A Different Way - The Sermon On The Mount - Covenant Breaking - Matthew 5:31-32

Matthew 5:31-32

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Hot button topics. What's a hot button topic? Well, if I went to my trusted dictionary, it would tell us that a hot button is an emotional and usually controversial issue or concern that triggers an immediate, intense reaction. That's how it's defined. And obviously, we have a whole bunch of these in our current world and culture, right? Hot button topics. I mean, you could push on the button today of politics. There's one. Or the button of race or religion or gender roles or gender identity. There's all of these hot button topics. And these are things that cause reactions. Now, the interesting thing is if you watch people when these things, when when one of these buttons is pressed, right? You've got a couple of different types of people generally. You've got those people who are what we will call the button pushers. These are the people who like to like walk up to a conversation, lob in a verbal hand grenade, and then walk away and watch what happens next. You know what I'm talking about? These are the people who are the button pushers. They're like, hey, what do you think about this? And they push this big button and everybody's like, you know, like that's that's what happens. Uh you've got a second group of people who are what we will call the foot-in-mouthers. These are the people who accidentally press the button. Do you know what I'm talking about? The people who inadvertently bring up something like politics or religion. They've got no idea what they just did, that they just like exploded a conversation and it got really weird and awkward and emotional and all the rest of it. And then typically you have the avoiders. These are the people that when one of these subjects is even hinted at are like diving for cover. Like they're trying to like get out of there as quickly as they can. And it's funny because we all kind of have our own ways that we react to these different topics. But one thing we don't think about very often is what historically have been these hot button topics? What are these things that have caused emotional responses throughout history? And what is interesting for today is the two verses that we're going to study here out of the Sermon on the Mount, I believe, are Jesus weighing in briefly on what was at that time a hot button topic. And I'll get to explain that a little bit more as we go, because I believe that divorce was a hot button topic at the time. Now, thinking back to our definition, a hot butt button topic was described as something that, these were the descriptors, emotional, controversial, and triggers a reaction. Now, keeping that in mind and realizing that divorce is potentially and definitely was one of those things, what that means is we actually have to walk into this conversation with uh, I think, a great deal of sensitivity. We need to be careful to the fact that this does elicit some of those responses in us as we talk about it. So we need to be careful into this conversation as we jump into it because divorce was a difficult topic then in Jesus' time, and I believe absolutely still is today. As I was doing some study on this passage, I was reading a commentary by a guy named a pastor and a theologian named John Stutt. And as I was reading his introduction, the words just were so pastoral and good that I wanted to actually read for you what he said in his little prelude into this particular passage. He said this I confess to a basic reluctance to attempt an exposition of these verses, an exposition, a pulling apart of these verses. This is partly because divorce is a controversial and complex subject, but even more because it is a subject which touches people's emotions at a deep level. There is almost no unhappiness so poignant as the unhappiness of an unhappy marriage, and almost no tragedy so great as the degeneration of what God meant for love and fulfillment into a non-relationship of bitterness, discord, and despair. I can't say that much better. I mean, what he's saying is marriage is meant to be this, but sometimes it's this. Marriage is supposed to be beautiful, but at times it can be horrible. It can be a prison. Well, let's focus on the on the first part of that statement first. Marriage is supposed to be beautiful. I say that, and I realize that all of us walk in here today with different perspectives on marriage, on what Christianity is, and what even the Bible is. And so I don't want to assume that we're all on the same page here this morning. And so I want to clarify a few things. What a Christian believes and what a by the Bible teaches is we're sorry, but a small part of this recording is missing. And he called it marriage. God instituted and designed marriage. It's not a human invention. It's not something that we came up in somewhere back in history where we're like, okay, yeah, it'd be good if two people kind of committed to each other for life. No, absolutely, God was the institutor of marriage. And we see that actually when Jesus speaks about marriage in Matthew 19. So I'm going to ask you to turn there. We will be in Matthew 5, but we're going to start in Matthew 19. And I'll just go ahead and warn you as you're turning there that we will be bouncing back and forth between these two passages because they're very parallel, and they're the two passages that speak to this divorce subject the most in the Gospel of Matthew. So Matthew 19. Interesting story, and we'll come back and visit this a little bit more. But Jesus' question about divorce, and he doesn't talk about divorce, he talks about marriage. And we see his response in verse 4, and it's going to help us understand what marriage is and what God has created in this institution of marriage. It says in verse 4 this haven't you read, he replied, that he who created them in the beginning made them male and female. And he also said, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, man must not separate. Now, what's interesting here? Well, there's several things that are interesting here. Jesus is quoting from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, directly quoting God's word. So you've got God, Jesus, quoting God's word. And what he says here is a few things. There's a few truths that are highlighted here about what marriage is. And we've said marriage is beautiful, and what that means is let's let's kind of define that a little bit. The first thing that I point out, and I say this sensitively because I realize me saying this is pressing a current hot button topic. But he says here very clearly that marriage is for a man and a woman. He articulates that very clearly, and I say that with sensitivity because I realize that right now that is a hot button topic, even inside of the evangelical church. Can marriage be between a man and a man or a woman and a woman if they genuinely love each other? And so I want to say that with sensitivity, but I also want to stay true to what God has said in his word, which is very clear here that when God designed marriage, in his original intent and design, it was for a man and a woman. The second thing, and again, I know there's a lot there, but we're going to keep moving. The second thing that he highlights here is that something incredible takes place when those two come together. The two become one. Jesus wants us to be clear on that too. He says, he quotes the Genesis passage, and the two become one flesh, and then he says, so they are no longer two but one flesh. This is an important point. The two become one. It's a mysterious thing. It's beyond really our understanding and our fathoming, but there's so much going on in a marriage relationship. Another thing that is highlighted in this text is that God is the joiner of this special relationship. I don't know if you saw that, but it's a really interesting point. It says there, therefore, what God has joined together. Now, often when we get married, we're like, hey, she's cute, I want to marry her. We don't give a lot of thought to this, like, God is a part of this. Well, oftentimes we don't. And I would encourage you that we are supposed to see marriage as this holy union where God is absolutely, integrally involved in it. Okay? Another thing that we see here in this text, and the final thing that I'll point out for now out of here, is that it says, what God has joined together, man must not separate. You see, marriage in God's original intent and design is meant to be permanent. Now we could just stop here and keep moving on, but I would say to you, if we zoom back out and we we looked to the greater counsel of Scripture, there's more truths about marriage we could learn today. We could go on and delve into the fact that marriage is designed to glorify God, that it's meant to point us and the people around us to who God is and to his glory. It's meant to be for our good. It's meant to be something that shapes us, and and sometimes that is through the good and the pleasant things, and sometimes that's through the hard and difficult things, but it is for our good. We could also go on to say that marriage, as God defines it, is the only safe place for sex. When we have sex outside of the bounds of marriage, that is not God's intent or design. And it becomes very dangerous in that environment. We could also go on and talk about how marriage is supposed to be the safe environment for child raising, that it's the safe environment for a child to be welcomed into the world and nurtured to maturity. And I'm moving really quickly here, I realize that, but I want to kind of table that conversation about marriage in that way and exploring all of these things and focus in on a word, and that is covenant. God, who is the designer of marriage, intends for marriage to be a covenantal relationship. Now I say that realizing that if you have a little bit of church experience, which maybe some of you don't, but if you have a bit of church experience, you kind of probably are like, yeah, covenant. I think I know what that is. Like, a covenant is kind of a weird word. Uh we see covenants all throughout the scriptures, throughout the Bible. Sometimes there's a covenant between special friends, like a David and a Jonathan, if you're familiar with who those characters are in the Old Testament. It was a king's son and the king who was going to be the king. And so these guys had this special friendship. It was a really deep friendship and had a covenant relationship. Sometimes it's between nations, and they they say, hey, let's together we could do more. Let's form this covenant. Other times it's between God and people. Think about Abraham and the covenant that God made with Abraham to say, hey, I'm going to make you a father of many nations. This is to a guy who doesn't have any kids at the time, right? So there's a covenant relationship. Or sometimes a covenant is between God and a nation of people. So the people of Israel, they leave their captivity in Egypt. I know I'm moving fast, apologies for that. But they leave captivity in Egypt and they go out into the wilderness to Mount Sinai, and God forms a covenant with them there. But uniquely in all of these things, marriage sticks out as a special type of covenant because it's between a man, a woman, and God. It's like this three-way union, this three-way deal that we see going on in the scriptures. Now, what's interesting is that Genesis 2, when it's describing and defining marriage for us, and this again is why Genesis isn't a textbook. You can't read it like a textbook. But it doesn't say a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to each other and to become one. And this is a covenant. It doesn't say that, but that is implied. As you read later on in the Bible, what you'll see is that marriage is referred to as a covenant. Let me read for you Proverbs chapter 2, 16 and 17. It says there, it, and it's talking about discretion and understanding. Discretion and understanding will rescue you from a forbidden, adulterous woman, from a stranger with her flattering talk, who abandons the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. Her marriage covenant. Malachi chapter 2 says this though she was your marriage partner and the what your wife by what? Covenant. A marriage is absolutely a covenant. But still, we haven't really answered the question of what does that mean? What is a covenant? A covenant is a binding promise, or we could even say binding promises, based on a relationship of love. Let's go with that as a working definition for today. Timothy Keller puts it this way. He says that a real a covenant is uh a covenant relationship is a stunning blend of law and love. You see, a covenant seems to be really built on these two pillars. This pillar of promises, this law piece, this I'll do this, I promise for this, I'll be true to this. And that the and the other side of it, the other pillar really is this relationship. And I I wouldn't just say relationship, a loving, friendly relationship. You can have hostile relationships, right? And so it's this loving relationship. And a covenant is much, much more, if these things are true of a covenant, a covenant is much, much more than a contract or an agreement. A contract is really this agreement where you say, okay, I'll do these things, you do those things, and as long as it's working out for both of us, we're good. But if I get a better offer, I'm out of here. I'm done. And that's not what a covenant is. A covenant says, hey, I promise these things because I love you, I'm committed to you. I'm here for the long haul. No matter what happens, rain, hail, or shine, I'm here. And that's why we have things like the vows. The vows in a marriage ceremony speak to this covenantal relationship that happens. Another place we see this covenant really coming out, I think, is back in that Genesis 2 passage, which we've referred to several times already. You don't have to turn there, but we'll put on the screen. Genesis 2, 24 says this. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife. Now, I'm sure those of you who have been to many weddings or any weddings have probably heard this passage and you're like, yep, I've heard that one before. But I want you to think about what it's actually saying. What it's saying to us is that this man and this woman, they bond together. Now, from the little I understand, uh, that word is very difficult to translate. That sometimes it says bonds and some other times it says joins in English language, but essentially what it means is glued. That's what it's trying to get to. My dad growing up uh was a shop teacher, and so I spent countless hours in the shop with him, and I heard him say many times to myself and other other people, his students who are in the classroom sometimes, is that when you take two pieces of timber, of wood, and you bring them together with a wood adhesive, that that bond is actually stronger there than at the other places. So if you try and take that that those pieces of wood and pull them apart, what you're actually going to do is probably break along another grain line somewhere else in the wood. It's gonna be destructive. And the reason I tell you that is that marriage is kind of, we can kind of picture marriage in that way. This bond, this marriage covenant is not designed to be taken apart. And when we try and take it apart, it's extremely destructive when we attempt to do that. Because marriage is a bond that was designed not to be broken. So when Jesus addresses marriage in Matthew 5, we are getting there. Matthew 5, this is his perspective. These are his thoughts. This is his approach to marriage. His belief is that he has created and instituted marriage to be a permanent bond. So I want you to keep that in mind. That covenant is this permanent bond thing going on. As we read this passage one more time that Alex read for us earlier, says this in verse 31 of Matthew 5. It is also said whoever divorces his wife must give her a written notice of divorce. But I tell you, everyone who divorces his wife, except in a case of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now to give this a little bit of context, we are in the Sermon of the Mount, and in this particular portion of the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus is taking six things, six statements, six laws and regulations that the people are trying to follow, and he says, You've heard this, but it's actually even more than that, it's this. So we're up to the third of those, and what Jesus uses as his base is a scripture from Deuteronomy chapter 24, and he's directly quoting that scripture from Deuteronomy, that's a hard one to say, is this it says, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a written notice of divorce. What's that all about? Well, it's actually a law that was given at the time of Moses to help predict protect women from frivolous divorce. Let me explain that a little bit. So around the time of Moses, there was this the culture of the time, a husband could get fed up with his wife. He could have enough with her and just send her out and say, hey, I'm done. Your cooking's not up to scratch, or like, like, really. Um, or he could be like, hey, I've found a new a more attractive option. And he could just send her out on the street. And we kind of laugh about it because it's a little bit awkward, but it was horrible because in their day and culture, women were really not viewed in a high place, and it was a very vulnerable place for them to just be like shunned out onto the street. And that was something that was real and going on. And so in Deuteronomy 24, God, through Moses, gives this law that says, hey guys, that's not okay. You can only divorce your wife if there's something really significant going on, and if you do, you need to give this written notice so that the community around can know what's going on, and so that she has an opportunity to remarry and have a place in the culture. And so this law was actually given to help protect women from divorce and frivolous divorce. And so, culturally, what we need to understand that was going on at the time of Moses was that the people had really moved into seeing marriage as a contract instead of seeing it as a covenant, right? So they've made this turn. And what's interesting is if you fast forward to the time of Jesus, where he's addressing mass marriage here in Matthew chapter 4, this uh this problem has really happened again. They've slipped again into seeing marriage as a contract more than seeing it as a covenantal relationship. Now, I said earlier that this was a hot button topic, and some of you are like, okay, so how do you know that? Well, I went down a rabbit trail this week. I'll just confess to that, in that I started to look into uh what was going on culturally at the time as some commentaries kind of pointed me in that direction. And what we understand is that there were two, at the time of Jesus, there were two rabbis, teachers of the law. You know, I I guess you could kind of see them in our modern culture as these super pastors, right? Everybody's looking up to their teaching and their wisdom. And one of them was called Rabbi Shemai, and the other was called Rabbi Hillel. And Rabbi Shemai, he was of the opinion, they had a very differing opinion on this hot button topic of divorce and on the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24 specifically. Rabbi Shemai had this opinion that this idea of divorce, you couldn't just divorce your wife for anything. It had to be something very serious. That you don't just, you know, divorce her for whatever reason. The second camp and the second opinion was that of Rabbi Hillel, and he had the opinion that if things just weren't working out, if it wasn't really, if things didn't seem good to you in that relationship, as a man, what you could do is you could follow the law of Moses and take and make a written notice. Now don't forget to do that, because that's the important part, right? Make a written notice and send her out on the street. And so that's what we're knowing is going on culturally at the time. The Pharisees regarded divorce lightly, but Jesus here in Matthew 19 and Matthew 5 is showing us that divorce is actually something that's really, really important. And that Jesus takes it very seriously. So what we're seeing here is a pattern. God institutes marriage, and sinful people come along and pervert it, and so he gives them this law at the time of Moses. Fast forward a few hundred years more, and what you see is that the people have taken this law of Moses and bent it to their own will and their own design. And they're now using this law designed to protect women and marriage to actually abuse women and defile marriage. You see the pattern there? Doing the same things over and over. So, with this information, I want to ask you to go back to Matthew chapter 19 with me, and what you're going to see is something I think that's kind of interesting. Matthew 19. I told you there'd be some back and forth. Okay, so what's going on in Matthew 19? Let's give it some context now. We just read it earlier, just from verses 4. But what we see is that Jesus has these crowds following him and wanting to be healed by him. And there's some Pharisees who come up to test him. Read verse 3 with me. It says, Some Pharisees approached him and they asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds? Oh, did I mention earlier? I meant to mention this. By the way, the Pharisees were in the camp of Hillel. Okay, so Rabbi Hillel, he was their guy. And so they're like, Yeah, I can divorce my wife no matter what, as long as I give her the right paperwork. And so here they are, they're uh they're they're they're coming to Jesus and they're asking this question. You can see it's a loaded question, right? These guys are absolutely button pushers. They're coming to Jesus with this question, and they're like, hey, Jesus, tell us what do you think? You know, obviously this is a hot button topic. And essentially what they're saying is, Jesus, if we drew a line, like where do you sit? What does the law say? Which side of the line should we be on? And so what's interesting is that when Jesus responds, which we read earlier, verses four through six, what does he do? He doesn't talk about marriage. He's like, yeah, I'm not jumping into that conversation. What I want I mean, he doesn't talk, he talks about marriage, he doesn't talk about divorce. He doesn't get into it. What he says to them essentially is it's not about the grounds of divorce. It's not about this silly line that you're wanting to draw in the ground. What it is about is that God loves marriage. And that divorce is the antithesis of his design. That's what he says in verses four through six. And obviously the Pharisees are not satisfied with this response, right? Look what they do in verse 7 when Jesus tells them, you know, the two are no longer one, what God is joined together, man must not separate. You can almost hear the snarkiness, by the way, coming out in the text. It says this. Why then? They asked him, did Moses command us to give divorce papers to send her away? And listen to the response of Jesus. Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of what? The hardness of your hearts. But it was not like that from the beginning. That wasn't my intent. That wasn't the design for marriage. And I tell you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery. That last verse there in verse 9 is almost verbatim for what we've been studying from verses 31 and 32 from Matthew chapter 5. The thing that's absolutely clear from these passages is that divorce is not God's plan or intent for marriage. So if we go back to Matthew 5 now and think about our key passage for today, I just want to point out to you that there's a danger for us this morning to lock in on those particular specifics of what Jesus is talking about with divorce and with adultery and all that's been said. But we could do that without considering the greater conversation that this is a part of in the Sermon of the Mount. And so what we've got to do is we've got to back it up a little bit and say, okay, this time this morning doesn't need to be just about talking about divorce. There's something greater going on that Jesus is pointing to. What Jesus has been doing throughout this whole sermon is highlighting the heart behind the law. The intents that we can and should have. He's trying to open the eyes of the crowd to the fact that the law is about far more than a list of actions. It should be about the intents of our hearts. So what we see both here specifically in verses 31 and 32 and throughout this whole first portion of the Sermon on the Mount is this. And this is what I think the point that Jesus is trying to make here. He is making a point about divorce, but even more so, he's making this point that mankind are covenant breakers, offending the covenant creating and keeping God. Divorce is just a picture of something much bigger going on. Mankind, all of us, are covenant breakers offending the covenant creating and keeping God. And you see, there's a danger for us to draw a line today and to say, well, that's, you know, these people we studied, they should have known better. But let's be honest this morning. Let's understand that we are no different. The same poison that led Adam and Eve to break promises and to break love with God in the Garden of Eden is the same poison that courses down through all the generations to these people we're studying and even to us today, that infects us and makes us these covenant-breaking people. Hosea chapter 6, verse 7 says this, but they, and it's talking about these people of Israel, God's special covenant people who are worshiping all these other gods that they're not meant to be worshiping. It says, they, like Adam, have violated the covenant, there's that word, there they have betrayed me. You see, Adam had a covenant with God. The people of Israel had a covenant with God. We are meant to be in relationship with God, but we have broken away from him as humanity. You see, divorce is really a shadow pointing to a deeper and darker reality. We all break promises and we all break love. Those are the two pillars of a covenant. We've talked about this. And we all break those things. And this is precisely why Jesus came. You see, little did the people know as they sat there on that hillside that day hearing the Sermon on the Mount, as Jesus is talking about marriage and divorce and weighing in on this hot button topic, that the person speaking to them was actually the reconciler of the great divorce. Now, when I say the great divorce, I'm talking about the separation between God and his humanity. We've been separated by sin, all of us. And Jesus was the one coming to heal the estranged relationship of the Creator and his much-loved creation. So to give you a very, very, very quick history lesson, mankind, as we've mentioned, broke covenant with God, Adam and Eve. They moved away from God's promises and his instruction. And God, in his grace, offered them terms of restitution. That is the law. He came throughout history and said, hey guys, if you do these things, we can be in right relationship. If you follow these laws and do these sacrifices. But the problem was that mankind couldn't keep the law. And instead of punishing his creation, calling them to account and saying, hey, you broke covenant, and here are the consequences, which there are consequences for breaking a covenant, God did something absolutely preposterous. He stepped away from what was normal in a covenant relationship. Think about it with me. A covenant is usually two parties, and it's like I'll do this and you do this, and we love each other, and yes, we're going to keep these promises for each other. There's usually consequences and promises from both. And what God did is he sent his son to come and fulfill the covenant for us. We were broken from him, and there was no way for us to make things right, and he sends his son. So God, in essence, fulfilled both sides of the covenant. Jesus bore the wrath, he bore the consequences that we deserve for breaking covenant, and he also fulfilled the covenant and gave us his fulfillment so that we could experience reconciliation and being right with God. We often refer to this exchange as the great exchange, or sometimes we call it the good news, other times we call it the gospel, and the gospel paints for us a picture of how God wants us to view the world. God is for reconciliation with us and even in this area of divorce. As he reconciles with those of us who believe, he also calls us to be reconcilers in the places that he puts us. So what we've seen here, as we've looked into this, is that divorce really is a picture of something much greater going on. This great divorce that we've talked about. Between a perfect God and his broken humanity, us. It shows us a picture of a covenant-keeping God and the grace that he extends to a covenant-breaking people. And you may be sitting here this morning, you're like, okay, that's good news, I think, you know, but what does that mean in a practical sense? Like, where do we go from here? What does that mean? Well, I think a fair question for us to start in asking that is are you estranged from God? That word estrangement is a term that we often use to describe broken marriages. If we were to look up a definition, it would tell us that estrangement is having lost former closeness and affection, or that estrangement is being in a state of alienation from a previous close or familial relationship. Does that describe you and God this morning? Are you estranged from him? Think about this with me. God wants to be in a right relationship with you, and he has done everything to ensure your reconciliation. He held up his part, he was faithful and true, and he held up your part. And so, why would we be estranged from him? Why wouldn't we reach out to him? And so I want to encourage you this morning. Some of you are estranged from God even though you've at some point reached out and had a close relationship with him. And what I mean by that is there's doubts in your heart. There's struggles in your life right now. There's questions where you're like, how can God be good if this is going on? Or if this is my experience. And it's leading to estrangement. Come back to the cross, come back to this thought of covenant and realize that God has done everything to be reconciled and be right with you. Others of you have never experienced reconciliation with God. You were born into a broken relationship, into a broken home. Where you were a product of this great divorce. You are in your sins and God is in his holiness. And so, if that's you this morning, if you've never been in a relationship or in a right place with God, you can experience reconciliation right now this morning. All it takes is a reaching out to God and saying, God, I want you. I want to be in the right relationship with you. I surrender to you. Can I please experience reconciliation with you? It doesn't have to be a fancy Christianese, perfect sounding prayer. It's just a simple act of forgiveness, uh, of reconciliation with God. And again, He does the work. And so if that's you this morning, I want to encourage you, don't leave this place in a place of estrangement. Leave reconciled, all of us. There's no reason for anyone to walk out that door this morning in a place of estrangement. There's every reason for all of us to walk out that door today, being reconciled to God. Listen to what Romans 8, 31 and 32 say. If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own son, but offered him up for all of us. How beautiful is that! So be reconciled to God today. I can't say it any clearer. I want to say it as clear as possible, but I cannot say it any clearer than that. Be reconciled today. Now, from that place of things being right with God, we can address some further things that we've discussed today. The first of those is divorce specifically. And again, we're talking about once you're in a right place with God, let's start talking about some of this more specific stuff. Some of you have walked or are walking down this very difficult road. And when I said earlier that this pulling apart of the bond of marriage is painful and difficult, you would absolutely nod your head and say, Yes, that's true. It is hard, it's very difficult. I quoted earlier from a pastor and theologian named John Stutt, and he has some thoughts on this. He said that in his pastoral ministry, he made a habit of never talking to people about divorce. If people approached him and wanted to talk about divorce, he said he'd never talk to them about it unless he had first talked to them about marriage and about reconciliation. And he said, I never did that because I believe that this passage, Matthew 5 and these other ones, point us to the reality that those are God's priorities. God is for reconciliation. Now I say that acknowledging that some of you are in really complex and messy situations. Divorce can be incredibly messy. And so I don't know the specifics of where you're at, but I do want to hold up this banner of reconciliation and say, this is what God has done for us, and this is what he calls us to, and I don't know what that will look like. I don't know what that looks like for you specifically, but I will say this. Once you're in the right place with God, use his power and strength to help you to seek reconciliation in whatever form that takes. It's gonna look different in different situations and scenarios. But God is for reconciliation. The second thing that I would say is this that once we're in the right place with God, we are called to be, and I mentioned this earlier, ministers of reconciliation. You see, some of you sit here today and you may think, well, I'm not experiencing divorce right now. Like, I guess this has something to do with me. This has everything to do with you. Think about this. You live in a world full of people estranged, i.e. divorced from their creator. You pass people in the hole, you sit next to somebody at work, all the people, your neighbor next door, all of the people that you touch and have interaction with are people who are estranged. Unless they believe in Jesus and what he's done for them, they're estranged from their creator. And so we have this role, we have this responsibility to be ministers of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5, all of it is super rich on this, and I encourage you to read that this week. 2 Corinthians 5. I'm gonna read just one verse from it, verse 18 today. And it says this everything is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ, i.e., you've experienced this incredible gift. But it then it goes on and says, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. If you've experienced reconciliation, you have a calling on your life. I can say that with absolute certainty. And that calling is to be a minister of reconciliation. So I've got a couple of questions for you then. Do you see that role that you have? Are you embracing that role or are you shying away from it? That's a hard question. There's definite seasons and times in my life that I've shied away from that role. It's just too hard to have that conversation. I don't really want to engage them right now. I don't feel like it. We have experienced this incredible reconciliation. Why will we not pass it on? Is it good news or is it not? As we reflect on these things today, all of these things that we've said, my hope is that your heart would be led to a couple of things. That is wonder and worship as we consider the fact that God held up both sides of this covenant. And so I want to ask you one final question this morning. Is your heart stirred? Our hearts should all we've got to have a heart check this morning. Our hearts should all absolutely be stirred by this reality that God came to reconcile us even when we were divorced from him in our sins. All that to say that God in his grace pursues us in spite of our wayward hearts, and he embraces us with his love, and that should lead us to wonder and to worship. I'm gonna pray. God, um this is good news. That you are a God who is not okay with the estrangement between yourself and us. Between you, the powerful, beautiful creator, and us, your broken humanity. And so we thank you that you went at great lengths to yourself. Great lengths to yourself to send your son to come and to die, a horrible death that we deserved in our place, so that we could be reconciled to you. God, we thank you that that isn't some sort of fairy tale or nice notion or idea that we we think about this morning. It's a reality. More real than even the things that we can look at and see today. And God, we cling together as a church to this reality. And we thank you that we have hope, that we have life today in these words and in this truth. God, I pray especially for any person in this room who is experiencing estrangement in their relationships, maybe even in marriage. And I also pray for any person, especially who is experiencing estrangement from you, their creator. And Lord, I pray that you wouldn't let people leave this room this morning without first doing business with you and being right with you. And so, God, just even give us wisdom to know how to take these next few moments of response. And we pray that you be honored and glorified in our time as we reflect on what you've been saying to us this morning. Thank you.