Mar 5 - Deuteronomy 24:5

If a man has recently married,

he must not be sent to war

or have any other duty laid on him.

For one year he is to be free

to stay at home and bring happiness

to the wife he has married.

Deuteronomy 24:5

^NIV

 

We often think of God’s law as constraining. Today listen to how gracious God is in his commands to his people!

 

1.    God knows! He know that we are a messy people … which means he knows that there will always be young soldiers marching off to war.

 

2.    God also knows that it’s these young soldiers who are marching into battle are often the same young men who just marched down the aisle to get married.  

 

3.    Therefore, even when there’s a “duty” to fight for your homeland and defend the kingdom, God stops and says, “Wait! Let me tell you something more important than advancing the kingdom militarily. It’s proclaiming the joy of the true Kingdom through our marriage.”

 

Wait?

 

What?

 

Most humans look for earthly kingdoms. That’s why soldiers go off to fight. Through governments and treaties and even wars, we keep trying to advance the interests of earthly dominions.

 

God’s kingdom is bigger and better than that! It involves the earth … but a redeemed earth. See, for example, God’s final promise in Revelation 21:5 where there will be a “new earth” where there will be no more mourning or crying or pain. And it’s even bigger and better than the promise that even “death will be no more.”

 

What’s better than that? “God himself will … dwell with [us]”!

 

That’s the plan – God’s eternal plan! It’s the union of heaven and earth.

 

And that’s the way it was in the beginning -- see Genesis 1 and 2. God was “with us.” There was a sense of oneness. Not of equality, of course, but of committed unity. Indeed, we were told that God loved to come walking with Adam and Eve in the garden.

 

There was another “oneness” that Scripture lifts up on those first two pages of Scripture. The unity of husband and wife. Bride and groom are blessed by literally becoming “one flesh.”

 

But then sin entered the world. Our sin separates us from God. That’s the temporary consequence. When the final promise of the Revelation 21 “new earth” is restored, our broken unity with God will be restored. In fact, with the cross and resurrection, the rescue plan is underway.

 

But we live in the meantime. (And, as I like to say, sometimes it is a very meantime.) But God left us with a sign of unity. A sign of joy. A symbol of oneness. It is man and woman … husband and wife … yoked together … for life! (It’s “bring[ing] happiness to the wife he has married” … and she to him.)

 

Indeed, that’s why in God’s commands that there’s something more important than advancing the kingdom militarily. It’s proclaiming the joy of the true kingdom through our marriage. So what does your marriage testify?

 

Question: Most of us brides and grooms don’t play out God’s picture of unity very well. We aren’t always very good witnesses to our beloved or the world. But what would happen if you quit viewing your most important relationships according to the selfish benefits you derive, and start viewing them as a holy witness to a broken world? What are you as two fiancés testifying to your friends? What are you as bride and groom using your wedding to say to the world about God and faith? What are husbands and wives testifying to their children through patience, kindness, and forgiveness? What if relationships aren’t about you, but the kingdom?

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy with new marching orders –

“bring happiness to the wife

[you have] married”