Jesus Teaches on Marriage and Divorce, Part 1 (Matthew Sermon 89)

I. A Sweet Blessing Gone Bad

Alright, so this morning I practiced this sermon and it was 56 minutes and 44 seconds long, okay? So it led me into a quandary. I can do one of two difficult things. I can hold your attention for 56 minutes and 44 seconds, or I can try to split this sermon in two on the fly. Either one of those are difficult to do. I’ve chosen to do the second, and so I’m going to preach in my normal way at the normal length, and I don’t know where that’s going to be, but I think what’s going to happen is, I’m going to establish this morning from Matthew 19, the clarity of Jesus’ teaching on what marriage is, from the way God intended at the beginning. So I’m going to set up the standard that Jesus sets up. And then next week I’m going to deal more thoroughly with the questions of divorce and remarriage that so plague us and are so difficult and painful for so many. So next week then I’ll have to re-establish again with clarity that clear standard that Jesus established, and then try to answer as many practical questions as I can.

The problem at the end of this sermon is that I seek to apply it as well, and I will want to apply some things that I might have to say again next week, so please bear with me. As Jesus said, the night before He died to His disciples, “I have much to say to you, more than you can now bear.” Alright, [laughter] so let’s go with it that way, okay? So I’ve decided to go that approach.

Remember Your Wedding Day

On my dresser in my bedroom there’s a picture of Christy and I taken on May 14th, 1988. I asked her permission to say those words to you before I came up here. She has granted that permission. It’s a picture of the day that I received the greatest earthly blessing I’ve ever gotten in this world. Christy said often we look like children in that picture, and I think about that, we look so young. I don’t think we fully understood what we were getting into at that point, I don’t think we still fully understand what we’ve gotten into. [laughter] But I know this, that a river of blessings has come to me from the commitment I made that day, as I stood before God and man and made a promise to her that I would be her husband, she made a promise to me that she would be my wife, and God has held us to that promise for over 20 years now, continues to hold us to it, and it’s been a river of blessing.

Those of you that are married, I ask you to think back to your wedding day, that day that God gave you the greatest earthly gift that He could give, another human being created in the image of God, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish from that day on and forever until death parted you. Remember how happy you were, you remember what hopes that you had, what longings you had for the future. Remember how beautiful each of you looked. You never looked better physically in all your lives. Wore your best clothes, you looked wonderful. I’ve seen lots of you in that condition. Lots of weddings. And you looked incredible, wearing special clothes for the most important act of your lives in this world. And how many pictures were taken that day? Some videos maybe, capturing your happy faces, the hopes in your hearts. How is it now? How is it now?

Remember the First Wedding Day

I wanna say to all of you married and unmarried alike, I want you to go back in your minds to that very first wedding day, God had made a perfect world. We can scarcely imagine the radiant beauty and glory of that pristine world, a perfectly blue sky, a radiant sun, glowing vegetation, all the flowering plants, fruitful trees giving off their fragrance, boasting of their succulent fruit. The Garden of Eden, a lush paradise of sights and sounds and smells and sensory pleasures by the fountain of delights the God who made them all for our pleasure and our enjoyment. Magnificent beasts with all their strength and variety, the creeping things, the soaring birds with their magnificent plumage, and there God put the man that He had fashioned from the dust of the earth, a living and breathing man now tasked with the responsibility of watching over and protecting the Garden of Eden, taking care of it, serving it, tasked also with the responsibility of naming all of those animals, and tasked with the responsibility of filling the world with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, of replicating the image of God throughout the world, of filling the earth with that image.

It was a task that Adam could not fulfill alone, he needed a helper suitable for him. And so God caused him to fall into a deep sleep, and while Adam sleeping God took a rib from his side and closed up the place with flesh, and God wondrously crafted a woman from the rib and brought this magnificent gift, categorically the last thing God ever created.

Some would say the best, I would have to agree. But I won’t argue the point theologically, God saving in that sense the most magnificent creation for the… And I think Adam would have agreed when he saw her, a beautiful woman perfectly suited for Adam, a helper suitable for him, and he responded the only way that a man can when he sees the woman he’s gonna spend the rest of his life with, with poetry. “This at last is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.” I often wondered how Adam knew that in that he was asleep at the time, but I think it was that God told him about her, God understanding a woman perfectly, as only God can do. [laughter] Adam had an education that lasted hundreds of years after that, but God explained from the beginning what she was and where she had come from. So God had given Adam the greatest physical gift he would ever receive, and Eve would become eventually the mother of all the living. 

But sin soon entered the world through Adam’s rebellion, through his sinful negligence, his failure to act, sin of omission of immense proportions as he stood there saying nothing while the serpent tempted his wife. And we have been suffering bitterly ever since, and divorce is part of that sin package. And it is the sad focus of our time in the Word this morning and next week. 

How Is It Now?

So how is it now with marriage? How is it now? Well, there is, some have called it an epidemic of divorce. Some years ago, a journalist for a national news magazine asked this rhetorical question, “Are there any person’s left in this land who have not had a friend or child or parent describe intimately the agony of divorce?” The statistics are shocking. Annual divorce rate is 3.9 per thousand people of population equaling well over one million new divorces every year. Sadly, the divorce rates among self-described Christians are not very much different from those of non-Christians. With one million new divorces every year, of course, comes two million newly divorced people plus several million perhaps new children of divorce.

Every single person involved in this process is hurt deeply, some use this language that they have been wounded for life, scarred for life. One commentator I read said this, “Every divorce destroys a little world, a little society with its own culture and traditions and history and network of relationships. A miniature world has been crushed forever.” The tragedy is unspeakable. Men and women feel rejected to the very core of their being, ripped apart from inside. The most significant promise they ever made broken, the most significant relationship in their lives ended in tragedy. It’s bitter beyond all measure. And they remember all the moments with bitterness and sadness, the photo of the couple on their first date, a love letter tumbling from the pages of a book, a box of memorabilia from the wedding day, video of the wedding itself, all the smiles, the kisses, promises made, hopes for the future. The honeymoon, their first home together, started their life together and how tragic now, the photos of their first child coming home from the hospital, the three of them smiling around the Christmas tree, the baby’s first Christmas smiling for the camera.

And now all of it is destroyed and they can’t look at those photos pleasantly. It’s somewhat in that way like a suicide, where you just can’t look at the photos of the person the same way ever again. And in that way, again, I think far worse than if it had ended by a tragic auto accident or a terminal illness, this world, this little world has come to an end through the choices to some degree that each person has made and their own foolishness, their own sin has brought it to an end. We cannot calculate the agony that these one million divorces pumps into the national atmosphere every year. Now, divorce used to be rare. Why was it rare? Well, in past years, the vast majority of marriages held secure and stable, it doesn’t mean that people were any less sinful than we are now, but there were certain pressures brought to bear in a positive way to the marriages. John MacArthur lists some of these pressures.

He says, first of all, the extended family was a powerful moral force. Relationships to parents continued to exert tremendous pull long after marriage. Married couples felt the pressure to work out their differences rather than bring shame on their parents by getting a divorce. So also there was a much stronger network of relationships extending to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etcetera. These relationships did not merely put pressure on the couple to save the marriage, but they also offered resources that the desperate couple would need at that difficult time. Advice, prayer, moral example, money, a shoulder to cry on, etcetera. This network has become gradually weakened over the last number of decades. The fluidity of our society, frankly the multiplication of divorces itself as we’ve mentioned tends to create more divorces. So also the proliferation of anti-biblical ideologies, like moral permissiveness, feminism, humanism, proliferation of television, movies, internet, etc., have pumped out a worldview that is hostile to the biblical worldview, and divorce is one of the by-products.

MacArthur also lists community expectation back in the day. The surrounding communities expected marriages to survive for the most part, and responded generally to divorce negatively, divorce laws therefore were difficult. Divorce was hard to come by, community ethics stood in favor instead of working out the issues and maintaining marriage.

Strongest of all the influences that John MacArthur lists are… the spiritual or religious aspect. Churches universally taught the Bible truth on divorce and remarriage. All branches of Christianity, Catholic, Protestant, orthodox strongly supported healthy family life and just as strongly opposed divorce. But this has all changed, especially in the church more and more people feel compelled in the name of Christian love and compassion to change the clear biblical teaching on divorce. I read recently that a Christian entertainer got a divorce, claiming that her husband stood in the way of her career advancement. She said she did not believe her divorce related to her religious views as a Christian in any way, and even if it did, she believed God would forgive anything she did, and loved her the same either way. More and more Christian counseling, both of the formal and informal sort, has imbibed this kind of approach, and the general prevailing worldly perspective, and has turned to helping people through the divorce process and has turned to giving worldly advice rather than biblical advice. Helping people through with minimal pain, helping them prepare for their future lives after the divorce.

Some Christians in the name of love then become hostile to anyone that teaches the biblical standard on divorce and remarriage, and calls it legalism. However, other Christians, seeing all of these things, what is going on in society in general, raise the biblical standard beyond the biblical norms. In a zeal to protect what the Bible says, they established strictures that I think go beyond what Jesus says in this text. John MacArthur, speaking of that phenomenon, either way it says, “But that which is contrary to Scripture can never be either loving or spiritual. A human standard may be more lenient or more restrictive than Scripture, but it can never be better.” Do you believe that? The Bible is the measure for all things and can never be more lenient, it can be lenient, it can be more strict, but never can be better. “When God’s word is ignored or perverted in any area, tragedy is always the consequence, the matter of marriage and divorce standards then are no exception.”

Now, generally in our culture, there are deeper questions about marriage that go beyond even this issue of divorce and remarriage. More and more confusion exists on what marriage is. Hence, we are starting to talk about things like gay marriage. I saw a humorous piece recently about a clerk who is working in a town hall issuing marriage licenses to an ever stranger series of people who are applying. First of course a regular couple, a man and wife wanted to become husband and wife, and then came two men who wanted marriage license, then two women, then a man and a boy, then a woman and a girl, then three people together, ended up with a man who wanted to marry himself, [chuckle] and at that point the clerk resigned his position. I believe in this general societal discussion on what marriage is, it is impossible for us to carry it on in the end without an absolute standard of truth and right and wrong. It’s really just going to be impossible. In this pluralistic society in which we live that kind of thing may well come. Because we are talking about a definition that comes from God. It is God that defines marriage, and the further we get away from, “Thus says the Lord,” the more confusing the discussion is going to be.

It’s going to be very difficult for Christian apologists who do not argue from Scripture to talk about what marriage is. I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I don’t think they should. I think they should say, “Thus says the Lord,” and say what marriage is, and just keep doing that, ’cause it is the truth.

Now, this morning, we’re going to face this painful question together as brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re gonna sit at Jesus’ feet, we’re gonna allow Him to teach us about marriage and divorce. I believe every one of us who has been married, is married now, will face painful issues concerning our marriage, and we’re going to be called on by the text as always to repent. There’s a constant call from Jesus to repent. All of us will need to do it. We’re going to look at Jesus’ standards of marriage, and all of us are gonna look in and find flaws. And so therefore, it’s my joy to proclaim forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even over this issue. There is grace, there is mercy, and there’s forgiveness for any sin and blasphemy Jesus said. But still there needs to be repentance. Jesus loves us too much to allow us to continue in sin.

So we’re gonna let Him speak the truth to us, no matter how painful it may be. We’re gonna allow Him to heal some of the most painful of spots in our souls, and hopefully we’re going to prevent, as a church, future pain and agony. All of those things are in my mind as I preach this morning.

II. The Pharisees Ask a Treacherous Question

Context

So let’s look at Matthew 19 and the context. In Matthew 19:1-2 it says, “When Jesus had finished saying these things, He left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed Him and He healed them there.” So for about two years, Jesus has been ministering almost exclusively in His home area of Galilee. Now, for the last two months in the narrative, He’d been focusing, it seems, almost exclusively on training the 12 for their future responsibilities as leaders, Apostles of His church. He now goes south to the most important appointment of His life, and that is His arrest, His condemnation, His death on the cross, and His resurrection on the third day to save us from our sins. So that’s why He’s traveling south.

The region beyond the Jordan that He’s in now in this text is part of the territory of Herod Antipas, the very man who had arrested John the Baptist for preaching that his marriage to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife was unlawful. Herodias and Herod did not take it kindly and arrested John the Baptist and had him executed for it. Now, I believe the Pharisees came seeking to get Jesus into similar trouble. I think they were trying to have Him killed. It clearly says in the text that they’re asking a question in order to test Him, or trap Him, they’re seeking to get Him into trouble.

The Treacherous Question

And so, look at Verse 3 at the treacherous question. “Some Pharisees came to Him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?'”

They’re not looking for information and they don’t want a debate. They really just hated Him, and they wanted Him killed. The backdrop in Judaism to their question is a long-standing debate between Jewish Rabbis on a text in the Old Testament. The text is Deuteronomy 24, and in that text, based on that text, the Jews believe that every Jewish man had the right to divorce his wife. The text talks about a condition in which a man finds something indecent in his wife and writes her a certificate of divorce and sends her away, and then she goes and then becomes the wife of another man, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and sends her away. She cannot then go back to her first husband and marry him. Would not the land become utterly defiled? That’s what Deuteronomy 24 says. Now, as they wrestled over that text, the Rabbis had different opinions on what it was that was the indecent thing in Deuteronomy 24. What was it that was indecent, and on the basis of that the man wrote his wife a certificate of divorce?

Now, the stricter school of the Rabbi Shammai felt that the indecent thing that the first husband found had to be adultery. He found adultery in her, but it doesn’t say adultery, but that’s what they interpreted. Now, the more lenient School of Hillel interpreted it more widely and said it referred to anything offensive to the husband, even to the point of the spoiling of the husband’s dinner. The Pharisees tended to follow this latter and broader interpretation to follow Hillel, and allow divorce for any and every reason, whatever the husband thought was best. A later Rabbi along the same line named Akiva interpreted the words of Moses, “if she finds no favor in his eyes”, to mean that if the husband simply found a prettier woman, he could divorce his first wife and marry her, because she no longer finds favor in his eyes. So you can tell that even back then feelings ran very high on this topic. No matter what answer Jesus gave, He would antagonize somebody. Maybe especially they were hoping, I think, Herod Antipas, who had the power to kill Jesus. So you can see that divorce was a hot topic in Jesus’ day, just as it is in our day.

III. The Timeless Answer of Jesus

So look at the timeless answer of Jesus to this question, Verses 4-6, “‘Haven’t you read,’ He replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together let man not separate.’” Now, I’m about to give you four foundations, timeless foundations to Jesus’ answer, and then His answer, but just for clarity’s sake I just want to draw out what’s happened here. They came and asked Him a treacherous question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Jesus’ answer is, “Absolutely not.” I mean, that’s a summation of it. His answer is no. Now, there’s more to say on that, and we will say more, but just if you’re looking at the question they ask, “Is it lawful to divorce a man… For a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Jesus’ answer is no.

But He does give foundations to His answer. And I wanna look at those four foundations. These are four immovable foundation stones on which our concept of marriage should be based.

Foundation #1: The Sufficiency of Scripture

The first foundation is the sufficiency of Scripture to address this issue, foundation number one, the Scripture itself. “Haven’t you read?”, He says. Now, these were the Pharisees, they spent their whole time working on Scripture. This is what they did. And so Jesus is really to some degree critiquing them for missing this. “Haven’t you read?”, He said. He begins this dispute by setting the ground rules. The answer will be found only by a right reading of Scripture. Therefore I take from this, just as a pastor, as a preacher, and as a counselor, and a Christian man, Scripture is sufficient to answer all questions of marriage and divorce and remarriage. And we don’t need another book, we don’t need any more information, we need to understand the Scripture rightly, that’s all. Jesus teaches us the sufficiency of Scripture.

I think this is the big flaw with much Christian counseling these days, they get more information about marriage from psychological studies and clinical research and prevailing patterns of therapy in the field than they do from the Scripture. In this way they are widely divergent from Jesus’ methodologies and counseling centers. True Biblical counseling answers the problems of marriage the same way it answers the problem of all of life. “Haven’t you read?” Or Romans 4:3, “What does the Scripture say?” Now, I want you to notice some aspect of Jesus’ view towards Scripture. Now this is one you might miss if you read too quickly. I’d like to ask that you take… Keep your finger here in Matthew 19, and go back to Deuteronomy… Sorry, Genesis Chapter 2. Genesis 2, Jesus quotes Genesis 2 at the end of the chapter, Verse 24. So just keep your finger in Matthew 19, we’re just gonna be in Genesis 2 for a moment. But quoting Matthew 19:4-5, this is what Jesus says.

“‘Haven’t you read that at the beginning the creator made them male and female and said, “for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”’” Now, Jesus here says that the creator, God, does two things, not just one thing, He does two things. “‘Haven’t you read,’ He said, ‘that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female,’” so He makes them, the Creator makes them male and female and said, “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.” So the creator not only creates them, but He makes a statement about them, that’s what the force of the phrase “and said”. The Creator made them male and female and said for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. Now, if you look at Genesis 2:24, you do not see the introduction phrase such as “the Lord said” or “the Lord God said” or “Lord God answered”, “the Lord God replied”, or any of those introductors that you see frequently in the Genesis narrative. They’re not there.

What is the significance of that? You know what it is? It’s Jesus’ mind towards the Bible. Every single word in the Bible is God’s word to you. The Creator is speaking to you today about marriage. That’s Jesus’ attitude towards Scripture. This is the one who’d rather die than Scripture be broken, friends. He has a very high view of Scripture, I would say He has an infinitely high view of Scripture. He has a higher view of Scripture than I do, he has a higher Scripture view… View of Scripture than any one of you does, that’s Jesus’ view of Scripture. We ought to come more and more up to His standard. And so, Augustine says in The Confessions, “Indeed, oh man,” this is putting this mentality in the voice… The words of God. “Indeed, oh man, what my Scripture says, I say.” Now, should you thereby get rid of your red letter editions to the Bible, which have Jesus’ words in red and all the other words in black? No, you can keep them, that’s fine, but please don’t put any higher value on the red letters than you do on the black ones, or the purple ones or the green ones or whatever color the editors chose to print the Word of God, and it doesn’t matter to me.

What matters is what the Scripture says, okay? So just notice in Genesis 2, it’s not the Lord God that says it, Moses wrote it just in the narrative. But in Jesus’ mind, it’s God that’s saying this to you. So go back to Matthew 19. God wants to speak to you today about marriage, and so He’s saying, What my Scripture says to you, husband and wife, I am saying to you.”

Foundation #2: God’s Original Intent

Foundation number two, God’s original intention of marriage. What did He intend by creating marriage? Look what Jesus said. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning, the Creator made them male and female?” We need to go back to the beginning. What did God intend? What God did with Adam and Eve, therefore in Jesus’ mind was intended to be a pattern for every marriage that followed. It is the pattern for all marriages, right from the very beginning. At the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

When Jesus says, “For this reason,” He’s saying, this is a lasting principle for all time. Adam didn’t have a father or mother, Eve didn’t have a father or mother. These words are inserted in the Genesis narrative, though there were no fathers or mothers at the time, to teach us all, the whole human race about marriage. It’s a lasting principle. So foundation number two is what is God’s original intent in marriage? Jesus calls God the Creator, the Creator does everything for a purpose. He will argue then that divorce was no part of God’s original purpose. Look at Verse 8, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard, but it was not this way from the beginning.” Do you see that? He’s arguing from original principles. What was God’s original intention? And God’s original purpose was one man, a male, one woman, a female, coming together in a complete physical union, one flesh for the purpose of filling the earth with His glory, the knowledge of His glory with His image.

Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female, He created them, God blessed them, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.'” So essential to God’s purpose in creation of marriage is procreation or children. He wants children, He wants the birth of little ones. Though it is not God’s only purpose in marriage, yet this is why the gender, I think, is mentioned here, male and female. This completely rules out so-called homosexual marriage, which I liken to speaking about a square circle. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Homosexual marriage is nothing, it doesn’t exist. God defines marriage and procreation is part of it, right from the very beginning. God wanted children, He wanted lots of children. He wanted lots of human beings who would fill the Earth with the image of His glory, and they would know His glory and worship Him, that was God’s purpose.

And so, in the covenant marriage relationship from the beginning with a male, a father, and a female, a mother who would train them, at least in part, to get ready for their own future marriages. That was a bad slip there. Not to get rid of them, alright? But rather get them ready for their future marriages, alright? There does come a time that they leave, and they cleave together and they form their own home. And so for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is the precise reason I believe that God hates divorce, it violates His purposes and is therefore violent to the spouse. Listen to Malachi 2:13-16, this is the prophet speaking to sinful Israel centuries down the line, this is what the prophet says, “Another thing you do, you flood the Lord’s altar with tears, you weep and wail because He no longer pays attention to your offerings, or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why? Well, it is because the Lord is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her. Though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit, they are His. And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. ‘I hate divorce,’ says the Lord God of Israel, ‘and I hate a man covering himself with violence, as well as with his garment,’ says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.” Do you see how God equates divorce with violence there? At any rate, to understand marriage, we must go back to God’s original intention as related in the Genesis account, and as commented on throughout Scripture.

Foundation #3: God’s Action in Marriage

Foundation number three is God’s direct action in making marriages. Christ says that the Creator physically prepared them for marriage by making them male and female, their physical bodies were well suited for God’s purpose in marriage. Parenthetically, some aesthetics within Christian church history have written against any kind of sexual involvement as though it were somehow dirty or unclean. As if it were intrinsically evil, because it is fleshly. The Scripture stands vigorously against their viewpoints. God created marital relations within the context of marriage. That anti-flesh bias is more from philosophy than from the Bible, end of parenthesis there. The creator made them male and female, and then Jesus says, brought them together so the two would become one flesh. It says very plainly in the Genesis account that God made the woman at some remote location, wherever that was, I don’t know, and brought her to the man and the two became one flesh. And so, there is a distance between the two when they’re single, and then God closes that distance and providentially brings the two together. And so God makes marriages, that’s what Jesus is saying here. What God has joined together, let man not separate. That’s the third foundation.

Foundation #4: The Two Become One Flesh

The fourth foundation is that the two become one flesh. What happens in a marriage in God’s mind? The union is deep and real.

It’s not merely a piece of paper as some unbelievers who co-habit together say, “It’s just a piece of paper.” I’ve heard them say this to me. Frankly, if it’s just a piece of paper, then Satan would behave differently than he does around it. He would behave differently, he would stop tempting Christian kids have relations before they get married, and tempting Christian spouses to stop having relations after marriage. He behaves radically differently after you say “I do”. He changes his entire strategy. He doesn’t think it’s just a piece of paper, because God doesn’t think so. So, we are deceived when we think it’s just a piece of paper. No, the two become one flesh. God does something very profound, very mystical. Yes, it is physical. The marital bed is pure and undefiled and physical, but God also creates a unity where there was none before. It is so profound that the Apostle Paul likens it to the spiritual unity between Christ and the church, quoting the same Scripture, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

This is a profound mystery, but I’m talking about Christ and the church, says the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 5:32. Even more amazing, then, Christ’s unity with the church is itself a picture of the trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in perfect unity with one another, it’s a picture of all human relationships after that. As Jesus prays in John 17:21, “That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, and may they be also be brought to complete unity.” So therefore, these are the four foundations, the sufficiency of Scripture, God’s purpose at the beginning of marriage and setting marriage up, God’s providential actions in forming marriage, and then the unity that He speaks of here, the two become one flesh.

The Timeless Answer

Those are the foundations, now comes the answer. Christ gives this timeless answer, “Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.” And answer to the treacherous question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”, the answer is simply and clearly absolutely not.

We have no right to undo what God has joined, to rip it apart, separate it, cleave it apart in any way. Because Scripture is God’s perfect word to you, because in Scripture God’s original intention of marriage is made plain, because God is active directly in marriage from the very beginning and even now is personally involved in making marriages, and because the two become physically, spiritually, mystically one. “Let man not separate what God has joined.” Now, there are more questions to ask. Indeed, the Pharisees and the disciples ask more questions, we won’t answer them today. God willing, we’ll have time next week. We might say, “Of course, this is God’s standard and it would be best if all of us followed it, but things happen. Will God still love me? Will He still forgive me? Will He still bless my life if I violate this standard?” Well friends, that’s an entirely different question, isn’t it? In Jesus’ world view, it’s somewhat like asking, “How much poison can I drink before I die? How many times can I shoot myself before I bleed to death? If I scoop fire into my lap, will my whole body be burned or only part of it?”

Whenever we violate God’s standards and go our own separate way, either as individuals or pastors or as a church, there are deep and painful consequences. Now, is the grace of God acting through Jesus Christ sufficient to cover this river of sin? I tell you, yes, in an infinite number of rivers besides. In a single day, Jesus atoned for the sin of the whole land. And that is the glory of the Gospel I preach, that there is forgiveness, that God’s grace can put together a broken life, it can put together a broken heart. That God is able to work through second and even third and fourth marriages when the people come to repentance and bring their sin to God and be honest about it, He can establish a new home. God moves on. We’ll talk more about that next week. Look at the case of David and Bathsheba and the birth of Solomon. Study it in advance. God moves on. But what if it hasn’t happened yet? What if it hasn’t happened yet?

What does God’s grace do for you? Doesn’t it behave very strongly with you and tell you, “Don’t get a divorce. Work on that marriage.”? I have much to say about that, more next week. I just wanna give you a couple of applications and we’ll talk more about divorce, remarriage, and how to work on a marriage next time, God willing, but I wanna begin by just urging you to celebrate the gift of marriage. This is a good thing. I think it’s so interesting that the Lord says, “It’s not good for the man to be alone.” The disciples contradict and say, “Well, it’s good not to get married.” Well, who’s right then, God or the disciples? Is it good or not good to get married? I’ll go with God. What do you say? It is good to get married, it’s a good thing. Now, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but God comes to give life and give it abundantly. So let’s celebrate the goodness of marriage. I think you ought to celebrate, if you’re a married couple, celebrate it every day, thank God for your spouse. No, I really mean it, thank God for your spouse.

Thank God deeply and richly and fully for your spouse. Thank God for marriage, thank God that He invented it. Thank God for your life together. Thank God for it. Secondly, can I urge you to glorify God in your marriage? Glorify God, let your marriage be a lamp, a light shining in a dark place. Let God put it up on a stand, make it glorious. Go back one sermon to the 10,000 talents, if you need help on forgiveness, but forgive each other, forgive each other deeply and fully and richly and love each other and work on your marriage so that it can be glorious. I have more to say about that next time. Thirdly, I want you to think of divorce as unthinkable. Think of it as unthinkable, don’t bring it up when you’re having an argument, don’t talk about it. It’s unthinkable. Again, I wanna talk more about that next time. But just no, the Lord said, no, we’re not going there, we’re gonna work on the problem, we’re gonna work on our communication. We’re gonna work on our sin, we’re gonna pray for each other, we’re gonna love each other, we’re gonna fast, we’re gonna do whatever it takes, but we’re going to work it out.

Think of it as unthinkable, I’ll say more about that next time. Just like I did with my pro-life sermon a few weeks ago, I just wanna finish with just a word to those of you that have been just deeply hurt by this topic. I hope not un-wrongly hurt by my sermon. I just wanna promise you that the grace of Jesus Christ is sufficient for you. Wisdom of God and the Word is sufficient for you. There is a path ahead from this point forward in which you can live a life completely pleasing to God, and that’s a sweet thing, isn’t it? God’s mercies are new every morning, they’re new every moment. If we turn to Him honestly, we seek forgiveness, He will give it. Trust Him for that and pray for me over this next week as I put together what’s left of this sermon into something coherent next week, and let’s talk some more about this topic then. Close with me in prayer.

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

I. A Sweet Blessing Gone Bad

A. Remember Your Wedding Day

1. that day God gave you the greatest earthly gift He could give… another human being, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, from that day on and forever, until death parted you

2. remember how happy you were, what hopes you had, what longings for the future

3. remember how beautiful you each looked… you never looked better in your lives… wearing special clothes for the most important act of your lives

4. how many pictures were taken that day, capturing your happy faces and the hopes in your hearts

5. and how is it now?

B. Remember the First Wedding Day

1. God had made a perfect world, we can scarcely imagine its radiant beauty

2. a perfectly blue sky, the radiant sun, the glowing vegetation—all the flowering plants and fruitful trees giving off their fragrance and boasting their succulent fruit—the Garden of Eden, a lush paradise of sights, sounds, smells, and sensory pleasures

3. the magnificent beasts, the creeping things, the soaring birds with their magnificent plumage

4. there God put the man He’d fashioned from the dust of the earth… a living and breathing man, now tasked with the responsibility of naming the animals and birds God brought to him

5. but Adam was alone—completely alone, no one to talk to, and a world to fill with the image of God… a task he could never have accomplished alone

6. Adam needed a helper suitable for him

7. so God caused him to fall into a deep sleep, and while Adam was sleeping, God took a rib from one of his sides and closed up the place with flesh

8. God wondrously crafted a woman from the rib and brought this magnificent gift, the last thing God ever created… a beautiful woman, perfectly suited for Adam

9. he responded the only way a man can when he sees the woman he’s going to marry—with poetry

Genesis 2:23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

10. God had given Adam the greatest physical gift he would ever receive… Eve would be the mother of all the living in history

11. but sin soon entered the world through Adam’s sinful negligence and rebellion, and we have been suffering ever since

12. divorce is part of that sin package, and is the sad focus of our time in the word this morning

C. How Is It Now?

1. the epidemic of divorce

Some years ago a journalist for a national news magazine asked a rhetorical question:  “Are there any persons left in the land who have not had a friend or a child or a parent describe the agony of divorce?”

Statistics are shocking:

Annual divorce rate is 3.9/1000 people of population, equaling well over 1 million divorces per year

Sadly, the divorce rates among self-described Christians not very much different from those of non-Christians

With one million divorces, of course comes over two million newly divorced people, plus several million new children of divorce

Every single person involved in the process is hurt deeply, some say they are “wounded for life”

One commentator said, “Every divorce destroys a little world… a little society, with its own culture, and traditions, and history, and network of relationships… a miniature world has been crushed forever.”

The tragedy is unspeakable:

Men and women feeling rejected to the very core of their being… ripped apart from inside… the most significant relationship of their lives ended forever

They remember all the moments with bitterness and sadness:  a photo of the couple on their first date, a love letter tumbling from the pages of a book, a box of memorabilia from the wedding day… a video of the wedding itself, all the smiles, the kisses, the promises made, the hopes for the future, the honeymoon, their first home together, the start of their life together… and how tragic, the photos of their first child, coming home from the hospital, the three of them together at Christmas, smiling for the camera

Now all of it is destroyed… and to make matters far worse… far worse than if it had ended by a tragic auto accident or a terminal illness, this world has come to an end through each person’s own choices, their own, foolishness, their own sin

We cannot calculate the agony that these one million divorces pumps into the national atmosphere…

2. divorce used to be rare… why??

a. In past years, the vast majority of marriages held secure and stable

b. Divorce was difficult and rare

c. What reasons can we give?  John MacArthur lists these

i) The extended family was a powerful moral force:  relationships to parents continued to exert tremendous pull long after marriage… married couples felt the pressure to work out their differences rather than bring shame on their parents by getting a divorce… so also there was a much stronger network of relationships extending to grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.  these relationships did not merely put pressure on people to save their marriages, but they offered resources the desperate couple needed to fight for their marriage—advice, prayer, moral example, money, a shoulder to cry on, etc. This network had become greatly weakened over the last number of decades… the fluidity of our society, and frankly, the multiplication of divorces for the last fifty years have shattered these networks… so also has the proliferation of anti-biblical ideologies, like moral permissiveness, feminism, humanism, and the proliferation of television, movies, internet, etc. have pumped out a viewpoint radically different from that of the Bible

ii) Community expectation:  the surrounding community expected marriages to survive, and responded to divorce negatively;  divorce laws were difficult, and community ethics stood in favor of maintaining a marriage and working out difficulties

iii) Strongest of all:  the church universally taught the biblical truth about marriage and divorce… all branches of Christianity—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox—strongly supported healthy family life, and just as strongly opposed divorce

d. But all of this has changed

i) Especially in the church, more and more people feel compelled, in the name of Christian love and compassion, to change the clear biblical teaching on divorce

ii) A Christian entertainer gets a divorce, claiming that her husband stood in the way her career’s advancement

iii) She said that she did not believe her divorce related to her religious views in any significant way… and that even if it did, God would forgive anything she did and loved her just as much in spite of it

iv) More and more Christian counseling has imbibed the general prevailing worldly perspective, and has turned to helping people through the divorce process with minimal pain, and helping them prepare for their future lives after divorce

e. Some Christians, in the name of love, become hostile to anyone that teaches the biblical standard on marriage and divorce and calls it “legalism”; but other Christians, seeing what is happening in society in general, raise the standard beyond what the Bible says in a zeal to protect what the Bible does teach…

John MacArthur:  “But that which is contrary to Scripture can never be either loving or spiritual.  A human standard may be more lenient or more restrictive than Scripture; but it can never be better.  When God’s word is ignored or perverted in any area, tragedy is always the consequence.  The matter of marriage and divorce standards are no exception.”

3. deeper societal questions about marriage itself

a. more and more confusion about what marriage is;  gay “marriage”

b. humorous piece about a clerk in a town hall issuing marriage licenses to an ever-stranger series of people… beginning with two men, then two women, then a man and a boy, then three people all at once, and ending up with a man who wanted to marry himself!!!

c. It is actually impossible to define marriage apart from the absolute standard God gives in the Bible… we are heading toward weirder and weirder issues the further away from “Thus says the Lord…” we get

This morning, we are going to face this painful question together, as brothers and sisters in Christ

We are going to sit at Jesus’ feet and allow Him to teach us about marriage and divorce

We are going to listen to Him to speak the truth to us, no matter how painful… and we are going to allow Him to heal the most painful spots in our souls

II. The Pharisees Ask a Treacherous Question

A. Context

Matthew 19:1-2  When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan.  ² Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

1. for about two years Jesus has been ministering almost exclusively in His home area of Galilee

2. for the last two months, He’s been focusing almost exclusively on training the Twelve for their future responsibilities as leaders of His church

3. he now goes south to the most important appointment of His life… His arrest, condemnation, and execution for our sins… and His bodily resurrection on the third day

4. the region beyond the Jordan was part of the territory of Herod Antipas, the very man who had arrested John the Baptist for preaching that his marriage to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, was unlawful

5. Now the Pharisees came seeking to get Jesus in the same trouble that John had experienced

6. in any case, the text says the Pharisees were asking a question in order to test, or trap him

B. The Treacherous Question

Matthew 19:3  Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

1. they were not looking for information… they just HATED Jesus and wanted to have him killed

2. backdrop to their question:  a long-standing debate among Jewish rabbis on the issue of divorce

a. every Jew believed a Jewish man had the right to divorce his wife based on the Law of Moses, Deuteronomy 24:  it says a man who finds something “indecent” about his wife can write her a certificate of divorce… but if she marries another man, she can never return to her first husband

b. the strict school of the rabbi Shammai felt that the “indecent thing” the first husband found had to be adultery

c. the more lenient school of Hillel interpreted it more widely and said it referred to anything offensive to the husband… even spoiling the husband’s dinner

d. the Pharisees tended to follow Hillel and allow divorce “for any and every reason”

e. a later rabbi named Akiba interpreted the words of Moses “if she finds no favor in his eyes” to mean that, even if the husband simply found a prettier woman, one more pleasing to the eye, he could divorce the first wife

f. feelings ran very high about this topic!!!!

g. no matter what answer Jesus gave would antagonize somebody… maybe especially Herod Antipas, resulting in Jesus’ death

h. so you see divorce was just as hot a topic back in Jesus’ day as it is in ours

III. The Timeless Answer of Jesus

Matthew 19:4-6  “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’  ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  ⁶ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

A timeless answer from Jesus… its truths are still binding on us today, no matter how modern or postmodern we may thing we are

He first lays four immovable foundation stones on which He bases His answer… then He gives His ruling

A. Foundation #1:  The Sufficiency of Scripture

1. “Haven’t you read…”

a. Jesus begins this dispute by setting the ground rules

b. The answer will be found only by a right reading of Scripture

c. The Scripture is SUFFICIENT to answer the questions of marriage and divorce

i) This is the big flaw with much Christian counseling

ii) They get more information about marriage from psychological studies and clinical research and the prevailing patterns of therapy in the field

iii) True biblical counseling answers the problems of marriage the way Jesus does here:  Haven’t you read…???

2. “What my Scripture says I say…”

a. the deepest issue here is the inspiration and authority of the Bible

b. look carefully at Jesus’ quotation of Genesis 2

Matthew 19:4-5  “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’  ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?

i) Jesus said the Creator (God) does TWO things in the Genesis account)

ii) First, He “made them male and female”

iii) Second, He made a statement about them… “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother…etc.”

iv) But if you look at Genesis 2:24, you’ll find that that statement is not made by the Lord God in the text, but is merely part of the narrative… Moses, who wrote the Genesis 2 account put it in there

v) BUT TO Jesus, THAT DOESN’T MATTER

vi) Everything in the Bible is God, the Creator speaking to man the creature

It’s what Augustine meant when he put into God’s mouth the words: “Indeed, O man, what My Scripture says, I say” (Confessions, 13.29; emphasis mine). J.I Packer says Scripture is thus the “transcript of divine speech” (Packer, God Has Spoken, 28)

God is speaking this to you today!!!

B. Foundation #2:  God’s Original Intent

1. Haven’t you read that at the beginning…

2. Jesus carries our minds back to God’s original intention

3. What God did with Adam and Eve was intended to be a pattern for EVERY MARRIAGE THAT FOLLOWED

…at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh…’”

For this reason = this is a lasting principle for all time

Neither Adam nor Eve had a father or a mother… but every other man in history would have one… and their union would be the pattern for all other marriages

4. He calls God “the Creator”… and the Creator does everything for a purpose

5. He will argue that divorce was no part of God’s original purpose

Matthew 19:8  “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. BUT IT WAS NOT THIS WAY FROM THE BEGINNING.

6. God’s original purpose:  one man (a male), one woman (a female), coming together in a complete physical union (one flesh) for the purpose of filling the earth with His image and His glory

Genesis 1:27-28  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

7. Essential to God’s purpose is procreation… the birth of children… though it is not God’s only purpose in marriage, yet this is why the GENDER (male, female) is mentioned here… this completely rules out so-called homosexual marriage

8. God wanted godly offspring… and children were to be born into a covenant marriage relationship with a male (father) and a female (mother) who would train them at least in part to get ready for their own future marriages

Matthew 19:5  ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?

9. This is the precise reason why God hates divorce… it violates his purpose and it is VIOLENT to the spouse

Malachi 2:13-16  Another thing you do: You flood the LORD’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.  ¹⁴ You ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.  ¹⁵ Has not the LORD made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.  ¹⁶ “I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel, “and I hate a man’s covering himself with violence as well as with his garment,” says the LORD Almighty. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.

10. At any rate, to understand marriage, we must go back to God’s original intention as related in the Genesis account, and as commented on throughout Scripture

C. Foundation #3:  God’s Action in Marriage

1. Christ says that the Creator physically prepared them for marriage by making them male and female… their physical bodies well-suited for God’s purposes in marriage

2. some ascetics within the Christian church history have written against any kind of sexual involvement as if it were intrinsically evil, because it is “fleshly”

3. but that anti-flesh bias comes more from Greek philosophy than from the Bible

4. The Creator made them male and female… and then brought them together so the two would become one flesh

5. Jesus goes beyond that to say that God has joined them together

 “what God has joined together…”

D. Foundation #4:  The Two Become One Flesh

1. this union is deep and real

2. it is not merely a “piece of paper” as some people who like to live together before marriage say

3. God does something very profound, very mystical… yes it is physical, the marital bed is pure and undefiled and physical

4. But God also creates a UNITY where there was none before

5. it is so profound that Paul likens it to Christ’s unity with the church

Ephesians 5:31-32  “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  ³² This is a profound mystery– but I am talking about Christ and the church.

6. AND even more amazing, Christ’s unity with the church is a picture of God the Father’s unity with God the Son in the Trinity

John 17:21  that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.

E. The Timeless Answer

Matthew 19:6  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

1. Jesus’ answer to the treacherous question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” is simply, clearly ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!

2. We have no right to undo what God has joined… to rip it apart, separate it, cleave it apart…

3. Four-fold foundation to Christ’s timeless command

a. Because Scripture is God’s perfect word to you

b. And because in Scripture, God’s original intention in marriage is made plain

c. And because God has acted directly in marriage from the very beginning and even now, personally involved in making marriages

d. And because the two become physically and mystically one,

e. Let man NOT separate what God has joined

4. There are more questions to ask… always more and more, but let’s keep this clear teaching in front of us

5. We might say, “Of course, that is God’s standard, and it would be best if we all followed it… but things happen.  Will God still love me and forgive me and bless my life if I violate this standard?”

6. That’s an entirely different question!!  But in Jesus’ worldview, it’s like asking “How much poison can I drink and not die?  How many times can I shoot myself and not bleed to death?  Can I scoop fire in my lap and not be burned?”

7. Whenever we violate God’s standards and go our own separate way, either as individuals or as pastors or as a church, there are deep, painful consequences

8. Is the grace of God sufficient to cover that river of sin?? Absolutely, and an infinitely greater river beside

9. but God’s grace works BOTH TO PREVENT SIN as well as to HEAL THE EFFECTS OF SIN

10. too much of the discussion is spent on the after-effects of NOT living up to Christ’s standard… God’s grace also labors with us ahead of time to protect us from the pain of sin

IV. Two More Questions and Two More Answers

A. Question #1:  Why Did Moses Command Divorce?

Matthew 19:7  Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

1. notice that, despite the clear answer with its four-fold foundation doesn’t quiet his enemies

2. it is important for Christians in particular to allow the clear teaching of the Bible to quiet their stream of questions at some point

3. are we here to argue with Jesus or to allow Him to speak authoritatively to us, even in the most controversial issues

4. Jesus’ statement was so absolute that it left even those who followed the stricter school of Rabbi Shammai wondering if Jesus would permit any divorce at all

5. the Pharisees come back with Moses’ command… which their hearts had twisted somewhat

6. remember that Moses was regulating not so much divorce as he was forbidding the remarriage of a twice-divorced woman to her original husband

B. Jesus’ Answer:  Hardness of Heart

Matthew 19:8-9  Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.  ⁹ I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

1. clarification #1:  Moses never COMMANDED anyone to get a divorce; he merely permitted you to divorce your wives

2. clarification #2:  divorce is rooted in the hardness of heart all sinners depict… sin is always the root cause of divorce;  I am not saying that there is not the “innocent party” in a divorce… there are some absolutely heart-wrenching cases in which a Christian husband or wife has been cruelly sinned against by some adulterous spouse, then struggles valiantly to save the marriage, but ends up losing that struggle

3. However, the permission Moses gave for divorce was not in God’s original intention… it was not this way from the beginning

4. Jesus’ strong pronouncement:  if you divorce your wife for any reason other than sexual immorality on the part of your wife, and you marry another woman you commit adultery

5. clarification #3:  divorce is sometimes permissible… there is a lawful way to get a divorce

a. this is the controversial “exception clause”

b. it is controversial because Jesus gives NO EXCEPTION in Luke and in Mark

c. however, if we accept all Scripture as God breathed, we must accept this statement as the inspired utterance of Almighty God on earth

d. a man who divorces his wife FOR SEXUAL IMMORALITY does so lawfully

i) that is the clear force of the Greek words translated “except”

ii) the “except” covers ONE CASE… other cases have been ruled out by Jesus’ earlier statement “What God has joined together let man not separate”

iii) what is “marital unfaithfulness” or “sexual immorality”  The Greek word is porneia, and it is broader than merely adultery… it covers any kind of sexual immorality, including fornication and adultery

iv) again notice that Jesus is not commanding people to get a divorce even if there is porneia… even in those cases, forgiveness and grace can restore a damaged marriage

v) but there is an exception, and I believe since Jesus Himself is dealing with remarriage (and marries another woman) then the lawful divorce carries with it the right to remarry

Note:  Later, the apostle Paul will add another case, that of abandonment of a Christian by an unbelieving spouse, and I believe he is giving permission to that person also to a lawful divorce and subsequent remarriage.  Other’s disagree and say no remarriage is ever in view… I respect that view but disagree with it

C. Question #2:  Isn’t It Better Not to Marry?

1. this one comes from Jesus’ own disciples

Matthew 19:10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

2. human nature, as usual, taking it TOO FAR!!!

a. The disciples have clearly overturned the original intention of marriage, which was that it was to be a BLESSING from the hand of God

b. God said of solitary Adam

“It is not good for the man to be alone… I will make a helper suitable for him.”

c. The disciples say

“It is not good for a man to be married…”

d. See how deeply in love with our freedom we are

i) We are always looking to make the final pronouncement, to get the final word

ii) We want an escape route, and God does not intend to give us one

iii) In the Christian church, marriage is at least in part intended to serve God’s greater purpose in sanctifying each partner

iv) Marriage gives a context for very hard issues and deep-rooted sin to float to the surface so it can be dealt with

v) That process is so painful, if we had an easy escape route we would readily take it

vi) So also the process of raising a family is very difficult, a daily challenge… many a man finds it too much for his natural abilities and inclinations…

vii) He is looking for an easy escape… and God will not allow him one

Illus.  There is a story commonly told about Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez, that when he and his small force of 700 men landed in Mexico in 1519, he burned his ships so that his men would be completely committed to the difficult conquest of the Aztec Empire.  Whether the story is true or not, it illustrates this principle in marriage:  God is not giving your sinful flesh an easy way out… He wants you to work out your salvation with fear and trembling and also to work out your marital difficulties the same way

D. Jesus’ Answer:  It Depends on Your Gift

Matthew 19:11-12  Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given.  ¹² For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

1. The disciples were saying it’s better to be single

2. Jesus accepts that, for some people it IS better to be single… He Himself is a prime example of that;  so would be the Apostle Paul

3. But that it’s a gift, and not everyone can ACCEPT it… the Greek word means “make room for” the concept “I’m going to be single the rest of my life”

4. He cites different cases:  some are born “eunuchs” (i.e. those who will never marry)… they are born that way because of some physical or mental defect

5. Others are made that way by men: (referring perhaps to those who were forcibly made eunuchs in Gentile courts like those of Babylon and Persia)

6. Others have “made themselves eunuchs” for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven

a. This does not refer to some drastic act like Origen took of self-emasculation so that he wouldn’t suffer from sexual temptation ever again

b. Rather this speaks of a voluntary renouncing of marriage for spiritual purposes

c. The Apostle Paul advocated this life in 1 Corinthians 7 and stated that it was his choice in 1 Corinthians 9

7. however, remember that Jesus said not everyone can accept it, but only those to whom it has been given

8. Paul put it in terms of GIFTS… one man will have the gift of singleness, another man the gift of a wife

1 Corinthians 7:7  each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

9. so also Jesus finished that way

Matthew 19:12  The one who can accept this should accept it.

i.e. “the one who can accept permanent singleness for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven should do so!”

V. Applications

A. Celebrate the Gift of Marriage

1. think often of the goodness of God in giving us this gift of marriage

2. it is Satan who wants us to think hard thoughts of marriage in many different ways

a. to be the philosopher ascetic who says that all fleshly things are evil, forgetting that it is God who made the flesh, and a male and a female to become one flesh

b. or on the other hand, to so delight in the physical sensations of the flesh that we forget the holy covenant of marriage that God established to protect it

c. so it is Satan that pushes young people to seize privileges that have not been given them yet because God has not yet made the two one by marriage

3. if you’re married:  thank God for marriage—for the wisdom and goodness of God in bringing you two together

4. if someday you will be married, thank God for that blessed state and look forward to it with holy expectations… keep yourself sexually pure in mind and body… keep yourself completely pure for that day when you will stand before God with the partner of your youth God is giving you

5. if you are a widow/widower, remember with sweetness the goodness of God in giving you the gift of marriage for as long as He did

B. Glorify God in Your Marriage

1. if you are married, make your marriage a delightful display of the glory of God

2. understand that Satan wants to make your marriage a battleground… perhaps no one needs to remember this verse Our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood… than a married person

3. Your mentality should be that God brought you together primarily for the purpose of putting Himself on display… that His attributes might shine forth;  both in how you treat each other, in the way you help sanctify each other, in the way you raise the next generation for His glory… THAT GOD MAY BE GLORIFIED… that is the reason you exist as husband and wife

4. so often divorce is essentially selfish:  “she doesn’t meet my needs”  “He doesn’t understand me”  “irreconcilable differences”… it can all be so selfish

5. the best remedy to selfishness in marriage is to see your marriage as having been crafted by God for His own glory and pleasure

C. Think of Divorce as Unthinkable

1. theologically unthinkable:

a. because the Trinity is eternal… no person of the Trinity is ever going to seek to get out

b. because salvation is eternal:  God has promised to never leave us of forsake us, so He expects us to make that same promise to each other

c. because heaven is eternal:  “and so we will be with the Lord forever”

d. for all these reasons, marriage must be permanent as defined by God

2. Practically unthinkable:

a. in this world of sin, the purpose of this standard that so shocked the disciples that they said “It’s better not to get married” is to protect the marriage from our sin natures… when two sinners come together to get married, their mutual sin habits will conspire to make life very challenging

b. if divorce is as easy as our sin natures would make it, we would be tempted to throw in the towel and not work things through

3. Therefore:  don’t mention divorce in angry moments… when you are having a conflict, do not bring it up as an option;  when

4. Obviously:  I do not remove the exception clause Christ gave… divorce is permissible in the case of sexual immorality… but even then, there should be a deep desire at reconciliation

D. If You Are the Innocent Party

1.  Perhaps your spouse abandoned you… perhaps he or she was unfaithful to you… perhaps you fought to save the marriage and they were determined to leave

2. I want you to know that God’s mercy is there for you… abundantly… His grace is sufficient for you

3. I know that doesn’t take away all the sting, but it is a sweet thing to reflect on verses like this:

Isaiah 43:1-2  “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  ² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

I also stand here and say it is my conviction that, if you are the innocent party in a divorce as Jesus describes here in Matthew 19 and in Matthew 5, or as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7, then I believe you are free to remarry

John MacArthur makes the point that, in the Old Testament era, an adulterer would have been stoned to death;   that would have left his/her spouse free to remarry.  Why should the innocent spouse be penalized because God graciously allowed the adulterer to live?

E. If You Have Sinned, Accept Christ’s Abundant Forgiveness

1. I am well aware—how could I not be?—of the fact that there are some listening to me today who have experienced divorce… and perhaps you are not the innocent party;  perhaps it was your own sexual unfaithfulness that destroyed your marriage;  or perhaps, you did not understand God’s standard on divorce and got divorced sinfully;  and now, you have been remarried contrary to God’s standards

2. I am well aware that those things can and do happen in the church

3. We have to realize that God sent His Son into the world to save sinners… unlawful divorce and remarriage is a sin, and Christ’s blood is abundantly ample to cover all sin

4. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba, murdered her husband, married her and settled into a perverse new life, God judged David by taking the life of the baby conceived… but then, when Bathsheba conceived again and bore David another son, Solomon, God sent word through the prophet Nathan that the baby would be called “Jedidiah”, that is “Beloved by the Lord”… lesson:  GOD MOVES ON… when you can’t rectify your sin, God wants you to make the most of your new situation

5. therefore, though the remarriage should not have taken place, now that it has, God desires you to live honorably within that new situation

F. BUT Also… Tell the Truth About It

1. However, if that has happened to you, you can bless the church most by being honest scripturally about it if you are ever in a position to discuss it

2. for example, if you are discipling some young couple and the issue of your first marriage comes up, you can simply say “According to the Scriptural standard Christ has given us, I should never have gotten a divorce or been remarried.  If I had to do it again, I would do it differently.  But God has graciously forgiven my sins and now desires me to live godly in my present marriage.”

G. Bottom Line:  Marriage is a Delightful Blessing… freedom from divorce is one of the great blessings of a mature Christian marriage