Today’s passage is Numbers 5:11-31. The Lord gives Moses a test to determine a man’s concern about his wife’s fidelity. He must take an offering and take her to the priest, who has her stand before the Lord, speak an oath, write curses in case she’s lying, wash the ink of the curses into bitter water and have her drink the water. If nothing happens, she’s innocent.
Fidelity
I am an adulterer. I have committed adultery three times. The first two times, I didn’t see it as adultery at all. The last time I did it I knew it was adultery but didn’t take it seriously.
The first time I committed adultery was with a girlfriend when I was in university.
She didn’t tell me she was married even when I met her husband in whose she was living! I thought he was a friend of hers, a house-mate.
He knew I was sleeping with his wife, but he didn’t say anything. He even left the house so we could have sex! If I had been her husband I would have been furious that my wife brought home strangers to have sex with.
The second time I committed adultery was with the woman who became my first wife. Again, her husband wasn’t openly angry at me or her for the affair, partly because she’d done it before and partly because he had been having sex outside of marriage for most of his marriage. Infidelity to us all was normal behavior.
When I got married to my first wife, I was jealous all the time because of her past.
If she wasn’t true to her first husband, why would she be to me?
My mother had committed adultery and divorced my father. My grandfathers committed adultery.
My sister did. Adultery in my family was the sinful norm. No one could be trusted with sex.
When my first wife was dying of alcoholism, I committed adultery again. My first marriage began and ended in adultery.
My affair with the woman who became the mother of my daughter Tess was filled with jealousy because of all the old boyfriends calling her.
And without marriage to her I had no right to demand fidelity.
A few years after my marriage to my wife now Kyeong, we made a month long fast to repent of the adultery in our families and break the curse of it. It was our Rizpah fast.
In the first few years I felt jealous because I had a pretty wife and my past infidelity made me insecure.
After our Rizpah fast I haven’t felt that way.
Through Pastor Kim’s sermons, church training, mokjang sharing, and daily QT, I have seen more and more of my sins and repented. Seeing myself more objectively has taken away my jealousy, praise God! As my security in the Lord grew, my jealousy declined.
I was jealous because I was not trustworthy. My lack of faithfulness to God meant I wasn’t faithful to my wife or anyone else. As my trust in the Lord grows, so does my overall sense of security. I don’t depend on others, I depend on God.
Application: Give thanks to God for my workplace and my co-workers and say it during my prayer time with my teachers.
Lord, thank you for your great mercy in showing me my sins and leading me to repentance. Thank you for the gift of my faithful wife.
