SPEAKER_00: Matthew 5, verse 31.
SPEAKER_00: It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jesus' introduction to his teaching on divorce.
SPEAKER_00: He'll pick it up again in Matthew 19.
SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to preach on this passage on the Sunday that was Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, that Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: So in thinking through it, I thought a sermon on divorce for Christmas morning, not the best fit.
SPEAKER_00: So I kicked it out a month and we did the 1 Timothy 3.16 study for Advent, which just means that the teaching on divorce ends up on the Sunday before Valentine's Day.
SPEAKER_00: There's no perfect answer to these kind of preaching dilemmas.
SPEAKER_00: It's no denying that divorce is a prominent feature of our society.
SPEAKER_00: In a sense, we are, as Americans living in this culture, sort of numb to it.
SPEAKER_00: We're like the goldfish in the bull.
SPEAKER_00: We don't realize it's wet, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: But our culture is inextricably marked by divorce.
SPEAKER_00: I read a book recently on the IGen, which is what this author calls the current generation of high school students, the IGen.
SPEAKER_00: I just love that title for them.
SPEAKER_00: And he pointed out some pretty stunning things about divorce.
SPEAKER_00: He argued that the baby boomer generation is not just the most divorced generation in American history, but probably the most divorced generation in world history.
SPEAKER_00: Of any civilization anywhere, the baby boomer generation in the United States has a higher prevalence of divorce than any other generation ever.
SPEAKER_00: And he notes all kinds of reasons for that.
SPEAKER_00: There was so much of an emphasis on self-fulfillment in that generation.
SPEAKER_00: That you could be fulfilled through work, which of course didn't lead to fulfillment, that you could be fulfilled through internal happiness was the big thrust of it.
SPEAKER_00: The prevalence of psychology over all of that that taught you the meaning of life was your own happiness, your own sense of stability, your own kind of oneness with yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a total introspective happiness quest, and it ends up defunct.
SPEAKER_00: And in a culture that prizes your happiness, if something's not making you happy, then of course you would discard it.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, there have been cultures that have been materialistic throughout the ages, but that little window of American history taught that happiness of the individual hardworking person was the chief end of existence.
SPEAKER_00: So if your family didn't make you happy, trade them out for a new one.
SPEAKER_00: Because your happiness is what is most important.
SPEAKER_00: The result of that is that the Gen X generation, generation that I'm part of, is the first generation in world history, not just American history, but the first generation in world history where the majority of the generation was not raised by their parents.
SPEAKER_00: The majority of that generation, their parents were not married to each other.
SPEAKER_00: If they were married, they were married to somebody different.
SPEAKER_00: The majority did not come from two parent homes.
SPEAKER_00: The result of that, he points out, is the millennial generation, who of course gets blamed for everything, but they deserve it, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And the author points out that the millennial generation is the least married generation, again, not just in American history, but in world history.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about how all those things connect.
SPEAKER_00: The prevalence of this idea that your happiness is why you were made, to the prevalence of the idea that a family is interchangeable.
SPEAKER_00: You know, who needs a family to the prevalence of idea in the millennial generation that actually believes that?
SPEAKER_00: It says, you're right.
SPEAKER_00: Who does need the family?
SPEAKER_00: It's one record after another, and who knows where this quest will end.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the current crop of high school students coming through now, and they've been taught by society they don't need people.
SPEAKER_00: You can do everything online.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even need to go to school, you don't need a teacher, you don't need to see a face.
SPEAKER_00: It all can be sacrificed for the health of the baby boomers.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's so fascinating how much divorce is a basic part of our life.
SPEAKER_00: The same thing could be argued about the generation of the Pharisees in Jesus' lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, divorce among the Jews in Jesus' lifetime was not as prevalent as it is in American culture by any stretch of the imagination, except for one small segment of the Jewish culture.
SPEAKER_00: The powerful.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees, for example, the religious leaders, those politically connected, those who had wealth, they very much embraced divorce in Jesus' lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: And they did it for a different agenda.
SPEAKER_00: Like for them, it wasn't embracing divorce to find your own sense of happiness.
SPEAKER_00: For them, it was all about inheritance, it was about power, prestige.
SPEAKER_00: If you could marry into a better family, that would elevate you in society.
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, your current wife kind of pegs you here, but there's this other woman who's interested in you, and she's at a different rung in society.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you get rid of your wife, you can marry her.
SPEAKER_00: And you've just climbed the ladder a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Some of this was about childlessness.
SPEAKER_00: In the Jewish mind, the most important thing was to have property to hand down to your family.
SPEAKER_00: It was given to your kids.
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't have kids, your property, your property was dissolved at your death.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Pharisees very much embraced divorce.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, most of what we know about the life of Jesus is from the historian Josephus, who he was born a few years after Jesus ascended into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Josephus himself was a Pharisee, and shock of shockers here, Josephus was divorced.
SPEAKER_00: It was so much a part of the Israelite culture in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish leaders had debates about divorce.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, one big school of thought said you could only divorce your wife for some sexual impurity.
SPEAKER_00: Another big school of thought said you could divorce your wife for anything in her that failed to find favor in your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: That was the language they used.
SPEAKER_00: You could divorce your wife if she did something that failed to find favor in your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that probably says more about you than about her.
SPEAKER_00: This is the stories, many of which come to us through Josephus, about people divorcing their wife because, you know, she put too much salt in the food, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And you understand those are pretexts.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody actually divorces their wife because of a burnt meal.
SPEAKER_00: You divorce your wife because you want to marry somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: And so you come up with some kind of pretense.
SPEAKER_00: The result of that, by the way, is there's no Jewish leader that would preach against divorce, period.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the third rail.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand how many people would be offended?
SPEAKER_00: All the religious leaders would be just flabbergasted if you came out and actually preached against divorce.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the last guy that tried that stunt was John the Baptist and he got his head chopped off.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's where this road goes.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not kowtowed by that pressure, though, and he goes after it.
SPEAKER_00: Right in the middle of this sermon here, he just preached about adultery, and he carries on with our passage this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That if anyone divorces their wife, he makes her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever marries a divorce woman commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: In the Jewish world, it was always the husbands divorcing their wives.
SPEAKER_00: That was largely the, well, almost entirely the thrust of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: In the American culture, we're more egalitarian than that, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And in the American culture, it's like a cherished sacrosanct right that women can divorce their husbands.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mark of equality, a mark of what it means to be a functioning democracy in society.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, women can divorce their husband for any reason.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like the kind of Jewish argument.
SPEAKER_00: He failed to find favor in my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And that's so much an essential part of the American psyche that we almost lose the thrust of how countercultural is what Jesus says, just because of the gender.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going after the husbands who divorce their wives.
SPEAKER_00: It's equally true on the flip side of it.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to read this passage again, but just swap the genders, and you'll notice just from American ears how jarring it sounds when it's switched.
SPEAKER_00: It was said, whoever divorces her husband, let her give him a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: But I say to you that everyone who divorces her husband, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes him commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: And whoever marries a divorced man commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: See how jarring that is.
SPEAKER_00: This is the third of the you have heard it said statements that Jesus uses in the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: He's using these as kind of outlines through chapter 5 to launch him into his points.
SPEAKER_00: And in all of the cases so far, what he is quoting here, you've heard it said, is actual scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying you have heard it said, you know, something false.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you have heard it said in quoting scripture.
SPEAKER_00: For example, you have heard it said, you shall not murder.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sixth commandment.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: Don't murder.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard it said, you shall not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: That's the seventh commandment.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: You have heard it said, coming up, do not swear falsely.
SPEAKER_00: That's also true.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
SPEAKER_00: That's Lex Talianus.
SPEAKER_00: That's Deuteronomic Law.
SPEAKER_00: That's true.
SPEAKER_00: The only one that's not exactly true is how the chapter ends.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard it said, love your neighbor, but hate your enemy.
SPEAKER_00: It's a misapplication of the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: But the other ones are all actually what the Torah says.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus says, you have heard it said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, that is a scriptural teaching.
SPEAKER_00: But the Jews, of course, had misrepresented it, misconstrued it.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees had taken this and used it for their own selfish endeavors that were actually contrary to the heart of the law.
SPEAKER_00: Like they did with lust.
SPEAKER_00: We saw this last week.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible does indeed say don't commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees took that, you know, the lowest common denominator, there, the lowest shelf of committing adultery is, you know, actual sexual relations with somebody other than your wife, and they excused all manner of lust.
SPEAKER_00: They said, I can do whatever I want to in my heart because I'm not actually committing adultery, so I'm a-okay.
SPEAKER_00: They were taking God's law and twisting it, even though they got the words correct, but twisting it to justify their own self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say self-righteousness, I don't mean that they were actually pursuing righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Of course not.
SPEAKER_00: They were pursuing their own ends.
SPEAKER_00: They were pursuing what they wanted to pursue.
SPEAKER_00: It's the equivalent here of saying, you know, I know the conclusion is I'm going to divorce my wife.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me open the Bible and find a passage that teaches me to divorce my wife.
SPEAKER_00: I know where I want to go.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just find the right verse to take me there.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus does not start his Bible study that way.
SPEAKER_00: That's why at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the Pharisees were just, well, the whole crowd was astonished at him.
SPEAKER_00: They said, nobody has taught like him before.
SPEAKER_00: Because everybody else is bringing on their own selfish agendas into it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is starting with just what the, what does the Bible say?
SPEAKER_00: And he does not start by saying, What does the Bible say about divorce?
SPEAKER_00: He starts by saying, What does the Bible say about marriage?
SPEAKER_00: And I'll give you a little outline to track along with.
SPEAKER_00: First, the intention of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The intention of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The intention of marriage is that it would be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is designed by God to be an unbreakable union.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus doesn't go into that so much here.
SPEAKER_00: It's implied from last week where we talked about adultery.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of Jesus' life, people are going to circle back to this point.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 19, they're going to come back to him.
SPEAKER_00: And the disciples who were here for the Sermon on the Mount are going to have some questions.
SPEAKER_00: They bring it up at the end of his life.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's how, that should just be a little marker for you about how countercultural Jesus' teaching here is.
SPEAKER_00: He gives the whole Sermon on the Mount, and you know, three years later, the disciples said, okay, Jesus, before you are crucified, I have a question for you about divorce from three years ago.
SPEAKER_00: They were stewing on this for a while.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Jesus clears up a lot of what he said there.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to bring in some of Matthew 19 into this morning's discussion.
SPEAKER_00: And that should make sense to you all because, you know, you understand this.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus teaches on a topic, he doesn't say everything about that topic in that one event, you know?
SPEAKER_00: He teaches on it repeatedly throughout his life.
SPEAKER_00: So you got to kind of corral it all.
SPEAKER_00: And in Matthew 19, he says, you know, you're not going to understand the teaching on divorce until you get this basic principle that in the beginning, God did not design marriages for divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage was designed to be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: For this reason, Genesis says, a man will leave his father and his mother, hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: This is divine mathematics.
SPEAKER_00: One plus one equals one.
SPEAKER_00: Two people come together and they form a new family.
SPEAKER_00: It's an ontological reality that is, of course, demonstrated and manifest by the sexual union, but the truth is deeper than that.
SPEAKER_00: It's a spiritual union, a new unit, an ontological reality.
SPEAKER_00: And I say ontological reality, that just means, you know, at a level of being, marriage creates oneness.
SPEAKER_00: It's an ontological reality, not a Facebook status, not a tax exemption.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what this is after.
SPEAKER_00: Not records filed at the courthouse.
SPEAKER_00: Some people ask me after first service, you know, for a marriage, does it have to be valid?
SPEAKER_00: Does it have to be in front of a pastor?
SPEAKER_00: Does it have to be in front of a judge?
SPEAKER_00: Does it have to be in front of anybody?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what it what what's the actual bare minimum requirement for a marriage here?
SPEAKER_00: And understand marriage is when two people join together to live their life together.
SPEAKER_00: They can make a commitment.
SPEAKER_00: Every culture has different, you know, displays of that.
SPEAKER_00: From you, there's cows that are exchanged to money that's exchanged, to handshakes that are exchanged, to swords that are exchanged, to judges that are involved.
SPEAKER_00: It's different all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage is a common grace that is global, it exists in every culture.
SPEAKER_00: God designed it globally.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be a Christian to enjoy marriage.
SPEAKER_00: God designed marriage to be the grace of life, Peter says.
SPEAKER_00: Non-Christians can enjoy marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Marriage makes life fun, it makes life enjoyable.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talks about common grace with rain as the example.
SPEAKER_00: That God loves his enemies.
SPEAKER_00: He's not talking about the love for the elect.
SPEAKER_00: The love for the elect is seen in the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But the love for the world is seen in common grace.
SPEAKER_00: That God gives the world marriage.
SPEAKER_00: He gives the world rain.
SPEAKER_00: It falls on the just and the unjust alike.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be a Christian to eat food grown by rain.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be a Christian to enjoy a milkshake.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great example of common grace.
SPEAKER_00: Milkshakes.
SPEAKER_00: Christians can enjoy milkshakes and non-Christians can enjoy milkshakes.
SPEAKER_00: Sunrises.
SPEAKER_00: Christians and non-Christians can enjoy sunrises.
SPEAKER_00: The rain, Christians and non-Christians can eat food.
SPEAKER_00: And marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Christians and non-Christians can enjoy marriage.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be an unbreakable union.
SPEAKER_00: God takes Eve from Adam to make him a help meet suitable for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Eve was tailor-made for Adam.
SPEAKER_00: And by tailor-made, you don't get much more tailor-made than made out of your rib, you know?
SPEAKER_00: That's personally designed.
SPEAKER_00: You know the difference.
SPEAKER_00: You know what tailor-made means.
SPEAKER_00: The difference between getting a suit made from scratch for you personally versus off the shelf.
SPEAKER_00: The idea behind marriage is that the two were made, tailor-made for each other.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we go on here on marriage, a word about singleness, because I know many of you are single.
SPEAKER_00: As you're listening to this, many of you are single and want to be married.
SPEAKER_00: Understand that in the agrarian society of the ancient Near East East, singleness was not a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Singleness meant basically you didn't have a way to pass down property.
SPEAKER_00: Even in the Greco-Roman world, singleness was not viewed highly.
SPEAKER_00: It regulated you or relegated you to the kind of sidelines of most of functioning society there.
SPEAKER_00: There are some notable exceptions, but for the most part, singleness was not a blessing or a virtue.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that changes in the church.
SPEAKER_00: This is a key part for you to understand.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 7, Matthew 19, when Jesus goes back to this again in Matthew 19.
SPEAKER_00: In both places, Jesus teaches that in the church, singleness is a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: In the church, singleness is a virtue.
SPEAKER_00: Different than the world.
SPEAKER_00: Singleness is not a common grace, but it is a Christian grace.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says that God made, you know, some people are called and saved in singleness, and they can be singularly devoted to the gospel ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Not that they're all, you know, professional ministers, but in their life, they can have a singular focus.
SPEAKER_00: They can be serving in their church and they can be giving of their money and they can be taking advantage of different opportunities that married people just can't do.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's a blessing for Christians to be single.
SPEAKER_00: The example Paul gives, you know, is single-minded.
SPEAKER_00: I think just practically, you know, there's an evangelism opportunity for me after church on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I want to take that evangelism opportunity, but I also want to make sure my family gets lunch and my interests are divided.
SPEAKER_00: I want to do both things.
SPEAKER_00: What's the right thing to do?
SPEAKER_00: There's division in the married person's mind.
SPEAKER_00: The single person doesn't have that division.
SPEAKER_00: So in the church, singleness is a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus doesn't talk about that in Matthew 5 because he's not talking about the church yet.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to his disciples out on the hill.
SPEAKER_00: He does talk about it in Matthew 19 because he's already taught on the church in Matthew 16, Matthew 18, he's getting ready to launch the church into the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's the distinction.
SPEAKER_00: But I just want you to file that in the back of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: If you're single and listening to this, if you're single and listening to this, that one single person tell me, man, I wish divorce was something I got to worry about.
SPEAKER_00: You know, but if you're listening to this and you're single, understand that God has a blessing for single people in Christ, in the church.
SPEAKER_00: There's great freedom in that.
SPEAKER_00: But for the married, understand that God designed marriage to be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what of those in rough marriages or difficult marriages?
SPEAKER_00: And I use the word rough here, not because I'm trying to minimize any kind of sin in a marriage or slight it or undervalue it by calling it rough.
SPEAKER_00: I just really can't think of a better word for it.
SPEAKER_00: What about those in rough marriages or marriages that are are difficult?
SPEAKER_00: And you think I shouldn't be called by God to stay in this marriage.
SPEAKER_00: And you have to kind of take a step back and ask yourself, what is God doing in your marriage?
SPEAKER_00: What is God doing in the world?
SPEAKER_00: You really need to go back to the first question of the catechism.
SPEAKER_00: What is the chief end of man?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why did God make you?
SPEAKER_00: And he made you, the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever.
SPEAKER_00: God made you to glorify him through your delight in him, not through your delight in marriage, not through your delight in the things of this world.
SPEAKER_00: That's not why he made you.
SPEAKER_00: Those can be secondary or tertiary benefits, but God made you to glorify him by delighting in him.
SPEAKER_00: And so there are trials in this world in any number of flavors and circumstances, from health trials to work trials to family trials.
SPEAKER_00: Those trials are all designed, as James teaches, to sanctify you by peeling away other things that you take delight and joy and comfort and find your identity in.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all burned away like metal has its informities burned away in fire.
SPEAKER_00: So you go through trials in this life, not just marriage, but a number of trials to sanctify you, to increase your enjoyment and your delight and your confidence and your trust in God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know why God is causing you to go through this trial or that trial.
SPEAKER_00: So you got to start with what do you know?
SPEAKER_00: You know for sure that God God made you to glorify him.
SPEAKER_00: You know for also sure that God designed marriage to be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, God gives the provision of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: He does give a provision of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an example of his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: His provision of divorce is merciful.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we pick up Jesus' words in verse 31.
SPEAKER_00: It was said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's quoting here, when Jesus said you've heard it said, he's quoting Matthew 20, or Deuteronomy 24, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 24 is Moses saying, if you divorce your wife for sexual immorality, you have to write her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: So Moses allows for divorce in the case of sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: A couple comments on this.
SPEAKER_00: That word sexual immorality from Deuteronomy 24, it's not in a vacuum.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming from Deuteronomy 22, where it says a husband and wife get married and there's not evidences of the wife's virginity or the husband suspects sexual immorality for some reason or adultery, they can go before the priest and they have different options available.
SPEAKER_00: They can get the marriage annulled.
SPEAKER_00: They can uh if if there's a misunderstanding or if there's actual sin involved, if it's adultery, the woman could be put to death.
SPEAKER_00: She could be stoned to death, is what's supposed to happen.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a foolproof system either, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: In Numbers chapter five, you want to read the absolutely bonkers chapter in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Numbers chapter five, the guy thinks his wife has had an affair, the wife denies it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a test of water and ash that the woman drinks, and if her conscience is clear, there will be no ill effect and she'll be vindicated, and if her conscience condemns her for adultery, it'll be manifest to everybody, the text says.
SPEAKER_00: What a crazy chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Good thing I'm not teaching on that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The point, though, is that it is not a foolproof system.
SPEAKER_00: The husband says, My wife's having an affair, and she denies it, and there's enough evidence to convict her, but not enough evidence to put her to death.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
SPEAKER_00: And God says in Deuteronomy 23, and he uses the same word from chapter 24, he says, Do not tolerate that kind of sexual immorality in your midst, or I won't even walk with you anymore.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I will deny you as my people if you tolerate that.
SPEAKER_00: So what then?
SPEAKER_00: Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: The husband says, My wife has committed that kind of sin.
SPEAKER_00: She is sexually immoral.
SPEAKER_00: She should be put to death.
SPEAKER_00: But there's debate.
SPEAKER_00: And God says he's not going to tolerate it.
SPEAKER_00: Now what?
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, write her a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: And send her away.
SPEAKER_00: Now part of this is to protect her, too.
SPEAKER_00: Say the husband is wrong or he's making up, it's a false allegation.
SPEAKER_00: He can't just leave her.
SPEAKER_00: If he just leaves her, she's abandoned.
SPEAKER_00: She can't get remarried.
SPEAKER_00: The certificate of divorce defends her rights and helps her.
SPEAKER_00: It's also a mercy if she is guilty.
SPEAKER_00: She shouldn't be hit in the head with rocks until she dies.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, she gets divorced.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And that, by the way, in Deuteronomy 24, is not even the main point of Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: The main point that Moses is arguing here, and you gotta stay with me.
SPEAKER_00: The person, the husband, marries this woman.
SPEAKER_00: She commits sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than putting her to death, the husband divorces her.
SPEAKER_00: She then marries somebody else, husband number two.
SPEAKER_00: They're married for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: Husband number two divorces her for sexual immorality also.
SPEAKER_00: This is Deuteronomy 24.
SPEAKER_00: Now she comes back to husband number one and wants to get remarried to husband number one.
SPEAKER_00: And Deuteronomy 24, the main point of theirs says, don't do it.
SPEAKER_00: For 10,000 reasons, but one of the reasons is that you're defiling the land if you do it, is what Moses says.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the main point of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Did you keep up with that?
SPEAKER_00: You know, wife, divorce, second husband comes back to first husband, second divorce, all that.
SPEAKER_00: Did you follow all that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Jews didn't.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews didn't are in that, and they're like, so you're saying divorce is okay.
SPEAKER_00: That was the that's what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: They latch on to 24, verse 1 and say, So Moses says, get a divorce, got it.
SPEAKER_00: Not at all what Moses said, but that's what they latch on to, because remember, they're starting their Bible study with, I want to get a divorce, what verse do I go to?
SPEAKER_00: The Jews said divorce is okay according to that passage, as long as the paperwork is filed.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: They even say the Jews, they would even say that Moses commanded us, this comes back in Matthew 19.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews there say, Moses commanded us to divorce.
SPEAKER_00: He did no such thing.
SPEAKER_00: God allowing divorce no more authorizes divorce than you having a smoke detector in your house authorizes arson.
SPEAKER_00: Just because you put a smoke detector in your house doesn't mean you're okay with somebody burning the house down.
SPEAKER_00: Just because God says instead of stoning that woman to death, you can divorce her doesn't mean that God is okay with divorce.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews latched onto this and said, file the paperwork and then do what you want to do.
SPEAKER_00: The theologian in me wants to make sure you all understand there's a difference between God's perfect will and God's permissive will.
SPEAKER_00: God's perfect will, do not murder.
SPEAKER_00: God's permissive will, Jesus is murdered.
SPEAKER_00: God's perfect will, do not commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: God's permissive will, David commits adultery with Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: From that relationship comes Solomon, from that relationship comes Christ.
SPEAKER_00: God's perfect will, do not get divorced.
SPEAKER_00: God's permissive will, if your spouse commits adultery, then send her away with a certificate of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: That does not mean that God is totes cool with divorce.
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between his perfect will and his permission will.
SPEAKER_00: He hates murder, but he permits it.
SPEAKER_00: He hates divorce, but he permits it.
SPEAKER_00: So first, the intention of marriage, the marriage would be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: Second, the provision of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: It's an act of mercy instead of being stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, the perversion of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews, of course, step in and say this justifies divorce for any reason whatsoever, anything that my wife did to fail to find favor in my eyes, I am allowed to get divorced.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, This whole thing is messed up.
SPEAKER_00: Your sinful heart is messing everything up.
SPEAKER_00: I say to you, verse 32, the contrast to how the Jews are representing Deuteronomy 24, I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to the exception clause in a second.
SPEAKER_00: So take that parentheses out of it and just read the full sentence.
SPEAKER_00: I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever marries a divorced woman also commits adultery.
SPEAKER_00: If you divorce your spouse and she remarries, she's committing adultery.
SPEAKER_00: If you divorced your spouse and you remarry, you're committing adultery.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a lot of adultery because you made a sinful decision.
SPEAKER_00: This is connected to the verse before that we looked at last week.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at a person with lust in your heart, you are sowing the seeds of adultery.
SPEAKER_00: You've planted the seeds of adultery, you're watering a tree.
SPEAKER_00: Because why is somebody getting divorced, by the way?
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're married to this person, but they want to be married to that person, so they bounce from her and marry that person, and it just makes all these, it multiplies it, all these adulterous relationships now.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking at her with lust, adultery number one.
SPEAKER_00: You divorced your wife, adultery number two.
SPEAKER_00: She remarries, adultery number three.
SPEAKER_00: You remarry, adultery number four.
SPEAKER_00: Even if the person you remarried is it's her first marriage.
SPEAKER_00: She was as chaste as the German snow until your adulterous person married her.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're making her commit adultery.
SPEAKER_00: You're her first husband, but now she's an adulteress.
SPEAKER_00: You're the first person she's been with, but she's an adulteress because you illegitimately divorced your spouse and married her.
SPEAKER_00: It's just one adultery, adultery magnifies itself, it multiplies itself.
SPEAKER_00: That's what sin does too.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about that last week.
SPEAKER_00: One sin doesn't stay one sin, it multiplies and it shows itself in a thousand different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery is the same way.
SPEAKER_00: You illegitimately divorce your spouse and you marry someone else, you've just multi-exponentially multiplied adultery in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no fixing that either.
SPEAKER_00: You divorce your spouse to go marry this person.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're married to spouse number two and you get convicted about it.
SPEAKER_00: You read the sermon around, like, whoa, this is an adulterous marriage.
SPEAKER_00: What are you supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: Divorce her and go back to the first spouse?
SPEAKER_00: No, that is what Deuteronomy 24 was about.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're you're here.
SPEAKER_00: You're stuck here.
SPEAKER_00: You can't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: If you divorce this spouse, now you're multiplying adultery again.
SPEAKER_00: The two sins don't cancel each other out.
SPEAKER_00: The whole thing's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you order an omelet and it comes and they didn't make it right.
SPEAKER_00: You can't send it back and tell them to put it back in the shells.
SPEAKER_00: Can you put the things back in the shells and tape it all up again?
SPEAKER_00: No, it's you can't unscramble the egg.
SPEAKER_00: You illegitimately divorced your spouse.
SPEAKER_00: There's not really a lot of fixing that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jesus is telling these, these religious leaders have so broken their society with this, they don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: The point is there's no safe way to lust.
SPEAKER_00: You think I'm just gonna look at this one with lust, I'm not actually gonna act on it.
SPEAKER_00: Divorce, no matter how nuanced its defense or how cleverly justified, violates God's design for human marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The point isn't even the remarriage here when Jesus is addressing this.
SPEAKER_00: The point is that a disrupted marriage is a disrupted marriage and thus breaks the will of God, the word of God, and the command of God.
SPEAKER_00: Divorce is breaking a seal that God has put together.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says this in Luke's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What God is joined together, let no people separate.
SPEAKER_00: And if you do divorce your spouse and marry somebody else, you're committing adultery.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why God hates divorce.
SPEAKER_00: And here, notice that Jesus divorces divorce from the civil authorities altogether.
SPEAKER_00: Because in the Pharisee system, all of these divorces were like legally followed, you know?
SPEAKER_00: When they divorced their spouse, they filed the paperwork.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Deuteronomy 24 said.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, file the paperwork.
SPEAKER_00: So they all did file their paperwork.
SPEAKER_00: They divorced their spouse to get married over here.
SPEAKER_00: They put in the papers.
SPEAKER_00: The county clerk received it, it was notarized into everything.
SPEAKER_00: So in man's sight, we're divorced.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, in God's sight, you're an adulterer.
SPEAKER_00: Who cares about your paperwork?
SPEAKER_00: The new marriage.
SPEAKER_00: You think, oh, it's legitimate.
SPEAKER_00: We got a wedding license from the county clerk and everything.
SPEAKER_00: Officiated by my uncle's rabbi.
SPEAKER_00: It's legit.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, it's adultery.
SPEAKER_00: It's adultery.
SPEAKER_00: You're breaking all the commandments, you know?
SPEAKER_00: You're coveting your neighbor's wife.
SPEAKER_00: You're committing adultery.
SPEAKER_00: You're bearing false witness.
SPEAKER_00: All of it you're breaking.
SPEAKER_00: All of it.
SPEAKER_00: You know how many conditional clauses were in your wedding vows?
SPEAKER_00: How many times did the pastor who married you used the word if before he said, I do?
SPEAKER_00: If this and if that and if the other thing.
SPEAKER_00: And according to your best judgment, if that's zero, probably.
SPEAKER_00: And so divorce breaks even the commandment about bearing false witness, which is where Jesus is going to go next in the sermon, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Finally.
SPEAKER_00: The exception to divorce is adultery.
SPEAKER_00: So the intention of marriage is that it would be unbreakable.
SPEAKER_00: The provision of divorce is to be merciful.
SPEAKER_00: The perversion of marriage is divorce.
SPEAKER_00: And the exception to divorce is adultery.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says whoever divorces their spouse and marries someone else is committing adultery.
SPEAKER_00: That's the main thrust of what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: But he has, and it's offset in the SV here by comma, some translations put it in parentheses, he has what is called the exception clause.
SPEAKER_00: The exception clause is except for adultery or except for sexual immorality.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when it's called the exception clause, that doesn't mean this is the only time the Bible says it, like exception clause.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's repeated in other places as well, like Matthew 19, for example.
SPEAKER_00: And also, how many times does the Bible have to say something before it becomes true?
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Exception Clause because Jesus uses the word accept.
SPEAKER_00: That's why people call it the exception clause.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says, whoever divorces their spouse and marries somebody else commits adultery, and that person commits adultery, and it's all adultery, except in this one circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: And the circumstance is in the case of initial adultery.
SPEAKER_00: So in a marriage relationship, if one spouse commits adultery, the other spouse has the freedom in Christ to divorce that spouse.
SPEAKER_00: This is the victim of an adulterous relationship.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in Deuteronomy 24, divorce was the mercy to the adulterer instead of being stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: But here in Matthew 5, in the Christian world, divorce becomes a mercy to the one who is sinned against.
SPEAKER_00: That's the exception.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to be very clear, Jesus does not command divorce in the cases of adultery.
SPEAKER_00: If a wife commits adultery, Jesus does not tell the husband, you must divorce her.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what the Jews are trying to get at back in Matthew 19 when they circle back to this later, is Moses commanded divorce.
SPEAKER_00: He did no such thing, and neither does Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He does not say, if your spouse commits adultery, divorce her.
SPEAKER_00: But he most certainly permits it.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I would never tell somebody who is a victim of adultery that God doesn't want them to divorce.
SPEAKER_00: I would never say you are supposed to stay married.
SPEAKER_00: I would say you're supposed to forgive your husband or you're supposed to forgive your wife.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, forgiveness is a Christian mandate.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be reconciled to them, but reconciliation is different than restoration.
SPEAKER_00: And every situation is different.
SPEAKER_00: Every situation is different.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine some extremes.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine the extreme of a person who, you know, is in an adulterous relationship for years and keeps faking repentance but going back to the same person and even builds up another life with that person.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously the victim in that marriage would be allowed to divorce and then to remarry.
SPEAKER_00: You can't stay married in that kind of situation.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and they didn't want to get a divorce because they felt like God doesn't want them to have a divorce.
SPEAKER_00: But one of them was in a fully fledged adulterous relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And you can picture another kind of scenario where a person has an adulterous relationship and in a moment and is repentant and is broken and seeks forgiveness, and you could see the spouse staying with that person.
SPEAKER_00: Despite the person's sin, forgiving him and staying with him.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the two extremes.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus doesn't go into all the particularities of this, does he?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say, whoever divorces his wife, unless the wife has committed adultery that lasted longer than two months and more than four times.
SPEAKER_00: I say it that way.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to laugh.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you laughed because you're starting to see like he's not giving a rule here, he's not giving a law here.
SPEAKER_00: He's giving the principle that he expects people in basic Christian wisdom to apply.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that principle is that if you are a victim of adultery, you can divorce and remarry.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is not very popular teaching in the Christian world.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's much of the Christian world that is like the Pharisees and, you know, don't teach on divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Divorce for any reason is okay.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, they wouldn't say that, but they would never do church discipline on somebody who's who's divorced because, hey, what if we get it wrong kind of thing?
SPEAKER_00: They would never do that.
SPEAKER_00: You got another big segment of Christianity in the United States, especially like the Midwest United States, that teaches, hey, divorce is a mess.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to regulate that.
SPEAKER_00: But all remarriage is out.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who divorces and remarries for any reason would be church disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: That's a very common view in European Christian circles, Midwestern Christian circles, but it's just, I can't get there from what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to get there personally.
SPEAKER_00: Like that's where I would want to go.
SPEAKER_00: Is like the Bible says, no divorce, no remarriage, let's go home.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: It says if you are a victim of adultery, that's the exception.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, 1 Corinthians 7 says, if you're in the exception clause, you can remarry.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to remarry.
SPEAKER_00: But you can.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's one other exception to this, and that's abandonment by a non-believer.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 7 says, if, you know, perhaps two people are not Christians and one gets saved, and the non-believing husband abandons you and says, I can't be married to a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm out of here.
SPEAKER_00: Christians are haters and they don't know what love is, so I'm out.
SPEAKER_00: I divorce you.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, in that scenario, you're free to remarry.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make the guy stay married to you.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make the woman stay married to you.
SPEAKER_00: Let the unbeliever go.
SPEAKER_00: Why isn't that exception addressed in Matthew 5?
SPEAKER_00: Because Matthew 5 is Jews on the hillside at the start of Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_00: That exception would make no sense there about being converted to Christ and joined to the church.
SPEAKER_00: They got no grid for that in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_00: But in Corinth, pagan idolatrous Corinth as the church is exploding around the Greco-Roman world, yeah, that's all the time there.
SPEAKER_00: So that exception makes way more sense why it's in Corinthians and not in Matthew 5.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is, you take it together.
SPEAKER_00: If you're married to someone who has an affair on you, you don't have to divorce them.
SPEAKER_00: You could forgive them and demonstrate the gospel that way, and the blessings of that in your family, I'm sure, will be immense, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00: You could divorce the spouse, but you are have the freedom in Christ to do.
SPEAKER_00: Experience God's kindness and mercy that way.
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're a Christian and you have a non-believing spouse who abandons you, you're free to divorce and free to remarry.
SPEAKER_00: One more practical point about this.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I know at Emmanuel Bible Church there are a bunch of people who have been divorced, who have been the victims of adulterous relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Their husband or their wife had an affair on them, or their husband or their wife divorced them illegitimately, and you're you're here.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you you know that.
SPEAKER_00: And I know there's always a fear in that person's heart, like they don't want to be viewed as like a second-class citizen, or what if people find out I'm divorced?
SPEAKER_00: It's a scarlet letter kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I trust that for the most part, our church has enough wisdom and discernment to recognize this is a fallen and this is a sinful world.
SPEAKER_00: And some people are divorced because they're the victims of divorce.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, more likely than not, at a church, if somebody's divorced and they're faithfully attending church and worship and all that, they are on the victim side of that, you know?
SPEAKER_00: So I want your default setting in your heart to be kindness and mercy, and love believes the best and believe the best about somebody's divorce.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't know the details, you don't get to know the details until you get to know the person.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope that's taking root in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good principle in any situation.
SPEAKER_00: Love believes the best and shows people kindness and mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, I know there's people that say, well, what about this scenario?
SPEAKER_00: What about that scenario?
SPEAKER_00: Or what about, you know, wife who this happened, her husband does this, or the husband whose wife does this.
SPEAKER_00: What about what then?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I can't address a hundred scenarios from a pulpit, and a sermon would be a very bad way to shepherd you in that regard.
SPEAKER_00: But God has placed you in a church with godly elders, with godly leaders that want to shepherd you and want to care for you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're in one of those kind of scenarios and you don't know what to do, come find one of the elders of the church and ask them for help.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they want to do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's way better than trying to like parse every phrase of my sermon to figure out what about in this situation or that situation.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, where Jesus ends here is a rebuke to the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees wanted to call themselves religious while they were rejecting God.
SPEAKER_00: That is a very tough act to pull off, you know?
SPEAKER_00: I'm so religious, but I reject the one who gives the law of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's one they did relatively successfully, though, until Jesus arrived.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're thankful for Christ and the mercy he shows us through his death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He truly was the perfect son of Adam, the perfect human, sinless, with no agendas of selfish ambition or personal gain.
SPEAKER_00: He could approach the Word of God just in humility and teach it clearly.
SPEAKER_00: We also look at him as the perfect Son of God, truly God, who knew the law from the inside out because he was the law.
SPEAKER_00: He was the lawgiver, he spoke the law, he brought it into the world, and he convicts us through his spirit of sinning against the law.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much condemnation here.
SPEAKER_00: Condemnation for adultery, condemnation for divorce, condemnation for lust, condemnation for bearing false witness.
SPEAKER_00: We know at the end of the rope of condemnation comes the mercy of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're condemned under the law and we find forgiveness in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful for the blood of Christ that forgives us from our sins.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for that in Jesus' name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.