Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Thousands of young boys walked past the Bathwell Castle in England, and none ever dreamed of climbing up the chimney to carve his name at the top.

There was one exception, however.

One boy did the unusual, and his name was David Livingstone.

That boy went on to become one of histories most famous missionaries to Africa.

Browning wrote,

You see lads walk the street.

Sixty the minute, what's to note in that?

You see the one lad astride the chimney stack.

Him you must watch.

Browning is saying, keep your eyes on the exception, for the exception may be more significant than the rule.

The age old saying that the exception proves the rule is nonsense.

What it proves is that the rule is not all there is.

It proves the rule does not cover all cases, and to say it does, in the face of an exception, is to say that a black sheep proves that all sheep are white.

The exception does not prove the rule, it breaks it, and shows that reality is more complex than the rule.

Science must constantly reckon with exceptions.

It cannot say, light is always a wave, for there are conditions under which light behaves like a particle.

This exceptional behavior cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, but must be incorporated into the total picture.

Darwin had to postpone the publishing of his book for 29 years, because he had to be honest about exceptions.

Often he would exclaim, "This little beast is doing just what I did not want him to do."

Ignore exceptions, and you become, not a seeker for truth, but a manipulator of facts to get your own way, and a narrow minded legalist, whose only concern is getting your own way.

The Bible demands that you be open to the power of exceptions, for only those who are, are open to the spirit of grace.

Even under Old Testament law we see examples of exceptions that allow grace to dominate.

The law forbids the Jews to marry Caananites or Moabites, but Rahab the Caananite and Ruth the Moabite are in the blood line of Jesus.

They became exceptions by their faith, and played a major role in God's plan.

The Jews recognized the need to be flexible, and open to exceptions.

It was the law that all male babies be circumcised on the eighth day.

It was a sign of the covenant between God and Israel.

But there were conditions that could alter this law, and allow for an exception.

A Rabbi wrote, "If a mother has lost 2 sons by the fever following circumcision, the operation on the third should be deferred until he is grown and strong."

Here was a circumstance where holding to the letter of the law would be cruel.

You destroy the whole spirit of the law if you cannot adjust to exceptions.

This was the whole point of Jesus breaking the Sabbath laws to heal people.

He was making it clear man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man, and, therefore, it is always right to do good on the Sabbath.

The rule is for man's good, but if the exception is even better, then the rule can be broken.

The exception is more important than the rule, if it accomplishes the purpose that made the rule good in the first place.

Exceptions are so vital to the whole plan of God that there would be no New Testament without the power of the exception.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, is the blanket of condemnation that falls over the whole of humanity.

All, that is, except one.

There is one glorious exception to this rule, and that one exception-the Lord Jesus Christ, by not falling short of God's glory, made it possible for there to be a perfect sacrifice to take away the sin of the world.

In other words, through this one exception the door is opened for grace to triumph over law, and allow all men to escape the condemnation of the law.

God's entire plan of salvation is based on the power of the exception.

Jesus stressed the motivating power of the exception in His own ministry.

The 99 followed the rule, and they stayed in the fold, but the one exception wandered away.

Jesus says the exception is what dominates the shepherd's mind, for he leaves the 99 and goes after the one to seek and to save it, and when he does, all heaven rejoices over that one exception being found.

The point is, sometimes it is the exception that matters most.

Those Christians who refused to deal with exception tend to become legalists, like the Pharisees, and depart from the spirit of Christ.

Much of the conflict of Catholic and Protestants was over this very issue.

Jesus made it clear in Matt.

5:32, and 19:9 that there was an exception which made divorce legitimate.

That exception was adultery.

The word actually covers all forbidden sexual relationships, including sex with animals.

Jesus is saying there are some things no mate needs to tolerate.

He does not say they have to divorce for this behavior, but they are free to do so, if they cannot forgive and be reconciled.

The Catholic church had to reject this exception.

Their legalistic system did not permit them to be open to the Lord's exception.

They had developed the concept that marriage was a sacrament.

A sacrament is a means of grace, and once you have experienced a sacrament, you have received something from God that can never be undone.

Baptism is another of the sacraments, and so once you have been baptized, they say, you have received the grace of God, and this can never be undone.

Applied to marriage, the Catholic church said, there can be no such thing as divorce, for once married it is like being baptized, and you can't undo it.

Only death can end a marriage.

Now, of course, they had to deal with intolerable situations, and so they called marriages like Jesus and Paul deal with, not true marriages, and, therefore, able to be annulled.

The history of this is a terrible scandal, for people married for many years, with large families, could get their marriage annulled, if they knew the right people, and had the power.

The Catholic church had to deal with exception, but they did it by pretending there were no exceptions.

Then came the Protestant reformers, and they began to question the Biblical right of the church to impose on people what God did not.

The first thing the reformers did was to reject the idea that marriage was a sacrament.

This was clearly a man made idea, for marriage is universal.

All men, even pagans and atheists, get married, and they do not receive grace in doing so, and so the whole idea comes from the Catholic desire to get power in people's lives.

The reformers discovered that Jesus not only allowed divorce for the exception of adultery, but that Paul allowed another exception here in I Cor. 7. Desertion by a non-Christian became the second exception the reformers allowed.

The Catholic church at the Council of Trent in 1563 blasted the Protestants for heresy.

The two sides became locked into their positions.

The Catholics became more legalistic than ever, and the Protestants became more soft hearted than ever.

Luther felt that the exception Paul allowed was based on the recognition that the marriage was dead.

You cannot keep alive that which is dead.

This lead to their being still more exceptions.

Once you depart from the absolute of the Catholic church, you open the door to more and more exceptions, and this is what the Protestants did.

Luther, Calvin,Melanchthon, and Zwingli, all agreed that divorce was permissible for other reasons that destroyed the whole purpose of marriage.

They added such things as:

1. Impotence: If sex is not possible, and is yet vital to ones partner, they said there is no marriage, and divorce and remarriage is legitimate.

If a mate refused to meet the sexual need of the other, as Paul stresses in the first part of this chapter, they forfeit their right to be married.

We are getting into touchy territory here, for the reformers are now going beyond Jesus or Paul, and we are in the area where the Bible does not speak, and it did not end here.

2. Leprosy became another cause for divorce, for this made marriage impossible.

Other sicknesses were soon added, such as mental illness.

3. John Calvin added extreme religious incompatibility.

And Italian leader in Naples became a Protestant and fled to Geneva where Calvin's authority was strong.

His wife remained a Catholic and refused to come with him, even after he settled down and invited her to join him.

Calvin said the marriage was dead.

He dissolved it, and the man was allowed to remarry.

The Protestant view seems to open up more and more reasons for valid divorce and remarriage, for life seems to get more and more complicated.

What if a man's wife became a witch?

What if she tried to poison him?

Were these not just as serious as adultery and desertion?

The Puritans tried to limited divorce to the two exceptions of Jesus and Paul, but these other issues forced them to consider more exceptions.

In the late sixty's, the Baptist Convention of Canada called upon the government to recognize divorce for incurable insanity, chronic alcoholism, and repeated prison sentences.

There is much more of the history of this battle, but we have seen enough to get the picture.

The Catholic position of absolutely no divorce led to all kinds of cruelty and hypocrisy.

But the Protestant view of divorce for anything that destroyed the purpose of marriage led to more and more exceptions.

One refused to let the water of liberty flow at all, and the other produced a flood.

The conflict goes on to this day, and Christians still tend to fall into one category or the other.

They are either so anti-divorce they refuse to accept the exceptions, even of Christ and Paul.