Unyielding

Unyielding Relationships

There was a church meeting, not at this church, there was a church meeting and at this meeting one of the leaders there exploded in anger at someone else. He said a lot of mean things, he said a lot of nasty things, and in no uncertain terms told the entire group that he disagreed with this other member of the team. After this meeting, the man he had disagreed with walked up to him, we’ll call him Anakin, and Anakin felt that he deserved an apology with the man, we’ll call him Luke, who had been angry in the meeting. Well Luke said that he had done nothing wrong, that he had just been honest about how he felt and disagreed with the Anakin’s plan. Now Anakin went to the pastor and explained the situation. So Anakin and Luke and the pastor sat down and talked about it, but Luke still contended that he had nothing to apologize for. So the pastor invited Anakin and Luke to an elders meeting where they explained the situation to the elders of the church. He talked through it and Luke was again asked to repent, to apologize and Luke refused. He still thought he hadn't done anything wrong, so the elders made a decision and they excommunicated Luke from the church. That meant he was no longer welcome to take communion with the rest of the church, it meant that he couldn't join them for worship, it puts some distance between him and the church.

A few months went by, until one day Luke showed up in the pastor's office. You see people from the church had continued showing Luke love even while he was separated from the church, and he had continued in God’s Word and the elders had kept reaching out to him and praying for him. When Luke came into the pastor’s office this time, he was ready to apologize. He sought out Anakin and and he apologized for his harsh words, he apologized for his stubbornness, and he laid out his plan and his intention to be kinder in the future, to be more humble and more open.

This story illustrates what Matthew 18 tells us about reconciling relationships. You see in Matthew 18:15-20 we're told

Matthew 18:15–17 (ESV)

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

That is to treat them as an outsider who the church is called to witness to. You see, God gives us relationships with friends, with family, with coworkers and it is not his desire that we throw those relationships away, that we let those relationships be divided. He lays out this plan, this strategy for relationships to be reconciled. At no point in this text is the instruction, “they've gone too far, give up on them,” “ignore them, pretend they don't exist,” or “hate them for the rest of their lives.” That's not what it says at every step the goal is reconciliation!

That's how we are called, we are challenged to live in our relationships with each other, with our friends, with our family, with our kids, with our neighbors, with our coworkers. We're called to preserve and seek to build up all of our relationships. Do you think this is a fair thing for me to say? That this is an expectation for us when we interact with each other? Good, because there's one area of our lives where I think this might be harder then it sounds and even if it already sounds hard I think that this area is harder still.

Unyielding Marriage

This brings me to our text for today. You might have noticed that I didn't read it before the sermon, that's because I wanted to frame it as I have done. The text comes from Mark 10:1-12

Mark 10:1–12 (ESV)

And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”

They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”

And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.

But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’

‘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.”

And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.

And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,

and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

This is harsh because frankly we live in a time where divorce has become accepted, in some circumstances even encouraged. Depending on who is writing the article, divorce rates are as high as 60% outside of the church and anywhere from 38 to 50% inside the church. It's so acceptable that there are lawyers who almost exclusively deal with divorce cases; in fact, where we lived in Boca Raton there was a notable billboard that promised an easy divorce for a flat rate. So when we read these words of Jesus, that “what therefore God has joined together let not man separate.” When he says “whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another she commits adultery,” it strikes us as extreme.

Especially if you've experienced divorce - whether you've been through it personally or someone in your family, someone close to you has crossed that line. We ask, “is Jesus calling me/them a sinner?” Well, yes, but frankly that's no different than a lot of the other stuff Jesus says. You see, because God didn't design for our relationships of any kind to be expendable. He didn't design for our relationships to be discarded. His intention is that they would be preserved, that we would work and apologize and forgive one another and and take the steps necessary - even the extreme steps - necessary to preserve marriage. When conflict arises between a husband and a wife, the response should never be divorce, the response should be to reconcile. If you've sinned against your spouse, the call is to repent, to apologize and if you have been sinned against, no matter how many times it happens, the call is to forgive. Which maybe sounds radical in the context of a marriage, but the reality is we're called to live that same way in all of our relationships.

Marriage gets this special attention because it is so profoundly intimate, because a marriage is likely the closest relationship any of us will ever experience. So Jesus takes the time to tell us to protect, it to build it up, to work to support it and heal it if necessary, not to discard it. If you've been through a divorce, I can't tell you that it wasn't sinful, I can tell you that you're forgiven. If you're contemplating divorce, stop. Even if you haven't been touched by it personally, I suspect that most of us in this room know someone who has, and it's our responsibility as a community to help build up the other relationships around us, to speak words of encouragement and healing instead of encouraging division and hurt.

Unyielding God

In this lesson, we learn about divorce. Yes it it speaks to how we interact with each other and it it tells us how we should be living, but it also gives us a very valuable window into our relationship with Christ. Ephesians 5:22-32 explains to us that

Ephesians 5:22–32 (ESV)

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,

because we are members of his body.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

The relationship between Christ and the church, between Christ and Christians, is compared to that of a husband and a wife. So when we're called to go to extreme lengths to preserve our marriages, when husbands are called to sacrifice for their wives, to sacrifice everything for their wives - that includes their time that includes their energy and in extreme cases that might include their lives, and wives are called to submit to and obey their husbands and to respect them as spiritual heads of house. I want to remind you, brothers and sisters, that Christ is perfect. He doesn't just try to do these things, He follows through perfectly.

So the relationship between a husband and a wife we are supposed to preserve at all costs, we're supposed to live forgiving one another and always seeking to reconcile the relationship. That's how Christ treats us, no matter what we do, no matter how far we go He's waiting to forgive us to love us anyway. He's willing to do so much to preserve His relationship with us that He went to the cross He died a death He didn't deserve - all to be reconciled with us, all to maintain His relationship with us. We say that the husband is called to sacrificially love his wife, to be willing to give up everything for his wife. Well, Christ does! He's willing to give up everything for the church, to sacrifice whatever is necessary for us and for what we need.

It's a tough message how are called to unyielding in our marriages, but thanks be to God that Christ fulfilled that perfectly, and our relationship with Him is perfectly unyielding. Amen.