Treasure marriage, for it is God’s gift and God’s picture of God’s promise to us.
And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
And 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?” They 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 not man separate.”
And 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.”
I have a confession to make before you all this morning. It's not one that I make joyfully.
I'm ashamed to say it, but I have never actually played the game of mousetrap. Mousetrap. You know the game of mousetrap.
You roll your dice, you move your mice, nobody gets hurt. Some of you kids grew up in the 90s, you know what mousetrap is, right? It's a game. It's a board game, I think, by Parker and Sons, right? You roll some dice, you move your little character, and at the end of it all, your mouse or some mouse gets trapped.
And obviously, I don't know how the game operates because I never played it. As a kid, I owned it. My brother and I loved to set it up, but we were never interested in playing this game because all we wanted to see was the trap at the end.
That little mouse, little poor plastic green or blue or red mouse, just helpless beneath this cage that falls down on top of him, never to escape. And we found it a great deal of fun. Maybe you actually played the game and you just thought the game itself was more fun than the trapping at the end, but in any event, trapping can be fun.
Some of you perhaps have experience hunting and trapping. Some of you have the maybe not so delightful experience of trapping and hunting in your own home. Some of the creatures that love to roam around in your kitchen and in your cupboards and under your crawlspace at night.
And while I don't delight in killing God's creatures, I do delight in removing them from my pantry. And so, I find myself once again delighting in that most sacred device, the mouse trap. It springs and the mouse doesn't even know.
It's actually rather humane. The mouse doesn't even know what's hidden, if you do it right. And I think the glee that I have in trapping such a mouse is the same kind of glee, at least the same level of glee, perhaps even more, that the Pharisees were hoping to experience in our passage this morning.
This is a mouse trap. You caught that. This was a trap that the Pharisees have laid for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, here at the beginning of chapter 10.
Jesus, as you may recall from previous weeks, has been making his journey again back down to Jerusalem. He's been ministering in Galilee for most of Mark's Gospel. Now, he's heading down to Jerusalem to Passion Week.
It's a good Friday to his crucifixion. And yet, throughout his ministry in Galilee and throughout his entire ministry so far, we found that he's been butting up against this pesky group, the Pharisees. They don't like him.
He does not have much regard for their oral Torah, the laws that they built up upon the law of God, the rules and regulations that they held up as God's Word when it wasn't God's Word. And so, since chapter 3, they have been conspiring to kill the Lord Jesus. And so now, as Jesus is making his journey away from Galilee and down to the region beyond the Jordan, this region of Perea, which is also the domain, as Galilee is, of Herod Antipas, there, the Pharisees are ready to spring a trap.
They ask a question. Seems like a normal question. Seems like a genuine question.
If we're not careful, we may— and if it weren't for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit explaining the question to us, we might think, this is just an average question. This is a question perhaps you might have. Is it lawful? Is divorce lawful? How can we get divorced? If we need to get divorced, is it wrong to be divorced? Is there ever a right circumstance for divorce? The Pharisees are just asking questions.
They're just asking questions. But as we see so often, there may be something lying beneath the question, a motive. Now, it's not good for us as mere men and women and children, especially to judge motives.
Sometimes it's really hard to know where questions are coming from. We should be careful about this. But the Holy Spirit leaves us no room to guess here.
He says very clearly that they did this to test Jesus. Interesting, four times Mark uses that word, test, in this gospel. Three times it refers to the Pharisees.
One time it refers to what Satan was doing to Jesus in the wilderness. He was testing him, perazzo, or also tempting him. It's a trap.
Just as Satan was seeking to trap Jesus in the wilderness, the Pharisees are seeking to trap Jesus now. And why is this a trap? Why is asking about divorce a trap for Jesus? Well, for a very simple reason, because it, at least in the mind of the Pharisees, is a no-win situation for Jesus. Why do I say that? By asking Jesus about this question, whether it's lawful for a man to divorce his wife, they're thinking Jesus can answer in one of two ways.
One of two ways. And this is because there were one of two schools, primarily at that time among the Jews, of the divorce. Now, all the Jews, for the most part, as far as I can tell, all of the Jews at this time believed that divorce could happen.
There was a category for divorce. It is possible for divorce to happen. But the situation of divorce, that was where they disagreed.
And so you fell into one of two major camps. And so this is actually a later Talmudic tract, the Mishneh Gittin. But this is the viewpoints that were available at the time in Jesus' day.
It says this. The school of Shammai, on the one hand, these you could think of as the conservatives, say that a man should not divorce his wife unless he has found her guilty of some unseemly conduct. Sometimes our Bible translates that as sexual immorality.
Jesus will use the word porneia to describe that. Something unseemly is the Hebrew word. Some unseemly conduct.
For it says, because he has found some unseemly thing in her, quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 4. Interesting with the Pharisees' quote here. But there was also another school, the school of Hillel, that says that a man may divorce her even if she has burnt his dinner dish. Since it says, because he found something unseemly in her.
So you begin to see the two schools of thought. On the one hand, you have the conservatives who say, unless there's some sexual indecency, divorce is not possible. And the other school that says, eh, you know, she had a bad dinner once in a while, divorce her.
No-fault divorce. The second they would have found a fault, it was that. In fact, Rabbi Akiva, who lived a little bit later than Jesus, but again, reflecting a view that was available at the time, says that a man may divorce his wife if he finds a woman more beautiful than she.
Not so far removed, is it? The situation in Jesus' day, though different in some respects, is very much like our own situation today, where marriage is esteemed very lightly. It's a shameful thing being here in the state of California and realizing that we actually played a role in the acceptance of no-fault divorce, as if such a thing could ever exist. When the Bible presents divorce to us, it's a violent thing.
It's always a violent thing. There is always sin involved in divorce. Always.
No exceptions. And yet, though the Bible does have provisions for divorce, and there are situations in which a party in a divorce could be the innocent party, Jesus here is not interested in giving us a great and expansive doctrine of divorce. No, what Jesus is interested in is giving us a doctrine of marriage.
And that's the point of this passage. Some would say that this is a teaching about divorce. In fact, that's the heading in the ESV, and in a sense, that is true.
Jesus is talking to us about divorce in this passage, but his point is not divorce. His point is marriage. What marriage is.
What marriage is, what it was meant to be, and what it should be. And so that's what we need to consider this morning as well, as we look to this, my prayer for us, whether you're here as a married person, as a single person, as a divorced person, my prayer is that we would hold marriage in honor, that we would treasure marriage together. That we would hold marriage in such an honor that we would regard this as an institution not created by men, but created by God.
Created good, yes, affected by sin, and sometimes terminated by sin, but beautiful in itself, what God has given us. And that's beautiful because it holds forth to us not only the gift of God in marriage, but the picture of God's promise to us through marriage. Marriage is a picture, a portrait for us of the promise that God has made to us, his church.
And so we're going to proceed through this passage, and I'm gonna tell you up front, we cannot cover everything about divorce and marriage here. It's not Jesus' concern, it's not my concern. There are other things, and I've included in your green notes this morning, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the larger catechism, and the Heidelberg Catechism on some of these matters.
And I encourage you to consult those, and then also I'll be sharing with you all some further thoughts and some articles maybe to consider. But let's pay attention not to all the possibilities of marriage and divorce, but let's focus on the text here this morning. And in the first place we need to consider, I think, because the text does account for it, the exceptions.
This is a sidebar, this is not the main course, but we do need to treat the exceptions in marriage. Jesus asks the question, what did Moses command you? I don't think he was expecting Deuteronomy 24. Deuteronomy 24, which is what the Pharisees are referring to there in verse four, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. That is the only place, really, or one of the few places in the Old Testament that even speaks about the possibility of divorce. There's a passage in Leviticus as well that speaks a little bit about some argue about divorce, but that is the primary passage where we find, and really the only passage we truly find about prescription for divorce, or the regulation for divorce. But I don't think Jesus was calling for them to point to this passage, Deuteronomy 24.
I think he had another verse in mind, and we'll come to that in a moment. But for now, as Jesus asks the question, what did Moses command you, which again, he's not concerned about what Moses said, he's concerned about what God said. When he says Moses there, you understand, he's talking about the word of God.
What did the Old Testament say? What did the law, the first five books of the Bible say about these matters, about marriage? And so they bring up Deuteronomy 24. So if you have a Bible, turn to Deuteronomy 24 for a second. Deuteronomy 24, it's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy, right? The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, look at Deuteronomy 24, and it's just the first four verses you have there.
This is the passage that the Pharisees are referencing, that the Mishneh Gittin was referencing, where it mentions this unseemly thing, or this kind of immorality. So let's give attention. This is verses one through four of chapter 24, where God says, when a man takes a wife and marries her, now notice all the conditional words here, ifs, whens, such and such, right? 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, there it is, some indecency, something unseemly 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 should not bring sin upon the land, that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
So the Pharisees read that passage, and they say, ah-ha, so there is divorce, but anyone filled with the spirit, and anyone with the humility to actually listen to what God is saying, would not read that passage and say, oh, look at that, God is giving us divorce, that's not at all what's happening in that passage, this verse, these verses, verses one through four of chapter 24, are not instituting divorce, divorce is not an institution, no, rather it's a regulation, on a circumstance that has already occurred, God is not saying, hey, divorce is okay, God is saying, if you're gonna divorce, here's some guidelines, here's some restraints, and Jesus points this out to the Pharisees, when he say, it was because of your hardness of heart, literally your stone hearts, you had stone hearts, you had sin, and because of your sin, God put restraints up in place, and he didn't do it so that men could just go around, and flagrantly throw away their wives, he actually did it to protect those women, because a circumstance may arise, where a man who getting a dowry from a wife, decides to divorce her, put her away, and then later say, actually take back, I'm gonna have her back, and oh, by the way, now I get a second dowry, because I'm remarrying her, I can't go into all of the reasons why, I mean, this is a very complex passage, but just suffice to say, this is a regulation and restraint, on a sinful situation that has already occurred, and primarily it's to protect the woman, something unseemly in her, that could be a whole variety of things, perhaps the woman isn't sin, but regardless, this man is not to play some kind of marriage hokey pokey, to send her away and then bring her back, and to get the financial benefits, that would accrue to him there in, still less is he to hold it over this woman, if he does divorce her, and he does so in a very flippant way, and she finds a truly happy marriage with a man, and then he passes away, and now all of a sudden, her perhaps even abusive husband, from her first marriage comes back and says, actually you belong to me, God says, no, no, no, that's not how marriage operates, you have no right and claim to her, you put her away, it's a restraint on a situation involving sin, whether on the part of the wife or the husband, or perhaps even both, but it's a restraint, it's not an institution, it's an exception, not a rule, and what are the exceptions? Jesus doesn't go into all of the exceptions, he says it's for your hardness of heart, but there are in the Bible, some clearly given grounds for divorce, in fact, in the parallel account, in Matthew's gospel, Matthew chapter 19, interestingly Jesus gives us an exception, that Mark does not include, Jesus says, you read there in Mark chapter 10, if you go back to Mark chapter 10, whoever divorces his wife and marries another, Matthew includes something Jesus said there, that Mark doesn't add, or doesn't have there, except for sexual immorality, the same word we find in Deuteronomy, likewise, a woman divorcing her husband, so there's a category of sexual immorality, that is a grounds for divorce, doesn't require it, God doesn't command divorce, but he does say there are situations, in which a sexual immorality, maybe to such a degree, that the marriage is rightfully ruptured at this point, now Jesus does not use the word adultery, in Matthew's account, to describe sexual immorality, again the word he uses is more general term, porneia, which we get our term pornography from, sexual morality, it's a much broader topic, can include a whole host of things, and so it should sober us to think, that there are sexual sins short of adultery, that could still possibly be grounds for divorce, again not commanded, but Jesus says, marriage is a holy institution, and there are sins that we may commit, that can so rupture that institution, that it is no longer able to exist and operate, sexual immorality, another exception, one that's recorded for us very clearly, although there's hints at it in the rest of the Bible, but more clearly presented to us, in first Corinthians chapter seven, I'm not going to read that for you all, but that's the passage, where Paul was talking about living together, as husbands and wives, and he raises the situation, in which a woman is married to an unbelieving spouse, an unbelieving husband, or a man is married to an unbelieving wife, and in that situation he says, well should you stay married, and he says absolutely, if your spouse is an unbeliever, and not that that is a good situation, not that you should ever seek that situation, and for those of you who are not married yet, and who are seeking to be married one day, God forbid that you should chase into a marriage, where your spouse is not walking with the Lord, because that's so dangerous for you, and so deadly, and you're just asking for heartbreak, and yes God can even work through that situation, and there are people perhaps even today, who are saved through a situation like that, but don't play with fire, but Paul says you may end up in a situation, perhaps you came to faith later in life, and your spouse remains an unbeliever, what do you do? You stay married he says, you stay married, but if your spouse decides to leave you, if your spouse abandons you, let him go, let him go, you're under no obligation God says, so the two categories we find in the Bible, that are grounds exceptions, that are there for that allow for divorce, are sexual morality, which would include adultery, but may include other sexual sins, and also abandonment, and again I can't go into all the details here, but I would locate under abandonment, also grave and serious examples of abuse, which is a form of abandonment, you've effectively abandoned your spouse, by treating them as trash, and physically harming them, or harming them in some other way, and again this is a matter, that calls for great wisdom and prayer, this is not something, and such a sad state of affairs, that even Christians, even Christians will inform the church of their divorce, rather than go to the church, with their marital troubles, now I hope this church is different, I hope you who are married here this morning, if you're struggling in your marriage, and you're not sure where to turn, I know that I'm young, we've not had 10 years in marriage, but God has called me to this ministry as your pastor, I hope you feel able to come to me, and to come to this church, and to really seek to pursue marriage together, and not simply inform us after the fact of your divorce, it's a shameful thing, and the statistics you hear, about 50% of marriages end in divorce, that statistic may be true culturally, the argument that that is true in the church, as well as outside of the church is not accurate, the statistics last I checked, are more likely a quarter of Christian marriages, of true Christian marriages, or at least those who attend church on a regular basis, a quarter of their marriages end in divorce, one in four perhaps one in five, it's still a frightening thought, think about the marriages in this church, one out of every five marriages ending in a divorce, again there are reasons, Jesus doesn't shy away from it, though Mark doesn't record it for us, because that's not Jesus focus, there are reasons for divorce, and again for cases of sexual morality, for cases of abandonment and abuse, there are means that where divorce is the right response, but don't take that lightly, again there is no "no fault divorce." There's always sin, there's always a sin that is at root, it's always sin that disrupts and destroys, divorce is violent, it destroys not only the marriage, but also the family, the children, some of you know that very painfully and very well, how painful divorce can be, not something we should ever want for ourselves, or for even our worst enemy,
but again Jesus point here, is not to talk to us about divorce. Those are the exceptions, that's what the Pharisees are seeking, now back to the Pharisees for a moment, why are they, again I said this is a trap, why do they think this is a trap, well again there are two schools available, divorce only in extreme circumstances, divorce for anything and everything, the whole gamut, if Jesus answers in the latter let's say, he's taking the liberal view, the school of Hillel, if he does this he immediately alienates his base, who are largely conservative Jews, and also he gives the Pharisees a reason, because the Pharisees would have been, somewhat on the conservative side, so they would have been giving them ammunition, to say see this man, he's just another one of those crazy Hillelites, he's just going around, throwing the scriptures around in the trash, and he doesn't care about the word of God, he's not some Messiah after all, that's option one, that's the trap on the one side, but on the other side, what if Jesus says, no in fact marriage is holy to the Lord, and divorce should not occur, at least unless there's extreme and grave circumstances, well in that case, we find Jesus in danger, physical danger, why? Because there's already been someone in Mark's gospel, who's taken that position, it was John the Baptist his cousin, in the very same region, that Jesus is standing now in Perea, in the region of Herod Antipas, Herod you may remember, it's been a lot a little while, but Herod had divorced his own wife, and had married his brother Philip's wife, it was a scandalous affair, and yet according to the Hillelites, it was totally fine, John the Baptist preached against it, John the Baptist was willing to speak, to a head of state, about the sanctity of marriage, and how marriage is something, that you can't play around with, and that it was wrong for him to do this, not only as the king, and the appointed regent of that area, but also as a man who at least on paper, presumes to be a God-fearing Jew, of course he was not, so John the Baptist was thrown in prison, and because Herodias hated this man, John the Baptist, because he was willing to speak God's truth, to flagrant sinners, she with in a really disgusting affair, you can read about it earlier in Mark's Gospel, and a really disgusting affair ends up, having John executed, his head decapitated, and placed on a silver platter, Herod is completely complicit in this, so Jesus is on the one hand risking, becoming a liberal, and alienating his base, on the other hand he is risking, certain death from Herod, that's the trap, and the Pharisees think they have Jesus, but again he turns it around on them, by asking them this question, good rabbi by the way, kids why does a rabbi, always answer a question with a question? Why not? Right? Exactly, so he answers the question with a question, what did Moses command you, and as I said a moment ago, I do not believe he has Deuteronomy 24 in mind, Deuteronomy 24 was a restraint on sin, but Jesus is speaking about something else, that Moses wrote, earlier in Genesis chapters one and two, which we read earlier in our service, Jesus says is because of the hardness of your heart, that Moses wrote you this commandment, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female, this is the standard of marriage Church, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, now there's a lot of funny business going on, in our world today, about what marriage is and isn't, people are willing to call all kinds of things marriage, you some of you have felt this very painfully in your life, you have family members or friends, or co-workers or neighbors, who are in favor of or perhaps are involved in, what is called so-called homosexual marriage, or marriage between those, who have supposedly transitioned their genders, and Jesus is saying to us, look you don't need a proof text, to say transgenderism is wrong, homosexuality is wrong, now there actually are texts that speak to those matters, but Jesus says the first and foremost thing you need to do, and I just want to encourage you Church, the first thing you need to do is go back to the standard, go back to the basis, go back to what it means to be a man and a woman, created in the image of God, go back to Genesis, when our neighbors and our loved ones, who are engaged in immoral lifestyles, whether they be sexually immoral in a homosexual way, or in a heterosexual way, when they come to us and they say, on what basis does your Bible say, that my lifestyle is immoral, take them to Genesis, take them to what God created us to be, take them to the fact that we are made, beautifully in God's image, male and female, which would be a radical idea in the ancient world, where women were treated so poorly, male and female, he created us in his image, different, yet beautifully designed to be brought together, that's the standard, we should be unashamed of this, sometimes we get a little nervous, our throats go a little dry, when we are asked about these sorts of things, is homosexuality wrong, is it wrong to try to go from being male to female, and the Bible has no gray area here for us, God made us male and female, he made us good, and we in our sins seek to distort that, and Satan all along has been seeking to distort that, he's been seeking to disrupt marriage, because he hates marriage, because marriage is beautiful and good, because it's something that God created good, and Satan does everything he can in his power, to destroy what God has made good, the standard of marriage, Jesus brings us back to the garden, and though sin does affect marriage, it does not obliterate marriage, marriage is holy.
Rightly speaking, marriage is not a sacrament, there are two sacraments in the church, baptism and the Lord's Supper, that Jesus instituted for all his people to observe, and yet marriage is an institution, a divine institution, it's not just a recognition of the state, it is given by God, and that means that in this sense, it is set apart, whether the marriage between believer and believer, or unbeliever and unbeliever, marriage is a picture of something, but more on that in a moment, the standard of marriage, Jesus points us back to the standard of marriage, marriage that is good, and for our good, more than that, we need to consider the purpose of marriage, as Jesus says, a man shall leave, he quotes again Genesis chapter two, which he read, a man shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, this is a mysterious thing, it refers to more than the sexual union, between the husband and the wife, but not less than, which is why having that kind of a union, outside of marriage, outside of true godly male and female marriage, is such an abomination before the Lord, because it perverts something that God created good, to describe a kind of mystical union, between the man and the woman, again we need to, you know there's areas, where we don't want to go into too much detail here, but it's a beautiful thing, it's a wonderful thing, it's sometimes a hard thing for us, to talk about and to even engage in, and you know when children, or it's funny, it's children result from it, and children also hinder it at times, but it's something that we need to hold in honor, but it means more than just the physical union, between man and woman, it means something much deeper too, kind of union, the purpose of marriage, God gives us marriage, to really draw the man and the woman, so closely together, that rightly speaking, in fact as first Corinthians tells us, first Corinthians chapter seven again, the husband's body doesn't belong to him, neither does the wife's body belong to her, but a husband's body belongs to his wife, and so the wife's to her husband, and that's a weird way to talk about marriage, that's how the Bible talks about it, that's how God talks about marriage, that you so are in union with your spouse, that you love them and care for them, and seek their good over your own, the purpose of marriage, he gives us marriage as a way of restraining our sin, that's certainly true, it tells us again in first Corinthians, that it is better to be married, than to burn with passion, so young guys especially, but all of us if we feel like, we have not been given the gift of singleness, that Paul had been given for ministry, then we should seek marriage, and pray for it to that end, a patiently waiting for it, but marriage is good more than just, for the gratification of physical desire, it includes also within it, this amazing ability to bring forth more images of God, I don't think we consider this principle of marriage, often enough this purpose of marriage, that God has given us marriage, for what the Westminster Confession calls, the propagation of a holy seed, again as a Christian man and a Christian woman, come together in marriage, and they bring forth children in that marriage, that is once again an ability for us, to beget and to birth the images of God, to bring glory to God, you could raise these children, in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and that's such a joyful thing, again it is a painful thing, and sin also touches their children, you have some sorrows in your heart church, regarding some of your children, and yet the great sorrows that we experience in our life, because of sin do not negate the purpose, for which God instituted marriage, that he would have many images, many little images running around glorifying him, and enjoying him forever, marriage is for the propagation of children, again it does not mean, that those who are unable to have children, or any less married, but it does mean that it's something, that we should all long for, something that we should desire, and even as Jesus tells us in the church, we find that we who are denied, our husband or wife or our children, or our parents in this life, find in the church more, more children, more parents, more brothers and sisters in Christ, than we would ever have naturally, God loves the family, he instituted the family, and though we may try to destroy the family, by our own sin, God will not be mocked, Jesus says from the beginning, this was not so, divorce was not so, sexual infidelity was not so, God made man and woman, to enjoy a life together, till death do them part, the purpose for which he ordained this, ultimately leads us to the picture, the picture of marriage, there's a reason why Jesus says, what therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder, or let not man separate, it's true that marriage itself, as an institution is a God, is a God given institution, God has joined the man and the woman together, and even in the case where, you find yourself married to an unbeliever, that's still a marriage union, that you are in and are committed to, until that spouse so disrupts that relationship, that you have no other alternative, but I don't think that Jesus is, just having in view here, the physical marriage, or the human existence and institution of marriage, but he has also here in view, what marriage in a way signified, what it always pointed to, why it was given ultimately in the first place, you know God didn't need to create, us male and female, he didn't need to create, the institution of marriage, but he did it, and beautifully as we read just a moment ago, in the book of Ephesians chapter five, he did it because marriage ultimately, is pointing us to something, a union far deeper, even than the union we enjoy, with our spouse in this earth, some of you have been separated by death from your spouse, and yet there is a union, that your marriage points you to, that is even deeper than this, and that will never be put asunder, the union that is between Christ and his church, I think the reason why Jesus is, is so aghast at the Pharisees, and their desire to find loopholes for divorce, is because he understands more than anyone, what this union points us to, it points us to the union of God and man, it points us to the fellowship and the communion, of God the son who took flesh for our sake, and who died so that we might live, Ephesians five tells us husbands, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church, as we just saying the church is one foundation, from heaven he came and sought her, would that we as husbands, loved our wives in such a way, as Christ loved the church, he put none of his prerogatives ahead, but he sought the good of his bride, of us, we are his bride, men you included, we are his bride, women you have to be the sons of God, so we both have to suffer through that, but no it's a beautiful picture, in the one hand we're called the sons of God, adopted into his family, on the other hand the Bible uses the image of marriage, not because marriage is a convenient metaphor, but because marriage was designed to point us, to this reality that Jesus is coming to make us his bride, it's wonderful you read in Malachi chapter three, I won't turn you there for the sake of time, but in Malachi chapter three, you find another time in Israel's history, where they had so poorly treated the institution of marriage, and God says don't you understand, don't you understand what this union means, you're putting away the wife of your youth, and yet I've not put away mine, you look to the prophecy of Hosea, those of you who are familiar with the minor prophets, you read Hosea and Hosea is called to take a wife, who's going to be unfaithful to him, why as a picture of what God is going to do for us, that's why I said divorce may result from sexual morality, but it does not have to, there are situations where that is called for, and again to seek that in the wisdom, and walking with the church, and with your spiritual leaders, and that is certainly necessary, but God did not divorce his unfaithful wife, God did not put asunder his union with a bride, who sought every other kind of lover, the idols of the world, the idols of our hearts, so often we have been that faithless bride, and yet from heaven he came and sought her, from heaven he came down, and gave himself up for her that he might, what does Ephesians tell us, sanctify her, husbands do you seek to sanctify your wife, I don't mean lecture her, I mean are you seeking her personal holiness, which means sometimes allowing her that time to meet with God while you care for the kids, and wash the dishes, do you seek to sanctify your wife, do you pray for her holiness, wives you have an obligation to your husbands as well, but as husbands especially, my prayer in our men's breakfast, is we read this how to lead your family book, again Pastor Joel Beek, he's not going to say anything new, he's going to say this is a picture of Christ in his church, husbands love your wives like Christ loves you, give yourself up for her, serve her, do not domineer over her, but love her, treasure her, lead her well, it's incredible, and we as Christians need to be absolutely awestruck, at the love that Christ would have for us as a church, that he would so subject himself to humility, that we would be sanctified, he doesn't need us, he doesn't need us but he wants us, he wants us, and he loves us, so he says anyone who's flippantly divorcing his wife, and marries another he's adulterous, he's taking the very picture of what I'm doing for him, and he is throwing it away, so also a wife who flippantly divorces her husband.
Jesus doesn't give us all the exceptions in this passage, because he doesn't want us to focus on those exceptions, he wants us to see the rule, and beyond the rule the portrait, the portrait of a God who loves us so much, that he willingly gives himself up for us all, that we might be holy, that we might be blessed, that we might enjoy union, greater than any physical union or emotional union, that you can enjoy with a spouse, a union with Christ, a union with God.
Marriage is a beautiful thing, it's a very difficult thing, you know that, difficult for different marriages, different couples are given different challenges, different adversities, some providentially, I mean not everything in God's providence, but some do through disaster, and external circumstances, some through sin, and yet God gives us grace for marriage, God will never call you, you who are married here today, God will never call you into something, that he will not equip you, to obey him in, and so seek his grace, if you're finding marriage difficult right now, seek his grace today, use those means of grace, I'm sorry Sarah and Alex, you happen to be the example today, because you're joining a membership, but you're a beautiful example, as they came into membership here in this church, this is a husband and a wife who love each other, and who care for each other, and who are instructed before you all this morning, to diligently use the means of grace to that end, the word of God, the sacraments and prayer, you take the Lord's supper together, you husbands and wives, you pray together, you read the scriptures together, again your devotional life may look different at times, but you're talking with one another, you're encouraging each other in your faith, husbands you have a special burden, as those who are leading in this family, to make sure that that is happening in your home, you're using those means of grace, and certainly coming in the Lord's day, those of you who are single here this morning, those of you who are, where marriage may be impending, or you may be seeking marriage, or perhaps maybe more sadly, marriage is in the past for you, whether through divorce or through death, understand that this is a word of Christ for you as well, love marriage, treasure it, pray for the marriages in this church, those of you who may still be married, seek that marriage in holiness, understanding that that's something again, that Christ has given us, and we are to do what God has given us, we are to pursue that according to God's pre-script for us, that we will never be blessed, if we seek the blessing of marriage in a sinful way, but treasure marriage more than that, not just for yourself, treasure marriage in your church, the marriages in your church, pray for the marriages in your church, that they would ultimately be a witness to the world of what Christ has been to us, those of us who have marriage behind us, this is your duty as well, as you pray for those who are married, pray that God would be so glorified in the marriages of this church, that the world would look in and they may mock us, they may laugh at us, they may call us bigoted, but they cannot say that we do not present the beauty of Christ in our marriages, yes, we are frail and we fail, but God gives us grace, and still more for all of us, whether you are married, divorced, single, whatever the case may be, bereft, understand that marriage is not ultimate, marriage is not ultimate, do not place a burden on your spouse, that he or she cannot gratify or desire.
Your marriage in this earth is only for a time, as precious as it is to the Lord, as holy as it is to the Lord, as much of an abomination as it is to sin in that marriage covenant, yet it is only for a time, but it points you to something that has no end of time, a union that knows no bounds, a union that will persist forever and ever, and will gratify you more than any earthly marriage ever could, the union you have in God, in Christ, what a beautiful thing, what a beautiful thing that though we cannot all enjoy our marriages here on earth, we have that marriage in heaven, forever, forever, death will not take it away, there is no divorce there, there is no disappointment, for the former things will pass away, but we will be invited to that marriage supper, and we will be that beautiful, spotless bride, basking in the glow of our glorious and heavenly groom, may he come soon, indeed, may he come soon, amen.
