Embodying the Covenant Faithfulness of God

When we read Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, we see a church whose attitudes and actions are sometimes indistinguishable from the Roman culture around them. The church in Corinth is messy and divided, but it belongs to God. The letter of 1 Corinthians shows us a beautiful picture of how the gospel can bring transformation and renewal to every area of life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Please listen as I read God's word. To the married, I give this command. Not I, but the Lord. A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife. To the rest, I say this. Not I. Or I, not the Lord. If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean. But as it is, they are holy. But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances. God has called us to live in peace. How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? Here ends the reading.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Good morning, everyone. Glad to be with you this morning if I have not yet had the chance to meet you. Today, my name is John, and I get to serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood. If you are here this morning for the first time as our guest, we just want to again uh extend a welcome to you if you're here today because someone else from Elmwood invited you. A special welcome to you as well. Uh before we get into the message today, there's a couple things I want to make you aware of. Uh the first is that if you are newer to Elmwood, I'm going to invite you to something called the Welcome Party. This is coming up in just two Sundays on Sunday, March 15th. It's going to be right back in the fireside room just through those glass doors there. And really, the whole point of the welcome party is to give you a chance to connect with others who are newer to Elmwood. Uh, there's a lot of you who are uh new around here, even just this year, and so this gives you a chance to connect with some of those newer faces, gives you a chance to meet some of our ministry leaders, and uh, we get to share about some next steps and ways to get connected and things like this. Uh the welcome party is only gonna last between 20 and 30 minutes, so it's typically pretty short. We want to get you out of here uh before your hunger pangs take over. But on that note, we are going to have cupcakes and some other light snacks. So there's some incentive for you to come uh with that. Uh if you are newer to Elmwood in the last number of months, or if you have been here for a while and you've just never come to one of these, uh please come. Uh we'd love to have you there with us. If you're here and you're like, I've already been to one of these and I like the cupcakes, you can come just to get the food. That's okay as well. Uh the only thing we ask is that you would RSVP if you are gonna be there, so we can make sure that we have uh enough supplies. Uh the second thing is that coming up in uh the Sunday after that, on March 22nd, is a college lunch. We had one of these uh back in January, I believe it was, and the next one is uh coming up on March uh March 22nd, rather. Uh so college students, come on the 15th and get your cupcakes and then come back the next week, and we're gonna buy you lunch, and we wanna uh we want to get to know you and we want to uh hear your story and uh learn from you how we as a church can better invest in and love college students. Uh so especially for that college lunch, if you would uh please RSVP for that, we really need to know how many people are going to be there. Uh so please make sure you RSVP uh for that. So a couple ways for you to get connected. If you're newer, uh if you're a college student, uh want to invite you to uh take part in these. You can right now uh get out your phone and uh head to the digital bulletin or scan the QR code and head there to uh RSVP. Uh with that, let me invite you to join me in a word of prayer as we come to this uh passage this morning. God, as we have already sung this morning, we need you to preach the sun to our deafness. God, our hearts can so often be slow to hear and receive your word and your good instruction. And so, God, we pray that by the power of your spirit you would open our eyes and open our hearts and open our minds to receive and to enjoy and to uh take hold of what is available to us in these verses this morning. So, God, be with us in a unique way today by your spirit, and we ask that you would uh form each one of us more and more into the image of Jesus. We ask this in his name. Amen. Uh we are in a series of messages where we are walking through this letter that we know as 1 Corinthians. Uh, this is a letter that was written by a traveling church planter whose name was Paul, and we see him in this letter addressing some problems and some issues that existed in this church. So in the opening letter of the uh the opening uh chapter rather of the letter, he says, uh, I've heard some things. Uh word has gotten out, word is starting to leak out, and it's actually been reported that, and then he goes on to address a number of different things that were uh problematic in the life of this church community, and so that's why he writes is to address these things. But his goal in this letter is not to simply write in order to say stop doing that. Uh it would be appropriate for him to just say, just stop it, but he doesn't write to just say stop it. His goal in this letter is to help them see how the good news about Jesus will transform their lives and lead them to a whole new way of life. If he were to just write and say stop it, it would be a very short letter. But he's not writing to just tell them to stop doing those things. He's helping them to understand and to see uh what you could call the logic of the gospel. He's writing to help them see and understand how the good news about Jesus uh change the way that I think, change my attitudes, change my motives, change my heart, and from there lead me to a different way of living in every part of life. So that's what he's been writing to do in this letter, and uh in this section that we're in here today, he's addressing the subject of changes in status. Changes in status. So there's members of this Corinthian church who are uh living with the mindset that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, that they need to change their circumstances, they need to change their status in order to live a life that is pleasing to God, and he's writing to remind them in this section of the letter that no, they do not need to change their status. They do not need to uh obsess over changing their circumstances because changes in their status gain them nothing before God. In addition to this, he says, they can be faithful, they can please God in any situation, and so they don't have to obsess over swapping statuses. The specific change in status that he's addressing today is the change in status from being married to unmarried. And specifically, he's addressing the subject of divorce. So we see him first, he's speaking to Christian couples who are wanting to get divorced, and then he speaks to Christians who want to divorce a spouse who is not yet a follower of Jesus. So in both cases here today, he's speaking to Christian spouses in different circumstances, and we're going to see what it is that he is calling them to do. How is he calling them to live in these circumstances? So, speaking to those who are Christian spouses, married to other Christians, he says this. Reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God. So listen again to what he says in verse 10, where he says to the married, I give this command, not I, but the Lord. A wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife. So what Paul says here is uh pretty straightforward. Okay? It's pretty straightforward. We're not sitting here saying, yeah, but what does it really say in the Greek? You know, uh, we're not really wondering that. It's not hard to understand his point here that believing spouses should not get divorced. And given what's happening in the church in Corinth in these marriage relationships, this is actually kind of a remarkable thing for him to say. If you haven't been with us through this section of the letter that stretches all the way back to chapter five, uh let me just sketch some of what's been happening. Some of these Christian spouses have been influenced by Greek philosophical thoughts, which basically said that spiritual things are good and material things are bad. And so this dualistic way of viewing the world led some to uh what's called asceticism or the rejection of pleasure. And the thought was well, our our physical material bodies are not good because they're physical, and so all the biological impulses and the biological needs we have uh in our physical bodies, those things are bad precisely because they are physical. And so they were rejecting uh physical pleasure, and what was happening was that some spouses in the Corinthian church were then withholding sex from their spouse in marriage. So one of the spouses single-handedly decided to eliminate sex from the marriage relationship altogether, and in this way are sinning against their spouse. And then as a result of this, some of these uh Christian spouses are then falling into sexual sin. Some of these Christian spouses are then going and visiting prostitutes in order to uh meet the sexual needs that they have that their spouse is now refusing to meet. And so both spouses are now sinning against one another in different ways. These marriages, some of these marriages are a mess, and one or both spouses now is considering or taking active steps towards getting divorced from their Christian spouse. Now, certainly there were there are probably other reasons behind some of this divorce. Um some of the uh scholars and commentators that write on this passage uh think that it's possible that a misunderstanding of Jesus' teaching is behind this. Where when Jesus talked about uh marriage at the resurrection and said that in new creation there won't be marriage in the same way that we have marriage today, and maybe some of those believers had heard this teaching of Jesus and are saying, okay, if that's where we're headed, why not embrace that new creation reality now and become unmarried? And so it's possible that it was because of a misunderstanding of Jesus' teaching, but uh, no matter the case, uh these marriages are on the rocks. There's messiness and complexity and dysfunction in these marriages, and into a situation that is this bad, where these spouses are sinning against one another in ways that Jesus gives as an exception clause. Paul writes and says, don't get divorced. The reason is because marriage, according to Paul and the rest of the Bible, is not founded or built on personal satisfaction or personal fulfillment only, although those are aspects of it. Marriage is built on the covenant faithfulness of God. And that's why these spouses, Paul says, should not get divorced. So one of the images that you see as you read the Hebrew Bible, uh, one of the images used throughout the Old Testament to depict God's relationship with his people is the image of marriage. So there's numerous times where God is described as a husband, and his people Israel are described as his spouse, and the covenant relationship that God enjoys with his people is uh described as and is talked about using the language of marriage. In his letter to the church in the city of Ephesus, Paul uh picked up on this same image and he's talking about uh the beauty and the mystery of human marriage and this one-flesh union that takes place when a husband and wife come, bring their whole lives and bodies together and become one. And as he's talking about the mystery of human marriage, he says, uh, and also the mystery I'm talking about is actually the relationship between Jesus and his bride, the church. So what he points out is that the human covenant of marriage points beyond itself to the greater reality of God's relationship with his people. So the point is that our marriages, because they are built on and a reflection of this greater reality of God's covenant faithfulness, our marriages ought to reflect the covenant faithfulness that God has shown us in Jesus. That's what Paul wants them, uh, I think what he wants them to see. Since God has been patient and long-suffering with us, we ought to be with one another. Since God has forgiven us for sinning against him, we ought to do the same with our spouses. Since God has been faithful to us, we ought to reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God in our relationships as well. So Paul writes to them and says, Don't take the easy way out of divorce. So to Christians who are married to other Christians, he says, you shouldn't get divorced. And then he turns to address Christians who are married to someone who does not yet follow Jesus. And his instruction to them is the same that it is to those who are married to Christian spouses don't get divorced. He says, instead, you should trust the saving power of God through your life and through your witness to your spouse. Now, the situation that he's addressing here of these spouses that are in marriages where they're not on the same page spiritually, the situation that he's addressing here is the result of the Jesus movement spreading throughout the Roman Empire. So at the at the very beginning, it was uh largely, it was uh mostly Jewish people who were coming to know Jesus as their Messiah, but then as the message of Jesus spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria into the far corners of the Roman Empire, all of a sudden there were more and more Gentile people, meaning those who were not culturally or religiously Jewish, those Gentile people also began to follow Jesus as well. And sometimes, sometimes an entire household would come to faith all at the same time. So we read about this in the book of Acts, where there would be a household where a husband and a wife and children would all give their trust and allegiance to Jesus, and then they would all be baptized, and their whole house would be converted all at once. But then there's other cases where only one spouse came to know Jesus, or only one member of that family or household came to know Jesus, and that's the situation that Paul's addressing here. He's writing to a husband or a wife who came to faith in Jesus, but their spouse is still following the religion and the religious practices of the Roman Empire. And since they are now spiritually mismatched, these Christian spouses are considering divorce from their non-believing spouse. Based on how he addresses the situation and what he writes here, it's likely that these Christian spouses thought that they would become defiled. Spiritually speaking, they would become defiled through marriage to a spouse who doesn't follow Jesus. And in their defense, this is the pattern that we see throughout the Hebrew Bible. So the pattern is that when something that is holy comes in contact with something that is unholy, the holy thing becomes unholy. And when something that is clean comes in contact with something that is unclean, the clean thing becomes unclean. And so we understand that the transfer of uh uncleanliness. Uh so if you imagine a child who's been playing outside in the mud and they run into the house and they give you a giant bear hug and just like snuggle in really hard, their uncleanness is very quickly transferred to you. And so uh that was the that was the pattern all throughout the Hebrew Bible. And this is what some of these Christians were afraid of is they're afraid of being in union with, specifically sexual union, with someone who is not a follower of Jesus. They thought that they would uh become defiled by this, and so they were considering divorce. But Paul writes to them and says, You should remain in that marriage. You should stay married to that person who doesn't follow Jesus. As long as they will stay married to you, you should stay in the marriage, and you should trust the saving power of God to be at work through your life and through your witness. He tells them to stay in that relationship because they have no idea what God will do through them in the life of their spouse. Now, staying in a marriage where you and your spouse have fundamentally different ways of viewing the world is hard. It can be hard when your preferences clash, let alone when your life is built on an entirely different foundation altogether. And some of you who are here today, you know how hard it is to navigate life with a person whose whole life is built on a different foundation. Whether it's because they uh explicitly reject Jesus, or because even if they claim to follow Jesus, functionally speaking, they live with a life built on a different foundation. And remaining in a marriage like that, following Paul's instructions here, to trust the saving power of God to be at work through your life and witness, this requires the kind of covenant faithfulness that we talked about just a moment ago. It requires patient and prayerful and persistent investment in ways that are tactful, in ways that are winsome, in ways that are loving and kind.

unknown 19:38

Right?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

It requires a certain kind of character to win over a spouse who doesn't know Jesus, because I think we all know that there was no spouse who was ever nagged into the kingdom of God. There was no spouse who was ever pressured or manipulated into the kingdom of God. And so it's not a matter of brute force and just pushing the issue. How do you lovingly and winsomely and kindly and with humility point your spouse to Jesus and lead them towards Jesus? Above all, it takes a supernatural work of God, the Spirit, to cause their heart to become alive to the things of God. And Paul says, stay in that marriage because you have no idea what God could do in and through your life as you remain married to this person who doesn't know Jesus. So to Christian spouses who are thinking about divorcing a spouse who's not a follower of Jesus, he says, trust the saving power of God to be at work through your life and through your witness. Whether you are married or single, here's where I want to uh turn with this next is the main application for this, obviously, is in the context of marriage. Uh there's there's main big applications for those who are married in this. But the kind of character that Paul tells these married spouses to adopt is not character that is exclusive to those who are married. It's the kind of character that all of us as followers of Jesus are called to embody and reflect as well. So uh you could say that whether you're married or single, your life should reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God. It's gonna look different in a non-marriage relationship, but your life should reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God. The message of the Bible is that we all have been unfaithful to God. We've not just broken the rules, we have given our hearts and given our allegiance and our trust to other things and other people, we've looked to those people and things to provide for. For us, but only God can provide for us. And so the way the Bible talks about it is that we have committed spiritual adultery. Every single one of us. But in spite of our unfaithfulness, God has remained faithful to us. He demonstrated his covenant faithfulness and his covenant loyalty by sending his son to die in our place. And as followers of Jesus, we don't just believe intellectually that we are recipients of God's grace and his kindness and his forgiveness and his patience. We don't just believe that intellectually, but knowing that changes our hearts, and then we live differently. And we now begin to reflect and to embody the love and the grace and the kindness and the mercy of God that He's shown to us. So it is an intellectual thing, but it doesn't stay intellectual. We reflect it in how we live. And this is true of everyone who's a follower of Jesus. So whether you're married or single, and you're here today, your life, you are called to reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God in your life and in your relationships. But not only this, whether you're married or single, I think Paul would want you to never forget what God can do through you. Whether you're married or single, never forget what God can do through your life and through your witness. Friends, there are people in your life who you are uniquely positioned to reach with the good news about Jesus. There's relationships that you have, maybe with friends, neighbors, family member, coworkers, classmates. There's people in your life who God has uniquely positioned you to reach with the good news of Jesus. And of course, with using our own effort, we can do nothing to effectuate any kind of lasting spiritual change in someone's life. But the good news is that we don't do the work. God the Spirit takes our weakness and he takes our inadequacy and he takes our fumblings and he takes our inarticulate words and he takes our fear and the times that we shy away from conversation and he takes all of these failings that we have and he works in and through and beyond and over and around all of those failings. He's the one who does the work. And so we can live with hope and we can live with confidence, we can live with anticipation and expectation for what God can and will do through us in our spheres of influence with the people that He has placed in our lives. So whether you are single or married, your life should reflect and embody the covenant faithfulness of God. Whether you're single or married, trust the saving power of God to be at work in and through your life and your witness. Let me bring our time to a close this morning by circling back and thinking with you about one more sort of overarching piece of application for those who are married and for those who have been divorced. And it's this. If I can get this to go to the next slide. Paul knows that we live in the real world, and in that real world, our relationships are fraught with brokenness and frustration and tension and fighting and yes, sometimes even divorce. I think it's really good for us to have to see the sort of black and white nature of the way Paul talks about divorce. I think it's good for us to have to sit with and wrestle with Paul's teaching here, which he reminds us when he says, uh, I give this command, not I, but the Lord. So Paul's just picking up what Jesus said. Jesus is the one who gave a command and said, you should not get divorced. It's good for us to have to sit and to wrestle with Paul's teaching, which comes from Jesus himself, and remember that when Jesus taught about divorce, his disciples are like, well, if that's the case, we should just not even get married. Whatever they understood Jesus to mean, the bar was so high that they said we should just skip marriage altogether. It's good for us to have to face what Paul says and what Jesus says about marriage and about divorce. And as we sit with this, I think it's important to remember that two things can be true at the same time. Divorce, on the one hand, is never ideal. I think we can say that it uh God does not desire that anyone should get divorced. And on the other hand, there's grace for when our marriages fail. Many of you in this room know firsthand about the complexity and about the pain of a marriage that didn't last. Sometimes it didn't last because of things like abuse, whether that's verbal or physical or emotional or even sexual abuse, sometimes because of abandonment, sometimes because of adultery or some other form of sexual sin, sometimes because of your own emotional or spiritual immaturity at the time. There's a myriad of reasons why marriages fail. And those of us who have walked through it don't need anyone to tell us that it's not ideal. Those of us who have watched parents or children or friends or other people we love walk through the pain of divorce, we don't need anyone to tell us that it's not ideal. We get that. Divorce is never ideal, and there's grace for when our marriages fail. Paul here is, his what he says here about divorce is not designed to lay a crushing weight of guilt on those who fail at marriage. It's not his intention in writing this. The entire letter that he wrote to this church in Corinth is saturated with and is grounded in and is founded upon the message of the grace of God in spite of our failures, even the failure of divorce. So, what that means is that there is grace for those who look back and think, there has to be more I could have done to save this relationship. But I just didn't know how. I didn't know what to do. I did the best I could and it still failed. There's grace for those who look back and think, there has to be more I could have done. There's grace for those who look back and think, how did I not see this coming? How did I not see that I was going to marry someone who was an abuser? Or someone who, how did I not know that this is what this person would have turned into? There's grace for those who look back and think, if I wasn't filling the blank, maybe my marriage wouldn't have fallen apart. There's grace for those who look back and think, I was so immature. And I made such terrible choices, and this was my fault. I'm the one who chose divorce. And now I'm remarried or in some other situation where I can't un, I can't take that decision back. There's grace for those who look back and feel the sting of a marriage that has failed. Friends, the good news is that divorce is not the unforgivable sin. And if you have walked through divorce, God's grace is enough for you. Now, believing this does not lead us to take divorce less seriously. It doesn't lead us to say, well, it doesn't matter if we get divorced then, because God's grace covers that sin too. No. It leads us to fight for marriage and it frees us from the wave of condemnation when we do fight for marriage and it's not enough. So if you're married here today, and especially if you're here and you have experienced divorce, remember that God's grace is enough for you. Remember God's faithfulness when your relationships fail. As we come to the communion table today, we are reminded of God's covenant faithfulness to us in Jesus. As we do each week, we come here to receive the grace and the forgiveness of God for the ways that we have sinned against him. And we come here to glory in the fact that in spite of our unfaithfulness, he has remained faithful. And he has provided a way for our relationship with him to be restored. He's made a way for us to experience new life. And so we get to come forward this morning and receive that good news for ourselves once again. We get to remember God's covenant faithfulness to us in Jesus. Let me invite you to take just a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will come to the communion table together.