Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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 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.”