Friend of the Family is a newsletter that is published quarterly by Biblical Family Ministries.  You will find articles on the family and other topics, as well as prayer requests and praises.  We hope you enjoy reading our latest edition of Friend of the Family!

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                                         In this column we are continuing our discussion on marriage, divorce and remarriage. It is a tough issue to say the least. I remember when I first faced the matter as a young pastor. I was grateful to have some dear older men in the ministry to turn to in getting answers to hard questions. When a marriage/divorce situation arose, I decided to call them for wisdom. I called five men and got five different views. That told me how much division there was among good godly men on this issue. It taught me to be careful in my own study of the Word of God and certainly taught me to not be too dogmatic. It also taught me to keep my heart tender toward hurting people.

So, with those things in mind we return to Matthew 19:9. The verse quotes the Lord Jesus and says, And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.  Bear with me as we take time to examine the verse and identify its message. The verse includes what is commonly known as “the exception clause”. That clause reads, except it be for fornication. In other words, fornication is an exception to the rule given by the Savior regarding marriage, divorce and remarriage. If we state the rule without the exception, the rule would read as follows: Whosoever shall put away his wife and shall marry another committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away doth commit adultery. The term “put away” speaks of divorce. It is found in Matthew 5:32 translated, “divorced”. The term “adultery” however, is not attached to the action of divorce, but always to the new relationship. This is helpful, because the question brought by the Pharisees was about divorce. They asked if it was lawful for a man to “put away” his wife for every cause. Our Lord answered their question, telling them clearly that what God had joined together, no man should put asunder, but He took the matter to the larger issue of adultery. Adultery is related to unfaithfulness to a commitment. The man who puts away his wife is not an adulterer until he has another woman. The woman is not an adulteress until she has another man. As soon as one who has been married is intimate with someone other than their marriage partner, they are guilty of adultery. The Lord Jesus told us that divorce resulted from a hardened heart. The greater offense of taking a new partner and therefore fully breaking the covenant established before God in marriage, is what our Lord called adultery. Better to never make a vow, than to make one and break it. More next time/

    As I start this article I wonder if you have taken time to search online or in some other way, for the Religious Heritage Bill offered in the U.S. House of Representatives in May 2009. I am hoping it will be offered again this year. If it is, it will have a different number as part of this year’s agenda.  The Bill states that it is “affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week of May as “America’s Spiritual Heritage Week”for appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith”.

Let me share with you some of the amazing truths regarding our history that are recounted in this resolution. The first act of America’s first Congress was to ask a minister to open with prayer and lead Congress in the reading of four chapters of the Bible. Upon approving the Declaration of Independence, John Adams declared that the fourth of July “ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”I wouldn’t say that is exactly how we celebrate it today, would you? Did you know that the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolution and established America as an independent nation, begins with the words, “In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity”? When the work of the Constitutional Convention ended, the statement on ratification was added as the 7th Article. The Article declares that there was unanimous consent of the states present and then the date was given. The date is expressed as “the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven.” We often hear there is no reference to God in the Constitution, but this statement certainly acknowledges our blessed Lord and the fact that the calendar is based on His birth.

Let me add that although it is not listed in the Resolution, it is also significant that in Article I Section 7/Bills of the U.S. Constitution; the following statement is made.  “If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within tens days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be law...”Of course Sunday was excepted because it is the Lord’s Day. By the year 1815 there had been over 2,000 official government calls to prayer, with many more since. Oh for a government that would call for prayer today -seeking the true Heavenly Father.

                                 In this column we are talking about children who grew up in a Christian home, but have not followed the Lord. Last time we began to focus on how parents handle their God given authority over their children. As noted previously, how we handle the authority God has given us as parents is critical to the process of training. We have briefly considered the warnings of Ephesians 6:4. Paul writes, “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” If we provoke our children to wrath we may be the very reason they reject our Christian training. May no child ever be able to point at his own father or mother to seek justification for his own rebellion against the Lord. But, let there be no doubt that such rebellion will never be condoned by God nor will stumbling over an unjust parent ever excuse a young person’s sin. Still, the Lord gives parent’s severe warnings of the necessity to perform their parenting obligations well.

Another text of caution is found in Colossians 3:21. Paul writes, “Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.” The King James Version includes the words “to anger”. I have put them in italics, just as the KJV does, to show that those words are not actually in the text. The translators put them there to better explain the text. That practice can be helpful in some places, but here it does not help. The warning of the verse is not against provoking the child to anger. The warning is against provoking the child to discouragement. The word for “provoke” in this text is different than the word for “provoke” in Ephesians 6:4. The term found in Colossians 3:21 conveys stirring up or irritating. Wuest quotes the commentator Lightfoot as saying, “Irritation is the first consequence of being too exacting with children, and irritation leads to moroseness.” We can see why Paul used the term to warn about parent’s discouraging their children. Wuest says the term discouraged means “disheartened, dispirited, broken in spirit, lose heart”. Have you ever seen parents treat their children in that way? I have. The rules are too strict; the expectations are too high and unrealistic. I can remember being too hard on my own children. Having been visiting late in the evening I would tell the kids to put things away and get their coats on. They would sometimes move slowly and I would speak more strongly to them. My wife would tell me they were tired. I would say, “Being tired does not stop them from moving when I tell them to move.” I am glad she finally got through my thick head that sometimes my expectations were too high. I learned. I have since come to deeply appreciate the compassion of the Lord toward us. Psalm 103:13-14, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. For he knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.” Let us as parents remember the spiritual and emotional frailty of our own children. More next time.

“…Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13b,14. Another year has passed and what is in the past can never be changed. However, we have a new beginning each day. The slate is clear before us; we can make our life count for this year! We should always be striving to be more Christ-like. We will never achieve perfection until we are with Him, but we are to live our lives trying to please Him.

We have a job to do – yes, we have to live in this world and do whatever we must to live here, but our true home is Heaven with the Lord, if we have accepted Him as our Savior. We need to be so busy winning the lost to the Savior. Maybe this will be the year our Savior comes for us. As a sweet missionary said to me this past year, as I told her I was anxious for the Lord to return: “Tricia, so many still have not heard, we need to be busy proclaiming the good news of the gospel.” I was, once again, reminded that we have so much work to do for our Savior.

I hope you will join me in being diligent telling others of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe this will be the year He returns, or maybe those neighbors and loved ones we’ve been praying for will be saved first. Our God wants all men to be saved, but they must receive the personal gift of salvation that He provided for them on the Cross of Calvary. Who will you lead to the Lord this year?

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