For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
When one starts to believe that they are better than others, it is only a matter of time until they will begin to undertake evil acts against those they believe are their inferiors. It is when we start to believe that certain individuals and groups are of less value than ourselves that we start to justify mistreating them in order to advance our own interests.
God has stored up goodness waiting for us to turn to Him. When we learn to fear Him and follow His commands He will release that goodness to us. If we cry out to Him for mercy, God will rescue us and shelter us from those who wish to see us fall. God will protect us if we loyally serve Him.
When I read today’s passage it sounds like he was talking about contemporary society. Paul says that staying single and nor having sexual relations with anyone is a good thing, but because of how much sexual immorality there is it is not practical for everyone. In order to minimize the temptation of sexual immorality that our society throws at us everyday, each man should have a wife and each woman a husband. Husband and wife should work to satisfy the sexual desires of their partner so that their partner is not as susceptible to lust. This is clearly a two way street.
Paul makes it very clear that he is not commanding Christians to marry. He states that it would be ideal (Paul’s view of ideal) if everyone would be able to resist sexual sin without being married, but he knows that not everyone has that gift. Those who are single and find themselves struggling with sexual temptation should get married. So, Paul tells us that he believes that the ideal is for single Christians to stay single. However, he emphasizes that those who are married should stay married. It is wrong to leave your spouse. The only wiggle room which Paul allows is that if one is married to an unbeliever and the unbeliever leaves the believer, the believer is freed (I believe Paul would have had some serious words for a believer who married an unbeliever).
Ultimately I find three key points in this passage. The first is that those of us who are married should strive to satisfy the sexual desires of our spouses. The second is that if a single person (whether never married or widowed) is able to resist the sexual temptations of our society, it is a blessing if they remain single…being single does not make one a second class Christian, on the contrary, we should hold them up as the ultimate example of Christianity. The third is that a Christian should not divorce their spouse under any circumstances. However, a Christian whose non-Christian spouse divorces them is free to go on with their life.
Nehemiah received a report that things were going badly in Jerusalem for the returned Exiles. However, he did not rush off to do something about it. And he did not demand that the government do something about it. No, Nehemiah fasted and prayed for several days, actually, from the context of the passage it appears that he did so for several months (my reading is that he fasted and prayed for days at a time over a period of several months). At the end of that time, Nehemiah felt that God had given him an answer as to what he should do. This represents the model we should follow when we hear of a tragedy somewhere which touches our heart. Let us fast and pray until God gives us a direction as to what action He wants us to take.