Judah Profaned the Covenant: Intermarriage
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Transcript
Order of Service
Order of Service
Welcome
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Prayer
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Main Prayer
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Reading
Reading
Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!
Sermon
Sermon
Pre-amble
Pre-amble
General Principal: people can lose contact with God through sinning against the unity of God’s people
Intermarriage
Intermarriage
Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!
Been Faithless towards one another
“Married the daughter of a foreign God”
Was not an objection on the basis of racial grounds
Examples of interracial:
Egypt
A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.
Ruth
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Jesus decended from Ruth
and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,
The issue was on religious grounds
He expressly forbad any Jew to marry someone who worshipped false God’s
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
Paul reaffirmed this command:
A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
A Christian must only marry a Christian
How Serious is this sin?
How Serious is this sin?
Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god.
The alternative, is to be “faithless” (to act treacherously / violate)
Abomination: cause horror and disgust
Your reaction may be: ‘The person I marry is my own affair; it has nothing to do with other Christians. I’m not hurting them.’
This is not the case. To marry outside the people of God is to deal trecherously with your bothers and sisters. How?
When you became a Christian you joined the body of Christ.
We are committed to each other.
Ultimately, just like the Old Testament Jews, we have no other friends in the world, except each other. We are called to love one another, to work together, to bleed together, to cry together!
You may agree. But now, in saying that marriage is your own private affair, you are saying something different.
When you joined the church, you committed yourself to God’s people, for whom the worship of God and submission to his Word in Scripture is of utmost importance.
But now, in wanting to marry outside the Christian family, you are saying something different. You are saying two different things at the same time.
Your words say one thing and your actions are saying completely the opposite. You are dealing treacherously with God’s people.
Your action is a great discouragement to God’s people.
You say that you are committed to work with God’s people for the glory of God and all your life is based on that.
But you do not consider that whom you marry will either strengthen or weaken the church.
If you marry a Christian, you can both put your energies to God’s work.
If you marry a non-Christian, although you may continue to attend church, which is ultimately doubtful, you will forever be torn in two directions—to work for the kingdom or to please your marriage partner.
Whom you marry decides whether or not you will be a worker or a passenger, a helper or one always in need of help.
An “abomination” and “profaned (desecrated) the sanctury of the Lord”
1) How is marrying a non-Christian comparable with Blasphemy?
Sanctury is the heart of a believer
God sits on the throne and rules there
God is our gracious Creator and redeemer and know us better then we know ourselves
He has made it very clear he does not want us to marry outside the family of his people
If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!
But you say “Let me marry him”
2) A Serious Sin: A detestable thing
The person who deliberately and knowingly goes against the Word of God and marries a non-Christian could not care less about his or her personal witness for Christ
You will set up a home together, but it will not be the kind of home which can be used in hospitality to share the gospel with others.
There will always be an obstacle.
The person who marries a non-Christian could not care less about the atmosphere in which any children of the marriage might be brought up.
At best from the non-Christian partner the children will get only the impression of cool indifference to the things of God.
At worst they will find blatant opposition.
How will that help them to see the claims of God upon them?
Non-Christians can be the most charming and kind of people, but with the best will towards them in the world, they do not love Christ.
3) Why is it a destable thing which desecrates God’s sanctury?
We need to address the root of the issue:
Why do you want to marry that non-Christian? What is it about them that you love?
What you love about that non-Christian man, church-going girl, is the aggressive, crude, macho masculinity!
What you love about that non-Christian girl, church-going young man, is her tawdry, brazen sexuality!
What you love about them is their ungodliness
Your attachment to that person only betrays the true desires of your own heart, covered with a flimsy film of church attendance!
A detestable thing is there in the sactury of your heart
It is desecrated by these things and rather than seeking to struggle against them you are committing yourself to feed those desires
4) A desestable thing, because you are giving your marriage partner the impression that the commands of God do not really matter too much
May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts!
Old Testament: To be cut off meant that the person is denied access to God’s people and thus the presence of God, whose sanctury was in the midst of his people
This verse connects marrying an unbeliever with the posibility of apostasy and being lost.
Do not be deceived, remember Jesus’ parable of the sower.
but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.
There are some people who appear to start the Christian life well, but in fact were never saved at all, and at some point along the way they come to feel that the claims of Christ are just too tough for them and they turn back into the world never to return to him.
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
How can you tell the difference between a Christian who has backslidden and one of these lost apostate people?
The difference is the backslidden will eventually return to Christ. The aposate never does.
For many young people the matter of Christ’s lorsdship over whom we marry is the crunch.
When they go against the Word of God in this vital matter is is not long before other commands of God do not matter either
This really is how people lose contact with God
Marriage requires the deepest possible unity for it to last.
If partners do not agree on the greatest matter of whether or not to live for Christ, it is a recipe for disaster
For both of their sakes it is better not to marry
You say that you’ll marry them and they will be converted
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.
Consider the hypocisy involved in marrying a non-Christian and then trying to convert them
Conversion is coming to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Master and King. How can someone who is flying directly in the face of God’s command not to marry outside God’s family then turn round and say to his or her partner, ‘You ought to submit to Christ.’ You are telling the other person to do something which you are not doing. It is sheer hypocrisy.
Sometimes to non-Christians are married and later one of them is converted. This is a very different situation.
In this situation you have not deliberaly broken the unity of God’s people.
You were not breaking God’s command, it did not apply to you.
It was in the Lord’s eternal plan that they were called to Christ after they had got married.
They can therefore rely upon him to give extra strngth and grace to cope with the situation and love your partner.
Peter provides some wise words for jus this situation...
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.
Practical Advice for Single People
Practical Advice for Single People
1) What sort of person should I be looking for?
1) What sort of person should I be looking for?
Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?
A believer
False Claims of being Believers
even deceiving themselves about it
Look for someone who is showing definite evidence in their life of being zealous for Christ and cultivating the fruit of the spirit
John Benton:
Look for a Christian who shows a definite growth in grace, who is involved in some way in evangelism, who has a prayer life and an obvious devotion to the Lord. Look for a Christian with whom you can talk about the things of God, with whom you can pray, someone you can respect for his/her faith.
This matter of marriage is one of the biggest decisions in life. and will shape your future.
Do not let anything persuade you especially wishful thinking or pity
Do not look through the eyes of love; look instead through the eyes of Scripture.
If you are equally yoked you will be pulling in the same direction
Pray that God will provide the right person and have a Biblical priority (charm, beauty and wealth should not primary factors)
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
2) Christ calls his followers to take up the cross and follow him
2) Christ calls his followers to take up the cross and follow him
Are you prepared to be single if that is the cost of being faithful to the Lord Jesus?
Some people are endowed with a gift of singleness and the thought does not worry them in the least.
It is good such folk can often be an enormously useful to the church of Christ with no family ties to worry them (1 Cor 7:25-35)
Not many of us though are made that way. We are like Adam, and it is not good for us to be alone.
Singleness for such people can be a very real cross to bear.
Are we prepared to be obedient, even if it means pain?
Consider post war spinsters who were spirirtual heroines
The Lord is mindful of such loving sacrifice for him; he is mindful of the tears and the heartache and he will not let such devotion go unrewarded.
Are you prepared to carry the cross for Christ?
3) The Gift of Singleness
3) The Gift of Singleness
I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
The Gift of Singleness: is the ability to live a single life while remaining emopitionally stable and sexually pure.
If you know in yourself that you do not have the gift of singleness then it is not wrong to think about taking some positive steps towards marrying a Christian.
Now is not the time for indepth consideration of these steps. We should though ask ourselves...
Am I the sort of person that a good Christian would want to marry?
Why doesn’t God lead me to the person I can marry?
Prehaps the answer is that your spiritual life is in such a desperate state that the Lord feels unable to present to entrust one of his children yet to a life shared with you.
Maybe the Lord is working on the spiritual life of the one he is making ready for you.
Paul wrote...
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Young man, a Christian young woman is looking for someone to marry, who is not perfect, but who bears some approximation to the kind of husband a Christian is called to be.
Christ loved the church before she was perfect, he bears with her faults and he gave himself on the cross to do her good. He was prepared to sacrifice his life, his personal needs, in order to bless her.
Ask God to help you grow up in Christ that you might begin to be such a man who is fit to be a propher, priest and king to a Christian Family.
Peter Wrote..
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands,
Young lady, a zealous Christian young man is looking for someone to marry who bears something of the character of feminine godliness as set out
Christian young men don’t drool over ungodly pinups but rather over the description presented by Peter
Finding the husband or wife that God has for you can be a very difficult time for some.
We need though to submit to the Word of God and wait patiently upon the loving purposes of our Father.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
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Doxology
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