GOD IS DIVORCED AND REMARRIED
by Tuese Ahkiong
When God entered into Covenant with Israel at Sinai, it was likened to the covenant of marriage.
Exodus 19:4-6 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 NOW THEREFORE, IF YOU WILL INDEED OBEY MY VOICE AND KEEP MY COVENANT, YOU SHALL BE MY TREASURED POSSESSION AMONG ALL PEOPLES, FOR ALL THE EARTH IS MINE; 6 AND YOU SHALL BE TO ME A KINGDOM OF PRIESTS AND A HOLY NATION. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Isaiah 54:5 “For your HUSBAND is your Maker, Whose name is the Lord of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.
Ezekiel 16:6-15 “AND WHEN I PASSED BY YOU AND SAW YOU WALLOWING IN YOUR BLOOD, I SAID TO YOU IN YOUR BLOOD, ‘LIVE!’ I SAID TO YOU IN YOUR BLOOD, ‘LIVE!’ 7 I MADE YOU FLOURISH LIKE A PLANT OF THE FIELD. AND YOU GREW UP AND BECAME TALL AND ARRIVED AT FULL ADORNMENT. YOUR BREASTS WERE FORMED, AND YOUR HAIR HAD GROWN; YET YOU WERE NAKED AND BARE.
8 “WHEN I PASSED BY YOU AGAIN AND SAW YOU, BEHOLD, YOU WERE AT THE AGE FOR LOVE, AND I SPREAD THE CORNER OF MY GARMENT OVER YOU AND COVERED YOUR NAKEDNESS; I MADE MY VOW TO YOU AND ENTERED INTO A COVENANT WITH YOU, DECLARES THE LORD GOD, AND YOU BECAME MINE.
GOD DIVORCES THE ISRAEL (10 NORTHERN KINGDOMS) FOR SPIRITUAL ADULTERY OR IDOLATRY.
Isaiah 50:1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.
Jeremiah 3:6 The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: "Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel,) how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7And I thought, 'After she has done all this she will return to me,' but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of DIVORCE. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. 9Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. 10Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the LORD."
Hosea 1: 8 When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son. 9 And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.”
Hosea 2:1-7 Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”
2 “Contend with your mother, contend,
For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; And let her put away her harlotry from her face
And her adultery from between her breasts,3 Or I will strip her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.
I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land
And slay her with thirst.4 “Also, I will have no compassion on her children,
Because they are children of harlotry.5 “For their mother has played the harlot;
She who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
Who give me my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’6 “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.7 “She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,
For it was better for me then than now!’
***God is not opposed to all divorce. The fact is, He is divorced and provides the offended party the option in certain circumstances.
Matt 5:31 "It was said, 'WHOEVER SENDS HIS WIFE AWAY, LET HIM GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE'; 32but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
There is a Biblical time to divorce, especially for breaking the covenant in adultery.
'God hates divorce' the Scripture says in Malachi. A good question to ask is "In what sense, does God hate divorce because it doesn't seem to bother Him that He is divorced? Kind of hypocritical for being divorced?"
Better yet, in what context is God saying that He hates divorce?
Malachi 2:16 NASB "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel, "and I hate a man's covering himself with violence as well as with his garment," says the LORD Almighty.
So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.
CONTEXT: God hates the divorce that the Jewish men were performing in the time of Malachi in that they divorced their older Jewish wives to marry young pagan hotties. The context isn't saying that God hates all divorce, just unbiblical divorce.
Hypothetically, a person could marry a non-believer who wants a divorce and Paul says give him or her a divorce 1 Cor. 7:15; your spouse could commit adultery Matt 5.31-32. (I'm not saying that adultery cannot be forgiven but it is a grounds for divorce.).
Sure, ideally, one enters marriage with the intent and aspiration to remain faithful to their covenant. I just don't think it's biblical to say that divorce is NOT an option. Some people are in ugly marriages. I know a woman who gets battered to a bloody pulp by her husband, raped and committed adultery on. Our Christian culture creates a stigma or taboo on divorce with all its pain and shame, so this Christian sister stays in this violent marriage. This is just more legalism to control people under guilt through a wrong interpretation of Scripture.
God is divorced from Israel and remarried to The Church, The Israel from above.
RE-MARRIAGE
Hosea 1:10 Yet the number of the sons of Israel
Will be like the sand of the sea,
Which cannot be measured or numbered;
And in the place
Where it is said to them,
“You are not My people,”
It will be said to them,
“You are the sons of the living God.”
Hosea 3:4-5
4 FOR THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL SHALL DWELL MANY DAYS WITHOUT KING OR PRINCE, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. 5 Afterward the CHILDREN OF ISRAEL shall return and SEEK THE LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness IN THE LATTER DAYS.
**Israel had no king after Jerusalem was judged in 586 B.C. until Christ came and took the throne. The remnant, The True Spiritual Israel of God born from above came to The Lord in The Last Days. “The Last Days” in Scripture are the Last Days of The Old Covenant World/ Age of Physical Israel.
Romans 9:25-26 As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” 26 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘YOU ARE NOT MY PEOPLE,’ there they will be called ‘SONS OF THE LIVING GOD.’”
Galatians 3:26 for in Christ Jesus you are all SONS OF GOD, through faith.
Romans 8:14 For all who are led by the
Spirit of God are SONS OF GOD.
Romans 8:19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the SONS OF GOD.
**The SONS OF GOD or THE CHILDREN OF GOD were revealed in the 1st century as THE NEW CREATION OF GOD, The New Covenant People, The True Israel from above.
Acts 15:13-18
13 After they had stopped speaking, James answered, saying, “Brethren, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name. 15 With this the words of the Prophets agree, just as it is written,
16 ‘After these things I will return,
And I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen,
And I will rebuild its ruins,
And I will restore it,
17 So that the rest of mankind may SEEK THE LORD,
And all the Gentiles who are called by My name,’
18 Says the Lord, who makes these things known from long ago.
IT IS BY GOD'S GRACE BY WHICH HE LOVES THE CHRISTIAN WHO ARE NOT WORTHY TO BE CALLED HIS CHILD or BRIDE.
HIS GRACE MAKES US WORTHY FOR IT TAKES AWAY OUR SIN AND MAKES US NEW!
Leviticus 21:1-15
21 And the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them, No one shall make himself unclean for the dead among his people, 2 except for his closest relatives, his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, 3 or his virgin sister (who is near to him because she has had no husband; for her he may make himself unclean). 4 He shall not make himself unclean as a husband among his people and so profane himself. 5 They shall not make bald patches on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts on their body. 6 They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God. For they offer the Lord's food offerings, the bread of their God; therefore they shall be holy.7 THEY SHALL NOT MARRY A PROSTITUTE OR A WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN DEFILED, NEITHER SHALL THEY MARRY A WOMAN DIVORCED FROM HER HUSBAND, FOR THE PRIEST IS HOLY TO HIS GOD. 8 You shall sanctify him, for he offers the bread of your God. He shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you, am holy. 9 And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.
10 “The priest who is chief among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil is poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not let the hair of his head hang loose nor tear his clothes. 11 He shall not go in to any dead bodies nor make himself unclean, even for his father or for his mother. 12 He shall not go out of the sanctuary, lest he profane the sanctuary of his God, for the consecration of the anointing oil of his God is on him: I am the Lord. 13 AND HE SHALL TAKE A WIFE IN HER VIRGINITY. 14 A WIDOW, OR A DIVORCED WOMAN, OR A WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN DEFILED, OR A PROSTITUTE, THESE HE SHALL NOT MARRY. BUT HE SHALL TAKE AS HIS WIFE A VIRGIN OF HIS OWN PEOPLE, 15 that he may not profane his offspring among his people, for I am the Lord who sanctifies him.”
**Christ was not a Levite. He was a priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Deuteronomy 24:4 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 THEN HER FORMER HUSBAND, WHO SENT HER AWAY, MAY NOT TAKE HER AGAIN TO BE HIS WIFE, AFTER SHE HAS BEEN DEFILED, FOR THAT IS AN ABOMINATION BEFORE THE LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
**God remarries Israel in 70 A.D.
Hosea 3:1-3
3 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, EVEN AS THE LORD LOVES THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. YOU SHALL NOT PLAY THE WHORE, OR BELONG TO ANOTHER MAN; so will I also be to you.”
Hosea 5:4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.
Iron sharpens iron.
to be continued... There are several other verses that support this.