Audio Archive | Christadelphians at Boston

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Location:Unknown (1981)

Topic:Our Heavenly High Priest (Youth)

Title:Class 1

Speaker:Norris, Alfred

Download:1981 Y1 our heavenly high priest.mp3

Source: archive.moorestownchristadelphians.org |

Transcript

Location:Unknown (1981)

Topic:Our Heavenly High Priest (Youth)

Title:Class 2

Speaker:Norris, Alfred

Download:1981 Y2 our heavenly high priest.mp3

Source: archive.moorestownchristadelphians.org |

Transcript

Location:Unknown (1981)

Topic:Our Heavenly High Priest (Youth)

Title:Class 3

Speaker:Norris, Alfred

Download:1981 Y3 our heavenly high priest.mp3

Source: archive.moorestownchristadelphians.org |

Transcript

well i've got a topic which i must talk about this morning because it's so very much in the air these days

especially

when they tell me i've totally got my figures wrong but is it at least one marriage in three that now ends in divorce or is it now one in two i forget it's such a very very high proportion that the likelihood of this kind of thing hitting us in our own lives is increasingly great and we need to know both what we ought to do before the danger arises how we ought to react to those who have been in that position and also to any examples of this kind of thing that might arise in our experience when those around us have their marriages broken and start fresh marriages again

so i have to talk about marriage and divorce

now first of all i'd like to take a clear understanding of what the old testament has to say about the practical possibilities of such a thing

we have to define some of our terms rather carefully to do this and we start off with the meaning of the word adultery

the seventh commandment says thou shalt not commit adultery

the practice of the law of moses was that those who did and were caught

should be put to death by stoning

man and woman alike

and the meaning of the word in old testament times was really quite simple

it was that if you take a married woman

or a woman who is betrothed to be married

and any other than her husband or her intended husband

engages in intimacy with her that's adultery

in other words in old testament language a married or a woman intending to become married

woman are essential for adultery to have been committed

the reason for that is that the law did not forbid men to have more than one wife

and consequently if a married man chose to step outside the bonds of his marriage

and engage in intimacy with another woman then provided that woman was not herself married or engaged

although he shouldn't have done what he did

he could put the situation right by marrying the girl with whom he had associated

or again if he had a desire to become linked with some woman other than his existing wife he could take another

so it wasn't necessary under old testament conditions to divorce a wife in order to take another wife

god very clearly regarded that as being very much of a second best in people's lives the idea of people multiplying wives to themselves was not in accordance with what god wanted people to do as we shall see but it was done and it could lawfully be done

as we know in the case of abraham whose wife was sarah but whose associate from whom ishmael was born with hagar

as we know about jacob with his two wives and his two concubines leah and rachel and the two concubines

when we come to new testament times the situation is different

for their though how is it come about we don't really know

it seems quite clear that the standard of respectability had changed

and even though it might for anything i know still had been possible in certain surroundings to have more than one wife lawfully

and the jew could certainly do so when the lord moses allowed it

the practice seemed to have died out

men might no doubt misbehave in all the ways they always have misbehaved and so might women

but in actual marriage they seem to have accepted that you took only one person whom you call the wife

so when we shall come in a moment to the question as to whether divorce and remarriage are allowable and when the rulers ask the lord jesus the question is it lawful for a man to put away his wife and marry another they are taking for granted that you need to put away your wife in order to marry another in other words they are practically assuming that the standard of respectability is that you have only one wife at a time

the situation is changed in another way in the new testament too and that is that whereas the law of moses never says anything about a woman's availability of of access to divorce if she wishes to get rid of her husband and marry another that situation is mentioned in the new testament so there has there isn't another practice that can happen namely a wife can in principle whether she should do it on another matter be separated from her existing husband and married to another one

so bear in mind that distinction that in the old testament adultery had to involve a married or betrothed woman

whereas in the new testament could be either way around a married man might be guilty of adultery by association outside his marriage and so of course as in the old testament could a married woman

now when the old testament talks about divorce it very rarely does so

there's really only one authenticated case of this which we will turn to to leave it as quickly as we can so that we do know the facts are there so deuteronomy please chapter 24.

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i will read you the first four verses

deuteronomy 24 verses 1 to 4

when a man has taken a wife and married her and it comes about that she found no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her

then let him write her a bill of divorcement

and give it in her hand and send her out of his house

and when she is departed out of his house she may go and be another man's wife

and if the latter has been hate her and write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand and send us out of his house or if the latter husband died which took it away his wife her former husband which sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after that she is defiled for that is abomination before the lord

and thou shalt not cause the land to sin which the lord thy god giveth the foreign inheritance

now i'm not going to dwell upon that passage very largely because one is not at all sure what the first verse means

it seems that a man marries a wife and he may find something about her which he deems to be here a thing of uncleanness

the hebrew calls it a matter of nakedness

there was a big dispute in the days of the lord jesus christ of what was meant here

the more severe of the pharisees thought it meant finds that she has committed adultery

but it's hard to see that that could be so because if that was so unprovable then she could be put to death for it and no divorce would be needed

it's possible that there might be other things which i'm not going to enter into of which you might have found uncongenial in a marriage which would allow him to dismiss her as a wife but would not involve guilt on her part one can think of things that might imply that but we won't need to

in which case he sends it away without a stain on her character

he can legitimately cease to regard his wife but she is not guilty in the eyes of the law of anything that could be punished so she can be married again if she wants to

and the only provision which the law makes about this is that what she can't do is be dismissed by a second husband and then go back to her first

and you can see the reasons for that

because if a man decides this woman is not suitable to be my wife then she doesn't become any more suitable by going back to him again afterwards the reasons he alleged the first time must still be the reasons which he used to dismiss her and so he can't go back upon them and say oh well it wasn't true after all because if you do that you're just simply creating confusion you're giving people to lift the liberty to lift fast and loose just as they want to and anything could go wrong in a land like that so you can see how the law had to provide that if there was such a thing as divorce at all it couldn't in those circumstances be reversed and go back to its old situation when you have already said that woman is not fitted in my wife

now with that background let's let's now go and see what the new testament has to say

i want to take some five passages one by one

i won't comment very much about the first two or three of them but then we'll come to the detailed ones and regard them in greater detail

first of all turn to luke chapter 16.

in this chapter between two parables the problem of the unjust steward and the parable of the rich man and lazarus

the lord introduces these words and i think we can read these round trees so can we read luke 16

from verse 14 through verse 18

and if you can start in this comment we can mention they

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yourself don't man your god expressed your heart to that which is highly sustained among men with the combination and the fire of god along the prophet's words have gone since that time to know god has preached every man's flesh into

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its wife

thank you just because of one word that was read there if i can get as far as the blackboard i can find a piece of chalk yes i can

i just uh introduce you to one little fact about the words here that you might like to know did you notice the word title appear in that chapter and it was read as title uh where's the verse now

uh it will be verse

17 it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail now the hebrew language was the language in which the law was written there are some words which are quite hard to tell from each on letters it's quite hard to tell from each other for example that letter

is the letter r and they call it rash

that letter

is the letter dalet

the d

and the only really distinguished especially if you write this one around the square by that little bit stuck on the end of the dalet that's a tittle

again for example the letter faith

is like that

not doesn't really have that topic projecting projects more like this way it has the kind of sound we would write it as ch you stick a little tail on the end a bit like that it becomes teeth these are inside the ox depending which way you're using it and that is a title

so in the hebrew it's the little bit you stick on the end of a letter to make it into another letter and the lord is saying the law is so sacrosanct before god it must be trifled with that not the tiniest little bit will go wrong and it's a little title he's speaking about

when in matthew chapter 5 the lord is saying similar things he says not one jot nor one tittle two words there shall pass away from the law till all be fulfilled

now again speaking of the hebrew language nearly all the letters are that kind of size in relation to each other one or two of them like allah project a bit of love and another one like a final salah predicts a bit below but broadly speaking they're all that kind of size

except for the little one which

is just like that in relation to the other high up on the line and extending no more than half the way down it's a very small letter and its name is yov or in english jot and so even that little bit won't be lost so he takes the tiniest letter in the tiny split of the letter and says those are the things you must take notice of in the greek language that yo this is replaced by the tiniest of the greek letters which is the iota like that and that too is very small in relation to other letters for example you put its nearest neighbor theta by its side and you can see how big it is

so what the lord is saying is that the law is so important that we mustn't trapped with the smallest part of it so it's one jot or one tittle that we're talking about

right now going back to this these two verses

in that context this is what has been happening

the lord has described their fallacies and the rules of the jews in terms of a steward who is having control over his master's goods and he ought to be faithful to his master and he hasn't been so he's being dismissed from his office and his television reforming when he's being dismissed he makes things worse by uh interfering with the accounts and trying to get his creditors to treat him kindly and the lord says that's what you are you're unjust stewards you're not looking after that which has been given to you in particular you're not taking care of the commandments of god and in one particular case you've turned it inside out and that's why he repeats in verse 18.

whosoever puts the way his wife and marryeth another committed adultery and he that marrieth her that is put away from her husband committed adultery you have trifled with the law and made it easier for people to put away their wives and to be married away again or for the wife having been put away to marry again you are playing ducks and drakes with the law of god and that is unfaithful stewardship so you can see how severely he regards the strict letter of the law about marriage and divorce

we'll come back to the details of that in a moment

just very briefly turn to romans chapter seven

there's a passage like this in romans and there's one in first corinthians as well but i'll pass it by just to show that it's there and then we'll go on to other matters

romans chapter seven

can we go on reading the first three verses please seven verses one through three

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thank you and although the apostle is using those words to illustrate something quite different from actual marriage and divorce he is making it very plain from the clear provisions of the law that a woman who is married has no recourse under the law to becoming separated from her husband the only conditions under which she can legitimately be married again are if her first husband dies

right now having got those two we'll go to the really important ones i think we'll begin by quoting matthew chapter 5.

i'd like us to start reading at verse 27

and read on through verse 32.

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what is

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you is to instead whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her

yes thank you now i'm going to leave out those words saving for the cause of fornication for the time being i may come back to them later and i want to take together what we had in verses 27 and 8 about the last commandment that i shall not commit adultery and what we have in verses 31

and 32 about whether or not one has the right to divorce one's wife and to remarry a divorced wife

between the two there's a very important verse that you'll understand in a minute

first of all the lord takes that which is quite unmistakable he says the law of moses says you must not commit adultery we now know what that means in both old testament and new testament terms

then the lord goes on to say but i say something different i say whosoever look upon a woman to lust out to her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart

now in a way it's not different

because he isn't in any way reducing what the law says about committing adultery he is saying there are more ways than one of doing it

there's the practical unfaithfulness which takes a woman who is not your wife

and engages in intimacy with her

there's the mental way of doing it which sees that the desired object

and inside wants to commit the forbidden act

but doesn't actually do so

in other words i think what the lord is condemning here is that if you're passing your eye upon somebody to whom you have no right of access

and you say i would take that woman if i could

or i would take that woman if i dared

then you have as good as committed adultery i should say as bad as committed adultery in his eyes

this is the big difference between the teaching of the lord jesus christ in practice and the teaching of the old testament

even when they both say the same thing as they quite often do in principle

the law was a law for a people living in a country and it had to be capable of being discovered by policemen and judged by magistrates and executed by those who punished people you had to see the thing before you could say that it happened

so adultery to the eyes of the policeman is when you see adultery and the punishment is because it has happened or the attempt has been made to cause it to happen and then the punishment is carried out it's all outside because the law can't punish inside it doesn't know what your thoughts are doing

but god does and the lord jesus christ says and don't suppose that you are any better in god's sight if you merely think something and would do it if you could that if you actually did the guilt is there in both cases so don't take refuge in not actually committing the forbidden act the lord says to us it connects with all kinds of things about adultery about hating one's brother about committing theft all kinds of things like that the lord says if you think it and you do it if you're dead then you've done it in god's eyes

that's why for example taking up some of the lord's words here the apostle john can write in his first letter whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer because he hasn't killed anybody but if you take the cane and naval kind of story you have to hate before you kill if kane didn't have to have a weapon handy or if he'd struck the blind missed or if it proved not fatal he was still in his own mind had been a murderer and in god's eyes too even though no death had followed so that's what the lord's saying about adultery the fixed desire to do it is as bad as the thing itself

and that's why he goes on to say as he does in verses 29 and 30

if thy right i offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell and if thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell

by the way the word hell there is the greek word gena

which is putting into greek letters the hebrew word gehenna

which means the valley of hinnom just outside jerusalem and that was the place where they always had fires burning to destroy rubbish and trash and sometimes the bodies of criminals

so the lord is saying it's better for you to do something that he's talking about here than to run the risk of being discarded as trash and burnt up and he might even mean before the judgment judgments even he says that

so why did he say if your right eye offend you pluck it out why does he say it at all

why does he say it here

and why do you say it's our right hand of him because he die

again why did he say it at all

and why does he say it here

and the answer must be this

the first thing that happens before anybody commits adultery is that he sees the object that he wants to

and that becomes such an obsession with him that the thought act is done all the real acts is done so the lord says if you find yourself looking in that way then trick your eyes out which is why we say don't look that way anymore take away the temptation from yourself so that you won't be guilty of the actual act it's better to do that and lose the thing you are desiring so much than to run the guilt of the danger of incurring guilt before god's judgment seat

and again if your right hand stretches yourself out to take something that doesn't belong to it or to grasp someone it shouldn't be grasping

then

flick away your hand from the scene

mentally do i cut it off take away the thing you desire to do so that you won't have the desire festering within you it's better to do that and lose the thing you want to have than to lose your life before the judgment seat of god so you can see how that is linked with the business of not committing and not wanting to commit adultery the lord says when you feel that kind of temptation coming over you look the other way and tie your hand to your side

right ravik said that he goes on to the words about divorce in verses 31 and 32.

i'll just read them again to remind us of the picture

it has been said whosoever shall put away his wife let him give her a writing of divorcement but i say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication authenticum is adultery and who will say what so we shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery

so he's saying that he is not accepting that provision which was given under the law of moses as being the right thing for a believing person to do he ought not he says to put away his wife

and if he does

so that that wife can marry somebody else and he's making her an adulteress and her new partner an adulterer

and the context is like this you must not commit adultery verse 27

you must not want to verse 28

and you must not seek a legal excuse for doing the same thing without it appearing to be so verses 31 and 32.

so he command condemns the act as the law does he condemns the desire as the lord doesn't say and he condemns the expedient of getting what you want without it looking like adultery which is what he is saying in those verses so he's talking very much about motive in what he says that will be important to us later

so as far as these words have gone the lord seems to be setting a very high standard indeed and saying marriage is ought never to be dissolved

with that in view let's turn to perhaps our next easiest passage if any of these are easy and that's mark chapter 10.

can we read in mark chapter 10

the first 12 verses please

starting where we left off i think it's over in that corner isn't it

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but from the beginning of the creation god made them male and female

would i get this scholar i think knowing thanks

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what therefore god is going together

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thank you now verse 12 of that reading introduces that matter which i'd mentioned before something that could be thought of in new testament times and couldn't have been thought of in old testament conditions namely that a woman might take the initiative in bringing about a divorce but the law says if she does so and then becomes somebody else's wife she herself is guilty of adultery in doing so so he deals with both cases there the man who puts away his wife and the woman who puts away her husband if you add together all the new testament passages then i think every possible case is dealt with in one way or another

now the cause of this questioning is the question asked by the pharisees in verse two

is it lawful for a man to put away his wife

tempting him

if we read the matthew record which we shortly will it says is it lawful to put away his wife for every cause

now the reason for all that controversy was this

the policies were divided into two camps

there was that which followed the leader shamai and was strict as pharisees go

there's that which follows the leader hillel and he was lacked and easy-going as pharisees go

and never was hillel more easy going than in the master of marriage

shall i would have said the only reason why a man can put away his wife is if she has unfaithful to him

that wasn't what the law said of course the law would have had her killed for it but shana said that's the only reason that is allowable and that was how he interpreted the words that we read in deuteronomy 24.

now hillel says this thing of uncleanness about a wife that might lead a man to put it away can be all kinds of things including the fact she's not a very good cook if he isn't a very good cook then he can dismiss him and marry a better cook uh hoping i suppose the second one would be better unless he's assembled a cooking beforehand

if he sees uh somebody who looks prettier than his wife then his own first wife is relatively unclean so he can get rid of her that way and marry another and in fact the floodgates to divorce for any cause whatsoever were pretty well being opened up by the disciples of the school of hillel so when the pharisees came and said is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause then they were apparently asking him to judge between the relative strictness of shamai and the easy-going laxity of hillary so that's the background against which the question is asked

they both no doubt have in mind

they both no doubt have in mind that clause in deuteronomy 24 which did allow for a writing of divorcement because they say so verse 4 when jesus asked them

jesus said what did moses command you and they said moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away and they were very wise in saying suffered because moses hadn't commanded it he just allowed it for the hardness of their heart they could do it if they were determined to do it but that was not the thing that god really wanted them to do never then he went on to say in verse 5

because of the hardness of your heart moses wrote you this precept but from the beginning of the creation god made them male and female for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh so then they are no more twain but one flesh what therefore god hath joined together let not man put asunder

and the teaching of the lord could hardly be clearer than this could it

he says although there was a provision in the law of moses when in one special set of circumstances they might then divorce their wives that was not the way god wanted it that was the way god provided for the determination of hard-hearted people and you ought not to be hard-hearted people you are not to want to do a thing like that you should take your instructions he says from the garden of eden and to the original creation story

and he says then god hath made them male and female verse six and for this course shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife verse seven and he is quoting from genesis chapter one and from genesis chapter two four chapter one said so god created man in his image in the image of god created he him male and female created he them

and in chapter two where adam saw his wife and said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh the record goes on to say therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother until cleveland to his wife and they too shall be one flesh

in those second set of words incidentally you'll find the real basis for believing that god not only did not want people to break up their marriages but didn't want people to marry more than one wife for they too shall be one flesh as the lord quotes it speaks of two and not three or four or more so that the ideal of the beginning was that marriage should go on for life and that marriage should be between one and one one man and one wife that was how god wanted it to be

so then the answer of the lord jesus christ to this mixed body of disciples of hillel and shammai some of whom wanted an easy answer and some of whom wanted a stern and so it was you're both wrong god doesn't want marriage and divorce to take doesn't want divorce and re-manage to take place at all he wants married partners to stay together for the rest of their common lives

so that's quite clear and plain isn't it and no exceptions are provided for everything in mark says that the straight line is don't divorce and don't be married

right now we'll take matthew 19.

we won't need to read the whole of this because we've got most of it in the mark record but where we noticed first of all that that clause that caused us a little difficulty in matthew 5 and we left it out for the time being is back again in matthew 19 verse 9.

whosoever shall put away his wife except for fornication and shall marry another committed adultery and who so married her which is put away does commit adultery apart from that the main teaching of this chapter is the same as that of the other one there's only that what might be slight or it might be big difference to take note of however there is an important addition and we find that in verses 10

to 12 and if we could read those three verses round please i'll be grateful 10

through 12 of matthew 19.

it is

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yes thank you now we did refer to this passage yesterday in a different context i think it may have been the first day but his setting here is this they come to jesus and say under what conditions can we divorce our wives and remarry without guilt

the lord says unless we take that exception into account under no condition should you do that

then upon the disciples hearing what he says are apparently quite outraged by the answers and they say if the case of a man be so with his wife it is not good to marry

now what they appear to be saying is this if you are telling me

that when i have married a woman i ought to stick to her throughout our common lives no matter how she behaves i'd rather stay bachelor

that's what they seem to be saying isn't it if the case of a man be so with his wife it is not good to marry

and the lord doesn't in any way say that he wasn't saying something like that he goes on to say well some people are willing to accept this some people faced in this very difficult condition are willing to put themselves in a position where they don't live a married life after they've been betrayed in this way they're willing for the kingdom of heaven's sake to treat themselves as being single people from that time onward

but he also says it isn't easy to accept that some can and some can't

not all men can receive this saying

he that is able to receive it let him receive it

now the reason why i quote those words of the lord jesus christ about

the disciples outrage when the lord lays down his ideals is that i think it disposes of one way out that so many people do think of

at this point bring in that so-called accepted clause and what i have to say from now on is that i'm going to tell you what i think about that

not every crystaldelphian thinks the same and in charity one has to admit that they might be right and i might be wrong or i might be right and they might be wrong or we might both be wrong at all events there is a definite distinction of opinion as to what that verse means

first of all i'm not trying to scrub the passage the passage is there and has to stay there the lord does say in matthew 5 and he does repeat in matthew 19

that a man who puts away his wife except for the cause of fornication is guilty of and is likely to make her guilty of adultery

now the most usual understanding of that is that the lord is saying that there is one ground on which you can without guilt divorce your partner

and that ground if we accept that is adultery

in other words if you find your wife is unfaithful

and it's usually read the other way around as well she finds that her husband is unfaithful or the lord doesn't actually say that but let's assume that too

if you find that your partner is unfaithful then you may legitimately divorce yourself from that partner and marry or be married again and you will not be condemned for it

that's what the usual statement is

it has sometimes been expressed in this way i'm almost quoting something now

this crude and wicked act meaning adultery dissolves the marriage bond it no longer exists

i could even give you the reference for that but i won't anyway that statement has been made

now let's assume for the moment that that statement is right

if it were right it would mean not just that adultery can be a reason for divorce

it would be that it doesn't it must be

a ground you can't avoid the divorce because if it dissolves the marriage bomb no longer exists then you're no longer married and so there you are the marriage is gone

and the lord isn't saying that

he doesn't make any commandments about it he doesn't say you must put away a partner who is guilty of that act he only says if you do it for any other reason than the one he's thinking about then you're guilty of bringing an adulterous situation into existence

so that

it isn't possible i think look at it quite in that way

the lord is not saying it would be impossible to forgive an adulterous partner

he's not saying he mustn't even try

he's saying that whatever is the meaning of this word fornication that's the only reason that can justify the breakdown of a marriage and starting again

however let's assume that he is talking about adultery

then if he were the lord would be saying that if your partner is unfaithful you can put her

or him we say away and be married again and you have not broken the law of god or the law of christ

now if that is so why ever would the disciples have been so outraged and say if the case of a man be so with his wife it is not good to marry

they went after all 20th century people these disciples they were good conservative first century people with a decent attitude towards life

and if the lord had been saying to them you mustn't put away your partner for poor reasons but you can if she's unfaithful i think they would have said they've got all that they wanted they would have regarded that as being the way of escape from a bad situation and they'd have been quite content but they weren't

they said if the case of a man be so with his wife it is not good to marry

and if it is right that the lord is saying that one has the liberty to put away one's partner if she or he is unfaithful i don't see what all the fuss was about they would have thought i would have thought that they got reasonable liberty can you imagine a first century disciple saying

if i can't put away my wife for other reasons that unfaithfulness i'd rather stay bachelor

i can't

and so i don't think they could have understood jesus words to mean that you can

divorce for adultery and remarry

they must have had some other ideas to what he meant

now the question is on which i don't want to take a lot of time what might it have been

now you notice the lord is using two words

one is fornication

and the other is adultery

now they're both concerned with sexual sins

and the fornication word is a much wider word than the word adultery

it can include any kind of sexual aberration including homosexual ones

but in this particular setting i think one has to say the lord wouldn't have used two words if one would have been enough

and if he had been talking about adultery about the wife he could have said so and it would have been perfectly plain whosoever shall put away his wife unless she commits adultery and marry another then he makes a committed adultery oh he commits adultery himself would have been quite plain and we would have been in no doubt and he doesn't do it

and i suggest to you that there's good reason to think that when two words are used in the same context they don't mean identical things when the lord says for example in math mark chapter 7 for out of the heart of man evil thoughts proceed fornication adultery and various other things he doesn't mean the same thing by those two

when the lesson of the hebrews says fornicators and adulterers god will judge it doesn't mean the same thing by those two

when galatians 5 reads the works of the flesh are manifest which are these fornication adultery and a lot more again it doesn't mean the same thing by those two

so whereas the former word used by itself could include the whole lot

when they're used together would suggest they might mean different things

now a little story as to what nearly happened in new testament times

a man was engaged to a woman and he thought he found she'd been unfaithful because she was going to have a child

and he didn't want to create a public first so he decided he will put it away privately

now there it seems to be you have the kind of situation that the lord might have been talking about

that if you are betrothed to a person who is legally bound to you already as she would have been under the law of moses

and if you discover before you come together in marriage that she's been unfaithful to her promise

then you may renounce the idea of marrying her

and on the new testament terms that could be called putting away your wife

and you know what i was talking about it was joseph and mary

because that joseph thought he found in mary and he was going to put her away privately and the words were of the angel to him joseph fear not to take unto thee mary thy wife so she'd although betrothed was called his wife because she was bound to him

now to me make very good sense if the lord is saying

if you are intending to marry a person and you find that she is not faithful to her promise then before it happens you may put it away

but afterwards you shouldn't

now that's what i think about those words

in other words i'm about as severe as a man can be as to the meaning of the words about marriage and divorce not quite so bad when you get to know me better maybe tomorrow but at this point a very severe indeed that is that the lord is not making any concessions whatsoever

to a couple already married

i think he is saying you ought if you want to fulfill the idea laid down in genesis 1 and genesis 2 not even to contemplate breaking up your marriage it should last as long as the life of the shorter lived of your lasts

and only then is it proper in god's sight to remarry

he's not making any exceptions to those already married

he's not making life easy for anybody

he's laying down an ideal that simply doesn't compromise with anything i think

another reason why i have for thinking this is this it isn't the lord's habit to lower his standards for any reason whatsoever

he may be prepared to consider very sympathetically those who don't rise to it

that's why not quite so hard as you might have thought

but it does nevertheless make very plain what the ideal is and i find it very hard to imagine that the lord would take a marriage in which for example

an overbearing husband makes life so impossible for his wife that she leaves it and falls into the arms of somebody else

where she is guilty of adultery but he's guilty of things just as bad and concentrate only on defense of one of them i can't see him doing that

it would seem to me the lord reads all our hearts and the hearts of the sinner who sins in public are no more worse in his eyes than the heart of those who behave badly and almost provoke the sin

so we ought all to recognize that in married life when anything goes wrong it may not be only the fault of the one who's public wrong is seen it may also be the fault of the one who's private wrong is driving the other person into whatever offence he or she commits it by the way it can happen not only with cockpit wives it can happen with infect husbands so it can happen both ways around this so that should be born in mind too

now

the one thing i want to make before we resume this subject tomorrow is that in all the passages we have quoted

either from the lord's lips or from the pharisees the sequence is is it lawful for a man to put away his wife and marry another or you say it is and you're breaking the law by doing so and that's always the connection putting away and marrying

now the lord has been very much concerned with motive in the matthew 5

record whosoever looketh on a woman to lust

and it seems to me that all these passages are concerned with that kind of situation in which a being dissatisfied with his wife b once woman c and so get rid of b

the motive is there

when the divorce is entertained

and the remarriage was in mind

at the time

so i think in all these passages the lord is talking about what you want to do in order to get your own way with some other person

and i think we need in our minds to distinguish very sharply between

what you do because you want something else cause and effect

and two things that might follow in history as for example without passing judgment on it a case where a man having an unfaithful wife

is left alone to look after two children

and after some years meets another lady and they get married

where you simply cannot say that he's marrying the second person was in mind when he was deserted by the first one

where the motive in other words doesn't exist

at the time when the divorce takes place

now tomorrow while saying a lot more about the idea of the way in which we ought to look upon our own pending managers i'll cope with that situation a little bit further

for the moment leaving a subject high in the air let's dwell upon that a little and then come back for what i hope will be a better termination when we resume the topic is to wear the prayer

oh lord who knows our weaknesses

and sees deep into our hearts and knows how easily we could fall from thy grace and be guilty in thy sight

watch over us and help us to put our ways before thee and to say when evil beckons us lead us not into temptation

but deliver us from evil

and receivers in this prayer we ask he through jesus christ our lord

amen

Location:Unknown (1981)

Topic:Our Heavenly High Priest (Youth)

Title:Class 4

Speaker:Norris, Alfred

Download:1981 Y4 our heavenly high priest.mp3

Source: archive.moorestownchristadelphians.org |

Transcript

now before going any further with the scriptural

counsel about the wrongness

but the possible mercy to be shown in the case of divorce and remarriage i want you to spend a few moments i want to see which are really quite obvious

as you know in these days divorce is a very easy thing to get

and i suppose most people who even if they go to the trouble of getting married

do that

how in their minds the knowledge that if this thing doesn't work it needn't be continued with

it can be dissolved almost as easy as it was started

it's quite easy for people to break up one marriage and go there several ways and start another

and i suppose that can't help but have the effect on the mind of those who enter upon their first marriage and they can say well i hope it'll work out all right but it's not there's always a next time

and from the somewhat exceptional multiple film star marriages of 50 years ago we're now getting the

almost routine multiple marriages of people who get divorced and start again

he's obviously both a very unsuccessful thing

for the second and third and however many it might be marriages break down as often as the first one does

except the people a little older and the chance that they're dying instead of divorcing becomes greater

but also the uh very philosophy on which it starts is making it much more likely that it won't succeed

see if any of us marries a wife or marries a husband and says to himself well this might work out or it might not then the little difficulties which arise can easily assume the proportions of saying well it hasn't worked out so while i'm still young let's break it up and start again

and so the very fact that that kind of thing happens makes us less tolerant with each other's faults

less careful about our own

less willing to try to find a means of living together and certainly that's willing to endure difficulties when they arise or even when they persist

and i would think our victorian foreparents who knew very well that they were expected to stay respectable and respectful were meant to stay married and not be divorced and not remarried

learned how to put up with each other much more effectively than people in these days are willing to do

and though they no doubt had their quarrels

and their great difficulties they also realized that since they had to live together for the next 50 years or whatever it might be it was no use going on like that you don't want a protracted cat and dog life

and so they tried to resolve their problems they came to understand that they were not as big as they thought they were they grew used to each other's mannerisms the things that made them want to throw things about became more bearable and together they lived a life which could be

endured even when it wasn't perfect

i think one of both those things could happen it could either become much better as it went along and everyone got used to the pulse of the other person so did the love grow and mature

or you didn't find that way of resolving it but you learned to be patient and you put up with things and even when they were they hurt and there were unhappy marriages in those days too well you keep an unhappy marriage going and put the right face on it

and the bible never tells us that life will be a bed of roses for anybody whether married or single or whether married for the first half of the second time it tells us that life has to be lived and lived in faith in god and that there are tribulations to go on with and so either one lives an increasingly happy married life or learns to live with a life which may never become any happier but has to be put up with and either way the servant of the lord jesus christ can do it if he knows that it ought to be done and the victorian married couples did it because they knew it had to be done and in one way or another life was bearable and it even became very happy

i realize in talking like this that there could be a kind of sneaking suspicion in the minds of those who are listening now is he talking about his own life is he saying this is the thing that has to be put up with them that uh it's very difficult he's putting a face on it so for the sake of my absent partner can i show you no i am not we we do very nicely thank you my wife has learned to put up with my faults extremely well and that's why we get on so well

so don't assume for the moment that i am and for a single moment that i'm hiding the unhappiness of my own matrimonial estate beneath words which say some people have to learn to put up with it that's not me my wife perhaps but not me we we do very well

but perhaps we wouldn't have done

if either of us had thought when we started well break it off if it doesn't work and while this time start again

it has and i don't think it needed too much of the we can't break it up so we'll carry on but if we had started with the feeling that we could break it up we might not have learned to live happily with each other in the way we effectively have learned i'm sure sylvia at least had quite serious problems in putting up with me and whether she would have tried again if she hadn't told you all not to i don't no i don't think she would but many people would many people do

there's something else about this as well

when married life first starts it starts in the flesh of what for most people has a very large percentage of sexual attraction in it the mere fact of coming together as men and women and enjoying each other in a carnal ways part of the early experience of marriage

the more you feel that when one marriage doesn't work you can break it up and start again the more likely it is that the caramel part will be predominant and that the idea of enjoying one another in a bodily way will be the principal motive bringing people together

and

quite obviously from anybody's experience that isn't the whole of married life

it isn't the whole of even early married life

and if it were it would become oppressive either of the partners could be so demanding upon the other that one at least would not be happy in the state in which they found themselves and that really means that both wouldn't

and as that married life goes on as our ordinary life goes on again it's quite obvious that that kind of part played in married life can't be as dominant as it was at the beginning the honeymoon days can't last forever and they can't last forever because we grow older because our sexual powers change because our sexual desires change because there comes a time when the

puny carnal enjoyments of the early days are not the fully enjoyable things that they were and not the frequently enjoyable things that they were

and if one starts life on the assumption that that's what makes a marriage with the urgent impulsive desire to fulfill that side of marriage and achieve that experience

then certainly there will be frustrations for everybody

and there will be the increasing feeling as time goes on that this isn't working out let's try again while there is time time being marked by the ominous onset of middle age and then old age

and that doesn't do anybody any good it isn't physically good for one to think in that way or to behave in that way either and it isn't going to lead to fulfillment the number of occasions when anybody trying again does better the second time are very very much fewer than the number of occasions when trying again you do worse the second time and proceed from disillusionment to disillusionment

one has to learn not merely to lift together as men and wife in the carnal sense but to live together as man and wife in the kind of partnership that the bible speaks about being one flesh because we are achieving one aim wanting one goal helping each other on the one path of life

and the idea that our marriage can be broken down doesn't help towards achieving that kind of thing at all that demands a recognition that this must and should go on so apart from all the laws laid down by god or all the ideals set out in scripture it is practically ruinous to start a married life on the assumption that you can break it down one of the things which is needed to make it work is the knowledge that he's got to work not the only thing but one very important thing

now having said that i want to take up where i left off yesterday in which we were discussing which i was pronouncing on the question as to whether or not marriage had to remain forever according to a divine law and what could be done in the cases where things break down

now what i'd like to do to begin with is just quote a few examples from scripture which will give us the right kind of mood for understanding how the mercies of god can operate we start off with one that has nothing whatever to do with marriage and divorce will have something to do with marriage but nothing to do with divorce in the second book of samuel you'll know it well

second samuel chapter 11.

we'll begin by reading around the first

six verses

second seven eleven verse one through to six

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foreign [Music]

thank you

just look at the background of that story to begin with

god's people were at war against a bitter enemy

and david hadn't gone

now we don't know why he hadn't gone

but the chapter does rather suggest that he would have been able to go if it chosen to do so

we learned but david turned jerusalem

so here we have an unemployed king who might perhaps have been busy about the lord's work and being kept with his mind so occupying what he ought to be doing that he wouldn't have time to let his thoughts wander and his mind stray

he was putting himself in a very dangerous position this david by staying at home while his men were at war he had time on his hands he needed something to do

and the devil finds work for idol hands to do the proverb tells us

that could so easily have been david's situation

and that's part one of the ingredients that we need in order to put our own lives right in god's sight and avoid the dangers that yawn in our way that is to be busy in the lord's service not to be unoccupied with our minds free to wonder with our fancies going where they will with evil thoughts taking root in our minds it can so easily happen

you remember how the lord spoke a parable of a man who was afflicted by a demon and the demon was cast out and the man left his house empty swept and garnished and there came seven other demons worse than that one and dwelt within that man and the last state of that man was worse than the first

and i suppose what the lord is telling us is that if we have some evil in our nature we manage to say we'll be rid of that for the time being but we don't put some good to take its place and don't find the job to do then sooner or later we can fall prey to worse sins and workplaces and that can represent an almost incurable condition we've got to find something to do with our lives to avoid the kind of temptation which this person refers to

now the second verse

and it came to pass in an evening time that david arose from his bed and walked up on the roof of the king's house

it's not a very good thing for

fallible ambitious human beings to walk in high places and look down

because when you get on the top and you look down you can think you're god everything else is beneath you this belongs to me said david in effect that's my jerusalem these are my people that's my woman if i want her

the wrong idea could come into his head because he was looking down upon something that belonged to him

there's something like that in the book of daniel too you might remember in the fourth chapter where nebuchadnezzar had dreamed a dream and daniel had warned him against that dream being fulfilled nebuchadnezzar walked on the roof of his palace they looked down upon great babylon and he said is not this great babylon that i have built by the might of my kingdom for he might have my power

and he looked down upon the wonders of battle and he thought he was god he'd made that battle and it belonged to him he could do as he liked with it but he forgot the true god

and the result was that that man was turned out of his palace and driven to live with the beast of the field for the next seven years and wasn't let out again until he repented and knew that there is a god in heaven who can set up over god's kingdom's the basis to men and learnt to humble himself under god's hand

so whenever we're supposed to think that something belongs to us or we can get it if we like or we have the power to take let's remember that we're not god that it's god who has the right to decide what we do

then there's the next verse or the remainder of that verse

and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself

and the woman was very beautiful to look upon

now i don't know where she was

david would be able to see her from the roof of his palace

there's more than a suspicion that wherever it was it would have been better if you'd been doing it somewhere else

because that was david able to see what was going on

and there was revealed before him all that was found desirable of her chance

and

she would have been well advised not to be washing into a public place

if the words later because she was purified for her uncleanness mean that

it was actually possible for david to conclude that her menstrual time had gone that it would be perfectly possible him to enjoy indivisible with her then that might be what it means

but it looks to me as though bathsheba is running very severe risks which came to fruition

in the way in which she was behaving at that time there's no proof of this and one can possibly have joined the wrong conclusion but we can certainly not be drawing the wrong lesson

and the lesson is that

when

any good-looking young woman

puts herself in a position

or clothes or partly unfolds herself in such a way

that when seen by the eye of a lustful man she can provoke his lust

then she is doing a very unwise thing

it's the female way of seduction

it can be positively sinful and certainly it can be dangerous

and we ought to bear in mind that that kind of risk ought not to be run

by one who is or who intends to become a disciple of the lord jesus christ

without seeking to look uncomfortably

then it should be made very plain that one is not offering oneself

not inviting the wrong kind of attraction not putting oneself in the danger of having the experience that bathsheba did

there's a lesson of what used to be old-fashionedly called modesty in this which is still very much needed

we ought to make it very plain that there is a barrier between ourselves and those who would take advantage of us which says no admission

we don't want to wear [Music] garments that say us stupid people do sell in the shops yield on what we've got around us we want to wear things that make it quite plain but only with the right person at the right time and on the right conditions

are we

in obedience to god able to make ourselves available there must be no tempting to promiscuity in the way we go on so can i ask our young folk

male and female alike to bear that in mind that whatever the standards of the times and however provocatively when is allowed to guard oneself in these days this is not the wise point of the beautiful scriptures teaching it can even be sinful

if that's hubert wasn't quite so forthright in her ways as potiphar's wife she may very well had the same idea

and potiphar's wife was an adult to this in our heart

so that's the next thing they learned from this passage

which wasn't at all why i started to quote it by the way

but the one that follows now is that david exercised his kingly rights as he took them to be

and took advantage of the commoners no rights of your either hittite and knowing very well that bashiba was another man's wife took her and committed adultery with her and fathered her child

and then things went from bad to worse

having put himself in that position he sought to draw back from the shame that would bring upon him publicly not from the offence you notice but from the shame and made matters worse by recalling iraq in the field of battle

and sending him home in the hope that it could reasonably appear that the child was your eyes child

and your eye wouldn't go

so then david made him drunk in the hope that his his inhibitions would be disappeared and he really would go and

have

the intimacy with his wife that could mean that he might have been regarded as the father of the child and that didn't work

and finally he was reduced to sending him back to the field of battle and instructing job to have him killed by the enemy's hand

now it's hard to imagine a worse conspiracy of sin than that that david committed

he begins by allowing himself the liberty of committing the capital offense of adultery with one of his subjects which is a mean thing to do then he goes on by committing the capital fellows of murder offense of murder by having the man who would not father the child he had begotten done to death on the field of battle

and if the law of moses had been carried out upon david with all the severity that it might have been then david could as well have been stoned to death twice

once for his adultery and once for his murder he'd broken two of the ten commandments within a very short space of time thou shalt not kill and thus not commit adultery

so if the life of david and his reign that terminated at that point we could have had no complaint against the justice of god in fact i'm still surprised i still can hardly appreciate how gracious and merciful god was today dude because he was wasn't he

so after that event is finished then let's go over to chapter 12 and see the outcome

second samuel chapter 12.

if we could go on reading please um at verse 1

until i say

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but stop poor man had nothing to save one little human land but she had bought and nourished up and grew up together with him and with his children

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to him [Music]

shall surely die

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is

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now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house because thou hast despised me and has taken the life of your life to be thy wife

no said the lord behold i'll rise up

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is

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god

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that's fine thank you

now you can see there that in the first place that parable incriminated david david was going to be very big and generous with the things that didn't concern himself it was obviously wrong for the visitor to come and be fed with the one new land belonging to a very poor man when the all kinds of sheep in the royal fold that david could see and he sentenced the man to death and then to restore the land fourfold you don't quite understand it's like being executed and then imprisoned for life isn't it but uh i i suppose what david meant is in his confusion that the man certainly must restore the lamb and he was worthy to die which is what the revised version says the man concerned is worthy today and he shall restore the lamb fourfold

but that he shouldn't have seen that this was directed against him is a remarkable indication how blind we can be when our own thoughts are concerned we can see other people's thoughts very clearly but our own no we need those pointing out with some considerable care before we can see that they're there we can see the most in other people's eyes with the utmost clarity but beams in our own no not quite so easily so david had have the message rubbed in nathan told in the parable and then said which david ought to have known thou art the man this is what you've done you had access to anything you wanted in this kingdom and you could have taken much of it lawfully so what did you do you went and stole the nearest possession from a man who was fighting for you on the on the field of battle that was your iniquity

and david now having awakened from his intoxication of passion realized that he had done all these things so wrongly and he said that he sinned and repented of what he had done

and on the basis of that repentance god was able to restore him and he did not execute him for murder he did not execute him for adultery he allowed him to remain king and he even allowed him to keep bathsheba and though the first son died the second one became the next king of israel in the shape of solomon it's an extraordinary parade of divine mercies which i accept but i i don't understand how it could have been so gracious except that

david's repentance is something quite remarkable to read as you might find if you'll turn to psalm 51.

this sum is the basis of the first hymn in our handbook

one of my favorite hymns not because it leaves me comfortable because of the things to which it gives expression

psalm 51

have mercy upon me o god according to thy loving kindness

according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions wash me throughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin

for i acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against thee thee only have i sinned and done this even in thy sight that thou might just be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest

behold i was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me behold thou desirest truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part that shall make me to know wisdom

purge me with hyssop and i shall be clean wash me and i shall be whiter than snow

it might seem a little surprising that david was able to say to his god against thee the only have i sinned and done that which is evil in thy sight you might say what about for your eye the hittite hadn't david sinned against him or even bathsheba too and of course he had against both of them grievously

but i'm sure that what david is saying is something i try to emphasize in our first talk and that is that the responsibility for everything we do is responsibility we owe before our god it isn't just that we can live our own lives and in living those into somebody else is that whatever we do is seen and known by our god and we have a duty to him not to do those things and if we do them we sinned against him most of all for he is the one against whom us in his most serious so david is really saying not i didn't sin against you and i didn't sin against bathsheba he is saying i sinned against no less than you oh god it was a fatal sin which i committed against my god you had the right to tell me how i ought to live my life and i didn't do it i broke your commandments and i failed to honor you so the duty of obedience that we were talking about earlier comes out again in these verses

now sum it all up

david shouldn't have done any of the things he did up to the point of having your eye killed

he was guilty of two offenses that carried the death penalty

when these things had been done

then he couldn't escape the consequences that the sword never departed from his house and also in the great shame came upon him when absalom took david's concubines to himself when he rebelled

but also god was able to forgive him utterly the physical consequences he must bear but the forgiveness could be granted to him he could be restored to his kingship and god did not as this psalm says later take away his holy spirit from him

so what we have to say is that we do know of one example at least where the strict law of god said execution

but the mercy of god provided something better

now be quite plain that is not an invitation to go and do something which is very wrong and then hope for the mercy of god that's what the bible calls sinning with a high hand and they can be very severe punishment against that but it does suggest that when things have been done which are then so utterly repented of that the man takes to himself sackcloth and ashes for what he's done then god's mercy can sometimes be shown

right now with that example before us let's go into the new testament

and take john chapter four

we'll start reading

at the first verse

now we need to start quite so soon we'll start reading at verse six and go on again until i say stop

john four verse six

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jesus christ

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for the jews have no dealings

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she has happened to her

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that's enough thank you

now it isn't easy to be quite sure how to reconstruct this scene one of the things we know for sure one is that it was in somalia which was a kind of halfway house between being jewish and being gentile the samaritans did believe some of the old testament particularly the law of moses and they had something therefore of the jewish faith but jews didn't like them and it wasn't usual for jews to go through some area if they could avoid it if you can picture them out of palestine you've got judea there you've got some area there you've got galilee on top and you've got your way around the river jordan there and the decapolis over here and jews would take the long journey around that way to get together the rather than go through some area because they didn't like to mix with the samaritans and the samaritans didn't like the jews very much either however jesus having no such inhibitions went through samaria and at shechem psycho as it's called here sat down by a well waiting for his disciples to bring food and there there came this woman of sumerian with a picture of water with a picture to draw water from the well and while the the disciples are aware jesus engages in conversation and asks for a drink

now the woman answer is one that you might expect unless perhaps we're justified in seeing a rather surprising tone there she said how is it that being a jew asked us to drink of me which i'm a samaritan woman now if it weren't what jesus tells her later about herself he's known to us as well that might seem quite innocent

but we know that the lord said to her that has had five husbands and he whom their house is not their own husband

one wonders a little bit whether she wasn't saying it in a rather different tone of voice and saying how is it that thou being the jew ask a string of me which i'm a samaritan and a woman

and as though she may have had designs in her mind that uh

she wouldn't have scrubbed it to her that she

was willing to make the most of an opportunity as it were finding himself alone with a man it looks very like that as though she was subjecting the lord to temptation

and i think the lord is perhaps reminding her that not only can he not be caught by that kind of guy but also that he knows what she's up to he knows the kind of person she is though has had five husbands you who say you're not married that has had five husbands and he hunted is not thine husband he gives a very plain picture of how well he's seen right through her

however the important thing after that is that we're not told the conditions under which the lord would accept her belief she did say she believed in him she went and called the men of the city they all seem to have shown some kind of faith in him and they may very well have formed the raw material for the conversion of a samaritan city when philip went there some years later so a preaching work started here could have matured at a later time

but go call thy husband and come hither jesus had said i have no husband she answered that's right the lord jesus says you haven't what you've got now is a man you're living with you had five husbands already and now you're living as it were in sin that's what the lord is saying to her

now it looks as though she must completely have repented of the way of life she were living we're quite certain the lord wouldn't have accepted it on any other basis than that but the thing we really need to know we're not children that is what the conditions the lord laid down as to how she should repair her married life you see if it said something like get rid of that man and go back to your first husband moving on exactly where we stood

now whatever he did say to her and he may have said more for all we know we don't know what it is

so we're left in the position where whenever we have problems arising in ecclesial life due to marital difficulties we don't have the lord's

case history as it were to give us exact examples of what he did we do with david and bathsheba we know that case well the whole story is before us but we don't have this one we only know that in some way he could receive her and in what way we're not told

and i feel that if it had been an absolute requirement that she should go back to the first person who was legally married and that was the lord's demand before he could receive it i think we would have been told that

since we haven't been told well we have to say we have to make the best we can with prayerful judgment when difficulties do arise that's all i can draw from that one and now go over to chapter eight

i'll read this one a lot myself chapter 8

verse 2

and early in the morning jesus came into the temple and all the people came unto him and he sat down and taught them

and the scribes and fantasies brought him a woman taken in adultery and when they had set her in the midst they say unto him master this woman was taken in adultery in the very act

now moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned but what sayeth now

this they said tempting him that they might have to accuse him

but jesus stooped down with his finger right on the ground as though he heard them not

so when they continued asking him he lifted up himself and said unto them heathers without cinema you let him first cast a stone at her

and again he stooped down and wrote on the ground

and they which heard it being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one beginning at the eldest even unto the last

and jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst

when jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman he said unto her woman where are those dying accusers hath no man condemned thee she said no man lord

and jesus said unto her neither do i condemn thee go and sin no more

now there are some very sad and surprising things about this story

in the first place there's that rather shocking thing about the pharisees of the lord jesus day that they weren't so much concerned about justice as about getting jesus out of the way they'd use any means to that end

they'd plant a man with a withered hand in the synagogue on a sabbath day and they'd watch to see whether jesus would heal him they got no pity for the man with the withered hands at all he was the cheese in the mousetrap and if jesus healed him well they'd have jesus and that was the only reason why they did it they wanted him to heal him so he could be condemned not because they cared about the man

the same was true of other sabbath day miracles as well which the lord was provoked into doing and they watched to see whether he would so they might condemn him and here's the most disgusting case of all where in order to get jesus condemned in his words they take a poor fallen woman and they plant her in the midst without the slightest regard for her feelings or for justice either and they wait to see what jesus will do

i suppose if he condemns it to death they might say ah we'll tell the romans about that we're not allowed to put people to death

and he says we'll show her mercy they might say well here's no man to say not one joke no one tittles you'll pass from the law he's breaking it himself so they thought they had him both ways but about the woman they didn't care

and it looks as though that was one of the things the lord jesus did care about most

they brought it before him and they said this woman was caught in adultery in the very act which in itself by the way is surprising because in that event they should have been able to bring the man as well and the law required that they should both be killed

and they only brought the woman which is rather astonishing and very displeasing

anyway they brought her and they accused her and they said to jesus now moses said she should be stoned but do you say and he ignored them and they kept on saying it time and time again and all the time they were saying it there was the lord writing on the ground

now some people think it's worthwhile to speculate what he was writing on the ground

i don't know whether they're right or wrong but it isn't the way it appeals to me

i have no idea what he was writing i don't particularly want to know what he was writing what he was doing was stooping down and not looking at them just busying himself he might have been doodling for all i know but things were being written on the ground and they were there looking at the woman looking at him trying to get him to accuse her or not to accuse her of at least getting an answer from him jesus just wrote on the ground i think he was suddenly ashamed

of them of course

and bitterly unhappy that people could do a thing like that just waiting to see if they'd realized the horror of the thing they were doing and put it right before it was too late but they wouldn't they were so obsessed with their desire to get jesus killed on the basis of what he would say about this mouse in the trap that they were not concerned with human justice for human feelings at all and they they couldn't be moved by his just doodling

so he raised himself up and said let him that is without cinnamon you cast the first stone and then so as not to be watching the effect of their conscience just to leave it to them he bent down and perhaps doodled again he was certainly writing once more

the thing he had said to them did what his own silence couldn't at last they saw something of the fact that if their private lives were examined [Music] then maybe they'd be standing there to be judged instead of her

i think it's very possible in fact that there could have been those present who were not guiltless in the matter they were accusing her of the lord did call it an evil and adulterous generation he described scribes and pharisees of white washed graves as though they look all right outside but just see what you get when you look inside there were plenty of sins to make those people guilty men they were being hypocrites some of them it would seem even presuming to bring such a case as this before his court

so he stooped down and he doodled on the ground and then beginning at the oldest the most hardened in sins they went out until the youngest the most precocious the most likely to stand up and say i'm righteous you have not been tempted yet you know the kind of thing they these people went out of their own way and they left the woman alone

now although they were pressing their legalisms on him the fact is the lord himself quite carefully observed the law

because when they all gone he looked up and this and stood up and he said hath nominated

jeff nolan lord

well that's all right said jesus there's no case to answer

for the law said that in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall everything be established there are no witnesses there's no case the case is dismissed so he had every right to give the answer he did even from the lost point of view there was nobody there to do the accusing

but what we're concerned with is simply the answer he gave which is neither do i condemn thee that's the legal part go and sin no more

and again the picture that gives to us is the lord jesus christ willing of his mercy to forgive things which the law would have condemned by death and let a person start again even though death ought to have been the outcome he is doing with this adult address what god through nathan did to david with bathsheba in the old testament

there's no conditions again laid down which will guide us as to how we should react when problems do arise but the atmosphere of mercy is being set before us there and it's something we need to remember

i think i may have quoted already but we'll do it again just in case i didn't uh first corinthians chapter six again to show the manner in which god once at once lays down the law and then offers the law of mercy

first corinthians 6

verse 9

know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of god be not deceived neither fornicators nor adulterers nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of god i do remember we did quote this now but we'll still continue and such were some of you but you are washed but you are sanctified but ye are justified in the name of the lord jesus and by the spirit of our god

now there the lord is plainly saying through the apostle paul that no matter how grievous the sin was which they in their ignorance were guilty of then when they come to the lord jesus christ and are baptized they can be washed and cleansed from all that and can start a new life

now that doesn't say what you do in the case where somebody who has already been washed and cleansed and started a new life or somebody who is not in ignorance but knows that these things are wrong already falls and is guilty of this kind of thing

no one can say about that is that the bible does reveal some examples of mercy even in a case like that without again laying down the conditions under which it can be shown in the same letter in the previous chapter

there's a story of a man who committed incest with his father's her wife presumably his stepmother

this was an appalling offense the apostle paul says that just simply can't be tolerated out with the man and the man was in fact withdrawn from by the ecclesia quite rightly so too

but we learn in the next letter to the corinthians that that man had repented and shown his deep sorrow and he was allowed back into the fellowship of the church the apostle paul told them to do so

so in spite of the horror of his offense forgiveness was possible

now as i said yesterday one can't take the ideals of the lord jesus christ laid down in matthew 19 and mark 10 and luke 16 and elsewhere and then say to anybody now that's the ideal but it's all right if you do less

one can't say that's what the law says the lord it says about the permanence of marriage that there shouldn't be divorce and remarriage but it'll be all right to me if you do something which doesn't quite rise to that one simply has no right to offer any relaxations to the lord's law

and yet what i've been trying to draw from the example i put before you is that when offenses do occur

when even people who ought to have known better do fall from grace

and when things are committed perhaps even in the matter of marriage and divorce but i'm not going to give examples of this now where the wrong thing has been done and discipline has rightly been exercised

and such people then suddenly realize or gradually realize come to realize the thing they've done and are bitterly sorry about it and wish to seek restoration

then i think the examples we have before us tell us that such cases should be carefully and sympathetically and mercifully considered

and without in any way trifling with the high ideals the lord has given us there should be some means whereby one can

leave open the door of mercy and of restoration to people who committed that kind of sin

one says this remembering always that the lord talks about the inward heart of everybody and says whosoever hath looked on to lust hath committed adultery one says that knowing the thoughts that could have been in one's own mind over the years

being very grateful that they didn't lead to the

breach of god's law

in a practical way which is so obviously possible when those kind of thoughts do come

but saying inside a very much humbled heart there but for the grace of god go i and being very thankful that uh the man who could very well be a pharisee if he's not careful has been spared the physical manifestation of desire

and hoping that god will forgive the inward thought that may have led that way

i think that takes us no it doesn't we have a few months longer questions

[Music]

i'm glad you asked that question the answer i give may not be quite the answer that would sometimes be given by some other brethren but this is the one i would give in good faith

first i don't think that sins committed before baptism are automatically wiped out by baptism

they're only worked out if one confesses them and regrets them and doesn't go on doing them

let me give you an example of that

i was talking to a brother in new zealand actually quite a long time ago who holds very severe views about marriage and divorce much more severe than i hold

and

he says if someone has been divorced and remarried before baptism makes no difference that union has got to be dissolved if the first partner is alive i don't agree with him by the way necessarily but this is what he said

he said let me give you another case mr a robs a bank on monday and gets fifty thousand dollars

and on tuesday he's baptized and that wipes the way he sins so he keeps the fifty thousand dollars

is that right said he of course the answer is no it's not right is it obviously not he's got to repent of his sin restore the fifty thousand dollars and if necessary serve a prison centers for what he did

so he says well now it's no different is it in the case of somebody living a life of adultery if it is the case that somebody who has been divorced and remarried

is living in a life of adultery with the new wife in the lord's sight because the old wife is still alive

then that is not wiped out by his baptism if he keeps on living with her because the offence goes on

now what i have to say is if his premises are right his conclusion is right too

if it is a life of continuous adultery if you've gone living with a second wife while the first wife is alive then baptism doesn't make any difference that thing would have to be put right there would have to be a separation so if i adopted his premises i would say it can't be done that's what i would say if i took that standpoint

however

it is my view that when divorce has taken place and remarriage has taken place

regardless of whether the first part is to arrive which is a technicality there's no one's conscious at all but regardless of that i would say if the remarried couple fully acknowledge and i would like them to do this

the principles and the ideals of scripture that divorce ought not to take place and re-marriage ought not to occur but they recognize that they have fallen short of that idea then for my part i would say such persons upon that confession ought to be received and

similarly if a person who has been divorced and has accepted the faith and is not yet married

does confess his or her inability to rise to the ideal of making himself a unit for the kingdom of heaven's sake as in the matthew 19 passage

but recognizing that that is the case that he has not been able to rise to the ideal but that circumstances make marriage for him something he can't do without then i would say that upon recognition that the ideal has not been achieved i wouldn't exclude that case either so you're probably beginning to get my mind on this matter which is that you can't authorize exceptions but you can say that if the lord's ideal proves too high for people to have achieved then it may very well be that upon the right frame of mind being shown such things can be accepted in our midst that is about where i stand

are you done [Music]

so okay this situation was when the person was headed aboard before he's baptized one situation arises the person has divorced after he's been baptized and remarried and then asked forgiveness does he send me and you know he says okay well i'm done wrong but he still continues to remain in that marriage that's not really true

it would depend a little how you define the condition in which he's living i think if you say because to live with the new wife is continuing adultery

and he knows it is

then the repentancy professors can't be sincere

then both those things being accepted what you say would be right

but if what i said yesterday is right that the lord is dealing with motives in what you do

and that the motive determines whether the thing continues to be a sin if a man divorces his wife with adulterous intent with respect to another woman and marries her with that same intent then certainly he is living a life of adultery i would think it was possible for that person to change his mind sincerely deeply to regret the events which had led up to the situation and genuinely say i realized that all this was quite wrong and i'm punishing and i'm contract and then seek for restoration and to my mind the right solution would not be to demand separation of the partners i i don't think that would be the right answer i would want to be as sure as a man can be sure though the repentance was sincere and i wouldn't hurry about it i wouldn't say divorce today marriage tomorrow get back into fellowship on the following day it will be something much more long drawn out than that in my mind but i would not rule out the possibility if i saw reason to believe that the person concerned really did regret what he'd done this is david and basketball exactly because david took bathsheba and he had her husband murdered and he did say how deeply sorry he was and nathan did accept him so it's that kind of case i would use my fellow love

oh lord we should have asked thee before we began that knowing thy holiness and thy law and knowing our fallibility and our weakness

that the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart might be acceptable in thy sight

we have to know that i will accept what we have said and purify it from anything that was wrong and receive us in thy mercy as we seek to regulate our lives in accordance with thy will

through jesus christ our lord

amen

Location:Unknown (1981)

Topic:Our Heavenly High Priest (Youth)

Title:Class 5

Speaker:Norris, Alfred

Download:1981 Y5 our heavenly high priest.mp3

Source: archive.moorestownchristadelphians.org |

Transcript