In America, and in the modern West more broadly, marriage
isn't what it used to be. In 2024, adults in the US were
less likely to be married than at almost any point since the
Census Bureau began tracking marital status in 1940.
In 1960, the average age of first marriage was 22 for men
and 20 for women. In 2024, it was 30 for men and
28 for women. So on average, people are
spending less of their life married.
In 1950, seventy 8% of households were headed by a
married couple. In 2024, only 47% of households
were headed by a married couple, which is near an all time low.
In 1970, among Americans ages 25 to 50, only 9% had never
married. In 2018, that figure was 35
percent. 35% of 25 to 50 year olds have never married.
So people are marrying later, fewer people are marrying.
And then there's divorce. Today in America, 43% of first
marriages end in divorce. Marriage has always been hard,
but life in modern America is making it harder.
Fewer people want to marry, fewer people are marrying, and a
whole lot of people who do marry fail to stay married.
What is marriage for? What makes it work?
What causes it to fail? This morning we continue our
series in Mark's Gospel with chapter 10, verses 1 to 12.
If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand and somebody
will bring you one. And if you don't have a Bible
because you'd like literally don't have a Bible, keep it.
Take it home, read it. It's our gift to you.
But seriously, if you don't have one, OK, it looks like
everybody's got one. In our passage, Jesus fields a
controversial question from religious leaders about divorce.
To answer that question, he appeals to the reality of what
marriage is, who created it, and what it requires of those who
are married. Whether you're single, married,
divorced, or widowed, Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce
is crucial for all of us. He shows us God's good design,
and by implication He shows us what it takes to fulfill God's
design and to help others do the same.
Please follow along as I read Mark 10 verses 1 to 12.
And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond
the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again and again, as was
his custom, He taught them. And Pharisees came up and in
order to test him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his
wife? He answered them, What did Moses
command you? They said Moses allowed a man to
write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.
And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he
wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of
creation God made them male and female.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
So they're no longer 2, but one flesh.
What? Therefore God has joined
together, Let not man separate. And in the house.
The disciples asked him again about this matter.
And he said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries
another commits adultery against her.
And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits
adultery. This whole passage is Jesus's
answer to a contemporary controversy about divorce.
Because of the nature of the passage, this sermon might seem
a little more dense and teachy than normal.
Wait a minute, you say, I thought the sermons already were
dense and teachy. Indeed they are.
But this one all the more so. It just comes with the
territory. We're going to have to do a bit
more work to both understand the historical background and to
connect Jesus teaching here with what the rest of Scripture
teaches about divorce, marriage, and remarriage.
Still, my basic task will be to explain and apply this passage.
Here's Jesus's main point. I couldn't fit it into one
sentence, so here's two Marriage is a lifelong, exclusive
covenant woven into the fabric of creation.
Divorce is only permitted when the marriage covenant has been
broken. I'll say that again.
Marriage is a lifelong, exclusive covenant woven into
the fabric of creation. Divorce is only permitted when
the marriage covenant has been broken.
We'll unfold Jesus reasoning here in three parts, which walk
through the passage pretty much in order with a little bit of
overlap between each point. Point #1 the authority of
creation. We see this in verses one to
six, the authority of creation. Verse one sets the scene.
And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond
the Jordan. And crowds gathered to him again
and again, as was his custom, He taught them.
As we've seen throughout this part of Mark's Gospel, Jesus is
continuing his journey toward Jerusalem.
And as he makes that journey and he gets down to the region of
Judea and around the Transjordan, he continues to
teach large crowds. Out of this crowd, some
religious leaders come to him with a controversial question,
verse 2. And Pharisees came up and in
order to test him asked is it lawful for a man to divorce his
wife? Now why this question is a test
is not 100% clear from the context.
It's possible that the Pharisees are trying to get Jesus in
trouble with the authorities by getting him to weigh in on
Herodias's unlawful divorce. Speaking out against that was
part of what got John the Baptist imprisoned and beheaded.
But I think it's more likely that they're simply trying to
throw him a curveball. Here's a tough question.
Here's a matter of dispute. They're trying to catch him out.
They're trying to somehow trip him up.
But what exactly are they asking here?
It's crucial to recognize that our gospel account is highly
compressed. It's highly abbreviated.
It's not a verbatim transcript of an entire exchange, like
minutes in a court case. Instead, it takes certain
historical background knowledge for granted.
And that makes sense. The first readers of this gospel
would have had a whole lot more knowledge of what Jewish life
around the time of Jesus was like, and so we have to work a
little bit to understand exactly what question they were asking.
All Jews of Jesus's day acknowledged some grounds for
divorce. No Jewish thinker known to
history categorically prohibited divorce.
Instead, the Pharisees are asking Jesus about what are
valid grounds for divorce. It's like if someone asked you
today, is it legal for a 16 year old to drink?
Well, I hope so because they need water to live, but of
course that's not the question. Oh, legal for a 16 year old to
drink alcohol? You just say drink because
that's shorthand. We understand what you mean.
There's shared cultural knowledge.
It would be a question. Well, no, the drinking age in
America is 21, and even in some other places it might be 18.
But that's irrelevant, right? A 16 year old can't drink.
If you just say a 16 year old can't drink, you know someone
from 300 years in the future might go.
A 1616 year old can't drink. What sort of bizarre torture are
they practicing on 16 year olds? No, there's an understood
qualification. Can't drink alcohol?
Everyone listening in would supply that.
And so here in the Pharisees question there's an assumed
qualification. In the Judaism of Jesus day,
there were two main schools of thought regarding divorce, and
they differed over how to interpret a crucial phrase in
Deuteronomy 24 verse 1. As a whole, Deuteronomy 24,
verses 1 to 4 regulates what happens after a divorce.
But we need to focus on verse one, when a man takes a wife and
marries her. If then she finds no favor in
his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he
writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand
and sends her out of his house, dot, dot, dot, then the passage
goes on. That's all set up.
That's all the circumstances that this legal ruling is
addressing. Now that phrase in verse one is
literally a matter of indecency or indecency of a matter, and
there were two schools of thought in Jesus day about how
to interpret that phrase. Followers of the Rabbi Sham I
held that Deuteronomy 24 one was speaking about divorce only for
a matter of indecency, which they took to mean sexual
unfaithfulness. But followers of Rabbi Hillel
had a new position that had recently come onto the scene and
became popular very quickly. It even became the majority view
very quickly. They understood indecency and a
matter to be two different things.
It's very much a looking for a loophole kind of reading.
A matter of indecency is one thing.
Ah, but it's 2 words. It's a matter and it's
indecency. So if indecency is one thing and
a matter is another, then Moses must be talking about a husband
divorcing his wife for any matter.
There's indecency and then there's a matter that is for any
'cause that position, which had become the majority position by
Jesus day, essentially gave a husband access to no fault
divorce. Some Jews in Jesus day said a
man could divorce his wife if she burned his dinner.
Not making that up. There's a historical record of
that. Some said a man could divorce
his wife quote if he found another fairer than she.
The historian Josephus casually reports about himself at this
time. I divorced my wife not liking
her behavior. So that type of callous, casual,
no fault divorce was taking place in Jesus day and on the
basis of a new view that was now the majority view of how to
interpret Deuteronomy 24. One, it really opened the
floodgates for divorce. It allowed divorce for any
cause. And that's exactly what the
Pharisees question assumes. They're asking is it lawful for
a man to divorce his wife for any 'cause when we hear their
question, we should supply those words.
Now if you're a little bit skeptical of this kind of
historical background reconstruction, if you're
thinking, oh, but I haven't read the Jewish literature, I don't
really know, maybe you're making this up.
Maybe the scholars you've studied are wrong.
Well, Matthew 19 verse 3, the parallel to our passage supplies
that exact phrase. Mark understands it.
Matthew says it. So it's it's the same question.
It's just if you're listening in, in Jesus day, you know, oh,
they're asking about any matter divorce.
You just know that's what they're asking.
Matthew says it explicitly and Mark it's understood.
So they're asking Jesus to weigh in on this debate.
Is is he a matter of indecency guy like the minority or is he
in any cause guy like the majority?
And this brings us to Jesus initial reply.
He flips the question back on them.
Verses 3 and four. He answered them.
What did Moses command you? They said Moses allowed a man to
write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.
So Jesus asks the Pharisees what do the scriptures teach?
And now that we know the context, they appeal to the
passage. We would expect Deuteronomy 24
verse 1. And so they summarize it.
But at least as recorded here, the information we have, it
doesn't look like they give away their position.
I think it's safe to assume they probably held the majority view,
but they don't seem to take a stand on the disputed phrase.
Instead they just kind of summarize the passage and kick
the ball back to Jesus. Well, Jesus Moses says a man can
write a certificate of divorce and send her away.
So what do you do with that one clue to how the debate is going
to play out? Jesus asks them what did Moses
command you? And they reply with Moses aloud.
Jesus is asking what's commanded.
They reply with what's permitted.
They're being evasive. Jesus is asking for something
slightly different than what they're willing to answer.
I should say just a little bit more on Deuteronomy 24 versus 1
to 4. For background.
The passage is complicated. It is about what to do if a
woman who has been divorced, then remarries and then is
divorced again. We won't get into all those
details, but it's crucial to know that in that passage and
throughout Jewish history afterward, a certificate of
divorce was itself permission to remarry.
The very wording of a divorce certificate in Jesus day was she
is free to marry whomever she wishes.
In the ancient Jewish world and the Greco Roman world more
broadly, it was universally agreed that permission to
divorce was permission to remarry.
If you were legitimately divorced, then you had freedom
to remarry. So in this passage in
Deuteronomy, it's not, strictly speaking, permitting divorce.
Instead, it's regulating it and limiting its impacts.
It's certainly not commanding divorce.
There is no command here to divorce.
And before we move on, I think it's worth clarifying that the
phrase matter of indecency, like really does refer to sexual
immorality. Jesus teaching elsewhere makes
that plain when he's engaging the same debut and other dispute
or debate in other parts of the Gospels.
He clarifies a matter of sexual immorality is what Deuteronomy
24 one is referring to. So how does Jesus reply?
Here? We see the beginnings of his
reply in verses 5 and 6. And Jesus said to them, because
of your hardness of heart, He wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and
female. Notice that Jesus does not
disagree with Moses's teaching. He doesn't dismiss Moses's
teaching. Instead, he sets it in the
context of creation. However we understand its exact
parameters. Divorce is a concession to sin.
It's meant to limit the damage of sin.
It's only legitimate when something has gone terribly
wrong. More on that and .3.
Jesus's point is that you cannot learn God's instructions for
marriage by looking at the instructions for what to do when
something has gone terribly wrong.
You don't learn to fly an airplane by following the
instructions for how to make a crash landing.
You don't learn how to win a battle in war by training for
how to make a successful retreat.
Jesus is saying the same is true for marriage and divorce.
You have to look to the purpose. You have to look to the pattern.
You have to look to what the institution requires and demands
and compels. And so he says, this concession
was given as a result of hardness of heart.
It was given to limit the impact of how people's hardness of
heart would damage each other. It's worth meditating on this
week. In what ways is your heart
hardened toward God, hardened toward his commandments,
hardened toward other people? What damage might that hardness
of heart do if you don't labor to soften your heart by God's
Word and by meditating on his grace?
So Jesus appeals to creation. In order to begin to uncover
God's design for marriage and the limits that God sets to
divorce. Jesus appeals to the authority
of creation. He first quotes Genesis 127, the
scriptural passage that teaches us about God's direct, special
act of creating the first human beings.
We'll consider more details in the next point, but for now I
just want to notice the move Jesus makes.
Notice the basis he appeals to. Jesus is teaching that God's
creative act has an abiding validity.
God's created order has an abiding authority.
God created humanity, male and female.
That teaches us that marriage is a natural human institution
created by divine design. It fits our very nature as male
and female. To use some technical language,
we can say that in the original act of creation, God created a
single sexually dimorphic pair, one man, one woman.
If you want to learn what marriage is, you can discern it
from the complementary bodies that God gave to the first two
human beings. The nature of marriage is built
into how God created us and what he created us.
As we are male and female, capable of becoming 1 flesh and
bringing a new life into the world, so marriage is not a a
human invention but a divine institution.
Marriage is not a human creation, but a divine
provision. Marriage is not an arbitrary,
culturally relative convention that we could sort of adopt or
tweak or dismiss as we will. Instead, it's something defined
for us by our very created natures.
Scripture and nature speak with one voice about what marriage
is. So to understand how marriage
and divorce fit together, you have to constrain divorce with
the created nature of marriage. Let the definition of marriage
limit divorce. Don't let permission to divorce
redefine marriage. Look to God's original design,
His blueprint, His purpose. Look to the authority of
creation itself. Jesus said from the beginning of
creation God made them male and female.
Now his Jesus quotation of Genesis 127 has all kinds of
implications for how we should think about our lives as male
and female, as men and women. I can only touch on a couple
briefly here. 1 crucial point is that sexual difference is a gift
from God to be received with Thanksgiving.
That God has created human beings in two sexual kinds is
not a burden to be refused. It's not a hurdle to be
overcome. To be a man is a gift.
To be a woman is a gift. Whether you ever marry or not,
whether you ever bear children or not, being a man and being a
woman is a gift. When we talk about what makes
human life unique and valuable and enjoyable, we should include
and highlight men and women's sexual difference rather than
trying to erase it. To give just one important
example, a woman's capacity to bear new life within herself is
not an obstacle standing in the way of some other greater good.
Instead, it's a miracle, and it's a marvel.
It is an astonishing power that should be celebrated and
cherished. Further, sexual difference is
something we must submit to and align our wills and desires
with. Sexual difference is not a
boundary we can or should seek to erase or even crossover.
We did not make ourselves and we cannot remake ourselves.
We can't trade ourselves in for a different model.
Sexual difference is given by God and it is a good gift.
If you're not a believer in Jesus, I want to challenge you
here and kind of point to some of some of the deep divides in
our cultural narratives. Our culture is filled with myths
of self creation, and I mean myths in a sense of stories we
live by and myths also in the sense that they're not true.
In a Supreme Court decision in 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy
wrote at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own
concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of
the mystery of human life. That doesn't hold water.
We didn't create ourselves, and only the one who creates has the
right to define. And so the meaning and mystery
of human life isn't something we define for ourselves, but
something we discover that's built in by God.
Freedom comes not from remaking ourselves according to our inner
whims. Instead, freedom comes from
submitting to who God has made us to be, and from receiving
with gratitude what he has freely given us.
Freedom comes from submitting to the authority of creation, and
creation authoritatively. Reveals point to the reality of
marriage. The reality of marriage.
That's what Jesus holds up for our view in verses 6 through 9.
The reality of marriage verses 6 through 9, The basis of Jesus
teaching on when divorce is permitted is what marriage is.
Specifically, marriage is an exclusive, lifelong covenant
woven into the fabric of creation.
Look again at verse 6. But from the beginning of
creation God made them male and female.
This teaches us that marriage is part of God's created order.
It's part of his original pre fall design and God still has
good purposes for marriage in this created though fallen order
that we live in. The fact that God created us
male and female points to the nature of marriage.
A male body and a female body are capable of joining in a
unique kind of intimate union, and that physical union doesn't
exist in a vacuum. Marriage is a total union, not
only of two bodies, but of two lives.
Marriage is an exclusive partnership.
Marriage is a total commitment. Marriage is a comprehensive gift
of oneself to another self. Marriage is therefore a
permanent commitment. It's not a contract you can
nullify at will. Jesus goes on to cite another
passage from Genesis, this time chapter 2, verse 24.
That's in verses 7 and 8. Therefore a man shall leave his
father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh. So they are no longer 2, but one
flesh. According to Genesis 224,
marriage establishes a new loyalty.
Every marriage founds a new family.
While our family circumstances before marriage can be very
different and diverse, marriage is always an act of both
separating and uniting, both leaving and joining.
When a couple pronounces the vows of marriage, they found a
political body. They bind themselves to a common
destiny by their sovereign declaration.
I do. To leave father and mother is to
found a new family. What does that require of a man
who is marrying? It requires him to hold fast to
his wife, you might say, to hang on to her for dear life.
Because she now is his dear life.
Her life is his. His life is hers.
Her body is his. His body is hers.
His body now includes her body. Whatever benefits her benefits
him. Whatever harms her harms him.
As marvellous and mysterious as marriage is, it is itself a
pointer to something even more marvellous and mysterious.
And it's in this picture of two becoming one, this deeper
transcendent unity, We see how marriage points beyond itself.
Paul instructs husbands and wives about how to live together
at the end of Ephesians 5. And at the end of that passage,
Paul quotes Genesis 224 just like Jesus, and he says this
mystery is profound. And I am saying that it refers
to Christ and the church to becoming one.
Flesh refers to Christ and the church.
It's about Christ and the church.
Marriage points beyond itself to Christ and the church.
How? We need to start by recognizing
that creation is ordered to communion.
God created us to have communion with Him.
God created us to share in an intimate union and fellowship
with him. And our sin ruptured that
fellowship. Our sin separated us from God.
Our sin is the original divorce. God was the perfect husband.
We had no cause to leave him. And yet our sin has divorced us
from him. We're separated.
We're cut off or alienated. We don't live in the kind of
intimate fellowship with God we were created for.
And that's one angle that runs through all of Scripture on His
plan of redemption. God sent his Son into the world
to redeem his bride. God sent his Son into the world
to pay the debt of our sins so that we could be reconciled to
Him, so that we could be reunited to him.
God raised Jesus from the dead to prove that his sacrifice was
sufficient and to bring Jesus himself as our guarantee into
the new kind of life that won't end.
A new life capable of having unending fellowship with God.
And when we look forward to being with him forever, the
consummation of our salvation is a greater intimacy that marriage
is only a pointer to. It's an even deeper intimacy.
It's an even fuller, closer union.
That's what God has created us for.
Marriage is a good gift. It's bound up in the created
order, but it has an end date. It doesn't continue into the new
creation. Why?
Because marriage is a pointer. It's a signpost, to use kind of
technical language. It's a type like David points
forward to King Jesus, like the sacrifices point forward to the
cross. Marriage itself points forward
to the greater union we'll all have with God in the new
creation. If you're hearing you're not a
believer in Jesus, being reconciled to God and newly
united to him through Christ is a far more urgent priority than
getting married or restoring a marriage or fixing a marriage.
You need to repent and believe in Jesus in order to enter into
that union. And when you do, if you do, you
have a whole new motivation and means and basis for transforming
all the human relationships that you are in.
Marriage is good because it's a good gift woven into creation
itself. Marriage is also good because
it's a billboard for the gospel, which means we as Christians
have all the more reason to preserve and protect and promote
thriving marriages. So how do we do that?
How do we preserve the goods of marriage?
Jesus tells us, at least implicitly, in verses 8 and 9.
Verse 8. So there are no longer 2, but
one flesh in marriage. 2 lives are joined into one.
That is not something you can sever at will.
That's not a decision you can reverse or undo whenever it
seems like the more convenient option.
And so in verse 9, Jesus arrives at his ethical bottom line.
Here's kind of his main point in the whole conversation, verse 9.
What God has joined together let not man separate.
How has God joined together a married couple?
Well, it's by the design of His creation, it's by His
providential gift of each husband and each wife to each
other, and it's by His witness to each couple's wedding vows.
Marriage is a human bond built by divine design and backed by
divine sanction. Marriage is not a contract, but
a covenant. It's a covenant designed by God,
ordained by God, and witnessed and overseen by God.
Whenever you enter a contract, say you're going to lease a car
to own it, you pledge to give only what the contract
explicitly requires, this many payments over this amount of
time, and the car belongs to you and the contract goes bye bye
right? The car dealer and the bank
making the loan do not care what you do at 8:00 PM on a Tuesday,
as long as they get that monthly payment.
That is their sole concern in this contract.
But in the marriage covenant, you pledge your whole self.
It very much does matter to your spouse what you do at 8:00 PM on
a Tuesday. It matters in a whole way.
It never mattered to anybody else before what you do at 8:00
PM on a Tuesday. You pledge all that you own and
all that you have. You pledge your life.
You pledge yourself. So marriage is not a contract
that could be dissolved at will, but a covenant that may only be
dissolved when the covenant itself is broken.
Again more on that in .3 but for now Jesus main point is clear.
Let not man separate marriages should stay together.
Jesus is against any matter divorce.
Jesus is against no fault divorce.
Jesus permits divorce only under very specific circumstances.
In the context of this debate over Deuteronomy 24 verse 1, he
sides with those who see it as permitting divorce only for
sexual unfaithfulness. Why?
Because sexual unfaithfulness breaks the covenant.
Now we know explicitly that Jesus permitted divorce for
sexual unfaithfulness because parallel statements in the
Gospels say so explicitly, like Matthew's version of our passage
in Matthew 19 nine or his teaching in the Sermon on the
Mountain, Matthew 532. So here's Jesus main teaching
for us. What God has joined together,
let not man separate. Note that he doesn't say what
God has joined together. No man can separate.
Instead, he warns us not to separate it.
Jesus's point is not that marriage is ontologically
incapable of being dissolved. Instead, he's warning against
dissolving it wrongly. If we want to avoid divorces
that Jesus would not approve, we have to work to build marriages
whose character would please him.
Everything that unites a husband and wife strengthens their
marriage. Everything that divides a
husband and wife threatens their marriage.
Marriage is a tremendous gift. In marriage, each spouse makes a
total gift of themselves to the other.
That's a high privilege and it's a sobering responsibility.
The traditional wedding vows in the Anglican Book of Common
Prayer beautifully capture this. If I happen to tear up while
saying them in a moment, sorry. Just know that I do that every
time I lead a wedding and I leave the couple and saying
their vows. So you just get to see what
happens at every wedding I do. I husband take you wife to be my
wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for
better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
health, to lead love, and to cherish till death us do part
according to God's holy ordinance.
And thereto I pledge you myself. Those wedding vows are a mirror.
If you're married, when you hear those vows, you should see
yourself in a comprehensive and unflattering light.
Every wedding vow summons death as its standard and limit.
This is a permanent promise. I don't know how many years I
have left, but all the years I have left I give you.
That's the wedding vow. The wedding vow is not only a
gift of self, it's also a death to self.
The wedding vow pledges that you will put to death every
interest, every desire, every attraction, every dream, every
ambition that would threaten or harm your spouse.
Every wedding vow pledges absolute loyalty, total
commitment, unending fidelity until you have no more of any of
that left to give because you are dead.
The wedding vow is a blank check.
When a groom vows himself to his bride, he promises to provide
for her in every way she needs provision to care for her in
every way she needs care. He promises to die to himself
whenever her good demands it. When you make that vow, you have
no idea how much it will cost you.
When you make that vow, you have no idea when God will call those
costs due. There you are, all dressed up,
looking the best you ever have in your life, with all your
friends and family beaming at you, and you have no clue what
sacrifices you are signing up to make.
Not the faintest idea. That's the promise, that's the
vow, and God's grace is sufficient to sustain you in
whatever ways He demands. That you die to yourself for
your spouse is good. So what?
God has joined together, let not man separate.
What is it that divides and therefore threatens a marriage?
Here is a non exhaustive list. You could add plenty of items to
it. Resentment, bitterness, refusal
to forgive, avoiding conflict to preserve a superficial peace
while the issues get worse. Slowly starting to despise your
spouse for their faults rather than graciously, patiently
working for their growth and conformity to Christ.
Becoming so busy that you're functionally sealed off from
each other, living separate lives.
We're casually pursuing individual interests in a way
that eats away at your ability to spend time together and
communicate and work together. If you're married, what is
dividing you from your spouse right now, and what can you do
to close that gap? On the flip side, the positive
side, what unifies and therefore strengthens a marriage?
Here's a non exhaustive list. Kindness, forbearance,
forgiveness, self sacrifice, Regular cheerful acts of
service. Joyfully putting your spouse's
interests before your own, offering them regular
encouragement, asking your spouse how they're doing and
giving them time and space to speak freely.
Nurturing and cherishing. Here's a good word on that from
Calvin. John Calvin wrote, Let the
husband and wife therefore live together in such a manner that
each shall cherish the other in the same manner as if they were
the half of themselves. In general, what unites and
strengthens a marriage? Communication.
Communicating honestly. Communicating gently.
Communicating beyond the transactional details of life.
Communicating in a way that helps you understand each
other's hearts and minds and to be more unified in heart and
mind. If your marriage is hard, don't
hide. Bring it out into the light.
Don't settle for a stagnant status quo.
Don't settle for retreating into your own corners.
Don't settle for distance creeping in between you as the
years and decades tick by. Instead, seek help, see counsel
from an elder, open up to a trusted friend, and brothers and
sisters, members of Trinity Baptist Church.
Consider the role we all get to play, the role we all should
play in strengthening and sustaining each other's
marriages. That holds whether you're
single, widowed, divorced, married.
Consider Hebrews 13, four. Let marriage be held in honor
among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will
judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
One way we hold marriage and honor is by praying for and
pursuing the good of all the marriages in our church.
What's the reality of marriage? It's an exclusive lifelong
covenant woven into the fabric of creation, which means we
should do all we can to strengthen all the marriages
that are in our body. It also means that in one way or
another, every divorce is a tragedy.
Brings us to .3 the tragedy of divorce.
The tragedy of divorce. We learned of this tragedy in
Jesus teaching in verses 9 to 12.
Again to reiterate from verse 9 what therefore God has joined
together. Let not man separate.
This is Jesus main point. You may not divorce for
irreconcilable differences. You may not divorce because you
think the kids would be better off without them having to hear
you fighting all the time. You may not divorce because over
time you've just become two different people and you don't
really know what you ever saw in that person in the 1st place.
Jesus is teaching that divorce is only permitted when the
marriage covenant is broken. But before we explore some of
the wider implications of that, we need to look at the last bit
of the passage, verses 11:50. And in the house the disciples
asked him again about this matter, and he said to them,
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery
against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another,
she commits adultery. Presumably the disciples were
taken aback by Jesus strict stance and so they asked him for
private clarification. What exactly was he clarifying
here? He says essentially the same
thing twice, once from the perspective of the husband and
once for the wife. Now, just as there was an
understood qualification in the Pharisees question in verse 2,
so there's an understood qualification here.
Jesus has denied divorce for any cause.
He hasn't denied that there are any grounds for divorce.
Again, elsewhere in the Gospels, when Jesus gives us the exact
same teaching it specifies, except for sexual immorality.
So. So again, here we're still on
the territory of debating Deuteronomy 24 verse one, and
Jesus is clearly against divorce for any cause.
Deuteronomy 24 verse one only permits divorce for adultery.
So why does an unwarranted divorce lead to adultery?
I think it's common but inaccurate to say because
they're still married in God's eyes.
I don't think that's actually what Jesus is teaching.
Instead, divorce leads to adultery not because the first
marriage still exists, but because the divorce wasn't
permitted by God, and so neither is the remarriage.
The remarriage is considered adultery not because you're
still married in some sense to the first spouse, but because
you you had no permission to divide yourself from that spouse
and unite yourself to another. In brief, I think we can
faithfully summarize Jesus's teaching like this.
Divorce is only permitted when the marriage covenant has been
broken. But to see how Jesus teaching
here fits with the rest of Scriptures teaching takes a
little bit of work. I think we can do that by
looking at just a few passages and seeing how they fit
together. So first one, we've already
glanced at Matthew 532 paralleled in Matthew 19-9.
But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on
the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.
And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Here again, the context is debating Deuteronomy 24.
One, and Jesus both denies and any matter divorce and permits
divorce in the case of sexual immorality.
That's one concrete exception, one specific ground for divorce.
But then in First Corinthians 715, the apostle Paul gives
another exception. Paul writes, but if the
unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.
In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.
God has called you to peace. The situation in view here is a
unilateral divorce in which a non Christian spouse leaves a
Christian spouse. In the ancient Mediterranean
world, a divorce could be accomplished by the simple act
of separation. You didn't have to go to court,
you didn't have to have a judge affirm it.
You just did it by leaving. And so this verse tells a
believer in those circumstances, if your non believing spouse
just walks out and effectively divorces you, there's nothing
further you can do. You have no more obligation.
That's what Paul means by saying they're not enslaved.
They're not bound by the former marriage that their unbelieving
partner has unilaterally dissolved.
So Jesus permits divorce for adultery, divorce and remarriage
for adultery. Paul permits divorce and
implicitly remarriage when an unbelieving spouse unilaterally
ends that marriage. Traditionally, the most common
Protestant understanding of when divorce and remarriage are
permitted basically just takes those two verses and puts them
together, kind of a shorthand. On the most common view, divorce
and remarriage are permitted either in the case of adultery
or in the case of quote UN quote, abandonment by an
unbeliever. And I think that's essentially
accurate. I just hold to a slight tweak of
that view because I think it takes some work to actually put
those two together. It leaves us a logical
difficulty. If Jesus forbids divorce in all
cases except adultery, only one exception, where does Paul get
the authority to just add another exception?
If Jesus is really saying in all conceivable cases every marriage
in the world, there is no divorce permitted except for
adultery, if that's what we take him to mean, how does Paul add
another? I would submit we need a couple
of things to keep in mind to get the answer.
One is that Jesus isn't forbidding all divorces except
for adultery. He's weighing in on a narrower
debate. And I would submit that the
logic that holds both Jesus and Paul's positions together is
that both are expressions of covenant breaking.
To unpack that a bit more fully, there's one more biblical
passage we need to bring in. Only one.
I know it's late in the game. It's been a dense sermon, but
there's no way around it. Exodus 2110 to 11, Like the
Deuteronomy context here to the situation in view is a little
complex. It's regulating a situation
where a man who is already married takes a second wife who
is also a servant, and it lists the rights of that second
servant wife. Here's Exodus 2110 to 11.
If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish
her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.
And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall
go out for nothing without payment of money.
That phrase she shall go out for nothing is explicit permission
to divorce. What are the grounds for the
divorce here? It's neglecting to provide food,
clothing, or conjugal rights. That is sexual, sexual intimacy.
Now you might think, how could this passage from the Old
Testaments, Old Covenant code possibly be relevant to us?
Especially because hardly anybody in the West practices
polygamy. One reason the passage is
relevant is this. Everyone in Jesus day understood
this passage to teach that divorce was permitted in cases
of neglect of provision and refusal of conjugal rights.
The more liberal Hillelites, the more conservative Shamaites
agreed entirely on this point. And there's no evidence
whatsoever that Jesus disagreed with them.
If he did disagree with them, it's one of those things he
would have had to make absolutely explicit as he's
weighing in on their debate. He does make his point of
disagreement explicit. He says nothing about Exodus 21.
Not only that, but Paul echoes the language of these verses in
Exodus in a few key places, kind of endorsing their logic about
what's entailed in the marriage covenant.
One of those is in First Corinthians 7.
In verses 3 to 5 of that chapter, he appeals to each
spouse's obligation to provide conjugal love.
Later in that chapter, First Corinthians 732 to 35, he
appeals to the need for a husband to provide for his
wife's needs, and his language echoes that of Exodus 21.
So on what grounds does Exodus 2110 to 11 permit divorce?
Covenant breaking provision, and conjugal union are integral
aspects of the marriage covenant.
One flesh union demands sustaining the other person's
life, and it requires spouses to give themselves physically to
each other. So I think we should understand
all of these passages. Exodus 21, Matthew 5, Mark 10,
First Corinthians 7 to all either assert or imply a single
rationale for when divorce is permitted, namely when the
covenant has been broken. Now, of course, not every sin of
one spouse against the other breaks the marriage covenant.
There's a difference between scratching a stick and snapping
it in half. There's a difference between
making a mess in a house and lighting the house on fire.
Now to summarize Jesus teaching and connect it with scripture.
The rest of scripture we can say that divorce is permitted,
though never mandated, when one party has broken the covenant.
Examples of that covenant breaking include adultery,
physical abuse, sustained and neglect to provide for physical
needs, and I would also add sustained, unrepentant emotional
abuse. Some of these grounds are
obvious and objective, at least on the surface.
Adultery has either happened or it hasn't, right?
But there are situations that can make us ask, has adultery
actually taken place? Where's the line?
What counts as sexual immorality?
Discerning whether grounds for divorce are present can be
excruciatingly difficult, not to mention delicate and
embarrassing. But Jesus's main point for us is
clear. Divorce is always a tragedy.
When divorce is permitted and legitimate, it's a tragedy
because one party has already torn apart what God joined
together. When divorce is illegitimate,
it's a tragedy because that act wrongly tears apart what God has
joined together. If you're in a difficult
marriage, get help. Get counsel about how to heal
your marriage. Get counsel about whether
divorce should even be on the table long before you begin to
go down that path in your mind. According to Scripture, divorce
is never commanded, but it is sometimes permitted.
We should be gracious and compassionate toward those who
have been divorced, whether with biblical warrant or without.
Divorce is a tragedy, but it is not an unforgivable sin.
Divorce has lasting consequences, but it doesn't put
someone beyond the reach of God's grace.
As a congregation, we used to be prepared to lovingly, patiently
minister to people whose lives have been scarred by divorce in
all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons.
Divorce is a tragedy. But if you're a believer in
Jesus, tragedy never gets the last word.
Sin has consequences, sometimes severe consequences, sometimes
consequences that last for the whole rest of our earthly lives.
But God's grace is not only greater than our sin, it's
stronger than our sin. The God who made this world will
one day remake it. If you're in Christ, the God who
made you will one day remake you.
And he begins that work of new creation.
Now by his Holy Spirit, the God who made everything good in the
beginning is also the God who declares, Behold, I'm making all
things new. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving ourselves to
ourselves in creation and for the covenant of marriage in
which many of us get to give ourselves wholly to another.
Father, we pray that we would strengthen the marriages that
are in our church. We pray that those marriages
would testify to Your steadfast covenant love.
Father, we pray for any ways we are convicted of sin by Jesus
teaching that we'd cast ourselves upon you for Your
mercy, for your forgiveness, and that Your Holy Spirit will work
cleansing and renewal in us. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.