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All right, so, the subject matter this morning I'm going to be preaching on, and the title of my sermon is called Interracial Marriage in Light of the Bible, Interracial Marriage in Light of the Bible. And I've never preached on this subject before, and I think it's very simple, it's a very easy subject to deal with, and it's kind of one of those things that I wouldn't even think should be an issue. But the problem is that there are people out there, there's weird doctrines out there, and there's a lot of things that people have been exposed to, and even some of our current church members, one of the reasons I even had the idea to preach on this, came from a church where the pastor preached against interracial marriages, and even advised the people to get divorced that were married that had an interracial marriage. So this is happening, and you know what, it's an independent, fundamental Baptist church. So it's wicked, it's wrong, it's weird to preach that, first of all, anyone should just be getting divorced, let alone for reasons because of race. Now, if you look around in our church, you can probably already get an understanding of how we feel about interracial marriages, because we have multiple people that are already in that situation, don't worry, I'm not going to preach that you need to get divorced this morning, I'm preaching the exact opposite, but you know what, we need to look at Scripture, and we started with this passage because this is the passage that I was told was used in Ezra 9 and 10 as one of the proof texts to give as to why people should get divorced if you're married. Now, there's so much we're going to go into this morning, I've got lots of pages and notes, and I'm barely scratching the surface on how the Bible deals with the subject of race, and how it deals with just marriage in general, so I'm going to focus a little bit more on marriage because that is extremely important anyways, and then we'll also just delve into a little bit on how God feels about race, but it can really be summed up in the fact that there's one race, and that's the human race, I mean, we're all here of human kind, we're all people, so when it comes to the various races, I'm going to get a little bit into why people look different and things like that, but at the end of the day, if you believe the Bible, you believe that we all came from, physically speaking, naturally speaking, from Adam and Eve, so everybody on the earth ultimately has the same ancestry, going back to the top, or the roots, right, going all the way down to the root of the family tree, you're going to start off with Adam and Eve, so, I mean, that alone should be enough common sense, but there's other things that happen in scripture, and we're going to go a little bit into some of those things, and I'm not going to, there's too many weird false doctrines out there to just tackle them all at once, so I'm just going to cover, first of all, Ezra 9 and 10, now, Brother Carter already preached a sermon on this passage here, and he did a really great job, do you remember what the name of your, the title of your sermon was when you preached that out of this passage? It was earlier this year, right? Maybe over the summer or something? Was it late last year, sometime, I don't remember exactly when it was, but he did a really good job, so I'm going to try not to just re-preach everything that he taught, but go ahead and look up that sermon when he did, to get even more information on this subject, because he did an excellent job of expounding on why, and I'm going to say this now, why it was wrong for Ezra to command the people to get divorced, even in this situation. Now, we have to understand that just because people do things in Scripture, and because you read about them in Scripture, doesn't mean it's always the right thing to do, in fact, many times, people do things that are not right, even though they may be really good men of God. We can't use the sins of man that are recorded in Scripture to justify sin. That's the bottom line. You can go to Moses killing the man with his bare hands to try to show that he's going to be the savior of Israel, right? That wasn't his place to just go and just kill that Egyptian, okay? That's not how he was supposed to lead. That was wrong. Now Moses did it. Is Moses a great man of God? Amen. But what he did was wrong. The Apostle Paul was not supposed to go and have this vow and go shave his head and have an animal sacrifice after Jesus Christ has already risen again from the dead, but you know what? He was satisfying people, and that was wrong for him to do that, and that was recorded that he did that, but it was wrong for him to have done that. And you could go on and on down the list, you know, people had multiple wives, but you know what? It was wrong for them to have multiple wives. I mean, how far do we need to go before we can see in Scripture people do wrong things? Good people can do bad things. It doesn't make the bad things right. It doesn't justify them at all. We get our doctrine and our understanding of what's right and wrong clearly from the Bible, and not just from the Bible, but in context. Not just what somebody did, but hey, thus saith the Lord is your primary foundation. So you read the passage, hey, this is what God said. This is what God says. This is what God says. That is our foundation for everything. You could read through the book of Job, and you can read about the things that Job's friends said unto Job, but you know what? When you get to the end of that, God says that the things that Job said was right, and the things that his friends said were not right. So all the things that his friends said are in the Bible. So be careful when you read it that you don't just assume that everything his friends said is right, and we just build doctrines off of, well, it's in the Bible. You know what? Satan is quoted in the Bible, too. The Bible says there is no truth in him, so you're going to start forming doctrines on the words of Satan? Well, it's in the Bible. Of course not. That's nonsense. Good foundation to understand that as we go into Ezra. Now, I can understand how sometimes people can be deceived, especially how stories read. You may think, oh, well, maybe this was the right thing to do, especially when you have good people doing them. It's easier to think that maybe that's the right thing, but we always have to go back to the Word. And you know what? This is a very good lesson, because you can have a really good pastor, a really good preacher that you follow, that you trust, but they could be wrong, too. So if they're saying things that contradict what God's Word clearly teaches, then they're wrong. And maybe many people end up getting deceived because of that, because, well, Ezra is a great man of God. He's a priest, and he did a lot of good things, and he's helping to rebuild the temple, and there's all this excitement and all this great work going on. Well, you know what? In this situation, in this one instance, he was wrong. So compare it always back to what the Scripture says. But let's dig into Ezra 9 here, and the divorces come in chapter 10, but we're going to see here first in chapter 9. So the first eight verses goes into detail on kind of the rebuilding of the temple and God blessing their work, and this is after they're coming out of Babylon now, they're going to rebuild, after they've been taken captive, and in chapter 9, Ezra gets to the understanding of just a lot of the sins of the people, and he's just upset, and he's prays to God, you know, like, we've really screwed up, God. You know, here we are, you've been really gracious and merciful unto us, but we've really, you know, been wicked and involved in a lot of sins. And not just the people, but even the chief rulers and the people who are supposed to be leading are also involved in sin and wickedness and things that ought not to be. So let's get into this, and part of it's going to have to do with the marriages that they had, because they did involve themselves in making marriages that were not right. But as we get into it, you're going to see it's not because of a racial thing, it's because of a spiritual thing. So let's get into this in chapter 1, the Bible reads, Now when these things were done, the princes came to me, saying, The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Prizites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. Now, these are all the people who, going back before their captivity, were supposed to have been wiped out of the land when they went in to inherit the land, but of course they didn't end up getting rid of all these people. They became a thorn to them, and there's various reasons for that, but I'm not going to get into all the history here. But he's basically saying, you know, there's all these people that have been influenced by, we'll call it the world, or by the heathen, okay, the people who don't worship the Lord are influencing God's people and causing them to sin, and now God's people are doing these abominations that the heathen do, okay? Verse number two, for they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands, yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass. And if you just read verse number two, I could see how someone might have the wrong thought of thinking that, oh, we can't mingle ourselves with those people and start coming up with ideas because it has to do with you being a superior race. But there's a lot more to the Bible than just verse number two, and verse number two is not even stating that it has anything to do with race, but I'm just saying, like, if that's all you had to go off of, oh, we're mingling our seed with those people, well, let's get into the reasons why. Let's understand this a little bit more. And jump down to verse number five, I'm just hitting some of the highlights here. We already read the entire chapter in context, you can read it again later. Verse number five, it says, and at the evening sacrifice, I rose up from my heaviness and having rent my garments and my mantle, I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God and said, oh my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God, for our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespass has grown up under the heavens. Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day, and for our iniquities have we, our kings and our priests, been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity and to a spoil and to confusion of face as it is this day. So Ezra here, when he's entreating the Lord and going to the Lord in prayer, he's not just talking about, first of all, he's not just talking about their marriages, he's talking about just everything. He said, we've been wicked going all the way back, right? We've been involved in a lot of sin and he's saying, you know, I'm ashamed and I can't even lift up my face unto you, because I'm so embarrassed because of the amount of sin that we've been involved in as a people, right? This is how he's going humbly to God. Ezra's a great man of God, okay, and there's no, I'm not saying he's not, but let's keep reading in verse number 10, the Bible says, and now, oh our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken thy commandments, I'm in verse 10, that was verse 10 verse 11, which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophet, saying, the land unto which ye go to possess it is an unclean land, with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness. Now therefore, give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth forever, that ye may be strong and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever. Now, I'm going to pause here real quick, because this is starting to give us a little bit of insight into why they're not supposed to take of the daughters of the land. Verse 11 again says, the land unto which ye go to possess it is an unclean land, with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness. When you go back and read the law, when you read Leviticus, and you read all the things that God spells out, especially the things that are worthy of the death penalty, all abominable sin, the Bible says, you know what, all the people of the land did all these things, and that's why the land is going to spew them out. So the Bible is saying, God explains that those people had to go, not because the Jews or Israel was so much better than them, but they just had to go because God's judgment was coming upon them. Because they were living so wickedly and abominably and doing all these horrible things, and when you read through, I've mentioned this many times in the past, but you read through Leviticus and sometimes you read laws from God going, why should that even need to be spelled out? Who in the world would ever think to lay with a beast? Why would we have to spell that out? Well you know why? Because people do. Because some people do and some people have, and those are the things that those nations that were in the land before God brought Israel into the land were doing those things. And the Bible says they were doing all of those things. So all of the wickedness, all of the abominable things, all of that stuff was being done prior to Israel being given that land. So God is kind of, you know, he's doing multiple things in his providence when he's bringing Israel into the Promised Land. One, he's keeping his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, right, bringing them into the land that's promised to them. He's also bringing judgment in on wicked people. And God brings judgment on wicked nations all the time and they come and they go all throughout history. God's bringing judgment against wicked people. So at that time, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, all these people are being judged by God. So, when the children of Israel are going back into the land, now, it's a similar situation because those people are still there. God's will wasn't completely, perfectly performed because they were supposed to wipe them all out, but the children of Israel failed because they made treaties with some of them, with the Gibeonites, and then they did other things, you know, they just failed to drive them out of the land. And as a result, they were left in. But notice the problem with taking of the wives is that they were doing abominations. What happens when you, I mean, there's no closer union between people than getting married, right? I mean, you're joining your house, you're making one family from two people, and if you've got one group of people that's just completely wicked and doing abominable things and then other people who might be righteous, and you mix the two together, guess what's going to happen? There's going to be a lot more wickedness and abomination going on than there is going to be righteousness. And the Bible's teaching not to do that, and we're going to get into more of the Scripture explaining this more in detail, but that's the point. It has nothing to do with one race being better than another. It has to do with people who follow the Lord versus people who do not follow the Lord. Verse 13, and after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great trespass, seeing that thou, our God, has punished us less than our iniquities deserve and has given us such deliverance as this, should we again break thy commandments and join in affinity with the people of these abominations? So, joining in affinity means you're becoming in-laws, right, so you're marrying into the family. That's what it means by joining in affinity. Wouldest not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor escaping? O Lord God of Israel, thou art righteous, for we remain, yet escaped as it is this day. Behold, we are before thee in our trespasses, for we cannot stand before thee because of this. So, I mean, it's a big deal that they've gone, and especially a lot of leaders have just gone and taken these wives and joined themselves unto the heathen, that are involved in all these abominable, wicked things. So it's not right, and it's good to go to the Lord and be repentant, be sorry, say, hey, we're not going to, you know, this is a big deal to us, we're confessing our sins, we're going to forsake our sins, but how you deal with that sin after the fact now, there's only so many options you can do, and what I believe is that they didn't choose the right thing. Now, we go into chapter 10, flip over to chapter 10, and Ezra, you should basically be there because we just finished chapter 9, so chapter 10, verse number 1, the Bible reads, Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children, for the people wept very sore. Now, up to this point, Ezra has just recognized this is a big deal, this is a problem, Lord, we're sorry, he's gone to God, but nowhere is he saying, is he hearing from God saying, you need to separate yourselves from these people now, I don't care if you got married, just divorce them, and nowhere is he saying that either, like this whole scripture of Ezra chapter 9 is spot on. Look at verse number 2 in chapter 10, the Bible says, And Shekiniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land, yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. So, just notice, this thought isn't even coming from Ezra anyways, this is someone else introducing this solution, he's saying, look, we know we've all sinned, but there's still hope for this, we still have a way out of this. Verse number 3 says, Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God, to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my Lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law. Because we're going to go in a little bit and we're going to go and check the law and see if what they're doing is according to the law. It's one thing to say, oh yeah, notice too, when he brings up this idea, he says, according to the counsel of my Lord, according to your counsel, but you're the one counseling, you're not getting the counsel from Ezra, you're the one giving the counsel to Ezra, but he's trying to play it off like it's going to be Ezra's idea, and it's going to be supported by the Bible, but it's really this guy's idea to go and put away the wives and the children that they've taken and just say, okay, we're done with you, and divorce them all and leave all the women and children just to be gone. Now another thing you'll notice, because I didn't have this in my notes, but God never puts his stamp of approval on us either. It's never alike and God bless him. How many times do you see, well, the children of Israel have sinned, they've done wrong, they repent, they do something to get it right, and then God says, okay, I've seen that and now I'm going to stop punishing you, right? We see that happen. We saw that with Phinehas when there was the plague at the matter of Baal Peor, and that was ironically, not ironically, but it's basically the same thing. It was the same type of thing where the people were taking the Moabites, the women of the land there that were heathen women, and taking them unto themselves when they were not supposed to. And in that situation, there was people boldly just defiant of that, and there was a plague as a result of their sin, so they're being judged because it was sin what they were doing, but Phinehas ended up striking through and killing one of the worst offenders, one of the rulers that was there just out and bold with his heathen wife, and stayed the plague. So what he did was confirm by God as being right. He actually secured to Levi their office and things like that, because God saw a zeal, and anyhow, that was confirmed. This we don't ever see confirmed. These actions we don't ever see confirmed by God, and in addition, we're going to check it against the law anyways, because it's saying, hey, let it be done according to the law. Verse 4, rise, for this matter belongeth unto thee. We also will be with thee. Be of good courage and do it. So just do this, Ezra. Verse 5, but then Ezra does it. For whatever reason, he says it sounds like a good idea or something. Verse 5, then arose Ezra and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel to swear that they should do according to this word, and they swear. Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Johanan, the son of Eliashib, and when he came thither, he did eat no bread nor drink water, for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away. Then he went down to verse 10, and Ezra the priest stood up and said unto them, Ye have transgressed and have taken strange wives to increase the trespass of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure, and separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the strange wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do. So they're basically saying, well, you said it, we're doing it. Well, how about God said, and we're going to do it, instead of just following a man? Because what was done here was not justified according to the law. So flip back, if you would, to Deuteronomy chapter 7, because now we're going to go back and study the law a little bit. And my first point, when Ezra 9 and 10 are brought up as to why an interracial marriage should be broken up and you should divorce, it's ridiculous because you can't justify divorce anyways from this situation, regardless of who it is. So the first point I just want to make and just explain here is that this is not a justification for divorce. It's not legitimate. So we're going to see what the law says about divorce before we even get into the race thing. Because this is easily debunked, and it makes me angry when you have pastors of churches counseling their church members to sin, counseling their church members to break up their families, break up their homes, get divorced, because it's not according to God's law. And that's wicked. And people will trust their pastors, they'll trust that they're there trying to help them and do the right thing. And if you're not in the Word yourself and have your own strong faith and conviction in the Word of God, then it's going to be a lot easier to be led astray. And I'll say this so I'm blue in the face, you know, I'm here, I know my heart, I know that I want to help you, and I hope that you can trust me to an extent, but you know what? Don't ever trust me more than you trust the Word of God. And you better always be in the Word so that you can compare what the Bible says against what I say. Because you know who God's going to hold responsible if you get into sin? You. Now, I may also have some liability in God's eyes, but you can't just say, oh, well, it's Pastor Burzins, because you'll still be held responsible for your own sin. So you have to know for yourself what you believe and why you believe it. You have to know that that burden is on you. I'm going to try to help, lead, and guide, and teach all the things that I've learned, all the things that I've received, but I know that I'm not perfect. I do my best to try to withhold things that I'm not certain of and only preach the things that I am certain of, but I'm just a man. So take what I could give in light of what God's Word says as the final authority. But let's look at the law in Deuteronomy chapter 7, because it is true that God's law had rules regarding who you could marry. So when we're looking at the law, and we're going to compare everything that happened in Ezra 9 and 10, it is important to see that the Bible says, yeah, you cannot make certain marriages, that it was not right. And when Ezra was praying to God and confessing that sin, he was right, because it was a sin for them to have taken the wives of those heathen nations. That was a sin. Let's see it spelled out, though, in Deuteronomy chapter 7, verse number 1, the Bible reads, When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land, whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites and the Gergashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou. And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them, thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Verse 3, Neither shalt thou make marriages with them, thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. Now these are people, first of all, that God is saying are supposed to be utterly destroyed. Keep that in mind, that the people that God is saying not to have marriages with are the people who deserve to be utterly destroyed in God's eyes. It's not just anybody. He spells out the specific people that are supposed to be wiped out and destroyed and says not to make marriages with them. And I'll tell you what, these people, there were a lot more nations than just these nations in the world at that time. There were other nations of the world that are not listed here, but he's specifically mentioning these ones saying don't make marriages with these people. And he doesn't say you'll be able to tell them apart because of their skin color. So verse 3 again, Neither shalt thou make marriages with them, thy daughter shall not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. Look at verse number 4. It says four. You know what that means? Because. So you give us the reasoning why you're not going to make marriages, for they will turn away thy son from following me. The reason why you don't go and marry these people, oh, because your race is going to be mingled and then you won't be pure blood. Wait, is that what he's saying? No. He's saying that those people are wicked and they're going to turn your son's heart so that he's no longer going to follow the Lord. He's going to go after these other abominations and false gods and everything else. That's what he's saying. He's saying a man's heart is going to be deceived by the woman, you know, so you're a Christian man and a Buddhist woman or an Islamic woman or, you know, fill in the blank that has some false god and you get those two married, it's a lot more likely that that woman is going to turn the heart of the Christian from serving the Lord and is going to be opened up more into just going after false gods. Oh, it's okay, we could have a shrine to Buddha in our house as you're married, right? Husbands that want to keep the peace in the house and allowing abominable idolatry into the house. Is it that hard to see why, you know, you'd not want to do that? But obviously in this case, too, these are extremely wicked people, too. So it definitely has to do with the false gods, no doubt about that. But these people have a really wicked culture, made to be, God was bringing the judgment of the death penalty on them. So let's keep reading, verse number four. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods. So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall you deal with them. You shall destroy their altars and break down their images and cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire, for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth. This doesn't have to do with race. Being the people of the Lord is not a racial thing. And that's proven from Scripture. One, even in the Old Testament, people from other nations and other lands can join themselves unto Israel. There was a law regarding people who wanted to join themselves and become one with Israel. They could emigrate, they make the Lord their God, and they become just like one of the other people in the land. And the Bible says in multiple places that there's going to be one law for the stranger that's with thee, as well as him that is naturally born in the land, that you all have one law. And it's God's law. And anybody willing to join themselves unto Israel was welcome to do so. So right there, that debunks God's making this master race of people or something. No. I'm talking about His people. It's always talking about spiritually. That's why John the Baptist, when the Pharisees came to the baptism, remember back in Matthew 3, I got the reference here, Matthew chapter 3. He's out in the wilderness, he's preaching the baptism of repentance. These Pharisees come out, and this Pharisaical Judaism has the belief... It's a racist belief that they think that just because they're physically seeds of Abraham, that somehow they get a special pass. And this is another bad, wicked doctrine that Christians hold. There are Bible believers that hold the Jews up and elevate the Jews as if they're some special people just because maybe they were physically born of the seed of Abraham. And you know what that is? Racism. And people try to justify it using Scripture. Oh, but God said unto Abraham, I'll bless him that blesses thee, and curse him that curses thee. Yeah, did you notice the thee? Hopefully you're using King James Bible because when it says thee, he's talking to Abraham. Because God did bless the people that blessed Abraham when he lived on the earth. And God did curse the people that cursed Abraham when he lived on the earth. And I could go on and on. You could read Galatians chapter 3, you know, read the book of Romans, and you can see how there's no difference between the Jew and the Gentile. How the New Testament teaches that we're supposed to avoid genealogies. So why should we lift up and exalt some group of people because they're ethnicity when the Bible says avoid genealogies? How are you even supposed to know who those people are? God doesn't care about the physical Jew, which is why John the Baptist said, and think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, right? Don't put your stock in the physical flesh of Father Abraham. For that God, he says, for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. He said that means nothing. You see these rocks? They could be children of Abraham just as much as anybody else. Because it doesn't matter. What matters is your faith. That's what makes you a child of God. That's what makes you one of God's people. So the people who joined themselves unto Israel from other nations became one, became the people of God. It's as simple as that. It's so rudimentary and basic. It boggles my mind that people can have a racist mindset on things, whether it's promoting Israel, which is a big problem in many churches today, because they have this false understanding of a racist God that doesn't exist. God doesn't care. Look, you think that I'm going to believe in a God that's going to exalt a group of people that reject the Lord Jesus Christ. You're crazy. You're going to call yourself a Christian and say, hey, let's promote these people that completely reject Jesus Christ. They believe there's a Christ, but they don't believe that that Christ is Jesus. You know what they are? Antichrist. That's what the Bible teaches. Read it someday. Oh, you're an anti-Semite. Look, I would that all Israel would get saved. Just like any other person, though. Not above anybody else. Any unbeliever, let's preach the gospel to them and try to get them saved. But no specialty for no special preference and be a respecter of persons because of who their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was. Why does that matter? It doesn't. So let's look at the law regarding divorce. So we can see from Deuteronomy 7 that there were some rules for them on making marriages. Don't make marriages with the heathen because they're going to turn your hearts away from the Lord. Sounds like a good rule to me. It's not based on the race, it's based on the faith. Look at Deuteronomy 24, and you know, you could read all these passages to get a more full understanding, but I'm limited by time and how far I could go into this subject. But what does the Bible say regarding divorce? Well Deuteronomy 24, there's actually not very many places that even talks about divorce. If you want to do a word study, you look up putting away or put away any form of putting away or a bill of divorcement, right, a divorce. So you can look up those terms if you want to know when could it possibly be appropriate to do such things. We're going to look at the law first, then we're going to go to the New Testament and see, guess what, you'll never believe this, they match up perfectly. The Old Testament and the New Testament, it matches up just the way that you should expect it to. Deuteronomy 24 verse number 1, the Bible reads, when a man hath taken a wife and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. The purpose for writing the bill of divorcement is because the husband has found uncleanness in her. Now, one thing that is important to note, and I'm not going to prove this this morning, you can look it up for yourself, and I'll give you the example without quoting the scripture. Marriages historically in the past were not consummated immediately. Oftentimes marriages would take place, you'd be espoused to someone for a period of time before you would consummate the marriage and really join that union physically. This is proven by Mary and Joseph. Joseph and Mary were married, they were espoused one to another, yet Mary was still a virgin. So they had a marriage, had not consummated that marriage, they were still married for a period of time, I don't know exactly how long that is, but long enough so that when Mary is with child of the Holy Ghost, when she's pregnant with the Lord Jesus Christ, in Joseph's mind, there's only one way that that could have happened. She's committed an act of uncleanness, right? She's been with another man. So the Bible says that Joseph, being a just man, just according to the law, being a godly man, knowing the law of God, he was minded to put her away privily. He was minded not to make a big deal about it, right, in the public's eyes, so he's going to do it kind of secretly and privately and just put her away and just be like, okay, this isn't the woman for me, she's not who I thought she was, because she's with child. So that would be finding uncleanness in her, right? But it's prior to the consummation of the marriage, and it matches exactly with what Deuteronomy 24 says, flip back to Deuteronomy 22, because once the marriage is consummated, there's no longer grounds for divorce, and I'll prove this even more clearly from the New Testament. Deuteronomy 22, verse 28, this is talking about a man laying with a woman, and they were not espoused, right? So this is fornication going on, but it says in verse 28, if a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, then lay hold on her and lie with her. And look, when it says lay hold on her, this is not talking about being forced. I understand how you might think that way, I do, I mean, I get it, especially if you're not really familiar with the Bible language and stuff, it could be a little bit different than the way that you would think about things today. Get your mind in the, you know, when you read through over and over again and kind of study it out, you'll see that just laying hold on someone is not meaning they're forcing, because there's another section in the same chapter that deals with someone forcing a woman. And when a woman is forced, they get the death penalty. And people who hate God, the atheists out there, will try to use this passage to say, oh, yeah, the Bible teaches that when a man rapes a woman that they need to get married. That is not what this is teaching. Because otherwise, you'd have a contradictory law within the same chapter, because it already tells you that if a man rapes a woman that he needs to be put to death. But they use that, because one, they'll use false versions of the Bible that may say that. And two, they just don't understand that just because it says he lays hold on her, and look, if you're going to commit an act of fornication, you're going to lay hold on the person, right? It's not that hard to understand. So it says she's not betrothed, so she's not espoused to anybody. He lays hold on her, lies with her, and they be found, it's found out that they did this thing. Verse 29 says, then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife. So you're saying, okay, you want to have this act, you want to commit this act, you want to have this physical relationship that's supposed to only be within marriage, but you want to do that without being married? Guess what? Now you need to get married. I mean, that's the right thing to do. It's a biblical thing. That's what God's law says to do. It says, okay, if you're going to go out and fornicate, then you just need to get married. And it's talking about with a virgin here, too, because people are supposed to be virgin when they go to become married. And it says, because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. So he says, they're going to get married, and you say, oh, but I didn't really want to marry this person, not allowed to put her away. What if he finds some uncleanness in her? Well, she was a virgin, so there was no uncleanness in her, because that's what the context is here. The virgin lies with someone. There's absolutely no way that he may not put her away all his days, because she was a virgin, and he laid with her and defiled her through fornication. He's humbled her, the Bible says. Now he's not allowed to put her away. Just like when you get married and you consummate that marriage, you've humbled that woman. She's no longer a virgin. She's no longer a maid. So now, there's no more getting divorced. Verse 4, Malachi, you can turn if you would to Matthew 19. Man I've got to hurry up through this. The whole divorce thing is turning into a little bit longer than I had planned. All throughout Scripture, right, Malachi says that the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away. God doesn't like people getting divorced. God never intended for people to get divorced. And if you also understand that when you get married, you're making a vow before God, in biblical context, when people make vows before God, that seems to take the highest priority. You think of an example, even with Jephthah, made a vow unto God, and said, God, if you deliver these people into my hand, in the book of Judges, and he judges Israel, he goes to battle and says, God, whatever comes and greets me, I'm going to offer that as a burnt sacrifice unto you. And what came out to greet him? His own daughter. He put himself in a bad situation. He never should have done that. But in the respect to making a vow to God's word and the importance of the word, he ended up offering her up, and that was a lose-lose situation. But not only that, with the Gibeonites, as I mentioned earlier, when the children of Israel made that pact with them and said, well, we're not going to destroy them, God had already told them they need to destroy the people of the land. But they came in, and they made it look like they came from a real long distance, right? Our bread is moldy, look at our shoes, they're all beaten up, and they tried to make it look like they came from really, really far away, like, oh, we heard about the Lord. We're your servants, right? Make a pact with us. They didn't consult God, they just looked on the physical appearance and going, oh, okay, sure, we'll make a pact with you, we'll be friends with you. And then they find out, oh, they actually, they're your neighbors. Oh, wait, they're the people that God said we're supposed to destroy. So now you've got a conflict where God said to destroy these people, but they made a vow that they're not going to destroy them. So you know what they did? They respected the vow and didn't destroy them. Now the actions don't necessarily dictate what's right and wrong, I've already said that. But there's a consistency on the vow, on the word of God, being, and you think about just anybody's word, the word of God is what saves you, the promise of God is what saves you. God puts a really high priority on meaning what you say and saying what you mean, and you won't be held guiltless if you just allow words to come out of your mouth, especially vows, and you don't keep your vows. And if the primacy is on the vow being taken at priority, then why wouldn't it also be in the case of a marriage, where you're making a vow? God said not to do this, but we did it anyways, we vowed that we're going to be married to this person. Well, don't break that vow. You've already sinned by doing what you're not supposed to do. Don't add a sin unto the sin. If I had you turn to Matthew 19, let's see the New Testament teaching on this. Verse number three, the Bible reads, the Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him and saying unto him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? So these Pharisees approach Jesus Christ in saying, well, can we just divorce a wife for any reason? Like, can we just put away for whatever we feel like? And Jesus responds, He says, look, haven't you read? Like what a dumb question. That's really what He's saying, it's a dumb question. Because He starts it off by saying, haven't you read? Meaning the answer is already in Scripture. Haven't you already 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 twain shall be one flesh? Didn't you read that? Didn't you understand that concept? That two become one. And you're talking about divorcing and splitting up that one. He says wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. So when a husband and wife come together, God brings you together to become one flesh. God has joined you together. He's saying don't divide that asunder. He said that's the way it was from the beginning. That's the way that God made it. It's one man. It's one woman. You join together and you have a marriage. And you get married and it's till death do us part. That's it. I mean, it's real simple. Really simple. And this is what Jesus is explaining. So then they answer, right? They're not satisfied with that. They say unto him, why did Moses then command to give a riding of divorce men to put her away? He said, oh, okay. Well, then how come Moses said we get divorced? He'll explain that too. Look at verse number 8. He said unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you, which means he allowed you to put away your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. He said, yes, there is a clause for divorce in Scripture. He said from the beginning that is not the way it was. That this was an allowance put into the law. But then he clarifies, verse 9, and I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except, so here's the exception, except it be for fornication and shall marry another, committeth adultery. So he's saying if you divorce your wife and marry someone else for any other cause than fornication, he says you're committing adultery. So the exception is fornication. The word fornication is important because when you're married and you commit the same act, it's called adultery. Fornication is when you're not married. So if someone is commit fornication before you consummate the marriage, that's when you find the uncleanness in them. They're pregnant. They have a disease. Whatever it is, they said they're a virgin. It comes out, they're not a virgin. You have not consummated the marriage yet. They had committed fornication, so you can go, nope. That was the law. That's the law on divorce. And Jesus himself said, hey, if there's any other reason, then you're committing adultery. Now, God's law also has a clause for adultery, which if we live with a righteous government, this would be the law of the land even today. And God's punishment on adultery is the death penalty. So you say, passive versions, if it was OK to get a divorce before coming together in marriage because of fornication, then why can't I get divorced because of adultery? Well, that wasn't the clause, because the punishment for that is death. Now obviously, we're in an imperfect state of affairs right now. But if we're going to go strictly on what the Bible says is allowed for divorce, which is the way I view the Bible, it's only allowed for the cause of fornication, the way that's written in the law. That's what it's for. And this ought to serve as a warning, if you're going to get married, do your best to make sure you're marrying someone you're going to commit to for your entire life. You get to know that person, because God's going to hold you to your word, to your vow, because you're going to vow till death do us part. Do you mean that? And look, this is more important today than ever in my lifetime, as divorce rates in our country and our culture just continue to increase. Just more and more and more broken families and people treating marriage like it's nothing. That's not how God views it. There's a lot of people that are going to be on the receiving end of God's anger as a result. God's not happy about all the divorce. God holds you to your word. God holds you to your promise. Flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, one more passage in the New Testament on divorce and remarriage. So you see, it all fits together perfectly, though the Old Testament and New Testament, we're not seeing really any differences in God's law, in the way that the Bible says this is appropriate or not appropriate. None of these instances qualify the divorces that happened in Ezra 10. They don't qualify, because there wasn't the fornication and the uncleanness found to put away according to the law. That's just what the person who was advising Ezra said, oh, we'll do it according to law. You didn't, though. You didn't. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, we're going to start reading verse number 10, and this is also important to read this. This goes hand in hand with what I was saying about people may do things or say things. It doesn't necessarily mean it's thus saith the Lord. The apostle Paul says, and unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord. So are we reading God's commandment here? You better believe it. And Paul makes it very, very clear, saying, I'm going to make sure you understand this. Because in this passage, Paul gives his opinion on marriages and people who are single and people who are married and saying, hey, you know what? I think it's better if you just stay single. That's what Paul says. That's his opinion. Because he was single. He wasn't married. So you could serve the Lord fully with your life if you're not married, because you're not going to be having to be concerned with caring for that other person. You could have 100% of your time focused on the Lord. You know what? That's well and great, and that's Paul's opinion. But he also states, you know what, that's not for everyone either. And I would say it's not for the majority of people. But anyway, I don't want to get into all of that, because right here, the passage that we're looking at, this is an opinion. This is what the Lord says. Let not the wife depart from her husband. That's what God says. But and if she departs, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife. God understands that people do get divorced, that it happens. And sometimes it happens for the wrong reasons. And He says, if that's the case, if that happens, you're not allowed to just go off and get remarried. He says, you remain unmarried or you just reconcile back with your spouse. Those are your choices. Right? He's saying, first of all, don't leave. Woman don't leave. Husband, don't put your wife away. That's what He's saying. Don't do it. If you leave, you don't go to anyone else. Your only other option is to go back to your husband. That's what God says. So where do you get divorces okay from here? Now look at verse 12. He says, but to the rest speak I, not the Lord. If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. Is what He said here any way contradictory to God's Word? No. This isn't contradicting anything that He said. This is what God said, and this is what I'm saying. Right? Verse 14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, else were your children unclean, but now are they holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God hath called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband, or how knowest thou O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? Now this isn't a stamp of approval on divorce, what He's saying, like, if you're married to someone, and they don't believe, and they leave you, you know, obviously you want to try to keep marriages together, but ultimately if they leave you, then you can let them leave, but when He says that you're not in bondage, it doesn't mean that your marriage is just annulled and it's no longer valid and God's eyes, that's not what He's saying there. Basically it's just, okay, maybe you need to let them depart, but it doesn't mean you could go off and get another wife, it doesn't mean, you know, none of that holds. In order to keep the peace with someone who's unsaved and saved, maybe they need to leave, and it's just something that's going to happen, and you may not need to go and fight and do everything you can to bring them back, He's saying, you know, if that's the way it's got to be, then you can let them leave, but it's not giving you an endorsement or validation to go and just get divorced and get remarried. It's not what it's saying. And then if you jump down to verse number 39, and again, you can read this whole passage, a lot of great passages here, a lot of great truth, verse 39 says, the wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth. Till death do us part, right? That's God's law on a marriage. You're bound by that law, but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will. So once the spouse dies, guess what? Now that law is broken, you know, that vow is fulfilled till death. Okay, now you're released from that bond of the vow, bringing yourself together, now the woman's at liberty to be married to whom she will to anyone she wants, but look at this, only in the Lord. New Testament matches because you're looking, when you're looking to marry someone, you need, as a believer, you need to be looking for another believer to marry. Look, there's plenty of choices out there, but do it only in the Lord. Those are the only people you should be looking at for potential spouses, people who are saved. Because when you bring saved and unsaved together, you're going to have problems, and you're going to have people trying to take your heart away from serving the Lord, and it's going to not be good for you. So in a similar fashion that the Lord had rules to say, you know what, children of Israel, don't go join yourself unto the heathen of the land. Today, Christian, don't go joining yourself unto some heathen to get married to. Marry whoever you want, but marry someone in the Lord. Marry someone who's in Christ. That's who you need to marry. It's the same, it's so consistent. Now let's deal with the subject matter of going back to race, and I know we've been going on for a while now, but I'm going to go through this real quickly. We see an example, there's actually an example of interracial marriage in the Bible with Moses, and there's a story, and I'm going to have you turn to Isaiah 56. That's the last place I'll have you turn. Isaiah 56. I'm going to read to you from Numbers 12, okay? After Moses' first wife died, he ended up getting remarried, and he got married to an Ethiopian woman. Now I don't know exactly what either one of those people looked like specifically, but we know that Moses was of the children of Israel, which is a different descendancy than the Ethiopian, right? Someone from Ethiopia would be in Africa, okay? So what we see here is an instance, and I'll read this for you, Numbers 12.1, the Bible says, And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman. Now I deduce from this story that the reason they had a problem with her is not that he had a problem, they had a problem with her for some specific reason other than she was an Ethiopian woman, because it makes very clear to point that out twice that she's an Ethiopian woman. Here we get to see God's perspective on this interracial marriage between Moses and the Ethiopian woman, because Miriam and Aaron, they don't like it. They're talking bad now against Moses because he's gone and taken this Ethiopian woman to life. Verse 2 says, And they said, Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam. Come out, ye three, unto the tabernacle of the congregation, and they three came out. And the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forth. And he said, Hear now my words. If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches. And the similitude of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? So God is standing up for Moses here? They're angry with Moses because of his spouse, because he married an Ethiopian woman. God defends him and says, Who do you think you are? You know, he's not saying, You're right, he never should have married that Ethiopian woman. He doesn't even deserve to lead because, you know, he's gone and joined himself with some, you know, in this interracial marriage. Does God say that? No. Actually, what's interesting is let's look at what happens to Miriam as a result of this, how God plagues her. The Bible says in verse 9, And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, and he departed, and the cloud departed from out the tabernacle. And behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow. And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. Do you know what was affected? Her skin. Her skin color changed. She became a leper with her disease as they didn't like this interracial marriage with Moses and the Ethiopian woman. That's reaping what you sow. To me, and I think it's clear, God's putting his stamp of approval on that interracial marriage in the Scripture, the way that he dealt with Miriam when she had a problem with it, let alone every other place of the Bible. Like in Mark 11 17, Jesus said, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves? You know what he was quoting and it's written? It's Isaiah 56 where I had you turn. Look at verse number 3. The Bible says, Neither let the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people. Neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. So this is in context talking about a stranger, a foreigner coming from another land that joins himself to the Lord. And he's saying, Don't let that person say that the Lord has completely separated me from his people. Just because you're a stranger doesn't mean you're separated from his people. I mean, do you get that? That's what he's saying. The eunuch is someone who can't have children, right? And he's saying, Don't let the eunuch say that he's a dry tree either. Okay, just because physically you can't reproduce with children. Hey, if you're in the Lord, it doesn't matter that you're a stranger. It doesn't matter that you're a eunuch. Verse number 4, For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant, saying, Okay, you're a eunuch, but you're choosing me, you're following the Lord, you're going after my ways. Verse 5, Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. You're saying, You know what? I'm going to reward you way better even than having children. You want to put your faith in me? You want to follow my ways? I will bless you for that. So don't worry about not having the children, right? That was the one example, but now look at this. Verse 6, Also the sons of the stranger, the foreigner, right? Someone who doesn't look like the physical seed of Abraham, that join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servant, everyone that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my covenant, even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people. And you mean to tell me that God's going to disparage someone that's of one nation, another nation joining in marriage when they both serve the Lord? You're out of your mind. It's wicked false doctrine to teach that and to try to teach people they need to get divorced because one person is one color, another person is another color. That doesn't matter to God. It doesn't matter. The house is a house of prayer for all people. God is welcoming every nation under the sun to come and worship him. You want to put your faith in the Lord? You want to come and serve the Lord? Great. There's a place for you here. That's what the Bible teaches. The Bible says in Acts 17 26, and hath made of one blood all nations of men for they dwell on all the face of the earth. God made us all of one blood. I'm way over time, but if you just think about this, because some people will say, oh, but when God put the mark on Cain after he slew his brother, that's where black people come from. It's racist people that are just picking and choosing. You have no basis or foundation to say any color. Why are you just picking one? It's because you have your own racist ideology or whatever. You just want to pick someone that you don't like and say, oh, that's who that is. Get real. You know why God put a mark on Cain? It wasn't a curse. It was actually so people wouldn't kill him. So people like to say, oh, the curse of Cain. God put this mark on him. God marked him to protect him. You're going to tell me that that's because of his wickedness? No. God judged him to be a vagabond and said that that's his punishment. And when Cain said, look, God, everyone's going to want to kill me now, God said, okay, I'm going to put a mark on you. Now, a mark doesn't mean a completely different skin color. It's just a mark. You know what the Bible refers to marks, printing marks on your body? It's like a tattoo. God marked him. He identified him and said, yep, okay, this is, don't kill him. For all we know, he said, don't kill me on his forehead or something, signed God. I mean, whatever. It was in some way he marked him. It didn't all of a sudden just get into his DNA to start spawning people that look different. That's just bizarre. That's just weird. The reason why we have different people that look different from each other, it goes back to what I believe, to the Tower of Babel. Because when God first created Adam and Eve, and if you understand anything about breeding and DNA, Adam and Eve had the DNA for the whole human race within them that God created. When you start breeding, and especially, I say the Tower of Babel, because that's where God separated people physically into different nations. He confounded the language, which made them split up. They were all joined together as one people. And if you're all one people, you know, generally speaking, you're going to look really similar. You're kind of all going to receive the dominant traits within the group are going to come up, and the recessive traits, not so much. But when you start separating people off, and you're, I don't call it inbreeding, but that's essentially what you're doing within a pool of people, different traits are going to be more dominant than others. And it doesn't really take that long for certain traits, hair texture, and skin color, the pigmentation, you know, all these various things to start coming out. Just knowing breed, I mean, we used to breed dogs. And guess what? We would breed them for their color. We've got Labradors. And the white labs, which are yellow labs, they're really just yellow, there's yellow, chocolate, and black labs, right? The black labs are real common and popular. That's just what a lot of people have. The yellow are also popular, but the white, when you breed them for that really, really, really, really light coat, there's not as many of those. So we got more money for them because they were more rare. And because people are racist, no, I'm just kidding. Because they're more rare, right? So we bred them for that reason, right? And people have their own preferences on what kind of dog they want or whatever, right? And you're able to do that through the line because those traits will come up. Like me and my family, guess what? My kids all have blonde hair. And if they marry other people that have blonde hair, you're going to get more blonde hair. It's not that it's better than anything else, it's just the way genetics works. And when you have groups of people all start splitting off into different nations and they're marrying within the nation because they can't hop in their car and just hop on a plane and just travel all over the place and start getting wives and husbands from all over the world, they're going to stay finding marriages within their area. And then their physical appearance is going to change and be different from other people. It's that simple. It's not a curse from God. There's nothing wrong with marrying someone who looks different from you. Marry someone in the Lord. Spotlights have a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we love You. God, I thank You so much for all the great, wonderful truth that You give us in Your Word. God, I pray that You would please just help us to not be influenced by the wicked world. I pray that You please help people here who aren't married to find a spouse if they're looking for a spouse, Lord, that's saved and that loves You. And I pray that You would just help us to show wisdom and discretion in these areas. And Lord, I pray that if anyone's been affected by bad, false teaching and false ways, Lord, that this sermon would help them and help strengthen their faith in Your Word and in this very clear teaching from the Bible, Lord. We love You. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.