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I am using readings from the 49 Week Bible Challenge as the basis for these devotions. I encourage you to join me in this discipline. Today’s readings are Matthew 19; Genesis 1; Psalm 127; Song of Solomon 1; 2.
Matthew 19:3-9
And Pharisees came up to Jesus and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Some claim that Jesus didn’t speak to the issue of same-sex marriage. Clearly he did. “He who created them from the beginning made them male and female,” he said. Same-sex marriage was never part of God’s plan. And even though homosexual practices were not unknown in Jesus’ day, that was certainly not the issue at hand. Nevertheless, God’s design for marriage is clear: one man, one woman, as long as they both shall live. Jesus’ definition of marriage comes from Genesis 2:24, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
But wait, there’s more. For this truth about marriage is not only about male and female relationships to the exclusion of same-sex relationships. The whole question that sets this discussion in motion is about divorce. And there we have a sticking point. Divorce has touched every part of our family and many friends as well. A good friend describes divorce as the gift that keeps on giving – and not in a good way. It gives heartache, heartburn, broken hearts, and broken lives. It is not a good thing.
But, wait, there is even more here. For Jesus adds on another issue, pointing out that if a man “divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, [he] commits adultery.” This was sure to bring the self-righteous Pharisees up short. They were good with everything Jesus had said until that last part. Some, no doubt, had simply written off a previous wife for far less cause than sexual immorality, and gotten married again.
If you want a hard comeuppance yourself, read Romans 1 & 2. For there Paul lists being thankless to God, and disobedient to parents right along side of sexual immorality as sins that condemn. What hope do any of us have?
The full understanding of Christian marriage is that it is a picture of the love of Christ for the church. He gave himself up for us so that we would be pure and perfect, without spot or blemish, holy and blameless before him. What we could never do – live a perfectly holy life as a man or woman, married or unmarried – Jesus has done. He is our righteousness, hope, and salvation. We, his church, are the bride of Christ. He will not divorce us. We are eternally his.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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