Highlighted New Testament Bible

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

St Matthews, Chapter 19, verse: 8, The Hardness of hearts.

Our paragraph topic is:  (The question of divorce) Part 6. 

From the beginning he created them male and female.  For this cause they will leave their parents and cleave to one another to become not two flesh but one.  This was God's purpose from the beginning, that they would come together for his purpose.  But man has created his own purpose.  Man changed God's purpose so that he could make it according to his own thinking.  And now we have divorce.  Now we have separation.  Now we have strife, anger, frustration, hatred, fear, doubt, and destruction.  Today we have destruction of God's plan that will brings peace and harmony, and love into the male and female relationship.

Where did it all begin?  God gave us bonding.  He gave us relationships.  He gave us the togetherness that comes with one flesh.  Yet we have separation.  Where did it all begin?  It began in the desert.  It began with the freedom of the captives from Egypt.  For they were in captivity for four hundred years.  They were under the Egyptian rule.  They were under the customs and habits of another culture and they adopted that culture and those rules as their own.  And they became hardened according to what they had known for four hundred years.  And Christ told them that it all began with their hardened hearts.  He said to them, "Because Moses, by reason of the hardness of your heart, permitted you to put away your wives."

Their hearts were hardened.  Their minds were set.  They were determined to separate, to divorce, to do other than what was God's plan.  So Moses permitted it.  Moses allowed them to put away their wives.  Moses saw that they were determined.  Moses saw what they would do.  Moses knew in his heart that freedom from the Egyptians was not freedom but continued bondage to the culture and ways of their captures.  And if this continued that their freedom would only lead to death and destruction.  For this was the way of the Egyptians.  This was how they dealt with their wives.  This was their separation and their culture.  And that same culture had been accepted by the Jews, freed from captivity.

So Moses sought a solution.  Moses did not want destruction.  Moses did not want his people to follow the same path.  He sought to change them.  He sought to move them in a different direction.  Moses sought to bring his people back to the Father who had freed them.  But they were determined.  They wanted to stay with what they knew.  They did not want to change.  And now today down through history we have the same.  We separate.  We divorce.  We ignore the will of God our Father who made us male and female, who made us that we would be one flesh for a purpose, for a cause. 

Father, forgive us.  Father, have mercy on us.  Father, help us to understand your purpose, your plan for us, male and female.  Help us to know you.  Help us to see you.  Help us to come to know the truth of who we are in Christ Jesus, our savior.  For he came that we would have life.  He came that we would no longer live in darkness.  He came that we would live abundantly in faith, and hope and peace and love.  Help us to understand the truth of who we are in you.  For with this knowledge we are able to see your purpose.  With this knowledge we are able to see ourselves as you created us, not as flesh and bones, but as spirits created in your likeness.  And with this knowledge we will understand the purpose with which you have given us to be male and female.  Thank you for your mercy, Father.  Thank you for your patience, Father.  And thank you most of all for your love. 


Read the sign of the times! Read the Highlighted New Testament Bible and lift the scales from your eyes that you may see, that you may know, that you may find the truth of who you are in Christ. Read it as though you would read a good book, from cover to cover, and see for yourself. Do not study it in parts reading one passage and then skipping to another, but read it for understanding. Read it for knowledge. Read it for faith. Read it that your eyes may be opened, that your ears may hear, that your heart may be filled with the light of Christ. The Holy Spirit awaits you. Christ seeks to know you. Open the door and let him in.