Greetings and welcome to all present and online, in America and abroad. As we begin the seventh chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul instructs us on the Gospel from a ‘ legal ‘ perspective as to how it is applied to guilty sinners by God’s unmerited favor. Grab a Bible and tune in as Pastor Fisher teaches a thought provoking lesson from this chapter that he has titled: “Spiritually Married To Christ”
Old Testament Scripture Reading: Isaiah 54:1 – 6 (NASB)
Isa 54:1 “Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons of the married woman,” says the LORD.
Isa 54:2 “Enlarge the place of your tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your pegs.
Isa 54:3 “For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations, And they will resettle the desolate cities.
Isa 54:4 “Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; Neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
Isa 54:5 “For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.
Isa 54:6 “For the LORD has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” Says your God.
New Testament Scripture Reading: Romans 7:1 – 6 (NASB)
Rom 7:1 Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?
Rom 7:2 For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband.
Rom 7:3 So then if, while her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man.
Rom 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God.
Rom 7:5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
Rom 7:6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
Transforming Power Statements:
#1) In this portion of Scripture, Paul is using marriage as an example of our union to Christ, to explain from a legal perspective how we should view the Law now that the revelation of Jesus, Messiah has been made plain. This passage is not intended to be a manual on the teaching of marriage and divorce.
#2) The analogy of God being married to His people is found in many places in the Word; Older and Newer Testaments alike, and gives legal reason to how God views His matrimony to His Church, and gives justification to His intension for the sanctity of matrimony in general, thus defining other marital deviations such as spiritual adultery and fornication.
#3) This marriage analogy is magnified even more as we see the new heaven and earth as a bride coming down from out of Heaven from God “As a bride adorned for her Husband”
