Matthew 19:1-6 The Two Become One
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: May 21, 2019 Matthew 19:1-6
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 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’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
(Understanding the Text) Jesus is now in the Pharisee’s territory. He left Galilee and went into Judea beyond the Jordan. I’m not sure what “beyond the Jordan” tells us about Judea. Was Jesus actually in Perea?
Anyway, it was easier access to Jesus for the Pharisees, so they tried to trip Him up again. His answer was interesting in that it went way back to the creation for justification. God created male and female at the beginning. The implication is that God did not create many females for one male, but only one female for one male. Then Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24 about a man leaving his mother and father and holding fast to his wife, and they become one flesh. Jesus is telling the Pharisees that there is a higher authority than Moses who said that a husband and wife were to be one unit after their marriage and should not be broken up.
Sin has made that original plan bent and in many cases broken. The ideal is to have two people, a male and a female, join together into one unit, but because of sin, one or both of the spouses may make it impossible for the other to stay in relationship. Adultery breaks the one flesh unity, but abuse can break the unity in horrible ways also. Our culture glorifies sex, but in the process we have lost the power of sex. Evidently, sex in a marriage can physically and spiritually join two people so that the power of connection is still there even if they separate for emotional reasons. The only thing that can separate a married couple’s link is sex with another person.
I have never thought before that adultery comes from the same root as adulteration, which means adding an outside chemical to something pure (pure in the sense that it is of only one kind). To commit adultery is to put something else into the connection that holds two married people together. God considered this a serious enough offense that in Moses’ time it was punishable by death. On the other hand, Moses allowed divorce and multiple wives, which would do the same thing. God’s rule was trying to show the people that they needed to hold the marriage vows as sacred while Moses’ exceptions were to keep from killing too many of the men, I guess. Now, Jesus corrects the misconceptions that came because of the accommodation that He allowed back in ancient times. He tells the people that divorce just isn’t right in any situation, except where it has already been accomplished through adultery.
(Revelation of God) Why then, and not in Moses’ day? I think because of two reasons. First, it was going to be a new day where the rules of death for adultery by stoning no longer applied. Second, Jesus was calling His followers to be priests and holding them to a higher standard. In everything, Jesus gave a higher standard from marriage to the ten commandments to dealing with enemies. Why was it necessary? I think so that we could see God more clearly. Without seeing the higher standard, we couldn’t see the purity of God.
(Understanding the Text) I read an interesting addition to thoughts on sex and marriage in Old Testament law for Christians. “Jesus affirmed that sex does not establish a marriage when he said to a Samaritan woman, ‘You have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.’ (John 4:18). So if a modern couple is known to have engaged in premarital sex, it is incorrect to tell them that they must become officially married because according to the Bible they are already married in God’s sight. It may be better for them to confess their sin to God, receive his forgiveness (1 John 1:9), and go their separate ways” (115). Sex alone does not form the marriage bond although it can break it through adulteration. However, the combination of marriage and sex can make the two become one. It is sex within a committed relationship that forms the bond. This is why Satan fights so hard to get people to shack up rather than to commit to one another. It’s also why He tries so hard to break the marriage bond, which must be the emotional bond. If sex is a physical bond, then marriage itself must be the commitment which forms an emotional union between two people. The combination of that commitment and the periodic physical joining of the two brings about a spiritual bond. Thus, it stands to reason that the spiritual bond can be broken physically or emotionally. However, evidently that spiritual bond is strong and enduring so that even when separated emotionally the pure physical joining can maintain it to some extent. Or else, it has to do with introducing another person into the two’s relationship with each other. Children are the way to introduce a new person into a relationship and they have the physical connection of being formed in and from the parents’ bodies. They carry the same DNA as their parents.
Jesus was addressing the issue of divorce, but His answer is also a response to all the myriad corruptions of the marriage relationships today. Male/male or female/female will not form the spiritual bond. 1 male/2 or more females and vice versa will not form the spiritual bond. We are male or female and were created that way, so changing to another is a corruption of the marriage relationship. The exception to this would be the deformations caused by sin so that someone is born with a Y-chromosome but has female physical characteristics, such as a womb and no penis. However, this exception should not be made into the rule. Instead, it is simply an exception because of the way our bodies have been corrupted by our sinful environments. It is not permission to break the rule based on the way we were made to operate from the beginning. It is simply a situation that has to be treated uniquely. If someone is born with six fingers, we don’t say that people should be operated on to have six fingers. Five fingers is the norm and should not be surgically altered while the six-fingered person should be treated as though having six fingers makes no difference to his/her value, acceptance, or anything else. He/she is just as human as anyone else, but with an exception to the usual.
This passage also gives us insight to the accommodations to culture that were placed in the laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. While they were from God, they were about creating a society that could reach the world of ancient times. There were certain societal norms that had to be maintained in order to create that society, such as having land remain within a family continuously rather than allowing one person to amass most of the land. Thus, levirate marriage was acceptable then because of the need to keep a lineage for the land and the continuation of the family. Those family lines were important until Jesus came. At that point, they were no longer necessary, so Jesus taught the laws of the kingdom of heaven to us.
(Application / Prayer) My application to myself is that I need to question accepted one-size-fits-all rules of religion to see if they match the deeper higher standards that Jesus put forth. Jesus was not just putting forth stricter requirements. He was trying to show us the reasons behind the laws and rules and which rules were because of corruption. He was trying to show us how to live in heaven. I have thought before that the thousand years in heaven are to teach us barbarians to live together by heavenly rules. We are going to be living with humans of all time periods who have been allowed accommodations because of the world they lived in, but who now have to live in the civilized world of heaven. I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of one-to-one work with the angels in order to understand that certain ways of doing things are not right. I wonder if the 144,000 will really be that pure and close to God as most Adventists think? If so, and if I am part of them, one of our jobs may be to explain to the ancient believers what it means to love Jesus and depend totally on Him and love each other. I can’t imagine how God is going to sort out our chaos since we will still have our personalities there, but I trust that God knows what He is doing. Help me to trust You to know what You are doing with me and life in general here and now.