Matthew 19:1-12 | "The Sacred Commitment"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Thank you for joining us this morning in this counter-cultural gathering.

Our culture does not want us to sing the things that we're singing, to pray the things that we're praying, nor to read the book that we've been reading.

And we're gonna do more of it.

Glad to have you with us.

Going to be saying some things and preaching some things in a little bit that if I put them on social media would probably get my account shut down.

But the reason that I'm going to be saying those things doesn't start with talking about marriage or a man and a woman.

It starts with believing what the scriptures say about the Lord Jesus Christ.

It begins with believing that the Lord Jesus Christ hung on a cross and he died for our sins after having declared it's finished.

So how do we then begin processing and thinking about that together?

Did you know that the cross is a fairly rare concept in the New Testament after the gospels?

It's true.

You don't find it mentioned very much.

Oh, you might be able to find it in its in its concept, in in the context of a passage without the word being mentioned, but it's fairly rare for us to read the word cross, C-R-O-S-S, in a way that means other something other than crossing the road.

There are only two books of the New Testament after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that include the word cross as in the cross of Christ more than once.

Only Philippians and Colossians have the cross twice.

I'd like to think a little bit about what Colossians has to say about the cross of Christ.

Colossians is a very Christological book.

It has much to say about the person of Christ, about the position of Christ.

And we start in Colossians chapter 1 and verse 15 as we begin to prepare our hearts and minds to receive the elements that remind us of the cross.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

After having told us that we have redemption in Christ and the forgiveness of sins, the Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

He is the firstborn of all creation, and that is, God is invisible.

We cannot see him, but he took on flesh and wrapped himself in a body so that we might be able to see the image of God.

And by him all things were created.

The things in heaven and the things on earth.

Visible and invisible.

Whether they're thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created for him and by him.

Because he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent, because in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

And God was pleased in Jesus to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven.

How?

By making peace by the blood of his cross.

That's an astounding, astounding statement if you think about it in the context.

Because we start with something, a being that is that is so immense, that is so powerful, that he can make every single thing that you've seen in the news this week that the web telescope has uncovered.

Millions upon billions of galaxies, light years away.

And he holds them in his hand and he calls them all by name.

And yet it is that immense and powerful and invisible God who now sheds his blood on a cross.

That's astounding.

How could the immense God take it upon himself not only to become a human being, one of his creatures, and to to become the head of the church and to die and to rise again?

How is it?

It's because he desired to reconcile us to himself.

Peel back that top layer and take that wafer on top.

We're going to do this backwards.

We're going to take the wafer, but think about it backwards.

Because it says here that he made peace by the blood of his cross.

We're not going to think about this wafer as in the blood.

Instead, we're going to think about this wafer as his body because it is only by the invisible God taking on flesh and having his body broken that he could bleed.

And it's only by having his body broken and bleeding that we could be reconciled to him and have the forgiveness of sin.

We do this in remembrance of the one who hung upon a cross and declared it is finished.

The other time that the cross is mentioned in Colossians, and this is in chapter 2.

And it says over and over again, in him.

Walk in him.

Be rooted and built up in him.

Why?

Because in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

There we have that invisible God becoming flesh once again.

You've been filled in him.

In him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh.

You've been buried with him in baptism.

You were raised with him.

All of a sudden, this invisible God who has become visible in the person of Jesus Christ is now something in which we are in.

Because he's made peace by the blood of his cross.

Then it says this in you.

And you who were dead in your trespasses and sin.

So the one who is life, who is living, became flesh so that he might die, and yet we who are somehow living are already dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him.

Having forgiven all your trespasses.

How?

By canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demand.

I got my mortgage bill in the mail this week.

It's a record of debt that stands against me.

And that's the image that we have here is that we have a record of sin debt that God Himself holds.

And it is due.

And the Lord Jesus took on flesh so that he might die by being nailed to a cross.

And in that nailing, because we are in him, in that nailing, our bill of sin was nailed to that cross.

And this record of debt he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

And he disarmed the rulers and the authorities, and he put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

So as you peel back that next layer, remember the astounding grace of God.

That astounding grace of God.

Do this in remembrance of him.

Because if you are in Christ, it is finished.

Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you.

In astonishment.

That you who hold the worlds in your hands, who causes the sun to move in its course by day and the moon by night.

You that holds the universe, that we're just beginning to comprehend, you hold it in your hand, you hold all things together, that you would consider our peace with you to be of such significance that you, the invisible God, would become visible in the person of Jesus Christ to die for us.

How can this be?

How can it be that you of such holiness would take us in yourself so that you might bear our sin on the cross?

We may never comprehend how that can be.

But we declare our praise and our thanks to you as we place our trust in you for all that you are and all that you provide for us only through Jesus.

And in His name we pray.

Amen.

Would you stand with us as we sing together?

Amen.

Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Hi, I'm Pastor Jeremy.

I'm the student and family pastor here, and among uh many other things I do here, I am your monthly reminder that it's okay to clap and be excited to worship the Lord.

So if you're gonna do that, lean into it.

Um I'm going to uh I have the privilege of leading us in worship.

And uh my my areas of ministry typically orient my focus on children and families.

And and this morning, this is something we've done before, but I I want to um invite the children here in the worship service with us in a form of prayer.

And and parents, I hope this is an encouragement for you.

If you're thinking about how do I teach my children in prayer, we're gonna go through a strategy, a way, a method of praying with your kids.

That's very simple.

We call it the thumbs up prayer in my house.

And so it's very simple.

Thumbs up, we praise God for who he is.

Uh we give him thanks for all he has done for us.

We do the thumbs down where we think of sin, because normally thumbs down means bad, right?

Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs down is bad, thumbs down is sin, right?

We confess our sin to God.

And then we do thumbs out, we think of others, we pray for one another, we pray for family members, um, we pray for our church members, we think of others when we do thumbs out, and then lastly we finish thumbs in.

Where our prayer ends with a prayer of asking Christ to make us more like himself.

So will you join me as we pray this morning?

We're going to start with thumbs up, kids.

So go ahead and hold your thumbs up.

Thumbs up as we pray to God.

God, we thank you for the good God that you are.

We come here this morning and not just because it's the right thing to do.

We don't come here this morning just because it's a preferred matter of worship.

We come here this morning because you are the good and gracious God of the universe.

You made the world and everything in it, and now we are seeing, Lord, as we did this past week, the stars and heavens, things that our eyes would never have ever seen had you not been gracious to us in our ability to develop technology.

And we are seeing the wonders that you created that that you you created just so you can, just to show how great and wonderful you are.

You are a good God.

You are a loving God, you are a righteous and just God, and we thank you for that.

Now, families, we're gonna turn our thumbs down, and I want to invite you kids to think of something you've done this week that has broken God's laws, whether it's lies or the ways maybe you've talked to your parents, maybe it's having a bad attitude, not being content.

Just think for a moment, things that you need to confess to God and ask for his forgiveness.

God, I confess my pride.

My selfishness.

When I want my own way and I don't get it and refuse to be content with what you've given us.

Lord, we have sinned against you in not just word and deed, but our sin permeates our being even to the things that we think.

We are dreadfully sinful.

From the moment we get up, we are we are sin-cursed people.

And immediately we're thinking about how tired we are and how we want our needs met, and how we're not getting what we want.

So, Lord, we confess this here this morning to you in all the many ways that we've sinned against you, knowing that if we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us.

And we know this because you proved it by sending your son Jesus to die on the cross to take the penalty of sin on our behalf so that we would be forgiven and be made right with you.

And now, families, we're gonna turn our thumbs outward.

We're gonna think of others.

Lord, we thank you for every single person that you have gathered here this morning in this church.

Lord, there are many needs in this body.

Many issues that we're facing.

We're we're facing cr uh many different uh crises.

Issues in our marriage, issues in our health, issues in the unknown, where we don't know what next week holds for us due to maybe financial instabilities.

Maybe what's weighing on our mind this morning is a wayward child or a distant relationship that has become fractured.

Lord, there are many needs here this morning, and and in particular we we lift up Ray and Jan as they are getting ready to move down to Fargo.

And Lord, we just pray for your blessing on them as they move down to Fargo.

And we pray for the church body that they are going to be part of.

And we ask that that church would be a good help.

Healthy ministry for Ray and Jen, and that they would be a good, healthy couple for that church, that they would be able to contribute to that church so that your gospel can go forward in fargo because of them.

I pray for your help, guidance, and blessing as they move.

There's a lot of details to get figured out.

And Lord, we just ask for your grace and mercy in that.

I pray that you move in the people here to help them with that as much as we can.

And for the many other needs, Lord, we pray for your grace.

We pray for your help.

And lastly, we turn our thumbs in.

Lord Jesus, it is our prayer this morning that you make us more like you.

We come here with baggage and we come here thinking of our sin and our failings.

But Lord, you, you and your power are making us more and more day by day like your Son Jesus.

And one of the ways that you do it is through the preaching of your word.

So Lord, my prayer is that this morning, as your word goes forward, that you would open up our hearts and our minds, that we would hear the word of God, and that we would put it into practice, and that the Spirit of God would change us so that our lives would reflect that of Christ.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you, Jeremy, for reminding us of Christ.

More and more we ought to be counter-cultural people.

Because we live in a world that does not love Christ.

Last Sunday we began studying Matthew chapter 19, verses 1 through 12, and I'm thankful that you came back for part two.

Matthew 19:1–12

I did not receive any emails last Monday from last Sunday's sermon, so I'm I'm expecting that you've all saved them for this Monday.

We looked last week at one side of Matthew chapter 19 of where Jesus addresses divorce.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

But he doesn't really address divorce.

So we we went on a walk through Scripture, trying to describe what Scripture has to say about divorce, letting Scripture speak for itself.

That's really all we try to do at this pulpit is let the Bible speak for itself.

It's not our opinions, it's not our own desires that we want to express.

We just want to open up the Bible and let God speak.

And sometimes when God speaks, often when God speaks, the world does not like what God has to say.

And if we speak God's words after him, then the world might not like us.

Goes even a step further in that if we begin to believe what God says and to listen to what God says and to believe what God says, then we are going to begin living what Christ says.

And if we begin living what Christ says, then we are going to be living in a way that does not fit in.

We're going to be challenged by that this morning as we look at the other aspect of Matthew chapter 19, verses 1 through 12.

Matthew 19:1–12

The disciples and Jesus specifically are asked a question about divorce, but Jesus does not answer about divorce, he answers regarding marriage.

There's a question about divorce, and Jesus says, No, you misunderstand.

You've mistaken what God has to say in the scriptures.

God doesn't really talk that much about divorce, he talks about marriage.

First century Jewish culture asserted that a wife could not leave her husband.

Neither could she divorce him.

She did not have that privilege, that right, according to at least one group.

The husband was free to act however he wished.

There was a minority group that sought to maintain a conservative stance on marriage, but the majority of Jewish leaders chose to allow men to indulge their selfish, sinful desires, and because women did not have the rights and the freedom to do as they pleased, that only enabled the men to do as they pleased.

That freedom placed the husband in complete control of the marriage.

He was provided great latitude for divorce and for remarriage, while women were often left destitute and alone.

There was a conservative group that sought to protect the innocent, while the liberal group sought to preserve the husband's freedom.

And now, here in this passage, in a fascinating exchange, the Pharisees ask Jesus what he thinks about the freedom of a husband to send his wife away.

For what reasons can a man divorce his wife?

So we spent a good deal of time last week on a biblical theology of divorce.

But Jesus says more in his answer about marriage than he does about divorce, so it's essential to hear that side of Jesus' answer.

If you have your Bible, I encourage you to take it to Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

We'll reread the passage to refresh our memories of its content.

Matthew chapter 19, beginning in verse 1, says, Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

The Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

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

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.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

They said to him, Well, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

So you notice there's the second question.

The first question, can we divorce for any cause?

Jesus says, No, and they say, Well, then why did Moses tell us to?

He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.

But from the beginning it was not so.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery.

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

But he said to them, Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

For there are eunuchs who have been made so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Amen.

First question is Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

We learned last week that divorce was expected for adultery.

Wasn't just a possibility, the culture expected it.

And it was accepted for a wide range of, maybe we can call them marital faults, from burning a meal to adultery.

But all Jewish perspectives were based on the Old Testament.

They all looked to the Word of God to say, here is our support.

The more liberal group believed that Deuteronomy chapter 24 gave them the right to divorce for any reason, and that God actually commanded that action.

Deuteronomy 24 · chapter mention

And then it appears that the Pharisees here were looking to see if Jesus was going to have the audacity to disagree with Moses.

Jesus, in his typical manner, responds with an argument that is older than Moses.

He says, Any question about the marriage relationship must begin with God's work, not in Deuteronomy, not at Mount Sinai, but in the Garden of Eden with God's work in creation.

So Jesus quotes from Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

He says, Have you not read, you're the leaders, the teachers of Israel, have you not read in your own scriptures that the one who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, A man shall leave his father and mother and shall hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Now, I want to pause here for a moment in talking about marriage and divorce and remarriage, all that goes on here, and just say that this is a very helpful response for us to think about as modern Christians.

There's an opportunity here for us to analyze how we think about the Word of God, how we treat what people say, what the world says about the scriptures.

For example, this week, this last week, a prominent U.S.

pastor and his wife made public statements asserting that Psalm 139 doesn't say very much about life in the womb.

Now, if that is not clear to you, Psalm 139, the psalmist says that God has formed us in the womb, inner being of the mother.

So this prominent pastor and his wife said, yeah, that psalm doesn't say very much about God's work in the womb.

Instead, they said that the psalm says far more about the love of God.

So we should talk about God's love, not about life in the womb.

Now, a natural response to a scriptural claim, maybe with which we're not totally familiar.

Maybe you're not familiar with Psalm 139, and so you don't know what the psalmist says, we tend to say, wow, I didn't know God said that.

I didn't realize that that passage of scripture talked about things that way.

You see, when somebody invokes Scripture, we we tend to believe what is asserted simply because it's attached to the Bible.

Without realizing that the Bible may do no such thing.

It may be that scripture is being used out of its context or to support something it was never intended to say.

Yet we don't even notice because we're not engaging our brains, we're not thinking about scripture, we're not reading scripture enough to even be familiar with it.

That is exactly what is happening here in Matthew chapter 19 in ancient Israel with marriage and divorce.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

See, the respected teachers of the law taught freedom for the husband in the marriage relationship, using scripture to support their argument.

They said God commanded divorce.

The problem, as we saw last week, is that Deuteronomy 24 doesn't say what they claim.

If you missed that, I encourage you to go to the church website or YouTube page and listen to that.

I apologize that it's an hour long.

I had to get through it all.

You can see how that works itself out.

Jewish leadership was employing God's word in a self-centered way.

They were saying, how can we view this in a way that benefits me, that helps me in my situation?

Sometimes biblical claims are proven wrong by nothing else than scripture itself.

You see, scripture must agree with Scripture, either in a near context or to another part of the Bible altogether.

God doesn't say something in Genesis that he will contradict later in Deuteronomy.

If God says something about marriage in Genesis, it's going to mean the same thing in Deuteronomy, and it's going to mean even the same thing in the New Testament, in the book of Matthew.

Because God cannot contradict himself.

Whenever we hear someone using Scripture to support their ideas, we need to think about what is being said and compare it with the rest of Scripture rather than just blindly accept it.

And I fear that the Christian church as a whole is blindly accepting a whole bunch of teaching that God never said.

What the Pharisees argue from the book of Deuteronomy doesn't match up with the rest of God's word.

Especially, Jesus says, God's intention in Genesis, in the creation account.

That Jesus isn't using one passage of Scripture to trump, to overrule another passage of Scripture.

That's not what he's doing.

He's not saying that one passage has greater authority than another.

Genesis 2 is the account of the first marriage.

God created one man and one woman, and his perfect design for that man and woman was to be married.

In that marriage, in that first marriage, man and woman, Adam and Eve, became one flesh instead of two.

That is God's intentional design, and it is then a principle that becomes established in creation, carried out in the rest of earth history.

Now, in ancient times, a man didn't necessarily leave his parents' home when he married.

So Genesis 2.24, what Jesus quotes here, says, let a man leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.

It didn't necessarily leave his father and mother's home.

A new husband and wife would celebrate their marriage at the bride's home, and then they would travel to the husband's, the groom's parents' home, where they would live, at least for a time.

Often there was another room added on to the parent's home for the new husband and wife to live until they had their own home.

Sometimes they lived there permanently.

So the one flesh union, that joining together, that holding fast to one another, having left the father and mother, doesn't necessarily mean move out of your parents' house.

Maybe it should.

But it doesn't necessarily speak to that.

It refers to the close unity between a man and a woman in marriage.

That marriage union is closer, is more united, is more permanent than any other human relationship.

There is no more significant relationship that exists on this planet than one with a spouse.

It's so tightly linked that God calls it one.

One.

The only other relationship that I can find in Scripture that is referred to in this way, to becoming one, is the way that Jesus describes the relationship he and the Father have with his sheep.

Jesus says in his high priestly prayer, I pray that they may be one even as we are one, and that they may be one in us.

Any question now about marriage, about divorce, or about remarriage, Jesus says must begin with God's intention.

In the beginning, in creation.

Any question starts there.

Jesus points to God's creative work, its intent and the permanence of God's design for marriage as the starting point for any discussion.

Any concept of marriage, contrary then to God's created intent, opposes God's purposes, opposes God's principles, and opposes God Himself.

In the context of the Pharisees' question about divorce, Jesus pointed out that God never intended for the husband-wife relationship to be severed.

And if God never intended for it to be severed, then doing so opposes God's principal design and will incur consequences.

Our national engineers designed the interstate system to have two parts.

One set of two lanes going one direction and another set of two lanes going another direction.

That's a design, an intended design, and if you cross that intended design, there will be consequences.

To use another illustration, there are many kinds of glues used in woodworking.

There are epoxies, hide glues, contact cements, and your good old yellow wood glue, which comes in interior and exterior, and I digress.

If if you use yellow, regular yellow wood glue properly, in the way that it's intended to.

When it's used properly, the glue bond is most often stronger than the wood itself.

In all of my good intentions, I intended to have objects here to demonstrate this, but I didn't get to it.

So you're just gonna have to use your imagination with me.

You woodworkers are already far ahead of me.

If you glue two pieces of wood together and you allow that glue to cure, and then you try to break the bond after it cures, the wood will often break before the glue bond breaks.

Now, if by chance something has not gone properly and you are able to break that original glue bond, the joint between the pieces of wood can sometimes be cleaned up and re-glued.

But the wood itself will break if the glue holds, as it should.

It will ruin the glued portion of the wood.

If you break it, it's just all raggedy and jagged, and you can't use it.

There's a parallel between a glued wood joint and what God does in making a man and woman one flesh.

Jesus quotes Genesis 2.24 a man shall leave his father and mother and shall hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Some scholars suggest that the word for hold fast, or your translation may say cling to, could be translated as glued or even cemented.

In other words, a man and his wife shall be glued together and become one.

Now I may be stretching this illustration too far, but perhaps another parallel exists.

Let's say you want to make a wide piece of wood, like for a drawer front in your kitchen or your desk.

And the piece of wood that you have is not large enough to cover the distance that you need to cover.

And so you take two pieces of wood and you you glue them together edge to edge to make a wider piece.

A good woodworker will carefully search amongst his pieces of wood to find two that match up, that match up in color, that match up in grain consistency.

You'll clean up that edge, sometimes with a jointer, sometimes with a plane, to make sure that it's straight and perfectly smooth, and then you'll put a layer of glue on that edge, and you'll put them together, edge to edge, and then you will clamp it together until that wood and glue are cured.

Take it apart, you sand it, you clean it up, you scrape it, however you want to do it.

If you've done your job well, that glue joint will be nearly invisible.

It will appear to be one piece of wood.

That is like how God designed the marriage relationship.

God glues two people together intending a permanent bond.

And if a divinely glued joint is broken, it will not be simple and clean because the bond is too strong.

There are no longer two people, but one person.

How do you ever sever one being without disastrous results?

You see, the Pharisees were overlooking God's original intent in their effort to maintain their freedom.

And as a result, men were severing those permanent bonds while women were selfishly and painfully set aside.

Rather than looking for ways to restore or refresh the one flesh union, they sought to sever it.

If you invite me to your house, I'm just going to confess this up front.

If you invite me to your home, one of the first things that you will catch me doing is looking at your woodwork.

I'll look at your cabinets.

I'll look at your trim.

It fascinates me, it intrigues me.

I like to see other people's work.

And sometimes, on occasion, I see a couple of glued pieces of wood that are just beautiful.

And somehow that joint has started to disintegrate and come apart, or maybe it's been cracked, or maybe it's been severed, and you just you kind of grieve.

Boy, that was a beautiful two pieces of wood put together, and it just makes you sad that now they're just all ruined.

If it pains me as a woodworker to see that severing with wood, how much more must the creator of marriage feel when his established bond is severed?

Jesus reminds us that he had never intended the marriage relationship to be severed.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Of course, when sin reigns and we live in a sin-cursed world, sinful people will elevate their sinful desires to the expense of God's word, won't they?

They'll put their desires, their self-centeredness ahead of what God has to say.

And so Jesus points his finger at any one of us who might think of discarding God's intentions for our desires and sinful motives.

That's what he's doing.

He's pointing out the Pharisees' sinful motives, their sinful desires.

He says, This is about your heart, not about God's word.

You are discarding, you are changing, you are molding God's word to fit your sinful self-centeredness.

And so Jesus corrects that.

And in this correction, Jesus wants us to know that God's intention is to be understood not merely as eh, a possibility, but as a command, as an expectation.

What therefore God has joined together.

Let not man separate.

Divorce always has a selfish, self-centered rejection of God's principle behind it.

Always.

Somewhere in one of the spouses or another, or maybe both, there will be a rejection of what God has to say to put my desires, my expectations, my life ahead of what God has to say.

Now we know, right?

Most of us are painfully aware that divorce can and does occur.

That one flesh union is sometimes severed.

We noted last week that it didn't take very long after sin entered the Garden of Eden for marriages to be in trouble.

But our text here in Matthew is not about what leads to divorce or what may or may not occur.

It is about what should happen.

It is about God's design, about how he molded things in the very beginning and his intention for it going forward.

So Jesus doesn't tell the Pharisees that divorce can't take place.

He's telling them that they must accept God's intention as his command if they are God's people.

They must submit their own self-centeredness to God's intention.

They must not seek to separate what God put together.

Now it makes perfect sense, doesn't it, for an atheist to reject Scripture?

It's no surprise that a sinful world intent on its own desires rejects God's word.

It's not a surprise to us, so it should not surprise us when the cultures around us feel free to marry and divorce at will.

It should not surprise us when there are attempts to redefine marriage or to redefine created biology of man and woman.

Because the world has little concern for God's intentions.

And that's the world you live in.

But to claim a connection to God and then to deny God's design and intent is rebellion.

And the one that you rebel against is the one who made it all in the first place.

I hope you get the sense of Jesus' statement here.

He's very hard-lined on this issue.

Today he would probably be called bigoted and narrow-minded.

And I'm sure the Pharisees were caught off guard by what he said.

To claim Christ is to support marriage as an indissoluble union between one man and one woman, just as it has been from the beginning, period.

Anything less is purposefully ignoring God's creative work, his revealed word, and his intention for his world.

And that naturally gets a response.

Because for the Pharisees, that doesn't fit into their theology because their theology is not based on an accurate understanding of God's word.

And as we saw last week, their misunderstanding hinged on two problems.

They were using Deuteronomy 24 as a proof text, they were lifting it out of its context to say, hey, God gave us a command to divorce, so we can divorce for any reason.

And it also hinged on their misunderstanding of the permanence of the marriage relationship.

But if you take out those two hinges, the door is suddenly going crazy.

So Jesus points out to them that God never commanded divorce.

He did.

He did institute a divorce certificate to prevent hasty divorces and to provide a merciful option for innocent parties in a divorce and to corral sin.

But God never issued a command to do any such thing.

Why would he, when he created the relationship, to be permanent?

So Jesus says the heart of the issue is the severing of the one-flesh relationship.

I hope it's safe to say that most human beings respond with horror to grisly murders involving dismemberment.

It's egregious to sever a human body, so why would it ever be okay to sever the one flesh union of the marriage relationship?

If we respond with horror to such terrible ways of taking the life of another, why would it ever be okay to sever one flesh union that God has established?

Because we do not perceive God as we should, we do not trust His word as we ought, and thus we do not see marriage as God intended.

Why do we seemingly have insurmountable marriage problems?

Why are our problems so daunting?

It's because our perspectives are too human.

We fail to see marriage through God's eyes, and so we allow sin to reign, and when we allow sin to reign, we refuse to walk in the ways of our Creator.

And the people of Jesus' day were the exact same way.

They possessed a short-sighted view of the permanence of the marriage union.

Jesus' statement would have shocked them.

Verse 9 I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery.

Unless there has been a already been a sinful severing of the one flesh union, to divorce and remarry is yet another act of sinful adultery.

Because the one flesh union still exists and is such a strong bond.

There was little thought in the first century world of divorcing a spouse to remain single.

If one divorced, then one remarried.

So Jesus doesn't address the issue of divorcing and remaining single.

The implication is that remaining single is the best option following a divorce for any reason other than unfaithfulness, that breaking of the union, that severing of the union.

And the whole of Scripture demonstrates that God shows mercy to those who are the innocent victims of an unbiblical divorce.

If a spouse leaves and marries another, they commit an unfaithful act that breaks, that severs that union, freeing the innocent spouse to remarry.

So here Jesus addresses a single issue: the husband's prerogative to be rid of his wife, to marry another.

And Jesus says, there are no multiple divinely approved reasons to divorce a spouse.

I chose to go with Colossians chapter one for our communion time this morning for a reason.

And that is because of the first part of that text in chapter one of Colossians, where he talks about Jesus being the image of the invisible God, and then verse 16 of Colossians 1, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

So if God created marriage, who created marriage?

Jesus.

And if Jesus created marriage and he's now giving definitions to marriage, then he's saying this is how I intended it.

And this is what I expect.

Jesus says to divorce your wife because she repeatedly burns your toast in the morning is not okay with God.

To divorce your husband because he fails to help you at home is not a reason to divorce.

To divorce because you have irreconcilable differences is not okay with God.

Divorce because you have fallen out of love is not acceptable.

Those are all symptoms.

Those are all symptoms of a failure to recognize and submit to God as your ultimate sovereign.

They are a failure to view his word as your ultimate authority and a failure to walk in obedience to him.

The only situation Jesus says where God gives mercy, not grace, mercy, to divorce and then remarry is if there has been a sexual sin-like adultery, where there's a severing of the one-flesh relationship.

Now, later in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul adds that if someone trusts in Christ, if there's a husband and a wife that are unbelieving, that they do not believe in Christ, and one of them comes to faith in Christ, and the other spouse says, okay, I'm done with you, I'm walking away.

The Apostle Paul says, you can view that situation as a death.

And that believing spouse is free to remarry.

But here before the cross, Jesus answers only with God's original intent.

Unfaithfulness is the only act that severs the one flesh reunion.

So God, in an act of mercy for a sinful world, grants the innocent spouse, the one who has not severed that union, the freedom to remarry after the disillusion of such a marriage.

Only, only because that one flesh union has been severed.

But remember, that does not come without consequences.

You cannot break a permanent bond without consequences.

In an act of mercy, God views the adulterer, the unfaithful one, as dead to their spouse because of their sin, freeing the other spouse to remarry.

We need to understand, however, that God doesn't command divorce even for unfaithfulness.

This is hard.

This is hard because that one flesh union is so permanent, is so secure, so bonding that it is painful to sever it.

And even in that severing, God does not command a divorce.

God grants permission because of the stubbornness of sinful hearts intent on severing what God intended to remain one, and for mercy for the innocent suffering the consequences of someone else's sin.

But we could make an argument that there exists an even greater mercy.

The greater mercy is God's power to enable a believing couple to work through sin issues toward restoring a marriage union through forgiveness and grace.

That's an astounding thought in today's world.

See, God designed it to be permanent, so it makes sense for that to be possible, for God to have the power to renew and restore that one flesh union.

Unfortunately, it's sometimes impossible from a human perspective because sin severs God's intentions and it also severs people's hope and God's principles.

We live in a society that may be more intent on personal freedoms than in Jesus' time.

So it's interesting to note the disciples' response in verse 10.

Lord, if that's the case, it's better to not marry.

You really mean that?

You can see which side of the question the disciples land on, don't you?

And this is after at least two and a half years of ministry with Jesus.

They have appeared to side with the more liberal group, believing that divorce is okay in most situations.

So they would rather avoid marriage at all, entirely, than to enter into that relationship with no way out.

So Jesus says that God is sovereign over who is married and who remains single.

And he gives these things as gifts to his people.

Therefore, everyone should live as God has enabled them.

Under God's created intentions.

Because if you don't, you're going to view God's created intentions as mere suggestions instead of commands.

And if you see them as mere suggestions and you violate his commands, you're going to be rebelling against God.

He says, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

My friends, seek to be content where you are.

It doesn't mean that God won't change it.

It means that God has given you the grace to live as you are today.

And in the grace to live as you are today, He has given you the grace to obey Him and His intentions today.

So do that today.

And entrust your future to the sovereign one.

I would love to know the mind of the Lord on this day.

The Pharisees are claiming to be God's chosen people.

The Lord Himself chose the disciples.

They believed in him, and yet none of them appeared to understand God's intentions for the marriage relationship.

Did that bring pain to the Lord Jesus?

Did he shake his head and say, you still don't get it?

Did it cause him sorrow?

In a similar way, I wonder if the way his church views marriage today brings him sorrow.

Does he shake his head and point yet again to Genesis when hearing our modern excuses for changing definitions and changing what he has to say in Genesis or discarding it entirely or for bailing on marriages so easily?

What does he do with our excuses?

I would suggest to you that Jesus doesn't care one bit for our excuses.

And that he doesn't care one bit for the Pharisees' excuses, because excuses are just that.

They're excuses for looking at ourselves selfishly, looking at our circumstances selfishly, and looking at them for what we can get out of it rather than what God has commanded us to be and to do.

The problem is not with marriage.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Thumbs in and thumbs down.

The problem is the sin that drives us to pride, thinking, I deserve better.

I deserve more.

I deserve whatever it might be.

Because at heart we refuse to consider others as more significant than ourselves, even when the Son of God Himself left behind the glories of heaven to wrap himself with flesh as a slave, to die on a cross, because he considered others.

Is more significant than himself.

And we have the audacity to say, you're not more significant than me.

Sin, my friends, will affect your life.

If you are married, or if someday you will be married, sin will affect the life of your spouse.

Sin will affect your marriage.

But if you genuinely view Christ as the most important one in your life, as the one who made your marriage and as the one who glued you together, you will labor to root out that sin as an act of obedience and worship to the one who called you to his own glory and excellence.

Trouble comes to marriages because of sin, and it will come.

Are you ready?

Have you prepared yourself?

Have you prepared your marriage by always looking to Christ and His Word as your ultimate guide?

Because the only way to be ready is to have a foundation comprised of an accurate view of how sin motivates selfishness and have an accurate commitment to marriage God's way.

If we are to please him in this area, we must work together to uphold the permanence of the marriage relationship because that is the way God designed it to be.

And that brings him the greatest glory and your greatest satisfaction.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we confess to you that so often we want our own way.

Like Eve in the garden, we we see that sin is appealing.

It's appealing to our senses, it's appealing to our heart, it's appealing to our flesh, and we desire it.

Lord, enable us to kill it, to put it to death, so that righteousness might reign in us.

Lord, enable us by the power of your spirit to go from this room today, committed to upholding your view of marriage, your view of what is right, your view of what is wrong, to upholding you as the one who made all things and made them right.

May we go from this place committed to encouraging one another to look to you, to hope in you, and to trust in you in all things.

In your name we pray these things, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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