Leaving and Cleaving - By Mervin Yoder

We need men who will walk in that path that God has called them to walk in. Men who will stand in the place God has ordained for them. Men who will follow God alone and not the paths of old traditions or new values.

Paul was such a man. In Philippians 3, Paul recounts all his accomplishments and says that if anyone could have confidence in the flesh, he could. But in verse 7 he says, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. . . ."

Many people misread those verses as a call to give our failures to Christ. We hate our sins and failures and the things that get us down and we're all too willing to give them over to Christ. But Paul talks about giving up those things that were gain to him. We are to count as loss those things we are good at, those things we can handle. When I began to give up my successes, I began to gain knowledge of Christ. I began to understand who He is and the cross He calls us to. I began to understand resurrection and the newness of life.

I don't think we gain enough in Christ because all we ever want to give Him is our sin and failures, the things we don't like. We are glad to have a scapegoat. Yes, He is our scapegoat and He does bear our sins, but to gain the "excellency of the knowledge of Christ" we must go beyond our sins and give Him everything. If Paul could count all his great successes as dung that he might win Christ, how much more can we give up our successes for Him.

One gain men are called to give up is their parents. For years I thought the Bible said that a woman needs to leave her father and mother and cleave to her husband. But the scriptures actually call on men to do the leaving and cleaving. And the whole purpose for that leaving and cleaving is for a man to establish the path that he and his family should walk. He is given the headship of the family, and He must practice that headship under God, not ruled by other forces. He must leave both the traditions of his own parents as well as the latest fads in his culture and, like Paul, he will know the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus and walk in His righteousness.

In Genesis 2 God said that Adam should not be alone, so He made a deep sleep fall upon him, took one of his ribs, and formed Eve, a help meet for him. Verse 23: "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

I like the forthrightness of Adam. God Himself had brought all the animals to him to see what he would name them, and now, with Eve, Adam discerned that she had come from him, and so he named her "Woman"--bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. That was the first cleaving.

It is the man's job to leave his parents and establish a new home. The woman, needing a home, is then able to move into the new home the man establishes. This role of a man is probably the most misunderstood role in the world today. From the beginning God laid down the pattern for a man to cut his ties and establish a new family. His wife ceases to be bone and flesh of her family and becomes bone and flesh of her husband. But too many men today are not leaving and cleaving. They are unwilling to take responsibility, to act as men. They are still being ruled by whatever standards the family or the world has set.

Families need men who will draw lines in the sand and say, "I have left behind all that I am, all of my strength, and all that is gain to me, and I have gained a knowledge in Christ that will lead me where I need to walk. I am not going to be dictated to by the world anymore, not even by family. I have severed all other ties and my family is going to go the way of Christ." Families need men like that. And the church needs men like that.

When a man begins to take seriously the responsibility and authority given him by God, he will be despised. Others will think him rude and unloving. Certainly the women's movement and the teenage movement will heap abuse upon him. This teaching is not a license to be obstinate or overbearing or rude, but the simple fact is that few will understand when a man lives out the responsibility placed upon him in the scriptures. The man willing to take that responsibility will begin to understand the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, as Paul called it, and he and his family will gain Christ. He will get answers to his prayers, and his biblical convictions will be written in the hearts of his children.

I wonder if Adam, lacking a mother and father, could even understand all that God was telling him. Maybe God was saying that Adam's umbilical cord and affections, until that time wholly between Adam and God Himself, were now to be directed toward his wife as he became one with her.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah found Elisha plowing the fields for his dad. Elijah cast his mantle upon him, and Elisha "left the oxen, and ran after Elijah, and said, Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee. And he said unto him, Go back again: for what have I done to thee? And he returned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen, and slew them, and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and gave unto the people, and they did eat. Then he arose, and went after Elijah, and ministered unto him" (verses 20-21).

Elisha took his oxen--his belongings from his parents' home--and sacrificed them to God. Then he kissed his family goodbye and left with Elijah. You know that Elisha became a powerful man of God, and it all started with his leaving. He moved into the responsibility God had for him.

Today we hear "family family family" everywhere we turn. Family seminars are popular and Christian radio talks about family frequently. I believe that family has become a religion or god of its own. If it is to be true to the Word, teaching on the subject has got to include the leaving and cleaving. Yes, we are to honor our father and mother. And when they are old and can't take care of themselves, we are to care for them. That's scripture. But a man's life must begin with severance. A man must walk with God and walk with his marriage apart from the home of his upbringing.

I confess it will be hard when the time comes for my son to leave. I'm probably going to fight to hold on to every last bit of relationship and everything I have poured into his life. The tearing will be painful for me--but he is going to have to do it. The sword will be in his hand. He will be called to leave and establish his own family and God-led walk. He will have to look me in the face and say, "Dad, I am following God. Just give me your blessing that I may go and serve my God." And I am going to have to humble myself and give it.

Abraham is perhaps the best known example of a man willing to leave his home and take on the work God called him to. In Genesis 12:1 God said to him, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee. . .."

Abraham almost did just what God told him. He took Sarai as his wife and he left for the land of Canaan. But he didn't quite do all that God had said. "Get thee. . .from thy kindred" was the command, but Abraham took Lot, his nephew, with him. And that decision brought a lot of trouble on Abraham. First Lot's servants begin fighting with Abraham's. Then they finally had to separate. Then Lot ended up in Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham had to plead with God to spare Lot's life--and he escaped only with his two daughters. And if that wasn't bad enough, the daughters took Lot up on a mountain, got him drunk, and committed fornication with him. Their two sons became nations that troubled Israel for many, many years, even to this day. All that trouble came because Abraham didn't fully leave his kindred, as God had commanded. Abraham was never fully free to serve God as God had intended, for he was always plagued with his nephew Lot.

Leaving your kindred behind isn't always easy. Even your wife will not always understand when you draw a line and say, "No, we can't go there. We must go here, where God has said." But when you leave and follow God alone, you will bring salvation to your family. You won't have to spend the rest of your life fighting with Lot. And you won't have to run off to Sodom and Gomorrah and see the destruction. You will be free to serve God.

Leaving is only the first step that God requires of a man. Next comes cleaving. A man must cleave to his wife and establish their own home on biblical principles.

It didn't take long for Adam to fall short of the responsibility assigned to him by God. We know about Eve's sin described in Genesis 3, but have you ever considered how the serpent got in Eden in the first place? And how he came to be alone with Eve? God had commanded Adam to dress the garden and keep it. I'm wondering if he had fallen short of his responsibilities long before Eve was ever enticed and led into sin.

Then when Eve did eat the fruit, she brought it to Adam and said, "Here. Try some." Who is leading whom? Who is directing the show? The New Testament refers specifically to Eve's sin when it says that a woman is not to usurp authority over a man.

God gives men the responsibility to lead the family, a responsibility that many men try to avoid. "Whatever you decide is fine." Like Adam, we shirk our God-given duties and wonder how Satan slips into the garden we're supposed to be tending.

Abraham's failures are again instructive. When the famine drives him to Egypt, he tells Sarai to pass as his sister to avoid trouble. He doesn't believe that God can protect him in a land of strangers, and his weakness and sense of self-preservation run contrary to his call to leadership. He tells his wife, "Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee" (Genesis 12:13). He is saying, "I want you to be my intercessor. Protect me." He is not taking the responsibility given Him by God.

And, as with the problems created by Lot, Abraham's failure to take responsibility again creates problems for the next generation. In Genesis 26:7, Isaac, like his dad, said this about his wife: "She is my sister." He, also, was too cowardly to stand up and claim his wife as his own. After a long time, King Abimelech happened to see Isaac sporting with Rebekah, and he knew she must be his wife. He came down hard on Isaac, for another man could have taken Rebekah "and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us."

This is not cleaving, men. We are commanded to lead our homes and care for our wives, not thrusting them into the role of protector, putting them in in the way of danger, or letting them go their own way. Too many men let the bishop or James Dobson or someone else set the standard for the family. They just meekly follow along. Wife wants to take off? Well, let her. Like Isaac, such a man hopes to sport with his wife once in a while while the world has her the rest of the time. This is the kind of man predominant in the world, but it dare not be the kind of man predominant in the church. The church must be made up of men who leave and cleave.

We look at the great evils plaguing our world--abortion, broken families, teenage crime and suicide--and blame the age we're living in. It's not the age, it's the men. Just as Isaac could have brought guilt upon the land he was living in, so men today bring guilt upon our land because they won't stand up for what is right and lead their families as God intended them to be led.

Isaiah 3:12 describes Israel in its sin, but see if it doesn't sound like America, and perhaps even like our own families: "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." You watch a mother in a grocery store and see who is in control. Children are the oppressor of many a mother, and the mother is left alone to rule, because no man is around. The verse continues: "O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Those causing us to err are the men. I believe the primary cause of nearly all of our problems is men who are not willing to leave and cleave.

When the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce, He quoted Genesis to them: "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh" (Matthew 19:5). Then He added: "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (verse 6). When the Pharisees pressed Him, Jesus attributed divorce to the hardness of men's hearts and said it was never intended in the beginning.

Men harden their hearts when they become unwilling to leave and cleave. We attribute our high divorce rate to loose morals, and certainly we do have loose morals. But the real problem is deeper: men who refuse to cleave to their wives and put aside all others. Today men and women work side by side in the workplace, putting themselves in the way of temptation instead of cleaving to the one God has provided. I'll be blunt--my wife is not going to be somebody else's secretary. We don't need the second income that bad. She serves me and our family, and she is not going to work for another man. Most people in America would laugh at such a notion, but many of our problems can be traced to men who cannot leave the women they work with.

The principle is stated again in Ephesians 5:31: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." In each case the Word says "For this cause. . . ." The only way for a husband and wife to attain the oneness God intended is to leave father and mother and all others and cleave to one another. Leave and cleave. The purpose of the leaving is to enable the cleaving. "For this cause. . . ." While it is true that the sexual relationship itself makes a man and a woman one flesh, that oneness will become entire or whole only when all other attachments are broken.

The beauty of that oneness is described in this chapter. Husbands are to love their wives even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. Verse 33 sums up the passage: "Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband." We are all different, and so each one of us must love his wife "in particular"--cherish all the unique things that make her special and love her in a one-of-a-kind way. Then wives, in turn, are to reverence their husbands. Don't fight them as they work to leave everything and establish their own homes.

I have been able to leave and cleave in my own life because I have a wife who reverences me. Her father said it was a poor investment to sell our home and buy a trailer and go gallivanting around the country holding tent meetings. But my wife reverenced me and took my word over her father's word, though it was hard for her. And Christ has taken us where He wanted us.

Jesus' hard words in Luke 12:51-53 astound many people: "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law."

Whenever Jesus talks about division, He specifies division with the world or division with the family. He never talks about division with the brethren or within the church. It may seem puzzling at first that God would make the home and family such a haven--a place where we can grow and feel love, strength, safety, and healing--and then come along with a sword and cut us off, making us leave. Perhaps the reason is so He can establish His own way in our lives and make certain we don't follow a second-hand Christianity, something simply handed down to us.

Why else in this verse are families divided? Because of lack of love? No, because of Jesus. When we begin to give up things that are gain to us and grow in the knowledge of Christ, those who do not know Him in this way will not understand. That is why Jesus brings division.

There is one more verse to consider. Malachi 4:5-6 says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." Obviously it is godly for fathers and children to honor each other. But it must come after the godly division. That honor must come back in the spirit of Elijah, come back in a right and pure way. At that point the father will regard his children as brothers and sisters in Christ and won't lay obstacles in their path, just as he wouldn't lay obstacles in the path of other brothers and sisters in the church. That is not as easy as it sounds. We tend to be freer to get in the way of family members and not as sensitive to them as we are to others. Family will drop in unexpectedly and prevent us from going to prayer meeting, but other brothers and sisters will say, "Oh, I'm sorry--you were heading out." The spirit of Elijah will restore divisions not by smoothing things over but by changing hearts and lives so that we all follow Christ with the same intensity and devotion.

The scriptural principle of leaving and cleaving applies not only to men and their wives but to men and their church. The passage in Ephesians 5 says that "we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." We are joined to the church in much the same way we are joined to our wives, and we must leave those who would stand in the way and cleave to the Body of Christ. The picture of a man cleaving to his wife is a picture of Christ cleaving to his church.

"Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord," Paul said. When we begin to give up all that we have, including our families, we begin to gain the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, a glorious intimacy with Him.