 Welcome to Hard Questions where we gather pastors together to take on your tough questions and answer them right from the Bible. I'm Tom Hollis, the moderator and today our panelists include Dr. Ian Walglaze, Bethany Baptist Church in Pittsburgh. Pastor Buck Schaefer, Grace Life Church Monroeville in the North Hills. Pete Giacalone, South Hills Assembly Guide Church, Bethel Park, P.A. Janthony Gilbert, pastor of another level ministries in Mount Washington. Pastor, thank you for being with us today's topics, sex, marriage, and Solomon's many wives. We're going to get right after it here. Sometimes the biggest decision we have before we go on the air here is who's going to take the question. Who's going to take this question? Who's going to take that question? Bill, it's fallen to you to take this first question. What does it mean to be one flesh in marriage? Well, you know, it's interesting that three times in the word, Genesis and in Matthew and in Ephesians, it says, therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. Now, somebody said, as Jesus said, verily, you need to listen to that. If he said verily, verily, you need to listen. But he said this three times in the Bible. So, you know, we need to heed. So, what does that mean? You know, it says, therefore shall a man leave his father and mother. So, first of all, there's the turning away from relationships that were the most significant and most important to you. And then it says to cleave. And that word cleave actually means like superglue together. And then it says the weave that you become intertwined. And I believe that in the intertwining, the one flesh, it means several things. You know, become one sexually, become one emotionally. You know, become one financially, socially. So, I think that, you know, the one flesh means that your lives are intertwined with each other. And that's why divorce is so devastating. Because if you've been glued together and become one flesh, that when you tear them apart, you know, there's a song that says, every time I go, I take a piece of me with you, you know. And I think that that's what's happening, that one flesh, the weaving of the sexually, the emotionally, the socially. And then you tear it apart, you know, apart will go with the other person, you know, when they do that. So, I believe that's what that one flesh means. Yeah, you know, that's a great explanation. And I just want to ask, maybe Pastor Jay, that whole thing of when people are knit together like that sexually, that also argues for why premarital sex is a problem, because there's those same kind of ragged edges when people pull apart, when they're not together. Oh, without a doubt. I mean, there's a connection here. I mean, as all being married here, you know, they talk about, what is it, breakup to makeup. You know, Marvin Gaye sang a song called Sexual Healing. There's something that happens when you come together, even in a marital union. When you come together, matter of fact, I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but I would talk and I do premarital counseling. I've married people that were sleeping together but chose to stop and then waited. And then I asked them, how was it? Now, I don't want no details, but like, what did they feel inside when they came together? Every single time they said there was a purity about it that I had never experienced before. So there's something supernatural that happens. Even if you're not saved, there's still something that's supernatural that happens when you come together with that person. Soul ties. All those things happen because God said, it's one flesh. And that's why I think he mentioned it so many times saying, hey, y'all might think it's just fun and games to get together and do your thing and get your swerve on as they say back in the day, but that's not what it's about. It's about coming together and becoming that one flesh. And that happens every time you're physically intimate. Yeah, fuck. No, I agree with Bill and everything that's said. You know, Malachi says in the Message Bible, I love it. I hate the dismembering of the one flesh union. That's like it tears your part. It tears your kids apart. And that's where a lot of fences open up and a lot of hurts and pains where the devil destroys families, comes to kill, still in destroy. But I love it that when you're one flesh, God sees you as one. Your husband and wife, you are one. And really the goal is to be baptized and be one with him, one with Christ. So one flesh, very important. And that union is really a symbol of our relationship with Christ. And Peter, I want to get into the second question because this just flows right into this. It does. And the second question is this. What does the Bible say about sex before marriage? And specific scriptures as well. They did ask Ephesians 5, 3-5. It says, But fornication in all cleanliness and covetousness, let it not even be named among you as fitting for the saints. Now again, we have to distinguish between the nonbeliever and the believer. But for those who are born again and as a pastor, I'm seeing a lot of this these last two decades that we have allowed the lifestyle of the nonbeliever to enter into the believer's life where believers before marriage are living together. It says, Nor foolish talking nor chorus jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks for this you know that here we go. No fornicator, unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. So in other words, are we really giving full credence to the Word of God? Also in 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 19, flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God and you are not your own. 1 Thessalonians, now stop here, it says this is the will of God, your sanctification that you should abstain from sexual immorality that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor. So we're told from the very gikko, yes, the passion, we're going to get later on to talk about Solomon, the passion is there. You know, when I fell in love with Elaine, we made a vow together that our honeymoon night would be our honeymoon night and our honeymoon night was our honeymoon night. I've had people say, oh, come on, do you expect us to believe that? I said, I don't care if you believe it or not, I can stand before God and know that nothing happened and I'm grateful. Now, does that mean that nothing happened in my life before Elaine? No, unfortunately. And I regret that. I know that's under the blood. And I did not want that sin to be part of our relationship. And I know Doc has some quotes about those who do live in sin. No, to me the most, and I appreciate those verses that Pete brought out, but to me the most powerful verse, and when we look at fornication, that sex outside of marriage, and they're asking specifically, is Hebrews 13 for marriage is honorable and all, and the bed is undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. So, you know, God is saying that marriage is the way to go. Marriage is my plan. Marriage is the, you know, you can enjoy yourself. You can knock yourself out sexually within the marriage boundaries, right? But if you step outside of that, you're a fornicator or adulterer and God will judge you. That's the glazes telling us to knock ourselves out sexually here. In marriage, of course. In marriage. Well, let me say real quickly. You guys have done well covering that. The reason why too, I believe fornication is bad, especially if you're dating, it robs you of developing the foundation in the relationship. If the sex is good, you don't need to get to know the person. And you can be so caught up in the intimacy of the physical part of it that you forget to talk about what's really important. That soul connect that needs to happen. Are we compatible? Do we see things eye to eye? So if the sex is good and let's just be real, then what happens in a relationship when you're dating somebody, you're like, oh, I don't really matter. Oh, I'm just so in love. They're just so beautiful. They're just so wonderful. And then you decide to get married. You put the cart in front of the horse. You are not even compatible. And then when that sex gets old, you don't have the ability to have a sustaining, lasting relationship. But listen to the way it says it in the Amplified. It says, That's pretty clear. I can just picture people watching saying, oh, those Bible thumpers. No, it's not the idea of being a Bible thumper. It's the idea of being a watchguard saying, be careful. This will take you down the wrong road. This will take you down to a path of destruction, even to those who are believers. That's right. You mentioned counseling. I know someone who counsel couples and he said, you know, people, what do they say in the world? Well, you have to experience this. Try it out. Try it out. Or work. He said, every time it caused hardness. Yes. Whereas those that did not, there was an openness. There was a softness. Whereas the experience, so to speak, caused a hardness and difficulty in that relationship. And real quick, if the car's really, really valuable, like a Bentley, you don't test drive Bentley's. No. You buy them. You can't even touch them when you go on the lot. Don't touch the Bentley, everybody. Come on, somebody. If you're a used car, another story. All right, well. Take it out on the bed. Coming up in 60 seconds, we ask, why was Solomon considered a golly man when he had so many wives? We'll be right back. Well, thank you for coming back to hard questions. We've been talking about sex, marriage, all those things. Pastor Jay, I want to get your thoughts and your biblical perspective on what does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage? And how is that different from what the world says? There's a lot to that. So I'm going to be kind of quick and share the wealth here. Well, you know, the Bible, I believe there's three major reasons why you can get a divorce biblically. Adultery, abuse, and abandonment. And the scriptures that I say about, there's one with Jesus talked about how except for adultery or fornication, that person is not allowed to get a divorce. And then also in 1 Corinthians 7, it talks about if the unbeliever chooses to depart and they choose to abandon you, then that's another reason. Then I think the abuse part for me is this. It's not the fact that if anybody ever made a mistake, can they be? But if someone's constantly abusing somebody, then I believe this is my personal take on it. You apply the Matthew 18 principle to it. Because then you got to wonder if they're even a believer. And then if you choose to back away, most of the time they're going to be choosing to leave and go their way as well. And most of the time, that's when you're going to see a divorce happen with that as well. Now it's not any one of those three though. Let me say this. You don't have to leave. You never have to leave. But I believe the Bible gives us an opportunity to leave. And if we leave under those bad grounds, the Bible forbids that we're not allowed to remarry. Okay. I think if you're a believer and you walk in 1 Corinthians, Agape, 13, God kind of love, the love of God never went to a divorce court. But on the other side of that, you have people that want to get a divorce for whatever reason. I agree with Jay. Abandonment, abuse. We've dealt with tons of couples. You know, sexual immorality. And it's just like, they keep doing it, keep doing it. Well, the Bible sets this up because Moses said, someone's heart's getting hard. And the law of Moses made a way for this. But the reality is, you know, you go to some denominations. If you get a divorce, it's like the unpardonable sin. Yeah, right, right. And you are done with ministry, done with life. And I disagree with that. I feel like you put that which is behind you. You get up on your feet. God loves you. Do the will of God. But it's not something we do every other year. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And actually that was a problem in the Roman world. I don't like getting divorced and remarried like every year. But let me ask this side of the table. What about the remarriage side of that? What are the pastor glades? You first. What do you think on that side of it, biblically? Yeah, well, I think that if you don't have a biblical reason for divorce, then you don't have a biblical reason for remarriage. And you know, that's hard. You know, and I get a lot of people, and I'm sure these other pastors do too, that call me. And they're just struggling in their marriage. And the first thing that they ask me, you know, if I get a divorce, can I get remarried? And I'm like, well, you need to deal with your marriage right now. And if you walk away from it and you don't have a biblical reason, then you don't have a biblical reason for remarriage. But I'm seeing that people are getting remarried anyway. So, you know, and then some people will tell them, okay, well, you're in adultery. And now that you've got remarried without a biblical reason. Well, you know, again, I have to go back to the blood of Christ, that even if you got remarried and you didn't have a biblical reason, that the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sin. So, you know, I would struggle to say that you're in a continual state of adultery, which is what some people will tell them. Wow. And remember, what they're leaning on here was, it was because of the hardness of your heart. You know, if dinner wasn't made properly, they handed the wife a bill of divorce. And in the Old Testament, it was ridiculous of what they were divorcing over. And you know what? It's coming to that this way today. And I really believe if couples, in their premarital, I'm speaking to the believer now, the nonbeliever, I can't help them with what I'm going to say. But for the believer, if their marriage is built on the word, before marriage, if their life is built on the word before marriage, you've got two solid believers coming together, then you've got a solid foundation. And it comes back to this word. It comes back to the word of God once again. You're talking that Bible? Can I give a scripture to that real quick? I know we need a lead right into the next question. A lot of people glance over this in Matthew chapter 1 and verse 6. I think it's very profound. It says, in Jesse Begat, David the King, and David the King Begat Solomon, the wife of Uriah. I think it's outstanding that Uriah was dead. He married Bathsheba, but the Bible, the heaven did not recognize that marriage. So even though earth might have the papers, heaven may say null and void. So I think that's something else that's important as well. Wow, that's powerful. I think it's one of the things, this is what we face, right? You alluded to it, is that we know people that are divorced and remarried, godly people, loving the Lord, and ministry, many of them. And it almost seems like, wait a minute, is that the biblical model for that? It's hard for us to figure out how to go forward with that. But we do because they're good people and they're the servant of the Lord. There's powerful pastors that in the beginning, I don't want to name their names, but powerful, powerful men that are literally reaching the entire world that their first marriage didn't win a ride. And they were the innocent party. I think that God always wants to err if there's such thing as air, but God wants to move on the side of compassion and forgiveness. Yeah, and grace. So the next one, we're going to talk about somebody who started off good and did not end so well. Why was Solomon considered the wisest man, godly man, when he had so many wives, 700 wives, 300 concubines? Tell me about this festival. Solomon started off good. He started off doing what his father wanted, but something that hit me is what Jay said. Maybe there's a little bit of that soul tie coming from a generational curse from before. But this dude was wise. This dude was smart. This dude had wisdom. He asked God for wisdom. So I'm having a struggle with one wife. So seven wives would be an issue. But 700 and then 300 concubines, I don't know what a man would do. But that's not wisdom at all, is it? So if you realize this guy writes proverbs, this guy writes song of Solomon about love and marriage and a spouse and how to treat her. But I think what happened if you study the scriptures, in the end, I think those wives turned his heart away from God. And if you notice, he was starting to do sacrifices for other gods. And the gods of his wives that had idols, I think he was probably just like, okay, go sacrifice the molek. And the Bible says he opened himself up to all this stuff. And I really believe that if you get the end of Ecclesiastes, he starts to try to correct that. And he says, it's all vanity and chasing of the wind. A man can have this and I did. A man can have that and I did. But this is all vanity, vanity. So I think he went out of the confines of what God wanted and God will let you do that. If you choose that, God will let you do that. But it did cost him and there was great consequences. And he walked away, Pastor Bill. Well, I heard somebody saying, I don't know how true it is, but I think there's some validity to it, is that Solomon wrote the song of Solomon as a youth. He wrote proverbs in his middle age and then he wrote Ecclesiastes in his elderly years. It seems like even though he let these women turn his heart away from God, that somewhere along the line, again, as Buck said, he realized what he did was wrong. So we can't use Solomon as a justification. As I heard somebody say, he has 700 wives and 300 porcupines. I was just thinking, if he had dinner with the one, it'd take him three and a half years to get back around. Get that out of your mind. But you know, when you think about it, you know, he learned. I believe he learned his lesson as to where he went wrong. And I think if you read Ecclesiastes, if he had the chance to do it again, maybe he might make a different decision. And you know, it goes back to, again, it goes back to the power of sexual sin. He who commits that sin, sins against his body, you become whatever you yield yourself serving to, that's whom you will be slaved to. And that's the reason why if there's ever a day that we as born-again believers need to safeguard our mind, of course, through the eye-gate, hearing-gate, we need to, there's an onslaught war like never before. And if a wise man like Solomon could be, yes, we need to realize that. Real quick, I think it also shows us too that wisdom was given to him as a gift. And even though he was gifted with wisdom, his character still could have been faulty. So you can operate in a strong gifting and have a charisma, but still have lacking character. And I think God wants us to realize, no matter how gifted you are, there's still the part of you that's the humanity that we have to deal with as well. That's right, that's right. So those 700 wives, everybody, that's not gonna work out well. No porcupines either. All right, let's get to the task of how we answered a previous question. Stay tuned. Well, while we enjoy receiving your questions on Hard Questions Hotline, we also appreciate comments and we received this comment. Let's take a listen. Hello. This evening, while listening to Hard Questions, I don't think I heard wrong, but one of the questions was where they could find that it's wrong to have sex before marriage in the Bible. And the answer that was given was really surprising that there really wasn't such a place. Now, I use the NIV version, have been using it for decades, and I know it's very clear, Lee answered in Ephesians 5, chapter 5 verse 3, or 1st Thessalonians, chapter 4 verses 3 to 5. It couldn't be clearer there. Galatians 5, 19 and 24 are the verses there. And 1st Corinthians 5, the first verse. I hope I did misunderstand the question because it really did seem like that was the answer that they were looking for. Thank you. Bye. Well, first of all, I congratulate you on looking up the verses of being biblical in your comment. I really wrestled with this because I don't think we would ever say that there's nowhere in the Bible that says sex outside of marriage is wrong. There certainly is. Pastor Jay, you had a comment about this. Yeah, I was thinking that there are times we've discussed that and we've mentioned about how the battle between, like someone says, it's living together wrong. They call it shacking up, living together a man and a woman. Well, that in itself is not necessarily a sin. Now, you could go to the case of avoid the appearance of evil. We get that, but it's not sexual sin to live in the same house. Sexual sin. And I'm wondering if that's where this individual took that stance. I'm with you. I don't think anyone's ever... Although almost 100% of people that are living together are sexual activity going on as well. And I totally... And I wouldn't condone that. I just wonder when we are addressing that if that's where they took that and went with it. But I know even with what you said, I don't think anybody's ever taken a stance that that's not biblical. And I know that as pastors all of us have run into it because I remember a specific situation where I was counseling a couple in premarital counseling and they were living together and they actually had, like, three kids and they were like 12 years old. But I did recommend to them that they separate and sleep in separate bedrooms. And they came back to the next session and the lady was upset with me. She said I can't believe he moved out of the bedroom. And he moved out of the bedroom and so they were in the same house but they had so much connected and so many things hide together that they couldn't actually move out so they moved in separate bedrooms. And I remember the lady told me she said, Pastor Blaze, she said when you marry us, she said we're not coming straight to the reception. That we're going to stop, stop at the house. Oh my goodness. And so I married them and the day came and everybody was at the reception and they didn't show up, man. And I said to myself, I know I wouldn't stop them. Well, Pete, how about some verses of the news show? Now you want to drag me in. Now you want to drag me in. Get us out of here, Pete. How about some verses? Well, again, I think the scriptures she quoted and the scriptures we quoted just a little while ago it comes back to are we honoring God? Amen. Am I honoring God with my body? Are you honoring God with your body? Because, again, if we I'm going to thump it again back to the principles of the Word of God and she read all the correct scriptures and I know where Jay is coming as a pastor that there may be some situations where a couple should live together. Again, all of us would say don't even go there. And there's no way I know you Jay well enough. There's no way that you're promoting intimacy. There's a lot of variables involved. Well, that's where our society is. I mean, I had someone call on the prayer line when I was answering here one time and said they wanted all this healing in their relationship and they were living together and I said, well, you know, God's not going to bless that. And she said, wait, you mean I have to move? I can't live together. And I said, well, yeah. And she hung up on me. In this world we live in in this age, the spirit of this age in our culture, they're all living together. So I think it's very careful that we come about this because once I bring the truth to people that want to get married and they address that truth in their hearts, they do, they separate, they move out. I make the recommendation. But that's where faith begins where the will of God is known. Once you know the will of God and obey that, things turn for the good. Absolutely. That's a good commentary and sorry for the confusion. If there was any, we certainly believe God wants that protected environment for that closeness, for that relationship, for that to be protected. Well, we'd like to end the program with the Scripture and today we go to Romans where it says be devoted to one another and love, honor one another above yourselves. We hope that you've enjoyed today's program and we want to hear from you. Email us your questions at hardquestionsatctvn.org or call into our hotline at 412-349-4326.