Matthew 19:3-9 | Divorce and God’s Design

Church, great to be with you in the house of the Lord.

As we pray, come on to Psalm 62.

Father, thank you so much for the privilege that it is to gather as your people.

Lord, we are confessing that you are enough because you are the all-sufficient one.

Father, for you alone, our soul waits.

Lord, there's no doubt many in here that are waiting, waiting for breakthrough, waiting for, longing for heaven, even as we ought to be rightly looking to things above.

Would you remind us today as we sing, we're caught up in a salvation in Jesus Christ that is enduring?

Would you remind those that maybe alert those that don't know Jesus Christ that there is salvation in no other name?

There is salvation in no other work.

Not their own works, not their good person ism.

But solely and completely in the work of Jesus Christ and Him alone, and we rest in His work by trusting in what He has done and who He is.

Lord help us to flee to no other fortress, hide in no other rock, seek for no other salvation, wait for no other helper.

Trust that our hope is in you and you alone.

You are our rock and our salvation.

On you rests our salvation and our glory.

So God help us.

Help us to trust in you at all times.

Help us even today as we pray to pour out our hearts before you.

Because we trust that you are a great refuge.

Be that today for your people, God.

And multiply the benefits of your word to their souls by your spirit's power.

In a way that I cannot.

In Jesus' name.

And all God's people said.

Amen.

Well, let me encourage you to stay standing for the reading of God's Word, but if you have a copy of God's word, why don't you go to Matthew chapter 19?

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

This is where we're going to be.

If you don't have a copy of God's word, a couple things you can do.

One, the words will be on the screens as we read these verses, but also we would love to give you a copy of God's Word.

If you don't have a copy of God's Word, they're on tables on the left and the right side of the worship center.

Would love for you to take that as our gift to you.

Matthew 19 is our text for this morning, beginning in verse 3, reading down to verse 9.

This is the privilege we have every week of hearing from the living God.

And Pharisees came up to him, that's Jesus, 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 said to him, Well, why then did Moses command 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.

Love ones, this is the word of the living God for our souls today.

And I'm trusting as always that the Lord will write these eternal truths on your hearts.

And with that, you can be seated.

Church, good morning.

As always, a privilege to be together on the Lord's Day.

If you have a copy of God's Word, why don't you go to Matthew chapter 19?

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 19 is where you're gonna wanna be as we continue in our series.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

It's gonna make it um through the month of August.

The grammar of marriage, God's framework for his gift of grace.

And I'm sure some of you sense that there was a need to address the topic that I'm sure you're picking up from the text today.

And this Sunday has indeed come, and so we want to capitalize on the time that the Lord has given us that we might open his word and behold wondrous things, and if not wondrous things, at least clear things about what the Lord would have for us on a very sensitive subject.

So let me give you the title for today.

The title is Divorce and God's Design.

It was coming at some point, right?

One of the things I've been hearing about this series is that people are digging the application of this series.

So like, oh, the application, I have so much to go home and apply.

And I hope you're really applying it.

How's that going?

Are you really applying this stuff?

Because I dig giving you application, I dig that you dig that you're getting application.

But here's what I dig more than anything.

I dig when you go home and actually do that stuff.

And I dig even more when that stuff actually makes your marriage better.

That's the hope, right?

Today's gonna be a little bit different.

It's not that it's lacking application, but it's that you're gonna have to put your thinking cap on as well because we're gonna have to do some work in the word on a very sensitive subject.

So come with me in this.

You have to understand who's in this room.

In this room are folks considering divorce.

In this room are folks getting divorced.

In this room are folks that have been divorced.

In this room are folks that are affected by divorce.

And if you aren't in all four of those categories, then you have one friend very close to you who's in one of these categories.

Speaking firsthand of the effects of my own family, I can say that, as one person said, divorce is worse than death.

Death has a finality to it that divorce doesn't.

Divorce lingers.

Divorce is like an earthquake that sets off one mighty kind of boom, but then all these aftershock effects take place afterwards and can carry on for many, many years.

It's truly devastating.

In the church, one of the patterns that I've known and seen in divorce is that there's a pattern of leaving a church to sneak an unbiblical relationship into another church before it's recognized.

You can hang out in our church, it's big enough.

You can sneak in something that your former church didn't approve of because the Bible says you ought not to, and then you come somewhere else hoping that you can sneak your new relationship in before anyone notices, and basically ask for forgiveness before you ask for permission.

How are we doing so far?

And that's all been elevated by the fact that in 1969, California became the first state to enact no-fault divorce.

And you know this, that according to the law, if one or more partners are dissatisfied with the marriage, they can obtain a divorce based on that standard.

What do you think happened when that law went through?

Divorces shot through the roof, and every statistic imaginable shows that.

Now, those statistics have dropped off to some degree, mainly because, and this is sad, people simply are not getting married.

They're taking all the benefits of marriage without committing to the covenant of marriage, and so you have a bunch of problems, but they're not within the context of a marriage.

Well, in Matthew 19, the passage we're gonna look at today, the Pharisees try to lure Jesus into a grounds for divorce debate.

Very similar to this sort of no-fault idea.

You'll see the question in verse 3, it's right in front of you.

Is it lawful to divorce your wife for what?

It's right there, say it with your chest.

Yeah, it's right there.

That was easy.

That was like, that was a lob.

That was Jordan to Pippin, that was a lob, all right?

Yeah, for any cause, right?

Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go back into the context of this passage because the issue that you don't see on the surface that is very much bubbling underneath is that there was this interpretive battle between, well, uh, of Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4, and in particular, this phrase in verse 1 of Deuteronomy 24, some indecency.

Deuteronomy 24:1–4

Divorcing one's wife for, quote, some indecency, end quote.

And there were two Jewish positions.

One was the Shemai position and one was the Hillel position.

The Shemai position was your more conservative position that restricted divorce only for serious sins such as adultery.

Whereas the Hillel position was your more liberal position and promoting a more permissive view of divorce, that divorce could be justified for almost any cause.

Literally down to burning a meal.

Or finding out your wife's barren, or that birth defect that they have, that mole, right, that you just can't stop looking at.

Right?

I'm I'm I wish I was kidding.

The issue is Jesus gets presented with this, and and you see in verse 3, they're trying to what him.

They're trying to test him, right?

Jesus, homie doesn't play by that game.

Jesus rejects the framework of their debate, and he takes it all the way back to the book of Genesis.

And it leads us to our big idea that I want to talk about today, which is this.

So many people start talking about divorce by studying divorce.

How do we understand what the Bible says about divorce?

Let's study divorce.

Jesus goes the exact opposite way.

He goes, You want to know about divorce?

You want to know about remarriage?

Get really, really well acquainted with my design for marriage.

That's the big idea.

God's design for marriage is the foundation for understanding divorce and remarriage.

In other words, it's the starting place.

You don't need to be a common expert on divorce, you need to become an expert on God's design.

And when you do that, everything else falls into place.

This is what Jesus is going to be pushing for in the text.

So we're going to break it down like this.

Verse three, there's a question.

Verse four to six, Jesus gives a defense, and verses seven to nine, an exception.

So number one, a biblical butchering.

Number two, a creational defense, and number three, a permissible exception.

But let's start with number one, a biblical butchering.

Here is the text in question.

So the debate, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

You can look at it with me.

We're gonna go to Deuteronomy 24.

Deuteronomy chapter 24.

Deuteronomy 24 · chapter mention

I'm gonna look at this passage closely.

Text says this: when a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found, there's the words, some indecency, that's what they're arguing over.

What does that mean?

What does that include?

Some indecency.

Is it a birthmark?

Can I divorce you over a birthmark?

And he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house.

And she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, often because in that context the wife would have been destitute, now left to herself, desperately needing to survive.

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.

You notice the only command in this entire thing is in verse 4.

That first husband may not take her again.

Alright?

Now, let's zoom out for a second, because I know we're jumping in this passage, and you read this passage once because you did your Bible in a year plan.

And let's just be honest, you just you feel so good.

You did it, right?

It's kind of like one of those chest banging moments, like, yes, I read it.

Did I did I really read this?

I don't think so.

But I read it.

I checked that box to the glory of God.

I read the Bible in a year.

Thank you, Lord.

Let me do some work for you here.

You zoom out, this passage falls into the context of Deuteronomy 23, 15 to Deuteronomy 24, verse 7.

Deuteronomy 24:7

Every single law in this section, listen, is the Lord attempting to protect a vulnerable party from being taken advantage of by someone in a position who could.

Every single law.

So, Deuteronomy 24, 1 to 4, is God's law protecting a woman in a particular case from a hard-hearted man who divorces her without just cause.

From essentially forcing her into a position of defilement because she would go, as was common in that day, often by necessity because of destitution, to another man, marry him, and it's adultery because in God's eyes, the marriage, the first one, was never justifiably dissolved in the first place.

I.e., they're still married.

Now, that's actually not even relevant all the way.

That's the background to the to the text, but it's not even relevant to where the Pharisees are at and asking Jesus this question.

What I want you to note is that Moses was not giving grounds for divorce.

Right?

Get your eyes on that.

Was he giving grounds for divorce?

Was he commanding divorce?

Or was he describing a situation in which a divorce happened in two different cases?

Moses was not only not giving grounds for divorce, he was definitely not commanding divorce, which is what the Pharisees believed and were talking about in verse 7 of Matthew 19.

Oh, yeah?

Well, then why did Moses command divorce?

He didn't command divorce.

See, here's the issue.

You got the Shemai's and the Hillels, right?

The Hillels understood Moses as granting permission for divorce.

Or even commanding divorce on grounds of something, quote, indecent.

But here's what I want you to see.

They're twisting Moses' words and intent.

Turning Moses' description of a situation into a prescription.

You should get a divorce.

They're turning a description into a prescription, which is the fundamental definition, there's that outline, of a biblical butchering.

You know what I'm talking about?

When you butcher the Bible with your bad biblical, unbiblical biblical interpretation?

You butcher the Bible.

It's a good phrase, isn't it?

I don't even want to ask us to raise our hands how many times have you butchered the Bible with your interpretation, but I bet if we were honest, all of us have been there.

See, the thing is, Jesus doesn't play that game.

What he's going to say is the point is not to use the Bible to find grounds for divorce.

The point is to use the Bible to recognize God's permanence for marriage.

Now here's why I say that.

Couple things for application.

Because we're prone to a couple things that need to be drawn out of this question and what's in the background of this question.

The first thing is, you and I are prone to ask the wrong questions.

We're prone to ask the wrong questions.

What do I mean by that?

We're prone when we're like in a dating relationship to ask where is the line?

Where is the line?

You know what I'm talking about?

Where is wrong question?

Wrong question to ask where is the line?

Of course, the way I heard it when I was a kid was a question isn't where is the line, it's when is the time, right?

We ask the wrong questions.

We we ask another question.

How unhappy do I have to be until my unhappiness gives me reason to act in some sort of dissolution of my marriage?

How there's no way God could possibly want me this unhappy.

What standard is that?

How unhappy is that?

So then you can act on that.

You're asking the wrong question if that's the question you're asking.

It's the question that Christians ask sometimes.

How much sin can I do and still be Christian?

Still be saved?

We're asking the wrong questions.

We do it all the time.

We're not just asking the wrong questions, and maybe you're asking the wrong questions in your relationship, you're asking the wrong questions in your marriage, but here's the other thing.

We're prone to using the Bible the wrong way.

We're prone to using the Bible the wrong way.

We're prone to use it in a way that butchers the Bible.

And especially is this prominent when it comes to tough marital situations.

You start going to scripture looking for an out, you're using the Bible unbiblically.

If you're going to scripture to try to support your reason for an out, that's not the way to come to Scripture.

I'll make it like this, even clearer in case that's unclear.

Using Scripture to defend or support something that the scriptures are not intended to defend or support is a butchering of the Bible.

We do this all the time.

Listen, and if you're like, I have no idea what he's talking about, I have never done that.

I need you to get your thinking cap on, big guys, all right?

I need you to like work with me here a little bit and think there is a possibility that there is a proclivity, yes, in your sweet, sensitive heart, that you could do the same thing.

You know, the shock of like, I can't believe I don't even know what he's talking about.

No, no, no, no, no.

You know yourself, hopefully, better than that.

So, what do I mean?

Using scripture to defend or support something that's not intended to uh defend or support, like trying to get you out of a marriage.

Like, uh, I wanted more from my marriage that they haven't committed to.

They vowed certain things and they're written vows, and they they haven't done all the things.

Or um, I gotta go to scripture because I married somebody, but he's not the person that I married.

And certainly there's gotta be an out for that.

Or, you know what, I'm I they haven't held up their half a deal.

They said they were gonna work out all the time.

They for sure aren't working out.

I'm not attracted to them anymore.

I want out.

Or you have no idea how tough it is day in and day out to live with this person.

I shouldn't have to live like this.

I deserve better.

So I'm gonna go to the scriptures to find some things that they're doing sinfully and make that my defense for getting out of the relationship.

That's the wrong way to use the Bible.

But let's hear what Jesus has to say.

They're butchering the Bible.

He's gonna give a creational defense, number two.

A creational defense.

I love this about Jesus.

He reframes the divorce question around God's design question.

Right?

He goes, You want to talk about divorce?

Let's talk about design.

That's what you should do.

Every time you go to divorce, you should be talking about design.

Talk about divorce, great, let's go to design.

What did how did God design this?

That's what Jesus does.

What I mean around the design question is they ask a question, but then doesn't Jesus ask a question in verse 4?

Do you see it there?

Have you not?

Whew! That's a, but they're in the Bible.

They're like soups in the Bible.

Look, look at them.

Deuteronomy 24.

I mean, there, they know the Bible.

And he pulls a have you not read on them?

Busted.

He doesn't wade into the cultural debate, he gives a creational defense.

Isn't that great?

You got a bunch of people on two different sides of this debate amongst Jewish people, and Jesus is like, I'm not playing that, I'm going right back to the creational defense.

And he begins with God and he goes to the book of Genesis.

And we've been through this in our series that he, God who created them from the beginning, made them male and female.

It's amazing how much theology is rooted in Genesis 2.

You better know this deeply.

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 that they are no longer two but one flesh.

So you can just write in there, indivisible.

This isn't like a like a neat picture idea.

This is before the eyes of God, you two in a marriage are one.

Then he adds to it, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Marriage is in Plato, guys.

We don't get to just design it however we want.

God's the designer, and as God's the designer, he gets to define what marriage is.

And so you could say, in a sense, that the issue with unbiblical or what I'll call unjustifiable divorce is it's the tearing apart we see here of something A, God joined together.

God did it.

Should be trusting his providence.

God joins you together.

But it's so bad, there's no way that's possible.

If you're married, it's Honda P possible, okay?

Second, because God designed it not to be separated.

This is why it grieves the heart of God when we talk about divorce in this way.

It grieves the heart of God because of the damage that it brings to the one flesh union that was never meant to be torn apart, not to mention the damage it brings to everyone in the vicinity.

And usually, parents, when you get divorced, you're thinking about yourselves.

Yeah, you think about your kids, you have no idea what it does to affect kids.

But it is devastating.

That's not hypothetical either for me.

Not just the damage it brings, but the distorted picture that it is of Jesus Christ and his church.

In no way does that represent Jesus Christ and his church, right?

Unjustifiable, unbiblical divorce does not picture what marriage was intended to picture.

And so the real issue of Jesus is saying here, put simply, is we gotta build from God's design out.

So everything you think about marriage, everything you think about those who are married around you, you're like, I'm not married.

Great, here's a couple of things.

If you're single and want to be married, then you need to build from God's design out.

How you enter marriage should be focused on what has God done with marriage?

How has God designed marriage?

How do I prepare for marriage in light of the way God's designed marriage?

It should change the way you esteem marriage when you work from God's design out.

We should revere marriage.

It's a holy gift from the Lord.

And as glorious as it can be, and as high of a gift as it can be, you're also dealing with something that in the hands of sinners can go terribly wrong.

And so we need to esteem marriage.

Building from God's design out means it changes the way you fight for your marriage.

God's joined us together.

Let's trust Him for this and work with everything that we have to fight for our marriage, to repair our marriage.

And it should change the way you think about divorce.

You don't start with divorce, you start with God's design.

The question: are you grounded in God, in God's creational design?

And what would that change for you?

I think here's one of the things I would say it would change, for example, and I see this a lot.

Marriage, when you're over it, becomes way too flippant to get out of it.

There is a flippancy about marriage when you want out that doesn't match the creational design, that doesn't match the significance of what God has put together.

You're so over it, you deal with it with a kind of flippancy that doesn't match the design.

Build from the design out.

Now, Jesus does give a number three, a permissible exception.

He does.

And I like the interaction here because we get the sense in Matthew 19 that they're trying to test Jesus, right?

And so they throw this question out at Jesus, and Jesus is like, I'm not playing that game.

Bam, you don't even know the Bible, even though you think you know the Bible.

That's humbling.

But it's almost like they had their rebuttal ready before they asked their question in the first place.

You ever get that when you read the Pharisees and you're like, they knew where this was going?

They had it schemed out already and were trying to stump Jesus.

It was almost like they weren't listening.

You know the person that you talk to and they already have something going for how they're it doesn't matter what you say, I have got a response ready.

That's how this feels, right?

Why then did Moses command, notice that word.

Verse 7, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

You know what Jesus is gonna say, of course, right?

He didn't.

He didn't.

You read the text.

There's no command to get divorced.

There's a description of two divorces happening.

There's no command to get divorced in that text.

Jesus says it wasn't a command, it was the concession.

Notice verse 8.

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

But from the beginning, it wasn't so.

Now notice the language here.

They use the word command.

Jesus uses the word allow.

And, you know, I know we're losing the standards in college and stuff, and people can't read and things, but just so you know, allowed and command are not the same.

Are we okay with that?

I know we're like making words into whatever we want, making humans into whatever we want, and it's all just a playground for us, but just so you know, definitions matter.

Allowed and command not the same word.

Which is important to say that biblical grounds for divorce is not the same as a biblical command to divorce.

Biblical grounds for divorce is not the same as biblical command to divorce.

What Jesus is saying here is there appears to be a biblically justifiable divorce.

And though that's not God's design, that is, divorce is not God's design, a biblically justifiable divorce is a merciful concession granted for life in a fallen world.

Jesus says it, right?

Here's Jesus exposing what's at divorce's root.

Scleros of heart.

It's the word hardness.

I say it not to say something, oh, it's in the Greek scleros, that sounds smart.

I just say it because you know the word.

Sclerosis.

Y'all have sclerosis of heart left to yourselves, apart from the Lord Jesus.

Because the sclerosis of heart, because of this hardness of heart, see, sin introduced divorce.

Divorce exists because sin exists.

Divorces don't happen because two people can't just get along.

Divorces happen because hearts refuse to bend.

And so, of course, we see this.

Jesus is getting at something far deeper.

We just don't, we it's not like, you know, most people come out and they just think they're just peaches, man.

I'm just I'm just so awesome.

I'm just in a bad situation.

And all I need, if I could just get a new spouse and a new marriage, I would, oh, I would so, so be awesome in marriage.

And maybe that's true.

But Jesus' point is you don't need a new marriage, you need a new heart.

And here's the thing: if you're not married, you need a new heart.

Because of your hardness of heart, there's serious problems, and God in his graciousness has designed a concession mercifully for life in a fallen world.

But left to yourselves, you have a hardness of heart that if not dealt with, in other words, not repented of, and not trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, you will stand before the Lord and give an account for your hardness of heart, and it will not go well for you unto eternity.

Jesus is drawing something out even far deeper.

Not only is there an issue here that he's trying to address, but there's a deeper issue of the soul that you must address, which is do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior?

He is the only one who has lived a perfectly righteous life.

You have not.

And you need his righteousness because you must be righteous in the presence of a holy God.

And he'll grant that to you as a gift by trusting in him, resting in him.

Who he is and what he's done, living a perfect life, then dying a death in your place for your sin, and rising from the dead, conquering Satan, sin, and death for those who trust in Jesus Christ.

And then what happens is by faith you're united to Jesus Christ, such as what's true of him is true of you.

You have died and you've been raised to new life in him.

And he's proved that by setting the seal of the Spirit in your heart.

The Holy Spirit literally comes and dwells within you.

You do nothing to earn it, you simply receive Jesus Christ by faith.

Turning from your sin, turning from your self-effort and your self-ideas and trusting in Jesus Christ.

For we need Jesus to redeem us from sin.

And then he does this amazing thing, he restores what sin seeks to destroy.

Now, back to the issue of divorce.

Let me be really clear here.

I hope you're sticking around and people haven't left after the first two points, freaking out already.

Let me say a couple things.

Divorce always results from sin, but it's not always a sin.

That's really important.

Divorce always results from sin, but it's not always a sin.

And there are camps of Christians that believe there's no grounds for divorce for anything whatsoever.

That's a position.

And they'll use that Christian trope, God hates divorce as their defense for this.

Have you guys ever heard that before?

God hates divorce, it's in the Bible.

God hates divorce.

Where is that in the Bible?

God hates divorce, it's in the Bible.

Where?

Well, Malachi 2, of course.

It's in the Bible.

Really?

You want to take a look at Malachi 2?

I don't think that's saying what you think it's saying.

Is that really what it says?

If you look at Malachi 2, I don't think that's what that's saying.

In the context, really the crux of the issue is this.

Is it God hates divorce, or is it the man who divorces hates his wife in sending her away?

It's a very big difference.

Not to get into it in the fullest of details, but Malachi is chastising God's people for their covenant unfaithfulness exhibited in men of Israel divorcing their Israelite wives to marry pagans.

And you see, the question that they should have been asking, God ends up asking in verse 14, why does he not?

Meaning, why does God not receive their sacrifices and their worship?

And God's answer is because you forsook the wife of your youth.

The men of Israel, and the verbs in the third singular, God answers his own question in verse 16 for saying, really, the translation's probably for the man who hates and divorces his wife covers his garment with violence.

Meaning that the one who divorces his wife for an unjustifiable reason has done violence to his marriage.

It's the man.

But, save myself really long email, perhaps, a response.

Even if, let's go with, even if this is God as the subject, then the kind of divorce God hates is a particular kind of unjustifiable divorce.

It's not a blanket term.

God just hates divorce.

It's a specific term related to a specific situation of Israelite men leaving their wives for no good reason and marrying pagans.

So let me just be clear: God hates that.

You can understand why you would, right?

God hates that kind of divorce.

But to just say God hates divorce as a blanket statement, I don't think you can offend it in Scripture.

And that cues verse 9 of Matthew 19.

I think Jesus would say the same.

And I say to you, here's an exception.

Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery.

Now here's what we have in front of us is referred to as an exception statement, and we have to know how exception statements work in order to not butcher it.

Exception statements modify the rule.

The rule is given in verse 6.

What therefore God has joined together, let no man what?

Separate.

There's the rule.

Verse 9 exempts from the rule.

So the exemption only sets aside that situation, otherwise, the rule stands.

Now, our doxa statement would say, according to scripture, there's this exception, and there's one other.

Our doxa statement that we mentioned at the members' meeting says this: quote, there are instances where God permits divorce to accommodate man's sin and provide protection in cases of serious particular sins.

Categorically, there are two.

Here, the one you see in Matthew 19, covenant-breaking sexual immorality.

In particular, adultery, but the word pornea is used here, encompasses other violations such as incest or bestiality or homosexuality and so forth.

But there's another biblical grounds for divorce, which is desertion by an unbeliever.

And the same word that Jesus uses in verse 6, Paul uses the word separate, Paul uses in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

And he describes a number of situations in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, in which a Corinthian individual gets saved, becomes a believer, realizes they're married to a non-believing wife as a follower of Christ.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

Should I dump them in order to follow Christ?

And Paul says, let me help you with that.

Hang on a second.

And in fact, in some cases, what we find is that Paul prohibits divorce in certain situations, which corresponds to Jesus' words in Matthew 19, because it's in fact adulterous to remarry after a biblically unjustifiable divorce.

But, verse 15, he gives the case of an unbeliever separating.

1 Corinthians verse 7, verse 15.

Chapter 7, verse 15.

But if the unbeliever separates, let it be so.

And it's what theologians have called constructive desertion, that certainly you can figure out a scenario where you could have what some have defined as such settled, unrepentant contempt and repudiation of the covenant and the spouse to whom God has given you that they have an effect even in the home, deserted the marriage.

You can understand that under this is where abuse considerations, for example, could perhaps be evaluated.

Where it could get so bad in the home, it's like they're a hostage in their own house or worse.

And certainly in some cases, they can be so extreme that divorce may actually be better than that marriage staying together.

It's devastating and horrible.

Though I must add that we take these extremely slowly and carefully, especially in a day where literally everyone is calling everything abuse.

It's making it way harder for us as shepherds to work through stuff when we use the abuse for everything.

I got bumped in the lobby.

Abuse.

It's wild.

It's wild.

Which leads to some application.

Let me give you a few things as it pertains to divorce.

Situational things, and then we're gonna pray, because man, we need to pray.

Couple categories.

Maybe this is you.

I didn't have biblically justifiable grounds, but I got divorced.

Maybe that's you.

I didn't have biblically justifiable grounds for divorce, but I got divorced.

What should I do now?

1 Corinthians 7 is helpful with this.

Remain single or reconcile with your spouse.

You say, but I got married again.

Should I get a divorce now because of what you're saying?

No.

Don't compound one sin upon another sin.

You don't get out of a marriage in order to affect one sin by adding another sin to your list.

Don't compound your sin.

That's not the answer.

What about the situation of I don't have biblical grounds, but I really, really am starting to feel like I'm just gonna do it.

I would say fight those selfish soothings right now.

I don't have biblical grounds, but I just am really there.

And what I mean by really there is like you're you're looking at it and you're thinking about it and you're going, man, my whole family is gonna be devastated by this.

It's gonna have so many implications, but you're getting to that point where it's so not to your liking, you don't even care what happens to other people.

You are going to force, you're gonna shove it down all your kids' throats, you're gonna shove it down your wife's throat, you're just gonna do it because you're that not liking your situation.

I'd say, you better fight that like till the cows come home.

Here's what I mean.

Fight every thought that comes up in your mind where you're using divorce to comfort yourself.

Fight every situation in your mind where you're imagining a different partner and how much better it would be if you had a different partner.

That is sin that needs to be repented of and sought for forgiveness.

Fight every thought in your mind of a kind of relationship you wished you had in comparison to the one that you do have.

Fight every desire where you're becoming increasingly okay due to dislike of your marriage that you're willing to force your family to deal with it.

That is a certain level of selfishness that is hard to come back from.

Fight that.

And then you just demand everyone to normalize around you.

That's wild selfishness.

Fight the fight the urge.

This is gonna happen.

Now I've preached this message.

You know what's gonna happen?

People that thought they could get away from it here are gonna be gone.

Probably walk down the middle.

Here's number one, I don't care.

Number two, that's foolish.

Stay low.

Stay low.

Stay long.

Bring people around you that can examine your heart and your life something's not right.

Don't be the one that asks for forgiveness later on because you do what you want to do.

Don't pray for escape.

Pray for God's grace.

Pray for contentment right where he has you.

Pray that no matter what you're experiencing, you spend every single day growing by God's grace into becoming the husband or the wife that you're supposed to be.

And leave all the rest of it to the Lord.

Trust him for the results.

He brought you together.

He has his hand on your marriage.

Play the long road.

Trust him with the results.

Here's another category.

I do have biblically justifiable grounds, okay?

So you've you've thought about it, your situation, you're like, oh, okay.

I have biblically justifiable grounds.

Here'd be my shepherding counsel to you.

Don't be hasty with that.

Permissible doesn't mean do it.

People move so fast.

Permissible doesn't mean do it.

At Doxa, our job isn't to approve divorces.

That's what a lot of people want us to do.

They want us to take a big old fat stamp and they want us to stamp their divorce.

Yep, God approves of this divorce.

We will not be stamping divorces here.

We will be counseling your souls towards God's design.

And we will be counseling your souls towards reconciliation where at all possible.

And should there be a situation where only after many attempts over a long period of time to secure the unfaithful partner's repentance when all of that has failed, then if the bond is broken indeed in God's eyes, then here's our position.

Divorce is permissible.

And if so, remarriage is permissible.

Last one.

I'm not sure where I am.

I'm married to a professing believer, but he's acting like an unbeliever.

Can I take that desertion by an unbeliever clause for myself?

Not right now.

See, the amazing thing about God's word is he's actually designed a process for us to walk through to determine whether or not your spouse is an unbeliever, and it's called church discipline.

And it's in Matthew 18, and you can read all about it, and we walk through every one of the steps.

So not until sufficient time is granted to seek that person's repentance, and once they've refused by one person going to them, and then two people going to them, and then the church going to them, and they are just proving to be an unbeliever, then they are put forth before the church and then excommuted out of the church, treated as an unbeliever, and then at that point, yes, desertion by an unbeliever qualifies, but not before that.

Not by your feelings, but by a process.

And so, as you can imagine, we need a lot of prayer.

Would you do this?

Would you pray for your elders?

We need a tremendous amount of wisdom.

Can you see all these categories?

This requires a tremendous amount of wisdom, and we need it.

Pray against haste.

Would you be praying for people?

Pray for their grieving.

Pray for those who are affected by divorce.

Pray for strength to do what glorifies God and to kill the desires of the flesh.

Pray for this.

Write these things down.

Because here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna literally go to prayer right now.

Because one of the things that I hate is like when you get into the lobby and someone's like, hey, I got this thing, would you pray for me?

And it's like, yeah, brother, I'll pray for you.

And then you walk away, like, hey, hey, hello, hello.

God's wanting you just lay a hand on right there and go, I'm gonna actually pray.

So we're gonna do that, right?

Because that's the culture of our church.

We're just gonna pray together.

We've got a whole bunch of things to pray for.

God help us all in our individual situations to pray for a ton of grace, for a ton of situations.

Let's do that now.

So, as you have a second, you can gather with a few people around you, and we're just gonna seek the Lord because we are in desperate need for Him.