I'll give you a heads up as we go. So from chapters 50, 54, and 62. First Isaiah, again, all of these hear the word of God. The first is Isaiah 50 verse 1. Thus says the Lord, where is the certificate of divorce? by which I have sent your mother away. Or to whom of my creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities. Chapter 54, verses four through eight. Fear not, for you will not be put to shame, and do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced. But you will forget the shame of your youth and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your husband is your maker, whose name is the Lord of hosts, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth. For the Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected, says your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting loving kindness, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer. Lastly, chapter 62, verses one through five. For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent. and for Jerusalem's sake I will not keep quiet until her righteousness goes forth like brightness and her salvation like a torch that is burning. The nations will see your righteousness and all kings your glory and you will be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will designate. You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. It will no longer be said of you forsaken Nor to your land will it any longer be said, desolate. But you shall be called, my delight is in her, and your land married. For the Lord delights in you, and to him your land will be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so your sons will marry you. As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you. I had the privilege to officiate at two weddings over the past two days. Each person of the two couples had suffered at least one divorce, and there were six divorces in total among the four people. I reviewed our directory, and there are approximately 20 divorces among our small congregation, as well as a few whose marriage ended when their spouse passed away. All this is not counting significant relationships that did not involve a marriage covenant, but whose demise nevertheless involved deep grief. God himself divorced his chronically unfaithful wife, Israel, and we must confess that Christ's wife, the church, is often guilty of unfaithfulness and likewise worthy to be sent away. It seems fair to say that some churches give evidence that Christ has divorced them. In our lives and culture that are plagued by divorce and other similar griefs, what hope is there for a good marriage in the future? The only hope is the power of Christ, his power to forgive sin, to give righteousness, to raise the dead, and to give new life to individuals and relationships, including marriages. Some of your marriages are evidence that there is life after the death of a previous marriage. One of my best friends from college suffered a horrible divorce, raised his three children by himself, and had lived alone for almost 30 years, despite being one of the most generous and caring people I know. Yesterday, he was married to a woman from his youth group of many years ago who had suffered also a painful divorce. This is evidence that God gives life to the dead and calls into being things that never existed. In Christ, there is life after the death of a marriage. That's what we're going to be considering. I'm going to be just skipping over a number of things that we've considered in the past that I hope are fairly well known, but are important to reconsider as we focus on this particular aspect of divorce and remarriage. You'll see in the outline, marriage, divorce, remarriage. That's the procedure we're following. So the first thing, marriage. Marriage is creational. It's part of who we are and what we were made to be. God made man, male and female, said it's not good the man be alone, made female, brought them together in a marriage relationship. The creational aspect and character of marriage is that it is heterosexual, monogamous, and covenant. Those are the three characteristics of them. Anything apart from this is defective. Homosexuality is defective. Polygamy is defective. Non-covenant relationships are defective. The biblical definition of marriage, inherent in how God has made us, is heterosexual, monogamous, and covenanted. For the Christian, marriage is only in the Lord. Our confession rightly indicates that marriage is good for all kinds of people, not just Christians, because marriage is creational. It is human, not distinctively Christian. But for Christians, Just as human beings should only marry human beings, Christians likewise should only marry Christians, 1 Corinthians 7.39. The purposes of marriage are threefold and follow a certain logical order. The first purpose of marriage is mutual help. The second purpose of marriage is that in that mutual help there is to be joy. And the third purpose of marriage is that in that help which brings joy, ordinarily, ordinarily, not always, but ordinarily, children follow. And so children are not the primary purpose of marriage. They are a usual outcome of mutual help and joy. Help, joy, and children. What I want to focus on particularly in this regard is that God established a marital relationship with Israel. When God brought the woman to the man, it was basically Adam said, who gives this woman to be married to this man? And God says, I do. And God brought the man to the woman and said to them, to the man, this woman will be your wife. And said to the woman, this man will be your husband. And he established a covenant in bringing them together. And really when God brings Eve to Adam, it is like the father bringing his daughter to the man and presenting him. And who gave Eve away? God gave Eve away in that covenant. And so when God says of Israel in Exodus 6 verse 7, I will take you for my people and I will be your God and you shall know that I'm the Lord your God. I will be your God, you will be my people. He is saying in effect I will be a husband to you and you will be a wife to me. The covenant of God with his people is a marital covenant. That's the nature of it. And so in Jeremiah chapter 2 verse 2, in Jeremiah reflecting on the exodus in the wilderness, God says, I remember concerning the devotion of your youth, the love of your betrothals, you following after me in the wilderness through a land not sown. The 40 years in the wilderness were a honeymoon. Now it wasn't a great honeymoon, but it was a honeymoon before they entered the promised land. And this, the love of the betrothals brings up the Song of Solomon, and the secret garden, and the intimate relationship between the husband and the wife. It is primarily a human relationship that is pictured, but though primarily human, it is ultimately speaking of God's relationship between himself and Israel. So in Hosea chapter 2 verse 19 and 20, I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice and I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. A threefold confirmed certain statement of God's marital relationship with his people. This is also of course true of Christ in the church. The exhortation to husband and wife in Ephesians chapter five is predicated on Christ's relationship to the church as a husband to his wife. Wives submit to your husbands as the church submits to Christ. Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her. The same relationship that God had with Israel, Christ has with the church. And so Paul expresses his concern In 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2 he says, I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy for I betrothed you to one husband so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. We are engaged to Christ and we're looking forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb, but engagement in the ancient world was tantamount legally to marriage. It was very difficult to back out of. And there were really two witnesses, the engagement and the marriage were two witnesses of this commitment. And so that's the significance of baptism and our confessions and catechisms speak of it as baptism is a sign of our engagement to be the Lord's. We are committed to Him. That's the nature of the relationship. In James 4 verse 4, James is very acting like the old prophets, and particularly Hosea, but really all the prophets. And he just blasts his readers. He says, you adulteresses. Now, you can't be an adulteress unless you're married. And so he sees the relationship of the believer to Christ, of the church to Christ, as a marriage relationship. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Friendship with the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, these things are things of the world. That is the other woman. That is the other man. That is having other gods, which is violating the marital commitment that we have with Christ. So, that is marriage and the relationship with God in Israel. Christ and the Church is a marital relationship. I think I have enough voice to get through this. Stay with me. Divorce. The definition of divorce biblically is when someone sends a spouse away or is sent away or someone abandons a spouse or is abandoned by a spouse. That's what divorce is. It does have a legal aspect, but it refers to the basic situation where spouses are, for one reason or another, separated from one another, not just to go to mommy's house to cool off, but a separation that is indefinite and enduring. That is divorce. As you have engagement in marriage as two parts of one thing, you have separation and divorce as two parts of one thing. Now, Moses said in Deuteronomy 24, if a man sends his wife away, divorces her, he must give her a certificate of divorce so that the general public will know that this woman has not abandoned her husband and she is free to marry someone else. But it was also restricted that if she married someone else, and then that guy sent her away, the first husband could not take her back. And so in the Gospels, when the Jews were asking Jesus about this, they were saying, if divorce is not right, then why did Moses say give her a certificate of divorce? And Jesus made clear that this was not an approved provision. This was a law to restrain the evil of constant divorce, and basically serial polygamy, and the betrayal of spouses toward one another. It was a restraint on evil, not a provision of good, and Jesus made that very clear. In Malachi chapter 2 verse 14, verse 16, you have this very familiar statement, I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel. And so the provision in Deuteronomy 24 was a restraint on endless depravity. But I remind you of the previous verse, verse 14. 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. It is not divorce per se that God hates, it is the treachery that is often involved in divorce. Sending a spouse away groundlessly or abandoning a spouse without sufficient cause. That is what God hates. Not the simple legal formula or the certificate. It is the treachery and the unfaithfulness that God hates. because he is a faithful God and requires us as his people to be faithful to him and faithful to one another and especially faithful in our marital relationships. So divorce is not a positive provision, it is negative to restrain evil. For the believer, it is not simply if you're being sent or abandoned, but for the believer, the ground for divorce is anything unseemly. We usually think in terms of Matthew 19 where Jesus says, God has given this divorce decree to you because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it has not been so. From the beginning in creation it was heterosexual monogamous covenanted for life. And Jesus says this, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery. And that's what we have in Mark and Luke. The exceptional thing in Matthew is the exceptional clause. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality. We usually think of this except for adultery, but the word that is used is much broader than the narrow fact of adultery. It says, immorality or anything unseemly, and it comes from Deuteronomy 24, the divorce law there. And so, the ground for a believer to divorce is not the outright adultery only, but anything that involves a spouse with someone that they're not married to in sexual impropriety. And so it is a very broad category and therefore somewhat difficult to apply. Also, what constitutes abandonment? Is alcoholism abandonment? Are there such considerations? Is physical verbal abuse abandonment? Is someone who verbally abuses their wife essentially sending her away? These are difficult questions and not easily answered. And from our conservative point of view, we think that other people allow divorce too easily. But we may be in danger as conservatives of allowing divorce too strictly. It is extremely difficult. And you don't want to be just granting divorces right and left, but you don't also want to be saying there are never any grounds for divorce except these narrow cases of outright adultery or physical beating. It is much more difficult than some people seem to think. So, these are broad principles. For someone married to an unbeliever, being sent away or abandoned. And for two believers, sexual unseenliness. Very broad. So there are two broad principles that require wise application. Our session has dealt with numerous cases over the years and it is never easy. It is never easy to judge grounds for divorce. Well, actually there are a couple of cases where it was easy, but in many cases it is not easy to apply these principles, and it is heart-rending in most cases. As we see, this is item F from Deuteronomy chapter 24, give her a certificate of divorce. There is a certain formality of this. It isn't just a husband saying, get out! in a fit of rage, but it is a resolution enough to go to the trouble, especially in those days, of a written certificate of divorce. And so it is a thoughtful, premeditated, definite action. It requires a public aspect. Another thing that speaks to this is in Numbers 5, when a husband was jealous of his wife, there was something that God ordained that in my judgment, and I think it's pretty self-evident, delivers the woman from false accusations. And the deal was this, the jealous husband who suspected his wife would bring her to the temple before the priest, and the priest would take some dust from the temple and sprinkle it in some water, and she would drink the water. Well, ordinarily that wouldn't harm the woman at all. It would be an extraordinary thing if something bad happened. But if she was guilty, the providence of God promised that her thigh would swell and she would be in very, very bad shape. But because it was such a simple procedure, it was a way for the woman to be relieved from the husband's unjustifiable suspicion. But the point for our purposes is you didn't deal with these things merely privately. These were public procedures to either establish grounds for divorce or relieve from those accusations. There's a wonderful statement, and I've read it before, but I'm going to read it again, that reminds us of the dangers that are involved with cases of divorce. It's easy to be too lenient or too strict, and this statement, I think, balances it rightly and emphasizes the need for a public action, both in the church and in the state. This is the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 24, paragraph 6. Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage, yet nothing but adultery, and that's understood broadly, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient of dissolving the bound of marriage. wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed, and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case." Biblically speaking, you cannot simply say, I have grounds for divorce, and divorce your spouse, pursue it in the civil courts. You need the judgment of your elders to give you a certificate of divorce and to judge your case on the basis of biblical principles, whether you have grounds for divorce or not. It is not a private matter. Marriage is an institution that is of interest not just to the parties and the families, but the church. And the well-being of the church depends on sound marriages. The well-being of the state depends on sound marriages. And each institution has a legitimate concern in maintaining sound marriages and in judging particular cases. No matter how badly they do it, they have a legitimate interest in maintaining sound marriages. And so you see in Isaiah chapter 50, Where is the certificate of divorce by which I have sent your mother away? God wrote out a certificate of divorce and sent Israel away into the Babylonian captivity. The Babylonian captivity was a divorce between God and his spouse on the grounds of their spiritual adultery. It was a formal exercise by God. The whole book of the prophet Isaiah is dealing with this issue. He speaks of Hosea taking a wife of harlotry as a prophetic example of the nature of the relationship between God and his people. And this is what he says in chapter 1, verse 9. Hosea and Gomorrah had a son, and God said, name him Lo-Ami, which literally means in Hebrew, not my people. And he says, for you, you are not my people, and I am not your God. What is that? When God covenant with his people, he says, I am your God, you are my people. When he divorces him, he says, I am not your God, you are not my people. And this relationship is over. God divorced Israel. God is a divorced person. And on right grounds. She was flagrantly and chronically adulterous in worshiping other gods and having other gods, the other man. And the way that Hosea says, the way that God says this in Hosea is a formal statement of divorce. Hosea is God's certificate of divorce to Israel. In chapter 2 verse 2, contend with your mother. Contend, for she is not my wife, I am not her husband. Another declaration of divorce. We see it also in Romans chapter 11 when Paul is explaining why the Jews are so generally unbelieving. And he says, they were broken off for their unbelief, but you stand by your faith, do not be conceited but fear. The Jews were broken off in the time of Christ. This is another divorce. We'll get to it. He remarries them and brings them back from the Babylon captivity. But here, again in the time of Christ, God is saying, by breaking them off from the tree of the covenant, He is saying to the Jews, because of your unbelief, because of your spiritual adultery, in rejecting me as your husband, you are not my people, and I am not your God, and it persists to this day that the Jews as a people are divorced from God on the grounds of their adulterous unbelief. God is a divorced person, and it's not his fault. What about Christ in the church? We don't usually have a sense of marriage and divorce with the old covenant and righteousness between God and Israel. But what about Christ in the church in terms of divorce? Well, Paul was afraid of this, as I read earlier in 2 Corinthians 11, 2. I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I betrothed you to one husband so that through Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. And the Corinthians are being tempted to covenant with other gods and to if you will, get in bed with someone that they are not betrothed to. Christ has betrothed them to Christ. He is trying to keep them pure until the the marriage supper of the Lamb. And Paul is concerned for the Corinthians that they are going to unite themselves with other gods in idolatry and immorality, and on that ground God will divorce them. James chapter 4, you adulteresses. The people that James is writing to have broken their covenant with God, have entered into a covenant with other gods, and that is the grounds upon which God has divorced his people in the past. Christ's statement in Revelation 2 verse 5, Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first, or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place. What does it mean when Christ takes the lampstand of one of his churches and removes it from his presence? He is saying, I am not your God and you are not my people. Removing the lampstand is a certificate of divorce. We see this also as with the Jews, also with Gentile believers. The Romans, in Romans 11, Verse 22, behold the kindness and severity of God to those who feel severity, but to you God's kindness in grafting you in, in covenanting with you, saying you are my people, I am your God. Otherwise, if you continue in his kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off. If we follow the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, the desires for other things, other gods, we give God grounds to divorce us and to say to us, I am not your God, you are not my people. Or as the picture in the judgment is, I never knew you. I never knew you. God divorcing his people for their spiritual adultery is a present reality, not a historical reality merely. God's the same today, yesterday, and forever, and he will deal with us as individuals and as a congregation in the same way as he dealt with individual Jews and the nation of Israel in the past. If we give ourselves to other gods and are unfaithful to Christ, We give him grounds to divorce us. And now the third part, which is much happier. In Christ, there is a new creation. What's the implication of that? In the old creation, there was marriage. In the new creation, it creates and anticipation that in the new creation there is also new marriage. That the old creation which was corrupted by sin and marriage was ruined in many ways, in the new creation where there is purification there is the hope of the revival of marriage. So, Paul says in Romans 7 If a married woman is joined to her husband, joined to another man while her husband is still alive, that is adulterous. But if her husband dies and she is joined to another man, that is not adulterous. And so after death, there is the possibility of a new marriage that is pleasing to God. Why? because God raises the dead. And after the death of one marriage and the passing of a spouse, there is in the grace of God the provision of a new marriage with a new spouse. Now in the time of the Reformation and even through the early Puritans in America, death was a very common thing. The loss of children, the loss of spouses, and the Reformers and the Puritans routinely remarried. And in fact, there were various cases, I think Martin Buecher was one of them, but there were cases where a reformer was on his deathbed and was counseling his wife to marry his best friend that was recently made a widower. Now, be careful with that. You don't want to be living your life thinking, gee, if my spouse dies, who can I marry? That is premeditated adultery, all right? There are many people in our culture, particularly in other denominations, that think that if your spouse dies and you remarry, you are being unfaithful to God and unfaithful to your spouse, and that's simply not true. For someone who has lost their spouse in death, in the new creation, God blesses and gives a new marriage. And it is lawful and gracious and joyous and glorious. You don't have to remarry, but you may. And God blesses it. So there is remarriage after the death of a spouse. And Paul says, only in the Lord. And there is remarriage after divorce. The law in Matthew 19, 9, whoever divorces his wife except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery. If someone divorces his wife on the grounds of immorality and marries another woman, does not commit adultery. The exception applies to the divorce and to the remarriage. If the divorce is groundless, the remarriage is adulterous. But if the divorce is grounded on abandonment by an unbeliever or unseemliness by a believer, if the divorce is biblically grounded, the remarriage is lawful. There is godly remarriage after death and there is godly remarriage after divorce. Again, permit me to read from our confession. Adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage gives just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract. In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and after the divorce to marry another as if the offending party were dead. It is lawful and pleasing to God that if the divorce is scriptural, the remarriage is blessed by God. We have to be very careful not to be more righteous than God and to understand the freedoms and the blessing that God gives us in Christ. So how did this work out with God in Israel? Some of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. Israel for 400 years. is sleeping with all kinds of other gods in God's face and he is patient as is evident in Hosea. But finally, with overwhelming grounds, he gives a certificate of divorce and sends her away into Babylon justly and divorces Israel. They are not his people, he is not their God. But then what does he do? The Lord has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected, says your God. For a brief moment, 70 years across millennia is brief. And the closer I get to 70, the more I appreciate it's brief. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of righteous anger, I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting loving kindness, I will have compassion on you, says the Lord your Redeemer." God established a new marriage with the wife that he had justly divorced. In his justice, he divorced her. In his grace, he remarries the same woman. There is life after divorce, and God proves it. Isaiah 62, verses four and five. No longer will you be called forsaken, no longer said desolate, but my delight is in her, and your land will be called married for the Lord delights in you and to him your land will be married. In Hosea verses 1, 9, and 10, in verse 9 he says, you are not my people and I am not your God, yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea and where it is said to them you are not my people it will be said to them you are sons of the living God. So even as he sends them out, He's promising to bring them back. Think of the garden. Even when he sends them out, he sets a flaming sword at the gate, protecting the way to the Tree of Life. Even when he sends them out, he says, I will come for you. There's a book written about my dad's group in Second World War. And this plane got shot down and some of them were prisoners of war, some of them ran around until D-Day and the Allies came through. The title of the book is, Someone Will Come For You. And in military associations, no one is left behind. That's how God deals with us. He throws Adam and Eve out of the garden because of their sin, puts this flaming sword that basically says, someone will come for you. And that someone was Jesus. Comes for us and brings us in a new and living way. He sends them into captivity. Someone will come for you. In his justice, he cuts us off, and in his mercy, he brings us home. Hosea chapter 2 verses 19 and 20, I will betroth you to me forever. And in verse 23, I will sow, just real, I will sow her for myself in the land I will have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, lo Ruhamah. And I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people. And they will say, you are my God. This is remarriage after divorce. There is life after the death of a marriage. It is not hopeless. And so also Romans 11 we can think of in these terms. God says, they also, the Jews who are cut off and divorced because of their unbelief, if they do not continue in the unbelief, they will be grafted back in, for God is able to graft them in again. If they don't continue in their unbelief, they will be remarried, as God has done in the past and will do again. What about Christ and the church in these terms? Romans 9 verses 24 and following quotes from Hosea. And he says, even us whom he also called not from among the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. He says also in Hosea, I will call those who were not my people, my people, and who was not beloved, beloved. And it shall be in that place where it was said to them, you are not my people. They shall be called the sons of the living God. In Hosea, this is speaking of God taking Israel back and creating a new marriage that was broken because of adultery. Paul is applying it to the Gentiles, where those who were never married to God are included with God taking the Jews back. When God brings the Jews back from the Babylonian captivity and establishes a new covenant in a new marriage, he implicitly includes the Gentiles in that remarriage. And so the picture that you have is that when there is divorce, there is hope for a new marriage. When there is divorce, that marriage is done. There's not a renewal of the marriage. But there is the reasonable hope that in the power of Christ that a new marriage can be established between old spouses. That's God taking the Jews back. But he also takes the Gentiles with whom he had never been married as part of that remarriage with Israel. And the application there is that there is remarriage after divorce with a different spouse. God remarries his previous spouse, there's hope for those cases. And God remarries a new spouse in the Gentiles, there is hope for those cases. Do not despair. God raises the dead and he raises up marriages from the ashes. My best friend who was married yesterday, we prayed for him for years. It's just the waste of a good man for him not to have a wife. Some poor woman is living without this guy. And God answers that prayer. Why? Because of the power of the resurrection and the new creation and a new marriage for this guy. And in other cases, where God is similarly gracious. So, trust God for life after the death of a marriage. If you are divorced from your spouse and neither of you have remarried, there is hope for a resurrection of your marriage in Christ. Think of Israel coming back from captivity. If you are divorced and your spouse has remarried someone else, there is hope for you that God will give you another spouse and bless a new marriage in a new covenant. There are some traditions and some churches that disallow these things, but the scriptures exemplify and command them. And we cannot do what God prohibits, but we also cannot prohibit what God permits and what God provides. And God provides hope for an old marriage raised from the dead and hope for a new marriage created out of nothing. These two things remind me of Abraham, which is what we'll close with, Romans chapter four, have the faith of Abraham. He believed God who gives life to the dead and calls into being which does not exist. He gives life to a divorce situation by giving a new covenant. He brings into being that which did not exist by bringing a new marriage that never was, after divorce. In hope against hope, he believed. He looked at his body, saw death, looked at God's promise, and saw life, so that he might become a father of many nations. With respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God. If you are divorced, don't lose hope. God is gracious and abundant in his goodness. Look to him. for his provision. Let us pray. Father, we pray that we would not be swept along with prevailing opinions simply because they prevail. But we pray that you would help us to devote ourselves to the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures so that we will be conformed to your will and your law and your ways of thinking and doing and expecting. And so we thank you so much that you give hope to the dead because you are the one who has raised Jesus Christ from the dead, forgiving sins, giving righteousness, bringing out of death, bringing into life. And so also in many cases where there is divorce, you give the reasonable hope of remarriage, either to the old spouse or to a new spouse according to your will. And Lord, we take note that you have already done this among us in so many cases, where there was divorce and the death of a relationship, where there was hopelessness and no reasonable expectation of anything good with respect to marriage, and in your grace, You have given life in marriage after the death of a previous marriage. Lord, these are things that we endeavor to avoid at all costs, but very often they are not avoidable. They are beyond our control and we are sent away or we are abandoned or we are dealt with treacherously. And so Lord, we thank you that in this very frequent tragedy and despair, you do not leave us there, but you give us hope of good things in our marriages. Please continue to bless us and protect us, deliver us and provide for us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.