Part 1 of Jesus speaking to divorce, creation of biological sex and marriage, remarriage and singleness...Matthew 19:1-12


One of the Haynach Lakes about 11 miles from the Tonahutu Creek Trailhead and a rise of almost 3,000 feet in elevation.  You can see a little snow on Nakai Peak behind me.  An emerald colored lake with trout jumping and picas chirping to one another.  And when you look the other way you see this....


More snow on Snowdrift peak overlooking another Haynach Lake.  It was a breathtaking view and I was so glad to get this 22 mile hike in last week.  I wish I had more time to spend there but the days are getting shorter and snow was starting to come down on me.  This was a place I had not been before in the park.

This Sunday's passage of Matthew 19:1-12 I have been to before.  I have also spend a lot of time there.  I included it in my sermon in July of 2024 at Stillwater Community Chapel in Colorado when handling Matthew 5:31-32.  I preached its parallel passage, Mark 10:1-12, in 2016 at Oglesby Union Church in Illinois.  I preached this passage from Matthew in 2013 at Gaylord Family Fellowship in Michigan.  Those times I spend 3 Sundays handling these 12 verses.  Figuratively I walked around the lake many times so that we would know exactly where Jesus stood on these topics.  What was common 400+ before His first coming and while He was here is still common 2000+ years after His ascension and we wait for His return.  

It is my belief that much of the dilemma we are in is because we have not put a priority on understanding the spirituality of marriage.  We have focused too much on the feeling of love rather than the bigger picture of it being God's creation and major tool for the furtherance of the gospel.  I look now at pictures on our living room wall of our family.  One big one of all of us and then smaller ones of each family unit.  There was a leaving of mom and dad and cleaving to another to create a new family unit.  One of the key elements that God stresses in both the Old and New Testaments is being equally yoked religiously.  When we do not uphold, teach and model this key element things can as history has shown with the people of God not being the who they could be as a witness of an all loving, totally committed God to His bride the church and the church being in obedience to its self-sacrificing Savior for her sake.  


We are no where close to being a perfect family but we are striving to follow God's words in regards to the issues in our time that seem to be at odds with Jesus' teachings.  It is important that the church keeps preaching and proclaiming the sanctity and sacredness of marriage.  We need to keep telling the next generation physically and the next generation of Christians how God created things to be.  From the sermon passage and going back in history to the prophecies of Malachi 2 and also the accounts of Nehemiah 13 that this was addressed to the priests, the religious leaders of the day.  They had gone so far from what God had commanded that they not only participated in the practice of divorce and being unequally yoked religiously but to the level of saying it was good and God actually approving of it.  

Jesus deals with this atrocity head on.  It is very much like Him going into the temple and flipping the tables of the moneychangers.  Jesus draws the line in the sand even in the face of powerful people like Herod Antipas who were doing just the opposite of what God had created and it cost John the Baptist his head for stating it.  We should not be surprised that there will be push back stating God's standards even within the walls of the church.  Jesus' words seem extreme but He shows from the book of Genesis that He has not moved but rather the religious leaders and institutions have.

Where will we stand?  Who will we stand with?  Are we standing on the solid Rock or sinking sand?  What have been the results of this divergence from God's instructions?  The list is long.  I hope to raise the awareness among the church to what God has said and how He is right and popular practice is wrong.  Pray that I would be able to proclaim this again in a way that steers us back God's original plan.  I plan on going around this lake 3 times.

Adam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQanI1RaQKY&t=1813s




 

A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 39th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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