As you know, our tradition at the Beach Fellowship is that we study the scriptures verse by verse. That tends to keep us from over emphasizing some things, or under emphasizing other things, depending on what we think people want to hear. Last week I said that the subject matter of Jesus’ teaching on hell at the end of chapter 9 was very unpopular, and if I were a smarter, more popularity conscious preacher, I would have skipped over it.
Well, I suppose that today’s passage of scripture is even more unpopular than the subject of hell. Today Jesus speaks against divorce, and for the sanctity of marriage. And so in all likelihood, I will be offending at least half of you here today. According to the American Psychological Association, approximately 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rate for second marriages is even higher, with approximately 60-67% of second marriages ending in divorce. I have also heard that the statistic for divorce is about the same in the church as it is in the world. So I’m sure that in our representative congregation here this morning, about half of you have been divorced.
That being said, I have already resigned myself to the fact that I will never win any popularity contest. And I believe that it’s far more important that I try to please God rather than men, so I will simply tell you what Jesus had to say on the subject and you can take it up with Him if you find it unsettling.
Let’s look at our text beginning in Mark chapter 10, vs 1: “Getting up, He went from there to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan; crowds gathered around Him again, and, according to His custom, He once more [began] to teach them. [Some] Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and [began] to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife.”
Jesus is deliberately and slowly moving closer to HIs destination which is Jerusalem and to His destiny which is the cross. He now leaves Galilee and enters Judea and once again the crowds flock to Him. And as was His custom, He began to teach them. The subject of His teaching is the gospel of the Kingdom of God. The only means by which people can enter the Kingdom of God is through Jesus Christ, through faith in Him as the Son of God, the Messiah, and what He will accomplish for them on the cross.
One of the main points of His teaching is to help people come to the realization that they are lost. That is why in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus spends a great deal of His message expounding the law. The purpose of the law was to make man understand that he is a sinner in need of salvation. I think it was Billy Graham who said, that the difficulty is not in getting people saved, the difficulty is in first getting people to understand that they are lost. Most people tend to think that they actually are not such a bad person. And so they make excuses for themselves while condemning others. But in reality all men are sinners and hopelessly lost, outside of the kingdom of God.
The Pharisees were a religious order of the Jews that prided themselves on their self righteousness. They believed that they kept the law as they had determined it. They had lawyers and scribes and rabbis who had studied the law and wrote a commentary upon it called the Mishna which they held in higher regard than the scriptures. So believing that they had kept the law according to their interpretations, they were not exactly fond of Jesus’ teaching which suggested that they were actually guilty of breaking the law.
And so the Pharisees routinely showed up whenever Jesus was teaching to try to catch Him with a trick question, or to catch Him or His disciples in some infraction according to their understanding of the law, with the ultimate goal of discrediting Jesus in the eyes of the people.
Their question then was a trick question, one that was designed to get Him in trouble with half the people, regardless of how He answered it. The question was whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife for any reason. According to one school of rabbinic teaching, Moses, whom they considered the author of the law, permitted a man to divorce his wife for unchastity, or adultery. The other school interpreted that Moses wrote that a man could divorce for any thing that he found distasteful. For instance, he could divorce her for burning his toast. And the majority of Jews favored that interpretation, and possibly that was also the accepted view of the disciples.
So if Jesus answered in such a way as to take the stricter position, He would undoubtedly offend the majority of people that favored the more lax view. But if He sided with the more liberal view then they could accuse Him of accommodating sinners and being morally lax.
Either way He answered, the Pharisees weren’t interested in keeping the commandment as He understood it, but only in trying to embarrass Him and discredit Him before the people.
But in response to their trick question, Jesus turns them to the scriptures, not to the rabbinic traditions. He says in vs3 “And He answered and said to them, "What did Moses command you?” The scripture, though written by human hands, in this case Moses, is the inspired word of God. So the scripture is authoritative, because it is the word of God. The rabbinic traditions were the word of man as he interpreted scripture. But Jesus turns their attention to the word of God. It’s the authority, not the rabbinic traditions.
By the way, that’s why we preach through the scripture, verse by verse. There is no other authority. Science is not an authority. Philosophy or psychiatry is not authoritative. All of the sciences are evolving, ever changing. But God’s word never changes. It is forever settled in heaven. 2Tim 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” And Peter says in 2 Peter 1:20-21 “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is [a matter] of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
The Pharisees answer Jesus in vs 4 They said, "Moses permitted [a man] TO WRITE A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND [her] AWAY.” What they give is an abbreviated synopsis of what Moses said, and in so shortening it, turn the intention of the law into something that indicates permissiveness. They say Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce. That is not actually what Moses says.
The original commandment can be found in Deut. 24:1-4 which says 1 "When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that 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 from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's [wife,] and if the latter husband turns against 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 husband dies who took her to be his wife, [then] her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance.”
Moses, while recognizing that the common practice was to write a certificate of divorce and send her away, does not condone that practice, but is merely addressing the additional responsibility of possible sin after a man has divorced his wife. Moses is saying that if you divorce your wife, and she becomes the wife of another man, then the former husband is not allowed to take her back again to be his wife. That’s a sin, an abomination before God. But Moses does not encourage or condone divorce. They had misinterpreted the law to accommodate their sinful desire.
So Jesus answers them in vs 5, But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.” See, Jesus says that Moses didn’t permit divorce, but he is writing a commandment in response to the hardness of their heart in carrying out their sinful desire to divorce their wife. In Malachi 2:16 God says, I hate divorce. God said, “the LORD has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.”
So God didn’t condone or give permission for divorce. Sometime before, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke to this same issue saying, Matt. 5:31-32 "It was said, 'WHOEVER SENDS HIS WIFE AWAY, LET HIM GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE'; but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for [the] reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” So Jesus had taken a position on divorce and according to Him, who is the Word made incarnate, the only reason for divorce would be unchastity. But even then, I think that the will of God is that there would not be divorce. He does allow for it in the case of unchastity, but He does not order it.
And that principle finds it’s in the sanctity of marriage as given by God. If marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman and in the sight of God they become one flesh, then what God has joined together let not man separate. So Jesus expounds the principle of divorce by stating the ordinance of marriage. He says in vs 6 "But from the beginning of creation, [God] MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. "FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 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 in answer to this question of divorce Jesus goes back to the original ordinance of God in regards to marriage, and once again, Jesus uses scripture as His authority. The first scripture reference is taken partially from Genesis 1:27 which says in full, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” The world has a whole bunch of problems with that verse, don’t they? First of all, the world doesn’t believe in creation. It doesn’t believe in intelligent design. The world believes in evolution, which is that man evolved over billions of years from some microorganism and random chance.
But if you believe that God designed and created man in His own image, and created them male and female, then that sets the parameters for everything that comes after. God didn’t make three or four or ten genders, He made two genders, male and female. But if you take God out of the equation, then I guess anything goes. If evolution were actually possible, then it’s conceivable that man could evolve into many different genders or variations of genders. But I don’t believe evolution is even possible, and if it were to happen that gender evolved then it would mean the end of our species. But I believe the Bible, and that God created man male and female and He said it was good. And that settles a lot of questions for me right there.
But that raises the question, do you believe in God, or more to the point, do you believe God? A lot of people claim to believe in God. However, they don’t believe in the God of the Bible. But the Bible says that Abraham believed God, not believed in God, and He credited it to him as righteousness. Abraham believed what God said. And like Abraham we gain righteousness by believing in the God of the Bible and believing what He said and what He promised and what He accomplished.
So having established that God made man male and female, Jesus goes on to show that God established marriage. Vs 7 "FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 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.” Again, Jesus quotes scripture. This time He quotes from Genesis 2:24 which says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
The whole context of that scripture should be considered though. God had said that it was not good for man to be alone. And then “the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man." For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” God designed marriage as part of creation to complete man and accomplish God’s purposes in creation.
So the indissolubility of marriage is stated by Jesus in very forceful terms. Jesus is summarizing the divine ordinance concerning the marriage bond. In God’s eyes, they form a partnership, one completing the other, each complementing the other, so that they individually are better together through their union. For a man to separate what God has joined together, means to arrogantly defy the work of God. And I would add to that, that when a couple make their vows to come together in marriage, that they make such vows to God and not just to each other. It is a three party covenant. So when you break that vow to your wife or husband, you are also breaking a vow to God. And that is a fearful thing, to break a vow to God.
Well, after Jesus said these things, they go into a nearby house, whose house we are not told, and the disciples take the opportunity to question Him further about this teaching. Vs.10 “In the house the disciples [began] questioning Him about this again. And He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”
What Jesus is saying here is that a husband who divorces his wife, thereby separating what God has joined together, is committing a grievous sin, and that he adds to that grievous sin a further condemnation by marrying another woman. Such a man is sinning not just against God but against his wife, for he is involving himself in adultery against her, or if she remarries, causes her to commit adultery.
So in very simple terms, using scripture as the authority, Jesus denounces divorce, refutes the rabbinical misinterpretation of the law, reaffirms the laws true meaning, condemns the guilty party, defends the innocent, and throughout it all reaffirms the sacredness and inviolability of marriage as ordained by God between a man and a woman.
So we are to understand that Jesus regards the break up of a marriage to be an abomination before God. Yet on the other hand, that same uncompromising Lord Jesus Christ is the merciful Savior, who says to the woman caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.” For most people listening here today that have had a divorce, it’s too late to undo it. In fact, you can add to the injury by divorcing once again to try to rectify the old divorce. But we can go and sin no more. if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The law exposes the fact that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But if we turn in repentance to the Savior, and believe that He died on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins, then as Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, so we by faith believe in what God has done and we receive the righteousness of Christ applied by grace to our account that we might gain eternal life and escape the condemnation that we deserve.
If you’re here this morning and you have been considering divorce I pray that God’s word has convinced you that God’s plan does not accommodate divorce and you will keep your vows to God. But if you’re here today and you are considering marriage, I hope that you realize that marriage is a covenant between you and God and your future spouse. It’s not something to be entered into lightly, or with a cavalier attitude. And if you are here this morning and you recognize that you have sinned against your spouse and against God by divorcing your spouse, then I hope you recognize that if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins, and cleanse you from all unrighteousness, and by faith in His work on the cross, God can make all things new in your life.
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