Matthew: Truth and Grace in Divorce

Help us with this.

The first is the flow to the text and the fact that in verses 17 through 20, which we looked at a few weeks ago, Jesus speaks about our inability to be perfect.

Right?

He speaks about our inability to be perfect, and then he starts to talk about these different behaviors, and he starts to talk about these different conditions and issues going on in our hearts.

He's challenging.

He's challenging the behavioral mindset of the day that refuse to move into the heart.

And what he's saying, he's saying you can't complete the law.

Right?

So we talked about that.

The law is all the shoulds.

All the shoulds in scripture, you should be like this, and you should be like that, and you should be like this, and this is what you should be like, and you should be like this, and you should be like that, and all the shoulds, and that's the law.

That's law.

And Jesus comes into law and says, Hey, by the way, you'll never be able to complete all that.

I completed that.

God Himself takes that upon Himself because we cannot, because we're just not perfect.

That kind, loving, sacrificial, patient, pure person who, you know, you should always eat kale and hummus and watch independent movies.

You already sold your first company, by the way, and you're perfectly fit and you're a force for cultural good, all those shoulds in Scripture and the shoulds in life, all of that, you'll never be able to meet all of it.

We always fall short of all the shoulds in life.

The shoulds in life, this is what Jesus is saying, the shoulds in life don't have to be the governor of your lives.

And that is such good news because all of us, all of us, all of us, fall short of that, and there is a way of grace.

So there's a flow to the text, good news for us, and there's a context to the text.

So the rabbis, rabbis in the Old Testament, and they're reading the Torah, the rabbis believe what constituted divorce was a break in the vows.

The vows were fidelity, provision, and love.

And so a break in the vows could constitute divorce.

Now, near Jesus' time, two rabbis surfaced, Rabbi Hilil and Rabbi Shema.

Now, these two guys believed two very different things.

They taught two very different things.

And these were thoughts that would be going on in the minds and the hearts of the people who would hear Jesus' words.

And so Shema came along and he was more conservative with that original understanding of the Torah.

And he said, the only thing that could constitute divorce is sexual immorality.

He said, That's the only thing that can constitute a divorce.

But Halil comes along and he says, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Like you can divorce your wife for any reason.

You can divorce her if she burns your meal.

It's crazy, right?

But at the time, women were treated as property.

And so sadly, this becomes a quite popular view.

And the women are just treated like property.

So Jesus bringing structure to this issue is Jesus bringing protection to women.

He's siding with Shema.

These words would have meant everything to a woman.

Everything.

A certificate of divorce for a woman meant that she could move on with her life without that husband, that ex-husband, coming back to reclaim her.

Not to mention that at that time, if a man divorced a woman, it was almost a death sentence.

She was dependent upon him for security and for income.

It's not like today where, you know, the woman can move on and keep her job, she buys another house, she gets another job, she goes to work at CNN and everything.

This was about poverty and hunger and starvation and prostitution.

So these words meant everything to a woman.

They would have soaked this up.

So I know we hear it very differently than they would have heard it 2,000 years ago.

Matthew 5, 31 through 32.

It was also said, Jesus teaching, and here comes these antitheses.

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.

See, he's coming in on the side of the rabbi Shema.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

We'll dig into that.

So he speaks severe words in defense of women.

Now, I know some of you are divorced, some of you caused divorce.

Some of you are maybe wounded by divorce.

Some of you may be going through a divorce.

Some of you hate divorce.

Some of you were rescued by divorce.

No matter what, what we all know, what we all know is divorce is hard on everyone.

It's difficult.

I've walked through divorce with some of you.

I've walked through remarriage with some of you.

I've walked through separation and divorce with people where I never could figure out what was going on inside that marriage.

None of it's easy.

Right?

Like no matter how easy it looks on the front of People magazine when Gwyneth and Chris Martin separate and divorce, there's always, always hurting hearts and difficulties and complexities on the backside of divorce.

We know that.

And I also know that we'd rather just watch Jimmy Fallon watch a silly game, you know, playing a silly game with Jessica Alba or eating our Talenty, but we have to.

We have to still talk about difficult issues, right?

Like it'd be fun just to come in and always talk about fluffy stuff and rainbows and lollipops, but we have to talk about difficult issues.

And so this is a difficult issue.

Now, back when Gwyneth and Chris divorced in 2014, if we're keeping up with that, uh all the news outlets, outlets, they they freaked out with all these statistics, right?

I mean, we always hear like, oh, the divorce rate is 50% and climbing.

Everybody's freaking out, freaking out, freaking out.

Well, it was interesting, a New York Times article came out at the same time in 2014, and it said the divorce surge is over, but the myth lives on.

And this was based on some research coming out of the University of Michigan.

And what this was saying is that the reality was that the divorce rate was growing in the 70s and 80s, and then since then it has actually been in decline for the past 20 years.

So here's a pretty long quote, but you're smart folks, you can hang with me.

Ultimately, a long view is likely to show that the rapid rise in divorce during the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly.

It occurred at the same time as a new feminist movement, which caused social and economic upheaval.

Today, society has adapted and the divorce rate has declined again.

In the 1950s and 1960s, marriage was about a breadwinner husband and a homemaker wife who both needed the other's contributions to the household, but didn't necessarily spend much time together.

In the 1970s, all that changed.

Women entered the workforce, many of their chores in the home became automated, and they gained reproductive rights, as the economists Betsy Stevenson and Mr.

Wolfers have argued in their academic work from the University of Michigan.

As a result, marriage has evolved to its modern day form based on love and shared passions and often two incomes and shared housekeeping duties.

The people who married soon before the feminist movement were caught in the upheaval.

They had married someone who was a good match for the post-war culture, but the wrong partner after times changed.

Modern marriage is more stable because people are again marrying people suitable to the world in which we live.

So according to this research, it's very interesting.

What's interesting is that at first women's ability to work outside the home and generate income and they're not stuck in the home all the time, that this freedom increased divorce rates.

And then there is this adapting that occurred.

And really it was the reforming of how we do marriage.

That the roles are shared.

We have shared roles.

I'm just assuming, I'm making a big guess here.

I'm not the only one doing laundry and bathing kids and uh doing a lot of laundry, by the way.

Just it's a bed and breakfast going on at my house.

That's what it is.

They don't pay rents, what's going on?

Right?

So the shared roles change.

There's more freedom for women.

They don't feel like they've got to go, I gotta get out of here, I gotta get out of here.

And so marriage becomes more stable.

So the text itself, because I think the text itself that Jesus talks about, I want to get technical, I want to dig into it for just a moment because he says a few things here.

It's quite difficult.

I mean, really kind of abrasive to tell you the truth.

So what here's what it says it says the woman in the text, the woman, is forced to commit adultery if she remarries.

Now hang with me, maybe remarried.

You go, ah, I've been reading that forever, I don't know what to do with it.

All right, so she's forced to commit adultery, but the Greek heirist tense reveals her as a victim.

All right, so this is fascinating because what it means is that the one who's committing adultery is seen as the victim.

All right, that's really, really interesting.

Because usually the one who is doing the act that is wrong is not understood as a victim.

And so what we see here is we see immorality and compassion actually finding each other.

And then it says anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

So what does that mean?

Okay, so if a divorce takes place, it's not in alignment with rightful cause for divorce, which in the New Testament is sexual morality and desertion.

And desertion is not just Cindy Joe ran off to Vegas.

I mean, you can be in the house and have deserted your spouse.

You can be in the house and deserted your vows to your spouse.

So if divorce is not rightful according to the New Testament, the new union, catch this, it'll kind of blow your brain, it's hard to grasp.

The new union, while it's not in agreement with a perfect moral code in its beginning, it's still a new union that in the grace of God must grow into health and beauty.

See, this is where grace and morality create illogical reasoning.

And it is probably why so many of us have had such a hard time thinking about divorce, and not even want to think about divorce, and not even want to deal with a passage on remarriage.

Because this is two different paradigms colliding for us.

And I think this is why Jesus brings it up.

Because what he's doing, he's talking about divorce, but he's also talking about something much deeper.

And that is that if you give your hearts to moralism, if you give your hearts to that, you'll have no grace for other people.

And eventually you'll have no grace for yourself.

Alright, so a few points.

Point number one there are clear scriptural guidelines for divorce, even while we always hope for reconciliation.

There are clear scriptural guidelines for divorce, even while we always hope for reconciliation.

When Sam and I sat down on Monday and we started, you know, all right, let's look at the next text, and you're like, oh, oh, it's divorce.

And I had family in town.

Oh, what am I gonna do?

Let's scrap it all.

You know, and they're like, all right, well, what song what songs can we sing?

What songs are on divorce?

There's no songs on divorce.

I mean, you don't sing songs, let's go sing some songs on divorce together as a community.

I mean, no, nobody wants to do that.

That's horrible.

It's not horrible ideas.

And so, you know, it's like, let's just sing songs about hope.

I mean, let's just sing songs about hope.

That's the best thing to do.

But there is these screw these clear scriptural guidelines for divorce.

A range of New Testament passages permit divorce based on sexual morality and desertion.

And by the way, all forms of abuse are under desertion.

All forms of abuse.

Point number two, divorce is hard on everyone, but divorce shouldn't be filled with shame for anyone.

Divorce is hard on everyone, but divorce should not be filled with shame for anyone.

This is not to condone any given divorce, but it is refusing to sit in condemnation over any individual going through any divorce.

We read Galatians 3, 23 through 26 a few weeks ago.

I'm going to read it again.

And you think about when we hear this word law, it's the idea of all the shoulds of who we should be.

Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

So we're not justified by how good we are, perfect we are, moral we are.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons, we can say daughters of God through faith.

It's a different way, it's a different path.

Point number three: recognizing our imperfection is the beginning of our rescue.

So just in case you're sitting in judgment over other people because you've had a great marriage and you think divorce is horrible in all situations, and you think you're really great, and you think you're fantastic, and you got your life together.

Jesus takes it further.

Because he's using divorce to get us to come into our hearts.

And so he takes it even further.

Because commitments aren't just about marriage, right?

I mean, it's about a yes be yes and a no be no.

And so he says this in verse 33.

Again, you have heard it also said of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.

So if you say you're gonna do it, you do it.

But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is the footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.

And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.

Let what you say be simply yes or no.

Anything more than this comes from evil.

Jesus isn't condemning you, he's just showing you reality.

And you go, oh, you think you're moral hot stuff.

You're not.

Like we're just not.

Whether you've got you've been divorced, you haven't been divorced, we've all broken oaths.

Right?

Your yes isn't always yes.

My yes has not always been yes.

I've wiggled out of things that I had committed to.

You stretch the truth so we can stop sitting in judgment over other people, and we can stop using our own merit to justify ourselves.

Jesus is drawing a clear distinction of our inability to ever have all the puzzle pieces together.

Remember when we talked about this a few weeks ago?

That you know that a life by law is this feeling like you have this puzzle, and if you can just get the puzzle all put together, everything will be okay.

And so you're just searching, you're constantly searching for that puzzle piece, that one last puzzle piece.

You think, I'll just find one last puzzle piece.

And maybe you do it within the religious world, maybe you do it within the secular world, but you're searching and you're searching, you're looking, you're looking, and you find a piece, you find it, this is gonna be it, this is gonna be it, and you put it in your puzzles.

You put in your puzzle, you realize there's like two other pieces that aren't there.

And so you go looking for the other two pieces, and you go looking, you're searching, you're searching, you're searching, and you put those in, and then you go, oh no, there's another piece missing, or maybe there's three missing, or four missing, and you go, and it's just over and over.

This, have you ever felt like that?

By the way, have you ever felt like life is like that?

Well, that's life as captivity under the law.

That's captivity under the shoulds of life, a merit system.

A merit system that lures you and then it beats you.

And I know this because I've tried to do it.

I still try to do it, justify my life and my value, even my position before God by what I do or how good I think I am, how good you think I am.

But it's not the way of faith and grace and love.

I don't know your present circumstances.

I hope you don't ever have to go through divorce.

I don't know your past.

I don't I don't know, but some of you have been abandoned by spouses.

Some of you have been cheated on, abused, beaten, belittled, ignored.

I know some of you have done the leaving and the cheating and the abusing and the belittling.

And for you also there's absolution and there's forgiveness.

The beauty of Christ on the cross is to show us in physical form that God Himself will take on all that brokenness and all that shortcoming and that sin, and then grace toward you heal you and relieve you from any life of having to use merit and law as your justification before Him.

And lastly, some of you, some of you have received shaming from the church because you got divorced.

And maybe it was a bad sermon.

Or maybe it was a bad small group.

It was just a bad Sunday school class.

It was it was whispers when you walk by, or it was some looks.

And and for whatever help it is to hear clergy say, I am so sorry that happened to you.

You did not deserve that because you, my friend, you you're a God's beloved, not by your work, but by his word for you.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you see again your need for the grace of God, for the work of Christ from outside of yourself, complete absolution and righteousness that is free as the air you breathe.

So may you breathe it in, let it transform your heart and out into your relationships, your marriages, your friendships, your parenting, and into the world.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you.

That though we are not always faithful and committed to you, you are faithful and committed to us, and in your grace, you love us enough to give us the law, to give us the shoulds of what we should be.

May it be our guide.

And in the same moment, would we be honest before it?

That we are not perfect, and that we need a way of grace.

And we thank you that you provided that for us to understand that through the life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

God, may we breathe in your absolution and forgiveness.

God, I pray for great healing.

I pray for the marriages in this room that are on the brink of exploding, and I pray for reconciliation and healing.

I pray for those of us going through divorce, would you be a great comforter?

I pray for those of us that who are divorced.

I pray you remove any shame.

I pray for great healing in those hearts.

And God, I pray for those of us who have remarried.

I pray those relationships would be beautiful and healthy and vibrant and full of truth and full of grace for your kingdom.

God help us to trust you in greater ways as we let go of all the ways we love.

Love to trust in our own work.

In Jesus' name, we pray.

Amen.

We serve communion each week here at Redeemer.

If you call Redeemer your home, please feel free as you come forward to bring your tithe or offering in these baskets.

Feel no obligation to give.

Feel no obligation to give.

If you're a visitor, uh, just feel no obligation when it comes to that.

In fact, when it comes to communion, feel no obligation to take communion.

Maybe you're here, you're from a different denomination, you're from a different background, you're from a different religious background, you're from a different faith, you're from a you're from no faith, and you're here.

We are we're excited you're here with us.

And feel no awkwardness to stay in your seat during our time of communion.

In fact, the scriptures say for people not to receive communion until you come to a place of faith and trust in Christ as Savior.

Now, we would love nothing more than for this morning to be a time where you find saving belief in your heart, and for our time during reflection and prayer, for you to bow your head and pray a prayer of trusting in Jesus as Savior and wanting to receive the grace of God in your life, and we would welcome you to come forward to receive communion in a meaningful way.

Communion is about what is done and accomplished outside of us and given to us.

So we come forward to receive, taking the bread and dipping it in the wine which is available in the cup to your left, or grape juice which is available in the cup to your right.

Bread and wine are God's symbols of his love for us.

Communion reminds us that we are not acceptable to God based on our work we have done, but because of the work Jesus Christ has done for us.

On the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ, he took bread and we had given thanks.

He broke it and he gave it to his disciples, saying, This body is given for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, he took the cup, saying, This cup is a new covenant.