Matthew 19:1-12 | "The Dangerous Dilemma of Divorce"

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

Matthew chapter 19, if you have your Bible, I encourage you to follow along as I read for us the first twelve verses to get our hearts and minds attentive to the Word of God.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

Says, Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan, and large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

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 from the beginning made them 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, the Pharisees, said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

Jesus 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 is better not to marry.

But he said to them, No one can receive not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

For there are eunuchs who have been 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.

It's not possible to answer all of the questions or address all of the issues that arise from this passage of Scripture in our time this morning.

So today and next Sunday we will consider what God says from this passage about divorce, marriage, and remarriage.

And even then, we will not fully answer all of the questions or all of the issues that may arise from this.

And we would gladly invite your questions and concerns regarding what is not able to be addressed in our time in these two Sunday mornings.

But we need to remember that Jesus here is on his way to Jerusalem.

That's how this passage begins.

He's leaving his area of ministry, his home area, and he is on his way as the king to the royal city of Jerusalem.

And as the king, he is headed there to be crowned, not with not with a golden crown, but with a crown of thorns.

And on his way to Jerusalem, the leaders of Israel gather around him to trip him up, as it were, on his way to the city.

And the question that they ask is about divorce.

But the answer is about marriage.

Now the average Christian's view of marriage and remarriage and divorce is often constructed with insufficient and faulty arguments borrowed from either or both, experience and culture.

And Satan then comes in and uses that insufficient information, that undergirded mindset that is built upon experience and culture to lead Christians to unbiblical conclusions and then unbiblical actions.

So it's important for us to have as much information as possible so that we are not deluded into believing what is inaccurate and unbiblical.

Now, having said that it is important for us to have as much information as possible, I have done as much as possible to cull information from this sermon.

We might be here a while.

Be thankful that we're not here longer this morning.

And remember, lunch is waiting.

We have two major things to consider.

One is divorce, one is marriage and remarriage.

So this morning, I would like us to consider what the Bible has to say about divorce.

Most of us have heard something about what the Bible has to say about divorce.

If you've been with us long enough, we've already heard some of what Jesus has said about divorce in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

But few of us have heard all that the Bible has to say about divorce.

And we will not be able to dive into every little detail that the Bible says, but I'd like to give us an overview, a flyover this morning of what Scripture has to say.

But first we need to understand some cultural elements.

Divorce was fairly common when the Pharisees asked this question of Jesus.

It's probably an exaggeration to say that divorce was rampant in the first century, but it's safe to say that it was an accepted practice.

An accepted practice that had been going on long enough that it had a wide range of views, much like we have today.

And those disparate views are important for our understanding of this passage.

Did you notice the phrasing of the Pharisees' first question?

They asked two questions in their challenging and their testing of Jesus.

Their first question is this Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

We have to really pay attention to their question.

Because it's subtle.

Do you notice their tactic?

Do you notice their tactic?

The legality of divorce is not in question.

They believe that it is legal because Scripture ordains the practice.

The focus of their question concerns the approved reasons for divorce.

They want Jesus' thoughts on whether it is legal to divorce for any cause.

For any reason.

In other words, they're interested in whether or not Jesus sees limitations on the basis for divorce.

Now, some cultural background may be helpful for us to further understand this.

First, we need to understand in that time period, only husbands possessed the right of divorce.

That's right, ladies.

You had far fewer rights.

Wives were not legally permitted to divorce their husbands.

Now, in rare cases, in rare cases, they could petition the local rulers, the local leaders to hear their case.

And if a ruling was in the wife's favor, the judges would then order the husband to divorce the wife.

In almost every case that we have on record, the husband is the initiator of the divorce because the wife did not have the right to do so.

We also need to understand marriage practices.

Most marriages of that time were arranged marriages.

They were arranged with a premarital agreement on a bride price.

That doesn't mean that girls were purchased as brides.

It actually points to the opposite.

Daughters were considered very valuable members of a household.

And so the bride price was to compensate the family for the tremendous loss of a daughter because of the value that they held to the home and to family life.

So a bride price actually served to elevate the concept of marriage in some way.

Because you wouldn't pay a bride price if you weren't going to put in the effort to make it worth the cost.

Now, the future husband, or his father, in many cases, paid the bride price to the bride's father when the arrangement was agreed upon.

But at the wedding, it switched to the other side.

At the wedding, the father of the bride gave a dowry, a financial gift to his daughter.

So one contribution went from the future husband, the groom, to the father-in-law.

The other payment went from that father of the bride to his daughter.

That dowry was hers to take into a new marriage.

Sometimes she kept it for herself.

It was her security blanket, you might say.

So when you remember the parable of the coins, and the woman was distraught at having lost some, you understand why.

It was her security blanket.

If she lost some and something happened to her, what would she do?

Now, sometimes, in some cases, there's evidence that that dowry came to be part of the couple's resources.

But most of the time she kept it for herself.

And it appears that the dowry was the principal issue at the heart of the Pharisees' question in Matthew 19.

Because Jewish records tell us that the husband could keep the wife's dowry for himself if there was an appropriate legal cause for the divorce.

But if there wasn't an appropriate legal cause, and he still divorced his wife, then she got to keep the dowry funds.

So do you see the underlying greed in the Pharisee's question?

The Pharisees wanted to know how much they could get away with and still be able to keep the wife's money.

How much could they get away with and still keep the dowry for themselves and leave their wife hopeless and helpless?

Now we understand that in almost every situation there's more than one side.

And there are two sides to this issue, led by two different rabbis.

Rabbi Shemai was the more conservative leader, and he taught that unfaithfulness or adultery was the only biblical reason for divorce.

In fact, they went so far as to say that divorce was expected for adultery.

That's why when Joseph found that Mary was to be with child, it was pretty much expected that you would divorce a wife for adultery.

Rabbi Shemai took a very hard-line stance so that if a man were to divorce his wife for any other reason than unfaithfulness, then he must return the dowry to the wife.

Rabbi Hillel, on the other hand, was the more liberal of the two primary leaders.

He taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason.

Now remember, the wife can't divorce the husband.

So she's very limited in her rights and her resources.

The husband, however, is free, according to Rabbi Hillel, to do whatever he wants.

There's evidence that men divorce their wives for adultery.

There is evidence on record for men divorcing their wives for burning a meal, or merely for finding someone that they desired more than their current wife.

So in Rabbi Hillel's world, the wife always lost.

There was an untold number of quote-unquote biblical reasons to get rid of a wife.

The husband could divorce his wife anytime and not suffer financial cost because he then got to keep the dowry.

And he would leave the wife with nothing.

So the Pharisees come to test Jesus.

Jesus, which side are you going to land on?

Jesus, we have this disagreement here.

And you know what?

Those far right conservatives, you know what, they don't allow much freedom.

But on the other side, there's quite a bit of freedom.

So Jesus, where do you fall in this question?

We're going to look at Jesus' answer more in depth next Sunday.

So you have to come back next Sunday.

And I will say that you will not fully gain the full perspective here without both studies.

If you just get today and not next week, you're going to miss a significant part here.

But next week we'll look at Jesus' answer.

But for now, notice the tension between verse 7 and verse 8 of Matthew 19.

Verse 7 says that they said to him, the Pharisees said to him, Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Notice that in verse 7, the Pharisees declared that Moses commanded them to divorce.

But in verse 8, Jesus says, Moses allowed, or your Bible might say, permitted you.

Why?

Because of the hardness of hearts.

And it wasn't so from the beginning.

There's a huge difference, right, between commanded and allowed.

Between giving an order, giving an issue, having something codified in the law, versus, okay, yep, I understand that this is the way things are, so it's okay to do that.

Jesus corrects their interpretation and their misrepresentation of the law.

Nevertheless, it's intriguing, I think, to see the biblical basis for the Pharisees' question.

They argue that divorce is commanded.

It is in the law of Moses, and therefore it is something that they must follow.

It's mandated.

Therefore, the only question left pertains to details.

For what can a man divorce his wife?

Remember, wives can't divorce their husbands in that world.

So, what freedom is a husband allowed?

That's going to be the remainder of our time this morning.

How do we figure that out?

Well, we have to figure that out by looking at what Scripture says.

So let's go all the way back to the beginning, to Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

We'll look at Genesis chapter 2 and look at verses 18 through 24.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Here's what that says.

I encourage you to look at it in your own Bible if you're not able to.

It is on the screen here.

Beginning in verse 18, it says that Yahweh God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make a helper fit for him.

So this is in the Garden of Eden, after all of the animals have been created, the world is created, all that's left is the fitting of someone to match Adam, the first man.

And God says, It's not good that he is alone.

Let's make somebody fit for him.

So out of the ground, Yahweh God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called, every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

So Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Yahweh God had taken from the man, he f he formed, he fashioned into a woman, and brought her to the man.

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 they shall become one flesh.

So notice how God initiates the relationship between creatures and creation.

God initiates it.

He puts animals together.

He puts husband and wife together.

Man is in dominion over everything else in creation.

God makes a woman a helper for Adam.

He performs the first wedding and he brings the first bride to the first man.

And at the last of what we read here in verse 24, that pattern of God bringing a woman to a man becomes divine principle.

The pattern is instantly turned into principle.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The created pattern, that is the principle guiding all other marriages, is one woman and one man becoming one flesh.

That's how the book starts.

That's how the world starts.

That's how God begins.

And in Matthew 19, Jesus asserts that text as proof that God always intended marriages to be permanent.

So what do we see?

Well, in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve drag all of creation into sin.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Then in chapter 4, Cain kills his brother Abel.

And then in chapter 4, verse 19, we read that a man named Lamech took two wives.

It isn't condemned in the text of Genesis, but it is contrary to the divine principle in the Garden of Eden, isn't it?

After only a few generations, sin has affected the way men and women relate to one another in the marriage relationship.

And so in Lamech, the man and woman and one flesh relationship suddenly becomes a man and two women.

And that's not where it stops.

We find another issue in Genesis chapter 16, as well as in Genesis 21, with Abraham and Sarah and their servant Hagar.

Genesis 16 · chapter mention

Because of Sarah's barrenness, Sarah suggests that Abraham take Hagar, her servant, as his wife, as his second wife, to conceive a child for them.

After Isaac's miraculous birth to Sarah, Hagar and her son are driven away from the family.

So by the middle of Genesis, sin had so infected the marriage relationship that it was used for personal benefit.

And in some cases, when personal benefit was gone, so was the woman who provided the benefit.

And that's not just a one-case situation because archaeologists have discovered that this was common enough that it was case law.

We can point to archaeological evidence where it was a common practice to do this kind of thing.

So by the middle of the very first book of Genesis, very first book of the Bible, sin has impacted the marriage relationship where that one woman and one man becoming one flesh is now all distorted and all messed up, such that it can be used for personal benefit.

And when the personal benefit is gone, poosh, push you out, get rid of you, cast you out, you're gone.

Now, 400 years passed between Hagar and Israel's exodus from Egypt.

So it should not surprise us to find that God steps in to regulate sinful marital actions.

Sin had plenty of time to infect the world, so God steps in and makes some statements about it.

But the statements aren't as plentiful or as clear.

So we find first some directives for priests in the book of Leviticus.

In chapter 21, verse 7, it says of priests, they shall not marry a prostitute or a woman who has been defiled, neither shall they marry a woman divorced from her husband.

Why?

Because a priest is holy to his God.

And that is repeated again in Leviticus 21, verse 14.

Leviticus 21:14

Now, both of these verses, Leviticus 21, 7 and 21, 14, include the English word divorce.

But it might surprise you that that's technically not what Moses wrote.

He used a word that means driven out or cast out, thrown out.

And it's the same word used in Genesis to refer to the actions about Hagar.

Cast out, thrown away, driven away from the family.

It's a word that's found only five times in the Old Testament regarding a spouse.

And it's a word that represents the wife being driven out of her home, driven out, cast out of her marriage.

Then we come next to Deuteronomy 22.

And you'll notice that we're going here now to the fifth book of the Bible.

And in the fifth book of the Bible, we're just barely getting into any kinds of information about this marriage relationship being separated somehow.

There's really not a lot.

There's really not a lot.

So what is it that we do find?

In Genesis, we find Hagar being cast out.

In Leviticus, we find that a priest cannot marry someone who has been cast out.

Deuteronomy, we find in chapter 22, verse 19, and also verse 29, a situation where it appears as though a young woman has been raped, where her virginity is at stake.

And in these two passages, a man who rapes a young woman or who questions whether or not she is a virgin and questions it wrongly must marry the woman and can never divorce.

Again, English word divorce.

But the Hebrew word in Deuteronomy is not the same word as the Hebrew word in Leviticus and about Hagar.

Great.

Now what do we do?

The Hebrew word in Leviticus, as you've already seen, is a word that means to cast out.

In Deuteronomy, it's a different word that means to send away, to put away.

It carries the idea of abandonment, of being done with that person as a spouse, and it's sort of a word that is a less intense form.

We might say that Leviticus has this sense of being intentionally mean.

Maybe sending away as not with that sense of meanness just being done.

And yet a wife would say, Well, that's mean.

Interestingly, these Leviticus and Deuteronomy references come before any mention of a certificate of divorce.

You remember?

When the Pharisees came to Jesus in Matthew 19, they said Moses commanded us to give a certificate of divorce.

We're already in the fifth book of the Bible, and that's not yet been mentioned.

So these concepts of being cast out, of being forced out, of being sent away, or abandoning wives is before anything is said about a certificate of divorce.

It's a picture of what happens when a man desires to be rid of his wife.

He just sends her away.

He says, get out, go away.

I'm done with you.

We should probably be careful about seeing those actions as a technical divorce.

I think it's a bit unfortunate that our translations have made that choice.

Why is that?

Well, there is a finality to divorce that is not seen in sending someone away.

Sending away leaves much up in the air because the one-flesh relationship has not truly ended.

The marriage has not been severed.

There's merely distance, space that is put between spouses, like a modern separation.

That's what Genesis suggests for Abraham and Hagar.

But put yourself for a moment in that woman's shoes.

Hagar was sent away with a loaf of bread and a pouch of water.

And when that was used up, what did she do?

She put her son under a bush in some shade, and she found a spot for herself, and she waited to die.

Put yourself in that woman's shoes for a moment, the woman who was sent away.

Your father arranged your marriage when you were a very young girl.

About the time you're 12, 13, 14 years old, your new husband arrives at your home.

And you have a marriage celebration.

And at the end of that week-long celebration, he takes you home to his father's home to live with him as your new husband.

Years go by, and then something happens, causing your husband to be very upset with you, and he's so fed up that he just sends you away, away from him, away from your children, away from your in-laws, away from all of your familial support.

Where do you go?

Where do you go?

Yeah, you might be able to go back to your father's home, but by then they might not receive you back because being sent away from your husband could bring shame on the family.

You're still technically married to him, but you're not living with him, so what does that say about you?

You're left to yourself.

Which may mean that your only options are begging or maybe prostitution at the worst.

Or, or maybe after several years of marriage, your husband is just dissatisfied with you.

Perhaps he doesn't like your cooking.

Maybe he finds you irritating.

Maybe it's all in him.

Maybe he's just downright selfish and arrogant, and he wants a younger, newer model.

And so you're just set aside.

Maybe if he's really generous, he builds you a shack out back.

You're still on the property, you're still with him, you're still around your family, but you're not the number one wife anymore.

You're no longer provided for as his wife.

You're not carrying the status of a wife, you're merely sent away because he doesn't want to have you around.

If you are that woman, there's little hope for you.

You're cast out, you're rejected, you're ashamed.

And since you're alone, folks may look at you as the cause of the problem.

When in reality the problem may have been with the husband.

But because you don't have the right of divorce and only the husband does, what do you do?

You're simply left at the whims of the husband to send you away.

Because of the depravity that rages within all of us, there was no recourse for Hagar.

There's no recourse for a woman in the Old Testament time period who was sent away to have any hope.

And so God, in his great mercy, steps in.

And he says in Deuteronomy chapter 24, 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, there it is, first time, 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 sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and 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 Yahweh.

Deuteronomy 24 · chapter mention

And you shall not bring sin upon the land that Yahweh your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Now, as we read this, we can see that there is no real command here.

If we back up to the first part of the section, we see that there's a whole bunch of ifs here.

There's an assumption of a wedding, of a marriage, a man and a wife.

Then if this happens, and if this happens, and this happens, and this happens.

The situation is really not about divorce.

It's far more concerned about remarriage after divorce.

God told Moses that a person who is given a certificate of divorce is free to remarry.

Notice the combination.

Notice the combination in verse one of the certificate of divorce and sending her away.

This is the first time in Scripture that we find a sending away in combination with a certificate of divorce.

One technically remains married and not free to remarry if they are sent away without the certificate.

So the certificate and the flow of the first five books of the Old Testament functions as a document of freedom for the woman who has been sent away.

She is free to remarry.

If there is a legitimate cause, Moses says a man should send away his wife with a certificate of divorce.

In Hebrew, the certificate of divorce means a document of cutting.

Because the marriage is a covenant that is often symbolized by the cutting of animals.

Symbolized the marriage by establishing a one-flesh relationship.

And so the only way to sever a one-flesh relationship is to cut it completely in two.

So a certificate of divorce is a document of cutting.

The marriage has been cut.

It has been severed.

The covenant has been cut again in a second time in a bat way.

There is no command here to divorce.

God never ever gives a command to divorce.

So the Pharisees in Matthew 19 were absolutely wrong.

To say that Moses commanded us to give a certificate of divorce is wrong.

There's no command anywhere.

So how do we explain this?

We explain it in this way.

God recognized that sinful people act sinfully.

And when they act sinfully, there are often grave consequences for other people.

So God steps in in this situation to regulate, to limit sin, and to protect and to provide mercy for the innocent.

The certificate of cutting, the certificate of divorce enabled the wife to prove that she was free.

She's not merely sent away, not merely cast out to the back 40 as a second wife.

It's her symbol that says, I'm no longer married.

So she's free to return to her father's house to begin her life again, or free to be remarried to another.

There's no question now concerning her status.

Now, sometimes the certificate pointed to the sin of the husband.

Perhaps his arrogance, perhaps his freedom to do what he pleased to the neglect of the woman.

Sometimes it pointed to the fact that there was serious sin in the relationship that necessitated the severing of the relationship.

By the time of Jesus, it was merely procedural.

You want a new wife?

Just send her away with a certificate.

That's all you need to do.

Give your wife the proper documentation and you could move on to the next woman.

But there was this tiny issue of indecency.

Did you notice when we were reading in Deuteronomy chapter 24 in verse 1, it said, When a man takes a wife and marries her, if he then finds, if she then finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her.

Deuteronomy 24 · chapter mention

What is an indecency?

Well, that is the key component to the Pharisees' question in Matthew 19.

Again, by Jesus' time, there were two schools of thought.

One side believed that adultery, unfaithfulness was the only kind of indecency that was in Moses' mind.

The other group believed that burning the breakfast toast was an indecency and sufficient cause to send a wife away.

With the proper certificate, of course.

I'm sure that if you think about it, you can imagine which group had the larger following.

Problem is it's very hard to be dogmatic about what an indecency is.

The word literally means nakedness of a thing.

What's that?

Well, it describes the stripping away of some kind of covering so that an indecent component is exposed.

We have a picture given to us, actually in the same context as Deuteronomy 24.

If you back up just a few verses to chapter 23, verses 12 through 14, we see another picture.

And that picture is, pardon this illustration before lunchtime, but it's of an outdoor bathroom.

Israel didn't have toilets or outhouses when they were wandering around in the desert for 40 years.

So God told them how to use the bathroom in the outdoors.

God told them to dig a hole in the ground to use as a toilet and then cover it up when you're done.

Then it says this in Deuteronomy 23, verse 14, you should do this because, here's the reason.

Deuteronomy 23:14

Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, this Israelite camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you.

Therefore, your camp must be holy, so that God must not see anything indecent.

There's that same word, indecent among you, and turn away from you.

God is absolutely holy.

And if you have any takeaway from today about what God thinks about marriage or divorce, it should be that statement.

God is absolutely holy.

And because God is absolutely holy, it says a lot of things about what he thinks about divorce and remarriage and marriage itself.

Even God is so holy that even normal bodily refuse is indecent in God's presence.

Now, wait a minute.

Didn't God create our bodies?

Well, yes, he did.

But here it says that even normal, normal bodily functioning produces things that are indecent, that are a nakedness of a thing.

Some covering has been stripped away so that God's holiness is offended by it.

So God told Israel to cover it up.

It's unholy.

It's indecent to reveal something in its nakedness when it ought to be covered up.

Now that may help us understand what the indecency is in this divorce remarriage context.

It may refer to some kind of act that brings shame to the holiness of God.

The holiness of the one flesh relationship, the sacredness of that marriage principle of one man, one woman coming together to be one flesh.

Now, here's where it starts to get sticky.

Remember that I said it's hard to be dogmatic?

This nakedness of a thing, this indecency, probably doesn't refer to adultery.

Why do I say that?

I say that because adultery was dealt with on its own in the law of God.

The consequence for adultery was stoning to death.

So if the adulterer is stoned to death, the spouse doesn't have any need of a divorce because the spouse is dead.

So the indecency seems to be something else that uncovers what ought to remain covered.

Several hundred years after the giving of the law, and several hundred before Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees, there was a situation of sorts.

Ezra and Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem with some of the exiles that were sent to Babylon, and they came back to restore the temple and the wall around Jerusalem.

And Ezra tells us that some of the men, when they returned from Babylon to their homeland, looked around at some of the pagan wives, pagan women around them, and decided we're going to take them for our wives, and we're going to send away our Jewish wives.

Seems to be the same situation that Malachi is describing in Malachi chapter 2.

Malachi 2 · chapter mention

Malachi chapter 2 is a very difficult text to understand and contains what may be the most difficult passage in Scripture to translate.

Malachi 2 · chapter mention

So let's try it.

Malachi chapter 2, verse 11, describes a situation that may be spiritual, but may also be physical.

Malachi 2:11

At any rate, it's described like a marriage.

God says that his people, the people of Judah, have married the daughter of a foreign God.

So that tells us right off the bat that whatever is going on here has some element of unfaithfulness to God in order to be faithful to another false God.

Notice now what it says in Matthew, Malachi chapter 2, verse 14.

Malachi 2:14

God does not accept their offerings or accept favor from their hand, verse 13.

But you say, why does he not?

Oh.

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.

So there's there's an implication here that we are having the mindset of Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Of God saying, I am, I am forming the pattern here, is one woman and one man, they're coming together to be one flesh, and that is now the principle going forward for marriage.

So that's what is in the back of any Jewish person's mind about the marriage relationship.

And God says to these Jewish people who have now married the daughter of a foreign God, listen, you have been unfaithful to the wife of your youth.

She's your companion, she's your wife by the cutting of a covenant.

Now we go down to verse 15, it says.

So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.

For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her, says Yahweh, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence.

Verse 16 says, For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her.

Only Malachi uses a single word that is much stronger.

Malachi doesn't say who does not love.

The man who hates his wife.

And interestingly, yet again, this is not the term for a certificate of divorce.

Just as a side note, there's only three times that we find certificate of divorce found in the Old Testament.

One is in Deuteronomy 24, where God describes it.

And the other two are in Jeremiah and Isaiah, one in each book, where God is the one who gives a certificate of divorce to Israel.

So it's not here.

This is that word found back in Deuteronomy that means the sending away to put somebody out.

The man who hates and sends away covers his garment with violence.

It's almost identical language to Deuteronomy 24.3.

So our question then becomes: if God, if God regulated the sending away in Deuteronomy, if he was upset and angry about men having such control that they just sent their wives away, put them out without any recourse.

And so he says, if you're going to be that sinful, you must give them a certificate of divorce to grant them freedom.

If God was so regulatory there, why does he sound so angry here?

Why that change?

Why is he so negative here?

I would suggest to you that there can only be two reasons.

One is that the reasons for this sending away were improper.

That is, there was no indecency.

These men are coming home from Babylon.

They're feeling free in the land of Judah.

They're seeing women around them and they're saying, hey, we can do whatever we want.

So they send their wives away and take a new model in.

The second possible reason is that men in this situation were demonstrating ultimately their unfaithfulness to God.

Yes, they were putting away their wives, they were sending them away and bringing in new models, pagan models, and that's exactly the point.

They're bringing in pagan Canaanite women, which is an act of indecency to God first and foremost, and an unfaithfulness to the wives of their youth.

And so rather than give their wives the decency of a certificate, granting them freedom, they simply push them out.

That, God says at the end of the verse, is faithless and treacherous.

It's deceitful.

The ones being sent away are not in the wrong.

The ones pushing their wives out are the ones acting unfaithfully to God and to the one flesh relationship, and God says, I hate that.

See, God desired faithfulness to him that is imaged in the faithfulness to a spouse.

Which really brings us to a key element about divorce.

If one sends a spouse away, what you're doing is saying, I don't care anything about God's principle.

I don't care anything about faithfulness to God.

But by the time of Jesus, they apparently hadn't learned that lesson very well.

Because the Pharisees in Matthew 19 argued over whether God gave them great freedom.

Jesus, how many reasons can you give us to be able to get rid of our wives?

We might translate that into our culture as how many irreconcilable differences can we come up with?

So now that we've had a bit of background, let's look back at Matthew 19.

Jesus answered this question.

Jesus, how many, how many reasons are there?

He says, Have you not read?

You experts in religion, you you church-going people, have you not read what God did?

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them 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.

If you disregard God's word, that's one thing.

If you disregard anything that God says and you start from a philosophy, a basis that says, I don't care what this says, I'm going to look at experience and what the world says, that's one thing.

But if you start by believing that God said what he said and he meant what he said, then you have to take into consideration what he said in the beginning.

And what he said in the beginning is there's one flesh.

And he created them as husband and wife, as man and woman, to come together to be husband and wife, so they are no longer two but one flesh.

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

Here these Pharisees come and say, Jesus, we we've got, we're making our list of reasons to divorce.

And Jesus says, You don't get it.

Throw that list in the fire because from the beginning God said, Don't separate.

So we can take away then an understanding that husbands and wives should not seek to dissolve the one-flesh relationship, but to maintain that divine principle of marriage.

Then we get to verse 7.

They said to him, Why then did God command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

Jesus says, Well, because you were too stubborn in your sin.

That's what it says.

Because of the hardness of your heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

Understand, friends, God never commands people to dissolve the marriage covenant.

We can never use the excuse.

God told me I should do this.

God can never be our excuse for sinning.

In verse eight, we've we can take away the principle that divorce is only allowed to take place because of sin.

And that means it is never good in terms of God's design for marriage.

That doesn't mean that it might not provide a means of safety, that it might provide a means of escape from abuse or neglect.

But we cannot use those reasons of escape from something bad to automatically say it is good.

Because the only reason it exists is because God said, I'm having mercy because of your sin.

It's always, divorce is always a painful severing of something designed to be whole and one.

That means, it's an overused word today, but it means there may be victims of divorce.

Just like there were wives in the Old Testament times who were just sent away.

There are some who do everything in their power to maintain their marriages, who do everything that they have within their ability and their power to love their spouse, to serve their spouse, but who still end up suffering the ugly effects of sin.

So, like God, we must be full of mercy for those who are the unwilling victims of the sins of others.

Do you know what God did for Hagar?

He saw her.

He saw her.

She was sent away with a bottle of water and a loaf of bread.

When that was done, she set out to die.

Then God showed her a well of water.

And she said, You are the God who sees me.

She was sent away.

She was cast out.

God saw her.

Do we show mercy?

It doesn't mean that God was in the end approving of something that severed a one-flesh relationship.

It means that God saw and gave mercy.

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

This tells us a little bit about God's true intent.

Sexual immorality is the only legitimate basis for divorce.

Now, that means that any sexual kind of sin that severs the one-fleshed relationship is a legitimate basis for divorce.

That gives us a clearer insight, I think, into the indecency of Deuteronomy 24.

Because sexual immorality uncovers what should remain private.

It abuses what should remain set apart for the sacredness of the marriage covenant.

And God says that someone who is guilty of sexual immorality has already severed the one-flesh relationship.

And since it is already severed, God allows divorce.

To sever the marriage relationship for any other reason and to marry another is to commit indecency, is to commit adultery.

Now some might say, well, it seems here that God allows divorce as long as you don't remarry.

Yeah?

It does seem to say that.

It does seem to imply that if you divorce and don't remarry, that you're okay.

But keep in mind that that is an argument from silence, which is dangerous.

We might be able to suggest that that's what it suggests.

But it's dangerous to make a suggestion about a suggestion.

For example, if a spouse is sinfully abusive and the other spouse is in danger, it seems that God allows the abused to escape that sinful situation as long as there's no remarriage.

But it doesn't say that.

It may imply that, maybe more accurately.

We infer that, we read that into the text, and the further we go down that road, the murkier it gets.

There are many side issues pertaining to divorce that are very difficult to answer because God doesn't speak to them directly.

But we can say that divorce never pleases God.

Because God is absolutely holy.

And his holiness is displayed in that one flesh, one man, one woman relationship that is not designed to be severed.

So we should work hard at maintaining the one flesh relationship formed and initiated by God.

To simply walk away from a hard situation is to walk away from the heart of God.

And as we will see, verse 10, that's a shock to the disciples.

So it's important to note that although God did not intend for divorces to occur, he recognizes that they do.

Why?

Sinful people do sinful things.

Did Cain know that it was wrong to kill his brother?

I think so.

Why did he do it?

Because sinful people do sinful things.

Why did Lamech abandon the principle that God had established?

Because sinful people do sinful things.

Why did God allow a certificate of divorce?

Because sinful people do sinful things.

He recognizes that that is a part of the world, and he knows that marriages are severed because of sin.

And he has stepped in to regulate that situation to prevent sinful severing and to also extend mercy to the innocent.

I've already taken more of my time.

And you have more questions, don't you?

Let's conclude with just maybe some applicational thoughts.

You may be sitting there overwhelmed with guilt.

Good.

Because you've severed what God never intended to be cut.

But understand this there's forgiveness at the foot of the cross.

On the one hand, if you have been through a divorce before coming to Christ, make sure that you confess that sin and repent of it and understand that there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

Go and sin no more.

Maybe you've been in a in a really hard situation that doesn't really fit into anything that we've talked about this morning is just a mess and has all kinds of different ins and outs and tentacles that reach everywhere that really have no clear way through in the text of Scripture.

You may feel guilty about what you've done, what you've allowed, what you've encouraged, what you've been a part of after your faith in Christ.

And you feel guilty about that.

Good.

Good.

Let your guilt take you to the man on the cross.

Let your guilt take you to the man on the cross.

And say to him, Lord, I have been unfaithful first to you.

And then to my spouse.

Seek his cleansing, seek his forgiveness.

Go and sin no more.

Remember what Paul said to the Corinthian church.

He said, Such were some of you.

But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.

If you are divorced and remarried, do not seek to be divorced again.

Remain with your current spouse and bring glory to God by honoring him in your marriage.

Do not add sin to sin by seeking to sever another one-flesh relationship.

If you've been through divorce as an innocent party, that is, you did not cause, you did not promote, you did not seek the divorce.

You sought to rectify all of the problems in the relationship.

You put yourself out as much as you were able.

Understand, there is mercy for you.

And I would hope that I could say with confidence, there is mercy for you before the throne of God above, and there is mercy for you in this fellowship.

Go and sin no more.

To all of us.

May we be careful in our condemnations.

The evangelical church, I think, can can treat divorce sometimes as the unforgivable sin.

It's not.

Just remember, if you've been angry with your brother, you're a murderer.

If you ever looked at another person with lust in your heart, you're an adulterer.

We cannot put one sin against another and say that that is worse than another because both have offended the holiness of God, and therefore all of us have been unfaithful to our Father in heaven.

And we have uncovered an indecency.

So let's be careful about our judgments because only God knows the heart.

There may be instances where a wrong is very clear and he gives us directions as to how to pursue that, how to handle those kinds of situations.

There may be instances, however, where we must choose what God says over what our friends believe.

Over what our family believes.

And as we'll see next week, we of all people should uphold at all costs God's intent and the marriage relationship.

Not for one another, but because of what it says about our God.

Remember how Malachi II talks about it?

It says, You've been unfaithful to me.

May we strive, all of us, in whatever ways God has given us in each of our situations, to be faithful to Him.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, thank you for your word.

Thank you that it clarifies some things and helps us to understand.

But Lord, we have all kinds of questions, and it seems like our enemy pushes us into situations that seem new all the time, that have different facets that make it so confusing.

Give us wisdom.

May your spirits fill us so that we might be wise and in our wisdom to walk in faithfulness with you in all times and in all ways.

For the praise of your glorious grace.

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.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.