Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
March 17, 1985
The Integrity of Marriage
Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:3-9, King James Version
Of all the decisions a person makes in life, getting married is one of the most important. No matter how it ends up, your marriage changes you forever. After 50 years together you even start to look alike. A happy marriage is one of the greatest blessings you can have. Your spouse builds on your strengths and covers up your weaknesses.
An unhappy marriage is something else. Very few things can fill you with bitterness or hopelessness like a failed marriage. One of the great Russian novels begins with the line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." [1]
Dr. Thomas Holmes at the University of Washington conducted a study to find what situations cause the most stress and disruption in the average person's life. At the top of the scale was having your spouse die. The second and third most stressful situations were divorce and separation. These produced more stress than having a parent or a child die, getting fired from work or having cancer.
Nobody wants to get divorced. Newlyweds always have high hopes the expectation that their marriage will be fulfilling. But despite these high hopes, one and a half million marriages end in divorce every year. It is a very difficult topic to preach about because it touches many people's emotions at a deep level. Nevertheless, every sincere Christian must wrestle with the view of Jesus on the matter.
Matthew 5:31-32 gives only a few points about his attitude. First, he quotes from Deuteronomy 24:1 which says that the procedure in a divorce is that the husband gave his wife a written notice. Second, Jesus says that anyone who does this will end up causing both people to commit adultery. The only exception is divorce that is caused by fornication.
Matthew gives a longer version of Jesus' teaching in chapter 19, which helps us interpret chapter 5. In chapter 19 Jesus is contrasting his teaching with that of the Pharisees. They differ in three important areas.
First, the Pharisees were preoccupied with the grounds for divorce, but Jesus was more interested in God's intention for marriage. In verse 3 the Pharisees ask Jesus - "Is it lawful for a man to put away (or divorce) his wife for every cause?" Some Jews at that time said you could divorce your wife if she burned your toast or lost her sex appeal. Others said only adultery was proper grounds. Where did Jesus stand? Was he liberal or strict?
His reply doesn't even answer their question. Instead he refers them back to Genesis. In verse 4 Jesus alludes to the creation of man and woman in Genesis 1, and in verse 5 he alludes to the establishment of marriage in Genesis 2. God's intention, therefore, is that marriage should be a close relationship and a permanent one. What God has put together, people should not take apart.
The second difference is that the Pharisees called Moses' provision for divorce a command in verse 7, but Jesus calls it a concession to the hardness of human hearts. Moses never commanded people to get divorced in Deuteronomy chapter 24. He doesn't even encourage it. All Moses says is that if people become divorced and remarry other partners, they can never go back to their original partners. Moses does describe the process of divorce which involved the written notice, but he does not by any means make a command about it.
Jesus provides God's real intent -- God does not want us to be divorced. But since people are sinful, God's intention is sometimes unable to be carried out. In verse 8 Jesus says, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives." This doesn't mean that Moses was wrong to allow it. In means God made a concession to human weakness. Divorce is never God's perfect will, but sometimes it can be allowed.
The third difference is that the Pharisees took divorced lightly. Jesus took it so seriously that, but only one exception, he called all remarriage after divorce adultery. This was the conclusion of this debate with Pharisees, and this is what is recorded in the Sermon on the Mount.
I have emphasized the differences between Jesus and Pharisees in Matthew 19 because I believe many Christians actually operate like the Pharisees on this issue. Even though we study all the New Testament passages and the words of Jesus, we still tend to focus on the grounds for divorce instead of God's ideal plan for marriage. Christians dig through the Scripture to find a loophole that justifies their divorce or condemn someone else's. The loopholes are legitimate -- adultery is one, and the Apostle Paul adds desertion by a non-Christian spouse. Nevertheless, the loopholes should never become the focus of all our attention. If you allow this to happen you become no better than a legalistic Pharisee.
It's much more profitable to focus on God's perfect will for marriage. Ever since creation God has wanted people to be fulfilled together through marriage. Every marriage should set an example for love and unselfishness. Forgiveness and reconciliation should be used to smooth over the rough spots. Even if there is a severe break in a relationship, such as adultery, divorce doesn't have to follow. The nation of Israel is often described as an adulterous wife in the Old Testament but God never gave up on her.
Jesus says that it is never God's perfect will to have a divorce. Concessions are allowed, such as divorce because of adultery, but these concessions are not God's perfect will. Jesus gives an absolute demand -- "Whatever God has join together, let man not separate."
This is not only absolute, it is downright harsh. The reason is that Jesus' prohibition of divorce is very similar to his prohibition of anger and lust. They are not meant to be a "new law" by which you have to live in order to be saved and right with God. Christians often treat the Sermon on the Mount like this but somewhere along the line you will fall short.
The reason is that all of us have hard hearts. God's perfect will is for us to fill our marriages with joy and peace but our old nature continually fights against it. Because of the reality of sin, God allowed divorce in the Old Testament and Jesus allows it in the New. These concessions are meant to protect people for whom the marriage relationship has been destroyed by sin.
Christians never completely overcome sin in this wife, so anger, lust and even divorce are always possibilities. The world would like to think they are not just possible, but inevitable. That is why some people change their wedding vows from "death do was part" to "as long as our love holds out."
I would argue that broken relationships are not inevitable. To counter our hard hearts, and Jesus offers a new heart. This new heart is a possession of everyone who accepts Jesus as their savior and becomes born again. Jesus gives us this new heart, but we have to nurture it and let it control us.
If you have been divorced, God can forgive you. If you are in a failing marriage, God can heal it through you. If you are happily married -- so far - you should ask God for the grace to get through each day with your spouse so that His love can be evident in your relationship.
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1. From "Anna Karenina," by Leo Tolstoy.
Sermon transcribed by "Dragon NaturallySpeaking" software. Please report any inaccuracies to Rev. Holwick.
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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