"Divorce & Hard Hearts" - Mark 10:1-12

Well, if you've got a Bible, we're going to be in Mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

One of the beauties of preaching through the Word as we believe it was intended,

verse by verse, chapter by chapter,

is you end up covering all the things that everybody says you need to cover

when God determines you cover them.

If you're here this morning, it's because God wanted you to hear what Jesus says about divorce.

I know, especially when I was younger, be listening to somebody preach,

going to church, and this topic would come up and my ears would immediately

just be like, thank God you said that, because now I know I can check out.

I'm good. Don't even know anything about this.

And selfishly, and I'll be honest, pridefully, even in my adult life,

when this comes up, been blessed with an incredible marriage.

I got an incredible wife. And so a lot of times when this topic comes up,

my natural inclination, and I would argue simple inclination,

is just kind of go like, well, you know, it is what it is. And I hate that, but I'm good.

You know, my wife is perfect. So...

But when Jesus talks about something, when Jesus has something to say,

it's wise for us to listen.

Whether you've been married 50 years, five years, you're not married,

you were divorced, whatever the situation you find yourself in,

Jesus has something to say about it, and therefore we should listen carefully.

I say that not only to make sure you're listening, but to make sure that you

hear me well this morning. Let me give you a couple of disclaimers as we get into this.

Number one, this sermon, this 30 to hour and a half minute sermon,

depending on how we feel about it, no matter how much time I had would not be exhaustive.

It's not enough time to have every conversation about divorce and remarriage and what that means.

Oftentimes, when people ask me about divorce or remarriage, what they're really

looking for is a pastoral flow chart.

They want me to give them something so that they can check boxes. If this, then this.

Yes and no. If you answer yes, go this way. If you answer no,

go this way. Yes and no, go this way, go this way.

It just doesn't work that way. And the truth is life doesn't work that way.

There's pastoral wisdom that goes into discussions like this,

certainly personal discussions. I know we have people in the room that have

been divorced. We have people in the room that have considered it.

We have people in the room that may not know that one day it may be on their doorstep.

All of those take time. They take conversations. They take personal conversations.

In fact, you'll see at the end of what we're about to read that when Jesus wants

to give more information, he just tells his disciples. He tells a small group of guys.

And as always a reminder, Jesus may have had a lot more to say about this.

Not everything we read in the gospels is an exhaustive concordance of every

word that Jesus said about everything.

It's what was recorded by the Holy Spirit through human authors for us to see.

And so, again, I like to put those disclaimers out there when I talk about something

like this, because I think a lot of times people will walk away and go,

you know, he didn't really answer my question.

Good luck, man. Good luck. And then you can come talk to me.

We'll talk for an hour. And I still might not answer your question.

It's a hard topic in a lot of ways. Certain things are really easy about it.

They're black and white. We're going to talk about those at length. Certain things aren't.

And so for those of you in here that I know, you know, have been divorced or

have been on the brink of that.

We've had that conversation for those in here that think, well,

this is never going to happen to me. I don't have to worry about it.

Pride comes before the fall is what I would tell you.

So as we do that, let me just pray to get started.

Father, as we talk about what your word has to say about divorce,

what Jesus has to say about divorce and remarriage.

And God, I think more importantly, as we try and get to the heart of what Jesus is combating here.

Would you open our ears and soften our hearts to your word?

God, would you give me wisdom as I preach, not to say something that I think

or that I might have an opinion on, but to preach your word faithfully and to

let your word do the work that only it can do. In the name I pray. Amen.

Let's read. This is Mark 10, starting in verse 1.

He says, and he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan,

and crowds gathered to him again.

Again, this is the common story of Jesus's life. Everywhere he goes,

people find out he's there and there's crowds.

And again, as was his custom, he taught them as always. Jesus taught more than he did miracles.

He taught everywhere he went all the time.

Verse two, and Pharisees came up in order to test him and ask,

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?

Jesus answered them, what did Moses command you? The Pharisees said,

Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.

And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.

Verse six, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and 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 no man separate.

Verse 10, in the house, the disciples ask him again about this matter.

And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

So this passage begins by a crowd coming to Jesus.

And when a crowd comes, the Pharisees get interested. You know,

Jesus, when he's just walking around with his disciples, we really don't see the Pharisees.

They don't care what Jesus does with his 12 disciples.

They do not care. And I can promise you that every legalistic,

religious person you meet will not care what you think in your own home.

But the second you get a following, the second people start listening to you,

they're gonna show up and they are gonna test him.

Right, that's an interesting thing that the text tells us is that when the Pharisees

show up, they want to give him a test and they want to test him in front of the crowd.

They want to test him in front of all these people, right? They haven't come

because they're humbly going, man, you know what? This guy may be right. They want to test him.

Truth be told, they want to make him look bad. That's their life's goal.

They want to make him look bad and they want to kill him. They can't kill him

yet. They just want to make him look bad.

So two things I want you to know as we think about this test. What is the test?

The first thing is we're in the same region where John the Baptist had his head

cut off for opposing Herod Antipas' divorce and remarriage.

When Herod married the former wife, I had to write this down because I know

I get this wrong, the former wife of his half-brother Philip for political reasons.

If you remember, we read this a couple chapters ago, but John vocally in front

of the crowd tells them, hey, Herod, this is not legitimate.

Herod should not be allowed to do this.

And it ultimately cost John his life. So I think in one sense,

the Pharisees are going, hey, we're in the same place that that happened before.

Maybe we can get it to happen again.

If we can get Jesus to say the same thing that John said, maybe we can get the

same outcome that we got for John and we can get his head cut off.

So it could very well be that the Pharisees are testing to see if Jesus would

make the same fatal mistake.

I think more importantly, though, the second observation is there was an ongoing

debate about a passage in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 24.

In fact, if you have your Bibles, go to Deuteronomy 24.

I think it's important we read it.

As you turn there, let me kind of give you a background. And there's all kinds

of writings on this. I encourage you to look it up. Again, we don't have a ton

of time to go look at the primary sources, but there's a debate going on on this specific passage.

Two factions of Jewish leaders, we'll say Jewish teachers, you got the Shammai

school, the Shammah school, and the Hillel school.

The Hillel school, you can still find today, they're still very much around.

Shammah school is still around, not as prominent, but these are still things that exist today.

But let me read Deuteronomy 24, and then we'll talk about this ongoing first

century debate that I think what's going on is they're trying to get Jesus to

give his opinion on this.

Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, when a man takes a wife and marries her,

Deuteronomy 24:1

if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he was found some indecency in

her, or your Bible may say uncleanliness in her,

and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends

her off 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

good of divorce and puts it in her hand and she sends her out of his house.

Or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband

who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife,

after she has been defiled for it is an abomination before the Lord and you

shall not bring sin upon the land.

Number one, let's just all take a deep breath and remind ourselves how good

and gracious and kind the Lord is that we don't have to follow that law.

We don't have to memorize those kinds of things, right?

It's a reminder when you read things like that, why does God have so specific

of a law like that? Why does he need to be so specific?

Because sinners will find a way to sin.

And so what God lays forth in Deuteronomy 24 is a means for divorce.

And the debate in the first century was over that phrase in verse one.

If he finds some indecency, again, I actually think the better word and some

of the translations say it is uncleanliness in her.

It's the same Hebrew word we see when the Bible talks about uncleanliness before God.

If the husband finds some indecency or uncleanliness in her,

he can divorce her. He can have a divorce done.

What's interesting is you might first say, well, that's adultery.

It's what that is. But it doesn't specifically say that.

And in Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 22, two chapters before that,

there's already a provision for adultery.

There's already something in the Bible that tells you what should happen if

a man or a woman commits adultery.

And that's, you should execute them.

And so the debate is over. Well, God's already given us what we do with adultery.

That's already established. Leviticus 20, Deuteronomy 22, 24.

What is this indecency? What is this in cleanliness?

How does that work?

And just like today, there's two general arguments. There's two general sides.

Like I said, you got the Shammai school, which would be more conservative.

They argue that the only reason for divorce was sexual infidelity.

It was adultery. That was it. That was the only way you could do that.

You had the Hillel school that would argue that anything that a woman does that

embarrasses her husband, displeases her husband, would fall under this indecency.

And the Pharisees of the day were a part of the Hillel school.

They believed that, hey, if my wife does something I don't like,

literally written down in the first century, you can go find this. This is in writing.

If she breaks my favorite dish, out, out, out.

And so again, back up a little bit and get the picture. Jesus knows this conversation.

He knows what's going on. He knows when the Pharisees come to him that this

is really what they're trying to get him to weigh in on.

He knows that they take a more liberal approach to this passage.

And he knows that John got his head cut off for taking the more conservative view of this passage.

And so the Pharisees show up and they want to test him. They want to say,

hey, what do you think about this?

What's your views on this? Because you know, the prevailing view is,

we can do whatever we want.

There's a good chance, and again, this is a little bit conjecture,

but there's a good chance that the same men here that are arguing with Jesus

about this divorce probably have a couple divorce certificates in their back pockets.

And what they really want Jesus to do is what so many people want Jesus to do

is to tell them, it's fine.

Don't worry about it. We're all guilty of that.

We all have the sins that we hold most dear, the things that we don't want to get rid of the most.

And we come to the word and are always looking for Jesus to say,

hey, that sin that you struggle with, that thing that you did in the past that

you don't want to feel guilty about, don't worry about it. You're good.

And that's what the Pharisees want. They want Jesus to say, well,

you know, who am I to argue with the religious elite, who am I to argue with these Jewish scholars?

So how is Jesus going to respond to this challenge? And remember,

this is in front of the crowd. Everyone's listening.

Everyone wants to know. Again, you've got people in this crowd over and over

again, mostly at this point in human history, men that have possibly gotten

divorces for things like that.

She made me upset, burnt the gravy.

It didn't go well for me.

And what Jesus is really about to do is, like I said at the beginning,

he wants to deal with the heart behind this conversation, the evil heart that

wants to have this conversation that says marriage is our business,

which means divorce is our business, which means I can do what I want to do with it.

And I will use the word of God to justify the means by which I do that.

So what does Jesus do? Jesus tests them. Jesus turns it around on them.

So Jesus says, what did Moses command you?

Listen, anytime Jesus asks you a question like that, that's a trap every single

time because he knows that they know the answer.

He knows exactly where they're gonna go. He knows exactly what they're gonna

quote from. Again, he knows the debate.

It's a part of Jewish culture, this debate, right? You may think of our debates

in terms of like sign gifts or worship styles or things like that.

If you're a Christian, you've been in those debates. You know the ethos of what's going on.

Jesus is just the same. The disciples, just the same. They know what's going on.

And so Jesus asked them, well, what does Moses say? And they quoted the hymn, Deuteronomy 24.

Well, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.

You got to think at this point that the Pharisees puff their chest up again,

like we do at times and go, see, I knew I was right. I knew I was right.

I knew I should be able to do whatever I want. Jesus says, because of your hardness

of heart, he wrote you this commandment.

And what does he do? But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.

Where does Jesus go? Genesis.

Now, does that mean that Genesis holds more weight than Deuteronomy in your Bibles? No, no.

It means that something changed from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

And what changed was sinful human hearts,

that God's design for marriage, just like God's design for sexuality and God's

design for gender and God's design for families,

all of those things have been corrupted in such a way by the time we get to

Deuteronomy that God is making concessions in such a way,

that he's going, I have to deal with these sinful hearts, these hard hearts.

And in a lot of ways in Deuteronomy, what he's doing is he's helping the women out.

He's saying, listen, these men are taking advantage of these women by divorcing

them for all of these erroneous reasons.

And once these women get divorced, if they don't have a certificate of divorce

and people think they're married, they can't get remarried.

They can't move on. They can't take the next step, right? God's dealing with the situation at hand.

He's not condoning their sin. He's dealing with it.

And this is what Jesus is trying to get them to see. hey, you're only focused

on Deuteronomy 24 because you think it lets you off the hook.

This is much like the same way if you hear people say things like,

listen, man, love is love.

Love is love. Don't you know that God is love? Don't you know that?

God wouldn't want me to feel that way. God wouldn't want me to have that on

my conscience. God wouldn't want me to feel guilty. God loves me.

And they'll take you to all the verses in the Bible. They'll go to John 3,

16. They'll go to Romans 3, 23. They'll go to all these places and go,

listen, you're telling me that this is wrong, that God is wrong, that he doesn't love me.

And you're saying, no, you misunderstand. understand. You think that God loving

you means something it doesn't mean.

You think that because God created you, or in this situation,

you think that because you're Jewish and you're God's chosen people,

that you can do whatever you want. That's not how this works.

And so what does Jesus do? He goes to Genesis and he says, this is the design.

This is what God intended. This is what God wanted. This is what he set out to do.

That when a man thinks of his wife and when a wife thinks of her husband,

they think one flesh. We are together.

Genesis says that God puts you together. Let no what? Let no man separate.

Let no human person separate these two things.

Now, is Jesus ignorant? Is Jesus telling us here, listen, there's never a reason for any of this.

If you've done this, you've done the worst thing in the world. Well, no.

Jesus understands the provision. Jesus understands, and he's even going to say,

we'll look at it in a little bit. In Matthew, he even gives a provision for

divorce himself. Paul's going to give one in Corinthians.

Just remember, what is Jesus fighting? He's fighting evil men in front of him.

And he's saying, your evil hard hearts is the only reason that you want me to say, yes.

You don't want to know what I think. You don't want to do the right thing.

You don't care about the right thing.

You want to do what you want to do. And you're using the word of God to do whatever you want.

And you can go into thousands of churches across America that are teaching the

same thing. Do what you want. God loves you.

And there's very few heresies that are sending more people to hell than that

one. Do whatever you want. God loves you.

You got saved when you were seven? Who cares, man? Live your life then.

You got the baptism certificate? Oh, you're good. Grandma signed your Bible?

You gotta be in, right? She's definitely in.

Protestants don't pray to Mary. They pray to their grandmas,

by the way. That is just how this works.

What does Jesus really want them to say? hey, listen, Jesus says, I value marriage.

I hold marriage on a very high pedestal.

There's a reason I hope at least you don't hear things like,

well, that's my old ball and chain at this church.

I hope you don't hear that. I hope you don't hear people talk about husbands

like, oh, that's that big bumbling oath that just can't put things away where they go.

All of those things send messages to the world around us that go like,

oh, they don't really care about marriage either. In fact, they kind of think

about marriage the same way that I do.

I've told this story before, I'm sure, but me and Kareth grew up at the same

church and didn't date in high school or anything and kind of moved off.

We always joke, we had to get out of youth group to like each other.

So you just couldn't like each other in youth group. It wasn't going to work.

Kareth was also very artsy and I can't hold a pencil.

And so it's just, it wasn't working. and ended up dating and getting engaged.

And we went back to the church we grew up at.

And this isn't a knock on that church of Civilly, just in this general idea,

because we heard it from everybody.

But everybody, when we were dating, loved it. They loved the idea.

Oh, you grew up here and you guys are great for each other. And we love your

families. And we know your parents. And we just, we watched you when you were little.

You also hear people say this. We always knew. We always knew.

And you're like, shut up, shut up. No, you did not know. You did not know.

It's like I wore basketball shorts and a hoodie every day.

This was not something that you saw coming. That's either here nor there.

The second we got engaged, the second we got engaged, you know what we started

hearing? Hope you enjoyed your freedom, brother.

Hope you enjoyed that. And then we go up to her and say, just know your house

will never be clean. It's never going to happen.

Which by the way, that's not my fault. That's their fault. But.

Yeah, totally.

But it was amazing how the conversation shifted the second that we decided to get married.

All of a sudden, all these people had these not negative things to say.

Nobody came out and said, like, that's the worst decision you're ever going to make.

But most people's general sense of marriage was hope you enjoyed your life while you had it.

Right. And we all hear this. And maybe you're guilty of it, too.

And I know a lot of this is said in jest and a lot of this is not taken seriously.

And I get that. And I hope you don't hear me nitpicking you.

Like one of you may have said that during the week and they're like,

hey, was he listening to me?

I wasn't. And I'm not trying to nitpick you. What I am saying is there is a

general sense, even in the church, that marriage is just not held in a high regard.

It's the same way we talk about kids sometimes. Oh, I should get rid of these

kids. If I could just get rid of these kids.

No, that's not how we talk about marriage. It's not how we talk about kids.

It's not how we talk about families because God doesn't talk that way about those things. Yes.

And we get married and it was just, it was so funny hearing those things because

I remember talking to Kareth like, do all these people have terrible marriages

that we just didn't know? Like, I'm really excited to get married to you.

And it sounds like I shouldn't be, I guess.

Like it was just like something we had to do. Well, you've been dating for a

year and you might as well get married because what else are you going to do?

And it's rare. It's rare to meet people who love their spouses,

who talk highly of their spouses, who don't walk around telling people all of

the negative things they had to do. Now, thankfully, again, not rare in here.

And I love that. I love that.

But this is what Jesus is getting at. He wants these people to know,

listen, God values marriage. I value marriage.

And what you're doing to marriage, what you're doing to marriage,

talking to the Pharisees and the crowd at large, you're perverting in a way

that God never intended, even Deuteronomy 24.

That is not the purpose.

He basically says the Pharisees, you're looking for the exception instead of following the rule.

You know what the Pharisees are doing? This is a great way to think about this

because we've all thought this way.

The Pharisees are asking, how far is too far? What's the line?

What can I get away with? They're not asking, how can I honor God here?

How can I honor God? How can I, how can my life, how can my marriage,

how can my family reflect God's intentional glory that it was meant to reflect.

No, we just want to know what's allowed here.

Jesus pushes back on that. God created marriage.

God sets the terms for marriage. God owns marriage, not me, not you,

not the government, not the church. Marriage is God's and it's God's gift to mankind.

But just like every gift that God has ever given mankind, mankind,

because we are sinful, has a way of ruining those good gifts.

And if you've experienced a divorce, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You could stand up and give a better testimony than I ever could.

By saying, man, that's right.

That's right. It should be a great gift because of something done to you or

something that happened.

You're robbed of that. Now, what are some reasons for a divorce?

Jesus doesn't stop there, quotes Genesis, but Jesus gives some reasons for divorce.

In fact, we see these even in narrative in the New Testament.

When Mary gets pregnant with Jesus and Joseph is not yet privy to how that happened.

And he thinks, like all of us would think, well, it wasn't me,

it had to be somebody else.

What does Joseph do? Well, Matthew tells us her husband, Joseph,

being, listen, being a just, or again, your Bibles may say, which I think is

a better translation, bad day for the ESV for me, which I think is a better translation,

but Joseph being a righteous man and unwilling to put her to shame,

resolved to divorce her quietly.

Joseph is a righteous man. The Bible tells us that he's a just man.

Because he is a just and righteous man, he says, I'm going to divorce her,

but I'm going to do it quietly.

I'm not going to go out in the town square. I'm not going to post on Facebook

what she's done. I'm not going to go out everywhere and say,

man, this lady was sleeping around on me. Now look, she's got pregnant with

somebody that's not mine. And now I'm divorced. I just want everyone to know it wasn't my fault.

No, Joseph being a righteous man is going to divorce her. But listen,

he's a righteous, honorable man.

The Bible doesn't say he was wrong in doing that. And when the information changed, he changed.

Jesus expands, even on this account, If you read Matthew 19,

we won't turn there for now for time's sake.

Matthew 19 is Matthew's recollection of this conversation, his recording of this conversation.

And he gets in a little more detail. Matthew 19, 9 says.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and

marries another commits adultery.

Now, this is where this conversation gets a little more difficult,

especially for 21st century people.

Because when we read except for sexual immorality, we immediately think,

well, that's adultery. We know that.

But that's not really what it says. Again, there is a Greek word for adultery.

It's a word that's used all over the New Testament. That's not what Jesus uses.

The word Jesus uses is porneia, where we get our word porn from,

which encompasses all sorts of sexual sins, all sorts of different perversions.

The reason I say that this is maybe a little harder or difficult conversation

for us is we have access to things that they did not.

We have avenues open to us as a culture that they did not.

You didn't have to go to the corner store anymore. You just wait for somebody to leave.

Now, is that a reason that you could divorce? I would argue, yeah, you could.

With the understanding being that the goal would always be the restoration.

It's always, man, stay together if you can.

But realizing we live in a sinful fallen world.

People like these Pharisees still exist. They do not care about marriage.

They don't want to honor it.

They got into marriage to make their life better. not to honor the Lord and what he gifted them.

These conversations, again, are hard. Let me again repeat, there is not a flow chart for this.

Every situation is different, right? Again, those who have been through this

know it's complicated and everybody's

life is a little different and every situation is a little different.

Paul expands on divorce in 1 Corinthians 7.15. He says, but if an unbelieving

partner separates, let it be so.

In other words, talking about divorce. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.

God has called you to peace.

This is often called the abandonment clause. In other words,

if somebody abandons the marriage,

specifically an unbeliever, because the assumption, listen, the assumption that

Paul is making is that if two believers are together, they'll figure it out.

And if one of them abandons the marriage,

something's wrong. There's an unbelieving partner here. Now,

again, that's a big conversation.

I could literally preach to you an hour on that. What does that mean?

If the unbelieving partner separates, I would argue that word separates,

again, in the Greek, it just means breaking the covenant.

They break off what God has put together. They're the one breaking it off.

And I think that encompasses some extenuating circumstances.

If you're looking for my, again, and this is a personal, this is not the word,

this is Brady's personal take on this passage, but in cases of physical abuse, right?

In cases of even psychological abuse, when the kids are in danger, right?

There is extenuating circumstances that I would argue, that's what Paul's saying.

When they separate from you, when they break the covenant,

you may legally be married in the eyes of the government and before the Lord,

but if you're living with someone,

that is habitually and unrepentantly breaking the marriage covenant over and

over again, I think that's exactly what Paul has in mind.

They may not want to get a divorce because of all the legal ramifications that

comes with it in the 21st century, right? They weren't dividing property in the first century.

There was no judge. They didn't go up there and say, you have to pay this person

30% of X, Y, and Z, and they're going to garnish your wages.

And no, no, no. There was a divorce. We got done. We moved on.

So a lot of people will stay in marriages for those kinds of reasons.

A lot of people are the aggressor. They are the abusive one.

They are the habitual adulterer. They are the one, again, that Jesus would talk

about that's constantly, and again, very important word, unrepentantly committing

sexual morality, but they stay in the marriage for tax reasons.

They don't want their wages to be garnished. They don't want to have to deal

with that, but they have functionally broken the marriage covenant.

Again, abuse, harm to your children, drug and alcohol problems. There's a lot of things.

That doesn't mean that every time somebody does one of those things,

we should raise our hand and go, you got to divorce them.

You just have to. No, that's not the church's goal. The church's goal,

our goal, my goal as a pastor is God's design.

But biblical wisdom reminds us we live in a sinful world.

We live, we talked about it in youth group this morning, in a present evil age.

There is evil things that happen every single day, both to you,

around you, and if you're honest, in you. That's where we live.

And these provisions that Jesus provides and that Paul provides are never meant

to be a get out of jail free card.

They're not meant to be, I'm looking for a reason to get divorced and I'm going

to find one. That's what the Pharisees were doing.

They are, it is heartbreaking and tragic that this has to take place.

But God has given the offended party a way out because of the sinful world they live in.

That's what divorce is in the New Testament.

Just say before we close too, Jesus goes on to give some directions to his disciples.

He says to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery against

him. What Jesus is saying here is, and what he's fighting in the culture is

most likely exactly what Herod did.

And maybe a more vivid example from your Bibles, exactly what David did.

David saw another woman. He lusted after her, had her husband sent to the front

line so he would be killed, so he could marry her.

And what Jesus would say to David is, you're an adulterer.

You're an adulterer. That's what you did. That's committing adultery.

Even if, even if David would have waited,

intimate with Bathsheba until they were married, God says, no, you're an adulterer.

Because the only reason that you did that, the only reason that you got out

of your other marriage to be married in this marriage was because you wanted

something that God hadn't given you.

You wanted a different wife. You wanted a different husband.

You wanted a different life.

You wanted to make more money. You wanted to be more at home.

You wanted to have a bigger house, whatever it is, whatever it is.

So a couple of things. Number one, and most importantly, I think,

we value marriage here. We honor it.

We talk about it a certain way. We talk about our spouses a certain way,

the same way that we talk about our kids a certain way.

They're not nuisances. We're glad they're here. And the same way that in our

marriages, they're not nuisances. They're not things that get in the way of

us living our best life. They are a reason that we have it.

We honor marriage at Trinity.

I think much of, and again, I didn't do any statistics in this thing because

again, I don't trust statistics.

You can always bend and do whatever you want, but I would just say,

generally speaking, you know, the statistics on divorce, you may not know as

well the statistics on singleness, right?

I mean, it's the most, it's the most single generation of people that has ever existed in America.

I should say that I didn't fact text every single generation ever.

But and I'll be honest with you, it's it's hard to begrudge some people for

that, because if you look at marriage the way most people are presented it.

No, thank you. No, thank you.

And let me be clear. That's not the fault of every single person that's got a divorce. It's not.

It's the fault of the person that caused the divorce for sure.

In every divorce, there is a victim. In every divorce, there is someone who

causes it and someone who receives it.

That's how Jesus thinks about divorce. That's why he says there's these certificates.

A wife is receiving a certificate. Again, that couldn't happen in the first

century now, but in today's world, a wife can send a certificate.

You may have to send one or receive one because of something that's been done

to you. Again, there's a lot of people that won't get a divorce because they

don't want to pay taxes. They don't want to do child support, whatever it is.

And they're just like, you just got to stay with me. And you have to initiate

that. Man, that's, again, a heartbreaking thing.

But God loves marriage. He created marriage. It's a gift. Let's think about

it that way. Let's talk about it that way.

Let's honor it the way it's supposed to be honored. That's number one.

Number two, divorce is never taken lightly. ever.

Just because we live in a culture that takes it lightly, just because we live

in a culture that thinks it's no big deal, doesn't mean we think it's no big deal.

And listen, if you know someone that's been on the receiving end of a divorce,

that it wasn't their fault, they didn't do anything to do it,

you know, that is one of the most painful things that can happen to a person,

and has some of the greatest residual effects in someone's life.

Some of the absolute hardest things I've ever done pastoral ministry-wise is

counseling people through a divorce, not the one who caused it.

That's an easy conversation, honestly.

Hey, you're in sin. You need to cut that out, repent of that,

and beg for forgiveness. That's an easy conversation.

What's hard is the one who is receiving the divorce, who's experiencing it not

because they want to, but because that's the decision that their partner has

made. Incredibly painful.

There is a million things I would rather do and counsel through than that because

there's no easy answer There's no easy out So we never take divorce lightly,

Don't fall for that lie. That's number two. Number three.

Divorce is not the end. Divorce is not the end. This is not the unparterable sin.

This is not something that if somebody does this, they're unforgivable,

that they can't come back from it.

Jesus, I would say God, then Jesus in the flesh, then Paul, the apostle,

they make these provisions as a way to say, hey, it is tragic.

It is heartbreaking, but it is not life-ending.

And maybe you say this, it's not life-defining.

It's not. If you're a Christian that's been in a divorce, you're not a divorced

Christian. You're just a Christian. You're a Christian.

You don't define yourself by what's happened to you in your life.

Don't walk around saying, well, I'm a formerly addicted Christian, right?

I'm a recovering anger Christian. No, you're just a Christian.

Your salvation has been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And divorce is not some special sin that falls outside of that grace that needs

a little more contrition, a little more repentance, a little more paying your

dues to get back in the gut and God gets graces. That's not how this works.

Divorce is not the end.

I love how Paul finishes that verse in 1 Corinthians 7.

If the unbelieving partner separates, and again, that word separates,

Spend a lot of time talking about what that means And just to be clear There's

probably people in the room that would disagree with some of my takes on that.

I get that I get that show each other grace You can be wrong. It's fine. Okay.

Unbelieving partner separates. What does Paul say? Let it be so.

That's Paul's way of saying, hey, take a breath.

Take a breath. Your life's not over, right? Your life's not over.

He says, in such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.

Why? God has called you to peace.

God's called you to peace. Don't

live your life in the shadow of something that someone has done to you.

I don't think I have to say that in this room, but I have said to people before,

hey, listen, begrudgingly, and as my last resort, you need to get out of that marriage.

You need to get out of there. Whether it's abusive, whether it's,

again, habitual, sexual not, whatever it is, I have had to say to people, hey, you got to get out.

Immediately followed by, and it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.

God has called you to peace. Don't let this define your life.

Don't take on this identity.

Again, just like you wouldn't take on any other identity. God has called you

to peace. So again, three things. God created, consecrated, loves and values

marriage. We should do the same. And we will at Trinity. We will.

Number two, divorce is never taken lightly. Don't let the culture trick you

into thinking it's no big deal. It is.

It is ruining generations of kids, by the way. Ruining.

Causing them more pain and hardship than it ever should have because of what.

One selfish person decides to do in a marriage. It is not ruining permanently,

but man, it's, it is tough. It is hard.

Let me just, again, feel like this is more of a pastoral sermon than it is a

theological one. But if you're in that world or you know someone that is,

listen, the church should be the best place for those people.

It should be the best place for those people.

They should find the most love and the most understanding of what they're going

through. Not because you've experienced it, because you know how serious God

takes it and you know how hard it is.

When god brings something together it is ripped of heart That is hard.

There's wounds All right. Sorry again pestle here God created it consecrated

loves it and values it. We should too divorce is never to be taken lightly last

thing Divorce is not the end.

It's not the end. All be all doesn't

define you doesn't define your life doesn't define the church Right.

God wants you to live in peace Now again, I don't think i'm talking to anyone

in this room, but I could be if you were the cause of a divorce,

if you were the cause of one,

let me just encourage you again, pastorally, that if you have not,

you need to seek the forgiveness of that person.

You need to repent to that person. God will forgive you when you repent. We know that.

But you need to go to that person and say, hey, listen, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have acted that

way. Shouldn't have put you through that.

Now, listen, if they don't forgive you, that's okay. You've done your part.

You don't have to carry that weight either.

Maybe it's not you. Maybe you know someone. Let me just, again,

encourage them. Seek out forgiveness for that.

Divorce is not the end. So I just need to keep going, but I won't.

We'll shut it off about right there.

Say in closing, again, the best way, the best way to guard against these kinds

of things is not just to read marriage books.

It's certainly not to just act like everything's okay.

It's certainly not to point the finger at the world and say,

yeah, they get this wrong and we get this right. If they were more like us, they'd figure it out.

Lest you become a Pharisee. The best way to fight against these things is the

best way to fight against every sin,

is to remind yourself the goodness and kindness that God has shown you.

God calls us as Christians, what does he call you? The bride of Christ.

The bride of Christ. Why is that such good news? Because he will never divorce

you, even though you give him ample reason to do it. Why?

Just like we all do. We all chase after false gods. We chase after idols. We sin every day.

And never once does our figuratively speaking husband look at his bride and

go, you know, that's just enough.

Take your certificate and go.

Think about that. Ruminate on those things.

Consider how good, gracious, and kind the Lord has been to you as his bride and go and do likewise.

And go and talk about marriage likewise.

That may be the best thing you can do. Why do you value marriage so much?

Because I'm the bride of Christ and let me tell you how well he treats me,

how well he loves me, how patient and kind and gracious he has been to me.

Nothing will give you a higher view of marriage than that. Nothing.

No book, no seminar, no retreat.

Nothing will give you a higher view of marriage than just stopping and thinking

about the marriage that you are in.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for your word.

Thank you for who you are. God, thank you for hard conversations like this one.

God, that they would remind us how good and gracious and kind you have been to us.

God, divorce is such a hard thing. It's a hard thing.

I think one of the things that I lament the most about the culture that we live

in every single day is that it's talked about so casually.

It's talked about as if it's just another part of life that everyone will eventually

have to deal with in one way, shape, or form.

God, I pray that that's not the way that we think about it here at Trinity,

that we, because of you and what you've said about, we honor it, we love it,

we think about it in a certain way, we talk about it in a certain way,

even if we're not married,

that we value marriage. Yeah.

As we think about divorce and we think about the provisions that you've provided

for it, will we be patient and kind with others that have experienced or are experiencing it?

Realizing that there is thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people here

in East Texas who have experienced a divorce that they never wanted to be a part of.

They had a spouse that chose themselves over not just their marriage and not

just their kids, but they chose themselves over you rather than submitting to

you and your design for their lives.

God, they have pressed outside of those bounds to try and get what they think

they want and what they think they need.

And the damage that that has left in the wake for other people to clean up.

God, I pray that us as a church, that Trinity Bible Church would be the ones

that would step in there.

We would love people well. We would be an open armed place for people who have

experienced that. We would not treat them like a different class of people.

And God, that we would be able to point them more than anything towards you,

to remind them that as Christians, they're not defined by that.

They don't have to ruminate on that. It doesn't have to define their life and what happened to them.

Now, there's living examples in this room right now that can say that,

that have gone in peace away from a marriage that was broken by someone else.

Now, lastly, again, what would you just remind us of the marriage that we're in with you?

That you are a husband who has bought his bride out of slavery,

and that even though we wander and we lust after other things and we chase after,

other husbands in a way that you love us well.

And that you don't give us a certificate of divorce when we break your favorite

dish or even when we go off and are sexually immoral with some other thing.

God, you are faithful to us through your son, Jesus Christ.

We'll be thinking about that this week.

And so think about marriage the way you've called us to. In your name, I pray. Amen.