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“Ezra and Unlawful Marriages”
Categories: Bulletin Articles
Of all the ordinances of God, perhaps the most difficult to apply is Matthew 19:9. Like most preachers, I’ve been in the painful position of having to tell an apparently happy couple that their marriage is unlawful in God’s eyes, and that if they wish to please Him, they will have to separate. I don’t relish these conversations, but I believe that it’s my duty to have them.
Some, however, want to avoid this painful responsibility by claiming that it’s not really what God would want, especially when such marriages have produced children. Isn’t God a pro-family God? Wouldn’t He want the father and mother to remain together when their divorce would inflict such emotional harm on their offspring?
I think that any valid argument that would exempt couples with children from the restrictions of Matthew 19 would quickly win acceptance. Nobody likes being the bearer of family-destroying news. However, the evidence we have points in the opposite direction. God is a pro-family God, but even more than that, He’s a pro-holiness God.
We see this most clearly in the story of the latter half of the book of Ezra. In this account, Ezra, a scribe who has recently returned to Jerusalem from exile in Persia, learns that in the absence of appropriate teaching and oversight, the Jews have begun to practice mixed marriage. Jewish men have joined themselves to the women of the nations around them.
Ezra is appalled. As he points out in Ezra 9:6-15, this is a clear contravention of God’s laws forbidding marriage outside the bounds of God’s people. This kind of sin is what got the Jews exiled in the first place. It’s why they continue under Persian bondage. If they continue in it, God may well remove them from the land forever.
The seriousness of the problem demands a stern remedy. In Ezra 10, Ezra and the people determine that the men in mixed marriages must put away their foreign wives. The Jews set up tribunals and dissolve every such marriage in a matter of months. This was no easy matter. After listing the offenders, Ezra 10:44 observes, “All these had married foreign women, and some of the women had even borne children.”
People 2500 years ago loved their families and children no less than we do, but they understood that the law of God left them no choice. If they were to remain God’s holy nation, they had to end all unholy marriages, regardless of who suffered as a result.
Today, the same thing is true for us. A Christian who wants to remain faithful cannot remain in a marriage that Jesus forbids, and the church that wants to remain faithful cannot tolerate the unlawfully married who insist on remaining together. If we veto the judgments of the Lord that we don’t like, He is no longer the head of the church. We have set ourselves up as its head instead. Either we are faithful in all things, or we are faithful in nothing. Ezra’s example is a difficult one to follow, but it’s the only path that leads to heaven.
