Just Married

Welcome to our Church at the Grove online worship gathering.

My name's Russ, and if I hadn't hadn't had a chance to meet you, welcome as we spend some time worshiping together and we spend some time in God's Word.

If you haven't already, go to our Church at the Grove app.

We'd love to have a record of your time with us.

And you have some sermon notes there that you can follow along with as we dive into Scripture.

You know, my wife and I, uh Jill is her name, we have a pretty simple system in our marriage.

I make all the big decisions and she makes all the little decisions.

But the key is she tells me which ones are big and which ones are little.

Now, as I'm sitting here looking at a camera, you're behind the camera, I hope that you found that to be just a little bit funny.

But I'll tell you what's not funny.

It's not funny when we don't take marriage and marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

We're well into this Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is giving his first sermon.

And we're in we're in part two.

We're titled it, Say What.

We're in the first part called the Good Life.

Jesus begins with the Beatitudes and He begins to teach us the building blocks of the Christian life and the Christian faith.

And then he encourages us and he makes these declarations over us where he says, You're the salt of the earth and you're the light of the world.

And then he gets into this section, and we we've called it say what, where he's basically taking his teaching to us as believers that are in the kingdom of God, and he's teaching us how to conduct ourselves in light of our kingdom beliefs.

And so if you identify with Jesus and you want to follow the way of Jesus, the life of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus, we've got to understand that Jesus calls us to a counter-culture way of life.

When Jesus taught this, it completely went against the grain.

It went against the grain of uh certainly of the Roman Empire and the systems of the world, but it also went against the grain of many of the religious leaders of the day.

And so he's teaching a culture.

You know, many of us are familiar with sports, especially on a collegiate level.

And if you went to a certain university and and and you enjoyed uh going to the football games, they had certain cheers and certain chants and certain things that they would wear and certain things that you would do.

If you went to UGA, um I mean you would say go dogs, and you would understand what it meant uh when somebody said, Hey, ring the bell after a victory.

Well, it's a culture that's built into that.

By the way, other universities, don't just you just forget about their culture.

It doesn't matter.

Only UGA's culture matters.

Um but what Jesus is doing is he's teaching us a culture, a counterculture that goes against the systems of the day, but goes toward Jesus and in the way of Jesus and following Jesus and how we should conduct our lives as citizens in the kingdom of God.

And I'm telling you this, these teachings are tough.

This is tough truth.

A couple of weeks ago we we learned about anger and that when we have anger in our hearts, we're just as guilty as someone who's committed physical murder.

Last week we we we learned that, hey, we're we're guilty of lust.

If we've had lust in our heart, that we're just as guilty as someone who's committed adultery.

And so these are tough truths, but here's the good news.

Jesus wants us in light of these tough truths to realize how wicked and how um how deceitful and how how the human heart will lead us down a path of unrighteousness, and that if we lean into Jesus and if we just throw ourselves at his mercy and his grace, he promises to give us a new heart and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and that we can live free of all guilt.

And so here in what we're gonna talk about today, Jesus doesn't pull any punches.

I mean, he just goes even harder at it as he teaches us about marriage and about divorce.

And here's the big idea for today.

Jesus teaches us to take marriage and the marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

Jesus is teaching us to take marriage and the marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

So here's what Jesus says about marriage and reconciliation.

We're gonna read into scripture, and then what I want you to learn is that the best interpreter of Scripture is Scripture.

And here's what I want, I want you to know.

I I know I know this about every one of you that God loves you way more than you could ever imagine, and way more than you could ever uh hope for.

God loves each and every one of you.

And so this message is for those of us in the kingdom, and it teaches us how to conduct ourselves as citizens of the kingdom.

And so this tough truth where God says he hates divorce, um, listen, I know that those of you who have experienced divorce, you hate divorce because you've actually had to live it.

Nobody hates divorce more than you do.

But I'm telling you that God hates divorce.

He doesn't hate you.

He loves you.

He gave his life for you, sent Jesus for you.

He loves you right where you are in your life.

And so here's some here's some statistics that I have found interesting as I have have uh I've done a lot of weddings and I've led a lot of couples into premarital counseling.

Here's what I've learned is here here's what I teach these couples that 41 to 50 percent of first-time marriages are going to end in divorce.

That's in our culture, and it's sadly not much different inside the Christian church.

67% of second-time marriages end in divorce, and 75% of third-time marriages end in divorce.

And in the night in the 1960s, uh during the what we call the cultural revolution, um an interesting judicial event happened, and it's what we call the no-fault divorce, and it completely changed the marriage landscape.

And when I say it changed the marriage landscape, I don't mean for the better.

Uh we we we no longer took marriage and marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

The world says, hey, we're gonna make it as easy as possible for you to end your marriage if that's the desire of your heart.

And so in leaning into this biblical truth and this kingdom ethic, um, we do so because we want to follow the ways of Jesus.

God is is, he loves us, and so he wants us to know his truth, and he wants our lives to go well.

He wants us to live blessed and not cursed.

And so this reality that we've come to grips with that, hey, that we're if we're angry, we're murderers.

If we lust, we're committed adultery.

We're fornicators, we're liars, we're thieves.

That's what the law of God reveals to us.

Now, here's what you need to know about marriage.

Marriage is meant to be a permanent covenant on earth between a man and a woman.

And here's the important part of this: it's meant to be a picture of Jesus' relationship.

He is the bridegroom and the church.

Those of us in the church, we are the bride.

And so marriage is meant to be a picture on earth of this heavenly kingdom relationship between Jesus and his bride, the church.

My gay friends who who um uh who hear these teachings from Scripture, they often will scoff at how how rigid they feel that we are sometimes about marriage being between a man and a woman and what the Bible says about it.

And here's why they scoff about it.

It's because we're so poor at it in the church.

And so nominal Christianity has taken something that God created to be beautiful and to reflect his relationship with us, and and it's and it's absolutely ruined the idea of what marriage should be.

And so nominal Christians, now what do I mean by nominal?

It's this idea of people who profess to be Christians or followers of Jesus, but they don't practice the ways of Jesus.

It's people who who maybe on some survey they check a box that say they believe in Christianity, but they don't really even attend church.

They don't try to live according to this kingdom ethic that Jesus is teaching us.

Um, nominal Christians entering marriage have a 28% higher divorce rate than those that truly follow the ways of Jesus.

People who attend church but still really don't follow the way of Jesus, but they they might attend church on occasion, um they are 20% more likely to get a divorce than non-believers who live good moral lives and say marriage is important to them.

And so 30% um less people are 30% less likely to get a divorce if they are actually involved, not just in church, but in the way of following Jesus.

And when I say that, that people that are engaged, not just Sunday attendants, they're engaged in a small group or in a small group of friendships and relationships where there's accountability and they serve and they they're involved in in the life of the church or the way of Jesus.

Now here's what I think Jesus wants.

And here's what I think you want this and I want this.

Let's reduce the divorce rate to zero.

Let's reduce it to zero.

But you know what that'll take?

It'll take people who get married, who both equally are committed to following Jesus with reckless abandon.

I mean, surrendered to the way of Jesus, believe in the kingdom of God, and that there is a conduct and an ethic that is different and goes against the grain.

People that are sold out to the kingdom of God.

And here's what Jesus says in this section.

We're in Matthew chapter 5 today, and I'm going to read these two verses in 31 and 32.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Here's what he says.

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 grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Now, let me have a little fun with you.

I'm holding up what we call um uh Chuck Taylors.

These are converse shoes called the Chuck Taylors, and there was actually a man who was a semi-pro basketball player named Chuck Taylor, and I'm assuming that he helped design these shoes.

When I was growing up, these were actually basketball shoes, but now they're just fashion shoes.

Um you need to know this that 98% of all of the athletic shoes that come into the United States, um, that they come from outside of the United States.

They're not made here.

They're made somewhere else and they're shipped in.

And there's a 20% tariff, financial tariff, that's added to the cost of those shoes that drives the cost up.

Now, the Chuck Taylors, they get, they get um, they don't have to pay that 20% tariff.

And that's why, uh here's why, is that there's this um this compressed felt that's on the bottom of these shoes.

It's called compressed felt.

And and if you rub your fingers, you can feel it.

Because of the percentage of the bottom of these shoes is covered, a certain percentage is covered with compressed felt, um, these shoes are qualified not as athletic shoes, but as slippers.

And thereby they do not are not charged the 20% tariff, and they cost less.

Here's what that's called.

It's called tariff engineering, and it saves money.

Tariff engineering might allow you to get away from a tariff tax, but here's what you need to know truth engineering doesn't allow us to escape or to get away from God's intention and what he teaches in Scripture when it comes to how we're supposed to follow Jesus and specifically how we're supposed to conduct ourselves in marriage.

See, Jesus addresses this whole concept of truth engineering that the scribes and the Pharisees and the religious leaders were trying to sell to the people of God.

Unless your righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees and the religious leaders, you can't please God, you can't be reconciled to God, and you can't get into heaven.

And so Jesus is teaching this about marriage.

He's saying, He's saying that we need to take marriage and marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

And so truth engineering is taking God's truth and making it fit our life rather than adjusting our life to God's truth.

See, we see it in this in the in this section of Scripture where there's a command from God, but the Pharisees and the religious leaders, they add their human tradition.

And it's false.

It changes the scope of what God intended when he wrote it, when he gave it.

Jesus is referring to these human engineering, this truth engineering, when he says, you have heard it said.

And so what he does is he realigns truth back to the original intention.

And then he says, but I say to you.

And then he tells us what it says and how we're to adjust our life to it.

And he says, This is how you should live.

And when you live according to God's truth, it will go well with you and you will be blessed.

See, Jesus is calling us back to a heart-level righteousness.

What is interesting about this little section of Scripture that sets it apart from the rest of these statements that Jesus is making in the other statements?

Jesus is referring to a commandment.

Right here, he's referring to a teaching that Moses gave when he says that I'm going to make an exception for those of you that are hard-hearted and are absolutely intent on divorcing your wives and sending them away.

You need to give her a certificate of divorce.

And what he's saying is he's basically saying, I'm at least going to provide some way of certifying what you are basically doing in wife swapping.

And Jesus is saying, I won't have it.

I won't have it.

I created marriage, and I want you to adjust your lives to the way that I created it.

See, see, we live in a current marriage crisis in our culture.

We've dumbed down God's plan for marriage and the divorce rate and the reality of divorce.

It's just, it's been tragic on our marriages, but also on families.

Do you know that children with divorced parents are four times more likely to divorce themselves?

So we've got to turn the tide back.

Jesus is saying, you've got to turn the tide back.

You've got to correct this.

Now when we see this scripture, when they heard Jesus teach this, they would have known immediately what Jesus was referring to.

And it was a passage in Deuteronomy 24 where Moses is saying, I'm going to allow, I'm going to make an exception for those of you that are hard-hearted about marriage and that are trying to send your wives away.

And here's what he's saying.

He said, When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter 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 the former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord.

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

Now here's what Jesus was dealing with in his day.

It says here, if you have found some indecency, that's what Moses is talking about.

Well, what's what what makes a woman indecent?

There were two schools of thought.

One was from a rabbi named Shemai, and another was from a rabbi named Halel.

Now, the rabbi named Shemai, he says that divorce was allowed for sexual immorality.

That's how he defined indecency.

If there is something that is sexually immoral and somebody can give witness to it, then there will be an exception where you can divorce your wife.

But here's what Rabbi Hillel said.

He said divorce was allowed for indecency.

And here's what he would say would qualify as indecency.

If your wife happened to burn the toast for you on a morning breakfast, then you were allowed to divorce her.

If the meatloaf wasn't good to your taste, you could divorce her.

Basically, indecency was determined by the husband and it was subjective.

Whatever he said was indecent allowed him to divorce his wife.

Do you see the problem with that?

You see how what they had taken that was meant to be sacred as marriage, and they made it a mockery.

And see, the worst part of truth engineering are the broken relationships.

Our relationship with God is broken, and our relationship with other people is broken.

The relationship and our marriages and our families, they're broken.

And this is not the kingdom living that Jesus designed us for.

This is not the kingdom living for those of us that want to follow the way of Jesus.

Here's what I've come to understand.

See, people don't have marriage problems.

People have single people problems and they just bring them into marriage.

Let me say that again.

People don't have marriage problems.

People tend to have single people problems, and those problems are just brought into marriage.

So let me go back to verses 31 and 32 of Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

It was said, 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.

And I said we're going to interpret scripture according to Scripture.

Another area where Jesus addresses this is found in Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew 19 · chapter mention

And it's when the Pharisees are trying to catch Jesus and trick him with a question.

So it says in verse 3 the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking.

Asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Here's what Jesus says.

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.

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

And 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 going to remind you that the school of Shemai says divorce is only allowable in the cases of sexual immorality.

And the school of Hillel, they all knew this when they asked Jesus this question.

He said that divorce was allowable for any offense, anything as simple as burnt toast.

But here's what Jesus does.

Jesus answers the question by quoting Scripture.

He says, It is written, don't you know what the law says?

Don't you know what how God created us?

That when you are married, you are two, but you become one.

And he quotes that scripture.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

You can't unwon what God has made one.

Let me say it again.

Jesus is saying, you can't unwon what God has made one.

See, they were looking for the exception clause.

And Moses gave them an exception clause.

But Jesus drops the truth bomb where he says this the exception clause is not meant to be the expectation clause.

There is an expectation that exceeds the exception.

And so Jesus teaches us, and this is the expectation, that to take, that we're to take marriage and marriage vows seriously and sacredly.

Now, this is tough truth.

It's tough, it's hard.

But I want you to think about the picture of Jesus' relationship with the church.

Jesus is the bridegroom, and the church is the bride.

And before you feel condemned, I want you to see how Jesus is slow to anger and great with mercy with the church.

Man, the church is a mess.

It's made up of individuals who have transgressed and sinned and gone completely against God's truth and God's law.

And Jesus showed his love in this, that he gave his life.

And so Jesus is the bridegroom that is so merciful and so gracious with the wicked, sinful church.

And so before you feel condemned, you need to know this: that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I love the story of Hosea and Gomer, and I don't have time to go there, but Hosea was the husband that had a wife that was promiscuous.

And he demonstrates the love that Jesus has for the church in that he continued to pursue his wife even though she became more and more promiscuous.

It's a picture of that relationship that Jesus has with the church.

Here's what Jesus is saying in this passage.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, marriage is mine.

I created it, and you are to conduct your lives according to the kingdom ethic that I have set forth and that I died for and gave my life for.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, you are mine.

And I'm calling you into a relationship by mercy, by grace, and there is no condemnation.

I want you.

You're mine.

And so I have a plan for you.

And so God hates divorce, but he doesn't hate you.

God has a plan to redeem you and to call you back to himself.

And here's what we say at Church of the Grove that everyone matters.

Anything's possible.

And so won't you consider just repenting of your sin and turning back to Jesus?

We say it's as easy as ABC at Church of the Grove.

Admit you're guilty.

And I've shared this before.

I'm guilty.

I'm guilty.

I'm guilty of transgressing God's law.

You're guilty.

We're all guilty.

And so we simply admit that we're guilty and that we need forgiveness.

And then we believe and trust in what Jesus provided in his life, in his death, in his resurrection.

And we confess Jesus as our Lord.

Now that's a prayer that happens through prayer.

That's not a magical prayer.

You pray it right there at home, right in the privacy of where you are.

You can pray it with a friend.

You can pray it in your car.

You can pray with other people, whatever it is.

The most important thing is that you invite Jesus into your life.

And we would love to know.

You text us 9700.

Text start to follow to 9700.

And we want to know if you begin your relationship with Jesus today.

And for those of you that are part of the kingdom of God, you're already a believer, you're a follower of Jesus, may we look at these hard truths and may we may we not give in to what what we know is truth engineering, but may we adjust our lives to the kingdom ethic that Jesus is teaching.

And may a world who is desperate for hope look at our marriages and look at our families and look at our lives and say, you know what?

There is hope.

And that is a way of life worth following.

God bless you.

I can't wait to see you next week.