Hello, my friends. Derek here from BOMSocks back with another day of BOM Bites, where we feast upon the words of Christ one bite at a time.
So this week’s study in the Come Follow Me, we’re doing Matthew Chapter 19 and 20, Mark Chapter 10, Luke Chapter 18.
And there is something in the beginning here in Matthew Chapter 19 that addresses one of the greatest and most wonderful parts of God’s plan of salvation. And it’s also one that can stir up a little bit of controversy if we’re not careful. So I do want to be careful and I want to be sensitive as I go through and discuss what we’re going to discuss today.
So you go into Matthew Chapter 19, you go right to verse number 3, you’ve got the Pharaohs coming unto him, tempting him. So you know it’s going to be great right out the gate here, right? They’re coming, tempting him, saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Now put away, you click on it, it says divorce. He answered and said unto them, Have ye not read? That he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall twin be one flesh.
Here’s Jesus talking about marriage. Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away? He said unto them, and Jesus dropped some truth here, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, accept it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commiteth adultery, and whoso marrieth her, which is put away, doth commit adultery.
Okay, so right on the surface here, Jesus is talking about marriage and also divorce.
Like I said, marriage is an essential and beautiful part of God’s plan.
But there’s also some difficult situations surrounding that.
So I love what it says in the Come Follow Me curriculum for this week. It starts off, marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. This interchange between the Savior and the Pharaoh is one of the few recorded instances in which the Savior taught specifically about marriage. After reading Matthew 19, 3 through 9, which we just did, and Mark 10, 2 through 12, which is very similar, make a list of several statements that you feel summarize the Lord’s view on marriage.
Then study some of the resources found in marriage in the Gospel topics and add more statements to your list. How does your knowledge of the Father’s plan of salvation affect the way that you think and feel about marriage? Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. That is the ideal. Now, with that said, you go into the second part of the Come Follow Me curriculum where it says this. It asks an interesting question, Did Jesus teach that divorce is never acceptable or that divorced people should not remarry.
Well, in an address on divorce, President Dallin H. Oaks, beautiful message here, he taught that heavenly father intends for the marriage relationship to be eternal. However, and this is a crucial statement, God also understands that divorce is sometimes necessary. President Oakes explained that the Lord permits divorced persons to marry again without the stain of immorality specified in the higher law. Unless a divorced member has committed serious transgressions, he or she can become eligible for a temple recommend under the same worthiness standards that apply to other members. Now, back to this idea. Again, the marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God.
That is a wonderful true statement. But sometimes we look at that as a very binary type of statement. This is how it is. Therefore, everything else is not acceptable. One of the things I do want to really point out here also is in the family proclamation, where it does say that idea of marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. Again, that is doctrine. It is something that we shouldn’t apologize for. But we also need to teach a wonderful, crucial statement that is also into this wonderful proclamation to the world about the family. It says, disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. That might be one of the most important statements in the family proclamation, right? You’re going to have disability, you’re going to have death, and you are going to have other circumstances. We could take other circumstances and start listing so many different things underneath there that do necessitate individual adaptation. One of the things to remember here is you do have the ideal, but not everybody has that ideal. Not everybody has those wonderful ideal situations to deal with. So what they have to do is individual circumstances will need to adapt for that, which, again, was what President Oakes talks about here.
It’s like, look, marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. Yes, but there are situations where you need some individual adaptation. So we as members of the Church, I think we need to make sure that we don’t weaponize that statement, and we need to make sure that we have other things and allow for grace and allow for situations where things don’t quite work out the way that we hope them to. Nobody gets married with the idea of, hey, someday we’re going to get divorced. I don’t think that happens. And yet we do have individuals where that happens, too. And it can, like President Oak said, it can bless people’s lives. But again, the idea there is you’ve got to keep both in mind as you’re doing this. Yes, this is the ideal, but there’s individual adaptation when things don’t quite work out the way you ideally wanted them to. So keep those things in mind. And we as members of the Church, please make sure that we are kind, that we are loving, that we are compassionate to those individuals who do not have that ideal. We love God. We love our fellow men.
Those are the two great commandments. And then we let those other things work themselves out with individual adaptation. I am grateful for that. I believe that’s one of the reasons that the atonement is necessary in our lives for individual adaptation that is necessary when things don’t quite work out the way we had hoped them to. Anyway, I love that message. It’s a sensitive situation there, but I do believe what the Savior is teaching here is true. Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks as always for sharing. We love that you do that. And please check out our Amazingly Comfortable Gospel Theme socks at bomsocks.com. Have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow. Godspeed. Bye. Bye.
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