The Kingdom and Divorce

Vision Moment

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Scripture Reading

Matthew 5:31–32 ESV

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 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.

Prayer

Father, this is a tough topic to talk about. A lot of your people who love you have been through the shipwreck of divorce. A lot of pain and sorrow is represented in this room, so Holy Spirit would you overwhelm us with your presence this morning? Would you Shepherd us in such a way where we can see Your beauty and glory through even a difficult subject like this one. I pray that you would heal where healing needs to be applied, I pray that you would graciously convict where conviction needs to take place and that your kindness would lead to repentance. I pray where there is self-righteousness that it would be knocked down and replaced with humility.

I want to say this up front, my experience with marriage has been better than most. I have been married for 15 years, both of my brothers and my sister have been married for 13, 15, and 17 years. All three of my wife’s sisters have had the same experience and for just as long. My parents have been married just under 40 years and my wife’s parents were married about that long before her father passed away three years ago. My grandparents on my father’s side would have celebrated 60 years before my father’s father passed away, and my mother’s side will celebrate 60 in a couple of years. My wife’s mother’s parents were married about 40 years before death, the one exception is her father’s parents who divorced when she was young.

Even in my time pastoring here, there has only been

The point in saying that is to acknowledge that from an experiential standpoint, I have not been affected by divorce in the way that many of you have,

Marriage the Way it was Meant to Be

Nobody came up with the idea of marriage. It has literally been woven into the fabric of human nature by the Divine Creator of all things. God designed marriage. He designed it to be multi dimensional. Before government, before the Church, before any cities were built, God performed a marriage.

God had a purpose and goals for that marriage, there were at least four:

Marriage is about starting a family

Genesis 1:28 ESV

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.”

Gen 1:28

It only makes sense, if we are created in the image of God that just as God started a family with the making of Adam from dust and divine breath and Eve from the rib bone of Adam that He would give his blessing on Adam and Eve to start their own family.

It’s fascinating to me to think about the world that way. Not in terms of a culmination of nations and states, but a culmination of families that all started because God said, marriage will be first and foremost about starting a family.

Marriage is about joining a mission

Genesis 1:28 ESV

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.”

The mission is to subdue the earth and have dominion over it. Those words foster images of ruling and reigning and they should, but maybe not the way we think about subduing and dominion. When we flip the page, the author retells the story, filling in a little more detail:

Genesis 2:15 ESV

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

15

The mission was to be God’s image bearers in the world to their family and the families that their families would create and it was also to make something out of what God planted in the ground and to do something with everything else God had created.

Marriage is about developing a friendship

Genesis 2:18 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.”

Gen 2:

Genesis 2:21–22 ESV

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.

Gen 2:21-22

The story paints a picture of God intentionally creating the animals male and female before creating the both Adam and Eve as a way of creating a longing within the man for friendship and intimacy.

We don’t know who God spoke those words to, but it’s the first time something that God created is not good. Marriage is about a partnership in the mission and a lasting friendship that goes deeper than the friendship a person can create with any other human being.

Marriage is about igniting a passion

Genesis 2:23–24 ESV

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.

Gen 2:

It’s interesting that as soon as Adam sees Eve, he becomes a poet. The mere sight of Eve unleashed this inner passion that he had to be joined physically with her. She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She’s mine. And the author makes a pronouncement of this inseparable union that no one, not even the birth family is able to come in front of.

And this passion was not just allowed, it was celebrated. There was no shame. They could bear every part of themselves to each other and there was no shame and no fear. No judgement, no condemnation, no shame.

Marriage from the beginning was all about starting a family, joining a mission, developing a friendship, and igniting a passion.

It’s just beautiful… But for a lot of marriages, that’s totally unrealistic. Beautiful, but not reality. Why isn’t that reality?

Marriage affected by the fall

We all know why this isn’t a reality in most marriages (even Christian). It’s because this utopian image of marriage was crushed when sin entered and the trust they had for their Creator was broken. They fell out of love (not with each other) with God. They had no idea that when they sinned against God that nothing would be the same.

Instantly they were ashamed because of their nakedness. The trust they had for each other was gone, instantly. When God, their Creator came to visit them they were hiding from Him and when he wanted to hear both sides of the story they couldn’t keep from pointing fingers at each other. Everything changed.

They were exiled from the only home they ever knew. No more walking with God in the cool of the day, no more abundance of fruits and vegetables without hard labor. Childbirth would be a nightmare and they would both want to lead in the home. Everything changed.

It didn’t take long for the whole plan for marriage to become twisted and convoluted. The next page in Genesis we read this little tiny song that this man named Lamech sang:

Genesis 4:23–24 ESV

Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”

Gen 4:

Through hundreds of years of history, marriage is at a low point. They’re infested by the same cancer that the first marriage was infested with. Marriage and divorce was very common in the ancient world. There was no clear purpose for marriage and there was no clear distinction between a Hebrew marriage and a pagan marriage.

Enter Mosiac law. God’s underlining purpose for the law was to create a distinction between the Hebrew people who were being ruled by Jehovah and the people of the pagan nations who were being ruled by the gods of their ancestors.

The Hebrew people were to be a people who reflected their Creator and His goodness and generous nature so that all the families of the earth could be blessed.

So the laws regarding adulterous affairs were extremely severe:

Deuteronomy 22:22 ESV

“If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

Deut 22:

The severity of the law indicates that this was happening in the other people groups and perhaps totally okay. God’s pronouncement of the law was meant to burn the conscience so that an adulterous affair was not commonplace amongst His own covenant people. You’ll have to go back to last week’s message to understand why there is such an emphasis against sexual sin.

But there was still a problem that Moses and the elders had to deal with. What do we do with people who can’t get along and no longer want to be married?

Listen to how far they had gone from God’s original intention for marriage:

Divorce in the Law

:1-

Deuteronomy 24:1–4 ESV

“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, 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 shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Marriage is about family, and mission, and friendship, and passion, what is all this about finding no favor in his eyes because of some indecency in his wife? And the next guy who marries her divorces her and she can’t go back to her original husband… what?

At first I think, okay indecency must refer to sexual sin and that is the general interpretation of the Hebrew word. But then what about the second husband who apparently puts away the same woman, but there’s no legal cause, he can just write a bill of divorcement and send her out of his house.

Fast forward to the first century. There are two premier law schools, The House of Shammai, and The House of Hillel. These schools serve the community by teaching how to interpret the Mosaic law and the historic commentary on the Mosaic law.

One school was a bit more conservative in it’s teaching as it pertained to divorce and remarriage. They taught basically that divorce was permissible in the case of sexual sin. However, the House of Hillel took a more liberal approach. Here’s just a little taste of what they taught:

“By the time of the composition of the Mishnah (AD 200), most rabbis seem to have embraced the view of Hillel.

The Mishnah stated that a man could divorce his wife if she were barren (m. Yebam. 6.6; m. Git. 4:8), if she became a deaf mute (m. Yebam. 14:1), or if she had epilepsy, tetanus, warts, or leprosy.

Mishnah Ketubbot 5:5 insisted that a man could divorce his wife if she failed to perform certain services in the home…if her husband considered her lazy he had the prerogative to divorce her.

Rabbinic law also stated that certain physical defects in the wife were so offensive that they were legitimate grounds for divorce….Consequently a man could divorce his wife if she had a head that was wedge shaped, turnip shaped, or hammer shaped, or if her head was otherwise malformed such as “sunk in” or “flat at the back.” He could divorce his wife if she had poor posture or if she had thinning hair. He could divorce her if she had no eyebrows, only one eyebrow, or bushy eyebrows. He could divorce her is she had a pug nose. The condition of her eyes was particularly important. If she had eyes too high or too low, if she were cross-eyed, had no eyelashes, had eyes of two different colors, watery eyes, or eyes big as a calf or small like a goose, any of these justified divorce. The man could divorce his wife if her nose were too big or too little, her ears too little or too floppy, if she had a overbite or underbite, missing teeth, a poor figure, a swollen belly, a protruding navel, oversized or damaged sexual organs, a dark complexion, bony ankles or knees, swollen feet, if she were bowlegged, suffered from swelling of the big toe, if her heel had protrusions, if the sole of her foot was as wide as that of a goose, or if she were ambidextrous…a man could divorce his wife if she ate something he had forbidden her to eat, if she visited the home of her parents, or if against her husband’s wishes, the in-laws, moved into the same city to be near their daughter.

The husband had the right to divorce his wife if she broke the laws of Moses or if she transgressed Jewish customs by going outdoors with her hair unbound, spun cloth in the street, or spoke to any man other than her husband. She would also be divorced if she cursed her husband’s parents or yelled at her husband so loud that her voice could be heard outside the house. A man could divorce his wife if she had a bad reputation (m. Git. 4:8), if she burned his supper, or if he simply found someone he thought was prettier (m. Git. 9:10).

Not offering sexual relations frequently enough was also grounds for divorce, and the law specifically expressed appropriate expectations regarding this matter. The wife had to satisfy her husband every day if he had the time, twice a week if he were a day laborer, every 30 days if he were a camel driver, and every six months if he were a sailor (m. Ketub. 5:6).” (Quarles, 125-27).

Repent for the Kingdom of God is Here

Hopefully you’re seeing the pattern. Jesus came on to the scene and announced that the Kingdom of Heaven was here. In the last two sections He affirms what the law says about murder, adultery, and now divorce. And when he talked about murder and adultery he gave lengthier explanations for why merely following the outward command wasn’t really the purpose of the law.

But the problem was that the Jewish people were banking on how well they followed the law to gain them acceptance with God, but what Jesus is exposing is that the law had no ability to transform. It could in some cases prevent certain sins, but it had no power to change the hearts of God’s people.

The point here as it was when Jesus spoke of anger and lust is that in order for marriage to work, the heart was going to have to be completely transformed. So they (and we) need to know that the people of the Kingdom whose hearts have been changed will not only see murder as sin, and not only see adultery as sin, and would not only see that a frivolous attitude towards marriage is sin, but they we would see that even a thought that would put down, or dehumanize one of God’s beautiful creatures is the heart problem underneath that sin. And that’s the place where Jesus does His work.

Jesus called for repentance from believing that he was just after outward compliance to the law. That’s never what God wanted. Ever.

AND - We know this because later on in Matthew’s Gospel we read a story of when the Pharisees were attempting to get Jesus to say something that might get him killed like his cousin John the Baptist was killed when he spoke directly against Herod’s sin by stealing his brother’s wife. But Jesus didn’t take the bait.

Matthew 19:

Pharisee: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

The Pharisees

Jesus: “Oh you didn’t read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “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. You didn’t read that?”

Pharisee: “Well, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

Jesus: “God never wanted that. He only allowed that because of how hard your hearts had become. Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

To show you how far off the path the Jewish had come from understanding God’s original plan for marriage, listen to what his disciples said to him after he said that:

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

Jesus very plainly goes back to the origin of marriage. He expects them to be able to see that God’s original plan for marriage was not being replaced because it was too hard. Instead the people of the Kingdom should seek alignment with that original plan.

When a Christian marriage and a non-Christian marriage look the same and have the same attrition rate it’s probably time to hear the words of Christ again, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It’s time for us to hear that Christian marriages aren’t simply unions that make sense. They aren’t relationships that should stay together for the sake of the kids. Marriage is a ONE FLESH UNION that can never be completely separated.

So, just because you give your wife a receipt when you show her the door, doesn’t make you righteous, Jesus says. No at the heart of it, you casually dismissing your wife because you don’t like the shape of her kneecaps makes you an adulterer, not a hero. Because in that society and in many places still today, a women (especially one with children) was going to have to remarry just to stay alive.

At this point in the sermon people want to hear, okay, but what are the biblical exceptions for divorce

But this shows a fundamental problem with our understanding of God’s nature and the Scriptures. Jesus gave one provision not because that’s the only legitimate reason for divorce, but because of the fact that adultery is a serious trust breaker and therefore a serious marriage killer.

Divorce is the formal announcement of a dead marriage. And there are several sins that can kill a marriage. Adultery, physical abuse, and abandonment are all marriage killers.

But I have seen God’s miraculous grace preserve even the most devastating circumstances and bring reconciliation. All marriages will be effected by sin, but not all marriages must end. Christians must all see that if we are to be on God’s mission to make disciples right here, we’re going to have to see to it that our marriages are grounded in God’s purposes.

Grace for the Broken

The sermon Jesus preached was exposing unrighteousness where there was assumed righteousness. In other words, Jesus was intentionally preaching this message to people who were either guilty or victims of the abuse and misunderstanding of the law. What were they supposed to do now?

Some of you have been or are in the same place. You are a victim of divorce or you’ve divorced a spouse for a not so great reason. Should you divorce your current spouse and try to reconcile with ex?

Let me offer a few words for you:

1. The only unpardonable sin is the sin of refusing grace. Your guilty, your broken, okay now come to Jesus and receive the healing grace that He brings.

2. God does not brand a “D” on the foreheads of divorced people, only religion does that. A divorced person is not a second class Christian. A divorced Christian is a forgiven Christian.

3. The worst thing a divorced person could do is harden their heart. If your spouse violated the covenant in some way and you took the action to divorce that person it is tempting to resent that person or God. Do not harden your heart. Receive the healing grace of Jesus.

4. Grace (in case you think it means to overlook) does not mean to overlook sin. Grace is not a pass on sin, grace is a healing agent for sinners.

5. If your parents divorced and hurt your childhood, receive grace. If your spouse divorced you, receive grace. If you divorced your spouse, receive grace.

And once you have received God’s healing, walk in love loving God and loving neighbor. And if you’re here this morning and contemplating divorce receive grace.

Because as Paul Tripp says, “Nobody gives grace more than the one who knows they need it most.”

The reality is, we’re all adulterers. If you’re offended by that statement it’s probably because you are unaware of your own sin. James throws in his version of an adulterer as one who has asked for something from God, so they can spend it on their own passions… you’re a spiritual adulterer, he says. In other words, you’ve cheated on your true husband, Jesus with materialism.

And if anyone ever had a reason for filing divorce, it’s Jesus. He’s the husband of the Church, how many times has the Church cheated on Jesus? How many times has the Church ignored the love of Jesus? But yet, He stays, and He washed us with the Word and tells us how much he loves us and how committed to us He is.

And that’s why we go back to the table every week. To remember that Jesus died for every sin we had ever or will ever commit against Him.