The Marriage Covenant:

A while back the Lord challenged me concerning His view of marriage, faithfulness and divorce. Over a period of a couple of years I had four believing couples approach me concerning their marriages and the fact that they were considering divorce. Then a fifth couple was added. Two years later one of the marriages had ended in divorce and one was very close to divorce. Two of the couple have separated. Unless you have been living in a cave in the wilderness for the past 20 years you know that marriage is under attack on a broad scale, irresponsible fathers, feminist, homosexuals and even our governments (welfare) to name a few, and make no mistake about it, divorce lawyers have no interest in restoring your marriage, they are making a living.

These situations and the Lord keeping me in the middle of them, has led me to revisit what He thinks about marriage. So this is an attempt to put on paper my current beliefs concerning marriage, divorce and faithfulness.

The first thing that God did after creation according to Genesis 2 was to have Adam look for a companion. He did not find one amongst the animals, including "man`s best friend". So God put him to sleep and formed Eve from Adam`s side. Yahweh created man and formed woman and immediately afterward, He created marriage. Adam was impressed with Eve and declared what I believe to be God`s definition of marriage, Genesis 2:24. This definition states that `man shall leave his parents, be joined to his wife and the two become one flesh.` The references are at the end of this article.

This is obviously what God had in mind all along. He had made the animals sexual creatures of male and female to reproduce themselves. Sex is primarily for reproduction and secondarily for mutual pleasure. He further commanded Adam and Eve to take dominion over the earth and to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. This alone is enough to show that God did not ordain same sex marriages. They cannot reproduce! Looking a little more closely at the definition of marriage you can see the basics of the marriage covenant; man shall leave his parents to form a new household and they shall make love to form a new family, and thus the two become one flesh. The man and wife must leave the headship of their fathers and the man forms a new family with himself as head. The sexual union is man`s part in sealing the marriage. The last part is the God part, the two shall be come one. This is a supernatural event.

The covenant of marriage is an agreement between the man and woman to joint together until death. We see in {John 4:16-18} that simply living together, common law marriage, does not constitute a marriage covenant. There must be mutual agreement to form the covenant { Malachi 2:14 }. Covenants in Yahweh's perspective require the witness of two other individuals. So the couple are married when they have mutually agreed upon forming a marriage covenant between the two of them until death with the witness of two others, leaving their families, joining together and becoming one.

These principles are the very foundation, the very essence of a successful marriage. If they do not occur then there is little hope of the marriage being a Godly marriage and lasting for a lifetime.

How can two bodies become one? Do they occupy the same space and they grow together so that to separate them they must be surgically separated? No, yet they become one flesh where there was two. God does something supernatural here and unites the two into one. This makes the marriage sacred! Thus we have Yeshua saying, the New Testament verse, Mat 19:6, `What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.` This precludes divorce. There are only a few things that the scriptures say that God hates, one of those is divorce. Man is not allowed to separate the two persons. All of the judges, lawyers and courts in the world cannot do it. They will have to answer to the Lord for every divorce preformed! If the Lord has not separated them then they are still married no matter what men say. Only God can separate a married couple, by the death of one of the two, 1 Cor 7:39. Basically, God does not change His mind, once the two have joined it`s until one of them dies. Then the covenant is broken or completed, and the surviving spouse is free from the covenant previously made.

If one of the spouses commits adultery, they have broken their side of the covenant. The punishment for adultery is death. It`s interesting that the marriage covenant is either broken by the death of one spouse or if broken by one spouse committing adultery which requires the death of the offender. This is a convent of God unto death. Since we are not enforcing God`s laws these days then we are leaving the innocent partner in a dilemma since he or she cannot remarry until their adulterous spouse dies. Justice requires their death and thus the curse of death is upon them.

This is, if you will, the spiritual law of Marriage. We have been given the physical Laws; gravity, etc., the Ten Commandments; which are called the moral laws, and the relational laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The relational laws apply to God and human relationships. They were put in place by our Creator to show us how we were designed to relate to one another. For example, `The Law of Love`, states that we are to `love the Lord our God with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our strength, and love our neighbor as our self`. Later this law is clarified by Yeshua; `greater love has no man than to lay his life down for a friend`. This kind of love is the foundation of marriage. This only comes from Yahweh, by loving Him and then receiving His love for our spouse and children. The passage that says `if we do not love our brother who we can see then how can we love the Lord who we cannot see`; is part of the same Law of Love. This especially applies to the command to husbands to love their wives as Yeshua loves the church and the wife is to submit to and respect her husband.

These laws apply to all humans, believers and non-believers, just like the law of gravity. You can deny that it exists, or say that it does not apply to you, however, no human is above the Law, and even the Lord Himself was not. Therefore the marriage covenant applies to all man and woman unions. The man and woman leave their parents, have sex and are joined together until death by Yahweh. This cannot happen for homosexuals. There is no sanctioned union and God does not join them together because they are not opposite sexes. Furthermore, if there is union outside of leaving their parents to form a new family then this by Yahweh`s definition is fornication. The act of sex does not define marriage. It is man`s way of sealing the covenant promise. Just because two fornicate with each other, does not make them married, and there is no leaving parents for the purpose of forming a new family until death. In this case, the provision that the Lord makes is that they are obligated to make the covenant with each other unless one of them is already married or promised in marriage. If this is the case then it is no longer fornication, but adultery.

Yahweh is very serious about His covenants. When the Lord participates in a covenant between Himself and humans, He always holds the humans to the covenant and He is forever faithful to uphold His side of the covenant. Of course He does not force humans to marry, however if we choose to marry there is only one covenant of marriage, His, on His terms no matter what vows you may make. Whatever promises you do make to each other, He will hold you accountable for them because you made them before your Creator with another one of His creatures. Each creature belongs to their Creator, Yahweh, thus each creature must give an account to his/her Creator for all of his/her actions. Every human ever created has every word, every action and every motive for those actions recorded in Heaven by Yahweh`s design. Each word, motive and deed is measured against Yahweh`s Love, Righteousness, Law and every applicable human agreement. If any of the words, motives and deeds breaks them, then we are accounted as Law breakers or covenant breakers and the curse of death is upon us unless we repent and accept His Son, Yeshua, as our God and Master. Father then considers us righteous because of Yeshua`s (Jesus) righteousness and leaves us in Yeshua`s hands until He chooses to end our life on the earth (life and death are in His hands). Yeshua`s job is to make us righteousness and loving like Himself and to lead us to do the same or greater works that He did while on earth. If we co-operate with Him as our Master, we begin to see Yeshua formed in us and we are thus being saved. If we continue to follow and obey Him we will be saved in the end. The Law required that we do the works of the Law by our own power and to sacrifice animals to cover our sins. Grace requires us to do the works of the Spirit (which will fulfill the Law) by the power of the Holy Spirit within us. Both covenants require righteous, one by our efforts and the other by the effort of the Holy Spirit within us, living through us.

Marriage is second only to our relationship with Yahweh and His Son, Yeshua. Yahweh has chosen marriage to be the earthly model of the Church`s relationship with Yeshua (Eph 5:24-33). Marriage is more about learning how give and receive Yahweh`s Love than about living happily ever after. We have a life time on earth to prepare to Love and honor our Bridegroom in heaven for eternity. If we divorce we have broken the sacred covenant at the expense of our spouses, our children and our Bridegroom. IF we remarry before the death of our spouse, we have committed adultery (Mat 19:9, Mark 10:11) and as a result have come under the curse of death. We also risk being an enemy of God by being a friend of the world (James 4:4). These passages are very clear and the very words of Yeshua. Just because we have not enforced Biblical Law in this country does not mean that Yahweh just gives a wink and a nod at sin. He is a righteous and just God. We have made our “new” spouse an adulterer as well putting them under the same curse. If we remain single there is still the hope of reconciliation. However, once we remarry there is no repentance for the broken covenant. We have entered into another covenant of equal weight, thus we cannot return to the first covenant without breaking the second covenant. We can of course ask Yahweh, for forgiveness but we cannot provide restitution, that is returning to the wife of our youth, which is required in true repentance, without breaking the marriage covenant again. This sin cripples all of our relationships and disqualifies us for leadership in His Church. This is why Paul in Timothy wrote that an elder needs to be the husband of one wife and to have raised his children in the Lord, that is, to genuinely respect their parents. This is an indication that he and his wife have Yahweh`s blessing, for how can a couple represent the Kingdom of God righteously and truthfully if they are living under His curse? If we have divorced, then we are still joined to our original spouse, because God joined us together and man cannot break that union, therefore Yahweh will not join us with our `new` spouse. This is true whether or not we are believers. The result is that our martial relationship cannot possibly be as fulfilling as Yahweh intended, because He cannot bless it, but in fact has cursed it.

The children of this marriage cannot be raised and nurtured as Yahweh intended because they are the children of adultery without the blessing of the Lord. They will never have the Godly example of parents that Yahweh intended. The result is that they often end up divorcing their mates in their lives. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children up to the forth generation so this divorce/ adultery sin propagates through the next few generations. Usually it gets worse and worse unless one of the children repents and become a believer. Yeshua then begins the process of breaking the generational sins and restoring the sacredness of marriage for that child. The believing child usually ends up repenting for their ancestor`s adultery and covenant breaking and then can enter into a God blessed marriage.

Finding the right mate:

This is no trivial task in today`s society. However, for a believer, it is critical. The world`s way is dating, shacking up etc. Dating is essentially finding a member of the opposite sex and spending time with them to see if you like them and they like you and then maybe `falling in love`, then playing house and maybe getting married if you happen to get pregnant. Of course if it does not work out at any stage you simply call it off and go your separate ways, no harm done. This is kind of like practice divorce. This was certainly not the way it was done in the Lord`s time. Considering that we are now over the 50% divorce rate, we can safely say that the world`s method does not lead to loving, lasting, divorce free marriages. When you look at the divorce rate in the Church and it is no different than that in the world, we can safely say that the way marriages are formed in the Church is not working either. So what is missing?

Let`s start with the foundations. First of all what is Yahweh`s purpose for marriage? Genesis states the Lord`s command to Adam and Eve; take dominion and be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Taking dominion need a little explanation. It is a military term, meaning to conquer. So who or what are we to conquer? Certainly not each other. Yahweh`s purpose is for us to conquer sin and Satan as a team in and through our marriage using the power of Love. How is this accomplished? This happens by coming into relationship with our creator, receiving and giving His love and learning of Him and obeying His instructions. We have been created, individually to be His sons and daughters, to carry out His will on this earth in our life time. We each have been given the abilities and talents that we will need to do this task. We each have also been given a vacuum in our soul that is to be filled with love, His love. We begin to experience the filling of this vacuum when we are born again, and continue to experience it as we walk and commune with Him.

He has chosen a way for His love and authority to flow onto the earth, and into our souls. Yahweh is the head of Yeshua, Yeshua is the head of every man and every man is the head of his wife (and children). As we read the new Testament gospels we often hear Yeshua say that the Father loves Him and that He and the Father are one. He said that He only did what He saw His father do and that to do His Father`s will was His food and drink (that which kept Him alive). He also stated that He operated by His Father`s authority. So here we see that everything that Yeshua needed came from His Father. So it is for men, everything that men need (specifically authority over sin and Satan and Love) comes from their Head, Yeshua, and everything that women need come from their head Yeshua, through their husbands, and everything that our children need come from Yeshua through their father and mother. All coming from the Father (who provides for all of our needs from His riches in glory), through the channel of Yeshua, husbands (fathers) and mothers. This authority line places the children safely under the parent`s authority (i.e. anointing and protection), women safely under either their father`s or husband`s authority, and men safely under Yeshua`s authority. If we allow ourselves to come under any other man (or women) we are sacrificing the anointing, protection and Love that Yahweh has provided for us.

Yahweh has also provided a means for the anointing, authority and Love to be transferred. A young woman is given by her father to her husband to be, at the direction of Yeshua through her father. This assumes that the young woman is the one Yahweh has selected to marry the young man. Yahweh will reveal it to Yeshua who in turn reveals it to the father, mother, and son/daughter assuming that everyone is seeking Father`s direction and the authority line is established and working. Of course in practice not everyone receives the revelation in that order. However, everyone should receive the revelation before the wedding proceeds. The Lord will be speaking to everyone in the line as well. This provides the safe guard for the young man/woman to have selected the correct mate. The Lord gives grace for the humble. If the young couple in this authority structure have intentionally removed themselves from it then they may be walking in rebellion from Yahweh and they may lose the benefit of Yahweh`s wisdom through their parents. The Lord resists the proud.

Yahweh has chosen to bless the children through their fathers. Usually the Lord will direct the father and mother concerning the spouses that He has chosen for their children. Many times the parents have been praying for the right spouses even before the child is born. This explains the examples in the Old Testament of the father`s selecting the spouses for their sons. I believe that this is one of the main reasons that the divorce rate is so high since most children today do not ask their fathers for Yahweh`s decision for their life`s mate. They do not honor their parents who are anointed for their benefit. They instead ask their friends who are not necessarily anointed. Personally I recommend that someone (preferably the father) ask the Lord for a sign for the couple so that when the marriage comes under attack by Satan (it always happens) the couple will know that they were Yahweh`s choice for each other, which will help them to endure the attack.

Other causes of divorces are these common misconceptions:

1) Physical attractiveness and sex appeal will make a good marriage.

2) The perfect mate (or soul mate) will make you happy.

3) You can change (or fix) your mate.

4) Getting to marriage is the hard part, it is easier after wards.

5) Having children will fix a difficult marriage.

6) If you made a mistake the first time you can fix it the second time around.

Each of these are lies promoted by the world coming from Lucifer. They are designed to deceive us and destroy our marriages. The physical attractiveness/sex appeal lie is easy to see through. Everyone has the equipment to reproduce, however not everyone has the capacity to truly love another self sacrificially. Lust is a poor substitute for love and age has a way of degrading our physical attractiveness.

Happiness is a result of our surroundings according to the world. The more expectations that we have the less happy we are. If everything goes our way then we are happy if not we are sad or even angry. Even the best spouse will not be with us every minute of every day to meet our every whim. The world`s idea of happiness is an illusion for self centered people. Many people enter into marriage chasing the illusion of ever after happiness and are sadly disappointed. Yeshua`s answer is joy from the Holy Spirit. The word happy is found in the New Testament 6 times. Four of those times is used in the context of persecution such as: 1 Pet 3:14 But and if you suffer for righteousness` sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; The other two are related to obedience to the Lord. There is no mention of happiness referring to marriage.

Changing our boy/ girl friend or mate never works. The problem lies with us and our expectations, or our idea of what our perfect spouse should be like. Never mind that we are not their ideal and probably never will be, we expect them to be ours. So rather than asking the Lord to change us into His image and change our desires into His desires; we pray, bribe and nag them to conform to our image. Healthy relationships cannot survive this for very long.

If we can just get married then we`ll live happily ever after as the Hollywood lie says. Marriage is not the end, it is just the beginning of a new life style that results in our growing up to maturity. Yahweh`s goal is for us to die to the self life and embrace living by His Spirit. That`s what marriage is designed for, to kill us so that He may live through us so that we can love one another. If you carefully roll up your toothpaste tube your mate will give it a good squeeze, in the middle. If you like to sleep in a nice warm bed your mate will throw off the covers because they are sweating. You like to be on time, your mate does not know what a clock is. This teaches you to love one another and ultimately to love Yeshua, for how can you love someone you cannot see if you cannot love someone you can. The question is; are you lovingly married not are you happily married.

Another common mistake is the idea that having children will bring us together or fix our problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. A baby is completely helpless and demanding. They demand attention, food, diaper changing and sometimes just time. If your relationship with your spouse was difficult before then it will not get better when a child who has nothing to offer enters the picture. Some think that a child will love them. A child is not born with love in their heart. Any love that they experience and becomes their own comes from their parents. If the parent are not loving one another they will not be loving their child nor will their child be loving them. Children are a blank slate that loving, stable parents get to write upon. This is the way Yahweh has chosen to bring more humans into the world, through Godly, loving parents pouring His love out and into their children. Parents are to be a reflection of Yahweh to their children so that they, their children will know Him and His nature.

The idea that we can try again was addressed above and is not an option from Yahweh`s perspective.

The Wedding:

A lot of emphasis is put on the wedding ceremony in today`s society. If as much time and money were put into preparations for the marriage as for the wedding, there would probably be far fewer divorces. All that is absolutely necessary for the wedding ceremony is the bride and groom, their fathers and the Lord. The rest in attendance are to join in on the celebration but are not necessary for the establishing of the covenant.

The wedding today is somewhat like interviewing for your first job, let`s say an engineer. You are interviewing for the job so you go all out, new suit and tie, new car, take the boss out to a fancy restaurant, etc. but if you have not spent the past four years successfully completing a college degree in that particular engineering field you and your job will be quickly parted.

What preparations have you made for your marriage? Have you learned to love selflessly? Have you learned to see thing from the other person perspective? Are you bringing a large debt into the marriage? Are you co-dependent? Can you put another person before yourself, consistently? Are you prepared to leave your parents and form a new household? Are you prepared to leave you friends of the opposite sex for your mate? Are you prepared to start over financially? Can you pray together with your mate as needed? Can you wait upon your mate to make a decision? Do you know how to end a fight properly? Do you know how to avoid a fight and have a discussion instead? Do you understand the contraception/ abortion issues? Have you discussed the different values you have with you mate and talked about how to resolve them? Do you know how to build up your mate; emotionally, spiritually? These are a few of the preparations that you should have started before the wedding. Matched may be made in Heaven but the hard work is done here on earth.

The bottom line is that you and your mate have different values. These were taught to you by your parents, religious leaders, and school teachers and you believe that they are correct and true. I can guarantee that they are not all God`s values! I can also guarantee that they will clash with your mate`s values. So what are you going to do about it? How are you two going to handle those clashes? The only true solution is for both of you to jettison the false values and embrace God`s values. This assumes that you can even recognize the false values as false and can hear from the Lord to discover the true values. Once this has happened for a particular value and you each a have realized the truth then you must incorporate that Godly value into your being and your marriage and the two of you will line up with Yeshua`s life and new life will flow into your marriage. Much of marriage is this process repeated over and over until the two of you become more and more like your Savior. Yeshua`s plan for you is to remove all of the false and fill you with truth and love and marriage is the best tool He has for this to happen. If you cannot love the one you can see how can you love Him who you cannot see.

Authority to Marry:

The authority to marry the couple lies with the fathers of the bride and groom. Each are under their father`s authority until they are married. The daughter is passed to her husband by her father and the son is passed to the Lord by his father, thus the authority line is never disrupted. The fathers have the Yahweh`s authority to declare their children married. No one else has, neither another man nor the state unless the father delegates it to them. Another man (pastor, elder etc.) nor the state can simply take the authority to marry unless given to them by the fathers.

Divorce:

We live in a society in which Yahweh`s Love and Law are not only neglected but belittled and even mocked. This attitude is the direct result of man`s breaking of his covenants with Yahweh and turning to a life of pleasing himself, PRIDE. This attitude of neglecting the seriousness of Yahweh`s marriage covenant has taken root and matured in the church, to the point that the divorce rate in the church is as high as in the world. This is appalling hypocrisy. This is why the blessing of God and the Spirit of God has left the church. If a `Christian` man and woman cannot dedicate themselves to each other for a lifetime, they are not able to dedicate themselves to their Bridegroom, Yeshua for eternity!!! If they cannot love one another they cannot Love Yeshua.

So what to do? If you are a `church` leader and divorced and remarried or have committed adultery, resign, for you will never have Yahweh`s blessing to be an elder/ leader!! Ask Him and your congregation, publicly for forgiveness for presuming to be a qualified elder even though you are an adulterer. Return all of the money that you received from them sevenfold from the time you committed adultery, for you have also committed the sin of theft! Earnestly ask Yahweh with humility, prayer and fasting, what else you need to do for restoration. Remember He holds leaders to a higher standard than the rest and the above requirements were for all the people, He will most likely require more of you for falsely and presumptuously claiming His blessing as a leader. If you did not preach and teach against divorce and adultery from the pulpit then you need to ask the congregation`s forgiveness for misleading them and you need to go to each couple that divorced and remarried without your objections and seek their forgiveness for your not warning them.

If you have divorced and remarried, fall on your face and plead with the King of Kings for mercy, that He may grant you what you`ve forfeited, His blessing upon your family. Pray earnestly that He would break the generational curse upon your children and grandchildren and reap the evil seeds that you have sown. If your parents started it, forgive them and ask Him for authority to break the generational curse of covenant breaking and adultery. Ask Him and your spouse for forgiveness for making your spouse an adulterer. Ask Him and your children for forgiveness for making them illegitimate, the children of an adulterous relationship.

Do not divorce again, for you will just breaking another covenant. Perhaps, if Yahweh determines that your heart is right, He will grant you His blessing. Remember King David`s heart was right when he begged for mercy but Yahweh still took the child of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba.

If you are divorced and your spouse was the one that committed adultery by remarrying then earnestly ask the Father for justice so that your covenant can be finished and you will be free to remarry. Or you can ask the Lord to be reunited with your spouse if he or she has not remarried.

If you are considering divorce, do not, unless your spouse has committed adultery. If so then seriously and prayerfully consider forgiveness and restoration, for this is the Lord`s way, the way of Love. There is no relationship that the Lord cannot restore IF WE ARE WILLING TO REPENT, FORGIVE AND BE CHANGED. Ask the Lord in prayer and fasting for His love for your spouse to be formed in you. His love will transform you and your marriage.

If you do divorce then do not remarry until your spouse dies, releasing you from your covenant. It is better to live the rest of your life singly than to be an adulterer and be responsible for another person`s adultery. Adulterers cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Remember the Lord HATES divorce! You want to walk in the Lord`s love, not experience His hate. We are to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. This is a critical issue in our relationship with the one Who is saving us, the one Who holds our lives in the balance.

The Lord has designed marriage to be built upon the foundation of Love, His divine, supernatural agape Love, which is selfless and sacrificial. The walls of faithfulness unto death and obedience to Yeshua are thick and tall, strong enough to stop any attack that Lucifer can muster against the marriage. Within those walls and upon this foundation is the Love and joy of our Creator shared by the married couple and their children, who can be raised in safety to know and experience the love of God. There is no greater experience on the face of the earth than a Loving couple, empowered by the Love of Yahweh through the Holy Spirit to demonstrate His Kingdom to each other on this earth for all to see.

References:

Genesis 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Mark 10:2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. 3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. 11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12 And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.

Matthew 5:31

It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: 32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Matthew 19:7

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. 10 His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. 11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

Mark 10:3

And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 10:4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.

James 4:4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

1 Cor 6:16 What know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

Ephesians 5:24-33 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

John 4:16 Yeshua saith unto her, Go, call your husband, and come hither. 17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Yeshua said unto her, you hast well said, I have no husband: 18 For you hast had five husbands; and he whom you now hast is not your husband: in that saidst you truly.

Malachi 2:14 Yet you say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between you and the wife of thy youth, against whom you hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. 15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.