Marriage is a Promise
February 8, 2009 in Remarriage by dan
Many people feel entitled to demand marriage and divorce as though they were inalienable rights granted by God. After all, who has the right to tell us who we can and cannot marry and whether we can or cannot leave that marriage?
This is evidence a nation and its people have lost their understanding of what marriage is. And with that, they show they have have lost their honor, integrity, courage, security, and sincerity of love.
Marriage is a Promise
Marriage is not a privilege or a right. Perhaps our government and society may not oppose our decision, but that alone does not make it a right. Marriage is a covenant. It is a promise, a sacred vow, an oath, an open declaration giving all of one’s honor
- to God
- to one’s spouse
- to one’s children
- to the rest of the family, friend, and society
It is a promise
- to love faithfully
- to love enduringly
- to seek the well being of the family
- to put the well-being of one’s family over oneself
- to bring honor to the value of one’s word
- to defend the honor of one’s family
- to defend the honor of the institution of marriage
- to protect the family’s right to live together in love
- to protect the family’s right to enjoy shared assets in peace
- to protect and not violate the family
To make such vows before God is to ask God for accountability. It is to declare one’s understanding that to violate this covenant is to stand before God for an honest judgment of one’s character and be found dangerously lacking in integrity, courage, faithfulness, honor, sincerity, love, and everything that would constrain an honest person from being unfaithful.
Unfaithfulness in Marriage is Offensive to God
If we make the promise without being totally surrendered to keeping that covenant at all costs, then we are lying to God no less than Ananias and Sapphira.
If we enter into adultery, divorce our spouses, and make the vows to another person, then we are not only lying to God but we are attempting to make an ass out of God.
Is that offensive? I hope so. It needs to be offensive, rough, and brutal before it can even come close to representing how offensive this unfaithful behavior is to God. By cheating in marriage, people make God out to be unworthy of respect and honor and faith and obedience. They make God out to be a patsy who has not the backbone or integrity or power to cast the sinner into the eternal punishment he or she deserves. It is an extreme affront to God.
Unfaithfulness Hurts God’s Loved Ones
There is no greater way to hurt someone than to hurt that person’s loved ones. When you cheat on your marriage, you hurt somebody’s son or daughter. And if you have children, you hurt them, too. People may tell themselves and others lies pretending that unfaithfulness and abuse in marriage is OK, but it isn’t. Some people may fake humility pretending to be weak and unable to resist, but that’s a lie and hypocrisy and it is arrogance with a full load of stupidity to go along with it. There is no excuse for abusing or cheating one’s family.
If this sin were all, it would be quite severe. But, it is not all there is. When God created us, He knew we would be unfaithful to Him. Each and every one of us. He knew we would take every blessing of life and freedom and use it selfishly against Him. So, He created us with the knowledge He would have to send us to hell or die to pay for our sins. Not only did He feel the pain of the cross and the torment coming up to the cross, but He lived an eternity in perfect anticipation of that pain and knowing there would be an eternity to remember that pain as perfectly as were He on the cross the whole time. His demonstration of His power over death through His resurrection was for us, but the pain He suffered and still suffers is infinite and eternal. And it is a pain He took on willingly.
Yet, we cast Him aside and made Him die on the cross knowing full well we would betray Him again and again, that we would regard Him unworthy of our love and honor, that we would sin. He knew. Yet He went through it. And after all that, there are still many who would rather go to hell for all eternity than surrender to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
And this is the core issue of why there is so much unfaithfulness in marriage. After all, who can be faithful to anyone if they are unwilling to take hold of the grace of God that would make them able to be fatihful?
When a Second Marriage is Fake
I really want to use that very rough word in hopes this message will cut to the heart and soul and mind of those who read it so they can begin to see that this sort of mockery of God in our nation must stop or our nation can be damned as a worthless and hell-worthy nation along with the people who support such a whorehouse mentality regarding marriage.
John the Baptist did not candy coat his words when he addressed Herod. Herodias was married to Herod’s brother, Philip, but she was playing the whore with Herod. She had left Philip to be joined together with Herod.
Today, many churches take a liberal whorehouse view of marriage and divorce. They might approach Herod and Herodias and say something like, “I am sorry to tell you this, but I don’t want your marriage to be hurt by the sins of the past. I really would like to see your marriage blessed by God, but for that to happen, you really need to ask God for forgiveness and also ask Philip for forgiveness, and then pray for God to remove the curse from that sin upon your marriage and future generations cutting all ties to the past and all soul ties to your ex-husband knowing that Deuteronomy 24:1-4 says once you divorce and marry another, you cannot ever go back to your first spouse ever again. Do you understand? Good. Ok, now pray after me…”
At this point, the church and the adulterous couple feel they have satisfied their need to be holy, and they’ve been really, deeply holy and are sincerely repentant. Sadly, it’s a lie.
Truth is, John the Baptist was right. He died. He was beheaded. But, he was compelled by the truth of God to tell Herod it was not lawful for him to have his brother’s wife.
John did not even recognize this as a marriage. And when Jesus was approached and asked about divorce and remarriage, Jesus said that except for cause of sexual immorality, a man who divorces his wife to marry another or a woman who divorces her husband to marry another commits adultery.
When churches and society defend the adulterous marriage over the covenant where God puts two together and commands us not to let man put us asunder, this is sin.
Some churches even perform adulterous weddings calling them holy matrimony where Jesus has called them adultery. Such churches call Jesus Christ a liar or an unenlightened fool, and those churches are all on dangerous ground continually and will be called to give an answer for those who were led into sin by their so-called whorehouse ministry.
Most pastors in this condition are arrogant jackasses and liars and will do nothing but bristle upon hearing the truth of the condition of their hearts feeling attacked unjustly, upbraided unfairly, slandered, accused as if by the accuser of the brethren, and yet they somehow seem to reconcile in their minds calling themselves godly while leading others into direct conflict with the very Word of God. They are so arrogant that when they find themselves in conflict with the Word of God, rather than question themselves or their own holiness and correctness, they will question the very wisdom of God and the wisdom of His Word calling it impractical.
In essence, they create a god of their own liking to worship and they have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven. They live in denial of this fact, but that will not protect them from the hellfire and brimstone to come.
They appeal to a concept of love and the demands of their concept of love, and to be fair they often do sacrifice greatly, but it is only with indirect worship of themselves through worship of a god that is under their power and control defined by them, approved by them, given permission to reign by them. They are liars and hypocrites but they know nothing about it. Yet this ignorance will not spare them of the responsibility they bear before God.
Sandy Patty wrecked her family to live with her affair partner. Apparently, to her repentance means going through a process of convincing others she has repented so she can continue to go on as a Christian singer, but she has no faithfulness at all to her first husband, John.
Amy Grant had some heavy struggles with her first husband, and I would not want to criticize her for those difficulties with him and his problems with drugs. It may have been hard for her to stay the course with him, but I think she probably should have done so given this is what she promised God. And most certainly if her second husband Vince was married to another woman, then Amy and Vince had no business breaking up a marriage to be together. Repentance is not merely a token saying, “sorry” and continuing to live in sin.
I have always loved Keith and Melody Green and their strong stand for marriage, and their deep commitment to the Lord. After Keith’s death, I was happy to see Melody married once again. But, then several years ago I felt hurt to see her marriage with her second husband end. Both had separate ministries, and without wanting to be unfair and judgmental without knowing the cause for the breakup, it is obvious to the whole world of onlookers that there was a marriage and there was a divorce, and that where there is a divorce, there is a commitment to sin on the part of one spouse or another. And, sin affects ministry deeply. In this case, sadly, it would seem one spouse is living in the sin of breaking a marriage covenant while the other is covering the sin and allowing that ministry to be led by a sinner. I don’t know the legalities or the situation specifically, but it would seem both must be in sin in order for this to happen, and this is something I find difficult to say because of my long time deep regard for not only Melody, but also Amy and Sandy as well. I don’t like saying things that hurt them, but I care and don’t want them to be in trouble on the last day either. Nor do I want the pastors who rigorously defend such sin to have to stand before God’s judgment. More than that I don’t want Jesus to have to suffer the pain of having to tell them, “Depart, I never knew you”.
When sincere people marry, they seek permanent bondage. They say so, and they mean it. It is as though their love and commitment were so deep and sincere they would gladly accept and even seek accountability before God and swear their souls away to hell should they ever choose in the future to turn away from the vows and live unfaithful to the principles of marriage.
When sincere people marry, their love is truly sincere enough to seek to offer accountability as if to swear to ones spouse and children never to violate their right to live together in love continuing to enjoy the shared family resources and home.
But, America and most westerners and especially Californians usually lack the courage, the integrity, the sincerity to allow anybody have the freedom to be sincerely bonded in marriage. They want to reserve for themselves the “right” to break free, to have a roll in the hay at their spouse’s and childrens’ horrible expense. They want their unilateral no-fault divorces. They’re liars and hypocrites who want a marriage ceremony but no sincerity. They’re cowards who have no backbone to take responsibility. They want to be whores and make someone else pay for their sins.
Then there are the California professionals in law. Some are deeply honest and deeply loving and caring and devoted to justice. I know because one of my close friends in Southern California is that very kind of divorce attorney. Deeply honorable and caring.
However, many are happy to drag the faithful and innocent into court, threaten them with the most grave losses of everything precious, and hold out their money like a Mafia thug committing extortion. And many judges are perfectly happy to let them do this. After all, if extorting from the faithful and destroying the families of small children for profit makes attorneys rich, then the state legislatures have to raise judges’ salaries to keep them on the bench.
So, here in California we have a prostitution of justice and a prostitution of marriage.
So, why in the world would the homosexual community even want to have the mess we heterosexuals have?
Instead of battling over whether homosexual marriages should be allowed, why not work on fixing the marriage laws that are already on the books now? Only a blithering idiot or a liar would ever claim they are truly Constitutional. They’re cowardly and reprehensible and evidence of supreme incompetence for those who would ever support them. Competent and honest politicians and citizens war against all they stand for. But, it’s one thing to cackle and crow how pro-family and pro-marriage one is, and it’s another thing to take action and make things happen.
If you want to see how competent a politician is, just look at the divorce and suicide rates, in his or her area and see if they are rising or dropping drastically.