In a thought-provoking session, Dr. McGee responds to listeners’ inquiries about the complexities surrounding marriage, divorce, and faith. Explore timeless biblical insights that discuss marriage’s role in society, the principles of remarrying after a divorce, and the spiritual obligations between husbands and wives. Our episode offers a distinct perspective on why true marital happiness is rooted in being Spirit-filled and why marriage remains a cornerstone of Christian living.
00:00:00 Introduction to Scriptural Questions on Divorce and Marriage
Is there ever a situation when divorce is scriptural? How about marriage? Is there ever a time when it’s wrong? What does the Bible say to the divorced person who later gets saved? Can he or she remarry? Well, stay with us as we deal with these questions and more.
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How firm a foundation, ye saints, of the Lord is laid for your faith. What more can he say than to you he hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
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Fear not, I am with thee.
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Welcome to another edition of the Question and Answer program. Our Bible teacher is Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who answered the questions of his many listeners for over 30 years. And thankfully for us, those answers have been preserved for the benefit of generations to come. Of course, this is a ministry of the Through the Bible Radio Network. Now, getting right to our questions, we have one here from a listener in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who writes, If two unbelievers get married and one is divorced, While the other had never been married, does God consider this a marriage?
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Well, may I say to you that God considers it a marriage in the sense that for the sake of the children. Paul made that very clear, I think, in 1 Corinthians 7. We’re told here, “…and unto the married he says, I command, yet not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband.” But, and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife. Now he’s talking, I think, to believers. But to the rest speak I, not the Lord. In other words, here’s a new situation. that has arisen before he was just giving the Old Testament teaching, and now, for the new situation, he says he’s speaking now, and that doesn’t mean God is not speaking, for he is writing here by inspiration. But the rest speak I, not the Lord. That is, he’s not quoting the Old Testament now. Here’s the new situation. If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. In other words, if a believer and an unbeliever are married, God considers it a marriage, provided the unbeliever is willing to stay. And the woman which hath a husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. Other words, the grounds for divorce is not because you’re married to an unbeliever. Now, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Else were your children unclean, but now they’re whole. That would be illegitimate if it was not a marriage. You see, God gave marriage to mankind. at the very beginning, and it’s the oldest institution that there is. And he gave it to mankind for his benefit. Now, we’ve come to a day when the unbeliever today is throwing off marriage, and they’re attempting to live together without marriage at all. And it is, of course, progressive prostitution is what it amounts to because note that they don’t seem to live together very long at one time. That is, a couple may live together several years and then move on to somebody else. Then I noticed recently that one fellow living with a woman who had been married to someone else and they were not married but they were living together and he got shot. I don’t know what the outcome will be but she happened to be there when he got shot. And you wonder about a situation like that. Certainly she didn’t shoot him in order to untie a knot marriage because it just hadn’t taken place. Now, but marriage is for actually the benefit of mankind, and certainly it’s for the benefit of the children. They become illegitimate. And I don’t care how you look at it, they’re illegitimate unless there was a marriage, because God gave marriage to be a blessing to mankind. Home being the very basis of marriage, and marriage makes the home. There’s no marriage. There really can be no real home. And generally, when they start living together, it’s not to establish a home. That’s not the thought at all. They’ve got other things in mind.
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Now, this same listener has a second question. He says, if an unbeliever was divorced, then got saved, could he or she marry a believer?
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May I say to you, I don’t know the details. I always wanted to know the details concerning any situation like that. I would say that the general would be, yes, the believer that is divorced to place before they were saved And it’s just like any other sin. If it was wrong, if they were a murderer and got saved, then they are forgiven. Well, if they got married before they were saved, got a divorce, and let’s grant that it was wrong, sinful, then they are forgiven their sin. And I think they are permitted to get married with the blessing of God upon that marriage. Now, this party makes this comment at the end, please keep your strong stand against the liberal preachers and churches. It’s easy to just sit back and not be controversial. Well, may I say to you, you’ve certainly made me controversial, there’s no question about that, because you’ve touched on one of the most controversial subjects today, and I do not mind to speak my mind on it. In fact, the matter is, when we teach I Corinthians, We are very bold and frank. In fact, my own wife thinks that I’m a little too frank in discussing marriage. But now I want to sum up some of the things that I’ve been saying in answer to these questions. God gave marriage to mankind at the very beginning. God brought Eve to Adam, and they were joined together. God joined them together. And if there ever was a couple that their marriage was made in heaven, it could be said of Adam and Eve. God made her for him. And she’s just right for him. I think she was the most beautiful creature that has ever been on this earth. And I think he was the finest man that’s ever been on this earth. They were physically and otherwise they were perfect. They came from the hand of God. They had a free will which they could exercise, and they did exercise it. And that, of course, was revelation of the fact that even a perfect creature with free will can make a wrong decision. And men today have a free will. You can still make a wrong decision, but you can make a right decision, of course. Now, this couple, their union was blessed of God. Now, after that, marriage becomes one of the bans that God gave to the human race. You remember the rebellion that is spoken of in the second Psalm. It was a rebellion against God. And the rebellion narrows itself down. It says, let us break their bands asunder. That is, let us break the bands of God the Father and God the Son. And I think you could say the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit. And what’s that band? It’s Mary. And this idea of living together without getting married, it’s a fad, of course, but it reveals the rebellion that’s in the human heart against God. Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. And the cords, of course, are the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Law that God gave. God gave it for the protection of man. you see, and when man will follow God’s laws, why there’s always blessing that comes to the human race. But man’s not saved today by keeping those to begin with. He can’t keep them. And the second thing is that God has provided a redemption that is perfect, that presents us perfect before God. Now, we’re living in a day when Christian marriages are the ones that are jeopardized today. That is the thing that disturbs me no end, is the fact that Christians are taking so lightly their marriage vows. Now, I very frankly believe that God has made the ideal marriage is not only of a believer, but as Paul makes it clear in Ephesians 5, that the person must be a Spirit-filled believer. He begins by saying, be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Then he tells about the things that will come from that, the fruit of it. And one of the fruits that’s mentioned, of course, is speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns. It will enable you to praise God. It will bring joy into your life. And it’ll bring love into your life. Now, he speaks of the fact there, husbands and wives. Wives are not to obey your husbands. That’s not the thought. But they are to submit only in the sense that a wife must be willing to submit to the man she marries. Now, he’s to be a man that loves her enough to die for her. Now, who are we talking about? Spirit-filled believers. I think they’re the only ones that can have this kind of a marriage. That’s the reason among Christians today that you have such terrible things that are happening to marriage, because they’re not made by Spirit-filled believers. And they’re trying by taking these little courses today, following certain little rules and regulations, to have a happy marriage. Well, my friend, you have to be a Spirit-filled believer in order to enjoy the blessings of this kind of a marriage. A woman has to be a Spirit-filled woman in order to submit to a man. And she is actually, it’s just to follow him. And he is told that he’s to love her. He’s not told that she’s to love him even. She’s to submit to him in what’s saying. Do what he does. She’s to respond. That is the thought and the word. She’s to respond to him. Now, if he says to her, I love you. And she used to say to him, I love you. But suppose he doesn’t say it. And I don’t think she used to say it at all. And until that man can say to you, I love you, and you can say, I submit to you, I respond to you, well, that’s no marriage at all. Couldn’t be a marriage at all. And that’s the reason that some women that have got a whole lot of character and sense today, they say, no, I’m not going to get married. They don’t have to get married. We gave a quotation. I know a woman. She’s a remarkable woman. She happens to be, frankly, she is part English. She’s part French. And I think she’s one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met. Real executive ability. Never got married. And she’s really a very beautiful woman. Why didn’t she? Well, I’ve never asked her the question, never had the nerve to. But she lives on an island down in the Caribbean. And I’ll tell you why she hasn’t. I look around at the crowd of Christians that she mixes with, and she just hasn’t found that man yet. And there are a lot of women like that today, by the way. And that’s the thing that marriage is all about today. It’s just not to be able to marry some man that comes along today, and that’s the reason that so many of them are ending in the divorce court today. Very frankly, the solution to the problem, of course, is not, as a great many people think, that you don’t then get married and you don’t have to get a divorce. But you haven’t solved your problem by that. In fact, you have complicated your problem and really made it difficult in your life. And you’d be surprised today that some of the letters that we get from folk that started off like that and didn’t get married, what tragedy has come to them and the child they have. Now, I must move to our next question. I’ve spent a lot of time on this, and I spend time because this is the problem of the hour, I would say. There just seems to be two classes of people today, those that are married and those that want to get married. Maybe I ought to put in the third class, those that are married and want to get unmarried. Those are the three classes of people that we have today. And therefore, this problem of marriage is really a very pertinent one.
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If you’d like more information on the issue of marriage, then we have several suggestions for you. Dr. McGee has two booklets on this issue called When Divorce is Scriptural and Marriage is Unscriptural and The Best Love. Or for a more detailed study, you may want to consider Dr. McGee’s hardback book, Marriage and Divorce. I’ll provide you with the ordering information at the close of today’s broadcast. Our next question is from a listener in Raytown, Missouri, who writes, Does it say in the Bible that it was best to bring fat-tailed sheep to sacrifice? If so, where does it say this?
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No, I don’t think it’s identified the kind of sheep that were to be brought. It just says sheep. And it is a fact that fat-tailed sheep were apparently in existence in that day, and they could have well been fat-tailed sheep. And it’s the belief of a great many today that that was the kind of sheep that were brought. and that that fat was actually the most important part. Now, the fat that’s mentioned in Leviticus, from Leviticus 1 through 7, mentioned about 40 times. And actually, the fat was considered the best part of the animal. Well, in this day, we don’t want the fat of sheep, certainly. I know that when I get a leg of lamb, I cut away a great deal of the fat. I don’t want it because it is fattening if you eat all of that. But in that day it was different. But your fat-tailed sheep, I don’t know that I could answer that. I do know that it’s the belief of a great many scholars that was the type of sheep that were offered in that day. And I’ve seen them in that land, many of them, and it is therefore reasonable to conclude they were in existence in the time of Moses.
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We come now to a question from a listener in Anaheim, California. She says, I have your booklet called Christ, His Cross, His Church. On page 30, in the first paragraph, I don’t understand what you mean when you say, we feel there is a reason why Protestantism has neglected this great truth in rebounding from Romanism at the time of the Great Reformation. Unconscious, they turned from the subject altogether. You go on to say, I can recall what a tremendous impression was made upon my heart when as a young minister I got told of this great truth. I asked my husband, and neither one of us are really sure what you’re speaking about. Could you explain it?
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Well, it’s in the section that deals with the priesthood of believers. Christ, the high priest, and the fact that every believer is a priest. If you’re a child of God, through faith in Christ, then you are a priest, and that means that you have access to God. That means that you stand on that kind of a basis. You have a great high priest that you can go to, and the epistle to the Hebrews is the epistle that enlarges upon that. It says, can you please explain it on your question and answer program, and if you have another booklet that talks on this and explains it, could you send it to me? I think if you’ll notice the subject that we were discussing earlier, was the great high priest and the priesthood of believers today. And that is the only thing that I can think of that could have puzzled you in that passage of Scripture.
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The booklet Christ, His Cross, His Church is no longer in print. However, the five messages contained in that booklet can be found in Dr. McGee’s hardback book, The Best of J. Vernon McGee. Again, I’ll provide you with ordering information at the close of our broadcast. We come now to a question, two actually, from a listener in Seaside, California. For his first question, he writes, Could you explain why the animals also had to wear sackcloth as mentioned in Jonah 3, verses 7 and 8?
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Maybe the best thing to do would be to go back and read that because it is in the scripture and I’m sure that it must sound very strange to someone reading it. Why in the world did the animals need to wear sackcloth? Because ordinarily they don’t dress up an animal to begin with. Now, these people that made that request, you must remember, were Ninevites. And they worshipped animals. In fact, the worship of the Assyrians was very much like a zoo. They worshipped all kinds of animals. And so when they went into sackcloth and ashes themselves, they brought their animals in. And we read here, and I want to read verses 7 and 8 of the third chapter of Jonah. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Well, to begin with, let me say that God didn’t command this. In fact, God didn’t even command the people to put on sackcloth. Sackcloth is just something that God doesn’t seem to go for. Nowhere commands that sort of thing. God never gave fast days. He gave feast days. And he says, come into my presence, he said, with joy, singing. God, I don’t think he likes these long-faced saints. God wants you to come into his presence with great joy. Now, here, You have to remember that these people worshipped animals. They are heathen. They are pagan people. And so they are so alarmed by this message of Jonah that they not only go in sackcloth, but they bring in their animals and put them in sackcloth. God never commanded either the animals nor for them to do that. But it reveals the extent of their repentance. It does do that, but as far as God commanding it, Well, of course he didn’t command it at all. You don’t find that anywhere. God did command them to repent, and all they needed to do was to turn to God, which they did. And when they did, God delivered them, you see. But not because of sackcloth and ashes, either on them or the animals. That had nothing to do with it at all. That was their own idea.
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Now this same listener has a second question. In Genesis 4, verse 4, Cain said to God that men will try to kill him wherever he goes. What men is Cain speaking about?
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Now, will you notice this party here that has asked this question also has others. The first one in this series now Do you believe Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on earth? Well, I certainly do. The Bible presents it that way. If so, please explain Genesis 4, 4, where Cain says to God, everywhere I go, men shall seek to slay me. What man? Well, I imagine some of his brothers. Now, we have a record given to us in the book of Genesis that is a very brief record. Have you noticed that the first 11 chapters in Genesis covers as much time and maybe much more time than the rest of the Bible put together? And that may seem strange to you, but it’s quite interesting. Moses is getting to a story in a hurry, and the story doesn’t concern these first ones. And so, very frankly, we have a trump cake. an abridged edition here. And who were the other men that you’re talking about? Well, the fact of the matter is that there were other brothers and sisters. I think before Adam and Eve died, you must remember they lived over 900 years, they had quite a family. And it’s not unreasonable to say that they probably had several millions. on the earth. Because you see, there could be children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren. What a homecoming they could have. And there were quite a few on the earth at that time. So that when you try to confine this to just these that are mentioned, you are not allowing for the fact that it makes it very clear that Adam lived 130 years. He begat a son in his own likeness after his image called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he’d begotten Seth were 800 years. And he begat sons and daughters. And he begat sons and daughters before that. I don’t know their name, but there’s quite a family that was on the earth.
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As we come to the close of today’s broadcast, we’d like to invite you to request a copy of our resource catalog. In it, you’ll find hundreds of books, booklets, CDs, and more, which were all designed to assist you in your study of the Word of God. Simply make your request and I’ll provide you with that contact information in just a moment. Now, if you’re a serious student of the scriptures and you’d like to follow along with Dr. McGee during his study, then we encourage you to have your name added to our mailing list for the notes and outlines. They’re mailed out with our monthly newsletter. Today, we mentioned several booklets and books by Dr. McGee. The titles, again, are When Divorce is Scriptural and Marriage is Unscriptural, The Best Love, Marriage and Divorce, and The Best of J. Vernon McGee. The booklet, The Best Love, is no longer in print as I mentioned before, but it is available as a free PDF download with a number of other booklets that have also gone out of print. For ordering information on any of these items I’ve just mentioned, contact our offices by calling 1-800-65-BIBLE Monday through Thursday from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific Time. You can find a number of these products and a sign-up form for our electronic newsletter when you visit us online at at ttb.org. We can also be reached by sending a request to Questions and Answers. For those in the U.S., Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. This week we’ll continue to press on in Dr. McGee’s five-year journey through the whole Word of God, book by book and chapter by chapter. So be sure to tune in to the Through the Bible radio program heard on this station every Monday through Friday. This is Steve Schwetz for the Through the Bible radio network with a prayer that God will answer all your questions and solve all your problems.
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