The Foundation of Marriage

As we come to Matthew 19, We find Jesus beginning his ultimate journey from Galilee, where the majority of his life and ministry took place, down to Jerusalem

Now, this isn’t the only Time Jesus went there - John’s Gospel records that He went there often for the feasts of Israel. But this would be his last time. We see that he travelled, by means of a road on the east side of the Jordan River, which was a common route.

Jesus is fulfilling his prediction in Matthew 16 that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, and be killed, and then rise again.

The previous chapter, then, would be Jesus last public ministry to Galilee. The rest of the book leads to the climax of Jesus crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.

As you look at the passage today, and if you’ve been here for at least a year, you might be thinking, “boy, Pastor Aaron really has an axe to grind. Two passages dealing with divorce in a year’s time!”

I assure you that I do not have an axe to grind. I hope that I haven’t been known to preach on any hobbyhorses over the last couple years.

And I’ll be honest, that Matthew has two passages dealing with divorce was not a selling point to me when I decided to choose this book. I even joked with Matt a couple days ago, telling Him that I was going to call an audible and ask him to preach on this passage for me!

So I will tell you that I do not get some kind of strange joy out of speaking on subjects like this, but as they arrive in the text, we find that there is importance in the matter.

When we were in the sermon on the mount, we covered the basic and essential elements of Jesus’ teaching on Divorce in Matthew 5:31-32.

In this passage, which is just a greater and more drawn-out dealing with the subject, everything points to the fact that Jesus held the sanctity and importance of the marriage covenant in high regard. Really, in the highest regard.

When the pharisees came to him asking this question, they were really asking in order to trip him up.

We talked, in our dealing with Matthew 5 about the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel.

Shammai, the more conservative rabbi who came down with a teaching on divorce, claimed that the law of Moses allowed only for divorce in the case of fornication. While Hillel, the more loose interpreter, interpreted the passage in Deuteronomy 24 as meaning that a man could divorce his wife for any reason at all. Even if she just burned his dinner!

That was the tension of the day! The question at hand was, is Jesus on the side of Shammai, the conservatice side, or is he on the side of Hillel, the liberal side?

If he sided with Shammai, he would certainly make enemies with many men who had taken Hillel’s teaching as a reason to divorce their wife at will.

If he sided with Hillel, he would certainly alienate those who held the more conservative view!

And to top it off, there is almost certainly an element where these Pharisees were hoping that they could use Jesus’ popularity to bolster their own view! As in, if we can get Jesus to take a side, we can use that as an argument for or against that position.

These men came to Jesus with the idea of divorce, really, the privilege of divorce for a Jewish man, as a given. As an granted reality. And it really was just that. In Jewish order and law, it was the man’s prerogative to give a letter of divorce. Even if a woman could petition the court that there should be a divorce, it was still a man’s responsibility to give the letter of divorce with the words included, “she is free to marry any man.”

Interestingly enough, when asked this “gotcha” question in a “gotcha” scenario, where any answer is sure to step on toes, Jesus went back further than Shammai and Hillel, He even went back further than Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 24. He went back to the foundation of marriage itself.

And that is what I want to do also. I want to take Jesus lead and focus in not on the key arguments for or against divorce, but rather highlighting and making the focus God’s design in all of this.

I want to encourage you today, also, as you come to this passage. Do not come to this passage hoping to prove or confirm your position on divorce and remarriage.

There are many opinions, many interpretations, of the exact reasons and allowances for divorce and remarriage. We will cover those briefly, but that is really not the point of this passage.

Jesus intention in this conversation was not to give an answer to the Pharisees’ question, but to point out to them that they were looking at it all wrong.

And often, we are looking at it all wrong. We become like the pharisees in this, and start to argue over divorce, when we really should be united in fighting for the sanctity of marriage.

Now, we know that the divorce rate is staggering.

But it is actually at a 50 year low. And at first glance, that might seem like a win. But there is more to it than that.

Consider that just in the last 30 years in our country alone, that the number of marriages per year has gone from 2.4 million to 1.6 Million.

That is a staggering decline, especially when we take into consideration the fact that the population in the united states, in that same time frame, has gone from 248,000,000 to 335,000,000.

So there are no fewer people to be married, and certainly there are no fewer couples who engage in romantic and sexual relationship. So why the decline?

We see a failure to look at love and relationship through God’s eyes. A failure to take seriously the idea of covenant, of promise, of commitment.

The foundation of marriage, which is really the foundation of society in general, is being ignored and downplayed. Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees in that regard is helpful for us also.

Hard decisions come because of human brokenness and hardness of heart, but we must look at marriage the way God intended it.

1. The Foundation for Marriage

We read that when Jesus answered this question, he went straight back to Genesis.

He asks them, “Have you not read?” Now of course, they had read it! There was no question whether or not they knew the words of the first paragraphs in Genesis. Jesus wasn’t doubting their reading, but he was showing them their emphasis was wrong.

Rather than looking at Marriage from the lens of “when is divorce permissible,” he showed them to look at the question of divorce through the lens of God’s design for marriage.

Genesis 2:18–25 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

There is an valuable and critical way the text unfolds here, because there is an acknowledgement, for the first time in Creation story, that something is “not good.” It was “not good” that man should be alone.

So there was a creation - a rib was taken from Adam, we don’t know exactly what that process entailed, but we know it was a special creation of the same kind - two from one.

And as soon as we see two from one, how God made man and women for each other, from the same stuff, so to speak, the drama of the story comes to a close with the words on the union.

Two from one, then one from two.

That is the institution of marriage. And Jesus’ words here, quoting this passage, confirms that.

And he adds those famous words, that are quoted in almost every Christian marriage ceremony, “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”

But the foundation really goes back even further, to Genesis 1.

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 2 gives the detail, but Genesis 1 gives a great overview and the purpose for God’s creation of mankind.

Mankind, male and female, are created in God’s image.

They are created for a purpose, to be fruitful, and multiply, to fill the earth, and to have dominion over it.

It is part of the creation blessing and creation mandate that the purpose of our existence includes these things! Fruitfulness, filling, and dominion.

And it is no secret or shock, that the way God designed and intended that filing and multiplication would take place through the union of one man and one woman.

Male and female, created in God’s image.

There is something incomplete - something lacking with just a man. Adam, alone, was “not good.” But Adam with Eve was “very good.”

There is something of the very image of God that is unique in relationship, and maybe most unique in the fulness and blessing of marriage.

There is an instrumental vitality of this God-designed institution of marriage for the flourishing of creation.

There is, of course, the expected propagation of children and reproduction - the multiplying,

but there is a fulness in the relationship. In the oneness. In the unity.

“Leave and become one-flesh.”

That one-flesh union is physical, and it is expressed physically, but just as there is physical and spiritual in our life, so there is physical and spiritual reality in marriage, so that we can truly say, when a man and woman come together in this Godly union, there is a real sense in which God has done something. Hence the words of Jesus, what God has joined together.

And so for that covenant, that union, to be broken, is no small thing. It is no light thing. It is breaking not just a physical bond or a legal relationship, but a holy covenant and unity that goes beyond the mere visible world.

Did the pharisees know this? Im sure they did.

Did they forget it? Probably not in the truest sense, but in their motive to test Jesus, to look at Marriage from the perspective of Divorce, they had neglected the true weight and glory of that relationship.

Now, do we know these things? Of course we do. There is a real sense in which, when I repeat this information, I’m carrying coals to Newcastle - I’m preaching to the choir.

But it is critical that we uphold, in our thinking, in our churches, in our discipleship of young people and young couples, this sanctity and wonder of marriage.

2. When that Foundation is Broken

Now, that is God’s design - that is His revealed will. It is never God’s design or desire that a married couple should be divorced. There is never a divorce in which God says “this is good” or “this is what I wanted.”

And Jesus emphasizes that - when asked “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason” Jesus answer was essentially, “no, God intended marriage to be permanent!”

By no means is an emphasis on the importance and covenant bond of marriage meant to shame those who have had to go through divorce. It is not meant to place such individuals in a lower class of the Kingdom of God. Actually, what the Pharisees were doing was what causes that.

When we make the argument all about grounds and reason for divorce, we make divorce the focus. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now, Divorce is not the unpardonable sin. In fact, in many cases, divorce itself is not a sinful act - it is simply a recognition of a host of sinful actions or a pattern of sinfulness that caused that fundamental foundation of marriage to be broken.

Now, one reason why I think that Jesus didn’t intend to give a full treatment on every instance that might allow for divorce, is that Paul in 1 Corinthians adds another one.

1 Corinthians 7:12–15 ESV

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

So sexual sin is not the only cause for divorce. This case, which has come to be termed as abandonment, is another clear case where the covenant is broken.

So there are reasons for divorce, there are grounds for divorce, but just because there are grounds does not mean that we enter marriage or view marriage through that lens. We cannot enter marriage saying, “well I always have the out of divorce if things don’t work out!”

The followup question, of course, was “why did Moses give a command for divorce?” We won’t spend as much time on that passage in Deuteronomy as we did last time around, but suffice it to say, Moses did not give a positive command that divorce must take place.

Matthew 19:7–9 ESV

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Moses did not give a command for divorce. He gave a concession, for when a marriage was already broken by unchastity, that a man should make the divorce official as to free and protect both parties.

But Jesus acknowledges, even here, that sometimes, even though marriage is to be an unbreakable bond, the bond is broken.

Specifically, here, the bond is broken by sexual sin - fornication. Now, there is debate in Christian circles over just what Jesus meant by that. In other words, what kind of sexual sin allows for divorce?

But even when we venture into those debates, we begin again to do what the Pharisees were doing.

And we quickly take sides, either taking a rigid and callous view of divorce, or we take a loose and casual view of it.

Those who view it so rigidly are often guilty of seeing divorced Christians as second-rate, second-class, rather than recognizing that some great evil has taken place, and though God’s design and will is not for divorce, that covenant was broken.

Those who view it as casual and loose, though, can be guilty of celebrating divorce, or running to it quickly. You might hear someone say, “I dumped that guy/girl like the sack of rocks they were.’

No, even if the divorce was necessary, there should still be a mourning - because God’s design was thwarted by human sinfulness.

Notice Jesus’ words - “because of the hardness of your hearts...”

That is, when it comes down to it, the cause for divorce.

Whether the stated cause was adultery, abandonment, or any other sinful reason, someone’s heart was hard.

Now, maybe there are cases where both hearts were hard, and someone should have pushed for the marriage to be preserved - I have no doubt that is often true.

But hardness of heart often leads to, and even necessitates divorce.

We often quote Malachi 2:16 where the Lord says, “I hate divorce.” And that is true.

And some of you, who have unfortunately been through divorce, would probably say the same thing - “I hate divorce!” Because you hate everything that led to it. And I think that is the heart behind what God says, too. Not that he hates divorce so it never must take place - but that he hates it because of what leads to it. Why do I think that?

Jeremiah 3:6–8 (ESV)

The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.

Yes, God hates divorce - and you know why? Because in a very symbolic and poetic, yet real way, God had to give his own people - Israel - a certificate of divorce.

He recognized that in their adultery - their idolatry and wandering - that they didn’t want to be in the covenant anymore.

So God doesn’t call for or push for divorce, but He recognizes that it does take place sometimes.

We should have the same view.

We should hate it, because ti breaks our hearts, because it is the last step in a broken covenant.

We should hate it because, after every attempt has been made to reconcile, the marriage failed.

We should hate it, not because of stigma or shame from our brothers and sisters, but we should hate it because God’s design has been thwarted. And if it becomes necessary, and a divorce must happen, our heart is not rejoicing, but brokenness.

3. Hope

Now, the next question always is, “what about remarriage?”

Well, we should start by understanding that the letter of divorce in the Old Testament assumed that remarriage would take place. In fact, that was the purpose of it. it was to free the divorced wife from the former husband so she could be married again.

Should remarriage take place after every divorce? Probably not.

Are there debates over when it can take place? Yes, there are!

Now, If you’re looking for me to give a final pronouncement on that subject, You will be disappointed because I will not do that. This has been debated since the words were spoken here, and certainly throughout the whole history of God’s people.

Good people, in good faith, come down on different sides of this argument.

You won’t find an official statement in our church documents that cover every instance of divorce, and whether remarriage is allowed in that case - because you won’t find that in scripture either.

Every instance is taken in a case-by-case scenario. For every broken marriage, there is a unique trail of hardness and brokenness and sinfulness that led to it. As some have said, it takes the Wisdom of Solomon to apply the Bible’s teaching on this to real life. And if you see it as simple, you probably are looking at it too simplistically.

There are many tragic and horrible things that the Bible simply does not touch on when it comes to brokenness in marriage. What about abuse? What about serial lying? What about theft? What about mistreatment of children?

There are many cases which at least require a separation. For the safety of a spouse or child. And there are many cases which require what we looked at last week - the call of the whole church for a sinful spouse to repent, or for the church to recognize that they no longer can be called a follower of Jesus.

But there is hope. There is hope in restoration. By God’s grace, many marriages which have been broken by unfaithfulness and desertion have come back together, and thrive now.

In the same way, many people who have faced broken marriage and divorce go on to live lives of fulness, whether they find peace in the Lord to remarry, or whether they go on as single.

Matthew 19:10–12 ESV

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

After hearing all that discussion, many of you might be thinking the same words that the disciples said - if the marriage covenant is that hard, then it would be better to remain single!

And some who are married and have been for years would agree, many days it is easier to be single!

And some are called to that. Some are given that.

There are some, who are given the grace and strength to be in a faithful enduring marriage, to bear through the worst situations in love and perseverance and see real victory and fulness.

But there are some, whether for natural, physical, emotional, or spiritual reasons, who are called to never be married.

Some are single, for the sake of the kingdom.

Some, who are divorced and do not remarry, remain single -and if you do so, do it for the sake of the Kingdom. If the Lord calls you to that, then do it faithfully. Not begrudgingly or angrily.

Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it.

If you’re married, fight for your marriage and pray that your spouse would fight too.

If you’re fighting but your spouse has seemingly given up, then recognize that it was not God’s desire, and it is ok to mourn that.

If you’re divorced and remarried, now is not the time to wonder whether you should have done that - fight for this marriage until the day you die.

If you’re single, and God calls you to remain such, then live it out for the sake of the Kingdom. And whatever state you are in, do it all for the glory of God.