Lust and Divorce // Sermon on the Mount

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at the lookout.church.

Um that uh Pete Gregg posted online.

He's he's the leader of the 24-7 prayer movement, this global prayer movement.

He was he wrote a beautiful prayer.

We realized that on Father's Day, um, not it, it's it's it's for some of us a conflicting day.

It's a conflicting day based on either our own desire to be a father, or maybe the loss, maybe it's the first year you've you've lost your father, and uh and it's hard to kind of know what to do with a variety of emotions that we feel, maybe even our own assessment of our own fatherhood in the room.

So we just want to acknowledge that.

Um Pete Gregg wrote a prayer I just want to read for us here today, and then and then pray over all the all the fathers in the room.

So here's what he said.

We pray today for dads, for new dads and granddads and stepdads and adoptive dads and solo dads and spiritual dads, for baldy ones and beardy ones, skinny ones and cuddly ones, for dads who tell terrible jokes and dads who dance to the YMCA, for dads who know how to fix things, and dads who just pretend they know how to fix things.

Father to the fatherless, we pray for those whom this day is sadder than it is happy, those who feel they have failed, those who are grieving children they never had, those missing their dads, those missing their dads or their children even more than usual.

Father God, at a time of so much pain when so many dads are distant, absent, or even abusive, we lean into your ever-present love and healing.

You are faithful and kind, especially for those of us orphaned, abandoned, and hurt.

For, quote, even if my father abandons me, as the psalmist writes, the Lord will hold me close, Psalms 27.10.

Father of mercy, heal our many hurts and restore the dignity and integrity and centrality of fatherhood in our families, in our communities, and in our nations.

And as the Apostle Paul says, quote, I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, and I pray that you may know love.

And finally, Lord, for all those poor souls everywhere who have forgotten that this is Father's Day, we ask that you would bless them in your abundant grace and manifold mercy with the discovery of chocolate and half-decent cards and surprisingly well-stocked convenience stores.

Amen.

Amen.

So, God, today as we celebrate this day, as we come into this place, I do thank you that you are our Father.

And no matter what situation we find ourselves in, we thank you that you're the only perfect Father.

You're the only good and perfect Father.

And you know how to love us well.

And as we sing, you know how to find us right where we're at.

And so this morning we rejoice in the fact that we have a good and beautiful and perfect Father in you.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

One other uh kind of update this morning.

We have some special guests with us here today, Mel and Cynthia in the back.

Can you guys stand for a moment?

Mel and Cynthia.

So Mel and Cynthia are here from California, and I just want you guys to know some of you uh know that uh as a church, we support a ministry called Amigos of Mexico that has historically been led by Mike and Nancy Jeanette for over 30 years and has done fantastic work in Mexico.

Um, they're in the middle of a transition of leadership and they're gonna be passing off the reins.

So, Mel and Cynthia from California, you're gonna uh you'll hear more about Mel and Cynthia over the months and years uh ahead, God willing, and and um, and we're gonna see uh all that God wants to do.

And so we're grateful to have you guys here.

Thank you.

Thank you for stepping in to take this post and to continue to serve uh all of the beautiful uh people in the different areas of Mexico.

We love you guys.

Be blessed while you're here in Colorado.

Can you guys give them a hand again?

Okay, so are you guys ready to jump into the scriptures today?

Yes.

All right.

So we have been in a uh a series on the Sermon on the Mount.

And so if you've been with us over the last several weeks, we've been really hanging out.

And Matthew chapter 5 through 7 will be there for some time.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And and what it is, it's Jesus inviting his followers.

He's he's casting a vision for the kingdom of God, and and he's saying, This is what my kingdom will be like, and this is what it will look like to be my followers on the earth, and this is how counterintuitive, how upside down, how different this will look than anything you've ever seen.

And so slowly by slowly, and piece by piece, teaching by teaching, he starts to uh dismantle an old way of thinking and lay foundations for a new way of thinking.

And sometimes it's hard for us, especially if you're familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, it's hard for us to remember how revolutionary all this was, how deeply provoke provocative, how uh how upending it all was.

And so as we come into the scriptures, let's come with uh an open heart and open mind to anything the Lord wants to say to us today.

Last week we talked about the topic of anger and what we do with the anger that we feel and the teaching of God about anger.

And so this week we get to move into two light-hearted topics called lust and divorce.

Really?

Lust and divorce on Father's Day?

Yes, we're gonna go for it, okay?

All right.

Now, we could chalk that up to a my bad on planning the preaching schedule to tackle lust and divorce on Father's Day, so I'm just gonna say, hey, my bad on that one.

But it's next in line, all right?

It's next in line.

We're going through it and we're committed to it.

And listen, we're gonna get after these two topics, both because they need to be discussed.

And second of all, at the heart of these teachings is actually really good news of the gospel of the kingdom for us here today, okay?

We can talk about hard things.

We're going to do just fine.

Everybody take a deep breath.

All right.

Now, before we read the word today, I do want to invite you.

We're going to take just one minute of silence here today.

We don't get enough silence in our lives.

I know the pace at which most of you live.

And before we jump into the scriptures today, can we quiet our hearts?

Can we just become aware of the presence of God?

And just feel your feet on the ground.

Take a deep breath.

Just become aware that God is with us today.

Okay, let's just take one minute together.

And again, it'll be in Matthew chapter five.

We'll start in verse 27.

You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

For it is better it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Everybody take a deep breath.

Please be seated.

So we're moving on from anger into two new movements here.

And so where it is in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus established that he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets in the Old Testament scripture.

He came to what?

Fulfill them, to fulfill them.

He didn't come to do away with them, he came to fulfill them, to bring a completion to them and to fill them out, to give them color and texture and robustness.

And so uh so um so he moves from anger into two new teachings and a kind of a paradigm shift of you've heard it said this, but I'm going to tell you something different than what you've heard, okay?

Now, before we jump in, I do want to acknowledge that all of us have been affected by these two things, lust and divorce.

I know that in this room here today, I understand who I'm talking to, okay?

And um, and I and I want you to hear my heart.

Um, I I know that in this room there are many here who have either been divorced or separated, or are now remarried, or or maybe you're you're still single.

Some are in the tension of a strange relationship, and you're asking a lot of very tough questions in this season of life.

Some of you were asked for a divorce, even though you fought tooth and nail to keep your marriage.

My goal here is not to stir up the pain of that.

I don't think that was Jesus' goal either.

Okay.

Um my desire here is not to disperse a bunch of you should haves or you shouldn't have's or you ought to's.

And I just want to announce today that today there's grace upon grace upon grace.

There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.

Okay.

Um, so one of the things as we talk about some sensitive, you know, we open a couple cans uh like this, is sometimes what's even worse than these topics is the shame associated with these topics that keeps us in hiding or keeps us in trapped in the regret of decisions or failures or mistakes or brokenness.

Okay.

And uh and I just want to announce to us here today we are redeemed in the blood of Jesus, and we have been given a new and living way through Christ Jesus.

There is a redemptive pathway forward for every single person in this room.

If it's not good, it's not over.

Okay, that deserved maybe a little bit more on that.

So that being said, it is it's actually good for us as healthiest to look at why Jesus included these teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

What was he trying to get at?

Okay, this was seemed to be important.

This is at the front of his sermon.

He seemed these seemed to be front and center with what he was upending, what he was getting at.

So, in short, though, the core thread that holds these two passages together is not just the dangers and destructions, destruction of lust and divorce, but listen to me, it's about the importance of covenant faithfulness as a reflection of the heart of God.

The reason why he wants to get at this is because at the core of what matters to Jesus is that his people and all that would follow him from here on out would have a vision for covenant faithfulness between God and his people and the kind and having the kinds of relationships that reflected the same covenant faithfulness that God has towards his people.

So the other thing about the context of this passage, though, that you probably noticed as we were reading it, both passages are directed towards men.

Okay?

Now, this isn't to say that women don't lust or women never initiate divorce with their husbands.

But at this point in time, this was a this is a patriarchal society, right?

Where the men had an upper hand, uh they had the upper end of power in relationships.

That's how it worked in first century Israel, specifically with the Pharisees.

And so what's going on is Jesus is addressing that from a unique angle.

He's not just talking about lust and divorce.

Ultimately, he's talking about how women ought to be treated.

We'll get into a little bit more of that.

And what Jesus is saying is you can't just do whatever you want with women and get away with it scot-free.

Okay?

So let's dig in.

Jesus starts with this first movement talking about lust, and he sets it up talking about you've heard it said.

Now he said, you heard it said, you shall not commit adultery.

Many of you know that's from Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

It's the seventh commandment that God gives to his people.

You shall not commit adultery.

But what was happening at this point in time is many of the Pharisees were using that one boundary to justify the existence of an entire inner world of imagination where anything could happen.

Okay?

And and uh and what was going on is they were, they found a loophole in the system where they could at least, if they could abstain from one act in an explicit form, they could be cut out of the pact, they could be safe from any public ridicule, any condemnation, um, and they would be able to use other human beings for their own personal imagination.

And and and honestly, we can do this with sex, we can do this with almost anything, which is why another one of the commandments is don't covet your neighbor, your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's donkey, right?

There's a lot of things we can want and a lot of things that we can do with our imagination, but specifically lust has to do with uh um the ability to carry, to collect an imagination regarding sexuality outside of the covenant of marriage.

And so what Jesus says here is everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery in his or her heart.

Now, it's an interesting phrase to unpack, it's an interesting sentence to unpack because when he says everyone who looks at a woman, it sounds, it sounds innocent.

The word looks sounds innocent, but just to be clear, he's not talking about noticing, okay?

There's two different things going on.

He's not just talking about noticing somebody who is attractive.

We are wired, listen, we actually are wired to notice beauty, uh, especially in female and male form.

And we all have different qualities we find attractive.

It's not a bad thing to take note when you come across an attractive or beautiful person.

That's not inherently sinful, okay?

We just we just need to kind of set the record straight.

When I first saw Megan up near this baptismal in church, uh, I took note, all right?

I took a lot of notes.

And it's like, I'm I'm gonna take my notes back into her presence, all right?

And uh and I as I was starting to date her and get to know her, I was like, oh my gosh, she's she's beautiful, she's still beautiful.

And uh and I I remembered I remember being captured by that, right?

And so I I I took note of that.

That was that's a natural, it's a good thing to notice beauty because that's how we're actually wired, is to notice beauty.

And uh, but what's funny is um, you know, she actually had this conversation with me uh one time early on in marriage because she was curious, like, if I found anybody else attractive.

All right.

So she asked me the question like, so who else like what other women do you find attractive?

Which I'm just telling you, if you're if you're if your wife asks you the question, it's a trap, okay?

Don't do it.

It's an absolute trap.

So I have two options at this point in time.

I could say I'm not attracted to anybody else.

Ever.

Never once.

Which would be a lie, right?

Um uh option B is I tell her somebody, and if I make the mistake of choosing somebody that she knows, that's gonna make it weird, right?

So I can't do that.

So I have to either go big or go home, all right?

And I I I'm embarrassed to even say this.

But she asked me, it's like, so like who else who else else do you find who else do you find attractive?

And I said, I don't know.

Beyonce.

And she says, Beyonce! That's who you went with, Beyonce?

She will never let me live that down.

She's like, that's who you're in, that's who you're into, that's your type.

Beyonce is your type.

Well, yeah, I had to pick something! You made me you trapped me.

So that so for some of you, that will be the only thing you remember about this sermon.

Okay?

You're gonna talk about that at lunch, and I'm I'm taking that risk.

Um that will be how you know me from now on.

Beyoncé.

Um so but finding human beings attractive is not the problem Jesus is getting at here, right?

What he's getting at here, looking with lustful intent, is the way that the words actually parse out in the Greek, has to do with um has to do with staring, lingering, not just noticing, but lingering in imagination towards a person, using the person in our own imagination.

Lust is taking into your imagination that which does not belong to you.

Lust is a craving for more than what you currently have, specifically as it relates to sexual desire.

Lust is going beyond the boundaries of a covenant relationship to take something more.

Some might even say that lust was part of the original sin in the garden coveting or lust, because uh because Eve would look upon the fruit and what it could give her, an imagination of what this one thing would give her if she stepped outside of the boundaries of what she currently had to achieve more.

And that's what lust does in her heart.

And so what happens was when this happens with people, when we long for people or for bodies outside of a covenant relationship, people no longer are people, they become objects, right?

We move from relating to people from it or from a thou, which is thou would be somebody created in the image of God, an image bearer, to an it, somebody whose body I can now use in my imagination for my own fantasies and desires.

And uh, and listen, I just I have to acknowledge this is a this is a very, this is a this is a topic that affects us all because we, as you guys know, we live in an overly sexualized world.

Everything has become sexualized and even pornified.

It's at the axis of our fingertips and even for our kids.

Um nearly every show or movie you're watching, it's really hard to consume any kind of media now that doesn't cross a line into creating a fantasy world and filling our minds with an imagination of what could be.

And if that's you, and if you found, gosh, I have I've been living, that's the waters I swim in.

Listen, I just have to tell you, you're not alone.

I know what that feels like.

Um, and and I and I need to say to you today the worst thing that can happen is to just drown in this feeling of you are the only one who ever has had to deal with this.

No, this is part of a condition that we're living in.

Some would say, for all of time, humanity has lived with these intentions of our heart.

In our time, it's it's more it's easier than ever to access an entire world within ourselves without having to um.

Lean into the blessing and the covenant of a marriage relationship.

And so it's something where shame can just eat our lunch all day when we're stuck with lustful imagination.

So what's Jesus' response to this?

What does Jesus say is the response to lustful intent when our eyes linger on a person or a body longer than they should.

It goes beyond noticing to a collecting and a harvesting of visuals.

His response was pretty simple.

That's all you have to do.

Amen.

So thanks, Jesus.

Thanks for that one.

Now, as we've mentioned before in some of these sermons on the Sermon on the Mount, it's important to know that what Jesus is doing here, as he does with many of his sermons, he's using hyperbole.

He teaches with shock factor, because he has to wake, he has to startle his listeners awake to get their attention.

Okay.

The truth is, even if you did pluck out your lie, and I guarantee you, over the course of church history, there are people in their fear of God and faithfulness to God have plucked out their eyes.

Okay?

The problem is when you pluck out your eye and you realize you're still imagining those thoughts in your head even without your eyes.

It didn't actually solve the lust issue.

You can still lust without a hand or without a body part, okay?

So it's it's not necessarily meant to be taken literally.

What Jesus is saying is eliminate uh eliminate the tendency to linger and to stare and to gawk and to linger with your eyes at all costs.

Don't stop, uh uh uh don't uh uh you know don't let there be any obstacle to you removing what it is that is causing or any uh any preconditions that would cause you to enter into this way of life.

He said, Don't let this fire burn within you.

Okay.

Now, we mentioned this, we did a longer series on marriage, sex, and relationships last year.

The truth is, sex is a fire.

Okay?

It is a fire that burns.

Now, fire is a good thing.

Okay?

Fire is a very good thing.

Unless it's not contained.

And all of us who live in Colorado should know this.

Okay, when you go up to the mountains, um when you have a fire, oftentimes you go to a campground.

There's a reason why you go to a campground, there's a ring around the fire.

It keeps why?

It keeps the fire burning in one central location.

When it starts to spread, that is a problem outside of the fire.

And so the marriage, the covenant relationship is the ring of safety that God has given to his people to enjoy the gift and the blessing and the beauty of sexual relationships without it eating ourselves, eating, eating uh burning ourselves, burning the relationships, and ultimately spreading further than we can imagine it.

Are you guys with me?

And so when he says the fire of Gehenna, the fire of hell gets inside of you, I believe is what he's talking about.

And it's just the same as when he talks about anger, he's saying, listen, when you give yourself to this way of life, it will burn you uncontrollably from the inside out.

You cannot stop it, it is too powerful for you to stop.

And so, in our culture, though, now listen to me, in our culture, everything you hear will be the exact opposite of that.

So, in our cultural, people will say, listen, no, no, no, no, no.

Do not repress your desire.

That's the worst thing that you can do is to eliminate your desire.

This is why people are unfulfilled, this is why people are pent up and then unhappy, is because they've repressed their desires.

They're not living authentically.

People look even at the Christians and are the sexual, the Christian historic sexual ethic of a relationship, covenant relationship, a lifelong covenant relationship between a husband and a wife, and say that is so archaic, that is so primitive, that is so limiting, that kind of thing.

And the message of our day, though, is you are what you desire, so don't let anyone stop you from what you want.

Okay.

But this is the only problem with this is almost everything that Jesus ever said.

Okay?

Here's what N.

T.

Wright, uh Anglican scholar, scholar N.

T.

Wright had to say.

He said, This is not repression, as people sometimes suggest it, is more like the pruning of a rose, cutting off some healthy buds, so that the plant may grow stronger and produce better flowers.

Choosing not to be swept along by inappropriate sexual passion may wealth uh feel on occasion like cutting off a hand or plucking out an eye.

And our world has frequently tried to tell us that doing this thing is very bad for us.

But neither the neither the first nor the last time we must choose to obey our Lord rather than the world.

He likens it to the pruning of a rose, of a perfectly good rose bush, so that it can grow in the right direction.

Listen, when we follow the straight and narrow way of Jesus, it does it does not lead to a repressed life.

It leads to the fullness of life.

Yes, it is specific, but it's in the boundaries and covenant relationship that God allows the depth of love inside of us to flourish.

Okay?

Are you guys with me this morning?

So that being said, for all of us here, I don't believe that God is demanding perfection.

Just sexual wholeness does not necessarily mean perfection.

All of us are subject.

We consume things that go far beyond um uh uh what we can handle or what is good for us.

But I just want to encourage this this morning uh to not use that as an excuse to give up and go with the flow.

We're not in a time where we can just give up and go with the flow.

Like, why even bother?

This is too hard.

Jesus gives us his strength and his power and he says, deal ruthlessly with the content of your heart and your imagination, get into a community, talk it through, flee from sin and run to God.

Why is this important?

Why is this actually good news?

It's not that Jesus is coming down hard on us, but he's inviting us back into the eternal picture.

Jesus is saying that the way that God loves us and is trying to love us, God does not lust after us, he loves us.

Lust is when you take something from somebody with no intention to give anything back.

Love is about mutual self-sacrifice and the full giving of yourself.

And so what God is calling us into is a picture that the God of the universe has fully given himself to us, and we ought to do the same, to not treat each other as it's, but to treat each other as thou's divinely made in the image of God.

And listen, if this is a piece where you feel you feel caught in the middle, it's listen, there's a lot, this is something we are all on the journey.

None of us are perfect, all of us are broken in our relationships and sexuality in some way or shape or form.

And so all of us have equal opportunity to the grace and the mercy of God to become free from the lusts of our hearts and enter into the love of God.

Amen.

All right, take another deep breath.

Is this okay?

All right.

Let's uh let's talk about divorce.

So Jesus then transitions from the lust of the eye into divorce.

So again, he's talking to men that have found ways out, loopholes out of things in their treatment of women.

And these Pharisees had, you know, previously in the lust passage had no they're not committing adultery, but what they're doing within their souls is causing destruction inside of them and in their communities.

Jesus continues this thought in a very short and incomplete teaching about divorce.

Um he didn't go into detail about marriage, divorce, adultery.

But he what he does here is he starts by referencing the Old Testament law, specifically in Deuteronomy 24.

It was when Moses clarified that a man must create a certificate of divorce, okay, in order to release a wife.

This is something that Moses had written down in the law.

And the allowance was this if a man found anything indecent in a woman, in his wife, he could divorce as long as he gave her that certificate.

But what was happening is these Pharisees were claiming that, well, I created a certificate, so you know, I'll just, if I do that, that's at least dignifying to this woman.

So the Pharisees were divorcing for petty reasons.

They would find loopholes to send women away, to create distance from women, to leave them on their own.

What they wanted to do was they wanted to find a way to get out of the confines of a covenant relationship quickly without getting in trouble and without losing status in society.

Okay?

So again, well, the topic of divorces at hand, this really has to do with Jesus, his singular focus here really has to do with how women are being treated.

And he's painting a bigger picture in the kingdom of God as women won't be treated like this in the kingdom of God.

Okay.

So we talked about this a few weeks ago.

What happened was in the Old Testament, there was a couple hundred laws in the Old Testament.

Pharisees, in their desire, scribes and Pharisees, in their desire to abstain from breaking those laws in the Old Testament, they created their own laws, which were fence laws, which created even further removal.

So they didn't even want to get close to breaking those laws.

So not only were there 200 kind of original laws, Pharisees would add another 400 laws, bringing, by the time that Jesus was alive, 637 laws that the people of God were supposed to keep.

Okay, that was the expectation.

Now, a hundred of those laws were against women.

Okay?

Pharisees hated women.

Um, and this is why, like in John chapter 8, when there's the women caught in the act of adultery, you ever ask the question, where was the man?

John 8 · chapter mention

Where was the man caught in an act of adultery?

That's exactly the men found a way to, they were always able to weasel out.

They were never responsible.

It was always the woman's fault.

Women were possessions, women could not testify in a court case because she was thought of as a liar, inherently liars.

Um Pharisees didn't even really acknowledge women.

They pretended they weren't there, which is why when Jesus was at Simon the Pharisee's house and a woman bust through the door to anoint Jesus' feet.

Jesus calls attention to the Pharisees, says, Look at her.

And he wasn't just saying, Notice, there's a female in the room.

He wanted, he was resetting the atmosphere, saying, No, look at her, acknowledge this is a female who is made in the image of God doing a beautiful thing to me.

Look at her.

She is real, and she is a real person, and she's here right now.

That's what was going on.

And so Jesus had to reset this culture.

And so what's interesting though is where he goes when he says to the Pharisees, but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, make makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Now that that's a little confusing and slightly problematic if you when you kind of read that at face value, right?

So is what Jesus is saying that when a Pharisee divorces a wife, is he saying that that woman is now an adulterer?

Is that what he's saying?

That's kind of how it reads.

He makes her commit adultery.

It's almost like God is saying, or it's almost like Jesus is suggesting that the woman is now somehow at fault too in this relationship.

But a lot of scholars agree that the NIV translate this a little closer to what would be actually the case.

Okay?

So NIV, uh Matthew 5.32 says this.

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for sexual immorality makes her the victim of adultery.

You catch that?

Makes her the not makes her commit adultery, makes her the victim of adultery.

And everyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

So in this instance, Jesus is making the case that when you initiate a divorce based on a petty desire to be with somebody else that you want to be with, and you're not taking in the full consideration of the covenant depth, the profound nature of what happened in marriage, the oneness of marriage, that what happens is that doesn't just affect you, that violates the intimacy that she has engaged with as well.

And it actually violates her covenant as well.

And so it's actually she becomes a victim of the same thing because now that that covenant is violated, it's almost like you're forcing her, by your petty reasons, to jump out of this marriage, you're you're forcing her to do the same, which is not necessarily something that she wanted.

And this is why, according to Jesus, this is why divorce is often so destructive and grievous, right?

Our culture sells us a message that divorce is a great option when things aren't working out and not fulfilling.

And I don't mean to belittle, I know that a lot of us have been through very difficult decision making.

And there's a lot of reasons why we need relationships need to end or at least separate for a time, okay?

But what Jesus does here is uh what he does in another passage, not in the Sermon on the Mount, but another passage, he anchors the entire topic, not just in marriage and divorce, but what God was doing when he first brought man and woman together.

So I want to read, if you guys are with me, I want to read Matthew 19, okay?

So we're gonna zoom ahead out of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 19.

Starting in verse 3, it says, And the Pharisees came 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 is joined together, let not man separate.

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

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.

I'm just gonna set that there.

Okay.

Now where Jesus goes is back to Genesis.

And what he is trying to get them, because right now their thinking right now is all about all right, so how do we find what are the boundaries of this thing?

When is it okay?

When is it not okay?

This is what we do too with marriage and divorce.

We're trying to find, we're trying to kind of test the boundaries.

When is this okay?

When is it not okay?

How can I find my way around this in order to to um either to justify or find reasoning?

And and and listen, we do have to have these conversations.

There's a lot that can happen and breakdowns in marital relationships that have to be worked through and have to be talked through, and it's not always you know super black and white on what to do.

But for Jesus, this whole conversation came back into God's design for oneness and marriage and unity.

It was about two flesh becoming one.

And a divorce ultimately is the tearing apart of connective tissue of a one flesh.

That's why it's one of the most traumatic experiences that people go through.

Uh psychologists, many psychologists say, I believe, I don't have a source on this, but many would say that the most traumatic event somebody can go through is the losing of a child, and maybe the second most traumatic event is walking through a divorce.

It deeply affects us, right?

So I was in New York City this week with my wife, uh Megan, kicking around the city.

Um, we did a lot of things together as a married couple, which is awesome.

We went and saw the notebook.

Anyone?

That's gonna buy me some serious points for years to come.

It was an amazing, amazing musical, The Notebook, right?

On Broadway.

Beautiful story of unending love and marriage to the end.

I was crying by the end of it.

I that was not a surprise to me or my wife.

Um and I'm gonna own that, all right?

There's a lot you're learning about me in this sermon, by the way.

So we want to watch the notebook.

The very next day we're walking down the street, and I see this photo on the street right outside of a shop, uh, a marketing uh marketing banner for divorce, and I discovered that divorce is only$499.

Okay, so they're selling divorce, come here and we'll get you divorced for$499.

I was just thinking about that, like, oh my gosh.

If that were only the cost of divorce, if that were only the cost of divorce, when Jesus is saying, like, listen, when you join your flesh together, there is a tearing apart, it doesn't tear neatly apart.

This is why it's such a big deal.

Um, when when divorce actually happens, it's the tearing apart of flesh.

And it's not about what's the least amount of relationship I can get away with, it's about the a union that reflects the undying covenant love.

And so this is why marriage in the church is so critically important.

It's important to Jesus that he lays the foundation in the Sermon on the Mount, and it's important for us today that marriage is not just a nice civil institution for those who want to complete each other and be happy with each other for the rest of their life.

Now, if that happens, that's awesome.

But on a more profound level, marriage is a prophetic picture of what God is, how God is trying to love the entire world in an undying way for all of time.

So the reason why Jesus wants marriages and covenant relationships to be held very high and for everybody, his followers to have a high vision of marriage is because this is the one picture that he has given us to send a symbol, a picture into the world of what God, how God is trying to love the entire world.

This is why it matters.

This is why we need our marriages to flourish, all right?

This is why that matters.

Now, if if you're in a time though where, again, some of you, that hasn't been the case.

That hasn't been your story.

You wish that maybe had happened and it didn't happen, okay?

My job here is not to make you regret that or feel bad.

I actually want to cast some hope for you in the next few minutes here and clarify a couple things because there's a few questions that still remain based on this passage of what Jesus says.

Does that mean that everyone who divorces is now an adulterer?

I don't believe that's what Jesus' point was in this.

I don't believe that Jesus or Paul later in the scripture were trying to write this thorough prescription of every possible scenario of divorce and separation and remarriage and the conditions for all of those things.

The Bible, surprisingly, isn't very thorough on this topic.

The scripture doesn't go into tons of details about what to do in every different type of case.

In fact, the only two things it actually talks about is uh divorce for the sake of infidelity and adultery, or divorce if an unbelieving spouse wants to divorce you, okay?

Now, that being said, that leaves us with a lot of questions.

If I divorce and remarry, am I now an adulterer?

If I get divorced for anything other than the reasons mentioned, am I still living in sin?

Can God still use me?

Is God mad at me?

Am I outside of God's will?

Okay?

Can we just be real?

This is what a lot of people, a lot of you have lived with this.

The church hasn't done particularly well in knowing how to address those who've walked through divorce.

And sometimes we say that sounds uncomfortable.

What you went through sounds uncomfortable.

We're just gonna shelve you off to the side.

We're gonna put you on the side, you're gonna be on your own track while the rest of us go over here.

And I just want to acknowledge that many of you have walked through divorce, um, you felt kind of like a black sheep in the family.

You felt like you've been outside of God's will.

But what I want to tell you today is this no matter how that happened, no matter where you find yourself today, no matter what part you played in that, whether it was a failure or a mistake, or you were a recipient of the other side of a bad relationship, I just want to tell you again, if it's not good, it's not over.

God, what's even more true about the heart of God, God never leaves us stuck where we are at.

There is always a redemptive pathway forward, and none of us are ruled out of the family of God and the will of God in our lives.

You are not separated.

From the heart of God.

You say, Well, gosh, but these are powered passages.

It kind of feels like I'm outside of if it feels like something's happened and I'm outside.

Like, listen, that might be the case.

There may have been things that you've done.

There's things that all of us have done that have separated us in our hearts from God and from others.

Okay?

You know what's really interesting is when you look at the scriptures, you look at this Bible.

If we were to tear out all of the scriptures written by murders, how much of this would we have left?

Okay?

All right, let's let's take out the first five books of the Bible written by Moses.

Okay, let's gonna rip out the whole Torah.

Okay?

Let's go ahead and turn to the Psalms.

We're gonna we're gonna we're gonna rip out the Psalms, right?

David sent a man to battle to be killed.

Okay, so let's we're not singing anymore.

Alright?

Then let's uh let's flip forward to all of the letters from Paul.

Let's go to Paul and let's flip through the most of the New Testament.

Because he killed, he had a lot of he had a lot of Christians captured and that led to their torturing and killing.

Okay?

So we wouldn't have much of this left.

If you look at adultery, it's the same thing.

Is it ever celebrated in the heart of God?

Not at all.

Murder is never celebrated in the heart of God at all.

But does God ever say to a person, I can know you are now outside of my ability to use you for my purposes and to partner with you in my kingdom from here on out?

He never says that.

He never says that.

In fact, there's a lot of biblical precedents that say that there's hope for all of us.

Okay?

And so this is kind of why I don't think divorce is talked about a whole lot in the church.

It's a really tricky one to talk about because, on one hand, we have to emphasize, yes, it's really clear in the scriptures, God hates divorce.

But on the other hand, we have to emphasize that you're never outside of the love and the forgiveness and the mercy and grace of God.

The two can be true at the same time.

Okay?

And if they're not true, we're in trouble.

We're in trouble.

Now, this is kind of the last thing.

I I want to turn our attention just to one historical example of this in the scripture.

We know that the people of God, the children of Israel, um, started with a man named Jacob.

Jacob would later become Israel, but he started as a man named Jacob.

Now, Jacob fell in love with a girl named Rachel.

He went to Rachel's father, Laban, and he asks for hand in marriage.

Laban says, not so fast, worked for me for seven years.

So he works for his father-in-law for seven, future father-in-law for seven years.

And then Laban says, All right, take my daughter's hand in marriage.

So uh so Jacob then uh takes who he thinks is the woman that he loves, he goes into a tent with her to consummate their marriage.

Um sadly, this is before electricity, so he couldn't quite see what was happening.

He wakes up in the morning to find out this is not Rachel, this is Rachel's sister Leah.

He was completely duped by his father-in-law.

No, that's problematic.

He's already headed into like a really weird relate, like family relationship.

So he's duped, and so he says, Hold on a second.

That wasn't Rachel, that was Leah.

I asked for Rachel.

He said, Well, you're gonna have to work another seven years.

So Jacob works another seven years to get the woman he wants.

He gets Rachel.

Now, he marries Rachel.

Now he's married to Rachel and Leah.

But it turns out that Rachel was barren, and so she could not have kids.

But Leah could.

So Leah starts bearing children.

Rachel starts despising her sister Leah because she could have children.

So Rachel, because of her anger in her heart and and her uh uh her regret and her own brokenness, she tells her son, her husband Jacob, uh, how about you take my servant and you bear children with her?

And Jacob's like, sounds good to me.

He went with it.

He's like, All right, gosh, a three for one.

All right, let's go for it.

So he he he he takes Rachel's servant, and uh, she has a few kids of her own.

Uh now Leah finds out that Rachel did that.

He's like, I didn't know you could do that.

Leah's like, how many take my servant?

So Leah then gives Jacob her maidservant, and so he sleeps with their bears more children, okay?

After this entire escapade, we end up in a polygamous relationship with two live-in servants, 13 kids, uh, one daughter and 12 sons.

All right.

Can I just point this out?

This is more than a blended family.

This is a completely broken family.

This is not something that should be held as an ideal for any family ever.

This is not a good idea, especially if you're setting the world up for blessing.

But somehow, in the middle of all this, get this.

In the middle of this twisted, bizarre scene, this blended weird family tree that's happening, God still looks upon Jacob, God still looks upon Israel and his sons and says, But I still want to bless you.

You are not outside of my blessing.

And I just want to tell my I want to remind us here today.

Some of you are in this room and you're looking at your current condition.

You can't go back to where you were, and you don't quite know how to move forward because you're living in the shame of what has happened.

However, that got you there.

Maybe that was through the lust of your flesh, maybe it's through bad decisions, maybe it was through um something that happened to you.

But what I'm saying, I want to announce to you today is that you are not outside of the blessing of God.

You are still a target of the blessing of God.

Turn your heart towards Him.

Receive your full identity of a pure and shameless, spotless son and daughter of God, and He has great and marvelous and beautiful purposes he still wants to fulfill in your life.

Come on.

Come on.

This is good.

This is why this is good news.

Because we're all coming from unideal situations.

Most of us can point to things in our life like that.

I wouldn't have chosen that.

And listen, I get that.

What Jesus is saying in these passages, he's not trying to say that if you don't hit this ideal, this standard, you are outside of the will of God.

He's trying to create a beautiful vision of the covenant relationship of God.

Call us into it.

And for those of us who, for whatever reason, aren't able to live into that, or something happens in our life that causes us to stumble along the way, he's saying, get up because you are not disqualified from my love.

Everyone gets to participate, everybody gets to play.

So it's time to get your feet back in the game.

You're not outside, you are right in the center of the love of God.

Come on, some of you, shout back at me.

Shout back.

This is good.

Okay.

So we've done enough work here today, I think.

Jesus has good news for all of us.

And it starts with a vision of his undying love for us.

And he calls us in to share the same kinds of relationships.

So I want to pray for a few kinds of people here today.

And listen, I know that everything I just shared about both topics is probably dramatically insufficient for some of the other questions that you have.

I get that.

I didn't intend for this to be a full treatment on that entire topic.

I just want to kind of get us moving in that direction, okay?

But I would just want to pray over a few of us here today in the room.

If you could just close your eyes with us with me.

Just invite Holy Spirit.

First of all, Lord Jesus, for those of us who gotta feel trapped within the lust of our own heart, our own imagination, taking more than what belongs to us.

You break the power of silence.

You break the power of secrecy.

And I thank you over this body of believers, Lord Jesus, for the liberating power of God to free us from the inside out.

I thank you that we're not alone, God.

We thank you that you intended sex to be a beautiful gift.

And we acknowledge Lord Jesus when that gets the best of us.

And so, God, I just pray for my brothers and sisters here, wherever that intersects with our life, that you would meet us there.

Not in a place of shame, but in a place of victory.

In Jesus' name.

God, I pray for our marriages here today.

The ones who have been holding on, the ones who have been choosing each other each day.

The ones who've been fighting that out for each other.

Maybe sometimes it feels like a battle.

Maybe sometimes it feels like a beautiful walk through the park.

I thank you, Father, for strength and grace to our marriages in this room here today.

That they would receive the blessing and the strength and the power of the heart of God to reflect your covenant purposes for our lives, God.

I thank you for strength to hold on and to be rooted in your love above everything else.

I thank you, God, for our singles here today.

Who are not in a marriage relationship, Lord God, but they are devoted to you in their heart and they're living their devotion to you faithfully.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, they're not outside of your covenant.

And I thank you, Father, for the flourishing of rich and deep-spirited friendships, Lord God.

We're friendships that they treat each other as thou's, not it's, not used for other purposes, but deeply ingrained as brothers and sisters and friends.

And I thank you, Lord Jesus, for strength for our singles to not feel on the outside looking in, but to feel completely rooted and established in your covenant love, God.

I pray, Lord Jesus, for those who have been divorced, Lord God, or have been divorced and remarried.

I thank you, and I just announce, God, over each of those in those categories that they are not outside of the blessing of God.

And together as a church, we say we bless you in Jesus' name.

We release the blessing of God over you and over your children and over your children's children, over your children's children's children, that you would have a fantastic legacy, and that there would be blessing over your home, your relationships, your sons and daughters, your marriage, your new marriage or your eventual marriage, that there would be no sting of sin in your life, no negative ramifications, and any failure you had, including the divorce, that God would renew you from the inside out, and that God sees you as pure and perfect, and He's rewriting your history as we speak.

You won't be known for what you have, you won't be known for your past, but God is paving the way to a bright and beautiful future for you.

We bless you in that, and we thank you for the strength and the power of the kingdom of God over each one.

That's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.