Jesus & Divorce, pt.1 (Mark 10:1-12) | 10/6/19
Mark 10:1-12 10/6/19 | Will DuVal
Now, it’s possible that a second service will be a moot point after this morning’s sermon. “JESUS & DIVORCE”. I’ll be honest: I do NOT want to preach this sermon. If you gave me a list of topics to preach on, the TOUGHEST ones out there, this would literally be my last choice. Not because Scripture isn’t clear on it; I think it is. Not because it’s not relevant; we DESPERATELY need to hear this message... But because we don’t WANT to. We have a VESTED interest in avoiding this topic in the church. We have a VESTED interest in avoiding it in THIS church. I went through and counted this week; I know of AT LEAST 30 of y’all who are divorced. And that’s just the folks I KNOW of; I imagine there are even more.
It could be professionally DANGEROUS for me to preach on divorce. I told you last week that Edette warned me her father got FIRED from his church for doing it. Here’s what happened to John the BAPTIST: “When Herod heard of [Jesus], he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” 17 For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife.”” (vv16-18) Now, granted, in Herod’s case, you’re also dealing with adultery, incest... but nevertheless, it’s not inaccurate to say that John the Baptist lost his HEAD for speaking out against divorce. So I can’t imagine YOU ALL are gonna do any worse than that to me this morning!
All jokes aside, this is a difficult, personal topic for many of us: raise your hand, if you have been PERSONALLY affected by divorce: either your parents are divorced, or YOU have been divorced, or someone CLOSE to you – a child, a sibling, a best friend, is divorced – would you raise your hand? Okay, THAT’S why we can’t just skip this difficult topic. As Christians, we HAVE to be equipped to address this, from a biblical worldview.
I’ll go ahead and admit MY baggage: my parents are divorced, THEIR parents were divorced, 4 of my 6 aunts and uncles are divorced, my sister is divorced, and I have personally WISHED on more occasions than I’d like to remember over the past 11 years of marriage that the passages we are about to study this morning WEREN’T included in the Bible. So if you’ve got an issue with anything I say this morning, just know that it will NOT be because “I don’t get it”; trust me, I DO get it. More importantly, I pray your issues WON’T be with something that I’ve said, but rather, with something GOD has said, in His revealed, inspired, inerrant word. I resolve to say nothing this morning that goes beyond the confines of Scripture. So with that said, Would you stand with me as you’re able for the reading of God’s word, from MARK 10:1-12:
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.
2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,[a] 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” This is the word of the Lord...
#1 – The first question we need to ask ourselves this morning is: What is the posture of my heart? (vv1-2)
Contextually, in Mark 10, the attitude of the Pharisees’ hearts, who prompt this whole conversation with Jesus in the first place, is clear: Mark tells us in v2, that as Jesus was teaching the crowds, the Pharisees came “in order to TEST him”. Now, they already KNOW Jesus’ position on the subject; he made it CLEAR in His sermon on the Mount, earlier in Matthew 5: ““It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 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.” (vv31-32) The Pharisees aren’t here for clarification, they aren’t here for a friendly exchange of ideas; they are here to ENTRAP and incriminate Jesus. By the way, v1 informs us that Jesus has just crossed the Jordan into PEREA, which was Herod Antipas’ territory, the same Herod who beheaded JTB back in ch.6. So the Pharisees have got him RIGHT where they want him. They are PRAYING for a double decapitation.
And isn’t it interesting that TYPICALLY they accuse Jesus of being too LIBERAL with respect to the Law: when it comes to observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher dietary laws - the Pharisees are stringent legalists. Because those laws suit their purposes; they are a small price to pay for the Pharisees’ religious superiority over and subordination of the masses. But when it comes to something like DIVORCE?! The thought of answering to a higher authority, the idea that GOD is the one who instituted and ordains marriage; that we’re accountable to HIM – the Pharisees WILL NOT accept that – they rather ENJOY wielding the power of divorce over their wives. See, the prevailing schools of rabbinic interpretation in 1st c. Judaism allowed for divorce in most EVERY case! That’s why in Matthew’s version of this exchange, the Pharisees ask Jesus: ““Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any and every reason?” They take divorce for GRANTED; they just want to know if there’s even such a thing as a BAD reason to divorce their wives. Their oral tradition MIS-understood Deuteronomy 24:1-4, the most significant passage on divorce in the OT: “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, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord.” 1st c. Judaism took this as God’s sanctioning of divorce. But don’t miss TWO important things about this passage: 1) Like so many OTHER alleged atrocities in the OT – slavery, polygamy – please note that this passage does not PROMOTE divorce. It is DE-scriptive, not PRE-scriptive. It doesn’t say a man SHOULD divorce his wife if she finds no favor in his eyes; it’s merely describing a situation in which he HAS ALREADY divorced her, perhaps SINFULLY. And Secondly, what IS prescriptive here is that IF he’s divorced her, he can’t take her back. Why? v4: Because her RE-marriage DEFILES her. We’ll come back to this. But the Pharisees JUMPED on this one obscure passage, and twisted its meaning, and devised for themselves a whole system of LOOPHOLES for getting out of undesirable marriages. Rabbi Hillel proposed that a wife’s “indecency” could refer to her burning her husband’s dinner! That constituted grounds for divorce! Rabbi Akiba suggested that a man’s finding another woman fairer than his own wife was enough.
The Pharisees’ commitment isn’t to God’s word; it is to THEMSELVES, and they twist the Law however they need to, tighter or looser, in order to serve their own purposes. But JESUS is ALWAYS committed to His Father’s word. So the usually liberal Jesus all of a sudden gets RE-branded as the crazy conservative here! If the Pharisees can’t turn the crowds against Jesus by questioning his devotion to the Law, they’ll try charging him with HYPER-devotion instead. He’s TOO loyal, too strict.
And the first question for you and I this morning, friends, is “What is the posture of MY heart?” Am I coming to Jesus, coming to God’s word, looking for validation of the things I have already resolved and made up my mind to believe? Am I looking for him to tell me what I want to hear, about divorce, or about any OTHER issue for that matter. You can twist Scripture in all SORTS of ways – we see that all OVER the place in the church world today. “Churches” that cherry-pick 1 or 2 passages to the obvious exclusion of others, and perform exegetical gymnastics to try and make a verse mean what they want it to mean, instead of receiving this for what it is: the word of God, with authority over me and over my preferences, in ALL matters of faith and practice. So before we even BROACH the question of what Jesus thinks about divorce, our first prerequisite question is: what do I think about JESUS? Because if your pride won’t allow you to submit to HIM as the authority on this issue, if your guilt and shame from a past divorce won’t allow you to hear ANY critique from him this morning, then I would humbly suggest you go pray for a softened heart, for ears to hear and eyes to see, and then come back to this sermon and re-listen to it online later.
But for those who WOULD hear, the SECOND question to ask is: “What is God’s design for marriage?” (vv6-9)
See, in order to understand why God HATES divorce so much – and He does; that’s a direct quote from Him, in Scripture: Malachi 2:16 – “I hate divorce” – to understand WHY, we first need to understand why He LOVES marriage so much. And we’re gonna be studying GENESIS together in 2020, so I’ll save my deeper exposition for later. But that’s where Jesus takes them, in vv6-9 here: back to Genesis 1:27 – “So God created man in his own image... male and female he created them.” and 2:24 – “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”. The Pharisees are hung up on this obscure, DE-scriptive reference to divorce from Deuteronomy, and Jesus pushes back in v3 by asking this REALLY pointed question, in typical Jesus fashion: “What did Moses command you?”. Jesus wants to SHIFT their focus from a debatable, hypothetical DE-scription to an absolute, timeless PRE-scription, a COMMAND from God himself, since the beginning of CREATION, that is not just binding for JEWS, in the Law, not just binding for CHRISTIANS, in the NT; NO - according to Jesus, this COMMAND from God with respect to the institution of marriage that HE designed and blessed humanity with is UNIVERSAL: that “a man shall leave his father and mother and shall hold fast to his wife,[a] 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they shall no longer be two but one flesh. 9 And what God has joined together, let NOT man separate.” Those are COMMANDS. You SHALL do this; you shall NOT do that.
And Why does God take this... take marriage... so seriously? Why does He LOVE it so much? Because according to Scripture, marriage is the best portrayal, the closest analogy, we have been given as humans, of God’s covenant faithfulness to His people. Let me just point us to 2 key passages on this, biblically. First, the OT example of Hosea. God specifically called the prophet Hosea to ““Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, - WHY? As a prophetic REBUKE against the Israelites’ WHORINGS after other gods and forsaking their covenant marriage to Yahweh. [[[for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”” (Hosea 1:2) God uses Hosea and Gomer to remind Israel of HIS unconditional love and covenant fidelity DESPITE their faith-LESS-ness; and that is what ALL marriage is supposed to depict. Let’s go to the NEW Testament now: Ephesians 5 – the most important passage on marriage in Scripture, that should be preached at EVERY Christian wedding: Paul AGAIN takes us back to God’s original design and purpose for marriage – ““Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” BUT THEN HE ADDS: 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Marriage is a “profound mystery”, precisely because it is a covenant symbol of God’s loving faithfulness to His people, of CHRIST’S commitment to His Church. That is the PURPOSE of marriage: not to make us happy, more fulfilled. No, God, the CREATOR of marriage, gives marriage TO us as a way to bring HIM glory by reflecting for an unbelieving world, God’s covenant - His unfailing commitment - of loving faithfulness to His people.
Marriage isn’t primarily ABOUT us, friends; it’s about GOD. It’s about CHRIST, bearing witness to his love for His Bride, the Church. So a Christian getting divorced because he’s no longer happy and fulfilled, because she’s no longer in love with her husband, it’s like selling your car because it couldn’t make you a good cup of COFFEE. That’s not what cars are FOR. Let’s quit making marriage about something that it’s not. Marriage is meant for GOD’S glory, not your personal happiness.
We talk about evangelism a lot in the church – being a witness for Jesus; you wanna share the good news with others? Stay married. My Aunt Becky, the one who DIDN’T get divorced – she ran away when she was 18 years old, didn’t listen to her parents’ warnings, got married, and realized in YEAR 1 that she’d made a huge mistake. That she’d married the most selfish, miserable, narcissistic human being you’ll ever meet in your life. My late Uncle Harris. And she STAYED married to him for over 50 years til he passed away. That might be the most powerful depiction of the GOSPEL you’ll ever find. God is loving and faithful, we are sinful and cheat on him regularly, and yet he CHOOSES to keep His promise to us. Marriage, is a CHOICE, friends. Love is a CHOICE: 1 John 3:16 – “This is how we know what love is: that Jesus [WHAT? had really strong FEELINGS for us? That he felt happy and fulfilled by His relationship with us?] ...that He laid down his life for us.” So, John reasons, WE ought to lay down OUR lives in return, for others. Will you start with your spouse? And make that choice again today, and then again tomorrow, then again the day after that... to stay true to YOUR promise, and faithfully represent God’s undying love for His Bride to a lost world. THAT is why God hates divorce most: because it tells the world a LIE about who God is.
But God ALSO hates divorce, because SPIRITUALLY, if 2 really have become 1 flesh, then a new SPIRITUAL entity has been conceived. “2-become-1” brings to mind the image of sexual conception: 1 egg... and 1 sperm... become 1 zygote. 1+1=1; You want a profound mystery? Re-watch the video from 9th grade biology class on how babies are made, it will BLOW. YOUR. MIND. In God’s eyes, when you got married, a new creature was born. A new, invisible, yet no less significant entity – GOD is invisible; so a thing’s WORTH is NOT tied to its visibility; a marriage is a new spiritual entity. Polly and I’s marriage counselor sometimes has to remind us that she’s not here to side with either one of us; she’s here to advocate for the invisible THIRD party in the room: the marriage. The sacred, living, spiritual BOND between us. God hates divorce so much because it amounts to taking a spiritual HACKSAW and cutting that marriage in two. Imagine how physically SICKENED and horrified you would be if you watched someone get physically sawed in 2 – that’s what God sees, spiritually, when he looks at divorce.
So Jesus says, unequivocally: “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” This thing is BIGGER than you now. GOD has gotten involved and sanctioned a marriage – you’ve given BIRTH to something now, that you no longer have the authority to dispose of, anymore than you could decide to saw your toddler in two if she stopped bringing you joy.
Now, this is HEAVY. And if ALL that is true, it leads us to some equally WEIGHTY follow up questions: first of all, why does God appear then, to “allow” for even the possibility of divorce, in Deuteronomy 24; why make a provisionary rule about how to handle the aftermath of a divorce, if it shouldn’t exist to begin with? Secondly, are there EVER cases that justify divorce? What about Jesus’ so-called “exception clauses” for divorce:
Mt 5:32 “...everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Mt 19:9 “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.””
And we might ALSO add the apostle PAUL’S exception: 1 Cor 7:15 “But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved.”
What does Jesus MEAN by “sexual immorality”? What exactly is covered by these exception clauses? Is that just when a spouse is CHEATING / having an affair? What about cases of ABUSE? And in THOSE cases, is RE-marriage permitted for the Christian, or is it still prohibited? And what if I’m ALREADY re-married; does that mean I’m guilty of PERPETUAL adultery? Should I dissolve my second, or third marriage, because in God’s eyes, only my first marriage was valid and unbreakable?
Those are all EXCELLENT questions, and I’m so glad you asked. And I must be glutton for punishment, because somehow I let God convince me this week that marriage and divorce were important enough to spend TWO Sundays on. So you have to come back NEXT week to get the rest of those answers. But here’s how I want to end this morning:
The Enemy, Satan, would love to have you do 1 of 3 things with this sermon today:
You could write it off as irrelevant. I’m single. Doesn’t apply to me.
You could listen vicariously, perhaps even judgmentally, on behalf of someone else who you think needs to hear this message more than you. Or #3 -
If you have been divorced, or perhaps like me, you’ve even just DESIRED it, Satan would love nothing more than to pull you back down into that pit of guilt and shame this morning.
So let me just end this way:
This IS relevant to you. Even IF you never get married, when over ¾ of the adult population in our country will get married in their lives, and considering how important God says that relationship is, YES, it affects you too.
Maybe your friend DOES need to hear this. Sure, send her the sermon audio link when Taylor posts it online. But please don’t miss how God is challenging YOU this morning too. How he wants YOU to be more faithful to YOUR marriage today.
And finally, for those who would be tempted to leave here in SHAME today, hear the good news of Jesus for you: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus... That neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor DIVORCE, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:1, 38-39) We’ve already studied the unforgivable sin, from Mark ch.3, and it’s not divorce. So for all who ARE in Christ Jesus, you can leave hear this morning in PEACE, knowing that even when we break our promises – even the BIG ones, the BIGGEST ones – God stays true to HIS promise to us. 2 Tim 2:13, that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” Amen. Thank you Jesus. Let’s pray.