Sermon by Rev. Ray Silverman

Sermon: True love in marriage is God’s greatest gift to mankind. It is an eternal union which becomes deeper and more pure forever. When God created the human race He blessed it with the gift of marriage love. It was the first blessing recorded in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, chapter one, we read that God created man in His own image, male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply.” It is significant that the first blessing recorded in the Word is the gift of marriage love. It is also significant that Jesus’ first miracle was performed at a marriage. God regards everything of His created world as good, but on the sixth day when He blessed man and woman with the gift of marriage, he called it “very good.”

In the beginning when people were open and receptive to the leading of God, there was an inmost perception of the sanctity of marriage. People knew by an inward sense that marriage was much more than a physical attraction entered into for the procreation of children. They knew and felt that it was an everlasting union, a marriage of minds and hearts. They understood that nothing happens without the will of God, and they perceived, through a kind of inner affirmation, that God had given them their married partner. It was a marriage made in heaven.

Initially, because people were created in God’s image, they were in touch with the most interior sensitivities. Their hearts were tender and merciful. They felt compassion and kindness. These gifts continually flowed in from God to His people, and helped to sustain and deepen the blessed state of marriage. But in the course of time people began to turn away from God. They lost their exquisite perception and tender-heartedness. Gradually they became cruel and unforgiving. It became more difficult to maintain the marriage relationship. Therefore, in order to preserve marriage, which is intended to be the greatest of all blessings, God issued the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery.”

When God came to earth, the Pharisees questioned Him about divorce. Jesus said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matthew 19:8) In the beginning man and woman were brought together by God and were intended to stay together forever, their love deepening every day. Even today, when people first fall in love, they are given a glimpse of this eternal truth. For awhile they enter a heavenly state of mind. They see one another’s inmost beauty, and they believe that in some way they will be together forever. They become angels to one another, thinking more of the other than they do of themselves. They are willing to climb every mountain, ford any stream, overcome any obstacle. If heaven ever came to earth, it came to them as the blessing of true love in marriage. But as we know too well, these heavenly states of mind are not always maintained, and the couple comes back to earth. Hardness of heart begins to set in. Selfishness arises. Squabbles erupt. Cruel things are said and done, and sadly, two potential angels are contemplating divorce, talking about mental cruelty and irreconcilable differences.

But it was not so from the beginning. Marriage love was given to mankind as a divine blessing. Emanuel Swedenborg refers to it as “the fundamental love of all other loves. Into it are gathered all joys and all delights, from firsts to lasts.” (Apocalypse Explained 993:2) And no other love opens the interiors of the mind more powerfully than does true marriage love. There is something in all of us that yearns for a true and blessed marriage relationship. We know that much of the heartache in today’s broken marriages is due to the sorrow of a lost dream – hopes that were dashed, promises that were broken. Perhaps most hurtful of all is infidelity in marriage. Yearning for understanding and affection, wounded human beings find themselves driven into the arms of someone other than their spouse. They know not what they do. They are hurt, confused, craving something which their marriage does not give them, and so they commit adultery, and they divorce one another.

In the Word of God, the children of Israel are frequently referred to as a wicked and adulterous generation. Over 500 times Israel is accused of playing the harlot for her many lovers. In Jeremiah we read these words of the Lord: “As a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel. I have seen your adulteries. I have heard your lustful sounds. Where have you not lain with men? By the road you have sat waiting to give yourself to them. You have polluted the land with your harlotries. You have gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there played the harlot.” (Jeremiah 3:20; 13:27; 3:2, 6)

But the Lord is ever merciful. In spite of all her unfaithfulness, He continues to reach out, inviting back His beloved. Jeremiah records these beautiful words of the Lord: “And I said, after she had done all these things, return to me. Return, O backsliding children, for I am married to you.” (Jeremiah 3:14) The Lord is here described as a husband Who will never forsake His wife, no matter how often she commits adultery. “And after she had done all these things, I said, return to me.” (Jeremiah 3:7) Again and again, the deepest and most essential teaching of the Word is the call to return to the Lord. No matter how far we have wandered, no matter how deeply immersed we have become in sin, our Lord calls to each of us, “Return to Me, for I am married to you.” But sometimes it is difficult to hear the Lord’s call. Sometimes human hearts have become hardened, and the words of the Lord have no way of entering.

When the Lord came to earth, He endeavored to soften hearts that had become hardened. He urged His people to consider the Divine Commandments in a new way. He took them beyond the merely literal level of the commandment. In the Sermon on the Mount He said, “Ye have heard that it was said of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27, 28) Such a new teaching must have come as a tremendous shock to the people of that day. It was called a hard teaching. But Jesus knew that the so-called hard teaching would eventually soften the hearts of those who kept it. It would help them become more understanding, merciful and compassionate. It would help them see in themselves the same sins they condemned in others. It would help them rediscover the blessedness of marriage, and make them less inclined to rush into adultery and divorce. Jesus came to soften hearts that had been hardened. “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives,” He said.

The deepening of the law against adultery was intended to soften hearts and protect marriage, but in the course of time, well-meaning Christians began to misinterpret the new teaching about adultery of the heart. Stories are told of Christian monks and martyrs who went to extremes in order to stifle all sexual longings. St. Jerome, for example, after fasting to the point of death in order to stifle desire, writes these words: “My face was pale and my frame chilled with fasting, yet my mind was burning with the cravings of desire, and the fires of lust flared up from my flesh, though it was that of a corpse.” Celibacy and self-mutilation were tried in order to repress the lusts of the flesh. Christianity became an oppressive struggle against Satan, whose chief weapon was seen as the lure of sex, because of Adam’s fall in listening to Eve. Marriage was seen as an escape for those who were too weak to follow the nobler path of celibacy and devotion to God.

But all this was based on a misunderstanding of Jesus’ teachings. It was Jesus Himself who gave mankind the wondrous blessing called marriage. He deepened the commandment against adultery in order to preserve the sanctity of marriage, not to nullify it. He deepened the commandment against adultery so that we could experience a softening of the heart. In time, it would help us becomes better wives and husbands, kinder, more forgiving, and more open to the leading of God. It would also help prepare us for the further deepening of this commandment in which we come to see that the person we are not to lust after is negative emotion in general. Such emotions, whether they be worry, fear, anxiety, greed, hatred or revenge, may be compared to a seductive person. Seducers attract, allure and finally entangle their victim in a deadly embrace. After a brief affair with some negative emotion, the victim feels temporarily satisfied. But like all adulterous pleasure, it can never truly satisfy. The negative emotion will come back again, more powerfully, to tantalize, seduce, and get its victim to commit adultery again. It is indeed wise to avoid such negative liaisons as we would avoid a deadly sexual disease.

God has given us the commandment against adultery because He loves us. Yes, He loves us as a husband loves his wife. He has loved us from the beginning with an eternal, undying love. Though we, at times, have a tendency to forsake the Lord, giving ourselves over to affairs with negative emotions, He is always there, calling gently, “Return to Me. I am your husband. Do not commit adultery.” He yearns to fill us with seed from His Word so that we may give birth to spiritual sons and daughters, noble truths and benevolent affections. He urges us not to mix His seed with the seeds of any negative emotions. “Return to Me,” He says, “Do not commit adultery.”

The Lord wants us to enjoy the sweet delights of marriage with the partner He has given us. Though Moses allowed men to divorce their wives, it was on account of the hardness of human hearts. From the beginning it was not so. The Lord calls us back to the beginning. “Return to Me,” He says. “Return and receive the blessings I yearn to give you.” True love in marriage is God’s greatest gift to mankind. It is an eternal union
which grows deeper and more pure forever. Emanuel Swedenborg writes that “true marriage love is the precious jewel of life and the repository of the Christian religion.” (Congujial Love 457:1) We enter more and more deeply into this blessed state as we strive to shun adulteries of every kind – in the flesh, in the mind, and in the spirit. In so doing, both husband and wife open themselves to receive their Lord, as a wife receives her husband, with clean hands and a pure heart. Together they can cry out with joy from the depth of their souls, “The Lord God Omnipotent reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready.” (Revelations 19:6, 7)