MATTHEW 5:31-32 - God Hates Divorce

Introduction

Every once in a while I get into a discussion with folks who are interested in understanding the differences between different Bible translations—which translation is the best, why does this translation include certain verses that this one doesn’t, why do different Bibles translate the same verse so differently, and so on. (The quick answer to “which translation is the best one”—that I shamelessly stole from John Piper—is that “The best Bible translation is the one that you will read every day!”)

Here at Bethel, we have made the decision that the Bible translation that we use in teaching and in preaching—the Bible that we have in the pews that we read from as part of our worship—is the English Standard Version. And part of the reason that we use this version is that it is in most cases very close to an accurate, word-for-word translation from the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts, while still retaining a readable and easily-understood sentence structure.

That doesn’t mean that it is perfect—our conviction is that only the original manuscripts actually written by the apostles and prophets themselves were perfect. What we have (and I believe we have it overwhelmingly and convincingly) is remarkably reliable copies of those original manuscripts represented in the Bible(s) we have today.

But at the same time, every Bible translation has a particular philosophy of translation—why they choose the particular words to translate out of the original languages, when they choose a word-for-word translation and when they choose to give a so-called “dynamic equivalent” translation.

And so that is why it is so important for pastors and Bible teachers particularly to have an understanding of the original languages in which the Bible was written—because sometimes a particular Bible version might make a different choice in translation than another, and it’s good to be able to get down “under the hood”, as it were, to see what the original languages looked like in a particular verse. (Most Bibles on the market today will include generous footnotes that will help inform you about the differences between different manuscripts, word choices, and so on.)

Now the reason that I’m starting off this morning with a rundown of Bible translation issues is because the subject of Our Lord’s sermon in Matthew 5:31-32 gives us an illustration of the way different translation philosophies play out in verses that address the subject of divorce.

In Malachi 2, the prophet is addressing the faithlessness and disobedience of the inhabitants of Israel who had returned from exile in Babylon. As Malachi warns the people about their contempt for the covenant of marriage:

Malachi 2:13–14 (ESV)

13 And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. 14 But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

The King James version translates Malachi 2:16 by saying:

Malachi 2:16 (KJV 1900)

16 For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts: Therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

The American Standard Version translates it

Malachi 2:16 (ASV)

16 For I hate putting away, saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, and him that covereth his garment with violence, saith Jehovah of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

The Legacy Standard Bible (the latest successor to the American Standard Version) says

Malachi 2:16 (LSB)

16 “For I hate divorce,” says Yahweh, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with wrong,” says Yahweh of hosts. “Be careful then to keep your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”

God hates “putting away” one’s wife—God hates divorce. But Malachi 2:16 in the ESV says

Malachi 2:16 (ESV)

16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Now, I am sure that the translators of the ESV are good and godly scholars who have done their best to ensure that they have provided the best translation possible of the original languages at this point. But since this translation was published in 2001, it is impossible to escape the suspicion that there was maybe a little squeamishness about the marketability of a Bible that speaks so harshly of a proceeding that nearly fifty percent of Americans have gone through.

(Now, having said that, I am still content for us to use the ESV for our worship and preaching—with the caveat that we understand that there are no perfect Bible translations, and the onus is always on the preacher or teacher to understand the issues surrounding Bible translations.)

But it is certainly an understandable nervousness to have in our day and age, isn’t it? To say so directly “God hates divorce” feels as though it might be a harsh thing to say to someone who has gone through a divorce. And we do not want to be unnecessarily harsh or unloving to anyone who has suffered in this way—but let God’s Word be true and every man a liar. We cannot whisper where the Word of God shouts, we cannot mumble where it roars. And coming across an angular, sharp-edged verse that cuts across our modern sensibilities is precisely the wrong time to say, “Well, we need to do a Hebrew word study to try to sand down those rough edges!”

Here is what I am convinced of, as we look at these verses in Matthew today—first off, every single person in this room has been affected personally by divorce. Either your own, or a family member’s, or someone close enough to you that you felt it when it happened. And so we can’t afford to skim past what God says about divorce just because it is difficult to talk about.

And the second thing I am convinced of—and why I have no problem affirming Malachi 2:16 that says God hates divorce—is because nobody hates divorce like someone who has gone through one. And so when God says, “I hate divorce”, they look to Heaven and say to God, “Yeah… me too.”

And so, beloved, we need to hear what our Savior tells us about divorce. And not just about divorce, but the nature of marriage itself, and what it means when a marriage comes to and end and why. We need to hear from Jesus, because the world around us has plenty of opinions about what marriage is, what divorce is, and how we ought to think about it. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is declaring what life in His Kingdom looks like—life that is founded on a whole new way of being human through the Gospel. And what I want us to see as we look at these Scriptures this morning is that

The New Birth offers a REFUGE and a RESTORATION from the TRAGEDY of divorce

We will be spending most of our time this morning between three texts in the New Testament that record Our Savior’s teachings on divorce—here in Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:3-10, and 1 Corinthians 7:8-16.

Matthew 5:31-32 represents the third “disputation” that Jesus lays out against the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees—see again the “you have heard it said… But I say to you...” pattern:

Matthew 5:31–32 (ESV)

31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

We have more context for Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19—the Pharisees

Matthew 19:3 (ESV)

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

There is an interesting dynamic at work here—in many cases, the Pharisees were known for being more scrupulous in their observance of the Law—counting out their cumin seeds to make sure they were giving exactly ten percent, for instance—but here, regarding divorce, they had basically thrown the gates wide open: “We can divorce our wives for any cause, right??” Funny how legalism and works-righteousness always seems to allow our flesh to still get to do what it wants, right? We can’t murder our neighbor, but we can murder him in our hearts… We can’t sleep with our neighbor’s spouse, but we can wish that we were...

In answering the Pharisees in Matthew 19, Jesus goes back to what was written about marriage:

Matthew 19:4 (ESV)

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

And so, in order to understand Jesus’ teaching in our text in Matthew 5, we need to start with

I. "It Is Written...” What the SCRIPTURES say (Deut. 24:1-4)

Turn with me to the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 24 (page 165-166 in the pew Bible). Here we find the core of the Scripture’s teaching on divorce in the Old Testament. Moses writes:

Deuteronomy 24:1–4 (ESV)

1 “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, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 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, 4 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.

The first thing that we find here is that Jesus’ teaching on divorce is perfectly aligned with Moses—the Hebrew word translated “indecency” here in Deuteronomy 24:1 is literally “nakedness”—it’s the same word used to describe Ham seeing his father’s “nakedness” in Genesis 9. So the idea here is the same: Divorce is permissible for sexual impropriety—excluding adultery. Adultery did not end in divorce in Moses’ Law—adultery ended in death:

Leviticus 20:10 (ESV)

10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

But other forms of sexual indecency meant that a marriage could be brought to an end by divorce.

There are at least two ways in which Moses’ Law regulated and restrained divorce. First, the Law

Regulated divorce by PROTECTING the PARTIES involved

A man could not just kick his wife out of his house according to the Law—he had to prove his case as to why the marriage covenant was broken. This is the significance of “writing a certificate of divorce” in verse 1. We learn elsewhere in the Law that any certification such as that had to be ratified by two or three witnesses—there was no room for malicious rumors or unfounded accusations (which spring up around failing marriages like daisies in the springtime…) Moses’ Law saw to it that a woman who had been sent away by her husband (or the husband who had sent her away) would not be subjected to gossip, rumor or malice—the end of that marriage was a matter of public record.

Moses’ Law regulated the practice of divorce by protecting the parties involved. And secondly, we see that the Law

Restrained divorce by EMPHASIZING the GRAVITY of the act

Once a divorce was finalized by the certificate of divorce, there was no going back. A woman could not go back to her former husband, and he could not take her back again. If a woman went and re-married after being divorced and her second husband also divorced her, she could not go back again to her first husband:

Deuteronomy 24:4 (ESV)

4 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.

Moses made it clear that divorce was final—it was not to be done lightly or for trivial reasons. It was not a mere formality, it was not meant to be just a quick legal proceeding.

But by Jesus’ day, the Pharisees and scribes had made it just that. When Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, the essential formula of a divorce decree did not have to include actual charges of impropriety, it did not have to specify wrongdoing of any sort. According to the Mishnah, It was a piece of parchment or papyrus (or whatever) inscribed with the words “Lo, thou art free to marry any man.” (Mishnah, Gittin 9.3, Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 1830). Crossway Bibles.). That was it. No muss, no fuss, First Century “no-fault divorce”.

And that was what Jesus was preaching against in the Sermon on the Mount. We have seen what the Scripture says, and now we turn our attention to Jesus’ disputation with the Pharisees and scribes, when He says in Matthew 5:31

II. "You have heard it said...” What the WORLD says (Matthew 19:1-10)

Turn with me to Matthew 19 - page 824 in the pew Bible. This is the further context of what Jesus says about divorce in Matthew 5—In Matthew 19:3, the Pharisees confront Jesus with their interpretation of Moses’ Law—see if you can spot the difference between what the Law says and what they said:

Matthew 19:3 (ESV)

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

Moses said there was a specific issue—indecency, sexual impropriety—that rendered divorce permissible under the Law. But (as we have just noted), by Jesus’ day the Pharisees said that it didn’t matter what the reason was for a divorce, as long as the certificate was in order—in Matthew 19:7 they said that Moses “commanded” that they issue a certificate of divorce. As long as the paperwork was done, that was all that mattered. In the same way today, the world around us looks at divorce in such a way as to

Emphasize the LEGALITY of divorce over its MORALITY (vv. 3, 7)

This is almost always the main concern over divorces that take place today, isn’t it? The legal process; how assets are divided, who gets the kids on which days, how much child support is paid in which direction, and so on. Divorce is considered a purely legal issue—as long as the divorcing couple’s lawyers sign off, everything is fine.

But God has ordained marriage not simply as a contract; it is a covenant. A contract can be made or broken by the parties involved with no moral issue or consequence. Say we contract with Rich Bowser to replace the drop ceiling here in the sanctuary—we shake hands, agree on the price and everything, and we’re good to go. Then a week later, the church burns down and we don’t need the ceiling fixed anymore, and a day after that Rich calls and says he can’t fix the ceiling because he fell off a ladder and broke his leg. There is no problem whatsoever with Rich and the church both agreeing to tear up the contract to repair the ceiling. It’s a contract, and if both parties don’t want to go through with it, it just cancels out.

But a marriage is not a contract. A husband and wife who get married and never have kids and keep their property pretty much separated, and one night sitting watching TV they get into a discussion and discover that they really have “fallen out of love” and don’t want to be married anymore—they can’t simply dissolve that bond. It is not a mere contract that they have both agreed upon, it is a covenant that they have both sworn an oath to God to protect. The world around us wants to insist that a marriage is merely a contract that can be voided if both parties decide to. But Jesus says that you cannot simply “decide” to cancel a marriage covenant.

The world wants to emphasize the legality of divorce over its morality—as Jesus is responding to the Pharisees about their low view of marriage, He in fact points back not to Moses to emphasize the significance of marriage—He goes back to the Creation order itself:

Matthew 19:4–6 (ESV)

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus makes it clear that marriage does not rest on some legal arrangement made between two individuals relating simply to each other—marriage represents something absolutely fundamental about the way God made the world. And as such, Jesus says, ending a marriage is like tearing a person in half:

Matthew 19:6 (ESV)

6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Divorce is inherently destructive to God’s creation—it is a fundamental dismantling of what God has built. But the Pharisees (and our own day and age) want to

Minimize the DESTRUCTIVENESS of divorce for the sake of AUTONOMY (vv. 4-6)

“Oh, I was just being suffocated in that relationship, it’s for the best...”

“We’re actually able to get along as friends, we just can’t be married...”

“Oh, kids are resilient—they’ll adjust...”

“Hey, look at it this way—you get two Christmases, now!”

In responding to the Pharisees’ practice of divorcing by simply handing a spouse a piece of paper saying “Lo, thou art free to marry any man...” Jesus is emphasizing that every divorce is an assault on the created order ordained by God. There is no such thing as a “painless” divorce, no such thing as a “non-destructive” divorce. It is always a destruction on the order of Creation.

And this is the case when it is a frivolous divorce because one spouse “fell out of love” with another, or whether it is a case of a divorce from a spouse who has repeatedly and flagrantly broken that marriage covenant with sexual impropriety.

Jesus countered the Pharisees’ attempts to minimize the destructiveness of divorce by reminding them that this is not just a contact, it is a covenant that goes back to the very Creation of the world. (And He does so with one of my favorite phrases He uses— “Have you not read…?” - “Guys, have you even read the Bible??”)

It is instructive to note that the disciples understood what Jesus was driving at when He appealed to the Creation order itself to emphasize the importance of marriage:

Matthew 19:10 (ESV)

10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

“Lord, if marriage is that consequential, if ending a marriage really is tantamount to undoing the work of God in creation; if the commandment of God is that marriage is to be preserved in every circumstance save sexual immorality, then who could possibly keep a marriage that perfectly?” Jesus’ answer in verses 11-12 is deeper than we can unpack at this point, but when He answers “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given...” “Let the one who is able to receive this receive it”, at least part of what He is saying is that marriage is impossible to honor rightly apart from God’s gift of enabling grace. The New Birth offers both a refuge from and a restoration for the tragic, Creation-rending nightmare of divorce.

We have seen what the Law of Moses said about divorce, we have seen how the Pharisees (and our own contemporaries) have minimized and discounted marriage. But now it is time to hear our Savior:

III. "But I say unto you...” What JESUS says

Against the religious leaders of His day (and the secular voices of our day), Jesus declares—with all the authority of the reigning King of heaven and earth and everything that fills them—that marriage is far more important than we give it credit for. The world around us may joke about marriage and be utterly comfortable with the destructiveness of divorce, but Jesus is deadly earnest about this bond. Jesus says, in fact, that this bond is not broken merely because you don’t want it anymore—and if you move on to another marriage with this bond still intact, you are necessarily putting yourself (or your spouse, or both) in an adulterous position:

Matthew 5:32 (ESV)

32 But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

The only way this marriage bond is broken is when one partner or the other breaks it by sexual immorality—the Greek word is porneia--adultery, compulsive porn addiction, incest, sexual abuse, or other wicked and evil sexual perversions that destroy someone physically or spiritually.

In this dark and twisted world there are times when a divorce will literally and actually save a person’s life. But that doesn’t mean that even that divorce isn’t destructive to God’s created order. When Aron Ralston had to amputate his own hand, he did it to save his life—but that didn’t make him a fan of amputation! Even though it kept him alive, it was a horrible experience that he would never want to go through again. Divorce is always destructive—even when it saves your life.

And Jesus says that for those who have been victims of that kind of darkness, He is the

REFUGE for the HEART-broken (1 Corinthians 7:10-16)

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 7 (page 955 in the pew Bible). The Apostle Paul is instructing the church in Corinth regarding marriage—in verses 10-11 he reiterates what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount; that a husband should not divorce his wife, and a wife, should not divorce her husband.But then he goes on starting in verse 12 to address the case of a man or woman who had gotten married and then come to faith in Christ—but their spouse did not. What do you do when you have an unbelieving husband who leaves you, an unbelieving wife who despises you for your faith? In 1 Corinthians 7:13-14, Paul encourages believers to do everything they can to stay married to an unbeliever—if they are willing to have you, stay married! But then, in verse 15, Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 7:15 (ESV)

15 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.

Have you been brokenhearted over the way your marriage ended? Did you try to make things right as best you could, but at the end of the day it made no difference, and you lost your marriage anyway? Jesus says, be at peace. When that marriage covenant is broken by abandonment, sexual wickedness, abuse, He knows, and He sees. You may think you are “damaged goods”; you may feel as though you have been marked by a marriage that failed because of someone else’s sin, but Jesus knows the truth. He is the One Who ordained marriage at the beginning, He is the One who blessed a marriage as His first public miracle, He is the One Who loves His Bride the Church and will never leave her—He loves marriage, and He loves you. And in the aftermath of a marriage that you were driven out of by another’s sin, He tells you be at peace, through the New Birth that you have in Him.

But that is not all—Jesus not only offers a refuge for those who have been heart-broken by the destruction of a marriage, He also promises

REDEMPTION for the OATH-breaker (cp. Jeremiah 3:8, 12-15)

When God spoke through the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah about the sin of Israel and Judah, He framed their wickedness in terms of the destruction of a marriage covenant:

Jeremiah 3:6–8 (ESV)

6 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? 7 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. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce...

After centuries of spiritual adultery, going after the Baals and the Ashtoreths and the Dagons and the Molochs and the Chemoshes of the nations around her, Yahweh had finally had enough, and divorced His faithless people Israel for their spiritual immoralities. (When God says, “I hate divorce,” He means it, because He has carried it out on His people…)

Just as adultery breaks a marriage covenant between a husband and a wife, so the faithlessness of God’s people destroyed the covenant that they made with Him. But as you read further into this chapter, you see something remarkable—something that Moses’ Law could not comprehend—God will take His divorced people back to Himself!

Jeremiah 3:12–15 (ESV)

12 Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, “ ‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the Lord; I will not be angry forever. 13 Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the Lord. 14 Return, O faithless children, declares the Lord; for I am your master; I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. 15 “ ‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.

God provides a way for the oath-breaker to be redeemed! God promises that the ones who have destroyed their marriage covenant with Him can be brought back to Him, be restored to Him! And He goes on to describe that restoration in verse 16:

Jeremiah 3:16 (ESV)

16 And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again.

God says that a day would come when there would be no more need for a box to contain His covenant with His people—because He would provide a new and better covenant to redeem His people!

The covenant that God has made with His people is no longer contained in a gold-covered box of acacia wood, splattered with the blood of bulls and goats and kept in the darkness of the Holy of Holies. Because the New Covenant is not represented by a box containing broken tablets of the Law—it is represented by God the Son Himself! He is the seat of mercy, He is the blood-soaked seal of the covenant that will redeem you from all of your covenant-breaking, all of your shame and brokenness of divorce and faithlessness and sexual sin and sundered families.

He is the only redemption for the oath-breaker—there is nothing that you can do on your own to get out from under the guilt and shame of having destroyed your marriage covenant by your faithlessness. There is no way to assuage your soul by minimizing God’s hatred of divorce, because He hates it so much that He sent His own Son to die to redeem you from it! Not just the sin of breaking a covenant of marriage with a spouse, but the far worse offense of breaking faith with God Himself. Jesus Christ suffered the consequences of an oath-breaker, even though He had never broken a single one of God’s commands. He suffered the shame and humiliation of that Cross so that you could be set free from the shame and humiliation of the tragedy of divorce; and just as God promised reconciliation and restoration when His faithless people came in repentance to Him, so He offers that same reconciliation and restoration to you today.

The Greek word for confess literally means to “agree with”. So come and confess to God—agree with Him—when He says in Malachi 2:16, “I hate divorce”. Confess your hatred of what has been done to you—what you have done—in the destruction of the marriage covenant. Confess that you hate what divorce has done to your family, your friends, your neighbors in this poor, miserable world we live in. Agree with Him that you will live in the power of the New Birth to preserve and protect the marriage He has given you. And come to Him for the power to live at peace, to honor the marriage covenant, whether you are married or single. And in whatever way you have broken covenant with one another or with Him, look to the One Who has sealed a New and better covenant between you and God with His own blood—the One Who calls you to the faithfulness and purity that only He can provide, the faithfulness and purity of His own righteousness given to you—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Hebrews 13:20–21 (ESV)

20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

The Bible describes God’s relationship to His people as a marriage (see Ephesians 5:24-33; Revelation 19:7-9). How does this teaching help us understand Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount?

What was the only exception Jesus gave for divorce? What other exception did Paul offer? Why are all other reasons not valid?

Jesus connected divorce to the Creation order in Matthew 19. In what ways do you see the widespread practice of divorce destroying the very foundations of God’s order for human society that He established in Genesis?

How does God’s call to His faithless people in Jeremiah 3 give hope to those who have broken their marriage vows? How does Jesus’ death on the Cross bring atonement for those who have broken faith with God and others, and how does His death bring peace to those who are weighed down with shame over the end of their marriage?