Restoring God’s Pattern for the Home #4

 

The living God has graciously provided for human happiness and welfare by ordaining a pattern by which we can build successful homes.  Human beings have been given sufficient ability to understand that pattern and to put into practice the various elements of the pattern.  One of the essential elements of God’s plan for the home is that only men can marry women and women can marry men.  Jesus asked the Jews, “Have you not read, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?” (Mt. 19:3).  A second element in the divine arrangements for the home is leaving father and mother (Mt. 19:5).  How sad that many young people and their parents do not realize just how vital this leaving is for the welfare of all concerned.  But just leaving parents is not enough; mates must cleave to their spouses.  They must stick like glue--the literal meaning of the word “cleave” or “be joined” (Eph. 5:31).

 

After instructing husbands and wives to leave parents and to cleave to one’s spouse, Jesus added: “Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mt. 19:6).  Matthew 19:5-6 shows conclusively the Lord’s attitude toward divorce.  The fact is, as every Bible student ought to know, Christ allowed remarriage only for sexual immorality (Mt. 19:9).  He requires husbands and wives to stick together.  He severely condemns dividing asunder what God has joined.  How can there be any doubt that our Lord wants marriage to last?  What does he think of current divorce statistics in the United States?  We know--whether or not we will admit it.

 

Did God permit divorce in the Old Testament era?  Yes, but that was never his will.  Please notice the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees.  After Jesus has spoken so plainly about not putting asunder what God has joined, the Pharisees asked him, “Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?  Jesus said to them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so” (Mt. 19:7-8).  My friends, did you hear what Jesus said to the Jews?  God permitted you to put away your wives “because of the hardness of your hearts.”  But from the beginning it was not so.  We do not want to be guilty of violating God’s perfect will for our marriages.

 

When the Jews returned to Palestine from their seventy-year exile in Babylon, there were numerous problems relating to their marriages.  For example, they intermarried with pagan nations which the Lord had strictly forbidden.  God had commanded his people through his prophet Moses not to make marriages with the heathen (Dt. 7:3-4).  Nehemiah repeated to the Jews the command God gave the Jews and then added: “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? (that, by marrying pagan women).  Yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.  Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?  And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Hononite: therefore I chased him from me” (Neh. 13:26-28).

 

But intermarrying with foreigners was not the only problem relating to marriage that the postexilic Israelites faced.  Many of them were wanting to put away their wives and marry others.  Malachi delivers these stirring words from Jehovah to his people.  “Yet you say, Wherefore?  Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously: yet is she your companion, and the wife of your covenant.  Ad did he not make one?  Yet had he the residue of the spirit.  And wherefore one?  That he might seek a godly seed.  Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.  For the Lord, the God of Israel, says that he hates putting away: for one covers violence with his garment, says the Lord of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that you deal not treacherously” (Mal. 2:14-16).  The Revised Standard Version translates the verb “putting away” by the word “divorce.”  God says very plainly, “I hate divorce.”  Do you want to be involved in any activity which God hates?  If God hated divorce in the Old Testament era, do you think he has changed his mind under the new covenant?

 

Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book, Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), includes one chapter with the title, “Divorce: Not Always Evil” (pp. 54-66).  The views of this liberal bishop differ greatly from what the Lord taught in Matthew 19 and what God said in the Old Testament.  Bishop Spong thinks the high American divorce rate may represent positive rather than negative values for human life (p. 54).  “Positive” from whose viewpoint--the Lord’s or a modernistic bishop’s or from the children involved?  He says he does not necessarily endorse divorce, but it is not always sinful--not always to be condemned (p. 63).  He thinks divorce is morally neutral and should not be automatically denounced by the church.  Divorce, according to Bishop Spong, may be the price society has to pay for the emancipation of women (p. 64).  Of course, we can understand the Bishop’s attitude toward divorce when we meditate on this last statement:  He disagrees that morality was frozen in an age when the male was primarily dominant in society (p. 66).  In other words, the Bible has precious little relevance to decisions on moral matters.  And we wonder why divorce is on the increase in the United States.  How about placing the blame where it belongs--on the shoulders of liberal bishops and other compromising leaders--both political and religious?

 

The next element in God’s pattern for the home is called simply “one flesh.”  Jesus said, “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall become one flesh.  Wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh” (Mt. 19:5-6).  The Old Testament uses the same language (Gen. 2:24) as does Paul (Eph. 5:31).  What does the Bible mean by the expression “one flesh”?  I have yet to find one reputable Bible scholar--Roman Catholic, Protestant, liberal, conservative, fundamentalist or otherwise--who does not believe that the one flesh arrangement means the sexual relationship in marriage.  Roman Catholics and Protestants, liberals and conservatives disagree on some aspects of human sexuality, but not the meaning of the term “one flesh.”

 

Yet there are very few aspects of biblical Christianity that are more criticized, maligned and lampooned than the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality.  There are probably several reasons for that, but let me mention just a few.  Many of us simply do not want anyone--including God--to prescribe what we should or should not do with our bodies.  If we want to drink beverage alcohol or use other dangerous drugs or engage in illicit and destructive sex, we do not want anyone interfering with our freedom.  We might understand a non-Christian’s reasoning and acting with such an unchristian attitude, but not a member of the body of Christ.  The New Testament teaches that a Christian’s body does not belong to him (1 Cor. 6:19-20).  God has a right, because he is God, to tell us--Christian and non-Christian alike--what is best for us.  His divine word is filled with instructions which will help us to leave meaningful and useful lives.  If you want to know the right attitude toward human sexuality, the best textbook in the world is the Bible.  In fact, it is the only really reliable textbook on human relationships--sexual and otherwise.

 

Many careless Bible readers and non-Bible readers think that the attitudes and writings of the so-called “church fathers” constitute the essence of the Bible’s teachings on human sexuality.  Even though the average man on the street may not know the names of Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Jerome, and such men, he is inclined to believe there is something “inherently sordid--to use Augustine’s words--about conception, birth and the intimate relationship in marriage.  Our entire culture has been adversely affected by the writings of men who believed--honestly or otherwise, I am not in a position to judge--that God’s pattern for sexual communion in marriage leaves much to be desired.  Let me give you evidence that I am not making unfounded accusations.

 

Letha Scanzoni--a professional writer on marriage and family themes--wrote a book in 1968 on the topic, Sex and the Single Eye (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House).  Scanzoni summarizes the unscriptural and unreasonable attitudes of the “church fathers” about what the Bible teaches on human sexuality.  According to Scanzoni and many other capable writers, there were many men in the fourth century who worked to avoid any sexual temptation by living separated from society and by punishing their own bodies.  One monk, Ascepsimas, was weighed down with chains so that he could not walk upright.  He had to crawl around on his hands and knees.  Another monk, Besarion, would not allow himself to sleep for forty years for fear he would have sexual thoughts.  Marcarius the Younger stayed naked in a swamp for six months.  So many mosquitoes had bitten him that he looked like a victim of leprosy.  These men did unbelievable things to prevent sexual thoughts from entering their minds.  Some of them would not take baths to keep from looking at their own bodies (pp. 24-25).

 

Were these men successful at warding off lustful thoughts?  They lived in torment.  An older monk admitted to a younger one that he had not allowed himself to eat adequately nor drink enough water nor sleep enough to avoid sinful thoughts about sex and yet he had been tormented day and night with the pangs of lust.  Sometimes these men went so far as to mutilate their bodies in avoiding thinking about women and sex.  But their radical and unbiblical approach did not work.  In fact, it drove many of them to an obsession with sex.  They seemed not to think of anything else.  I have one question to ask you which I would like to have asked them: Why did you not get married and experience the intimacy of the marriage relationship?  Here was the Lord’s remedy for sexual desires: “But if they cannot control themselves, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9).  Did Jerome, Tertullian, Augustine, and Origen know these great truths from 1 Corinthians 7?  Of course, they knew them, but they had been so influenced by Greek philosophy that they ignored what Paul said about the legitimacy of sexual appetites.  How can such brilliant theologians ignore the simple truth of the gospel.

 

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, even the learned Augustine who had been extremely sinful before his conversion, accepted the views of most of the so-called “church fathers.”  Augustine believes that the processes of conception and birth were inherently shameful and sordid.  He argued that the perpetuation of the human family would not have been by sexual reproduction had sin not entered the human race.  Humans would have reproduced by the process of fission, like the amoeba and paramecium.  We would just fall apart and there would be two of us.  Can you imagine anyone of Augustine’s knowledge of the scriptures holding such unreasonable, unscriptural, and unscientific views of human reproduction?

 

Tragically and inexplicably, many of these church fathers blamed women for the sinful conditions in our world.  Tertullian wrote as follows about women: “You are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert--that is, death--even the Son of God had to die.”  Besides contradicting the plain teaching of scripture with regard to the fall of man, this teaching had a destructive influence on how women regarded themselves and what men have thought of them.  How foolish is the reasoning of Tertullian!

 

If the church fathers were so far off--and they unquestionably were--then what is God’s pattern for sexual relating in the marriage relationship?  In the very first book of the Bible, God provides some insight into what God had provided in marriage.  “And Adam knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord” (Gen. 4:1).  Husbands and wives by God’s design are to know each other in their intimate moments.  Why do the Hebrew scriptures use the word “know” (yadah in the Hebrew) instead of a plainer word?  Were the Bible writers embarrassed to discuss human sexuality in simple, explicit words?  As a matter of fact, that had nothing to do with their use of the word “know.”  The word describes a nonverbal medium of communication.  It refers to a very intimate way of learning about your partner in the marriage relationship.  It is a very dignified way of showing that the sexual act is more than a physical relationship.  It has spiritual overtones, as well.

 

But surely the inspired word of God would not exalt and glorify the sexual relationship--even in marriage?  My friends, if you think in those terms you have been influenced--either consciously or unconsciously--by the thinking of the church fathers and Plato and Aristotle and not the teaching of the Bible.  The Hebrew writer expresses very simply and forcefully the beauty of the sexual relationship in marriage.  “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed is undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb. 13:4).  The word “bed” in this verse is koite which comes into the English in a word coitus and means sexual communion.  The marriage bed, the Hebrew writer strongly affirms, is undefiled, that is, it is not vulgar, stained with moral evil and second-class behavior.  Is this the view the average man has concerning the Bible’s teaching on sex--even in marriage?  Any other approach does irreparable harm to the family.  Besides, the teachings of the church fathers give our young people warped ideas about their bodies and about marriage.

 

But is not the Bible anti-sex, as men like Bertrand Russell have taught for years?  On the contrary, the Bible provides the only really healthy teaching about human sexuality.  Oh, I know of the Bible’s teaching about premarital sex, adultery, incest and homosexuality.  But is the Bible anti-sex because it condemns these destructive behaviors?  As we close our lesson today, I want to read what the book of Proverbs says about sex in the marriage relationship.  Please remember as I read that the words “cistern,” “running waters,” and “fountains” are euphemisms for sexual communion in the marriage relationship.  Solomon wrote: “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.  Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.  Let them be only thine own, and not strangers’ with thee.  Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.  Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be ravished (or intoxicated or exhilarated) always with her love (Prov. 5:15-19).  Although Solomon wrote these words almost 3,000 years ago, they are as appropriate today as they were then.  How could you find healthier teaching on human sexuality?