00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
And I invite you to take your
Bibles and turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. We are continuing
our Sunday morning sermon series through Paul's first letter to
the church in Corinth. We're in chapter 7 looking at
verses 8 through 16. If you haven't brought a Bible
with you this morning, there are pew Bibles in the pew racks
in front of you. And our passage today is found
on page 955 in those few Bibles. As we continue to see as we work
our way through this letter, Paul deals with a number of issues
in the culture and especially in the church in Corinth that
are also issues in our world today. And so we are seeing the
church today wrestle with a number of these very issues or related
issues. There is confusion today about
the body, and there was confusion in the church in Corinth about
the body, the goodness of the body. The body and its relationship
to the whole person. The body and its relationship
to the spirit. And Paul tells us that those
things are one. The body and the person are one. The body and spirit or soul are
one. They're not to be detached in
some way. And we've seen a series of issues
that all revolve around that confusion in the church in Corinth. It's confusion that works its
way out in terms of sexuality and immorality, what we do with
our bodies. And Paul says, since the body
is part of the person and created by God and tied to your spirit
and your soul, what you do with your body matters. It's not just
an indifferent lump of matter. Immorality, but then we also
see Paul addressing Problems with regard to marriage, that
same philosophy that what we do with our bodies doesn't matter
seems to have played out in what we can call platonic marriages,
where husbands and wives are together, but they don't give
themselves in body fully to one another. They don't give themselves
sexually to one another. So Paul has addressed that in
the first part of chapter 7, basically saying, husbands, give
yourselves to your wives. Wives, give yourselves to your
husbands. There's a mutuality in Paul's
address there in the first seven verses of 1 Corinthians 7. He's also now going on to address
a similar and related issue And that is, well, if the body doesn't
matter, singleness must be the higher spiritual state. And so if we're married, we might
as well just get divorced, leave our spouse. And what Paul is
going to tell us this morning is there is no higher spiritual
state. Singleness is good and a gift
from God. Marriage is good and a gift from
God. And if you're married, live like
a married couple. That's the bottom line in our
passage this morning. So we're going to look at 1 Corinthians
7, focusing on verses 8 through 16. I'm going to begin reading,
however, in verse 7. Hear the word of the Lord, the
Eternal. Word of God. I wish that all
were as I myself am, but each has his own gift from God, one
of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows,
I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But
if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is
better to marry than to burn with passion. To the married,
I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not
separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain
unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband
should not divorce his wife. To the rest, I say, I, not the
Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and
she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If
any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents
to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving
husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving
wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise, your
children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But
if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases,
the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you
to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether
you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband,
whether you will save your wife?" Thus far, God's holy, inspired,
and inerrant Word. Let's go to Him in prayer. Our
God, we do pray that You would teach us. Pray that You would write Your
Word on our hearts today, and we pray in an age of such moral
confusion that You would make us faithful. That's our prayer
this morning, O God, make us faithful and make us bold to
speak Your Word in truth. We also pray for love. Loving
spirits, loving hearts that desire to see those who are confused
come to a knowledge of the truth. So, oh God, we pray that you
would be with us. Bless this reading and preaching of your
word today. Not to us, oh God, not to us,
but to your name be glory. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Dr. Albert Mohler, in his wonderfully
helpful book, We Cannot Be Silent, actually points to no-fault divorce
as one key factor that set the stage for our current moral revolution. No-fault divorce, a key factor
that set the stage for our moral revolution. The history, in the
history of the Western tradition, divorce has been a big deal. It required typically a long,
difficult, legal process. There had to be some guilt found
there, oftentimes adultery, to justify a divorce. But the basic message of this
long, difficult process was the value of marriage, that every
breakup of a marriage is a disaster. As Pat Conroy, the writer, once
put it, divorce is the death of a small civilization. It's expensive, excruciating,
painful. At some level, every divorce
is, but especially the long process that has marked divorces in Western
cultures. Because of that, however, no-fault
divorce was seen to be more humane. People didn't have to be necessarily
raked over the coals. They didn't have to spend tons
and tons of money for the divorce, etc., etc. Humane. Actually, one of my political
heroes, Ronald Reagan, when he was governor of California, I
think, signed the first No Fault Divorce Bill in 1969. What has happened since then
has been a skyrocketing divorce rate, actually somewhat leveled
off now, but skyrocketing. It undercut marriage. Marriage
was no longer a covenant, a biblical binding covenant. It now became
a contract between two people. And it was, in effect, as long
as the two agreed to to maintain the contract. Dr. Mohler actually points out that
the church through the years was complicit in large part by
not standing firm, by not exercising church discipline in the midst
of this skyrocketing divorce rate, even in the church. The church has been complicit.
We have played a part. in the rise of this current moral
revolution in our country and around the world. God speaks fairly clearly. As
the New American Standard Version puts it of Malachi 2.16, God
says, I hate divorce. I hate divorce. That's pretty
clear. God does give. Biblical reasons
for divorce, biblical allowances for divorce. We'll look at that
as we move along this morning to specific conditions, but at
the heart of it, God says, I hate divorce. As we get into this
passage this morning, I really want us to see just basically
two things. Today, I'm not even going to throw in a small little
third thing at the end like I did last Sunday. Two basic things,
that there are different gifts and different marital situations.
That's what he lays out for us in this passage. Different gifts,
different marital situations. First of all, there are different
gifts. And Paul addresses this in verses
7 to 9. He says, I wish that all were
as I myself am in verse 7. What does he mean by that? Verse
8, it is good for the unmarried and the widows or widowers to
remain single as I am. But as he says here in verse
7, each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one
of another. Some are gifted and called to
singleness. That is the reality. Some are
gifted and called to singleness. Paul himself appears to have
had the gift and the call to singleness. And we're going to
come back to this because Paul deals with this issue again later
in chapter 7. So again, we're only going to
deal with it in somewhat of a surface way this morning because he deals
with it at length later in this same chapter. But later he's
going to tell us that he believes single people are better equipped
to fully serve the Lord in whatever calling or whatever vocation
God calls them to. Better equipped. They don't have
to worry about loving and caring for their spouse, which is a
good thing. I don't want to play down that. It's a good thing to do that,
but there are these extra responsibilities. As Paul says, the single person
can be fully devoted to the Lord as long as they have the gift
of singleness. So it's good. Singleness is good. As I said last week, singles
should not be made or made to feel as second-class citizens
in the church. Some churches do impose this
kind of stigma, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. And it
does make us ask the question, how do we treat singles in the
church? How do we reach out to singles
in the church? Do we make sure they're included
in our gatherings, in our times together? Do we let them know
that they are a valuable and important part of our community? Sometimes singles impose their
own stigma. Sometimes they withdraw themselves
from the community of faith. Perhaps sometimes feeling, well,
I'm not married, I don't have children, I don't really fit
in well. Let me encourage you to seek to fit in. You are where God has placed
you. You may want to be married. Some
of you do who are single, some of you don't who are single.
You may want to be married, but God has placed you where you
are right now. You can pray for change, but
be content and be a part of the body of Christ. We are better
off for your being an active part of the body of Christ. The flip side is some who have
held historically that being single is the higher spiritual
state, the higher spiritual state. Perhaps that comes out of verse
9, or a certain reading of verse 9, where Paul says, if they,
singles, cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is
better to marry than to burn with passion. Some have said,
well, marriage is only for those who can't exercise self-control.
It's a lesser state. The higher state is the single
state in marriage. You know, actually, the word
cannot in the ESV and in, I think, most translations is not actually
in the original Greek. It's not in the Greek text. But the idea I think is pretty
much the same. All of us at one level wrestle
with self-control. We all have our various issues
of self-control and our sexual desires, our desire for intimacy
are a part of who we are. And one of the points that Paul
is making here is the strength of those sexual desires and desire
for intimacy is one determining factor in determining our gifts. I knew that I did not have the
gift of singleness. Many of you know that you don't
have the gift of of singleness, and one of those keys and clues
is our desire to have intimacy with a person of the opposite
sex. The strength of those is a determining
factor. You know Martin Luther, the great
reformer who was a monk, pledged to become a monk because He made
a rash vow during a thunderstorm, but eventually got married to
the woman who became the delight of his life, his Katie. And he grew to detest the enforced
singleness of Catholic priests and monks. He recognized the
gift of singleness for those who had it, but without it, without
the gift of singleness and forced singleness, he basically saw
as a form of misery. And he wrote a letter. I love
this letter that he writes to one of his friends and colleagues,
Nicholas Grable. And in part of this letter, he
writes this, kiss and re-kiss your wife. Good, good, good,
good pastoral advice for you husbands. Kiss and re-kiss your
wife. Let her love and be loved. You are fortunate, Luther says,
in having overcome by an honorable marriage that celibacy in which
one is prey to devouring fires and to unclean ideas. That unhappy state of the single
person, male or female, without the gift reveals to me each hour
of the day so many horrors that nothing sounds in my ear as bad
as the name of monk or nun or priest. A married life is a paradise
even where all else is wanting. There is a good, strong, healthy
view of both singleness and of married life, the gift God gives
one to some and the other to others. Secondly, in our text,
we see different marital situations, and we see this in verses 10
to 16, different marital situations. First, in 10 and 11, He addresses
the married, and in particular he addresses married believers
in these first two verses. And he says, to the married I
give this charge, not I but the Lord. It's interesting because
he's going to later say in verse 12, to the rest I say, I not
the Lord. Now, let me tell you what Paul
is not saying here. He is not saying, I'm going to
refer to Jesus here and what Jesus taught, and that's authoritative,
but later I'm going to give my opinion. It's not necessarily
going to be authoritative. That is not what he is saying
here. What he's saying is, I know a command of Jesus that addresses
this situation, I don't have a specific command of Jesus that
addresses this one, and yet as an apostle, his opinion, his
word is still authoritative here. So he says, first of all, to
the married, Jesus has already spoken. The wife should not separate
from her husband, but if for some reason she does, she cannot
get remarried. or else be reconciled to her
husband, and the husband should not divorce his wife." The basic
commitment here is no divorce, no remarriage. That's the basic
teaching of Scripture, no divorce, no remarriage. Marriage was created
by God at creation. It was good. When the man was
still alone for the first time in God's creating in Genesis
1 and 2, we hear the words, not good, not good for Adam to be
alone. God creates a helper fit for
him, someone of a complementary nature taken out of him. So we
have a complementary reunion of the man and the woman. They
are alike. But they are different. And as one writer puts it, we
see in that passage in Genesis 2 that God brings her to Eve. God, as the writer says, like
the father of the bride, brings the woman to the man. But the
Bible says that this union of man and woman is a covenant. It is a binding relationship. It is two becoming one flesh. And covenants, biblical covenants,
were broken on pain of death. That's what the whole covenant
ceremony meant, when people entered into a covenant in the ancient
world, passing between animals that had been cut in two, as
if to say, if I break My end of the covenant, nay, what has
happened to these animals happened to me. Now, I am not advocating
death for divorcees. But what I am saying is the Bible
takes marriage seriously. It takes it seriously. This one
flesh union between a man and a woman, that is biblical marriage. Yet there are times when God
allows it, times when God allows it. Matthew 5, Jesus says, except
for, He uses the Greek word porneia. You can hear some English words
coming from that word porneia, sexual immorality in general,
which in the context most likely meant adultery. Why is adultery
a grounds for divorce? Because it breaks the one flesh
union between a man and a woman. Paul back in chapter 6 with regard
to believers going to prostitutes said, don't you know that the
one who joins himself sexually with a prostitute becomes one
with her for the two become one flesh. That can only be with
one woman, with one person in the binding covenant of marriage
where two lives are joined together. Adultery on either part breaks
that. That doesn't mean it can't be
rebuilt. This is a case where divorce
is allowed. It is not required. In fact,
as I've As I have counseled married couples over the years going
through marital problems, sometimes because of adultery, I try to
encourage them that I have seen many marriages survive adultery
and and even in some ways become stronger in the end. It doesn't
necessitate a divorce. But divorce is allowed in those
circumstances. The second biblical Example,
and these are the only two given in Scripture, is when we have
a case of desertion by an unbelieving spouse. And that's what we see
here in verses 12 to 16. A case of desertion by an unbelieving
spouse or one who shows themselves unbelieving by their desertion. Paul is addressing what we might
call mixed marriages. A case when one spouse becomes
a believer and the other one does not. And there's the key
question, what do I do? I'm now a Christian, but I'm
married to an unbeliever. What do I do now? Now notice
this is not justification for marrying an unbeliever. That's
not what Paul is saying here. Actually, he's going to say at
the end of chapter 7 that those who do get married must marry
only in the Lord. only a believer. But what do we do when we become
a Christian and our husband or our wife does not become a Christian
with us? Paul says if your spouse desires
to remain married, stay in that relationship. It's kind of interesting
because in the first century, wives were expected to worship
the husband's gods. God or gods. Plutarch, the first
century writer, historian, et cetera, et cetera, wrote this,
it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the
gods her husband believes in. Paul sets that aside, says no,
believe in the one true and living God and in Jesus Christ, but
stay if the husband or wife desires to stay in the marriage. There might have been a sense
that if we stay in a marriage with an unbelieving spouse, we
will be some way defiled by it. So Paul says in verse 14, or
we get this from verse 14, where Paul says, the unbelieving husband
is made holy because of his wife. The unbelieving wife is made
holy because of her children. Otherwise, your children would
be unclean. But as it is, they are holy. They're in some sense set apart
by the presence of a believer in the home. Holy doesn't mean
Christian here. They're in some sense set apart. The defilement may come right
out of the Old Testament, this idea of being defiled. The Old
Testament says, don't intermarry lest you be defiled, lest you
be led astray. Ezra, after the return, after
exile, the return commanded Israel to put away their foreign wives. whom they actually had married
inappropriately to begin with. They didn't come back and have
foreign wives and become faithful believers. But the sense of defilement.
But your spouse, your children are made holy and set apart. Tom Schreiner has a nice quote
about this. He says, when Jesus touches the
leper, Jesus does not become unclean, but the leper becomes
clean. That's a helpful way to see it. A spouse, the children come under
the sphere of grace, and maybe there is an opportunity for conversion.
1 Peter 3 addresses wives. to adorn themselves with Christ-like
beauty so that their husbands may be won over, their unbelieving
husbands may be won to the Lord through that beauty. But them becoming Christians
is no guarantee. As Paul addresses in verses 15
and 16, if the unbelieving partner separates, let them go. And he says, how do you know? Verse 16, wife, whether you will
save your husband. How do you know, husband, whether
you will save your wife? We don't know. So if the unbeliever
wishes to go, Paul says, let the believer go. He uses the language here, the brother
or sister is not enslaved or is not bound. If we look forward
to verse 27, which we'll come to in a couple weeks, Paul says,
are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. Literally,
he says, have you been loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife.
But if you do marry, you have not sinned. In other words, what
Paul is saying here is these are occasions in these particular
circumstances where the one who has been divorced is free to
remarry. Free to remarry. Here we have
these strong words in Scripture with regard to biblical marriage.
It is a high view of marriage, which we are losing in our society
today. But in the Bible, it is a high
view because it reflects the union of Christ and His church
The husband and the bride, that language is used. We have a single
savior whose call precluded marriage his whole life. A single savior. Jesus was never married. And yet God prepares for his
son a bride, a greater bride. as great as brides are, as great
as wives are, a church, a people that He will be united with for
all eternity. As we come this morning to the
Lord's Supper, we come remembering that we are the bride of Christ,
that we are in union with Christ, that we are one with the Lord
Jesus Christ. And may that impress upon us
not only the glory and goodness of God, but also the importance
of the states that God has put us in, whether married or whether
single. Let's pray together. God, how we praise you, that
you are good and gracious. You tell us, O God, that you
do not lay any burden on us that is more than we can bear. Our
God, we pray that whatever state that we are in, you would help
us to be faithful and to do the duty that you have called us
to in that particular state. Our God, we also thank you for
your great grace. There may be some here who have
fallen, who have sinned, who have broken your commandments,
and yet, oh God, your grace is greater than all our sin. And
so we pray that you would be present with your gracious love
and mercy in all of our hearts this day and prepare them now
as we come to partake of the bread and the cup as we remember
the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that we
pray. Amen.
Marriage and Divorce
Series 1 Corinthians
| Sermon ID | 5519151343996 |
| Duration | 33:24 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 7:8-16 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.