Divorce -- What's In A Vow

What’s In A Vow

9/29/96 Eccl. 5:1-8 Matthew 19:1-12

What’s in a vow. There’s a V in a vow and it indicates that victory is possible when the vow is kept. There’s an O in a vow and it indicates that opportunities for many things to happen, some good, some not so good, and some bad. There’s a W in a vow and it indicates Work is going to be required to make the vow stand the test of time.

We serve a loving, compassionate and forgiving God who makes vows to us with the intent of keeping his end of the deal. He said, Lo I will be with you always, even until the end of time. His word tells us that his mercy endures forever. It says when we confess our sin, He removes it from His presence, as far as the east is from the west. It tells us nothing can seperate us from His love which is found in His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus himself says, "come to me all of you with heavy burdens and I will give you rest.

The Scriptures make it plain and clear that God’s arms are open to anyone who comes to Him in repentence and asks for forgiveness of their sins. God has made a vow to us, "if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." But we must always remember, the cost of forgiveness did not come cheap. God’s grace was not cheap or free. It cost the death of Jesus Christ. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t die with the message , go ahead and sin as you please, my blood will cover whatever you do. When we willfully disobey God after becoming Christians, the Scriptures state in Hebrews that we are stomping on Jesus, treating his blood as unholy, and insulting the spirit of Grace.

Can you imagine what dire predicament we would be in if God had not made a vow to be with us always. Can’t we all confess, we have done things which would provide Jesus with ample evidence against us to get up and walk away. The amazing thing is not that we have stayed with Jesus all these months and years, but that He has stayed with us. Very few if any people could walk close beside us if they knew us as intimately as Jesus did. That speaks more highly of the vow Jesus has made to us, than the one we made to Him. Our God is a compassionate God.

God wants us to be as compassionate toward others in our vows, as we want him to be to us. One of the greatest attacks on the vows we make today is on the vows of marriage. One of the most difficult topics to speak on in the church today is divorce. The reason is, there is no good time to teach on it. Within the church, at any given moment someone is going through or coming out of a divorce.

We are all affected by the society in which we live. Our society has instilled with us the belief that we all have the right to live happy, wonderful, and fun filled lives. That which hinders our joy, should be removed so that we might become self-fulfilled persons. The same mentality has become part of the church’s theology. God does not want you to be sad, ever. He wants you to be enjoy life. We interpret Jesus’s words of abudant lives to mean, abunance in things, abundance in pleasure, and an abundance of having things go my way.

Yet if one looks at Jesus’s life, we some material things, but not a whole lot. We see him having some fun, but there’s some persecution, betrayal and lonlieness. We see some things going the way He wanted, but there was some time spent in great pain and agony up there on the cross and there was that moment in time in which He was completely seperated from God the Father, when He cried out something we never will have to, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me."

The world has told us there is such a thing as a no fault divorce. Well what is there to have caused the tremendous amount of pain that goes on in the lives of the people which led up to the no fault divorce. No fault means, because it wasn’t my fault or your fault, we simply split things evenly and walk away. We appluad this new enlightened way of thinking as progress. What we don’t see is the great injustice involved.

One person may have been committed to making this relationship work, has endured years of abuse, and now this other person has found someone new. Completely breaking his or her vows can he or she come into the court with clean hands and say I only want my 50% share. We give more recognition to contracts between businesses than we do the contract of marriage. If a business promises to deliver a million gallons of oil at $1 a barrell and the contract is signed. If the price of oil goes up to $5 a barrell, the person selling can’t say, oh I changed my mind. I’m going to sell my oil to someone else for $5 a barrel. If he does, the original buyer will be able to sue him and get $5 million for breach of contract.