The Beautiful Design

Mark 10:1-12

Jesus' Teaching on Marriage & Divorce

Pastor Matt Moran 

Transcript

 And he left there and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan, and the
crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And
the Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, Is it lawful for a man to
divorce his wife? He answered them, What did Moses command you? He said, Moses
allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus
said to them, Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. Therefore a
man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore
God has joined together, let no man separate. And in the house of the disciples,
and in the house of the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said
to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against
her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
Thanks Luke. Let's take a moment and we'll pray together. Father, we thank you
for your word. Together as your people we ask that your word would fall on good
ground today. As we hear, Lord, we pray that the seed that gets sown wouldn't be
quickly just gathered up and taken away, but that it would find good soil in our
hearts. That we would listen and receive, be full of faith. Help us in this
moment, Lord, by your Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. I'm sure you've
heard the expression before that there's no such thing as a stupid question.
That is something that people say. I'm not sure that Jesus would agree. And in
this morning, we're in chapter 10 of Mark. Jesus is starting to move towards
Jerusalem. That means Mark is drawing towards its finale. This is where Mark's
gospel is going to eventually culminate as Jesus journeys towards Jerusalem and
to the final events of his passion. So Jesus is on this journey from Galilee to
Jerusalem and today we see him teaching again. And he gets asked a question. He
doesn't quite say it's a stupid question, but he does say it's the wrong
question. So before we get started, I want to acknowledge that this is a tough
passage where we read Jesus' teaching on divorce. And when we're gathered in a
setting like this, it's a diverse group of people. We have married couples who
are thriving. We have married couples who are struggling. We have single people
who are totally happy about that. We have single people who are not as happy.
We've people who've been through divorce before, people who've been through the
loss of a spouse. We have children and youth and some of them very well will be
married one day. So there's just a broad group of people here. And I've got two
goals today in this for all of us. One is that I explain Jesus' teaching on
divorce so that we all understand it. But I also, in doing that, I want to
persuade us that we need to love God's beautiful design for marriage just as
much as Jesus, a single man, did. So let's get into this passage and we'll start
with this trap that gets laid in verse 2. Multiple times in Mark, we see the
Pharisees trying to trap or entangle Jesus. And they do this by asking a
divisive question so that in their minds, whichever way he answers, he won't be
able to win. They do this because they're hoping to expose a weakness in Jesus'
ministry. So in Mark, we see this multiple times and we see the Pharisees asking
questions like this. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Or why is he
eating with tax collectors and sinners? Why do his disciples pick grain on the
Sabbath? Will you give us a sign to demonstrate your power? Today the question
is, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And we're told directly in the
text the motive for the question. The motive is it was in order to test him. In
order to test him. So the divorce question was controversial in the time of
Jesus, as it is today, although for different reasons. And in the mind of the
Pharisees, as they have game-planned this question and then anticipated his
answer, and they think about this encounter, they're thinking, well, however
Jesus answers, it's going to be divisive. And then they'll be able to attack
that weakness. Because he's not going to be able to please everyone with this
answer. This is a classic trap. If you ever watch a political argument, you'll
see this type of disingenuous conversation or debate going on repeatedly. So
you'll see a question like, Senator, do you care about clean energy and saving
our planet? Or do you care about the 200,000 working class people in your home
state whose livelihoods depend on fossil fuels? And we'll all lose our jobs if
you start regulating this industry. Tell us your answer quickly so we can
decide, right, which way we're going to attack you. It's a disingenuous no-win
question that's designed to entrap the person being asked the question. So in
their attempts to trap Jesus with this question on divorce, the Pharisees are
well schooled in the different viewpoints that are out there. In the Jewish
rabbinic commentary on the law of Moses, there were different schools of thought
as to when divorce was permissible. I'm going to give you a couple examples from
the Mishnah to help give you an idea of what was out there, the different
perspectives that were in play at this time. So the Mishnah is like the rabbi's
commentary on the law of Moses. So if you go back, you can see the school of
Shema says, a man may not divorce his wife unless he has found unchastity in
her. In other words, there was a school of thought that said divorce is only
permissible in the case of sexual immorality. Then the school of Hillel says he
may divorce her even if she spoiled a dish for him. In other words, divorce is
permissible for almost any reason, any cause. And then Rabbi Akiba says he may
divorce her if he found another one fairer than her. So we've got different
perspectives going on. There's a range of perspectives ranging from divorce can
only happen under very specific circumstances to a husband can lawfully divorce
a wife whenever it suits him. So there's obviously a significant point of
disagreement between these different schools of thought and the Pharisaical
parties as they hear these different perspectives. But it is almost certain that
the idea that divorce could only happen after sexual immorality was a minority
view. The more common idea at this time, and when I say this time, I mean Jewish
first century culture, was that a woman who did not accept her husband's control
was in danger of being divorced. So if you read the ancient historian Josephus,
he says in his first century historical accounts, almost as like an aside, he
says, at this time, I divorced my wife, not liking her behavior. So obviously if
we go forward to our culture in 2025 in the U.S., you have no fault divorce, and
you can end your marriage fairly quickly for broad reasons like irreconcilable
differences or loss of affection. Our culture in general does not see marriage
as permanent or necessarily permanent or a sacred institution. If you looked for
advice about your marriage in our secular culture, the questions would probably
be about whether you are happy, whether you are fulfilled. If you were getting
advice, should I continue in this? Are you fulfilled? Are you happy? Do you like
the direction that this is going? And then in American church, we might think
we're different, but we still probably in ways we don't realize breathe this air
of self-fulfillment. Many people think about their marriage and the struggles
they experience and they wonder, do I have biblical grounds for divorce? Or what
are the scriptural escape hatches that I can use to get out of my marriage? So
in our text today, the Pharisees want to trap Jesus, so they say, tell us what
you think. It's a loaded question. Because lurking behind this question is the
Pharisees' familiarity with all these perspectives, and they're ready to spring
at Jesus. So he answers with a question of his own. Look at verse 3. He answered
them, what did Moses command you? This is now a game of tennis. In other words,
you're the experts, this should be right in your wheelhouse. What does the law
of Moses say? They said, they say, verse 4, Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of divorce and to send her away. What's the certificate of divorce?
What the Pharisees are talking about refers to something in Deuteronomy 24. That
passage says, and I'll read this, Deuteronomy 24 verses 1 through 4. When a man
takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he
has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and
puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his
house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates
her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends
her out of his house, or if the latter man dies who took her to be his wife,
then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife
after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you
shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an
inheritance. Now if you got lost in that scenario, I don't blame you. But here's
what this law was dealing with. In ancient Israelite culture, when a woman was
married, she came with a dowry, and that refers to her father's marriage present
to her. And whether that dowry was money or land or livestock, it was given to
her husband from her family as a wedding gift. If the woman was then divorced by
her husband, her husband still got to keep that dowry. If the woman remarried,
she would be given a second dowry. Now if that second husband also divorced her
or died, the first husband, number one, could not bring her back and acquire
that second dowry. We already know he didn't love her. He can't just acquire
what's being given to her. Now obviously, none of this would be ideal, but the
Mosaic law was making provision for the woman so that she would not be taken
advantage of financially by the first husband who did not love her but wanted
her second dowry. The Israelites in this time, they are this set apart people
living under the law, given to them by God, so that they would be a witness to
the nations, and they have civil laws that govern their life together. So what's
outlined in Deuteronomy 24 was related to the certificate of divorce, and it was
designed to protect the woman and maintain civility in the society. The civil
law does more than indicate how things should be. It provides provisions for
human sinfulness. So for example, in the Mosaic law, it tells people how to
respond. What do we do when your ox gores your neighbor, or when the axe head
slips off and someone gets hurt, or when a child curses his parents? What do we
do then? Well, we don't want those things to happen, but the provisions exist
because of human sinfulness and because of the reality of life in a world cursed
by sin. So now it's hundreds of years later, and the Pharisees want to trap
Jesus by getting him to weigh in on this question of when divorce is acceptable.
The question is, well, what rises to the level to make it permissible? So Jesus
answers. Look at verse 5. Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart,
he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them
male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but
one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. So
Jesus, in his incredible wisdom, says, Moses made a concession for you, but
you're starting from the wrong place. Let's look at God's beautiful design.
Jesus says, in effect, you are missing the point with your question. That
provision existed because of human sin. The point of Deuteronomy 24 is not to
tell you when divorce is permissible. It was put there because of the hardness
of your heart. So Jesus says, okay, you want to talk about when divorce is
permissible. That is one question. But let's back up and ask a different
question. What is marriage? They want to parse out Deuteronomy 24, and Jesus
says, okay, but first let's talk about Genesis 1 and 2. Jesus is saying, you
want to argue about case law, but you are missing the major principle. You want
to talk about what situations it might be technically permissible to dissolve a
marriage, but you don't understand what a marriage is. It's a situation where in
their legal scholarship, in their comparative views, they are missing the forest
for the trees. So Deuteronomy 24 and the certificate of divorce was not about
God's purpose for marriage. It was a concession to help care for a woman when
the marriage was already broken. It was about dealing with sinful behavior in a
just manner. It's not pointing to the way God designed things to be. And if we
want to know what God designed marriage to be, we don't begin by looking around
the perimeter for edge cases. We go back to Genesis 1 and 2, because this is
where we see God's creation ideal, and Jesus is clearly saying, this is not
simply a nice story of origin. This idea still holds. This is what we're going
for today. So Jesus references two very foundational passages in Genesis 1 and 2
in his response to the Pharisees. He quotes two different passages. One is
Genesis 1.27, which says, so God created man in his own image. In the image of
God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And then the other
passage is Genesis 2.24. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. That is where
Jesus goes. Back to God's original, beautiful creation design. And it's very
telling that although that was in a world that was not yet, that had not yet
been marred by sin, Jesus still goes back to that creation institution. And what
Jesus is really telling these very esteemed religious experts is, did anybody
ever tell you about Adam and Eve? Did anybody ever give you a storybook Bible?
You want to talk about when divorce is permissible, but you don't understand
what marriage is. And we see from Jesus' words that God has endowed this
institution with tremendous importance. And I know I'm aware I'm not breaking
new ground by bringing us to Genesis 1 and 2 today. But here's what I would like
to encourage us with. We need to be as personally locked in on Genesis 1 and 2
as Jesus was. Let me make a few points from this text just to, that will help
explain what I mean. First, Jesus believed the Old Testament scriptures were
divinely inspired. He believed these were breathed out by God. When he gets
pressed with a hard question by the Pharisees, Jesus doesn't go down some rabbit
trail of scribal tradition. And he doesn't really get into all these various
traditions and conversations among leading rabbis. He does not chime in and say,
here's what I think about the Mishnah. He goes to the Bible, the Old Testament
scriptures, and it's abundantly clear that Jesus believes that these words are
breathed out by God, that they're divinely inspired, that they're authoritative
and all the beautiful creation distinctions still hold. And second, look at what
he says. He affirms that maleness and femaleness is a creation institution. He
says from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Isn't that
amazing that Jesus would refer to this not simply in Genesis 1 as an origin
story, but in Mark 10, God made them male and female. Maleness and femaleness is
not self-determined or random or fluid. It's given with divine creative intent
from a good creator God. And everything that we see in creation has this
beautiful duality. Everything has this twofold nature. Everything that God has
created would lose its meaning and significance without its complementary side.
We see this throughout Genesis 1. We see light and we see darkness. We see
heaven and earth. We see water and dry land. We see sun and moon. And then
finally on the sixth culminating glorious day of creation, we see male and
female and we see Jesus affirming it. And let's just think for a second about
the incredible importance of this duality. Because what would be the
significance of darkness if not for light? Or what is dry land without water?
It's the desert. It's a wasteland. It's dune. And water without dry land is a
post-apocalyptic world. It's that old Kevin Costner movie. It's water world,
right? It's a flood. But the place where water and dry land meet is the place we
all want to go on vacation. And that's the same thing with maleness and
femaleness. They're made in the image of God in beautiful symmetry and
complementarity. So Jesus affirms these things. He also emphasizes the intimacy
and closeness of marriage when he says the two shall become one flesh. It's a
bond that's given that goes beyond any other relationship, even parents with
children. And fourth, Jesus emphasizes the permanence of marriage. But therefore
God has joined together. Let no man separate. Everything in Genesis 1 and 2 is
absolutely foundational to how Jesus viewed marriage. And as I say this, of
course I mean that we ought to be able to defend the traditional biblical
understanding of marriage and manhood and womanhood. But I also want to say that
it's possible to defend a traditional understanding of marriage while losing
touch with all the relational beauty that the scripture teaches. It's not a
position that we need to be apologetic about or angry about, but rather that we
can be happy and joyful about. That we can be in our teaching and also in our
actual relationships show that we are enamored with God's beautiful design.
Jesus is teaching that God designed marriage from the beginning, and his design
would be that this relationship would hold fast, that marriage is meant to be a
permanent relationship. It's part of God's original creation intent from the
beginning. And we need to love and appreciate and teach the simple beauty of
that creation design. When Paul teaches on marriage in Ephesians 5, it's built
from Genesis 2. When he teaches on sexual purity in 1 Corinthians 6, it's built
on Genesis 2. So afterwards, as often happens in the Gospel, the disciples
follow up with Jesus later on about what he had taught. Verse 10 says, In the
house the disciples asked him again about this matter, and he said to them,
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And
if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. So
Matthew 19 gives a parallel account of this passage in Mark, but it also
provides a little bit more detail about the conversation afterwards. And the
main distinction is that Matthew records that Jesus said, Whoever divorces his
wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. People
have often wondered, why is there an exception clause for sexual immorality in
Matthew but not in Mark? There's a probable reason. In the Old Testament,
adultery was punishable by death. So if the exception of sexual immorality is
not mentioned in Mark, it's simply because it was already understood that this
provided that sexual immorality had the power to sever a marriage, and it
provided scriptural justification for divorce. That word for sexual immorality
is the Greek word porneia, and it can refer to all manner of sexual immorality.
That can be such a violation of the one-flesh relationship that's described in
Genesis 2 that it can sever a marriage, and it does provide grounds for divorce.
However, even then, Jesus is not teaching that this makes divorce mandatory.
Forgiveness and reconciliation is still possible. Sometimes and I've seen this,
a married couple is unhappy, so one seizes the other person's immorality as
scriptural justification because they kind of knew they wanted to get out
already. Forgiveness and restoration is possible. However, this is important as
well, we ought never to assume that a person who is divorced is divorced because
of their hard-heartedness. The scriptural provisions for divorce on account of
sexual immorality, or later on in the New Testament on account of desertion, are
there because of human sin, and a spouse may do everything that they can do to
make a marriage work, and in the end, their spouse's hard-heartedness makes it
almost impossible. And in such cases, sexual immorality or desertion, divorce
can be biblically justified. In such cases, remarriage can be biblical. Now
there are nuances to this, so it ought to be approached with a lot of prayer and
pastoral counsel. I'm not intending in this message to try and get into every
scenario. But when Jesus' original hearers, the disciples, heard this, he was
dramatically raising the bar in their minds. Because in Matthew's account in
chapter 19, the disciples said to him, well if that's the case, if such is the
case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry. So we know from their
reaction, he's radically raising the bar. Jesus has just done away with, when he
returns to Genesis 1 and 2, he's doing away with a lot of the popular grounds
for divorce, and he's elevated marriage radically by taking it back to creation.
And the disciples, they've likely been operating with this same low view of
marriage that everyone else has, and they realize with this, whoa, whoa, whoa,
with these restrictive views, I could get locked into an unhappy marriage
forever. Jesus says I can't be like Josephus and just divorce my wife whenever
she irritates me. So they say, well if that's the case, it's better for a man
not to marry. They hear Jesus go back to Genesis 2 and think, who would take
that risk? Better not to marry than get locked into this unhappy, unfixable
arrangement. Because Jesus has basically shut off their emergency hatch. And
they recognize their view of the sacredness of marriage is woefully deficient
compared with his. And that vision of fidelity and a one-flesh shared life
scares them. And in a real sense it should. Because marriage threatens our
autonomy. Think about what a one-flesh relationship really looks like. It's a
shared bed, a shared sexual relationship, shared meals, honesty, shared bank
accounts, decisions made together. Family. That can sound appealing on one level
and also frightening to our autonomy. That's why many people think of marriage
as something they would like someday, but in the actual moment think this is
threatening my freedom. And marriage ends up being death to selfishness. Because
oneness is a theological, spiritual reality that is also a lot of work. And the
disciples hear Jesus and they say, if it's that restrictive, if it's that
binding, it would be better not to get married. There's something to be said for
that. They're partly right. We say in a marriage ceremony that marriage ought to
be entered into soberly and reverently. There's nothing casual about it. Soberly
and reverently. But we also use another phrase in the marriage ceremony,
soberly, reverently, and with great joy. When Jesus read Genesis 2 and when he
calls people back to it, he clearly believed that holy and happy marriage was
possible. And that high bar ought to be an encouragement. Because every earthly
marriage is touched by sin. Every earthly marriage has difficulty. But we enter
into marriage and persevere in it with great joy because marriage is a
reflection of God's beautiful design. In his book, Marriage and the Mystery of
the Gospel, Ray Ortlund says, the most remarkable thing about marriage today is
not that it can be troubled, but that we still have this privilege at all. When
God justly expelled us from the Garden of Eden, he did not take this gift back.
He let us keep his priceless gift, though we sometimes misuse it. But what every
married couple needs to know is that their marriage is a remnant of Eden. This
is why every marriage is worth working at, worth fighting for. A marriage filled
with hope in God is nothing less than an afterglow of the Garden of Eden,
radiant with hope until perfection is finally restored. Always, always worth
fighting for. And when we gather as a church, whatever our stages, children,
young adults, married, late married, early married, single, widowed, divorced,
if we are in Christ, we are on our way to a wedding feast. The biblical
narrative begins and ends with a wedding. We see weddings bookending the Bible,
first in Genesis 2, when God presents Eve to Adam, and last in Revelation 21. In
John's vision in Revelation 21, he says this, then I saw a new heaven and a new
earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was
no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard a loud voice from
the throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell
with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as
their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no
more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the
former things have passed away. The culmination of human history is pictured in
a wedding feast. So Jesus Christ spoke men and women into existence and created
the institution of marriage, and our earthly institution of marriage prefigures
the relationship of Christ and the church. It's a little window into the gospel.
And Jesus is patient with his church, his bride. He's coming to save us and to
rescue us. And how many times have you seen a bride and groom stand and take
their vows, maybe even here in this building? Every time that happens, whether
or not the bride and groom are even aware, whether we are aware, something about
that biblical story is being reenacted. Jesus stepped out of heaven, out of
eternity, into our world and pursued his bride, sacrificing his body and his
blood to win her. An earthly marriage is a reality inside that massive
redemptive reality. So here on earth, in the church, marriage is to be pursued
and held in esteem. And what we're going for is not simply not divorcing, but to
have beautiful and God-honoring marriages. Not simply marriages that stay
together legally but drift away into disregard or boredom, but pursuing
beautiful, one-flesh, God-honoring marriages that show off his beautiful
creation design. Let's pray.