Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

These passages regarding marriage in 1 Corinthians are so personal to me.

If you don’t know, my mom abandoned my dad when I was 8 months old.

When I came to maturity as a young person, I looked beyond my own selfish hurt and mourned for my dad.

I cannot imagine the hurt he felt, with a young son to care for, and his deep love lost.

It wrecked him and it wrecked me as a young person.

I don’t know all the details of that infamous day and I don’t need to.

What I know is that my dad survived that moment through a faith in Christ, a hope in him that anchored him to the truth that God will never leave him nor forsake him.

As I prepared this sermon in tears, I meditated on how MUCH God loves his people and HOW MUCH he loves us in each situation that we face.

He pours unmeasurable love and grace on his people that are in unbearable situations due to sin.

Some of these situations include abandonment, adultery, abuse, and other such sins that destroy marriages.

That treachery is not just an attack on the victim of that dissolved marriage.

The greater treachery is against our Creator who created marriage for His glory and it was given as a gift to this world.

Sin leads us to spit in the face of God when we seek our own interests in relationships instead of the interests of our spouses.

This is why my mother left my dad and their marriage ended.

But God’s grace shone brighter than that dark day and God sent another woman, my mom, Cheryl, to be what he needed in a wife and what I needed in a mother.

I am blessed immeasurably by God’s good gifts and my mother Cheryl is one of many of those gifts.

Many of you have been blessed in similar ways.

Through dark days like I have described, you looked to the Lord as a immovable rock in a raging sea.

He was your comfort as you wept though pain.

No matter if our spouses rejects our love and leave us behind, we have this firm truth:

Romans 8:35–39 (NASB95)

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now this verse is both soteriological but also personal.

It deals with our final salvation in Christ for all eternity but that salvation is present now as it will be when we die or He returns for us.

Whatever we face in this world, Christ will be our strength as they lash us to the burning stake or as we watch our relationships crumble before our eyes.

He is faithful and He is a Good Shepherd who continuously cares for his sheep until our end comes upon us.

This is true when marriages face their greatest difficulties.

Review:

Please remember with me that Paul is dealing with marriages in the Corinthian church.

As the apostle who started this church, he continually guides and teaches these believers according to God’s word. 1 Corinthians deals with many conflicts and offenses against God and man and Paul guides this church and our church to see how to handle them in a way that honors Christ.

Last week, we looked at how two believers in Jesus Christ should view marriage.

He were reminded that permanence and reconciliation are the two major aspects of a healthy, Biblical marriage.

Divorce should not be drive of any believer in Christ because God has called us to faithfulness in marriage as a reflection to his faithfulness to His people.

Let me encourage you church, as you face conflicts with your believing spouse, never to hint, imply, or joke about divorce.

It should never be a word on your lips because if so, those words come from your heart.

Instead, peace and reconciliation are always the goal because Christ is the love our lives and he calls us to the ministry of reconciliation.

In our small group this week, as we applied the sermon from last week, we were reminded that God’s call to “love our neighbor” is a call to love the closest neighbor on this earth, our spouses.

Loving her or him is seeking peace with them always.

As sin leads to the disobedience of God’s people and the fresh reminded that we are fallible creatures, these verses help us navigate practically the life where sin invades our relationships.

Divorce will happen among believers in Jesus Christ because sin has been defeated by Christ but its effect are still visible.

The authors of Scripture were guided with truth so that we can know how to live in a world were sin remains, including when sin leads to the divorce.

Now, as I stated last week, v 10-11 were written for two followers of Jesus Christ.

Vs 12-16 are for the rest, meaning those who are in imbalanced marriages.

Marriages where one spouse is a follower of Jesus Christ and one is not.

II.

The Command for Marriages with Unbelievers (vs.

12-16)

Disclaimer:

Paul now deals with a situation different than when two people follow Christ and are wed to one another.

Now he deals with something different.

In a pagan culture, Paul answers the question, what do you do if a person come to faith in Jesus Christ and the other spouse remains in their lost condition?

This is not a command by Paul for believers to date non-believers with the hopes of those spouses will eventually believe.

That mis-application would actually be violating God’s consistent call to his people to not marry Pagan or unbelieving peoples.

The Lord warned Israel that marrying the Caananite women would lead to a troubled life where families would be turned away from the worship of YHWH to the foreign gods of the bible.

This is of course what happened exactly as we watched the Kings of Israel and Judah marry foreign women and being setting up altars to false gods where altars to YHWH once were.

Fast forward to Paul, and his concern is still the same.

This is why in 2 Cor 6:14 Paul gives the command

This verse does not deal specifically with marriage.

Instead, it is any dealings with unbelievers and the pagan beliefs that they have.

We can apply this to business partners, friends, spouses, etc.

What reasons would be have the deepest relationships with unbelievers who believe and live the complete opposite ideas about all of life than we do.

Therefore, Paul is not advocating to marry and unbeliever in order to try and “save him” or be a gospel light to him.

This includes dating for all our singles out there.

Paul wants the church to understand generally what a believer should do if one person comes to faith in Christ, or perhaps if you thought your husband or wife was a believer but was actually lost.

Do you divorce them in those situations?

Paul will answer that.

In 2008, Amy and I became very close with a couple and their family who joined our previous church.

This couple really seemed to love the Lord and they were a big influence on our early years of home schooling.

We would have dinner together, i was the youth pastor to their children.

It was a strong relationship.

Then we found out that the husband had cheated a few church members out of services that he promised to perform.

They paid him but he never completed the work and it the amount that was stolen resulted in felony charges.

As one of the pastors, and this man’s friends, I went to confront him and he would not even talk with us.

My point is that I was deceived into thinking that this man truly loved the Lord and I was wrong.

Many people get married thinking that their spouse loves the Lord only to discover later on they do not.

This is a reality of a fallen world and thankfully, Paul’s words give us instruction in how to consider this in the church.

Whether the spouse remains an unbeliever when the other comes to Christ, or the spouse was mistakenly considered a believer, when the reality of their actions display otherwise, Paul’s word is applicable today.

Marriage with unbelievers reflects Christ and the gospel

Paul’s instruction reflects his belief and hope in the gospel.

Just as Paul’s message to married followers of Christ, so Paul’s hope is that mixed marriages can also reflect the hope and love of Christ with the one believing spouse.

A. Permanence v12-13

The message from Paul seems to be the same as in v 10-11, “do not divorce and do not send them away.”

Paul again is focusing his attention on the importance and truth of the permanence of marriage.

He teaches us that is not a holy act for Christians to pursue divorce with their unbelieving spouse as a general command.

By refraining from seeking divorce, believers are setting the standard that followers of Jesus Christ value the permanence of marriage even if the circumstances are less than ideal or what was expected.

This shows to the world that God’s word and his good design overrules the difficult relational barriers and differences in a marriage relationship with an unbeliever.

In a 2019 study on divorce at the University of Denver, these are the top 10 reasons people get divorced.

10.

Religious difference

9. Lack of support from family

8. Health problems

7. Domestic Violence

6. Substance Abuse

5. Financial Problems

4. Getting married too young

3. Interpersonal Conflict

2. Infidelity