03.08. GOD: ISRAEL’S FAITHFUL HUSBAND
GOD: ISRAEL’S FAITHFUL HUSBAND
Foundational to an understanding of what Scripture teaches concerning the permanence of marriage (and implicitly, concerning divorce) is knowledge, of who the God of Scripture is and how our God lives in a covenant or ‘marriage’ bond with His people. If we are to be true image-bearers of God in marriage (which is also a covenant relationship), reflecting what He is like, then we are to look to Him as our example. A brief look at how God stuck by Israel despite her sins is instructive.
God and Abraham
Holy God, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and earth, came to earth one day and focussed His attention on the man Abraham. To this man almighty God said, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-2). Here is a thought to make one pause. Holy, sovereign Creator established a relation with a sinful man! And see: Abram responded by packing his bags and travelling to the land God showed him. Abram’s response to the command of such a God was obedience. But see: on account of a famine Abram (and Sarai his wife) diverted to Egypt. What kind of a man did Abram show himself to be in that situation? ,Scripture tells us: “And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, ‘Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you’” (Genesis 12:11-13). Such language is simply not the language of faith or, of trust in God. In fact, to claim that his wife was his sister was simply a lie. And lying is of the devil, the father of lies (cf John 8:44). Holy God would have been most just to respond by rejecting Abram. But note well: this is not how God reacted! Instead, we read how God later came in a vision to Abram saying, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Genesis 15:1). What this says of God? This: He started out in a relationship with Abram and carried on with it despite Abram’s weaknesses and sins.
Similarly, God promised Abram that He would make Abram the father of many children (Genesis 15:1-21). Abram, though, didn’t entrust the fulfilment of the promise to almighty God and so took matters into his own hand; he fathered a child through Hagar (Genesis 16:1-16). Again, note that God did not respond by giving up on Abram, refusing to deal with such a sinner any longer. Instead we read how God made a covenant with Abram. To this sinner, a liar and an adulterer, God said, “... I will make My covenant between Me and you...” (Genesis 17:1-2). What this says of God? He is faithful: “His covenant stands from age to age unbroken; He is our God, in truth and faith enshrined” (Psalms 12:4, Book of Praise). This is God: He keeps His promises. When God said to Abram, “You are mine,” then in spite of all of Abram’s sinful ‘gymnastics’, God never reneged on His word. Abram remained His!
God and Jacob Or take that swindler Jacob for example. He deceived his father Isaac in order to obtain the blessing. As a result, he had to flee from home in order to escape the vengeful wrath of his brother Esau. Yet, on his way, God came to him in a dream saying, “I am the LORD God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. ... Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you”(Genesis 28:13-15). That is God! He promises Jacob, sinner that he is, to keep him and to be with him always - despite Jacob’s depravity and sinfulness. As God was with Abram and Jacob, so He was with their descendants, Israel in Egypt. Though their service of God in Egypt could be described as apostate, serving other gods, God appeared to Moses in the burning bush to tell of His plan of deliverance for Israel saying, “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them....” (Exodus 3:7). This is God: He’s given His word, He said, “Israel is mine” and so He kept that word, stayed with this people.
God and the Seventh Commandment
Faithful to His word, God did deliver the Israelites from their slavery to the Egyptians and congregated them at the foot of Mt Sinai. There He said to them, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage... “ (Exodus 20:2). By identifying Himself with Israel as “your God”, the Lord at Mt Sinai as it were married the people of Israel. That is why the prophet Jeremiah could later describe God’s relation with Israel in terms of marriage. Jeremiah quotes God as saying to Israel, “I am married to you...” (Jeremiah 3:14). And again, when God describes the covenant He made with Israel at Mt Sinai He says that “they broke (this covenant), though I was a husband to them, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:22).
It’s this reality of God’s marriage with Israel at Mt Sinai that gives God’s seventh commandment to Israel its punch. When God tells His people in their marriage not to “commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), His own conduct in relation to Israel forms the ultimate paradigm for the people to follow. As He, despite the weaknesses and sins of Abraham and Jacob and Israel, nevertheless remained faithful to His ‘bride’, so God’s people are to remain faithful to the spouse. That means simply that one remains “one flesh” with the spouse alone.