SPEAKER_00: There is no doubt that marriage is under attack in our world, both from inside of the church and from outside of the church.
SPEAKER_00: From outside of the church, we live in a culture that treats marriage as a threat.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage, as far as our world is concerned, is incidental to gender.
SPEAKER_00: It is incidental, the number is incidental.
SPEAKER_00: It's an open question in our society.
SPEAKER_00: Can two, three, four people get married?
SPEAKER_00: Seems like every month there's some crazy story about a Norwegian woman who marries a road sign or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Children are viewed as an obstacle to happiness in our world.
SPEAKER_00: And so certainly the idea that marriage provides the best place for children to thrive is considered, I don't know, hateful or arbitrary or certainly irrelevant as it relates to marriage.
SPEAKER_00: From inside the church, marriage is likewise under attack.
SPEAKER_00: So many Christians are prone to view marriage as something that's designed for human happiness rather than something that's designed by God.
SPEAKER_00: And so when it stops producing happiness, it can be traded in.
SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, there is a phenomena in evangelical churches where a couple will separate in their marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They'll move out from each other.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll live independently from each other for, I don't know, a year, two years, five years, ten years, for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Without getting divorced and saying that they are, they wouldn't get divorced because that would displease the Lord, of course.
SPEAKER_00: So they just live independently of each other.
SPEAKER_00: They call it a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It is not a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: But they fancy themselves honoring the Lord by not divorcing.
SPEAKER_00: That dual attack from outside and inside of the church ends up eroding the very foundation of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, our culture and even those in the church value the fruit of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They value the idea of companionship, the idea that you should have someone to spend your life with.
SPEAKER_00: I remember following very closely because I was living in California at the time of the case that went to the, it was a federal judge, but it went all the way to the California court system and then to a federal judge about gay marriage there.
SPEAKER_00: And much of the testimony hinged on gay couples saying things like they're, you know, at the end of their life and of cancer or whatever in the hospital room.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't they have somebody who they love and they live with and they share the life with, be able to be with them in the hospital room kind of thing?
SPEAKER_00: And it's a, of course, a common sense, tearjerking appeal there.
SPEAKER_00: But if you take a step back and think about it, that's the esteeming of the fruit of marriage while denying the root of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That's saying, of course it's beneficial to have somebody to spend your life with and to share your highs and your lows with and to bring children into the world with and pass down your property to.
SPEAKER_00: Of course you want that guy.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, that is good and virtuous and noble.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's called marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It's designed by God and given to the world for precisely that reason.
SPEAKER_00: Our world, of course, rejects God and his design for marriage and yet wants to carry on its connection to the fruit of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is the the ridiculous extreme of this in our world today is, of course, unusual.
SPEAKER_00: It's been a thousand plus years since we've had cultures that really question gender distinctions in marriage or question the number of people in marriage, etc.
SPEAKER_00: But it is not unique.
SPEAKER_00: Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, there has been an incessant attack on marriage in human existence.
SPEAKER_00: It varies in different nations and ethnicities, of course, but it has been ubiquitous.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this was the first attack in human existence.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve were married and in the garden and sinless, and the devil attacked not just them, but their marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point.
SPEAKER_00: Adam and Eve had dominion over the earth.
SPEAKER_00: The devil wanted dominion on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted with the angels to rule the earth.
SPEAKER_00: It was a pleasing, it was pleasing to him and to be desired.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to have authority here.
SPEAKER_00: And instead of giving it to angels who can fly and don't die, God gave it to Adam and Eve, who were made from dirt in a rib.
SPEAKER_00: So the devil attacked them by attacking marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this in 1 Timothy 2.
SPEAKER_00: The devil attacked Eve by appealing to her to sin.
SPEAKER_00: It was Eve who sinned, not Adam.
SPEAKER_00: It was Eve who was deceived, not Adam.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that women are more easily deceived than men.
SPEAKER_00: It highlights the fact that the devil attacked the wife to get her to step out from underneath her husband's leadership and protection, getting the husband to abdicate his leadership and role in his wife.
SPEAKER_00: And so the devil is undoing the very foundation of human dominion on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Two people can't subdue the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Two people need to multiply and be fruitful in order to subdue the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And God gave marriage for that reason, and the devil attacked that.
SPEAKER_00: And that attack is carried on throughout human history and is, of course, evident today.
SPEAKER_00: We see the way the Jews attacked marriage this morning through the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 19.
SPEAKER_00: This is a new geographic place from where we've been in Matthew 18, but it is continuing the theme.
SPEAKER_00: If you recall, Matthew 18 begins with Jesus taking a child and saying, This is the grace in the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That was a statement, I suppose, about humility and receiving the kingdom, but more than that about the sense of dependency and a sense of order in the home.
SPEAKER_00: A child realizes he's not the architect of the house.
SPEAKER_00: He realizes he's not the dad of the house.
SPEAKER_00: He may play family at home, but he recognizes he's not the provider or the worker.
SPEAKER_00: He only receives, and so it is with us in our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We receive from God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus launches from that into a prolonged, all through chapter 18 and the first half of chapter 19, series of teaching on the family relationships inside of the church.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to protect weak believers, your brothers and sisters in Christ, and not lead them into sin.
SPEAKER_00: When one gets stuck in sin, you're supposed to rescue them out of sin.
SPEAKER_00: If your brother is in sin, Jesus says, or sins against you, go get them.
SPEAKER_00: Confront them.
SPEAKER_00: Use the church.
SPEAKER_00: If they don't repent, bring a friend and bring witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: If they don't repent, bring the whole church.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you can win them back.
SPEAKER_00: And we talked about, if you recall in chapter 18, what happens in the family relationship when a spouse is sinning against their spouse?
SPEAKER_00: They're lying and gossiping and slandering and being divisive and nagging and being unkind or maybe ignoring and neglecting and all a thousand ways that you can make marriage difficult.
SPEAKER_00: What happens if your spouse is sinning against you in that way and making the home life practically unbearable?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you confront them in their sin and you bring a witness if they don't repent and say they don't repent.
SPEAKER_00: You bring the whole church and the church appeals to them, and then what happens if they do repent?
SPEAKER_00: Well, praise God, they repented.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is oftentimes that the spouse who's been sinned against now is no longer willing to receive the sinning spouse back.
SPEAKER_00: They look at the last three months of their life where their sinning spouse has been separated from them and they think, man, this this has been wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going back.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not forgiving them.
SPEAKER_00: The very fact they're asking for forgiveness shows they don't realize how severely they hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus tells a parable about someone who's been forgiven$36 billion.
SPEAKER_00: We did the math last week, remember?
SPEAKER_00: $36 billion, but won't forgive somebody else who owes them$20,000.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, the idea by the$20,000 debt, it's not saying it's insignificant, of course not.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying you're forgiven a million dollars and you won't forgive your brother a dollar.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you've sinned in an infinite way against God, an uncalculable way.
SPEAKER_00: And somebody else sinned against you severely, significantly,$20,000 is not insignificant.
SPEAKER_00: It's a massive debt.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not$36 billion.
SPEAKER_00: This sets up for his teaching on marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a mystery where that illustration is most commonly going to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: It's most commonly going to be seen in the confines of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And so, chapter 19, verse 1, Jesus finished these sayings, speaking to the church about church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: He went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: This is where he's going to begin to teach that marriage belongs to God.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to continue.
SPEAKER_00: This is packaged together because Matthew, who was present for both chapter 18 and chapter 19, recognizes the continuity of Jesus' teaching here.
SPEAKER_00: The theme is that marriage belongs to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so that you know I'm not making this up, you can jog your eyes down to chapter 19, verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus closes off this teaching by bringing children to him again, laying his hands on them and praying for them, saying, Let the children come to me, to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same thing basically that happened in chapter 18, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: So this whole teaching is bracketed by this notion that children represent receiving the kingdom with humility.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of that is what does family life look like in the kingdom of God?
SPEAKER_00: And so now he turns from your brother or sister sinning against you to marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And then it begins, of course, with a trap.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with a trap, you see, in verse 2, large crowds followed him.
SPEAKER_00: He healed them there, and the Pharisees came up to him and tested him.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees have been lurking, hunting Jesus, even for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Going back to chapter 12, when in this same area back in Galilee, Capernaum, he had healed the man with a withered hand in the synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: They at that point decided to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: They began hunting him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus left Galilee because it was not his time to die.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees have been looking ever since.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he dodges back in here and there with the feeding of the 5,000, which was across the lake.
SPEAKER_00: Comes back across over to Capernaum again.
SPEAKER_00: He then leaves Israel altogether and goes up to Lebanon, Syria, that area.
SPEAKER_00: Comes back in at the north end, Caesarea Philippi, Banias, the very northern tip of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Mount of Transfiguration.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's working from there all the way to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He goes back through Galilee, that's where he teaches chapter 18.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees re-engage.
SPEAKER_00: They're still trying to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: They're following him down the Jordan River now towards Jericho.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's going to get to Jericho where he'll heal the blind man.
SPEAKER_00: Then he's going to go into Jerusalem for Passion Week.
SPEAKER_00: That's the trajectory he's on.
SPEAKER_00: On the way, the Pharisees re-engage to trap him.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to test him, which is just funny, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Pop quiz for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He can read their minds.
SPEAKER_00: He's been doing it all along, but they have not given up.
SPEAKER_00: Even the last week of his life, they're going to come up with their three hardest questions to test him in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: This is not one of their hardest questions, but they think it is.
SPEAKER_00: Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the geography of this is hugely important.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Jordan wilderness along the Jordan River.
SPEAKER_00: This is where John the Baptist was arrested and martyred.
SPEAKER_00: That's the most significant event that happens here in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: This is where John had been preaching.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been to Israel, this is not the Jordan River baptismal site with all the Great Commission verses on the wall and the green lush trees everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That's not where John was.
SPEAKER_00: That's where McDonald's are, not where John was.
SPEAKER_00: John was out in the Jordan wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd follow the Jordan River down, maybe if you take the bus down to Jericho from there, which is the normal way tour groups go through Israel, you went through that wilderness area.
SPEAKER_00: That's where John was.
SPEAKER_00: And remember why John was killed?
SPEAKER_00: Because he preached that the king could not simply divorce his wife and marry somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: John was put to death for preaching against divorce, right where the Pharisees corner Jesus and ask him about divorce.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a stretch.
SPEAKER_00: It might be to our minds, because we don't know the geography very well.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of an American analogy.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like a reporter ambushing President Trump in Ford's Theater, asking him about Secret Service protection.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's a loaded question.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of motorcade will you have when you visit Dallas?
SPEAKER_00: Kind of question.
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't need to spell it out like, oh, this is what happened in those places.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody gets it.
SPEAKER_00: And so when the Pharisees corner Jesus in the Judean wilderness along the Jordan and ask him about divorce, it's an obvious trap.
SPEAKER_00: Their goal is his death.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a trap because the Jews believed in divorce.
SPEAKER_00: For a couple reasons.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, if your spouse was barren, you could obviously divorce her.
SPEAKER_00: The function of marriage was to provide a family line to pass along your property.
SPEAKER_00: The whole tribal system of Israel was designed by tribes and families so that the land would revert to the family name every 50 years.
SPEAKER_00: Now, keep in mind, this is total hypocrisy because the Jews never actually followed the year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_00: They never did that.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they were exiled 480 years before this encounter.
SPEAKER_00: God kicked them out of Israel because they never actually obeyed his word on this.
SPEAKER_00: But they're back in Israel now, and they're still teaching that if your spouse is married, you can divorce because the point of marriage is children to pass along the family line.
SPEAKER_00: God wouldn't be so hard-hearted that he would have you stay married to someone who can't produce a child for you.
SPEAKER_00: So of course you can divorce.
SPEAKER_00: And they also taught you could divorce if you were in a difficult marriage, if your spouse sinned against you in these kind of extreme ways, up to three times.
SPEAKER_00: Your spouse sins against you by making your life miserable and unbearable and gossiping and slandering and lying and all the emotional trauma you can experience in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: If your spouse does that, you can separate.
SPEAKER_00: If they repent, you bring them back.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews taught you could do that up to three times.
SPEAKER_00: But the fourth time you were allowed to divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Then everybody believed that.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody did, all the Jews did, anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, There's no way that God is so hard-hearted, He'd want you to stay married to somebody like that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he knows how hard it is.
SPEAKER_00: He designed marriage to be good and happy, and this one is not good or happy for you, so obviously you could divorce.
SPEAKER_00: That was kind of standard to Jewish teaching.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist didn't buy into that, remember?
SPEAKER_00: And they killed him.
SPEAKER_00: So they're asking Jesus this question.
SPEAKER_00: It's a trick question.
SPEAKER_00: They're not asking him if divorce is permitted, they're asking him when and where and why.
SPEAKER_00: Option A, Jesus could say all divorce is fine, don't worry about it, and they would love that.
SPEAKER_00: Option B, that Jesus could say divorce is not fine, and they would be able to turn him over to the Romans to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the John the Baptist trap.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the good news about this kind of question is that this kind of difficult question is so effective in revealing what you actually believe.
SPEAKER_00: What you actually believe.
SPEAKER_00: And people often say that the evangelical church can be hypocritical when it comes to marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I sometimes roll my eyes and people critique the evangelical church.
SPEAKER_00: That rubs me the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: But I do have, I do resonate with this critique here because you know, the evangelical church is filled with people who will go off against gay marriage and talk about how, you know, you can't have two guys marrying each other, two girls marrying each other.
SPEAKER_00: God designed marriage is so important and so significant and whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And then yet they tolerate one of their friends leaving their spouse for a few years.
SPEAKER_00: They tolerate that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they'll sign all kinds of long statements against gay marriage and God made gender, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: But when somebody they know leaves their spouse unbiblically, you're suddenly like, whoa, this is actually really confusing.
SPEAKER_00: That's super common.
SPEAKER_00: There is an element of hypocrisy in that.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't fall into that trap.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus leverages this as a benefit.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of trap is actually effective at showing what you really believe.
SPEAKER_00: You want to know if someone really believes about marriage.
SPEAKER_00: See how they react when their marriage goes through a trial.
SPEAKER_00: See how they react when a friend of theirs leaves their spouse unbiblically.
SPEAKER_00: That is a better window into what somebody believes about marriage than, you know, some kind of room with a bunch of their friends and they draft statements against gay marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That's easy.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus leverages here.
SPEAKER_00: He sees a trap, he sees it coming, and he responds with the roots, the root of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the Pharisees in verse 3 say, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
SPEAKER_00: They are appealing to Jesus, to Jesus to go to Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: That's the passage, they're going to reference it in a few minutes.
SPEAKER_00: That's where they built their teaching of marriage out of, was out of Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: They're wanting Jesus to engage with that text.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 24 is where Moses says, if your wife commits adultery, you can basically divorce her, give her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Moses says if there's any kind of impurity in her, and it's a word that means sexual impurity, it's another way of saying adultery, you can divorce her.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Jews had taken that word to mean if there's something distasteful or displeasing in her, you know, and you you worked with it for three times, then you could divorce her, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: So they're wanting Jesus to go to Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: And I, if I were Jesus, that's what I would have done.
SPEAKER_00: I would have answered with Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: Because I I think Deuteronomy 24 is on Jesus' side in this.
SPEAKER_00: I would say, let's go to Deuteronomy 24 and see what it says, because it doesn't say what you say it says.
SPEAKER_00: But let's go there.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I would have done.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees didn't ask me, and I'm obviously not Jesus, and Jesus did not ask me either, and does something totally different.
SPEAKER_00: So let's learn from Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't go to Deuteronomy 24, he goes to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.
SPEAKER_00: He goes before Moses' teaching on divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the significant part of Jesus' answer here, and I want to just harp on it one more second because I want to make sure you appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't start where they start when they're asking about divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Because their question about divorce is rooted in human happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Their question about divorce is what happens in a difficult marriage, can't you leave your wife?
SPEAKER_00: They want to go there.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus goes before sin even entered the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's where he goes.
SPEAKER_00: He does not meet them on the battlefield of their own choosing.
SPEAKER_00: And from that you can extrapolate this point.
SPEAKER_00: If you start your view of marriage with human happiness, or even with grounds for divorce, or even with sin, you're not starting in the right place.
SPEAKER_00: Because marriage predates all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' method here is to teach on marriage by going to the beginning of marriage, not the corruption of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage predates the Pharisees, it predates Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage predates Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It predates sin.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus goes to the origin of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4, have you not read?
SPEAKER_00: Which I laugh every time Jesus speaks to the Pharisees that way.
SPEAKER_00: These are people that have the Old Testament memorized.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they know how many words are on each page of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: I know they use scrolls, but you get the point.
SPEAKER_00: They know how many words are in each section of a scroll.
SPEAKER_00: They know how many vowel points are on each line of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: So for Jesus to say, have you not read?
SPEAKER_00: And not follow it with some obscure quote from Malachi, but have you not read?
SPEAKER_00: And he follows it with Genesis 1, is funny to the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: I find it funny.
SPEAKER_00: Your mileage may vary.
SPEAKER_00: Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus makes God the subject here, not Moses, not human beings, not divorce, and not marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He makes God the subject.
SPEAKER_00: They ask him about divorce, and Jesus responds with, let's talk about the God who designed marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It's about God, not people.
SPEAKER_00: And is that in as much as it's about people, it comes to the fact that they are made male and female.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus is doing here is getting under the hood.
SPEAKER_00: He's showing what the design of marriage is.
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever ask yourself, why is there marriage at all?
SPEAKER_00: Why did God make the world with marriage in it, which he did?
SPEAKER_00: And why is it being attacked by culture?
SPEAKER_00: Because culture props up the, like I said, the fruit of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They want happiness, they want children, but they don't want the means to have happiness or to have children.
SPEAKER_00: And so they start tinkering with it by saying, you know, if you find somebody, male or female, that you can be happy with, they call that a marriage.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus goes under the hood and says, marriage is as old as gender.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're in a world that rejects that God made people, specifically.
SPEAKER_00: Rejects that God-made people male and female, then you find yourself in a culture that says gender is mutable, gender is changeable, malleable, interchangeable, not defined, even so hard to define male and female, so hard, so hard.
SPEAKER_00: If only we knew what a man or a woman was, so hard, which means you can't even engage with marriage at any level whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus goes back to the beginning, male and female.
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is the last thing I'll say about that hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: It's it is interesting how quickly evangelicals will talk about the ridiculousness of gay marriage because it denies, oh, you know, you don't even know what a woman is, ha ha ha, while excusing people, including themselves, from living with their husbands and wives in an understanding or godly way.
SPEAKER_00: But those truths are evident.
SPEAKER_00: As certainly as they're male and female, God designed a marriage for human flourishing, for the human service of society, for men to lead and protect their wives, for wives to love and submit to their husbands.
SPEAKER_00: That's the design.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 27, God created man in his own image.
SPEAKER_00: In the image of God, he created him, speaking of man, male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus quotes.
SPEAKER_00: The point is, gender is not incidental to marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It is foundational, and you cannot redefine that which you did not invent.
SPEAKER_00: While our culture, our our culture debates outcomes of marriage, Jesus returns to the origins of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to understand divorce, you must first understand marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to understand marriage, you got to go back to creation.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Jesus goes anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, the reality.
SPEAKER_00: The trap was divorce.
SPEAKER_00: The root is God designed male and female.
SPEAKER_00: Now the reality, God joins male and female together, verse five.
SPEAKER_00: A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.
SPEAKER_00: This is Genesis 2, 24.
SPEAKER_00: And the two will become one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: The two will become one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the order that Jesus quotes this in the husband, the man will leave his own family.
SPEAKER_00: Both the husband and wife leave their family in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The wife leaves her parents, the husband leaves his parents.
SPEAKER_00: So why does Jesus call out the man leaving his parents?
SPEAKER_00: Because this is demonstrating the husband's role in initiation in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The guy asks the girl, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: The husband initiates marriage, the husband initiates intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: The husband is the leader in the family.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea behind this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not arbitrary, it's reflected even in biological reality.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus appeals to that.
SPEAKER_00: The husband shall leave, the man shall leave his father and mother.
SPEAKER_00: The two will cling together.
SPEAKER_00: This is the cleaving, leaving and cleaving.
SPEAKER_00: They will hold fast, is how the ESV renders it.
SPEAKER_00: They hold fast to each other.
SPEAKER_00: The husband left, the two of them form a new entity.
SPEAKER_00: They take the husband's name, they make a new family, a new loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, you still have your old family.
SPEAKER_00: You don't stop being part of your old family, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, a function of marriage is even passing down property and the family name, obviously.
SPEAKER_00: So there is still a familial connection.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that in marriage, a new family starts.
SPEAKER_00: A new family starts.
SPEAKER_00: And that new family is the foundational unit of society.
SPEAKER_00: It provides a place for children to come into this world and have the leadership of a dad and the protection of a mom, where their home is their worlds.
SPEAKER_00: This is how God designed marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, real quickly, this doesn't mean that every marriage has children.
SPEAKER_00: Our world today stumbles over these kind of basic logical reasoning principles here.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage as a class is designed to bring children into the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the functions of it as a class.
SPEAKER_00: That's the way God designed it to function.
SPEAKER_00: But sin ruins everything, of course.
SPEAKER_00: Sin ruins everything.
SPEAKER_00: Unhappy marriages don't undo the idea that God designed marriage for happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Childless marriages don't undo the idea that God designed marriage for children.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a world where sin corrupts everything.
SPEAKER_00: Of course it does.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't promise children to every married couple.
SPEAKER_00: He does not.
SPEAKER_00: It's not his will to give children to every married couple.
SPEAKER_00: When you read the book of Genesis, a couple things stand out right away.
SPEAKER_00: Like your first reading, if you remember the very first time you read Genesis, can you remember back that far?
SPEAKER_00: Like put the child Bible aside.
SPEAKER_00: If you grew up in the church, not the storybook Bible, but like the actual Bible you read for the first time, you're going through Genesis, a few things jump out.
SPEAKER_00: One, God is sovereign over the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Like he causes a flood and he made the world with his words, and he calls Abram, and his words do stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Probably the second thing that stands out for you is that God is sovereign over the womb.
SPEAKER_00: He's sovereign over all things, but one of the most repeated lines in Genesis is God closed this woman's womb and opened that woman's womb and closed that womb, and they prayed for children.
SPEAKER_00: That's an ongoing theme with every person in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: God is sovereign over all things, but particularly bringing children into the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, he designed children so that mankind could be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: It's a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: No, not every marriage is blessed with children.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean they're not marriages.
SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't undo the design of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: That new family, then, with the new name and the new unit, becomes the foundational unit of society.
SPEAKER_00: It's not merely a physical union, it's not superficially a legal union, but it is an ontological union.
SPEAKER_00: They make a new family.
SPEAKER_00: And there was probably four or five different weddings I did where I say, now pronounce you husband and wife, you may kiss the bride, and they stop, and then after the kiss, they grab a phone from like the best man or something, and they update their Facebook status together, married.
SPEAKER_00: Dan, did you do this?
SPEAKER_00: Tell the truth.
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00: Video games in the worship center.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know, man.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is more than a Facebook status.
SPEAKER_00: It is an ontological reality.
SPEAKER_00: It's a state of being.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus isn't saying that two people should not be separated in marriage, but he's saying that they, in a sense, cannot be.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: They are no longer two, but one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: This is divine mathematics.
SPEAKER_00: One plus one equals one.
SPEAKER_00: Don't try that on the SAT, but it is true in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: This is the only human relationship that's like this.
SPEAKER_00: You know, two sisters have, or three sisters have a wonderful relationship with each other.
SPEAKER_00: Best friends.
SPEAKER_00: They're still three people.
SPEAKER_00: In the eyes of God, they're three different people.
SPEAKER_00: Two brothers are best friends with each other.
SPEAKER_00: They're two different people.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna go off and have two different families one day.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is the only institution that's like that.
SPEAKER_00: You can be best friends with somebody.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're not married to them, you're not one unit.
SPEAKER_00: It's only marriage is like that.
SPEAKER_00: Only marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And God designed it for that person.
SPEAKER_00: The shared life that they have together.
SPEAKER_00: This one flesh excludes adultery, it excludes divorce, and it excludes sexual immorality by design.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it is a form of common grace.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to be a Christian to enjoy the benefits of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: God designed it for the world.
SPEAKER_00: Rain is common grace.
SPEAKER_00: Rain waters the crops of Christians and non-Christians alike.
SPEAKER_00: Rain doesn't just fall on the Christian farms.
SPEAKER_00: Milkshakes are an example of common grace.
SPEAKER_00: God gives milkshakes that the world is enjoyable.
SPEAKER_00: And do you know that we live in a world with the Chick-fil-A peach milkshake and atheist at the same time?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how, I honestly don't know how.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like the Chick-fil-A peach milkshake is checkmate, atheist.
SPEAKER_00: Answer that.
SPEAKER_00: They ignore it, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is like that.
SPEAKER_00: Non-Christians can get the benefits and the blessings of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They can.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are recognized the maker of marriage get more blessings out of it.
SPEAKER_00: They maximize the blessings, but marriage is not designed only for believers.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage predates the fall.
SPEAKER_00: It's designed for the world.
SPEAKER_00: And let me add this very quickly.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot of people say that marriage is also designed to pass down your ethnic identity, your language and your cultural backgrounds and your ethnic identity to your kids.
SPEAKER_00: It's the way you pass down your sense of self and your ethnicity.
SPEAKER_00: That's garbage also.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage predates ethnic diversity.
SPEAKER_00: It does.
SPEAKER_00: It's not designed to pass down some ethnic identity and shared cultural hegemony or whatever with your kids.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is designed to make a new family and bring life into the world and joy and fellowship and all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is designed by God to give you companionship.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's hard to walk alone.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage gives you somebody to walk with, it gives you somebody to share your joys with.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you have something fun happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody tells you a joke in the hallway, and right away you think, oh, I want to tell this to somebody.
SPEAKER_00: You feel like that joke is not, it's unrequited until you pass it along.
SPEAKER_00: And marriage gives you that person.
SPEAKER_00: Something hard happens at work.
SPEAKER_00: Something, somebody's obnoxious to you at work or it does something dumb at work, and you feel like you want to share that with somebody, and marriage gives you the person to share that with all the time.
SPEAKER_00: They're with you all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You come home every day to him or her, and you share that with them.
SPEAKER_00: You have to be careful that you don't just complain every day.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a healthy part of you sharing what's going on in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage gives you that.
SPEAKER_00: It magnifies your joy, it helps bear your sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Something hard happens to you.
SPEAKER_00: You have somebody who's walking with you through it at all times.
SPEAKER_00: It brings children into your life, which are such a blessing and brings so much joy.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture says they, you know, it's hard to go on vacation when you have kids.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Kids bring such joy into your life.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage facilitates holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Not just in the world of sexual purity, although that's a big part of it, but in every area of holiness.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're married, you live with somebody who says, hey, I haven't seen you read your Bible all week.
SPEAKER_00: Do you still do that?
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen you praying this week.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're married to the person, but you can't say, Oh, I do it when you're not around.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: It provokes your holiness.
SPEAKER_00: There's political blessings in society through marriage.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you start having kids, you start generally voting a different way than maybe you did when you were a single college student.
SPEAKER_00: Like you suddenly care about the people that are on the school board in a way you didn't when you didn't have kids.
SPEAKER_00: You care about what kind of laws and protection there are in society because you're looking to pass down something.
SPEAKER_00: That same kind of blessing is true in the church.
SPEAKER_00: There's a way that new life in the church through marriage energizes a church and gives you people to teach your kids, the next generation of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is designed in the Psalms, it talks about passing down the blessings of a common faith in the Lord to the next generation.
SPEAKER_00: God designs marriage to be a blessing in all of those ways.
SPEAKER_00: The Puritan Daniel Roger asked, quote, what would the world be without marriage?
SPEAKER_00: It would be a dungeon.
SPEAKER_00: What is the world but an emptiness and a vanity without the usefulness of marriage?
SPEAKER_00: He goes on later to write, the marriage is the seminary of the commonwealth, the seed plot of the church, the pillar of the world, the right hand of providence, the glory of peace, the sinews of war, the life of the dead, the solace of the living, the ambition of virginity, and the foundation of all kingdoms.
SPEAKER_00: People don't write like that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: That comes from God's creation and his good design.
SPEAKER_00: He designed marriage for that reason.
SPEAKER_00: And so marriage highlights our dependence on God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is why people who reject God go after marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the constant reminder to them that God made the world and gave them good things.
SPEAKER_00: You may not know who Carl Benz is, but he invented the first car.
SPEAKER_00: You can deny that he existed, call him a figment of the German imagination, but every time you drive a car, you testify to his existence.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you understand the difference between male and female, you're recognizing the existence of God, that he designed the world that way, so that he could bring marriage in the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's why there are different genders.
SPEAKER_00: It is the function of making marriage wonderful and lovely.
SPEAKER_00: One name, one life, one covenant, one future with God as the efficient.
SPEAKER_00: He brings people together.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it says in this passage here, verse 6: what God has joined together.
SPEAKER_00: Let no man separate.
SPEAKER_00: God is the one joining, so man lacks the authority to undo it.
SPEAKER_00: God speaks this way because he's trying to magnify the glory of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He designed marriage to give marriage glory.
SPEAKER_00: He performed the first marriage so that you would know it should be glorious.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was born to a woman engaged to be married to magnify the glory of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He did his first miracle at a wedding to magnify the glory of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: When Scripture talks of a covenant relationship with God, it uses the analogy of marriage to magnify the glory of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Christ uses the relationship between himself and his church as an analogy of marriage to give it glory.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus uses marriage as a symbol for the kingdom of heaven, the marriage supper of the Lamb to magnify it and to give it glory.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know that's not everybody's experience.
SPEAKER_00: I know there are people in difficult marriages.
SPEAKER_00: I know there's people who hear this and think, man, I know marriage is designed for human happiness and human flourishing.
SPEAKER_00: I believe it, but that is not my experience.
SPEAKER_00: The way you respond to that is not like the Pharisees and say, Deuteronomy 24, get me the loophole.
SPEAKER_00: The way you respond to that is by faithfulness and trusting the Lord who designed marriage.
SPEAKER_00: By prayer, by resisting the cultural reduction of marriage to human happiness and marriage to feelings, which come and go and change.
SPEAKER_00: By recognizing marriage is a sanctifying grace, that marriage is sanctifying your own life.
SPEAKER_00: Even in a difficult marriage, that it stops being about what percentage of the sin is your husband's or your wife's fault, and it starts being about how is God sanctifying me through this, wherever the source is.
SPEAKER_00: And you submit your marriage to God's design.
SPEAKER_00: The husbands, man up and lead and care for their wife and cherish them, and wives submit and serve and honor their husbands.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you submit your marriage to God's design.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're single and you think, man, I'm just longing for a spouse, know that Christ is longing to be reunited, his spouse as well.
SPEAKER_00: He longs for the day where the church is brought together with him in heaven forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you charted out marriage as a way to bring us happiness and joy into a sin-filled world.
SPEAKER_00: We know marriage doesn't shield us from sin.
SPEAKER_00: Sin enters our family because we marry a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: And yet marriage still makes life enjoyable.
SPEAKER_00: To have someone to walk with and share with and love with and live with.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.