God’s divorce -Jeremiah 3

 opinions and feelings. Many have family members whose marriages have ended up in divorce. Many have close friends who have experienced divorce. Many have gone through divorces themselves. Churches are full of people who have experienced divorce in some way.

With all the divorces that have taken place throughout all eternity past, who is the most prominent divorcee of all eternity? A very brief study of Jeremiah 3 shows that God has experienced divorce. What is more, He initiated it! He did not suffer willingly and stay content in His marital state for the grace of God as many pastors today counsel their members to do. When Israel did something that was grounds for divorce, God divorced Israel. This is found in Jeremiah 3:6-8:

6 The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.

7 And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

God shows His relationship with Israel as a marriage relationship. Israel, according to verse 6, played the harlot. In verse 7, God gave His bride a second chance, a chance to repent and “turn back to me”. Israel did not turn back, and for Israel’s adultery, God did exactly as His Law instructed concerning a husband whose wife no longer has favor in the eyes of her husband. He gave her a bill of divorce and put her away. We are compelled to notice that “put away” (shalach) and “bill of divorce” (keriythuwth) are two separate and distinct things. If they were one and the same, then what God did in verse 8 was:

“And I say, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I divorced her and divorced her;”

Or it might read this way:

“And I say, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had given her a bill of divorce and gave her a bill of divorce;”

Instead, God Himself shows that they are two separate and distinct things.

But what do we now make of these verses? That God is a divorced person! Yes, God is divorced! He has admitted it. He is unrepentant. Is He then disqualified from being God?

It is worth consideration that God’s marriage to Israel is a marriage in the “spiritual realm,” and not a “physical marriage” as between two humans. However, the fact that God was married to Israel in the spiritual realm makes it even more meaningful. God refers to His relationship with Israel and Christ’s with the church as marriages because the earthly marriage relationship is as close to spiritual absolutes that man may experience while still in the flesh. God’s love for Israel is the ultimate example of a marital love. In human physical marriages, mankind is to strive to follow that example, and that is truly what God’s marriage relationship with Israel is: an example for mankind to follow in our physical marriages. We are to strive to love as deeply as God did. However, we also are free to follow God’s example if our spouse breaks the marriage covenant like Israel did. It is never wrong to follow God’s example, and never wrong to obey His Word, whether that rattles prejudices and preconceived notions or not. Since God is the supreme example and role model for mankind, it is pertinent to note that He broke the relationship when His spouse, Israel, so broke the marriage contract.

While the position could be taken that God’s divorce from Israel is still unclear, we would reply that it is only unclear if prejudices and preconceived notions are getting in the way of a clear reading of God’s Word. When God divorced Israel, it was over.

Many times a church member will come to their pastor for marriage counseling when their spouse has been unfaithful or broken the marriage vows in other ways. Many pastors tell them that they may not divorce, because it is a sin and if they ever remarried they would be adulterers. If God would have come to many pastors today for counsel, and told the pastor that His wife had broken the marriage contract, we wonder what those pastors would have told God? If they are consistent, they would have told God that He must not give Israel a bill of divorce, for if He did, it would be a sin.

One has no recourse but to conclude that if God refers to Himself as divorced, there are times when divorce is not wrong for His children.

As mentioned previously, there are 23,214 verses within the Old Testament. We do not find even one that forbids divorce (keriythuwth). Not one! It is also notable that we do not find even one verse that forbids remarriage for someone who has been given a bill of divorce.

Oholah was the name of the elder and Oholibah the name of her sister. They became mine, and they bore sons and daughters. As for their names, Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
Ezekiel 23:4

 

GOD DIVORCES EPHRAIM

God gave Israel laws regulating the practice of divorce in Deuteronomy 24. Prior to this, a man could verballydivorce his wife and virtually confine her to a lifetime of impoverishment.  

¶ “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, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 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, 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.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4

There are two particularly important things to note about these regulations. Firstly, the divorce had to be a writtendocument. Secondly, the husband divorcing his wife could not remarry her. Jesus Christ elaborated on this and stated that if a man divorced his wife and married another while his former was still alive, he was committing adultery. And if the wife he had just divorced was to marry another, he would be causing her to commit adultery.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
Matthew 19:9 NKJV

The terms of the covenant between God and Israel included blessings and curses, terms and penalties. The terms of the covenant with God could be summed up with the word – devotion. The blessings of the covenant could be summed up with the word – prosperity. The terms of the covenant could be summed up with the word – Law. The penalties of breaking the covenant could be summed up with the word – exile. 

And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.
Deuteronomy 28:11

And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick— the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath—all the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’
Deuteronomy 29:22-28

When Israel abandoned the Lord, God sent them prophets who each reminded them of their Covenant with God. These prophets to the Northern Kingdom of Israel included: Hosea, Amos, Joel, and Jonah. If, as Jeremiah declared, God had given Israel a written decree of divorce, chances are it was penned by at least one of these prophets. What we cannot be as certain about is whether there is a Canonical (Scriptural) record of this decree. In Second Kings 17 there is a reference to prophets giving this prophetic decree to Israel without including the precise retelling of its wording or naming any particular prophet.

until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as He had spoken by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.
Second Kings 17:23

Initially it appears that the book of Hosea is the most likely candidate. Support for this candidature includes its historical context. 

(i) It was written before Israel was exiled to Assyria. 

(ii) It metaphorically pictures Israel’s marriage to God and their adulterous unfaithfulness. 

(iii) It foretells of a coming new covenant, which would involve God taking a new bride. But in order for this to happen in accord with what Christ said about divorce and remarriage, one of the parties would have to die. This will be discussed shortly.

 

SENT AWAY

Divorce involved the sending away of the divorced wife. When Abraham divorced Hagar, it necessarily involved sending her away (Gen. 21:14). In Israel’s case, this was carried out by the Assyrians who took them into exile.

¶ In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
Second Kings 17:6

The Southern Kingdom of Judah faced the same threat from the Assyrians, but unlike their northern sister, they turned to the Lord.

Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD by saying, The LORD will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ …  ¶ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard … ¶ “Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.
Second Kings 18:30; 19:20, 32

But eventually, despite the Prophet Jeremiah’s pleading, Judah also abandoned the Lord and committed spiritual adultery with idols. This eventually led to them also being divorced from the Lord. 

Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the LORD.’”
Jeremiah 3:20

 

THE NEW COVENANT & GOD’S REMARRIAGE

The New Covenant was foretold by the prophets, particularly Jeremiah. It depicted a remnant of the twelve tribes of Israel being reunited under a newcovenant.

In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage.
Jeremiah 3:18

Based on the prophecies in the Book of Hosea, the New Covenant was to encompass those who were not ethnically Hebrew who were depicted with the common Old Testament metaphor for Gentiles of ‘beasts’.

¶ Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
Hosea 1:10-11

And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.
Hosea 2:18

But in order for this to happen in accord with what Christ said was permissible, one of the previously divorced parties would have to be dead. This was fulfilled with the death of God The Son. By understanding this and recognising that God has now taken a new bride (as prophesied in the Old Testament) – namely, the Church (referred to as “the true Israel” cf. Gal. 6:16) – we can begin to understand that the closing book of the Bible, The Revelation, is the legal divorce papers of Israel and the announcement of God’s having taken a new bride. 

If we read the Book of Revelation in this light, we can see an acrimonious ex-wife who is spiteful and hostile toward the new bride. But there is no mincing of words in the Book of Revelation when this ex-wife is referred to as –

¶ “ ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
Revelation 2:9

Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.
Revelation 3:9

The implications of appreciating this issue are dramatic. Rather than persisting with the Dispensational notion that God has two People who are redeemed under two concurrent and equally salvific covenants, the Scriptures declare –

¶ In speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:13

The Bible is unique among the religious books of the world partly because it is structured around a story which has a beginning, a plot, a climax and an end; and partly because this story is also a love story. Its lead character, God, is its hero. He takes a new bride. His bride flourishes and encompasses a multitude of people from every nation, tribe and tongue, so vast that no-one could number!

¶ After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10

Spiritual adultery is just as significant as physical. 

But that doesn’t mean that God has changed His standard. Marriage is still the will of God as described in Genesis 2:24, one man, one woman for life. And furthermore God hates divorce. In fact He says that, first person, Malachi chapter 3 verse 16, “I hate divorce.” And that’s long after the fall. So we understand marriage as the divine ideal. We understand that marriage has been corrupted by the fall but we understand God hasn’t changed His ideal and that God still hates divorce. Having acknowledged those truths we still have to face the reality of marital conflict, and we have to face the reality of divorce in a fallen world. We agree that divorce falls short of God’s ideal. But the question is, is it every acceptable, is it ever tolerable to God? And the best way we can answer that is to look at Matthew chapter 19, because it’s in Matthew chapter 19 that God Himself answers that question – God Himself incarnate in Jesus Christ.

     We’ve been looking at this chapter and we’re going to kind of wrap up our look at it. Matthew chapter 19, and I’ll just remind you, verse 3, “The Pharisees came to Him, testing Him and saying, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?’” They bring up the question, can man divorce his wife for any cause at all? And of course, the popular answer was, absolutely, yes. A very popular rabbi had come up with that interpretation of Scripture and everybody bought into it, because it was the most concession to their sinfulness and their evil desire. So the popular answer was yes. They were trying to get Jesus to say no. If Jesus said no, they thought they could somehow make Him unpopular with the people.

     And Jesus answered them not by simply saying no, but by taking them back to God’s original standard. Verse 4, “He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He, who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.” Jesus answered their question in His normal profound way that evaded their attempt to discredit Him by saying, “You don’t have any problem with Me. Your problem is with God.” This issue is not about rabbis; this issue is about God’s Word. And He took them right back to Genesis 2:24 and confirmed the divine ideal. The divine ideal – male, female – one man, one woman for life. This is God’s design. He brings them together, makes them one flesh. You better not separate what God joins.

     And then comes the compelling question in verse 7. “They said to Him, ‘Why, then, did Moses command to give her a certificate and divorce her?’” Well, of course, Moses didn’t command that. Nowhere did Moses ever command divorce. He didn’t command it. He didn’t commend it. He didn’t condone it, and he didn’t excuse it anywhere. There is a portion of Deuteronomy 24 verse 1 to 4 where in the Mosaic instruction, of course written by Moses, as was all the Pentateuch, Moses prohibits remarriage. In Deuteronomy 24 he says if a man divorces his wife for some impropriety of some kind, and she goes and marries another man, she commits adultery, and so he can never take her back because that’s an abomination to God. All he’s doing is regulating remarriage. There is no command to divorce. There is no commending of divorce. There’s no condoning of divorce. There’s not excusing of divorce in that passage. In fact, as we’ve pointed out, and we won’t go back into the detail, that actually prohibits remarriage, because it says if you ever do divorce and remarry anybody else, you have engaged in an adulterous relationship. And that is an abomination to the Lord and you’ve made yourself unclean.

     So you say, well then in Old Testament there was no grounds for divorce? That’s right. Well you say, what about adultery? Well originally adultery wasn’t a grounds for divorce, because what was the penalty for adultery? Death. In Leviticus chapter 20 and verse 10 God says punish the adulterer by execution. Adultery did end a marriage but not by divorce. It ended a marriage by widowhood. According to Old Testament law, adultery was not originally a reason for divorce, certainly not in the Mosaic Law, the law of God given to Moses. It was to be punished by death. And that’s how sacred marriage is to God. There wasn’t any grounds for divorce, because if they carried out the law of God, an adulterer would have been executed. And any other cause of divorce, as in Deuteronomy 24, any other impropriety, any other thing that you did to divorce your wife would cause her to become an adulteress when she remarried and make her unclean and an abomination to God. That’s why the Old Testament originally, initially, states no grounds for divorce. Adultery would break the marriage because the guilty person would be executed.

     But, soon after God’s law was given it become apparent that the people were not going to uphold it. God told them when they went into the land of Canaan to kill all the Canaanites. They didn’t do that. God told them to stay away from the idols. They didn’t do that. God told them not to intermarry with the pagans. They didn’t do that. God told them to obey His law. They didn’t do that. God told them to carry out His law to the very letter of His law. They didn’t do that. So in among the things they didn’t do, they didn’t execute adulterers. And it became apparent that the nation was hard-hearted. But God is merciful. God Himself could have executed adulterers. Every time somebody committed adultery, God could have upheld the original standard of Leviticus 20:10 and by a divine act, executed them on the spot. But God is so merciful and God is so gracious. You see that right at the very beginning. God says to Adam and Eve in the Garden, “The day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you’ll die.” They ate and they didn’t die. And immediately God puts mercy into place. God could have executed all the adulterers but He didn’t. God demonstrates His patience and His forbearance and His kindness and His mercy.

     And so, verse 8, “Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart’ – because you never would do what the law said, because you never would obey, you never would implement the law – ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it has not been this way.’” It was never God’s original intention. It was never God’s original plan. But you’re such a hard-hearted people that God graciously and mercifully held back the execution the adulterer deserved. And in its place, Moses allowed divorce. And Jesus then says, in verse 9, “But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality” – and then that’s back to the adulterous situation. If you divorce except for that issue and somebody goes and marries someone else, they commit adultery. That is to say God doesn’t recognize any divorce except in the case of sexual sin.

     And when God realized His people weren’t going to carry out His law – as I said He could have executed the adulterers Himself, but being a God of mercy, He didn’t do that. He was amazingly gracious, and He didn’t execute the adulterer. But He did give the innocent person the possibility of escaping the pollution of that adultery through divorce. After all, the innocent party would have been freed from the marriage if God had executed the guilty party. The fact that God was merciful to the guilty party shouldn’t then penalize the innocent. So God allowed for divorce. And He allowed it because of the hardness of heart. That’s an expression intended to define willful, rebellious sin.

     So beloved, I want you to understand that verse 9 is really important. Because when you put verse 8 with verse 9, Moses permitted divorce, verse 9, “Whoever divorces his wife except for immorality, marries another woman, commits adultery.” What you have there is Jesus, God in flesh, affirming the only grounds for divorce. And I think Jesus is affirming that that was understood in the Old Testament. There isn’t any explicit verse in the Old Testament that says that. But there isn’t any explicit statement – you remember I pointed out – in which God commanded Cain and Abel to bring a certain sacrifice but it was obvious they knew what they should have done. God revealed it. It just isn’t recorded in Scripture. And I’m very confident that God revealed through Moses to the people of Israel that He would allow for divorce on the part an innocent person for the sin of impenitent adultery. And Jesus simply affirms that.

     So we can say the only thing that breaks a marriage is adultery. In God’s perfect plan, adultery would break a marriage by creating a widow who could then remarry. In God’s merciful plan, God allows for a divorce in the case of impenitent adultery to free the innocent party from that intolerable situation. So there’s not an Old Testament text that establishes the ground, but I think it’s established right here in Matthew 19:8and 9 in the very words of Jesus.

     Now I believe that God then allows this, divorce for the cause of adultery, and I want to show you a very dramatic illustration of it. Turn back to Jeremiah chapter 3 – Jeremiah chapter 3. And let’s just look at verse 1, “God says, ‘If a husband divorces his wife and she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted?’” Where did that come from? Deuteronomy 24. It’s almost verbatim out of Deuteronomy 24. You can’t divorce, and if you do divorce and she goes and marries somebody else, she can’t decide, I don’t like this guy. I’m going to come back to you. That would something that would completely pollute the land. But look at the difference. “‘But you,’ end of verse 1, ‘you’re a harlot with many lovers. Yet you turn to Me,’ declares the Lord.” In the Mosaic accommodation to the hardness of heart, in the Mosaic accommodation to sin, there was the recognition that divorce would occur. But if it occurred it could only occur for adultery. If it occurred any other way there was no coming back. So according to Deuteronomy 24 there was no coming back but God says, I’ll take you back, if you repent. I’ll take you back.”

     And look how that unfolds in verse 2, “Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see, where have you not been violated? By the roads you have sat for them like an Arab in the desert, and you have polluted a land with your harlotry and with your wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no spring rain. Yet you had a harlots forehead” – that is to be appear as a harlot. “You refused to be ashamed. Have you not just now called to Me, ‘My Father, Thou art the friend of my youth? Will He be angry forever? Will He be indignant to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken and have done evil things. You have had your way.” Now this is very interesting. He says you’re a harlot. You’ve got all kinds of lovers. You didn’t commit adultery with one person. You got adultery going all over the place. He’s talking about spiritual adultery. He’s talking about Israel. He’s the husband; Israel’s the wife. And Israel has just got all other kind of gods, going off up to this idol and that idol, and that’s a spiritual adultery, being unfaithful to God.

     “Yet you turn to Me,” He says. What is this? This is a shallow, superficial thing. It’s not a real break with their idolatry. It’s not the real thing. Their devotion to adultery frankly was notorious. They waited, according to verse 2, to rape their prey like marauding Bedouin bandits in the desert. Their desire was insatiable. They just couldn’t be satisfied and they just weren’t ashamed. And they even, according to verse 5, instead of coming to the Lord in repentance they thought God’s anger would die out. They thought God’s anger would run out. He’s not going to be angry forever. He’s not going to be indignant to the end. He’s not going to punish us. You’ve just gone on doing your evil things and you had your evil way and you just filled up your soul with lust and you went after every other God. You went after all these spiritual harlots – all these spiritual gods, I should say, and played the harlot. And then you give Me lip service, and you think that I’m not going to judge you, and My anger is going to run out and I’m not going to punish you. This is pretty serious. He’s talking here to Judah, the southern kingdom.

     And then in verse 6, “Then the Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, ‘Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.’” To show the serious danger that Judah and Jerusalem is in, the southern kingdom, to show how dangerous their situation is, the Lord compares them to Israel, the northern kingdom. Now the northern kingdom at the time of Jeremiah had already gone into captivity. The Assyrians had come in 722 B.C. and they had taken the northern kingdom captivity, already gone into captivity and frankly gone forever. They never came back – never came back. And they went into captivity because of what they did. Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree and was a harlot there. In other words, they had gods in every hill, in every tree. They had deities all over that entire land. They had their groves to worship the false god. They had their high places to worship the false gods.

     And verse 7 God says, “And I thought, ‘After she had done all these things, she will return to Me.’ But she didn’t return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.” Judah, the southern kingdom, they saw it. They saw the idolatry. They saw the harlotry. They saw what Israel was doing. And they saw that Israel wasn’t listening to God’s call to repent. They saw that. And then verse 8, “And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel” – listen to this – “I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce.” Now I want to stop right there. God divorced Israel. Remember now, the kingdom after Solomon was divided into the northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom called Judah. The northern kingdom made up of the ten tribes; the southern kingdom made up of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. They were of course by Jeremiah’s time, members of all 12 tribes that had migrated south to be a part of Judah. But the northern kingdom of Israel had been taken captive, literally the judgment of God, from which they never returned because of their idolatry.

     Verse 8, “I sent her away and gave her a bill of divorce.” God doesn’t do unrighteous things. God doesn’t do evil things. God doesn’t do sinful things. God doesn’t even do marginal things. When the relationship with God, the husband of Israel in the analogy, was broken by Israel’s incessant, unrepentant idolatry, which is a form of spiritual adultery – by the way, those cults, those Canaanite-ish cults were spiritual adulteries, but they were also rife with physical adulteries. There were within the cults of the Canaanites, typically those cults were defined by sex and fertility. They were sexual fertility cults and there were a myriad of prostitutes, male and female, that engaged themselves with the so-called worshippers in those cults. So it’s very reasonable to assume that while they were committing spiritual adultery, they were also engaged in physical adultery and which, as I told you last time, may have played into the reason why Ezra told them to divorce their pagan wives. Not just because they threatened the future of the nation Israel by intermarriage, the nation could be lost as to its purity, but also they had been guilty of this adultery.

     And so the northern kingdom had engaged itself in spiritual adultery, following after other gods, being unfaithful to God, the true God, and also in physical adultery associated with that. Because of that the relationship was broken and at that point, God says, it went so far that, “I sent her away,” that’s the language of divorce, “and gave her a writ of divorce.” The word faithless Israel there, you see it at the beginning of verse 8, often translated backsliding Israel. It really means faithless. And so there’s a divine divorce here. And isn’t it interesting that God actually divorces Israel for the reason of adultery? And that is analogous to the only reason for divorce, even in the physical realm, for God’s people in that also being adultery.

     But let’s go on a little bit. In verse 8 God says, you saw that. He’s writing through the prophet Jeremiah to Judea, the southern kingdom, you saw that. You saw that I sent Israel away. You saw that it was a permanent ending to our relationship, “Yet her treacherous sister Judah, didn’t fear but she went and was a harlot also.” There was no fear. And verse 9 He says that there was a lightness in her harlotry. That’s a very interesting phrase there. It came about and, “Because of the lightness of her harlotry” – now, what does that mean? Well, I guess one way you could translate that would be to translate it casual harlotry. They treated their harlotry lightly. It’s the idea that there was no seriousness. Ihey didn’t think seriously about their sin. Idolatry did not way heavy on Judah. Even though they should have looked at Israel and seen the consequence of it, it didn’t weigh heavy on them.

     And so in verse 10, because it was such a light thing to them and such a small thing, in spite of all of this, in spite of the divorce of the northern kingdom, “‘In spite of all of this, her treacherous sister Judah didn’t return to Me with all her heart, but rather in deception,’ declares the Lord.” There was a fake repentance. There was a shallow repentance. There was a superficial repentance. You know frankly, even under the “revival under Josiah” there was a tremendous amount of superficiality. So the point here is this, God divorced Israel, the northern kingdom, for spiritual adultery. And that is a righteous model for when divorce is tolerable. But God tolerated a lot. It wasn’t just one time and you’re out. God tolerated that northern kingdom’s constant, relentless pursuit of harlotry. God was so patient – so patient, wanting to forgive.

     In fact, if you don’t think that’s true, go down to verse 12. “Go and proclaim these words toward the north.” He says to the people of Judah, to up there in the north and just yell out to the people who’ve been hauled off, “Return faithless Israel.” God’s still giving the same message, “‘I’ll not look upon you in anger for I’m gracious,’ declares the LORD. ‘I’ll not be angry forever. Just acknowledge your iniquity that you have transgressed against the Lord your God and have scattered your favors to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed My voice,’ declares the LORD. ‘Return, O faithless sons,’ declares the LORD. ‘For I’m the Master to you and I will take one from a city and two from a family and I’ll bring you to Zion.’” Isn’t that gracious? Here they are, they’re already gone. The divorce is already done, and God’s saying, hey, if you want to come back, O faithless, backsliding Israel, if you want to repent, if you want to deal with your sin, I will take you back. That’s grace.

     You know, it took 700 years before God divorced Israel. That’s pretty patient. Isn’t it? Now I sometimes have to counsel with a couple, and maybe the husband has committed adultery or the wife has committed adultery and the partner says, “How long do I tolerate this?” Well, God waited 700 years before He divorced Israel. There’s some kind of message in there. Isn’t there? That somebody’s sin isn’t immediately an excuse to dump your partner if there’s repentance, if there’s penitence. And the classic illustration is the relationship between the prophet Hosea and his wife Gomer, who became a prostitute. Yet he went into the slave market, and when he found her penitent, he brought her back after years of adultery. She was actually stark naked being sold off as a sex slave when he embraced her, took her back, and treated her as if she was a virgin.

     Divorce certainly for the cause of adultery, yes but only after extended patience. And that’s why through the years – and this has gone for years and years, I’ve always said there is a grounds for divorce in the Bible. It is adultery. But it is that adultery that is continual and impenitent and it just goes on. And your patient for a while, but it becomes apparent that there’s an impenitent heart and that’s the option you have. Just make sure you demonstrate a measure of patience as Hosea did, as God did with Israel, in case God should work repentance in that heart.

     Turn to Isaiah chapter 50 – Isaiah chapter 50. We have a lot more things to say tonight if we have time. Now we’re going to have a message from Isaiah to Judah. Judah, back in Jeremiah chapter 3 – I think it was verse 11. I didn’t read it to you – said that Judah was more treacherous than Israel. I mean in some ways, Judah was worse than Israel. Israel’s idolatry was worse, but you know what God sees as worse than idolatry is hypocrisy, and Judah’s hypocrisy was worse. But still, chapter 50 of Isaiah, most interesting, verse 1, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Where is the certificate of divorce by which I have sent your mother away? Or to whom of my creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and for your transgressions your mother was sent away.’” What’s He saying here? He’s saying, you know, I sent you away. I sent you away for your iniquities, your transgressions. I sold you for your iniquities. What’s He talking about? Babylonian captivity. They were going to go into the captivity into Babylon. They were going to be sent away, a separation. It was the end of the theocracy. 586 B.C. Jerusalem was destroyed. Jews, three deportations from 603, 597, 586, all carried out to Babylon. The theocracy has come to an end. And these people are separated from God.

     But notice this, “Where is the certificate of divorce?” You don’t have one. God says, I divorced Israel; I never divorced Judah. Never divorced Judah. The southern kingdom, started out as two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. But eventually, particularly under the revival under Josiah, people from all ten tribes migrated south so that Judah eventually, even after Israel was gone away, the Judah that existed when the Babylonians came and took them away, really was made up of people from all 12 tribes. So they are newly constituted Jewish people, the people of Israel. The ones that went into captivity in Israel got intermarried with the Gentiles and disappeared. But Israel was sort of regrouped in Judah. And He said, I never gave you a divorce. I never gave you a divorce. We had a temporary separation but never a divorce.

     You see God has an unconditional covenant to fulfill, doesn’t He? He promised that He would raise up Israel when He made the Abrahamic promise. That He would raise up a nation out of the loins of Abraham and that that nation would be great. And that nation would be like the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven. It would stretch across the earth and that it would the source of blessing to the world. And then He told David that out of that nation and to that nation would come a great King in the line of David who would establish the throne in Israel. And that Israel would have a glorious kingdom – we talked about this morning – and that they would receive all the promises to Abraham and all the promises to David some time in the future. So God dismissed the northern kingdom as an object lesson of what the southern kingdom deserved. But because of His unconditional covenant, He never gave a certificate of divorce to Judah. There would be a separation, and I want you to know folks, that separation is still going on even as we speak.