when people look at the Bible and they see cases of polygamy they're not distinguishing between what God commands from the history of how he rule of how he treated his people and how his people treated him and his people were not faithful God is the one who designs marriage God is the one who invents marriage marriage is not something invented by humans God is the one who gives the first woman to the first man God is the one who presides over that marriage ceremony and then when Moses tells us this he makes a comment there
for a man a men shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife in the singular and the two shall be one flesh so that's God's standard that's what the Bible is teaching we should distinguish that from the Bible as a divine history of God's relationships with his people these relationships are called covenants a covenant is like a marriage where two where two parties make a commitment to be devoted to each other to be loyal to be faithful we see that God has creates that kind of a relationship without a man Eve but
they are disloyal they do not believe his word they do not obey Him and they plunge humanity into chaos and evil God makes a new start with Noah and then that also goes down the tubes God makes a new start with Abraham and his family then God makes a covenant with Israel the family of Abraham and the whole history of the Old Testament is a history of how human partners are unfaithful human partners are disloyal they do not believe in the word of it would they do not believe what God says they do not obey
his royal rule and King and they rebel and they want to establish what is right and wrong for themselves and so in that history we see a constant violation of the original standard and so that's what we're seeing we see that with Abraham God promises him a child he doesn't he doesn't trust God he doesn't wait for God he tries to do it on his own strength and he has a relationship with his with Sarah's female servant Jacob also has two wives is that a wonderful relationship no it's not a wonderful relationship the Bible is
showing that this brings in all kinds of trouble in the book of Judges it tells us that these judges had many wives why because they were aspiring to be king so most people in the ancient Near East only had one wife only Kings could afford to have many wives so when you read the Bible the Bible is not promoting polygamy it's showing us that only royal figures had had many wives and it's also showing us that this is not ideal that this caused all kinds of difficulty and hardship and trouble and and the fighting among
the wives and and the and it's not a satisfactory relationship we see that in the case of David Nathan the Prophet came to him and spoke to him and gave up a parable a parable about a guy who had many sheep and a poor man who had only one sheep and when someone came and he had to show hospitality instead of slaughtering one of his many sheep he stole the one sheep that this poor man had and all that that is saying is you you have many wives and still you're not satisfied so it shows
us that having many wives is not is not a satisfactory relationship you have many wives and you're not satisfied and you know you've got you know you you go you have to go and steal the one woman that this one person has we see that in the case of Solomon Solomon is a tragic figure because he did not practice what he preached so you have the wisdom of Solomon in what he wrote but we don't see the wisdom of Solomon in the way he lived he disregarded his own wise principles he multiplied wives which is
expressly forbidden for Kings in Deuteronomy 17 the king is not to multiply wives not to multiply gold not to multiply horses because who is a king gonna marry he's gonna marry a princess from another country and it's gonna create a political alliance and they're gonna trust in that alliance and they're not gonna trust in the Lord he's not to multiply horses because he's not to rely on chariots and military hardware he's not to multiply multiply gold because he's not to trust in his ability to pay other Kings to deliver him he's to put his trust
in Yahweh so what the history the history of the Bible shows even though these were men of faith they're not men of morality not everything they did was moral if you look at the New Testament and look at what Jesus says in the New Testament and look at what the Apostles say they never hold up anyone from the Old Testament as a moral example they hold them up as examples of faith but not as examples of morality so there's there's a very clear difference between what God commands and instructs us to do in marriage and
how his people actually behaved in the in there in the history that's recorded for us just because these things happened in the Old Testament we have to listen to what the narrator is saying the narrator is not saying this is a good thing he's showing that it's a bad thing it creates all kinds of problems and it doesn't create a satisfactory way to live because it's abandoning the creation standard thanks for watching honest answers don't forget to subscribe [Music] you
