2001.02.1.11 The Wrath Of God For The Church: The Judgement For Adultery Created by James3 on 7/5/2019 8:02:10 AM The Wrath Of God For The Church: The Judgement For Adultery
Greetings
About a month ago we posted a message "The Wrath of God for the Church: Why Judgment is Coming on the Church Today". This was a message preached at Foundation for Living Church on 31 December 2000.
Attached please find the follow-up message to this, "The Judgment for Adultery" which covers many important points concerning the correct definition of marriage, adultery and related topics in scripture and seeks to highlight why judgment is coming in the area of adultery.
This is important reading for all believers but particularly anyone who has had more than one sexual partner, is divorced or is contemplating divorce or simply would like to see their marriage improved.
The message has particular importance for those in ministry who preach, teach or counsel on marriage and related subjects.
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God bless
THE WRATH OF GOD FOR THE CHURCH: WHY JUDGEMENT IS COMING ON THE CHURCH TODAY
Good morning.
Neil asked me to continue with what I was preaching on last week so that's what I am going to do.
And, in a moment, I'll hand out, as I did last week, a set of scriptures because it's rather a lengthy message that The Lord has given me again today. But again, as with the message last week, it is not something that can be broken into pieces.
I have to say to you that today=s message is even more challenging than last week's message!
And, it's going to challenge every one of us. It's going to challenge me in bringing it and it's going to challenge you in hearing it. Because, this is really getting to the heart of some of the issues that are facing the church in this time of tribulation.
So, before I bring anymore, can I just ask you to bow your heads with me and let's just bring this word before The Lord?
Father, we come to you in the name of Yahshua, we bring this word before you now. Father I just pray that you open everyone of our hearts to receive all that is in this message that is of you and Father, that should there be anything that is not according to your perfect will and your perfect word that you will just blow it away. I thank you Father that your angels encamp around us to protect us. I thank you that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. I thank you that you cover every person listening to this message with the Blood of Jesus from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet and that you cover the entire environment where we are with the Blood of Jesus. That no agent of Satan can in any way interfere with that which you would have us hear from your Word today. In Jesus' Name. Amen.
You may have noticed last week. I only noticed when I was doing the transcription.
By the way, there is a transcription of last week=s message available for those who want it and there are tapes as well.
I only realised when I was doing the transcription last week that I had left out completely in the recap, the seventh commandment "Thou shall not commit adultery" and I realised as I was preparing this message, that was by the Spirit of God, that He wanted to deal with that particular subject separately today.
So, my message today, as a continuation of last weeks message, which for those of you who weren't here, was entitled "The Wrath of God for the Church: Why Judgement is Coming on the Church Today" and which was a message in which essentially God said to us that the church is currently in this age, breaking every one of the ten commandments wilfully and, to a point, knowingly. And that judgement would come on the church for that reason.
The message today is, "The Judgement for Adultery". And, in presenting this message, I will present you with some background to understand how God actually defines adultery in the spiritual sense.
[a document with all scriptures was handed out to the congregation, where only portions of the scripture were read, the full scripture is contained at the end of this document]
I would ask you not to page ahead, as last week, because if you do, you'll kind of get ahead of what I'm saying and that may make things more difficult.
Before I go into that, one aspect that is perhaps evident, but perhaps not, in the context of the message that I brought last week. I presented one dimension, and you'll remember that I referred to the multiple dimensions of Torah and of scripture. I presented ONE dimension of how Satan operates. Clearly, I wasn't dealing with all the dimensions and there's a very obvious other dimension and that is the way in which, through demonic interference, Satan tries to trap us into lust, he traps us into lies, he traps us into false doctrine and so on and so forth. But my objective last week was not really to deal with that.
Satan in that whole situation is playing a dual role. On the one hand he is fomenting unrest in the Church, if you like, with lies and what have you. And on the other hand, he is coming before the throne of judgement and saying "AHa, look I caught them out, I want a judgement against them".
So, it's a very complex subject, and not one we can deal with as quickly as that and, just, as an aside, I mentioned this book last week, "Poverty in the Church of Jesus Christ". Which is a whole diagnostic catalogue of things which in my experience have led to loss in the lives of believers. If anybody would like a copy just let me know.
Let's get back to the judgement for adultery. I need to make one other point here. Judgement in this life is Mercy from God. In my experience, many people in the church today don't want to talk about judgement. And, if you start talking to them about judgement, they kind of get offended and they think you're trying to be ugly to them. But we need to understand judgement in this day, judgement in this life, is Grace and Mercy from God.
We can either have judgement now in this life and pay the price for our sin now or we can live a life of comfort and not face judgement in this life. In which case we will be judged at the end of our lives when we come before the Judgement Seat of Christ and we will pay a much dearer price in terms of a part in the lake of Fire and Brimstone, or whatever the case may be and possibly, in the extreme, losing our salvation.
So, the process we talked about last week is not something that is bad. Unpleasant as it may be to be judged in this life, it is mercy and it is grace. IF we receive it as such and we see that it provides us with a means to change the way we conduct our lives in this life. If we don't, if we become offended when God judges us, we just heap sin upon sin.
2 Corinthians 5:9-11
9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.
10 For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
11 Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences. (NKJ)
One of the things that has struck me in the last couple of years because The Lord has been dealing with me on the subject of judgement now for about four or five years. We went through a whole court case three years ago where we experienced a trial. We were the plaintiff's in a Civil Court action for breach of contract against us. And so we got a very first hand experience of what the judgement process is about. That made this whole thing a lot more alive to us. But what I find is that the majority of Christians don't know this "terror of The Lord". They don't have a fear of the Judgement Seat of Christ.
That is one of the pivotal factors behind what I was teaching on last week. The reason there is so much error in what the church practices and preaches today is simply because the majority of Christians have not got a revelation that the day will come where they will stand, on their own, before the Judgement Seat of Christ and a decision will be taken with regard to their future destiny.
Most people do not have a revelation that they can lose their salvation. Most people do not have a revelation that they can have a part in the lake of fire and brimstone. I'll touch on that again later but I need to make the point, Revelation 21:8 refers to a "part" in the lake of fire and brimstone. So it is possible to go to hell for eternity but, as I understand it, it is also possible to spend a period of time in the lake of fire and brimstone which is a cleansing. It is paying the price of sin that was not dealt with in this life.
So, the Judgement Seat of Christ is an AWE FULL place. A place full of awe! We should be reverently fearful of the Judgement Seat of Christ because we must ALL stand before that Judgement Seat one-day. We must give account for every word that we have spoken, every deed that we have done and whether we have done what God called us to do.
As I've mentioned to you, previously, The Lord has been dealing with me very severely since October this year, around a variety of issues. In terms of things that I was leaving undone and part of what I was leaving undone relates to what's in this message. So I bring this message to you with a revelation of the awesomeness of the Judgement Seat of Christ and how awe full, full of awe, the core of this message is today.
In the last message we went through the whole judgement process and we went through headlines of how each of the ten commandments was being broken to a greater or lesser extent by some or a large portion of the church today. I'm not going to go through that because I'm acutely aware of the time constraint.
We went through Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5 and we looked at all of that. And, as I say, I only noticed when I was transcribing, and it only really hit me when I was preparing this message, that somehow I'd completely missed the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery.
And I want to say to you today. And this is a subject that I've been praying into for years. So I don't make any of the statements I'm going to make today lightly. Adultery is probably destroying more lives in AND outside the Body of Christ, than any other single sin today. There are probably more souls in hell today as a consequence of sexual sin than anything else. There are probably more believers in the Body of Christ who are going to have an awe full shock on the day of judgement as a consequence of adultery than in any other area.
It's important to understand Jesus' ministry began with a miracle at a wedding and it ends with the miracle of the marriage supper of the Lamb.
So God has been restoring over the last five hundred years, since Luther and the Reformation, the truths of the Faith. The last truth that He is restoring, as I mentioned briefly with those tapes that I showed you last week, is the truth about marriage. Because, until the church has been cleansed in that area, the bridegroom cannot return to a spotless bride.
We see in 2 Peter 3:14, one of a number of verses which speaks of this: Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; (NKJ).
The church cannot be without spot while two thirds of ALL marriages in the Christian faith are ending in divorce and remarriage and the majority of them are ending in Divorce for reasons that are not scriptural.
Ingrid and I are both divorced, there are other people who are divorced, who God has permitted to divorce, but generally after a very testing period. There are others who just wake up one day and say "I don't like your face anymore" and they get divorced and they think that's acceptable. And, it's not, and I'll show you why as I go through.
So, let's look at what is the judgement for adultery? It's summed up very succinctly in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. (NKJ)
That's pretty crystal clear. We need to be clear what these things are but we need to see that.
I just want to give you a few examples; The Lord has been taking us on a journey over a number of years to be able to give this message today. I think I mentioned this last week, I heard recently of a case, an elder in a congregation, very well loved, well-respected, married a divorced woman, he was DEAD within six months! The Word of God was that he was in adultery!
We ministered personally to a man about three years ago who went bankrupt within six months of marrying a divorced woman.
On a less dramatic note there are many. We minister quite regularly to people who are in permanent financial lack simply because their house is divided, because the wife is not in agreement with the husband, there's strife in the home, and, I'll show you more later how that allows the Devil to kill, steal and destroy in a marital situation.
By contrast, we've ministered in another situation where a woman who'd come to salvation about five, six years ago, had been living in the sight of God in adultery for twenty years and basically they'd experienced no discomfort until God took her out of the marriage. Then, in a period of eight hours of prophetic ministry, revealed that she had been seduced, she'd lost her virginity under hypnosis! She had absolutely no recollection of it, but in the sight of God she was married to the man who took her virginity under hypnosis!
Now that is really shocking stuff in terms of our understanding of a lot of these subjects.
Proverbs 7, just verses 1, 5 and 27:
1 My son, keep my words, and treasure my commands within you. (NKJ)
......
5 That they may keep you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words.
......
Then proverbs seven goes on with a whole account of this adulterous wife who seduces this young man. Verse 27 Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death. (NKJ)
So we should be under no illusion. The judgement for adultery is very, very severe indeed. It is not something to be trifled with. It is not something that we should be wishy washy in our understanding of what scripture says. Therefore, forgive me for being very robust in terms of what I'm going to share with you today, but it's time that the church comes out of the closet and owns what adultery is and starts dealing with adultery, because those people who do not hear the truth in this life are going to pay a terrible price as we've just heard.
Matthew 19:9 in the New King James, Jesus speaking:
9 "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery." (NKJ)
Now, as I've said, over 60 to 70 percent of marriages in the Body of Christ are ending in Divorce and the vast majority of them are covered by that verse of scripture.
Matthew 19:9, this is now the King James Version which lifts this out a bit more clearly,
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication [porneia], and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. (KJV)
So, fornication, adultery, are all derivatives of the same concept but let's take it a little bit further. Thayer defines the word porneia as "illicit sexual intercourse" and metaphorically the worship of idols. [The more detailed definition is in the appendix].
What you see throughout scripture is that the act of sexual immorality and the act of spiritual immorality are almost interchangeably used. The same words are used. God speaks of the "adultery of Israel", he speaks of adultery in marriage. It comes back to this principle, everything in our relationship with God is a shadow and a type of the relationship between husband and wife and vice versa.
So, it's important to understand that Jesus, when He spoke of porneia was speaking of not only straightforward, obvious sexual immorality, He was also speaking of spiritual immorality.
I was divorced on the basis of persistent spiritual sin over 25 years, and when The Lord told me to get divorced, I didn't even understand what I'm sharing with you now. I just knew that I knew that I knew that God had told me to get divorced. It was only subsequently that I came to understand why and why I had to get out when He told me to get out because I was on the brink of being destroyed spiritually myself.
So, porneia is something that is devastatingly terrible. It's not something that you wake up one morning and you look at the person in the bed next to you and say, "I don't like your face, I think God's just told me to get divorced".
Revelation 21:8 "But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (NKJ)
I just want to digress there a moment. There's something that most Christians don't see, that's the little bit about ALL LIARS. So the next time you tell a joke that involves an untruth, just remember the number of minutes you might spend in the lake of Fire and Brimstone as a result of that untruth! We will be judged for every idle word that we speak!
So we need to understand that ANYTHING that is a lie, potentially lines us up, if we don't repent of it, and I've been through a serious cleansing process on this, as I shared briefly last week.
But the sexually immoral, Revelation 21:8 in the King James Version refers to "whoremongers", the Greek word is "pornos" which is a variation of "porneia" and it speaks of the same thing. It's sexual or spiritual adultery.
Let me take you to Malachi 2 verses 13 to 16 which most of you are probably familiar with to a greater or lesser extent. But I want to read it from the King James. Because the King James makes a very important distinction. Sorry, I missed that in Matthew 19:9 above, in the King James, it refers to "putting away", NOT divorce, and I'll come back to that now.
13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD [Yahweh] with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD [Yahweh] hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
16 For the LORD [Yahweh], the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD [Yahweh] of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. (KJV)
Now, there is an enormous difference between "putting away" and divorce. In virtually every modern translation of the Bible it uses the word "divorce" instead of "putting away".
The vast majority of what we call "divorce" today is "putting away". Jesus, in Matthew 19 was addressing specifically the moral climate that we have in the world today. Prostitution was rife, fornication in pagan Rome and pagan Greece was absolutely rife. All the abominable practices that we condone and accept in the world today were rife in Jesus' day as well. Caligula was the Emperor of Rome just after Jesus death and some of you may have seen, if you've ever been overseas, the adverts for the movie "Caligula" which had the most vile practices in. And those practices are prevalent today, particularly in the spiritual sense.
So what God is saying here is, He hates putting away. He accepts that a marital partner will reach a place of porneia which is irredeemable, that they will lose their salvation and go to hell and, under such circumstances he will permit divorce. Putting away is just throwing a spouse out of the house for no reason, in very simple terms.
Porneia, adultery, putting away - they are all the same thing - it's a spiritual thing and I hope in the next few minutes to make that alive to you. Adultery is a SPIRITUAL STATE. It's not just a physical act. It's an irreversible spiritual state, well, not totally irreversible, it can be reversed with the correct repentance and the correct prayers, but, see also that porneia is treachery.
See the number of times that the word treachery is used there.
A digression, but it's an important digression because it is fundamental to understanding what the Word of God says, with regard to the issue of divorce, adultery, etc. There is a condition of irreversible spiritual death for a born again believer. There are three passages here
Hebrews 6:4-8, I'll just lift out a few extracts "it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit,"
verse 6
"if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame."
Hebrews 10:24-31 and I'll just pick up again a couple of extracts "For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgement, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries."
Certainly, in my experience, since I cried out to The Lord in '95 about the level of divorce and He started to open the Word to me around these areas, I've seen the extent to which people in the Body of Christ don't want to confront the truths that we are talking about today.
They don't have a fearful revelation of those passages in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10. I had the situation, shortly after I'd moved out and started divorce proceedings against my ex-wife and I was praying for her. The Lord said to me "Hebrews 6 applies, be quiet". That is a terrible experience, but it's very real. We need to understand that is the basis on which God permits divorce. A person who has come to salvation and LOST their salvation irrevocably.
If they were married before either of them came to salvation, then the party who has come to salvation is required by scripture to lay down their life until death for the salvation of the other spouse. UNLESS that other spouse reaches a point where they have lost all hope of salvation or have committed the unpardonable sin and they can no longer come to salvation. One of the things people need to understand is, if you join yourself to an unbeliever. If you join yourself to somebody who is doubtful in the faith. You are committed to them for life except in the most extreme set of circumstances.
A last scripture which again, many Christians seem to take lightly in this day. Jesus speaking, Matthew 12:31-32
31 "Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men.
32 "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. (NKJ)
What I've observed over the years is that the most powerful spiritual force available to mankind on this earth is a husband and wife who are in absolute perfect, unity, harmony and agreement. The Word of God is very clear on that. Whatsoever we agree on earth will be granted in heaven and, because a husband and wife become one flesh in marriage, if they come into complete harmony, it's the same prayer coming out of two mouths and that is one of the most powerful instruments available to God on this earth. That is why Satan hates marriage so much and that is one of the reasons there is so much deception and so much error around the area of marriage today.
Again, in some of what I'm going to share with you today, you are going to be seriously confronted relative to what you have believed the Word of God says in some of these areas. I ask you, if anything rises up inside you, please take authority over it. I know of one man of God who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit in his reaction to some of these truths and I know of several instances where this has happened, because Satan has got such a strong hold in the church in some of these areas.
Let's look at the specific definition of adultery. One of many in scripture. Leviticus 18:20 "'Moreover you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor's wife, to defile yourself with her." (NKJ)
Deuteronomy 22:22 ""If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die-- the man that lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall put away the evil from Israel." (NKJ)
Again, it's very specific, adultery is a man lying with a woman who is married to another man. Having sexual intercourse.
So, let's understand what is a wife. This is where we start to get serious confusion in the Body of Christ today.
What is a wife? What is marriage?
Let's look first of all at Deuteronomy 22 verses 28 and 29:
28 "If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out,
29 "then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce [put her away - KJV] her all his days. (NKJ)
There is no other requirement in scripture for marriage except that the man takes the woman's virginity. I'll come back to that in a moment.
The taking of vows and everything else are incidental and they are supplementary. The minute a man takes a woman's virginity that IS THE ACT OF MARRIAGE!
Deuteronomy 22:13-21, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it makes it very clear indeed. It basically says that if a man comes to marry a woman and on his wedding night he discovers that she is not a virgin, then she is a harlot and she is to be put to death. However, if he brings a false accusation, again we see that he may not put her away all his days.
There is a whole lot of other circumstantial stuff round about the evidence of virginity, etc. We don't have time to go there, but understand that the basis for the sentence of death for this young woman is simply that she purported to be a virgin and therefore marriageable. On the night of the wedding she was found not to be a virgin and she is taken outside and stoned to death on the lack of the evidence of the blood of the loss of her virginity. It's that harsh!
So, we need to understand that if a woman is a virgin, she is not married, if she has lost her virginity, she is either married if she is living with the man that she lost her virginity to and she's only had one man. If she's a widow and her first husband has died, she's permitted to remarry, otherwise, barring certain key exceptions, which I'll get to in a moment, she's a harlot and she will be subject to the death penalty on the day of judgment.
If she is divorced by the Spirit of God for scriptural reasons, the Word of God is COMPLETELY SILENT in terms of what it says concerning that situation. However, we know from our own experience in ministry that God does permit remarriage for women who are truly divorced in His sight. But there is no scriptural guidance as to the basis.
So we have to turn to the Spirit of God. We have to go to Him and we have to trust totally in His leading, we have to put out fleeces, we have to do whatever we have to do to make absolutely sure if we are planning to marry a woman who is NOT a virgin that it is spiritually safe to marry her.
So, we can replace the word "marry" or "marriage" in the scriptures with the words "sexual intercourse with a virgin". Now I understand that's a little bit provocative to some people, but that is what the word marriage in scripture means. A wife is a woman who lives with the man she gave her virginity to. It's as simple as that. Anything other than that is embellishment, it is not at the heart of the situation.
So, the consequence of that is folks, there is no such thing as a one night stand! There can be an accidental marriage, but there is no such thing as a one night stand. The majority of the church today will tell you that if you got a bit over excited in the back of the car and she lost her virginity, well just go and repent and God will bring the right person across your path. Folks, it's not like that. If that's what happened, you're married!
That's the way it is, and if you go and the woman then joins herself to somebody else, she will find herself classified in the court room of God as a harlot. Whether she did it naively or whether she did it because her pastor told her it was OK. The people that I mentioned earlier, the man who died and the man who went bankrupt, both had been told by the church that it was safe to marry.
There's a whole other discussion there about the judgment that comes with people who give false counsel like that. If the church understood the consequence of something like that, they would be a lot less hasty to express judgments in areas like that.
I'm not going to go into that in a lot of detail, but there are a couple of points there. The virgin that's referred to is a girl at puberty. A girl comes into the age of spiritual majority in the sight of God at the time of puberty, which is generally somewhere between twelve and a half and thirteen or fourteen years old today.
It's important to understand that all these passages that speak about marriage are speaking about girls of that age.
Now, again, that's a major paradigm rattler to us today. But, we need to understand that's the reality. So, before we judge girls of fifteen or sixteen who are battling with their sexuality, we need to understand why. The reality is that God never intended them to live the way we require them to live in this age. I understand that is immensely controversial but we need to confront these truths. Because we set ourselves up as judges and arbiters over people and make their lives miserable. The harsh reality is folks that secular statistics indicate that of the order of a third of all women in the world today have lost their virginity by their fourteenth birthday. Of the order of two thirds of all women in the world today have had intercourse with at least two men by the time they get "married".
Those are harsh statistics. Those are statistics which are sending billions of souls to hell! We need to confront them.
Let's go and look at "what is the marriage covenant" because I'm sure everybody would agree with me that marriage is a covenant, so let's understand what the Word of God says about the marriage covenant.
First of all, Hebrews 9:18 "Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood."
Covenant requires the shedding of blood.
Genesis 15:4-21 is presented there and you're all familiar I'm sure with the story of the first covenant that God cut with Abram where he cuts the animals in half and the fiery oven passes through it. I'll just read a few verses.
Verse 6 "And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness."
Verse 8 "And he said, "Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?""
Verse 10 "Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; ........"
Verse 17 "And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
18 On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram ...."
That is the most explicit description we have anywhere in scripture with regard to the cutting of the covenant.
Jeremiah 34:18 "'And I will give the men who have transgressed My covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before Me, when they cut the calf in two and passed between the parts of it--" (NKJ)
So, again we see that a covenant involves the death of an animal. In the footnote to Genesis 15:10, "The Living Torah" which is a very anointed modern Jewish translation of the five books of Moses. They've subsequently brought out several volumes of the Living Nacht. It's got a series of commentaries by some very anointed Rabbi's. It's the most anointed translation of the Old Testament that I've ever read. If you want the Old Testament to come alive, that is the translation to read in my experience.
That translation relating to Genesis 15:10 says "[Abram] brought all these for Him. He split them in half, and placed one half opposite the other."
The footnote to Genesis 15:10 in the Living Torah states "split them . . . This was the way of making a covenant (Rashi). Indeed, the words b'rith (covenant) and bathar (split) appear to be closely related (.....) It symbolized that just as the two halves of the animal were really one, so were the two people making the covenant. Moreover, just as one side cannot live without the other, so the two cannot live without each other (.....). It was also seen as a malediction; anyone violating the oath would be torn asunder like the animals (.....)."
So, we see the principal aspects of covenant, which bear repeating:
1) The covenant is made by splitting or cutting some living thing and shedding blood.
2) People who make a blood covenant become one and cannot live without one another.
3) A person who breaks the covenant is to be put to death.
So we there find the underlying covenantal principle behind the death penalty for adultery. We also find some guidance in terms of better understanding what the marriage covenant is about.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "split ... Break forcibly, be broken into parts esp. longitudinally or with the grain or plane of cleavage; ..."
Out of that we get the crux of understanding the marriage covenant. Genesis 2:21-25 which, again I'm sure you are all familiar with, verse 23 says ".... This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."
So you see that verse 24 speaks directly of the act of sexual union which results in the cutting of covenant with the shedding of blood.
It's really, really important to understand that. If you will just bear with me, I don't mean to offend anybody, but the reason Satan uses that symbol [the red valentines heart _] the way he does for lust and love, is because of what it physically represents.
So that symbol is used by Satan to create a subliminal effect of men thinking of women's most Holy part. It's really important to understand this. Every time you see one of these valentines cards or your kids innocently draws a heart, etc. It is getting to the very heart of the marriage covenant. It is an EXTREMELY sexually explicit symbol. That is why Satan has made us so oblivious to what it signifies. It is the most terrible abomination and we are completely oblivious to it. In the world and in the church today.
1 Corinthians 12:23-24
23 And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty,
24 but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, (NKJ)
So we see from that that God is saying that the male and female genital organs are the most Holy part of the body. They are the most honoured part of the body and that is why public nudity is such a shame and such an abomination. Those are the most Holy organs. They should only be seen within the marriage bed.
Let's take that a bit further. We've been now to Genesis 2:24, let's go now to Matthew 19:5‑6 and I'm reading from the Amplified Bible. Jesus is again speaking:
5 ...For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be united (joined inseparably) to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?
6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder (separate). (AMP)
We kind of hear that and we use it in a legalistic sense. But, I've been down a very, very rough road in that area. I came back to serving God. I gave my life, had an experience with God when I was about thirteen in the Anglican church. I got highly offended with the hypocrisy and what have you in the church by the time I was about seventeen or eighteen and I back slid totally until about eight years ago. So I was about 39 at that stage. I was in adultery, my life was in a mess and I was on the express lane headed for hell. Everything blew open, the relationship was exposed, it came to an end. I suddenly found that, notwithstanding all the will in the world. And having come back to The Lord and truly had a revelation that I was headed for hell and truly repented of my sin of adultery. I still could not cut off the ties that I had with this woman that I'd committed adultery with. And The Lord took me through a very dramatic period of cleansing and period of teaching in that.
Basically, what the Word of God is in fact telling us here is that when a man has intercourse with a woman, part of the man's spirit joins irreversibly to spirit of the woman. The more they make love, the more passionately they are in love, the more passionately and unreservedly they give themselves to one another, the stronger that bond becomes. So that in the sight of God that man and that woman are no longer two people.
This is the heart of understanding marriage.
Their very spirits become fused together. It's no longer John and Jane, it's just John. John is two people in the spirit sense. The stronger that gets, eventually, if it grows to the full extent possible, that man and that woman are able to communicate with one another spiritually. If you like, "telepathically", across great distances. You can think of something and phone her and say "I was about to say this to you" and she will say, "yes that is exactly what I was thinking of saying to you!" They will be able to communicate.
Once they get to that point, their prayers become immensely powerful. But, where you have that in a situation that is unGodly, you've got an enormous problem. So what we have in the world today, you're probably all familiar with that symbol (_) for a male? It's a biological symbol and that symbol (_) for a female? I'm just using them for convenience because I need to do a couple of drawings here.
In a Godly marriage, that=s the union that you have (Figure 1).
If this woman now goes and joins herself to a couple of other men, she's joined like that, (Figure 2). Remember this is an unbreakable spiritual bond. It can be broken, but it can only be broken from my own experience through a very broken and a contrite heart and humble petition before the throne of God, because there is no scriptural basis anywhere for it to be broken.
So THAT is adultery. Adultery is a spiritual state in which a man is joined to a woman who is joined to one or more other men. Now, as I said to you last week, the reality is that The Lord showed me at Passover last year. That the vast majority of people in the Body of Christ are joined to at least one other person with whom they are not living, and that person is joined to at least one other person with whom they are not living. The result is, and you can see this "spiders web" goes on indefinitely (Figure 3).
Now, one of these people is joined to the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ is joined to every Satanist, every witch and every warlock on the planet. That is in God's sight what the spiritual manifestation of adultery and fornication is.
So, when God looks down on people in this situation, he doesn't just see John and Jane, He sees John joined to Peter and Joe and all the rest of it. That is why fornication and adultery is such an absolute abomination in the sight of God. It takes an orderly relationship, which is what you've got there, and it turns it into something which is absolutely horrifyingly inappropriate and debilitating.
If you take it one other step, and it's important to understand why incest is such a problem. If we just take the example of a woman who has a daughter and the father then has intercourse with his daughter. Folks, this is harsh stuff, but the statistics indicate that 20% of all women on the planet today have been sexually molested by a close relative, either father, step-father, brother or uncle, 20% of all women molested through incest (Figure 4).
What you get then, there's the blood line passing through the father and the mother to the daughter and there's the one flesh bond and you get essentially a spiritual short circuit. Which, again is an absolute abomination in the sight of God. Once you understand that, you understand why Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 speak so harshly about incest.
Understand that there IS Grace in the present age for adultery. We see in John 8 verse 3 to 11, the woman caught in the ACT of adultery. Where they caught her in the act but they only brought the woman. They didn't bring the man. And Jesus wrote on the ground, and again I'm sure you are familiar with that story, but at the end of the day, Jesus "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." (NKJ)
It appals me the number of people who take that verse to say, well if you're living in adultery, just repent and then you're fine, you can carry on with that relationship. Folks, it doesn't say that at all. It says, "go and sin no more".
If a man and woman have married in the sight of the world and are living in adultery in the sight of God, that's it. The Word of God says, GO and sin NO MORE. Now there are certain things in our experience that you can do, there are prayers that you can pray and ask The Lord for guidance. There are some instances where God will sanctify that union. Depending on the spiritual state of the man who originally took that woman's virginity.
But there are many instances, and I cite again the experience that we had, because it was a real eye opener to us. This woman was in her forties, we were ministering to her, I'd actually given her a word by the Spirit of God confirming that God was permitting her to divorce. She'd been working for years trying to save her marriage. Her husband was an unbeliever, she'd come to salvation a number of years ago. She was in a terrible state over this whole divorce and we started ministering to her. She came and she had supper with us. She sat in our lounge until four o'clock the next morning. The Lord started to give me words of knowledge and just certain key phrases and the Holy Spirit started to give her visions. After eight hours, she realized that she had been seduced under hypnosis when she was sixteen years old. She'd been taken through a whole marriage ceremony. This guy had periodically pitched up in her life, clicked his fingers and had intercourse with her.
He actually fathered a child out of wedlock under hypnosis and she didn't even realize it until that day under the ministry of the Holy Spirit. At the end of eight hours, God said, in the mean time, this man had now pitched up, he was now born again, and he had reappeared in your life and God said "that's your husband and I'm taking you out of this" twenty something years "of adultery to restore you to your husband". Now that is really, really, paradigm wrenching stuff in terms of our understanding of what God thinks about adultery, because the majority of people would say "he took her virginity under hypnosis, it's no contest, she's free to marry anybody she wants to". It's immensely challenging.
I want to go on to the subject of submission, rebellion and adultery. Matthew 5:28
28 "But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (NKJ)
So we see that adultery can be a non-physical thing as well. It can be a spiritual thing.
The same, I would assume, applies to a woman who goes off and starts getting attracted to a man other than her husband.
Ephesians 5:22-24, I touched on last week "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." the end of verse 24 "in everything."(NKJ)
There is no exception provided for there. 1 Peter 2:19-3:2. I'm not going to read the whole passage, chapter three verse 1 "Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands,". Likewise? If you go back and read the tail end of chapter 2, like Jesus Christ, who when He was reviled, reviled not, who when He was crucified unjustly did not in any way resist. He could have called legions of angels to save Him, but He didn't.
A salutary warning to any woman who is thinking of marrying an unbeliever. Because what the Word of God says is submit to your husband in everything. Even if he beats you, even if he puts you into prostitution, even if he treats you in the most vile fashion. The Word of God says "IN EVERYTHING" there is no exclusion. And we find if you read a bit further in 1 Peter chapter 3, you will encounter a verse which says, like Sarah who called her husband lord. If you go and take that back, you'll find that there were two instances where Abraham told Sarah to lie about her marital status. To tell Pharaoh and subsequently Abimilech that she was his sister. She was then taken in both cases into their harem and what you read then is that "for Sarah's sake", in one case, God brought a plague on Pharaoh and in the other case God appeared to Abimelech in a dream. So we see that a Godly woman, and Sarah is held up here as an example of a Godly woman, who submitted to her husband in EVERYTHING, because of her submission was protected by God.
What we need to understand there is, it's very easy to get offended by what I've just said. I'm not saying that a Godly, Christian woman should voluntarily go into those sorts of situations. But what I am saying is, if she submits to the Word of God and if she submits to her husband, if she prays for protection, God WILL protect her.
But if she tries to protect herself, if she strives and she fights and she doesn't submit, God cannot protect her. She will never be strong enough to resist what that man will do to her. But the bottom line is, folks, there is a tragic set of circumstances around that, dealing with a lot of women who have married out of the faith.
God is in the process of dealing with a lot of those marriages, and He's taking people out of some of those marriages in the present age. But, the other side of that is, today, it is absolute foolishness for any born again believing girl, to marry a man unless she is absolutely certain that that man is born again, sanctified and serving God. Because she will be judged on how she submits to her husband!
I understand it's very challenging, but, again, remember the parallel because Ephesians 5 says submit as to The Lord and 1 Peter 2 and 3 says submit AS Jesus submitted to those who crucified Him.
If we take that a step further, the converse of that is that the majority of people would have us believe in this age that women have a prerogative to decide where they submit and where they don't submit.
If we take the parallel again, 1 Samuel 15:23 Samuel speaking to Saul "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he also has rejected you from being king." (NKJ)
So we see that the other side of submissiveness is rebellion. If you don't submit to God you get into rebellion. If a wife does not submit to her husband, she get's into rebellion and the house becomes divided.
A couple of other aspects on that, Hebrews 13:4 "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge." (NKJ)
Genesis 3:16 "To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."" (NKJ)There are a lot of women today who claim that they are getting out of their marriages today because they claim that they don't love their husbands. Genesis 3:16 is a statement of fact and a commandment. It's not a matter of choice, it's a matter of fact. Once you are married to a man, your desire MUST be for him. It's not a case that you can wake up twenty years later and say, "Oh, gee whizz, I don't really like you anymore, I'm going to get a divorce". There's no basis for divorce.
A lot of people are getting divorced every day for reasons like this.
If I can make one other point that I touched on last week, but I think it's pertinent to this question of submission. There are testimonies of men who came to salvation on their death bed after they had abused their wives for thirty, forty years. There is a Norwegian, I think it is, evangelist, who testifies that he was a drug lord, he was a pusher, he was a pimp, he used to abuse and beat his girlfriend in the most vile fashion and she submitted to him in everything until she died. After her death, he was so convicted of his sin, that he came to salvation! He attributes his salvation to the way that woman laid down her life.
We need to understand, Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow Him.
All of us have to come into this place of understanding that serving Jesus Christ is about taking up the cross. It's not necessarily a happy, clappy ride. We have to be willing to die for our testimonies. Like the example of the Russian women that I gave a few months ago [refer posting on Sergei].
Deuteronomy 21:15-17 clearly shows that a woman can be unloved and that is still not a reason to divorce. That's another of the reasons that's given for divorce today. There is NO scriptural basis for it.
I want to come back to the subject of rebellion. Proverbs 14:1 "The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands" (NKJ)
That's a challenging statement. Proverbs 12:4 "An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones." (NKJ)
Now we've read just now that she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, so once she starts to divide, once she starts to pull apart from him. She starts spiritually, going back to the one flesh bond, creating trauma and distress in the spirit realm between the two of them. That starts to tear the house down.
Proverbs 25:24, Proverbs 21:19, Proverbs 21:9 deal with a contentious wife. Again, make some statements which are not necessarily that popular in this age.
1 Peter 3:7 "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered." (NKJ)
Now there are two components to that. I have perhaps not dwelt enough on the other side of the requirement, which is that the husband should be like Christ to his wife. A husband is required to seek to become like Christ in order to lead his wife closer to Christ. But, again, that reinforces the fact, I'm talking here in terms of general principle, the fact that the husband does not do that, does not ipso facto provide a basis for divorce.
But what you do read out of 1 Peter 3:7, and I'll come back to another verse that reinforces that, is that if a husband and wife are not in agreement, their prayers will be hindered. We've ministered repeatedly in situations where a husband and wife, a family are in financial lack and often it's because the husband and wife are not in agreement or it's because one of them has a one flesh bond outside of the marriage. Because, in the sight of God, that union opens them up to demonic attack. So, if either member of the family has a one flesh bond extra-maritally. Either unresolved out of a divorce situation or out of promiscuity earlier on in life, that thing needs to be broken otherwise the house is divided.
But, even where you just have a one on one relationship and there is no other spiritual funny business. If the wife refuses to submit to her husband, if she strives with her husband, their prayers will be hindered. Obviously if the husband goes into really outrageous behaviour, and unGodly behaviour, his wife is going to have enormous difficulty submitting to him. Because, the reality is that none of us are sanctified and Holy enough to fully live out some of what I've been saying.
So there is a push-pull control so that if the husband starts to get absolutely out of line and his wife just cannot bring herself to submit to him anymore, it will create spiritual tension which may bring him back into line. BUT at the end of the day, if they are both believers, they should not be surprised if they are striving and fighting with each other if they are in financial lack.
1 Corinthians 11:3 "But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God". (NKJ)
What we see there, and this is also profoundly important. We have the Father, we have Jesus, we have the husband, we have the wife, and, in a sense, beneath the woman, we have the children. This is a really startling thing that The Lord showed us a few months ago.
The Word of God is a "two edged sword", it cuts "both ways" and it's particularly important to see that imagery that the Word of God cut's both ways because the relationship between us and Jesus is a mirror of the relationship between the husband and the wife and we are told that very specifically.
What happens, and I'll share this from the point of view of personal experience to make it a bit more real. I was complaining to The Lord because I was upset with some things that Ingrid was doing that, as far as I was concerned, were unacceptable. The Lord said to me, "why are you fussing? because you are treating Me the same way".The relationship between the husband and Jesus and the husband and the wife is essentially a mirror. Not always, because there can be other things going on as well. But what The Lord basically showed me is "husband, if you don't like the way your wife is treating you, it's probably a reflection of the way you are treating Jesus". If you don't like the way your children are treating you, it's probably a reflection of the way you are treating the Father. If the wife doesn't like the way the children are behaving towards her, it could well be a reflection of the way she's behaving towards her husband.
That's not absolute, but, I have to tell you, it works! I found that there were a number of things that I had to repent of and deal with as a result of looking in that mirror! That is part of the power of what God has given us in marriage.
Marriage is an awesome thing, it really IS an awesome spiritual state if you actually understand how to walk in it.
Luke 11:17 "But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falls." (NKJ)
I'm going to stop there because I have run out of time and we need to have communion. Maybe, God willing, I'll address the last point at some time in the future.
I just want to close by saying that this point, a house divided against a house falls, is profoundly, profoundly, profoundly important in the area of marriage. Once you get into a situation where the wife is striving with the husband, arguing with the husband, finding fault with the husband.
The point that we need to understand, it doesn't matter whether the wife is right and the husband is wrong. The wife is tearing down the house, she's undermining the marriage in a spiritual sense. Whereas, if she intercedes for her husband, she submits to her husband and says "Lord I can't bear this. I know that what he is doing is contrary to Your Word" - but understand, the wife is NOT the head of the husband, Jesus is. So, if the husband is doing something wrong, it doesn't help the wife trying to fix it. She has to intercede, "Jesus please deal with him, You are his head, I'm not his head, I can't deal with this".
Equally, there is nothing in scripture which says that a husband can discipline his wife. Love cannot be commanded, it cannot be demanded, it cannot be bought or bribed. Submission is the same. So, if the husband does not like the way his wife is behaving, she's getting out of the Word of God and the will of God, etc. It's no good ranting and raving at her. It's not going to produce any fruit because he doesn't have the spiritual authority to rant and rave at her. All he can do is go to his Head, which is Jesus and say "Jesus, please help me, I know that what she is doing is wrong, please show me how I need to change and please will you deal with her in the areas that she needs to change".
Once you start to understand this mirror thing, there is a strong possibility that if the husband doesn't like the way his wife's behaving when he goes to The Lord and says, "please fix her" the first thing The Lord's going to say is "well the way you are behaving towards me is pretty miserable too so why don't you fix that and the problem with your wife will go away".
The same applies to your children. You cannot demand or command obedience. Yes, the Word of God DOES provide for the FATHER to discipline the children with the rod of correction but you are not going to achieve anything by the mother ranting and raving at her children. If the children are mirroring the way she's behaving towards her husband. I ministered to a man just last week whose four children had gone completely off the rails and, in discussing it, his wife, we believe The Lord took in 1991 because she had back slidden to such a point that she was about to lose her salvation. But before she died, she was in such total rebellion against her husband when her children were in their teens that the children were now all into drugs, into homosexuality, into a whole bunch of things and into rebellion. Mirroring their mothers behaviour just before she died.
We need to understand, the Word of God tells us, look not to the things that are seen but to look to the things that are unseen. We have to deal with the spiritual dimension the whole time. If there is something wrong in a relationship, we've got to stop looking [.... tape ends ....]
The last few minutes of this message were lost as the tape ran out, but basically, the conclusion was that adultery is a MAJOR problem in the Body of Christ today. That judgment for adultery is coming upon the world and on the church. In particular we should see adultery as not being the extreme of sexual immorality alone but also unfaithfulness, lack of submission in thought and in deed.
Thayer's definition of 4202 porneia-
1) illicit sexual intercourse
a) adultery, fornication, homosexuality, intercourse with animals, etc.
b) sexual intercourse with close relatives; Lev. 18
c) sexual intercourse with a divorced man or woman; Mk. 10:11,12
2) metaphorically, the worship of idols;
used of the defilement of idolatry, as incurred by eating the sacrifices offered to idols
Hebrews 6:4-8
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit,
5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come,
6 if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.
7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God;
8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned. (NKJ)
Hebrews 10:24-31
24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay," says the Lord. And again, "The Lord will judge His people."
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (NKJ)
Deuteronomy 22:13-21
13 "If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and detests her,
14 "and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name on her, and says, 'I took this woman, and when I came to her I found she was not a virgin,'
15 "then the father and mother of the young woman shall take and bring out the evidence of the young woman's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate.
16 "And the young woman's father shall say to the elders, 'I gave my daughter to this man as wife, and he detests her;
17 'now he has charged her with shameful conduct, saying, "I found your daughter was not a virgin," and yet these are the evidences of my daughter's virginity.' And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
18 "Then the elders of that city shall take that man and punish him;
19 "and they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.
20 "But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman,
21 "then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father's house; so you shall put away the evil from among you. (NKJ)
The Talmud, The Steinsaltz Edition, Volume IX, Tractate Ketubot, Part III:
"If a man finds a virgin na'arah who has not been betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the na'arah fifty pieces of silver, and she shall be his wife, for he has humbled her. He cannot let her go all his days." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29.)
The opening commentary states:
"The laws concerning the seducer or the rapist of a girl between twelve and twelve-and-a-half years old are stated explicitly in the Torah.
Relates spiritual majority to the onset of puberty and relates this to the age at which a young girl becomes the subject of the passages of scripture relating to virgins.
Genesis 15:4-21
4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, "This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir."
5 Then He brought him outside and said, "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
6 And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
7 Then He said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it."
8 And he said, "Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?"
9 So He said to him, "Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon."
10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
11 And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.
13 Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
14 "And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
15 "Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.
16 "But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."
17 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
18 On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates--
19 "the Kenites, the Kenezzites, and the Kadmonites,
20 "the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Rephaim,
21 "the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites." (NKJ)
Genesis 2:21-25 in the King James
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (KJV)
John 8:3-11
3 Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst,
4 they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act.
5 "Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?"
6 This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.
7 So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first."
8 And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
10 When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?"
11 She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." (NKJ)
Ephesians 5:22-24, I touched on last week:
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.
24 Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. (NKJ)
1 Peter 2:19-3:2
19 For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.
20 For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:
22 "Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth";
23 who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously;
24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness-- by whose stripes you were healed.
25 For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
CHAPTER 3
1 Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives,
2 when they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. (NKJ)
Deuteronomy 21:15-17
15 "If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the unloved, and if the firstborn son is of her who is unloved,
16 "then it shall be, on the day he bequeaths his possessions to his sons, that he must not bestow firstborn status on the son of the loved wife in preference to the son of the unloved, the true firstborn.
17 "But he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his. (NKJ)
Proverbs 25:24
24 It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman. (NKJ)
Proverbs 21:19
19 Better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman. (NKJ)
Proverbs 21:9
9 Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman. (NKJ)
1 Peter 3:7
7 Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered. (NKJ)
1 Corinthians 11:3
3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (NKJ)
Luke 11:17
17 But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house falls. (NKJ)
[MAKERATING]
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