SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: It is good to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: My name's Joe.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors here.
SPEAKER_00: And um we are in the book of Mark today.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we do as a church is we preach through, typically, we preach through books of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And we do that on purpose so that, one, we make sure to cover all that God has for us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to skip anything.
SPEAKER_00: And it forces us to talk about the hard things.
SPEAKER_00: We don't just jump around and preach the things that are easy to preach.
SPEAKER_00: We actually follow through again verse by verse so that when we bump into difficult things, we have to handle them.
SPEAKER_00: And as you can see, today's title is Divorce and Discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we begin, I recognize that just based on the statistics, over half of the people in this room have been affected by divorce in some way.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I want to ask of you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask of you that you actually lean in to the entire sermon with me without mentally interrupting me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: You're probably not gonna like shout out in the middle of the sermon, but yeah, what about this?
SPEAKER_00: But you might do that in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Have these, wait, wait a minute, but yeah, but what uh hey, what about this scenario?
SPEAKER_00: What about that scenario?
SPEAKER_00: But you don't know my story.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to ask you, let me get work through the whole thing and and just maybe receive what God would have from his word.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna work through the whole text and then I'm gonna draw application at the end.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm hopeful that if you'll lean in with your heart and your mind with me, that the Lord has something important for you today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not in the habit of watching shows like The Bachelor or trying to think of the other ones that come up on my Hulu splash page.
SPEAKER_00: Um Love at First Sight is one of them.
SPEAKER_00: There's a new one about farmers, like The Farmer's Wife or something.
SPEAKER_00: Um every every now and then, you know, when I turn on Hulu, they have those you know, splash page commercials, and I think, what in the world is happening?
SPEAKER_00: But this is, you know, we kind of laugh or we get caught into the drama of these different shows.
SPEAKER_00: We know it's not gonna work, right?
SPEAKER_00: We know that there's no way this works.
SPEAKER_00: The facts bear it out.
SPEAKER_00: I looked it up this week.
SPEAKER_00: 50 seasons of The Bachelor, nine out of ten couples are no longer together from The Bachelor.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: But we know it doesn't work, and at the same time, we have allowed culture to dictate what we believe to be true about marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That marriage is about choosing my own happiness, that marriage is about doing what's best for me, or that divorce is about following our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Consider that over against a quote that I'm about to read from John Piper's book, This Momentary Marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It is, it has been the most influential.
SPEAKER_00: Don't go, don't go, don't go, go back, Lou.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: Give me it, give me a second, man.
SPEAKER_00: He's just too fast on the trigger.
SPEAKER_00: This has probably been the most influential book on marriage in my life.
SPEAKER_00: And it has been that because of the way that he sets up the picture of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read a rather lengthy excerpt from it, but I think it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Lou, go.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists for God's glory.
SPEAKER_00: That is, it exists to display God.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is patterned after Christ's covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display.
SPEAKER_00: That is why marriage exists.
SPEAKER_00: If you are married, that is why you are married.
SPEAKER_00: If you hope to be, that should be your dream.
SPEAKER_00: He continues, staying married, therefore, is not mainly about staying in love.
SPEAKER_00: I read that sentence for the first time in 2009, and it has stuck with me for all these years.
SPEAKER_00: Staying married is not mainly about staying in love, it is about keeping covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Till death do us part, or as long as we both shall live, is a sacred covenant promise, the same kind Jesus made with his bride, the church, when he died for her.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, what makes divorce and remarriage so horrific in God's eyes is not merely that it involves covenant breaking to the spouse, but that it involves misrepresenting Christ and his covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Christ will never leave his wife.
SPEAKER_00: Ever.
SPEAKER_00: There may be times of painful distance and tragic backsliding on our part, but Christ keeps his covenant forever.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is the display of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the ultimate thing we can say about it.
SPEAKER_00: It puts the glory of Christ's covenant keeping on display.
SPEAKER_00: And the most important implication of this conclusion is that keeping covenant with our spouse is as important as telling the truth about God's covenant with us in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Consider that view of marriage over against the Hulu version of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the issue.
SPEAKER_00: If our hearts and our lives are not saturated, or as Paul tells us in Ephesians, washed with the water of the word, then what we begin to believe is what the culture is telling us, what your neighbors are telling us, what the news is telling us, what the conversations in the hallway at your school or at the at the boardroom communicate to us.
SPEAKER_00: All day long we are bombarded with an unbiblical view of marriage, and we can begin to adopt it if we're not careful.
SPEAKER_00: And so my hope this morning is that we would engage God's word with a high view of marriage, and wherever your view is, that it would be elevated.
SPEAKER_00: And so, the book of Mark, chapter 10, I have four headings for you that'll help guide us through the exegesis of the text, and then we'll bring application at the end.
SPEAKER_00: First heading An intriguing question with poor motives.
SPEAKER_00: An intriguing question with poor motives.
SPEAKER_00: Verse one 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.
SPEAKER_00: And Pharisees came up, and in order to test him, asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
SPEAKER_00: Now this is a curious question.
SPEAKER_00: You might not think it curious, but it was common knowledge in first century Judaism that divorce was permissible.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even a question.
SPEAKER_00: The only question, and this is probably at the root of what the Pharisees are asking.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees are the religious leaders of the day, the scholars of the day.
SPEAKER_00: What's probably at the root of their question is not whether it's actually permissible, but on what grounds it's permissible.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there were a couple veins of thought, schools of thought within Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: The school of Shumai taught they were a more conservative sect of Judaism, and they thought the only grounds for divorce was marital infidelity.
SPEAKER_00: Over against the more liberal school of Hillel, which believed that there were a litany of reasons why you could get divorced.
SPEAKER_00: Add to this the social dynamics of male and female in this culture.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice, just in the way that the question is phrased, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
SPEAKER_00: Why did they phrase it that way?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in this day and time, within Judaism, even though divorce was permitted, it was not something that a wife would pursue, but it was something that was instigated by the man.
SPEAKER_00: His wife was actually treated more like property.
SPEAKER_00: So it was unheard of that she would divorce.
SPEAKER_00: The man was the one who could choose to divorce or not.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can see why the text says that the Pharisees brought this question to Jesus to test him.
SPEAKER_00: They're looking to trip him up.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how he answers, he's gonna make some group of people angry.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as Jesus often does, he turns the question around on them.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, he answered them, What did Moses command you?
SPEAKER_00: Now, this leads us to our second heading.
SPEAKER_00: A simple answer with shallow understanding.
SPEAKER_00: What did Moses command you?
SPEAKER_00: He asked.
SPEAKER_00: When we speak of Moses, what Jesus is referring to is the Old Testament law.
SPEAKER_00: Moses was the one who communicated God's law to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the most common Old Testament law that you're familiar with is the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: But there were many, many, many types of laws that governed all of life in the ancient Near East, the time of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and then and the law of Moses was still the law that governed the Jews in first century Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: So, all the way from Moses to the time of Jesus, the same law, the law of Moses is governing.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus just turns the question around.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, you're the experts in the law, you tell me what it says.
SPEAKER_00: What does Moses say?
SPEAKER_00: They have a simple answer with shallow understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.
SPEAKER_00: Now, they're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows that they're wrong, but he's gonna allow them to dig the hole a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: They're referring to civil law from Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: And in Deuteronomy 24, it does indeed talk about a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: But the Pharisees have done one of two things, or maybe they've done both of them.
SPEAKER_00: Either they misunderstand the Old Testament law, so they don't understand what Deuteronomy 24 is saying, or what's more likely is that they're twisting the text to say what they want it to say.
SPEAKER_00: Which is very, very common when we get into hard topics.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't really like what the Bible has to say about this holistically.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe I can find a verse or two, kind of pull them out of context, and make it say what I want it to say so I can do what I want to do.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably what has happened with the Pharisees here.
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth of the matter is Deuteronomy 24 does not give permission for divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 24 is actually God stepping into a broken world and protecting vulnerable women.
SPEAKER_00: See, what was common in the ancient Near East in Moses' time is that a man could divorce his wife for any reason and just throw her out on the street.
SPEAKER_00: Now you have to put your mind back in that time.
SPEAKER_00: Women had no, they had they had they had no way to make money for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Their financial dependence was tied to their husband and their family, and their their dignity and their worth in that culture was actually tied to their husband and family.
SPEAKER_00: So if she was kicked out and was alone, and she actually tried to find another husband or another family, it was a very there was a very good chance that she would be accused of adultery and could maybe be harmed.
SPEAKER_00: What God provides through Moses in Deuteronomy 24, this whole certificate of divorce is actually a legal document that God commanded Jewish husbands to give to their wives so that they could remain safe and cared for.
SPEAKER_00: When they had that certificate of divorce, it allowed them to keep their dignity and it showed everyone that they had not done anything wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So the Pharisees completely misunderstand the aim of the text.
SPEAKER_00: They're going, hey, Moses said, give her a certificate of divorce and send her on her way.
SPEAKER_00: When that's not the intent of the scripture at all.
SPEAKER_00: See, they had taken this text that had intended to provide protection and were using it as permission to divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Well, then this causes me to ask the question well, why would God do that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would God provide some sort of civil law that says that you have to write her a certificate of divorce instead of just saying, don't divorce?
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't he just do that instead?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus gives us the answer.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.
SPEAKER_00: So, as if to say, Deuteronomy is not intended to be a green light for a husband to divorce his wife.
SPEAKER_00: It was actually written, presuming hardness of heart, that you're going to divorce no matter what God says, and I'm going to protect this woman if I have anything to say about it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, watch what Jesus does here.
SPEAKER_00: This is usually the point where now we would dig in and debate the finer points of these arguments.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is having nothing of it.
SPEAKER_00: He actually, in his next statement, says, God doesn't need to say anything about it in Deuteronomy because he already said it.
SPEAKER_00: This is our third heading.
SPEAKER_00: A radical design with divine intention.
SPEAKER_00: I take complete responsibility for that because I made the slides this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It should say divine intention.
SPEAKER_00: A radical design with divine intention.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.
SPEAKER_00: But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
SPEAKER_00: 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 two, but one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate.
SPEAKER_00: So here Jesus is reframing the whole conversation.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying the text that you're quoting, Deuteronomy, is a band-aid for hard-hearted people that are going to choose divorce no matter what.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the command, that's not the green light, that's not the optimal.
SPEAKER_00: The optimal goes right back to the creation order in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis is the blueprint for those who have a tender heart towards God.
SPEAKER_00: So again, Deuteronomy is a band-aid for those who have a hard heart towards God.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis is a blueprint for those who have a soft heart towards God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus roots marriage right from the very beginning in this miraculous work that God does.
SPEAKER_00: He says, we're not going to define marriage with the baseline of human failure.
SPEAKER_00: We're actually going to cause it, we're going to look at the heights of divine design.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're going to get our view of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And he talks about three parts.
SPEAKER_00: You leave, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother.
SPEAKER_00: So you leave your past behind, and to some degree your old identity behind, and you build a brand new life with this spouse, and then you hold fast to that spouse.
SPEAKER_00: The weight of the of the initial Hebrew here is that you are supernaturally welded to one another.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I thought about welding something on stage, but this is not a joke.
SPEAKER_00: So I figured.
SPEAKER_00: What I did do is very, very simple, but I think helpful.
SPEAKER_00: I I just glued some paper together.
SPEAKER_00: See, when I talk about marriage as covenant, let me tell you what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: So contract is between two people.
SPEAKER_00: And we deal with contracts all day, every day.
SPEAKER_00: Whether written or unwritten.
SPEAKER_00: When you pull through the drive-thru at Chick-fil-A, the contract says, you give me money, I give you chicken sandwich.
SPEAKER_00: You don't give me money, I don't give you chicken sandwich.
SPEAKER_00: That's how a that's how a contract works.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't pay the bill, you don't get the stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Covenant is different.
SPEAKER_00: In that, especially in marriage covenant, there is a there's a binding agent.
SPEAKER_00: So there are two people, individual pieces of paper.
SPEAKER_00: Man, let me include these really good.
SPEAKER_00: There are two pieces of paper, they really are here, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And God is the binding agent of the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not only making promises to one another, we're making promises to God.
SPEAKER_00: And God welds or supernaturally glues these two things together.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is saying is when you try to tear it apart, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: When you try to get these two things apart, as much as you might try, you might try to be really, really good at it and really, really careful with it.
SPEAKER_00: But but this is exact this is exactly what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna end up with a big old mess on your hands.
SPEAKER_00: And you might try to find some loopholes, you might try to get your fingernail in there.
SPEAKER_00: Man, they really glued this really, really well.
SPEAKER_00: The illustration is working.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, there we go.
SPEAKER_00: You might try to get in there, but here's here's here's what happens is when we continue to do this, when we try to tear apart what God has put together, we end up with the covenant as we're supposed to display God's covenant-keeping love looking a little bit like this.
SPEAKER_00: We go, yeah, world, this is what God's love looks like.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture that Jesus intends us to see here.
SPEAKER_00: We become one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That, you know, maybe you've been to a uh a wedding ceremony where they pour something together, you know, sand, or I've seen paint, or I've seen coffee.
SPEAKER_00: Or I've seen wine, all these things.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea is you know, when you pour the two things of sand into the one thing of sand, it's nearly impossible to parse out which sand was in which container.
SPEAKER_00: That's the whole idea of the unity ceremony.
SPEAKER_00: The same idea here.
SPEAKER_00: And it's incredibly countercultural.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, you don't need more instructions.
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, this is how God intended it.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus begins to deal with the real life implications of what happens when we break this commitment, and this leads us to our force-heading a serious standard with a solemn warning.
SPEAKER_00: And in the house, so the crowds are gone.
SPEAKER_00: They're back at the house.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples asked him again about this matter.
SPEAKER_00: So they're probably a little bit blown away.
SPEAKER_00: Because again, divorce was very common in first century Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: And they're going, wait a minute, you just totally flipped our worldview upside down.
SPEAKER_00: And you rooted it in the earliest of Hebrew scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: And you're saying that God creates this bond that we ought not ever separate?
SPEAKER_00: So they lean in.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty significant.
SPEAKER_00: So if you divorce your wife, get married again, then the law is very clear.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery's in the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_00: You commit adultery against her.
SPEAKER_00: And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: And then the story just ends.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a couple things are interesting.
SPEAKER_00: The first, if you notice, if you lean in and play, pay attention, Jesus actually elevates the dignity and the validity of females in the marriage covenant here.
SPEAKER_00: Because he doesn't speak like the Pharisees speak with a misogynistic overtone.
SPEAKER_00: He actually roots this statement in the creation order that man and woman are both made in the image of God with equal value.
SPEAKER_00: How does he do this?
SPEAKER_00: He does this by actually explaining both sides of the coin.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just say whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
SPEAKER_00: It could have been a period right there.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus goes on, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: So he elevates women being made in the image of God and equal partakers in the marriage covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is not just a male-dominated institution, but in the same vein, he actually gives both men and women equal responsibility over their behavior as well.
SPEAKER_00: Are you tracking with me?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see what Jesus is doing?
SPEAKER_00: He makes them responsible for their actions.
SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking, what why does he use this illustration at the end?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like it would be best to root marriage in Genesis, what God has put together, let not man separate.
SPEAKER_00: And let that be the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: That seems to tie up like a bow, really, really nicely.
SPEAKER_00: Why then, back in the house, does Mark give us this little vignette where Jesus says, if you divorce and you marry someone else, you commit adultery?
SPEAKER_00: Notice, he's talking about two things.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about a legal status, divorce, you have the paper in your hand, judge signed it, it's official, and a spiritual ramification of that piece of paper.
SPEAKER_00: As if to say, to ensure we understand it, the way that Jesus kind of mic drops at the end of this text is to say, I'm not going to let you separate your legal responsibilities from its spiritual ramifications.
SPEAKER_00: You can have the piece of paper in your hand.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to be careful not to put words in Jesus' mouth, but it's as if he's saying, and I don't care about your piece of paper.
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually more concerned about the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I would propose that Jesus is ultimately concerned about what we're communicating to the world about what he is like.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little plaque.
SPEAKER_00: When I'm sitting at our kitchen island, I look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Almost every day I see it.
SPEAKER_00: Sits above the window.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, The Valenti family, we are here to show the world what God's love is like.
SPEAKER_00: And there are times when my wife and I are circling the drain.
SPEAKER_00: When we are so angry at one another, where we've caused so much harm to one another.
SPEAKER_00: That I need to look at that sign and have it remind me, you are here to show the world what God's love is like.
SPEAKER_00: Not, Joe Valenti, not to be concerned about your own happiness all the time.
SPEAKER_00: It hasn't helped anybody.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't help my marriage, and it doesn't help my witness.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus gives us this last statement as if to say, I don't care about what's happening legally.
SPEAKER_00: I care about what's happening spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: I care about your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I care about your witness.
SPEAKER_00: When you tear apart the covenant that God has glued together, you say to the world, Jesus quits on you when he gets bored with you.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: That's what divorce does.
SPEAKER_00: If marriage is intended to be a mirror of the covenant-keeping love of God, and we choose not to keep covenant, what we're mirroring back to the world is when things get hard, God will quit.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: I told you to hang with me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna move to application.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you to stay with me through the application as well.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know there are two things here.
SPEAKER_00: I am responsible to teach God's word as it is and not do what the Pharisees do and try to knock some of the rough edges off of it so it'll sound a little better coming out of my mouth and going into your ears.
SPEAKER_00: It's not my job is to preach God's word as it is, and I also have a job to be a shepherd of your heart and of your soul.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want you to know and recognize that I've been doing this long enough that I know that every single scenario is unique.
SPEAKER_00: It would be foolish for me to just close the Bible now and say, that's it.
SPEAKER_00: Have a nice day.
SPEAKER_00: And so allow me, if you would, just a few minutes to pastor us through this.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're still fighting the same fight from the first century and from the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: We're still fighting the same fight from Deuteronomy 24 and Mark 10.
SPEAKER_00: Namely, people who have hard hearts that want to take God's word and make it say what they want it to say so that they can do what they want to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're still fighting this fight.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible gives us two very clear exception clauses for when divorce may be permissible.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't say you should get divorced.
SPEAKER_00: It says these are scenarios where it may be permissible.
SPEAKER_00: Sexual immorality and abandonment by an unbelieving spouse.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 5, 1 Corinthians 4, respectively.
SPEAKER_00: Now, immediately that becomes a very nuanced conversation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not cut and dry.
SPEAKER_00: How do we define sexual immorality?
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word there in Matthew 5 is porneo, which could include all sorts of sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: So which kind is grounds for divorce and how much of it?
SPEAKER_00: What about the severity of it?
SPEAKER_00: How bad does it have to be, and who determines how bad it has to be?
SPEAKER_00: What about abandonment?
SPEAKER_00: That's another one.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what exactly defines abandonment?
SPEAKER_00: If a spouse is abusive, have they abandoned the relationship?
SPEAKER_00: If a spouse is emotionally distant, have they abandoned the relationship?
SPEAKER_00: If so, how long do they have to be emotionally distant for it to be considered abandonment?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: These are nuanced conversations.
SPEAKER_00: They're hard conversations.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to be, it's really important that you hear, I'm not trying to be flippant at all about every unique situation in every marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I know that there are issues of children and safety and finances.
SPEAKER_00: So don't hear me saying that this is a clear black and white issue.
SPEAKER_00: This necessitates spiritual discernment.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_00: The nuance is not at the center of today's text.
SPEAKER_00: At the center of Mark 10, one through twelve, is an apparently centuries-old problem, namely that we want what we want based on how we feel, and we are prone to skew God's word in order to meet our desires.
SPEAKER_00: See, the Pharisees came to test Jesus because they had been misusing Scripture in order to get what they wanted.
SPEAKER_00: The heart is the core of the issue.
SPEAKER_00: Ninety-five percent of the time.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what happens when a couple or an individual comes to myself or Pastor Dale or Pastor Dean.
SPEAKER_00: They sit down on the couch, or he or she sits down on the couch, and their mind is already made up.
SPEAKER_00: Nine times out of ten, mind is already made up.
SPEAKER_00: Checked out of the relationship, packed their emotional bags, maybe even consulted a lawyer, and they s and what they're actually looking for from me is not a pastor, but permission.
SPEAKER_00: Look, I've tried everything, I'm miserable, and this this is typically one of the statements, and I know God doesn't want me to be miserable.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see do you see where the center is there?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see where the heart is focused there?
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't God want me to be happy, Pastor Joe?
SPEAKER_00: See where the center is there?
SPEAKER_00: And if I open the scriptures, again, even gently and pastorally, often it very quickly turns to anger.
SPEAKER_00: I talked to Pastor Dean this week.
SPEAKER_00: He said, most people that come into his office are angry at him already because they know what he's gonna say.
SPEAKER_00: But just imagine this scenario.
SPEAKER_00: A couple walks into my office and they sit down on the couch, and I'll tell you, I can feel it.
SPEAKER_00: I can feel it in the room.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes years of words, of actions.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can hurt us like that person that we're married to.
SPEAKER_00: And they sit down on my couch and they say, Joe, we stopped loving each other a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: She might say, I can't stand him.
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, they actually don't have the energy to even fight anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They're just so sick of one another that they're just resolved to be done.
SPEAKER_00: We're drifting, we're disconnected, we're hurting, and we're tired.
SPEAKER_00: And then I wait for it.
SPEAKER_00: What are they asking for?
SPEAKER_00: Every now and then I hear something like this.
SPEAKER_00: What do we need to surrender so that God can heal our marriage?
SPEAKER_00: We want to honor Him.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to keep our covenant, and we want to display what Jesus' love is like, even if it costs us everything.
SPEAKER_00: Can you please help us?
SPEAKER_00: And my heart just leaps for joy in those moments.
SPEAKER_00: This is a heart with a high view of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: People who are not looking for Scripture to give them permission, but for the Holy Spirit to give them power.
SPEAKER_00: And look, these are not my stories to tell, but there are story after story after story of couples in this church that God, they have come to God with a heart like this, and He has performed miracles in their marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He has healed and restored things that Dean and myself and the best counselors in the world can never fix.
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually going to ask several of them who are farther along in the journey to share their stories on our blog this week.
SPEAKER_00: Because I want you to know that it's possible.
SPEAKER_00: Stories of horrendous pain and rebellion that God has restored.
SPEAKER_00: Because people have chosen to say, displaying the covenant-keeping love of God to the world in this temporary marriage is more important than my momentary happiness.
SPEAKER_00: That's at the center of this text.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just have a few things to close.
SPEAKER_00: First, a question to consider.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in this scenario, in the front, in the middle, on the back end, are you asking God for strength to stay or permission to leave?
SPEAKER_00: Now, two final thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: You singles in the room, this is always an issue.
SPEAKER_00: I came on a day when it doesn't have anything to do with me.
SPEAKER_00: Can I just tell you, it has it has everything to do with you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Teenagers in the room, young ones in the room, singles in the room.
SPEAKER_00: One of the greatest reasons for marriage failure in our culture is because of sexual immorality outside of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Starts when we're young.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to believe that this is what God allows, or we don't care what God thinks.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Those are just ushers getting up, don't worry about.
SPEAKER_00: All these people are not feeling convicted, they're just ushers.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, don't worry.
SPEAKER_00: Calm down.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's like, wow.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take the Lord's Supper in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Link back in with me.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what happens when you dip your toe into pornography or sexual immorality outside of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: You get blinded.
SPEAKER_00: You think you're building for yourself some sort of foundation.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I need to kind of play house.
SPEAKER_00: I need to need to test things out, you need to make sure that there's chemistry before we get married.
SPEAKER_00: You're building yourself a trap.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: With your actions, you're actually causing chemical interactions in your brain to cause you not to think or see clearly.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Young people are infatuated by the person that they're sleeping with, and they think, oh, we ought to get married because I love this.
SPEAKER_00: I enjoy this.
SPEAKER_00: This feels good.
SPEAKER_00: And with and with no guardrails in place and no family members or church just tell them to stop, they continue to move forward.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth.
SPEAKER_00: At some point, the smoke is gonna clear, and the infatuation's not gonna be there anymore, and they're not gonna be as hot as you thought they were.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna wake up one morning and you're gonna look across the bed and think, I don't even like this person.
SPEAKER_00: What in the world was I thinking?
SPEAKER_00: We don't share the same values.
SPEAKER_00: Our families are now broken because of the decisions that we've been making.
SPEAKER_00: And what's gonna come into our brain?
SPEAKER_00: How do I get out of this?
SPEAKER_00: And it all started when you're 14 years old and decided to begin to engage in things that you ought not to have engaged, and your mind took you down a path of believing something about marriage that is not in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: The importance of Purity.
SPEAKER_00: Number two.
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: The need for church membership, life group involvement, and the protection of the elders.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you would think, really?
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about church membership right now?
SPEAKER_00: How does this help with anything?
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes people ask me, why is church membership important?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it just some bureaucracy for you to like pad the attendance numbers here?
SPEAKER_00: Can I just come and show up and do my thing and not be a member?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me, I'm gonna give you at least one reason why, directly connected to this text, why church membership matters.
SPEAKER_00: Because you were never intended to protect your covenant alone.
SPEAKER_00: Every day from every angle, you are being bombarded with the world's view of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And so you need people around you that you are covenanting with.
SPEAKER_00: Where we're making commitment and with God as the binding agent to say, I am gonna fight for your marriage even when you can't.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is this is why life group involvement is important.
SPEAKER_00: Because you can you can you can get lost in a room this big.
SPEAKER_00: This is why.
SPEAKER_00: Look, there are some scenarios, I get it, that are filled with mess, that are filled with abandonment, that are filled with financial issues, that are filled with abuse, either of you or of children, and they're all tangled up.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why God has built the church to have a plurality of elders, so that all of those scenarios don't just come to Joe Valenti or don't just come to Dean Siley and we go, well, let me see if I can help you figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: Part of being a member of our church is that you have a group of elders, a group of men who have been ordained to this work, who fit the qualifications laid out in God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know this, let me tell you, they pray for you fervently every week.
SPEAKER_00: They pray for your marriages, they pray for your children, they pray that you would hold on when life gets difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And many of them right now are up to their eyeballs caring for difficult, strained, broken marriages.
SPEAKER_00: This is why church membership is so important here, because you can't do it alone.
SPEAKER_00: What church membership does it is it allows an invitation into your household before your house starts burning down.
SPEAKER_00: You ever see a house that's so on fire that the firemen get there and they just wait for it to die down?
SPEAKER_00: It's so hot.
SPEAKER_00: See, sometimes people neglect church membership, they neglect involvement, they don't want anybody involved in their business.
SPEAKER_00: Let my business be my business.
SPEAKER_00: Stop sticking your nose in, Pastor Joe.
SPEAKER_00: And then the house is on fire, and now you want help.
SPEAKER_00: Church membership invites the church into the house before the fire starts.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, brothers and sisters, it has saved many a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what do we what do we do from here?
SPEAKER_00: What do we do from here, man?
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, this topic, whoo, it spins up so much pain and so much difficulty and so much struggle.
SPEAKER_00: What the the answer can't be, okay, get out there and work harder at keeping your covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Ha ha.
SPEAKER_00: Good luck.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's moments like these where we come back to the Lord's table and we take the bread and we take the wine as symbols of our covenant-keeping God who says, even when you can't do it, I will keep my covenant with you.
SPEAKER_00: Your covenant keeping and your worth and your value are not based on how good or how well you perform, but on my covenant-keeping love that is ultimately displayed on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And we come to him in repentance to receive his grace, to be transformed in the heart, that we might leave today with a high view of marriage that is aimed at displaying what that bread and that wine represent.
SPEAKER_00: And so I know I've gone a long time.
SPEAKER_00: I apologize.
SPEAKER_00: I just didn't feel honestly, I didn't feel like I could cut any of this.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to leave you hanging.
SPEAKER_00: And so I apologize for going long this morning, but I just want to, it's really important that we take the Lord's Supper and that we do it in reverence.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we're gonna leave here with a do more, try harder attitude.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not at the heart of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So, ushers, would you come?
SPEAKER_00: If you are a follower of Jesus, I want to invite you to take the Lord's Supper with us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not, I would just ask that you let that cup pass from you.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna take two cups out.
SPEAKER_00: They're stacked on top of one another.
SPEAKER_00: The bread is on the bottom, the juice is on the top.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take a moment to reflect, to ask the Lord for forgiveness, to ask him to transform our heart and hold those elements.
SPEAKER_00: I'll come back and we'll take them together.