PH 5-minute Bible teaching
So about polygamy…
It was a comfortable “You Asked for It” week this week as the question we took on led us into the wonderful world of incest and polygamy. I can’t say that I think anyone in our local congregation has a struggle with either of those two things. No, I think this is about wanting to know how to defend a belief in the Bible. If it praises and condones things like incest and polygamy, most people are out.
This is yet another example, backed up with plenty of biblical examples, that when you distort God’s plan for things, including marriage, it never ends well for anyone. If you want the audio-only version, click here.
If you want to see the full sermon associated with this clip, you can find it here.
Transcript: So about polygamy
Wed, Nov 15, 2023 : Peter Heck
(Begin transcript)
There is no chapter and verse that I can turn to in Scripture. I can't chapter and verse this and say right here is where you will see a line that says, No man can have more than one wife. There is no passage in scripture where it says, Thou shalt not have more than one wife. Okay, that's true. But you do know that there are a bunch of sins that we know are sin, distortion of what God intends that we see in Scripture. There's not a laundry list of every possible sin that says, Thou shalt not and then fill in the blank, because we humans are pretty creative. We come up with a lot of creative ways to sin. And so there's not a laundry list of those things. Not all sins have blanket statements. So what do we know?
Follow me. We do know that doing polygamy, doing that, distorts God's intent. We already established what God's intent was: one man, one woman for life. And so polygamy, we do know distorts what God intended. And we do know that those arrangements, every time we see them in Scripture, even when it's David, even when it's Solomon, even when it's Abraham, those things are never presented in a positive light. The scriptures never portray polygamous relationships as a really good thing: “This is neat. You all should try it.” You don't see that anywhere in Scripture.
In fact, we know that whenever polygamy arises, even in the lives of these great champions of the faith, really bad stuff happens as a result. Abraham, you remember Abraham's polygamy, right? Sarah wants to have a baby, but she's barren. So she says to Abraham, “Abraham, I want you to go and sleep with my maid servant, take her use her and make a baby with her.” And Abraham says, “A man's got to do what he's got to do.” And he goes, and he does this. And then what happens as a result of Abraham's union with Hagar, they have the baby Ishmael. And then what happens as a result of that? It leads to bitterness, and resentment. Ultimately, ultimately, it leads to Hagar and Ishmael being banished from their camp. And then what happens after that? I don't know if you're aware, but Ishmael becomes the father of the Arab people. And then on the other side, you've got Isaac, Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, who becomes the father of the Jewish people, Arabs and Jews. Any issue going on with those folks today? Right? This is what I'm saying. It's the conflict of the ages. And it came as a result of polygamy. Far from the Bible saying, “hey, this was a really good idea by Abraham.” It's pointing out how awful it is when you distort what God's intent is. Can I point to you a place in Scripture, Thou shalt not have more than one wife? No, but I can show you where people when they did it, it led to the conflict of the ages and untold human suffering that continues in the year 2023.
Abandoning God's plan, and his design may seem like a great idea at the time. But where it leads us, we don't want to go. Jacob, what about that? Jacob, he wanted to marry Rachel. He got the old switcheroo done and ended up with Leah. If you know the story, you know what I'm talking about. And then he works another seven years and gets Rachel so he's got two wives, but then Rachel can't have any kids. She's barren. So she says here, take, take my little maid servant, you can have her to make a baby. And then Leah says, “Well, if you get her maid service, you got to take my maid servant, Jacob sitting there saying, bring him on. And so he ends up with four different women that he has children with. And what does that lead to? A lot of problems you might remember. Jacob shows the favoritism to Joseph who was the firstborn of Rachel, his favorite wife. Joseph then is despised by his brothers and his sold into slavery. This isn't a pleasant story. It isn't a pleasant thing. For Joseph. God brings good out of it as he does most things, all things, but it was his intent.
Man, David. David had multiple wives. With one of his wives, he has a son named Amnon. With one of his other wives, he has a daughter named Tamar. So Amnon is a half brother to Tamar. Amnon rapes Tamar. As a result of that rape, another one of David's sons, the same one same wife that he had Tamar with, he had Absalom with. Absalom, then avenges the rape of Tamar by killing Amnon. And it's just bloodshed all over David's household. Again, when you distort God's plan for marriage, nothing good comes out of that.
And then to me, Solomon is the worst of all. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, he couldn't overcome his love of women. He married all of these women, 700 of them 300 concubines, and what do we know from scripture, they turned his heart away from God, and he worshiped foreign gods as a result. That's what happens when you distort God's plan for marriage.
So yes, the Bible records accounts of polygamy, but in no way does it condone polygamy, no way does it ever approve polygamy? It is always shown in a negative light, the consequences of violating and distorting God's plan. By the way, the same thing can be said of adultery. The Bible shows adultery all over the place. David's adultery with Bathsheba is one but mere fact that it occurs and it occurs by someone who is a man after God's own heart, a good dude, David in the in the final analysis. Doesn't mean that that act is somehow approved in Scripture.
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