D-I-V-O-R-C-E And How To Stop It

D-I-V-O-R-C-E AND HOW TO STOP IT

INTRODUCTION

A. My assigned topic is “Divorce and How to Stop It in Christian Homes.

B. I wish I could stop every divorce, but I know I can’t. However, if tonight, I can stop just one, I will have meat to eat you know not of.

C. This sermon will touch some more than others, but its purpose is not to prosecute or vindicate anyone, but to see divorce for the sickness it is. Many of you could tell of the pain of D-I-V-O-R-C-E much better than I because my personal knowledge of that pain is that of a grandpa who has not seen a dear little grandson since he was five, and he is now 22 years old.

D. Tammy Wynette captured some of the pain of divorce:

Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man

So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand

Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E

But the words we're hiding from him now

Tears the heart right out of me.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today

Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away

I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me

Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas

Or his fifth birthday

And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play

I spell out all the hurtin' words

And turn my head when I speak

'Cause I can't spell away this hurt

That's drippin' down my cheek.

Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today

Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away

I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me

Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

E. We begin with faulty views of marriage and divorce.

I. A FAULTY VIEW NUMBER ONE IS VIEWING PEOPLE AS OBJECTS

A. We begin our journey in the Old Testament by looking not at divorce, but at polygamy, which may seem irrelevant to us.

1. God made concessions, as he did with divorce, but he limited the number of wives a man could take; and, under no circumstances, could a wife take more than one husband.

2. Exodus 20:17 may give us some insight into the hearts of the time:

“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”

B. Women were the property of men, either their fathers or husbands. So long as those of the opposite sex are viewed as objects to be possessed for our enjoyment, trading old models of husbands or wives for new ones will be as easy as trading cars.

II. THE SECOND FAULTY VIEW THAT CREATES MARRIAGE DILEMMAS INVOLVES HUMAN SEXUALITY.

A. Many of us were born into a world dominated by Victorianism, in which sex is an act designed for procreation in marriage and not something to be enjoyed, especially by the wife.

B. Those born since the sexual revolution have been born into a world in which sex is seen as an activity—a game to be played, as in the lyrics of a song: “…love is a name, sex is a game, forget the name and play the game.”

1. Sex is not something one simply does; it is something we are—male and female in every cell in our bodies, as this statement from Stanford University states:

“No amount of surgery, hormone injections or anything else will change someone's DNA from a man's to a woman's (or vice versa).

As you know, for humans, sex is determined by the presence of a Y chromosome -- humans with an X and a Y chromosome are male and those with two X chromosomes are female. No current (or probably future) technology can replace a chromosome in all of our trillions of cells.

In fact, it probably wouldn't matter if they did. The genes on the Y chromosome sort of get the ball rolling for becoming a male. Once that has happened, the system can go on indefinitely” (Stanford at the Tech/ https://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask35)

C.. There is no such thing as casual sex—uncommitted sex, yes; casual sex, no:

a. Hear Paul: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:16-17).

b. Hear C. S. Lewis as he speaks through the senior tempter Screwtape: “Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love," but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes "one flesh." You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of "being in love" what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call "being in love" is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy” (C. S. Lewis. “The Screwtape Letters,” XVIII).