2022-04-10-matthew-5-31-32.mp3

Hear now, the word of the Lord from Matthew 5:31-32.

31 “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 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."
Matthew 5:31-32, ESV

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The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Well, in the days leading up to my own wedding, I had an absolute blast. I was thrilled to get to marry Allison. It was fun to plan the ceremony and the reception, and let's be honest, Allison did most of the hard work on those fronts. I got to have a lot of family and friends in town for the ceremony, people I hadn't seen for a long time in some cases.

The night before, I slept extremely well. We got up. Then we went to take pictures, which was a lot of fun on that day, and I was just again having an absolute blast until about 10 minutes before the ceremony started. It was my job to go and usher in parents and grandparents into their place where they were going to sit in the church. As I was making my way to go do this, I remember talking to some people, many of whom I had known for most of my life.

As I was talking to them in the course of it, suddenly it hit me what I was about to do, and I had a small panic attack in the moment. I remember being totally flustered as I was trying to usher in a family to where they were supposed to go. Now, it wasn't that I had cold feet or second thoughts about Allison. Outside of the salvation that God has given me through Jesus Christ, Allison is by far the greatest blessing of my life. She wasn't the problem.

The problem was that what was weighing on me was the significance and the seriousness of what I was about to do. I was about to take vows before God and my family and my friends. Vows that will endure until death parts us. I realized that I was about to enter into something of the utmost moral significance.

You know, up to that point, marriage seems a little bit like a dream, a little bit imaginary in some senses. Now that reality was creeping all the more closely and I was terrified. I remember there were different Bible passages going around in my head, and I don't know if this happened to be one of them or not, I was again flustered. I caught a glimpse of what Jesus is talking about in our passage today, namely the great seriousness and significance of marriage.

Now, remember where we are in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus been teaching us about the moral law of God. He started with the moral law of God as concerns the Sixth Commandment, you shall not murder. He said, the weight of that is so significant that it stretches so far, that even to be angry at your brother is already to violate the Sixth Commandment.

Then he moved on to the Seventh Commandment. He said the Seventh Commandment is so significant and so weighty that the full implications of that stretch so far, that if you look at another person with lust who is not your spouse, you have already violated the Seventh Commandment. Well, if that was what the Seventh Commandment forbids, you shall not lust after another person, even in your heart.

Jesus now shows the other side of this, the positive extension of this that shows us the positive sense and the positive view toward which we need to consider marriage. In the middle of Jesus's teaching on the law of God. It's remarkable, here we find the surprising centrality of marriage right in the middle of the moral law of God.

So our big idea today is we study this brief passage is that Jesus came to sanctify marriages..

So three parts in these two verses.
1. The Abuse of Divorce
2. The Adultery of Divorce
2. The Adultery of Remarriage

As I begin this, I feel like I must say that this is a very heavy passage that deals with some very heavy things. This may raise a lot of questions. A little bit like last week, this may raise a lot of questions. If your heart if you have more questions, please come talk to me afterwards. I would love to talk more about what Jesus proclaims here. Today, we're just going to try to stay as faithful to what Jesus puts forward in this text.

The Abuse of Divorce

So the first section deals with the abuse of divorce. The abuse of divorce. Now look at what Jesus says in verse 31, he says, "It was also said whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce." Now, in the two previous sections where Jesus taught on the moral law, Jesus very clearly and verbatim and explicitly quoted two of the Ten Commandments. First, the Sixth Commandment, back in verse 21, "You shall not murder." Then the Seventh Commandment back in verse 27, "You shall not commit adultery." Again, he quoted those verbatim.

Here Jesus is doing something different. In the two previous sections he'd been saying the problem wasn't with the commandments, the problem was with what you have been taught about these commandments. Now Jesus quotes not a commandment, not one of the Ten Commandments, but some of the teaching of Moses, where he's quoting from Deuteronomy 24:1. What's interesting is that the way Jesus quotes this, in the way that he quotes it is really more of a paraphrase. It's not verbatim. If you listen to the paraphrase, it sounds like what Moses was teaching is that divorce is a fairly easy thing to do. Really, the only requirement there was to give a wife a certificate of divorce.

What Jesus is doing is he is actually misquoting the text of Scripture just a little bit, and he's doing it on purpose. He's not trying to mislead us. In fact, he is pointing to the way that this passage has been twisted. I want to read to you what the original passage teaches in context. In Deuteronomy 24:1-4, it's actually a much longer context. So I read it, you'll see that this is an elaborately stretched out situation. Where Moses is going to say, imagine a situation where this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens. When you get to the end of it, what Moses says is not that divorce is a light and small and insignificant thing. He rather shows that remarriage after a divorce is actually a far weightier thing than we typically contemplate.

So let me read to you Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Here's what Moses says,

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, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, 3 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, 4 then her 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.Deuteronomy 24:1-4

What Moses is not getting at is he is not saying divorce is this small thing. Just write the right certificate, put it in her hands and it's all taken care of. Wash your hands of it and move on with your life. What he's actually saying is that this is so serious, so significant that one man cannot divorce his wife so that she's taken by another man and then that first man takes her back. It's that serious. This isn't typically categories that we have in our minds when we're thinking about divorce and remarriage. What Moses is doing is he's forbidding certain kinds of remarriage.

Now, what Jesus is addressing here, the whole reason that Jesus is quoting a distortion of this passage is probably because this distortion was typically what had been quoted. You know, if you went to the priest or the Levite and asked them, what should I do to get a divorce? Well, they would say, "Well, whoever divorces the wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce." That's all you have to do. Move along with it.

One commentator, John Noland, puts it this way. He says, "According to the Pharisees, divorce was purely a matter of paperwork. Where the only thing mattered was to make sure that you did it by the book. Get your i's dotted and your t's crossed and you're good to go." What Jesus has been criticizing through this whole section, starting in verse 17, is the legalism, the legalism of that society. Where the nature of legalism and we're seeing a very clear example of that, the nature of legalism is that it always seeks loopholes. What does legalism do? It's always looking for loopholes.

The idea of legalism in regards marriage is to recognize that if there are circumstances where a man may divorce his wife in some cases, well, then a legalistic mindset tries to expand that into a loophole that can perhaps encompass more situations, maybe any situation. If there are some cases where divorce is possible, then the legalist wants to find ways to stretch that to make divorce permissible in any and every circumstance.

This is what Jesus is condemning in his society. I think it's also our tendency, we have a legalist in all of our hearts as we read this passage, because we read Jesus talking about the permanency of marriage. If you're like me, one of the first questions that comes to your mind is, well, what does this say about who may get divorced? When can someone get divorced? We're asking these questions about exceptions, but we have to understand, that Jesus's purpose here is not to show us all the loopholes, all the exceptions, all the places where divorce is permissible. It's rather in the context of the Sermon on the Mount to show us, as we've been talking about, the high as heaven, infinitely high standards of the law. Where, according to Jesus at the very end of this chapter, 5:48, "You therefore must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

What Jesus is calling our attention to is not the possible ways that you may seek a divorce, but he's reminding us that God has established marriage at creation as a foundational human institution. Marriage is not a human invention. Marriage is not a causal relationship in any sense of that word. Marriage is not subject to redefinition by human legislatures or courts. Marriage is something that has profound moral and ethical implications. God's glory is bound up in marriage and this is why Jesus came to sanctify marriages.

Jesus said back in verse 17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets, I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them." When we talked about what that fulfillment meant, in part it means Jesus came to stretch out our understanding of the law. Rather than being this very narrow thing that really mainly condemned other people's sins, this big thing that Jesus wants us to see, a high as heaven thing, where the law condemns a tremendous amount of the sin in my heart and your heart. Jesus is now dealing with the concept of marriage and saying, understand, I didn't come to abolish marriage, but to fulfill all that God requires in marriage.

Have you ever seen a spy movie or read a spy novel or something like that? It's interesting, spies go to some of the most elaborate, exotic, beautiful places on Earth. They're doing some of the most interesting things, but it's really interesting when these spies get into these certain situations, they're never enjoying where they are. They're never appreciating, you know, where these elaborate places where they are operating on. Rather, they are following their training and they are purely looking for the exits. The spy doesn't see all the splendor and all the riches and all the extravagance of where he is. The spy is only recognizing all the exits, trying to figure out how to get out of the situation if things go south, recognizing which exits have guards and which might be harder to get out than others.

Jesus is saying that's the nature of legalism. It's that you're in a context, in a marriage, that is so beautiful and glorious that if you caught just a glimpse of the weight of it, it would move you to tears for its glory. But the heart of the legalist isn't appreciating anything of it, he's just looking for the exits. How are all the possible ways I can get out of this situation? Jesus is saying we don't understand the full significance of marriage. Jesus is condemning a culture in his day of easy divorce and easy remarriage and if that was true in his day, how much more true is it now today?

Divorce Causes Adultery

So what then are the implications of this? Jesus has so far simply quoted or rather captured a misinterpretation of the law by a misquotation of the law that was popular in that day. What then, are the implications of divorce and remarriage? Well, the first implication this is the second point of the sermon is that divorce causes adultery, the adultery of divorce in the first section of verse 32. Jesus goes on and says, "But I say to you", you've heard this, and it was a twisting of what the Scriptures teach, but I say to you what is true. "I say to you", Jesus says, "That everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery."

Now, again, this is one of those antitheses. Jesus is saying, you've heard one thing, but I tell you something different. What Jesus is teaching us different from what we have heard, demands that marriage be honored. Now he does acknowledge one situation, one circumstance where it's a permissible cause for divorce, the ground of sexual immorality. We'll come back to that in a little bit.

What we need to see is that Jesus isn't listing out all of the possible exceptions. The main focus here is on talking about the permanency of marriage. And so what Jesus is saying to make this point is to say that every other cause, every other cause for a man to divorce his wife makes her to suffer adultery. That's how one theologian, John Murray, translates that and I think that captures the sense of what Jesus saying her, that it makes her to suffer adultery. This is a very hard word to translate. It's the word to commit adultery, but it's in a passive sense. It's not something that someone actively does, it is something that the person has passively acted upon herself in this case. So it isn't that the woman is committing adultery, it's that what her husband does causes her to suffer adultery.

I was thinking about how to translate this. Would you say this woman has been adulterated? Someone suggested this person has potentially been exposed to adultery or one commentator suggested this means that she has been stigmatized as adulterous. Now, that's probably too mild. It's more than a stigma. Jesus is saying this actually happens to her. What we need to see is that Jesus is not condemning the woman. He is condemning the man for what he does to the woman by initiating this unjust divorce.

To capture a sense of this. Here's what John Calvin writes. He says, "The man who unjustly and unlawfully abandons the wife whom God had given him is justly condemned for having prostituted his wife to others.
It's just so hard. This is so heavy. This is not the light, casual way we think about marriage and divorce. We have to be really clear in Jesus day and Jesus is society, only the man could initiate a divorce with his wife. Our society works both ways, the man can initiate a divorce with his wife, the wife can initiate a divorce with her husband. In fact, depending on the source, the general number that's largely agreed upon, it might be a little higher, a little lower, depending on the source you look at. Roughly 70% of divorces in our society are initiated by women.

Now some of those, I don't know how many of those, some of those are initiated on the ground of sexual immorality. We have to understand that primarily women are the ones in our society initiating divorce. We need to think about that and recognize that within the context of what Jesus is saying here. Again, Jesus isn't trying to identify all the possible outs, all the possible exits. Jesus came to sanctify marriages, to fulfill all and fill out all of the law teaches us about the surprising centrality of marriage in the moral law of God.

Now we do have to come to this phrase except for sexual immorality. Now, Jesus talked about adultery in the last section, "You have heard it said you shall not commit adultery." It's not the same word. The word for sexual immorality is sort of the big umbrella category. Within that, one kind of sexual immorality would be the category of adultery, cheating on a spouse. Jesus talks here about sexual immorality, meaning that this can actually apply to a lot of different kinds of sexual immorality. Now, why is there an exception that Jesus acknowledges here?

Well, the idea here, if you look at what Jesus says here as well as the rest of the Scriptures, is that when you're talking about sexual morality, the one who initiates divorce because of the sexual morality of the spouse, the one who initiates divorce is not the one who is breaking the marriage. The one who has broken the marriage already is the one who has committed sexual immorality, sinning against the spouse. That's what breaks the marriage. Now, that doesn't require them to divorce. There are many cases where people have worked through this, where there has been real and genuine repentance, and that has led people to reclaim and recover marriages even after sexual immorality.

It doesn't require people to divorce. But what Jesus is recognizing is that the one who has committed adultery or the one who has committed sexual immorality has already broken the marriage so the one initiating divorce is innocent from the charge of having broken the lifelong vows of marriage.

Now there are other examples. There are other cases. For example, really the only other one would deal with a sense of abandonment. In 1 Corinthians 7:15 Paul describes the kind of willful desertion of an unbelieving spouse, as can no way be remedied by the church or the civil magistrate. That Paul says is also sufficient cause for divorce. He says, "Let the other person go." Even an abandonment effort must be made, Jesus's point, again, is not to identify all the possible exits. Well, you got this option and that option, and maybe you can drum something up over here, or maybe you can develop this idea. Jesus is sanctifying the institution of marriage as a whole, and that means that he is sanctifying individual marriages in particular. Except for sexual immorality, Jesus says that divorce makes the innocent party suffer adultery.

Now, if you look online to try to figure out why do people in initiate divorce outside of sexual morality? It's very interesting. You can usually see there's a cause for it, particularly there's a cause where someone is trying to gain something better. There's sort of a grass is greener situation. A man may want to pursue a different woman from his wife, and so he seeks a divorce on that case. A woman may feel held back in some aspect of her life, perhaps her career or something like that, held back by her marriage. Either of them may initiate divorce, arguing that they just aren't happy anymore. They identify some good, they say that my marriage is holding me back from this good. The only possible way to get that good would be to divorce my spouse and move on with my life.

While these may recognize something that we think to be good, it doesn't factor in the cost of getting from point A to point B. This isn't just a simple exchange. We're not just bartering products in the marketplace. We're talking about marriage, the indissoluble institution of marriage for life.

So what Jesus is saying here is that trying to get at this good and be willing to go through a divorce in order to accomplish that good is something like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Don't deform yourself just because you have a problem with your face as you use that expression. Jesus is saying, when you tear apart, rip apart the one flesh relationship of marriage, that's exactly what you were doing. You are entangling both you and your spouse, not only in psychological trauma, emotional trauma, not only in financial trauma, not only in even physical trauma. From this, you are burying both you and your divorced spouse in deep moral trauma.

You know, I think marriage is something that's so hard to understand the value of until it's broken. You know, marriage is all around us. We're always interacting with married people. Jesus is saying, you don't realize that you're walking on sacred ground. You don't realize when you're interacting with a married couple or when you're acting with one side of a married couple that you are walking on sacred ground. It's like you are in the temple, like you're in the holy of holies, like you were in the presence of God. What you do there has deep and great significance. But it's hard to understand that value until it's gone.

It's like a human life. We're always around other living human beings. It is hard to appreciate the value of a human life until that human being loses his or her life. Then suddenly, once what was good is broken. And suddenly you realize the value of what was lost. Jesus is saying the difficulty begins with this divorce, but it doesn't even end there. Divorce leads to ongoing problems as we get to in the third section. The second argument against divorce and remarriage, and that is the adultery of remarriage.

The Adultery of Remarriage

Now, this isn't the case for those who commit sexual immorality or divorce on the grounds of sexual morality. The idea there is they are innocent. They have been released from this where the other person was the one to break the marriage. They are therefore free to remarry again.

Jesus is closing the loop of the logic on the status of the woman who has been sent away by her husband or in our society, the man who has been sent away by his wife. In this case, the divorced person not only suffers adultery, but anyone else who marries that person commits adultery with that person. Why? Because the marriage is not so lightly, so easily dissolved. The reason that marriage shouldn't be lightly entered into is because marriage may not be lightly exited out of. Even if you get a divorce, that is all legal and proper, dot all your i's dotted, all your t's crossed, all the right paperwork submitted in the eyes of the law that doesn't completely dissolve the marriage in the sight of God. There are ongoing ramifications for the sanctity of marriage.

You know, I remember the day that I moved off to college. I was so excited about it. Kind of like, although to a lesser degree like getting excited for my wedding day. I was excited about it. It was the next chapter of my life. I was very busy leading up to it. I had to fill out lots of applications, make arrangements, register for classes, all of this and I remember and packing in all the middle of this. I remember when I came down from my bedroom and was about to head out, let's head out.

I remember seeing all of my stuff packed in the living room of my house right by the front door and seeing all of my stuff outside of my own room again, it hit me. It hit me what was about to change. It hit me that my parents’ house would no longer be my house. I was moving out and my relationship was going to change and I didn't know how important that was to me. I didn't know how much I valued it until I saw it being broken. It wasn't just a me that was a wreck. It was very hard on my parents, my mom in particular. She was a mess that day. Understand that was a healthy change, children at some point have to move out of the nest. We raise children for the purpose of preparing them for that move. That's a healthy thing that God has ordained, divorce isn't.

Divorce is the relationship that God has established. Marriage is the relationship that God has established to be permanent and indissoluble and you can't simply tear it apart. It's not so simple.

Application

So what then do we do? Well to apply what Jesus is teaching here, let me quote from Hebrews 13:4, "Let marriage be held in honor among all." Jesus is teaching that marriage is absolutely sacred. Marriage is foundational, it is fundamental. It is one of the institutions that God established in creation. This isn't something that God established after the fall into sin, in order to fix something that went wrong, God established marriage from the very beginning at creation. Humans did not create marriage. Humans may not redefine marriage.

I understand that in our society, marriage has been redefined, redefined to legalise homosexual marriage, and that does defile the sanctity of marriage. It cheapens it, it devalues it, it damages it. Christians should pray that in our country and around the world, people would repent from this evil. It is profoundly damaging in this world that marriage has been redefined in the eyes of the world. But Jesus gets in a lot of other ways in which marriage is degraded and cheapened too, especially through the introduction of no fault divorce.

That means you don't need the ground of sexual immorality. No fault means I'm just growing apart from the other person and want divorce. Jesus solemnly, solemnly warns us not to ignore the dangers of the sin of adulterous divorce. We don't see the damage. We don't see the harm. Jesus calls our attention back to God's original purposes in creation, the surprising centrality of marriage within God's moral law.

We must be far more diligent to protect our marriages. You know that fresh, eager, young couple. I've been part of that couple. I've married others of those couples standing in front of me right from this stage. Some of you have been at those wedding ceremonies. Those fresh, eager young couples. They really scarcely understand what their vows mean. I mean, they know what they mean, but you don't know what you mean until you walk through it. It takes the rest of a married couples life to explore all of the various applications. What did I sign up for all those many years ago when I said I do? The married couple on the front end of their marriage can't really understand it. You only understand it as you go through every up and down, in sickness and health and riches and poverty and on and on and on. That's why we need the Word of God to reopen our eyes to the full weight and the full significance of marriage. This marriage is so important. Jesus came to sanctify marriages.

Again, as we've seen through this, every time Jesus is teaching on the law here in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, we tend to look at his words and we lose sight of him. We may ask, why is marriage so surprisingly central in God's moral law? It's because marriage was originally ordained in order to give us a picture of Christ's relationship to his church. Any defiling of marriage that happens defiles the picture that God has set up all over this world to tell us what Christ relationship to his church is.

To break a marriage is to tell a serious lie about Jesus, about his faithfulness, about his love for his bride, the church. This is what Paul explains in Ephesians 5:25-33. He says,

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.Ephesians 5:25-33, ESV

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Up to this part we've been talking about normal human marriages, but then Paul says this mystery is profound. A mystery is something that you saw in the past, but the true significance of it was veiled and concealed. Until you have an apocalypse, until you have the uncovering of what was veiled and concealed in the past, and you have revelation which reveals us the true nature of this. The covering over, the veiled the nature of what marriage was all the way from the beginning, Paul says, is this, "This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."

However, that doesn't mean we're off the hook in our own marriages. Not to look for the exits, however, "Let each one of you love his wife as himself. And let the wife see that she respects her husband." This is why Jesus came to sanctify marriages. This is why God's glory is bound up in marriage. God created marriage not only for husbands and for wives and for children and for wider society. God created marriage to teach us about Christ and His love for the church. Again, to break apart a marriage is to tell a profoundly wicked lie about Jesus's faithfulness to his church. It's to show the humble, joyful love of God for us to come down into this world and to give up his life for us.

Then on the other side, we, as the church are called to show our humble, joyful, submissive respect to Christ. This marital union is not just something that happened in various human relationships. This was given to teach us about who Jesus is.

I understand that in our day and age. Some people have already crossed these boundaries. Some people have already broken apart marriages. You may be here today dealing with that issue. And the question you have to be left with is, well, what then? We saw in versus 21 through 26 that if you're angry with your brother, you're already guilty of the death penalty. If you're lusting after a woman committing adultery in your heart with her, you have already broken the marriage vows. What then, should we do for those who have completely divorced and cut off, sent away a spouse unlawfully and biblically?

Well, part of Christ's glory, as the great bridegroom of the church, is to heal broken marriages and to extend abundant forgiveness for those who have sinned. Again, as a pastor, when I preach my job is to lay out Jesus's words. I recognize that sometimes those words are going to be hard and heavy and they are going to hit certain people in a very painful, difficult way. Understand what Jesus is teaching here is only a part of his ministry and his preaching and teaching. What Jesus is doing is showing us the infinitely high standard of the law. So that all of us can see just how far short we fall.

However short we have fallen because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that's what we're told in Romans 3:23. Jesus then calls us back to himself to find forgiveness and grace and mercy. The pieces can be put back together. You can have forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He can heal your wounds.

So if you have questions for this, I'd ask you to come to me. And probably this isn't just going to be a conversation with me. It'll be involving the elders as we together try to give counsel and shepherd you through difficult situations. Please hear the word of God. Marriage plays a far more a surprisingly central role to the moral system of God's law. Do not lightly enter into it. Do not lightly exit it. Jesus came to sanctify marriages.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand. I pray that if there are some who are offended by this message or hurt by this message from your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that their response would not be to run, to flee, but rather to repent. Instead of fleeing from Christ and his teaching to flee to Christ the rock of ages, the great bridegroom of the church, his bride, the great shepherd of the sheep, the one who heals up all of our wounds, the one who sprinkles us clean by his own blood. I pray, Father, that you would lift us all. Let our eyes to see Jesus by faith as our great high priest is seated at the right hand of you, our Father in Heaven, as he intercedes for us. I pray, hear his prayers, forgive us our sins and put back that which has broken. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.