“Shacking Up” With God

Special Teaching — Shacking Up with God

Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and another in the series of special teachings — one I’m entitling “Shacking Up with God.” I admit it’s a very strange title, but I hope that by the time we get to the end of this teaching you’ll understand what this means and you’ll remember it.

Anyways, this teaching came out of a YouTube video I stumbled across one day where an Evangelical theologian — we’ll call him Preacher A — was taking issue with another preacher, who we’ll refer to as Preacher B. Now Preacher B was doing a sermon and in the sermon he started quoting some principles and some laws, saying these are things that we as believers must do. Preacher A did not like this because he thought this was legalistic and this was law, and we’re not under the law — the law is done away with. And so Preacher A is condemning Preacher B’s sermon because there was law involved, and as everyone should know, we are not under the law anymore. We are under grace and everything should be done through love.

Well, I grew up on sermons like this. And I was driving — I had a rather long drive ahead of me — and I started thinking about this. And I started imagining: what if Preacher A’s daughter — and I don’t know if Preacher A has any children at all, but let’s say he has a grown daughter — and his grown daughter comes to him and says, “Father, I’ve met someone. I’ve fallen in love with him and he’s in love with me, and he’s invited me to move in with him. So Dad, I’m packing up my stuff. I am going to go and shack up with this boyfriend who I love dearly.”

I wonder how Preacher A would respond to that. Would he be okay with it because after all, it’s love? It’s grace? I rather think Preacher A — if you were to meet Preacher A and hear his teachings, I think you would agree with me — that he would not be too happy with that setup. He would insist that his daughter, if she truly loves this man and he loves her, that they need to get married and make this proper. Make it legal. There is that word — legal. Is that the root of legalism?

You understand that when you get married, law gets involved. I’ve performed many wedding ceremonies, and for each one the bride and groom had to go to the courthouse or somewhere — some bureaucracy — and they had to get an application and register for a marriage license. And this would be printed up — it’s a very legal document. And then during the ceremony the couple would make vows to one another. And in a Jewish wedding ceremony, these vows and these stipulations and promises and rules and obligations of the couple to one another are written out in a document called a ketubah (כְּתוּבָּה). And this is signed by the bride, by the groom, before the wedding. It’s signed by their two witnesses. And then it’s signed by me. And then it is read in the presence of all those who are attending the wedding ceremony. So there are rules, there are stipulations, there are vows, there are laws, there are requirements that each is promising to give to the other.

And then when the ceremony is over, I sign the marriage license and I have to mail it in to the county seat — the courthouse — so it’s put on register there, put on file, so that they are legally married. And anyone who’s ever been through a divorce — I thank God that is not something I’ve had to experience, but I have many friends who have gone through divorces — and if you go through a divorce you get even more involved with the law, with judges and with lawyers and with all kinds of things to finally dissolve this marriage.

So all of this to say: marriage takes more than love — though love is so very, very important. And so we could come up with this formula: love plus law equals marriage. Because if there’s no law involved, if there’s no marriage license, no marriage ceremony, no vows, no ketubah — it’s just shacking up. And the love may truly be there, but God is wanting something more than just someone to shack up with him. He wants a bride.

He wants a bride who loves him the way he loves her. He wants a bride who’s committed to him the way he is committed to her. He wants a bride who will lay down her life for him the way he has laid down his life for us.

The Ketubah of Sinai — Exodus 21–24

And this is why, as we read through the Torah, just this week we were reading Torah portion Mishpatim (מִשְׁפָּטִים) — which begins in Exodus chapter 21, goes up through chapter 24 — and this takes place right after the events at Mount Sinai, which in Judaism has always been seen as a wedding ceremony. Where the canopy is the cloud cover on top of the mountain, the people are gathered around, the stipulations of the marriage ketubah are read — these are the Ten Commandments and the mishpatim, the laws that follow. They are written down in a document. They are read. They are witnessed. They are agreed to. And then at the end of this, in chapter 24, there is a covenant meal. And of course the wedding ring is the Shabbat (שַׁבָּת) — this is the sign of God’s relationship with his people.

So again, the Sinai event there in Exodus has always, always been seen as a wedding ceremony between God and his people. There is love — there is very definitely love there, though the love was pretty one-sided. God loved his people, but it took them a while to love him back. But there was also a law. There was a contract. It was something that was written and agreed to. So love plus law is what makes a marriage. Because love without law is just shacking up — there is no commitment.

And I’m sure that you know people just as I do who don’t really have a commitment to God. They’re willing to accept Jesus as their personal savior. They’re willing to invite God into their life. “Let’s shack up for a while. Let’s live together. Let’s walk together for a while.” As long as the warm feelings last, they’re very happy. But when the warm feelings go, when true faith is tested, when a commitment is tested, when a person is required to do and follow through and lay down their lives for this one that they’re shacking up with — they tend to fade away.

God wants more than that. God wants a bride. And when you read the last two chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22, you see this great marriage feast. You see the New Jerusalem descending from heaven from God as a bride adorned for her husband. And these are the ones who were faithful to him, the ones who were committed to him, the ones who have chosen to obey him. There are many saved people in the world, but the bride is made up of those who are saved who are also committing back to God what he’s committed to them. They’re loving God back as he has loved them the best they can. They’re choosing to learn about their bridegroom, to find out what pleases him, and to live their lives in a way that matters to him.

I probably shouldn’t share this, but I used to know a guy who really liked to hunt. So when his wife’s birthday rolled around, he bought her a shotgun. I know what you’re probably thinking — if my husband bought me a shotgun, I’d use it on him. But we tend to give God the things that we want instead of taking the time to look at the word and see what is it that he wants. What does he want?

John 14:15, 21; John 15:10; 1 John 5:3

So I want to close us out with some passages by John. The first few come from the Gospel of John and the last one comes from his epistle in 1 John. So I’m just going to string these together and read them. The first ones come from John 14, verses 15 and 21, and then the next chapter, John 15:10, and the final one comes from 1 John 5:3. So let me just read straight through them. Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is speaking:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” — John 14:15, 21

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” — John 15:10

“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” — 1 John 5:3

You can go through these again and see every time the word “love” is used and every time the word “commandments” is used — because a marriage requires love and law. And it’s marriage that God wants with us. It’s that intimacy of the covenant of marriage that he desires. He wants a bride. And so we just say, “I love God, he loves me, we’re all just happy” — that’s just shacking up. God wants something much more than that.

So I hope this will give you something to think about, and that in light of these passages you’ll examine your own relationship with God. Has it been a little too casual? Has there been no commitment where you’ve truly given your life to him — sworn your allegiance to him, made him your Lord, and put everything else aside because you want to focus on him?

I’m preparing a teaching on Psalm 62, which I hope to record very quickly, very soon. And in that psalm the word akh (אַךְ) — in Hebrew, the word “only” — appears six times. And over and over: only in God do I trust, only for God do I wait, only God is my rock. I call it the “Only Psalm” because it’s this short psalm of only about 12 verses or so, and it’s talking about how I don’t trust in anything else. Everything else is passing away. Everything else is undependable. But only in God. Only in him. He is my source, and he is the place and the one to whom I will return. It’s only in him.

The word “only” is a kind of talk a bride uses, because she wants to live for her one and only. And we need to be that bride. That’s the kind of people God is seeking to be his bride. So until next time, I wish you God bless.