"A Study of 1 Corinthians" by Neal Pollard - Part 5

a pivotal, a transitional point. And I just kind of want to take you

to where we are as we come into a study of

what has often been touted as a difficult and

a controversial chapter. But I think we'll find— here's

what you're going to find probably. There's going to be some things

that you may or may not like,

but I don't think you're going to find it to be difficult to understand.

I think it's difficult for people to accept. You know,

Jesus often says that, that this is difficult to accept.

And so, but all we can do, and all we

can do with anything that the Bible says, is follow what it says. If we

start going cafeteria style and we accept and embrace

what we like and we reject what we don't just because we don't like it,

then we might as well throw the whole thing out, and we can't do that,

okay? Now, this letter begins, if you recall,

with Paul, after the customary greeting, saying that

he had heard some issues that were going on in the Corinthian church.

And so, it seems to me that 1 Corinthians chapters

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

1 through 6 is Paul kind of taking the report

that he's gotten from Chloe's household, and he addresses those things right up front.

And if you kind of think in review of what some of those

would be, it would be the at the heart of it is that they're

divided. They're not of the same mind and they're not of the same judgment,

and he is urging them to do that. Now,

without taking too much time, what are some of the things that they're divided

on up to this point?

Okay, preachers or personalities at the very least,

those of prominence that maybe were teachers, spiritual leaders.

Paul uses the examples of preachers to make the point So

there's probably that layer involved as well. And they're lining up behind

them. Their allegiance is not to

Christ. Okay? So that's a major part of it. Anything else

that Paul deals with in those first 6 chapters? All right,

so we've got sexual immorality, and that's where we were last week.

And there are some multiple issues involved in that.

There is the major overriding issue of

the man who has his father's wife. No doubt this is

on Chloe's report. And so Paul says, I've got to deal with this.

This is egregious. And not just that, but you've got to respond

to it properly. And so he lays out the pattern of how you

handle someone who is living an immoral lifestyle who is within the

body of Christ. You know, he talks about that there

is a human court system to deal with those who are outside of the body

of Christ. But you, God's giving you the responsibility to

You purged the leaven, and you had all the different reasons in 1 Corinthians chapter

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

5 to exercise judgment and so forth. On the back of that, he starts talking

about sexual immorality. So, we already know from the introduction that Corinth

was a seat of immorality. And no doubt, Paul is

getting this report from Chloe's household of the fornication

that is going on among them. So, 1 Corinthians 5 and 6 in the report

had to have been sexual sins in the congregation.

Now, we're going to see a significant change in the letter,

and it's going to be signified with the phrase, now concerning.

It appears in the way that this formula is

repeated by Paul, and I've given you all the references where you're going to find

that, is that Paul is addressing questions that they have. So,

part 1 of the letter, This is what I heard from Chloe and his household

about what's going on there. And we got— this is emergency. Let's deal with this.

And then also, you gave me

several questions that we need to handle. And so let's start handling all those.

And that formula that you see there, it's a preposition that's one word that's translated

2 words in our English, now concerning. Every time except chapter

8 and verse 4, Paul is introducing a

new question that he is going to answer. And we're going to be looking

at those all the way throughout the rest of the letter. And what

I find interesting is that in the first, the first now

concerning, and we're going to read it in just a

moment, but if I know you do your homework and you read ahead, what does

the now concerning thing concern here in chapter 7 and

verse 1? Okay, it has to do with marriage,

certainly.

Okay, so, and we're in an adult class here,

and I was going over my notes, and I had

Carl with me this weekend. He said, is this an adult class? I said,

yes, it is. Everyone, as far as I know, are there children in here?

I don't see any. He's dealing with sexual

matters. Now,

this is connected, so it's interesting that he would start

up front with this, with a sexual matter. But it's a different

sexual matter. Sexual immorality, fornication, which is

sexual intercourse with someone to whom you're not married.

And we'll deal more with that when we get into the chapter. So he's

dealt with that. We have the man with his father's wife. That's certainly

sexual sin. We have the fornication in 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6. And now we have a new one that we've got to deal with.

So turn your Bibles to chapter 7.

Verse 1 through 7. Let's look at it together. Now concerning the

things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a

woman, but because of immoralities, each man is to have his own

wife and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his

duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does,

and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body,

but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement

for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer,

and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because

of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of

concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were

even as I myself am. However, each man

has his own gift from God, one in this manner and

another in that. All right, so what is Paul's counsel here?

Stay with your wife, stay with your

husband. For certain, and that seems to be maybe part of what's behind their question.

With all the sexual immorality in our culture,

should we be married or should we not be married? We're going to see that

in some of the successive things that the Apostle Paul has to say.

That's part of it. Should we stay with our spouse?

What else is he saying? Okay.

Paul is going to begin and end the letter by saying,

and he's going to actually say this throughout chapter 7, the ideal

situation spiritually, in his view,

is that if you can be, be single.

Don't get married. And he's going to have an entire section at the end wherein

he gives his rationale. Some of it's situational, But Paul's

saying, that's— I have this gift, and the gift he's talking

about is what? Controlling himself.

I don't have to give in. I'm strong enough that I can handle any

urges that I might have and not have to get married. Yes,

sir.

Right. And somebody might say that this is actually an

overreaction in their mind because of what's going on in the culture. And we're

going to see that in just about what we're about to look at. We're going

to swing to another extreme, and it's an extreme

that's unacceptable. And so Paul's going to talk about it. So let's ask the question

in correcting this, what is the duty in verse 3?

All right, so the duty is to be sexually intimate.

That's what Paul is saying is if you cannot contain

yourself and/or you make the decision to be married,

then you have a duty.

Now, and I think as we unpack this, that perhaps you

wouldn't think of that as a duty, but there's a problem going on

where some saw that as a duty rather than a God-given privilege.

It involves surrendering authority over your own body,

verse 4. That's a euphemism for what?

Give your body to your spouse. It belongs to them.

It doesn't belong to you. The husband and wife have a

responsibility, an obligation in the marriage relationship

to provide each other sexual fulfillment. And so that's

what Paul is highlighting here. And then, The key

verse, it seems to me, is in verse 5. What does verse 5 say?

Don't deprive each other. What does that mean?

Okay. Somebody not Bill give me an answer. What does

it mean? Stop depriving each other. And I appreciate the answer.

Uh-huh.

Right. And that's going to be in his— and

all that's true, and you're getting to the consequence, but all he's saying is don't

withhold sex in the marriage. That's what he's saying.

And then he's going to give us some further instruction that I want us to

notice here. He says, he lays down the guard rules here

because this is a question they have and they really want to know, How do

we resolve this daily issue that apparently is in the

culture of the congregation so that they want Paul to come to the rescue and

help them to know what's to take place? Now, just kind of watch what he

says. Number 1, don't do this unless by

mutual consent, both parties agree.

So don't deprive one another. Don't withhold from the sexual

relationship as husband and wife.

Unless both of you agree.

Number 2, don't do this too long, or why?

You're tempted to sexual immorality. Number 3, and this

is not in the text, but this is an inference for sure, don't do this

out of boredom, out of anger,

out of disinterest, out of revenge,

Now, why would I say that? But because

we all live in community, and whether we're talking about family,

whether we're talking about congregationally, and this is

one of the things that crops up. This is a problem that happens.

And we're not talking about, by the way, I feel like sometimes we're

going to just run to some exceptional situation, some kind of physical malady or

some kind of trauma, which I don't discount any of that, but we're talking about

on the whole, the rule with regard to that this is not something that

needs to be taking place. And you don't— Paul's very specific

about this taking a break, if you will. And he's going

to follow that up by saying that it's for a particular

purpose. You're devoting yourselves to God. And don't do it for very long.

He then says, come back together

again. Some folks might choose the first part of that,

And they don't choose the second part of that. They'll deprive one another for a

season, whether they're praying or whatever they're doing, and they don't come back together

again. They would be outside of what Paul's instructing

here in 1 Corinthians 7. Bottom line is

Satan will try and exploit anything he can to hurt the family,

to hurt the church, and this is one of the ways that he does that.

Now, he ends up by saying that he wishes that everybody has the gift that

he does and can remain unmarried, But if you do get

married and you decide that you don't want or need sexual relations,

that's not a blessing. It's not what Paul's talking about

here, and it doesn't need to happen. And his answer to you would be,

don't deprive or stop depriving you.

We probably could spend more time on that. We don't typically spend a lot of

time on that. There's— that's not the heart of what we're here to talk about

this morning, but I wanted to make sure that we spent some time with that

because it is a congregational problem not

unique to Corinth that needs a biblical answer and it

needs us to say the quiet part out loud. Okay? Yes, sir.

Opportunity. Yes, sir. To tempt.

That's right. That's right. He's looking for any way he can to get

in there for sure. Any other thoughts on verse 1 through 7?

Yes, sir. Genesis 1:28.

Genesis 1:28

God's plan,

fruitful and multiply. And so it's his

plan. That's right. And really with all of this discussion,

that's a great point. It's God's plan. In chapters 5 through 7,

Paul is dealing with sexual immorality because anytime

you think about anything, let me give another example before I finish this.

Material blessings, every good and perfect gift comes down from above. You think

about how God takes care of all of our needs. That's a blessing from God.

Is— but are material things, is money abused?

Well, certainly it is. And you think about all the Bible talks about with greed

and covetousness and so forth.

Sex is a gift that God has given.

Will Satan try to exploit any— and you think about Bill was talking

about how that was woven into how procreation occurs. It's kind

of like with the fact that we're not— God didn't give us a black and

white world. He gave us a color world when he didn't have to. So,

the thought being that God has given us a wonderful way in which

to perpetuate the human race, and Satan will try to

come in and exploit that. And he's already dealt with in chapter 5

the dirtiness of your— where do you have to get in your depravity

in your mind to take your father's wife to your bed?

And how about going along with the culture? And we— that's

a 21st century lesson that all of us can appreciate because we

see sexual immorality all around us and how Satan is trying to tell us

the only place where misery occurs in a sexual relationship

is where? What would Satan say? Where would it be?

Misery in sex, in marriage.

Where is thrill and excitement and enjoyment?

Anywhere else. And the opposite is true.

So Paul deals with this as his first now concerning.

Yes, yes. Would this be easier if couples decided about

this kind of thing before marriage? That's why Hiram and I have the identical policy.

I won't marry anybody without having premarital counseling with them.

Now, I went— Kathy and I went through premarital counseling from a professor

in marriage and family therapy at Faulkner University in the last semester

right before we got married. And I mean, he really, he literally wrote the book

on it. But, you know, I was 22 and Cathy was 20.

She no doubt took better notes and listened better than I did.

And that's the problem with counsel. There are a lot of times that we don't

listen, we can't hear. And sometimes we have to go into the crucible of the

laboratory of life and learn. But the

way that we have guidance on how to learn best is by following

God's Word. So Paul's just dealing with a common issue,

a maybe an overreaction to the issues in chapters 5 and verse 6 and

chapter 6, but he's also giving us some sage

advice for how we deal with any sexual deviation from

what God desires in our lives. And if we're married,

God's given us, and we're married because we can't abstain,

then we have an outlet and our spouse is reliant

upon that. And it's a part of that in that

sense, even though we're not dealing with eros, of an agape love in which we

give and we're looking for, and it's

a lifetime of learning and understanding one another. And I think God's

doing so much in the marriage relationship as it involves that.

All right, I see y'all are uncomfortable, so I'm going to move on.

Yes, ma'am. We're not going to move on. Doris has got something to say.

Yes, ma'am.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's an important point. And I will say that before we leave on.

What Miss Doris was saying is, is that there was bad teaching.

And the case that she's mentioning with, with women, there's a lot of bad teaching.

We're talking about the world's going to teach bad teaching that said that sex was

dirty. And sometimes people think that that's the wholesome biblical

point of view, and nothing could be further from the truth. Sex is

designated by God as a gift that he wants

us to enjoy, but then he puts the guardrails on that. And as a result,

and I've seen this as well, there was withholding

because it was thought to be wrong. And then you put the

man in a very difficult situation, and her bottom line rhetorical question is,

what is a man supposed to do? Now, you know,

we speak in generalities, and we're talking about

things that I know are very sensitive, like drives and the

drive of a man and drive of a woman not being necessarily the

same. And that's part of what God wants us to be able to negotiate and

work out in the marriage relationship. But the answer

is not to see that it's dirty because God gave it. That's not biblical.

It's contrary to what the Bible says. And to understand

that we exist in that relationship for our need

fulfillment and our spouse's need fulfillment. Okay.

Y'all just don't want to talk about what's this tough stuff

next. Now, the rest of the chapter are instructions that Paul gives

revolving around marriage. And we'll just walk through those. There's,

I think we have 5 of these. The first, and this is pretty straightforward,

there's instructions to the unmarried and to the widows in verse 8

and verse 9. So, he's not totally, he's kind of transitioning into some connected

issues that revolve around marriage. All of these that we're going to see in the

rest of chapter 7 in some way touch on marriage. And here's what he says

in verses 8 and 9, but I say to the unmarried and to widows that

it is good for them if they remain even as I. What does that

mean? Stay single. But if they

do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than

to burn with passion. I think this is pretty straightforward, isn't it? The unmarried here

have a— there are 2 unmarrieds in

this chapter, and people who try to muddy the waters and where we're fixing

to go next try to make these unmarried the same. There are 2 unmarrieds in

the chapter. There are unmarrieds who can be married, and there are unmarrieds

who must remain unmarried. Does that make sense?

These unmarrieds are those who are eligible to be married.

The next group are not. Okay?

All right. And we'll

deal— I'll deal with this in the next point. Number next, we have instructions to

the married. Now, stay with me very carefully, especially over

the next 5 verses, because this is where there is a lot of controversy in

the religious world, even within the body of Christ. And people try to,

as Peter says, twist and distort what God's Word has to

say. All right, here's the instructions to the married. But to the married I

give instruction, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should

not leave her husband. That's pretty clear and straightforward, right?

I'm giving instructions to the married, not I,

but the Lord. What does that mean? Say it.

Okay, so the Lord's got something to say about this. Where does the

Lord have something to say about this? You might

want to write this down, and I'm just going to give you Matthew's. Mark also

and Luke, but in Matthew 5:32,

Matthew 5:32

in Matthew 19:3-9.

Matthew 19:3–9

So, you're going to see that these instructions in verses 10 and 11 mirror

what Jesus has taught. And anything

that Paul is going to say in this chapter before

we do anything else has to be read through the filter of

the Lord says. What does the

Lord say? Not that to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord.

All he's saying is, let's review for just a moment on what Jesus

taught on this subject, that the wife should not

leave her husband. When you are married,

once you've made that decision, as we used to say, one husband, one wife for

life, remain married. That's what That's what the rule that Jesus

is giving in Matthew 19 is. But if she does leave,

now, when you read that, I want you just to understand that when that word's

used, it means divorce. But if she does divorce,

she, listen, she must remain unmarried.

Now, we'll go back to Matthew 19:9 for just a moment.

Matthew 19:9

There is an exception. What's the exception?

Fornication, sexual immorality.

Whosoever, this is Jesus in Matthew 19:9,

Matthew 19:9

whosoever, that means everybody. Nobody's exempted from this.

This is in within the body of Christ. And by the way,

sometimes people like to say that Matthew 19:9 is under

Matthew 19:9

the Old Covenant. It's not New Covenant teaching. Makes no

sense. And here's why. Jesus is teaching this,

and in a few weeks, he's going to go to the cross, and then the

church is going to be established. And so, do we really believe Jesus is saying,

for the next 2 months, this is true? And so, if you're in this 2-month

period, then this applies to you. After that, we're going to have a new covenant,

and it's, you know, if any man's in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things

are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. No way.

Jesus is teaching. And by the way, what are the disciples going to teach

when they are building on the foundation of Christ?

John 14:26, John 16:13. What are the apostles

John 14:26 John 16:13

going to teach? What Jesus taught them.

This is one of those things. Whosoever puts

away his wife— let's do it without the exception first— and marries another

commits adultery. And whoever— and by the way,

adultery— and Harm, you have to help me

with this because it's Greek— present Indicative.

Okay. Present perfect. Okay. So that

what all that means for our purposes here is that

it's a continual action. It's enduring that

you continue to do this. It is not a one-time act that you can say,

oh, I'm sorry I did that. And then you can move on.

It's ongoing. And they would have understood it that way as they're listening

to this. Whosoever puts away his wife and marries

another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who has been put away commits

adultery. There's an exception, and it doesn't hang

on who goes to the courthouse first. It is the fact

of, except for fornication, sexual immorality,

unlawful sexual intercourse with someone other than your mate.

That's what Paul is talking about in verse 10 and verse 11.

So let's look at it again. If she does leave,

divorce, she— and obviously,

for a reason other than fornication. Here are

her options. She must remain unmarried or else be

reconciled to her husband. I say

this— look, we're dealing with the most difficult thing. I hope you don't hear in

my voice anger or anything, but there

are people that people trust throughout the Lord's church

who have convoluted this text, and people's souls are going

to be lost because they're listening to this. The Lord's

clear. Paul's clear. You have 2 choices.

If you divorce, you remain unmarried,

or you be reconciled to the person that you divorced.

And he just makes sure that we don't miss this by saying, and the husband

should not divorce his wife. This is true for everybody,

husband, wife, both of these.

And as we notice, he's saying, it's not I, but the Lord.

This is nailed down by Christ already. So what I'm going to be dealing with

is something that he has already dealt with. And we've already said that leave means

separate, It's the idea of divorce. It's even used interchangeably there.

And I want to just give you this. I don't know, I think

the first time I saw this chart, it was Brother Winkler, and he was helping

us when we were dealing with counseling. I think this

one is either— this may be Dan Owen or Denny Petrillo. I want to give

the proper credit for this.

This is Matthew 19:9, for just a moment, before we get into what comes

Matthew 19:9

next. What Jesus is saying is whosoever,

we can make that person A,

puts away, that's what that slash, divorces, not for fornication,

his wife, that's person B,

and marries another, that's that C, what happens when they

marry another according to Jesus? Commits adultery.

And whoever marries the one who has been put away for a reason

other than fornication, Now, Jesus is

going to deal with this in Matthew 19:12. He said that there are some who

Matthew 19:12

are made eunuchs of men. That is,

somebody puts you in this situation. I think we've all known people like that,

who they didn't want to be divorced. They wanted to stay in the marriage,

but their spouse, for 1,000

reasons, whatever they are, say, nope, I don't want to be married to you anymore.

I've actually heard it said this way, I don't want to be married to you

anymore, and I want you to be clear, I'm never going to cheat on you.

And so there you go. Is that fair?

Of course not. It's horrible.

But if somebody comes along and marries a person who's been left in that situation,

what does Jesus say the resulting marriage is?

Now, here— just a second. That's not complicated

to understand, is it? What's complicated is, is it deals

with human lives and entanglements and hurts

that come along because of either decisions we made or that others made.

But, but I just want us to make sure we're clear. This is not ambiguous.

This is very straightforward. Yes, sir. I was just going to

say, if, uh,

and then remarried without immorality

involved, then they're committing

adultery. That's right. And look,

that's not said with any shred of

joy or

I've been raised in the church.

And I've seen so many people who

have trusted somebody who told them things,

and that in 1 Corinthians 7 is one of the places that they go to

justify what God will not

justify and with what Paul is not saying

in this chapter. And I'm walking us through it

step by step so that we don't miss this.

Because man comes along and entangles that with a lot of different teachings

that contradict the plain teaching of what the Bible says.

Now, before we go any further, I want to remind you of something that goes

beyond just this issue. Do you remember when Jesus is teaching his disciples

and he's just finished with them at Caesarea Philippi and he says, if any

man will come after me, y'all know how it goes after that, right? What must

he do? Deny himself, take up his cross.

What is that? What's take up his cross? It's not Calvary.

It's his burden. It's his collection of

burdens. And follow me.

Follow, submit. Not my will,

but God's will be done. There,

listen, there is no application of this any

harder than what we're talking about.

I want you to know that that's fully understood,

but it doesn't change truth. As soon as we

start taking out Jehoiachin's penknife and

start cutting out the things that we don't agree with,

then what does the Word of God become?

Our word and not his. Okay.

All right. Hiram, why didn't you deal with chapter 7 last week? All right.

Now, we've got to get to the instructions to the rest. I know we're running

short on time. We may not get to— I think I can summarize the last

2 sections pretty quickly, but we've got to cover this section.

Instructions to the rest, and I've defined that for you. This is believers

who are married to unbelievers. Now, before we read it, Paul's saying, all right,

here's a situation that Jesus didn't address, at least so far

as the gospel writers put it down. Now, it's possible that

he dealt with this, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't tell us. And so

Paul's saying, here's something that I want us to, to review that

certainly deals with your situation and situations that we know about.

But to the rest I say, not the Lord, so he

hasn't covered it yet, in the scriptures, that if any brother has a wife

who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must

not divorce her. All right, so what's Paul— what's Paul

saying? Yeah, if you're a believer and you're married

to an unbeliever and the unbeliever is content to stay with you,

stay with them. Why do you think they would have to, to cover that?

Why would Paul have to to even say that part?

Okay, maybe, maybe in a darker side, they might say, this is a

way for me to get out of a marriage I don't want to be in.

It might be hard in some ways to be married to an unbeliever. Maybe there's

even more. Yes, sir, Andy.

Issues are going to arise now that your allegiance has changed,

especially when we talk about bondage here in just a moment, slavery.

That you've got a new master and it's not your spouse, if it

ever was. Whatever your master was, it's now the Lord. And that's going

to create 2 different worldviews going 2 different directions, and that may cause problems.

Yes, sir, Ira. And you wonder,

where might they have gotten that idea? It's not really as far out

in left field as we might think. Do you remember they had access

to the Old Testament? And what— how did God deal with

that in the Old Testament? Exodus chapter 34 and the giving of the covenant.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

The Jew was not supposed to do— to do what with regard to marriage?

Can't marry a Gentile. If you did marry a Gentile and you had a child,

what kind of ramifications did that have? There's uncleanness.

Now, you know, she's going to use the word sanctify here. Maybe there's— maybe that's—

we can't say dogmatically, but maybe that's kind of the idea. They maybe read Ezra

10, Nehemiah chapter 9, and what did God do in the past in the Old

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

Testament when a when a child of God is

married to somebody who's not— who's a heathen, who's an idolater. You've got to get

out of those marriages. So maybe they're going, well, maybe that's what we're supposed to

do. Paul, is this what we're supposed to do? And then Paul goes and says,

no, no, no. No, if you're married to an unbeliever

and they are content, you sanctify

that. In other words, it's not an unholy situation.

And, uh, it's fine. It's okay. It doesn't

have spiritual ramifications. Yes, ma'am. Sure,

sure.

There's— yeah.

And the Corinthians were probably going to experience some

of that. And anytime in any situation you have such radically different worldviews.

One is self-centered, one is Savior-centered. There are going to be problems. Now, let's keep

reading. A woman who has an unbelieving husband and he

consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving

husband is sanctified, maybe that is pulling back to that Old Testament

language, through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through

her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, again, what we just mentioned,

but now they are holy. Verse 15,

yet if the unbelieving one leaves,

let him leave. The brother or the sister is

not under bondage in such cases,

but God has called us to

peace. What is Paul saying?

So peace with the person and God. Okay, that's— I think you're right.

What does he mean when he says you're not under bondage?

Okay, yeah, I think that's good. I'm going to come back to that. Anybody ever

heard of what's called the Pauline privilege? You probably haven't heard about that language.

Here's what the position states that's taught.

2 people are married to one another and

one abandons. And to stay purely

with this teaching, Christian's married to non-Christian, non-Christian leaves

them. Paul says they

are not under bondage. And the Pauline

position says what Paul's saying is you're

not bound in God's eyes

to that person any longer. Implication, you can turn around

and you can marry someone else. They say Paul

is giving a privilege,

another exception that

Christ has not— did not give in Matthew 19:3-9.

Matthew 19:3–9

You ever heard that or some version of that taught? Very commonly

taught. What's wrong with that position?

Okay, well, no, I agree with you. I think you already know that I agree

it's not true. Maybe a better question is, why is that not true?

Okay, we got to start right there. It contradicts verse

10 and verse 11 where the Lord is already. So here's what you would have.

You'd have Paul saying, the Lord said this, But I'm going to

tell you that that's not right. Here's the answer: cannot

work. That alone is enough, but that word bondage

is a word that's not used that many times in the New Testament. I think

9 times in this— to be enslaved is what it means. The noun form

of slave is used over 100 times.

You'll not find that ever in any context, and we can give

you a list of the few passages where it occurs, never refers to the marriage

bond. Never. And by the way, if one makes

bondage marriage and equates the two, what Paul is saying is

you were not and you are not now married, and that is not what he

is saying. And nobody accepts that position. Now,

there is a word for bound,

for marriage, that is the word bound, and Paul uses that. And if you want

that, well, maybe that is what we need to do.

Romans 7:2, listen to what Paul

Romans 7:2

says, for the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he

is living. So it's very obviously a word used for the marriage context. But if

her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband.

So now here's another occasion when a person

who has been married can be married again. If their spouse

dies, they're no longer under the law of that

spouse and they can be married again. Now we've got to remember

the one that they're married to, has to be one that they can be

married to. Otherwise, you go back to the chart we had

a moment ago. But in this chapter, Paul uses this same word for

bond twice. Look at verse 27,

are you bound to a wife? Do not seek

to be released, to get out of the marriage. Are you released from a wife?

Do not seek a wife. It's unambiguous. It's very clear.

Look at verse 39, a wife is bound as long as

her husband lives. But if her husband is dead, she is free to be married—

this is Romans 7:2— to be married to whom she wishes only

Romans 7:2

in the Lord. So what Paul is saying is,

if you are married to somebody who is not a Christian and

the tension gets so bad, or more likely,

you're put into positions to where they're saying, look, you're going with me,

to the temple to worship idols.

I'm not taking no for an answer. What does that spouse

do? Are they enslaved? Do they have to go along with them with

the shackles of taking that spouse's command

over the command the Lord's already given them? Because that'd be a sin for them

to do that. Maybe that spouse would say, look, we're going to have an

open marriage, and, you know, so you're

going to go into this lifestyle with me. Because this is what we do in

Corinth or in America or whatever

you want to say. You're going to go.

No, my master is Christ.

I don't want this to sever our marriage, but if

you make me choose between forsaking my Lord and

forsaking you, the ball's in your court, but I'm not doing those things.

If they leave, and that may happen,

go back to Matthew 16:24.

Matthew 16:24

God is not making you forsake his word

under any circumstance. And you'll find this concept in Ephesians 5:22,

Ephesians 5:22

where the wife is to be in submission to her husband in the Lord,

or Ephesians 6:1, children, obey your parents in

Ephesians 6:1

the Lord. You have 2 verses in Ephesians 6:5 and verse 7, where the

Ephesians 6:5

slave is to be subservient to their master in the Lord according

to— if there's ever a division, I think it's Acts 5:29, we ought

Acts 5:29

to obey God rather than men. That's what Paul's saying here.

He's not saying, let them go and then you can get married

again, in light of what the

Lord had already taught and in light of what he says here. Now,

I'm not going to be able to get to the unmarrieds,

Paul's just saying to the unmarrieds in verses 25 through 38,

there's a present distress. We don't know if that's a famine by Claudius

or if it's persecution, but what he's saying is,

dads— and this is a different cultural thing— who had a little bit more say

in their daughter's marriage status, tell them for whatever

this distress is, don't be married. And if they can't

though, if they have a desire to This is where Paul's going to express an

opinion. Let them do that. Let them get married because it's better for them to

marry than to burn with passion. And then verse 39 and 40, let me

just say this real quick, where Paul gives instructions to the widows. He says,

only in the Lord. There's 2 prominent views on that. Only in the Lord

is they have to be a Christian if you marry them. And I think in

context, some people build the case about all the problems you have when you're married

to an unbeliever in verse 12 through 24, or you have in the Lord,

meaning according to the Lord's teaching. I kind of incline toward

that view, but I wouldn't hold it as a fellowship issue with anyone else.

I know I didn't just do this because it was 1 Corinthians

7. I know the second bell has rung. Any questions for Hiram

next week when he cleans up this mess? Yeah.

With regard— I think that's acceptable as long

as we don't— again, they can't enter into another marriage

as a result of that, but their hands are clean in

the eyes of God. If they leave. Yep. Yep.

All right. I know this was not fun, but we, we're done with 1 Corinthians

7, I think. All right. Thank you very much for your attention.