What Jesus Said about Marriage

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This morning we’re going to be in Matthew chapter 19 and Mark chapter 10. Matthew chapter 19 and Mark chapter 10. And we’re going to look at the last of these four issues where, as I’ve said, the church is supposed to think differently, live differently than the world around us.

And what we’ve talked about through this series, these aren’t the only places where we’re supposed to be different. We are just supposed to be different because Christ makes us different. It’s not that we’re any better than anybody else.

It’s that Jesus Christ has made a change in us. And that begins with a way of thinking, with a change in our way of thinking. Because repentance is essential to the gospel, and that word repentance means a change of mind.

That already we have changed our minds toward God, that we’ve realized that we’ve been living in rebellion, and our rebellion against Him is wrong, and it incurs a just penalty from a holy God. we’ve come to that realization and that alone realizing that the judgment of God is real and it’s just and that we’re staring down the barrel of it because of the choices that we’ve made. That realization alone changes your way of thinking.

And so by the time we’ve repented there’s already a change of mind and then we’re supposed to not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So the work of the Holy Spirit within us causes us to think differently from others around us, and when we think differently, we behave differently. What we really believe shows up in how we live our lives.

So the things that we’ve talked about throughout this series, these are not the only places where we’re supposed to think and live differently from the world around us, but it’s a pretty good sampling, I think, of what some of the hot-button issues are in our culture, where even some churches and some so-called clergy, so-called pastors, so-called shepherds of God’s people are giving in and changing their teachings about what God has always said to be true to suit the culture. When really, if our way of living is out of sync with God’s word, it’s not God’s word that needs to change. It’s our way of living.

And so we come to the last of these four that I’ve picked out for this series today, which is marriage. marriage. And we’re going to look at these two passages today.

We’re going to look at both of them in their entirety, but we’ll probably spend more time camped out in Matthew just because it gives more information. But it’s important for us to look at these two passages because Jesus does address the subject of marriage. And so much of the debate when it rages in our culture and within the churches as to things regarding marriage and family and sexuality and all these things, whether they’re sins, whether they’re okay, whether they’re right and wrong.

We hear on various topics, well, Jesus never addressed that. Yeah, he did. You know, oh, you get that from Deuteronomy.

And I agree, because Jesus fulfilled the law, we should not base, here, I want to make sure I say this carefully, because I do still believe that God’s moral principles taught in the Testament law are still correct for us today. They’re just not a way of salvation by following the moral law. But because Jesus has fulfilled the law, we don’t look primarily, if I can say it that way, we don’t look primarily at the Old Testament for something.

We look at the New Testament. I think that don’t go cutting the Old Testament out of your Bible. Don’t think, oh, the preacher said, We need 39 less books in the Bible.

No, those absolutely have value. Without the Old Testament, we wouldn’t understand the reality of sin, the reality of God’s judgment, the need for blood sacrifice. It lays the entire foundation for the gospel as it’s presented in the New Testament.

But Jesus comes in, Jesus clarifies, he fulfills the Old Testament law where we could not live up to it. We could not possibly live up to the Old Testament law. He fulfilled it for us, and he clarified what the point of the Old Testament law really was.

And then he taught his apostles, and his apostles wrote as well, and they all together, they clarified what God’s unchanging standards are for us. And so there are things in the Old Testament that were ceremonial laws that were meant to keep Israel separate from the other countries around them, because God was trying to keep this nation on a straight and narrow track. so that he could use them to bring the vessel that would bring the Savior into the world.

But there are some things in the Old Testament that are still, there are moral laws that are still principles that, you know, God put there for our good. But people will say, oh, you find that in Deuteronomy. Jesus never talked about that.

That’s Old Testament. Okay, well, what about where Paul said it? What about where Jude talked about this?

Oh, well, that’s not Jesus. Okay, today we’re going to see, number one, if you believe, as we do, as this church does, that Jesus Christ is God the Son, has always been God, and you believe, as this church does, that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, as it says in 2 Timothy chapter 3, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. And that phrase given by inspiration means it was breathed out by God.

If you believe that all scripture is breathed out by God, is God’s word, and you believe that Jesus Christ is God, then everything the scriptures say, Jesus said. That’s my first answer for those who say, well, these things about marriage and family. Jesus never addressed those.

Oh, yeah, he did. He just used Paul to address that there. He used Moses to address that there.

But on top of that, Jesus directly, if you have a red letter Bible where it shows you, If you’ve ever wondered what those red letters are, those are quotes from Jesus, if you didn’t know. Those red letters, we’re going to see today Jesus absolutely did address issues of marriage and sexuality, family, intimacy, all of these things where the debate rages today. And so in Matthew chapter 19, we’re just going to read both of these to start with and then discuss them a little bit.

Matthew chapter 19, starting in verse 1, says, Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings, that he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And great multitudes followed him, and he healed them there. The Pharisees also came to him, testing him, and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

Now what they were asking about, there were a couple of schools of thought in Judaism at that time about the appropriateness of divorce. And there was one rabbi, I believe it was Rabbi Hillel, who years before had taught that a man basically had, he tended to liberalize the law and said, you know, a man has a reason to, has a right to get rid of his wife for any reason. He just gives her a bill of divorcement and he can get rid of her for any reason.

And that sounds a lot like our laws today. But this left, this was a, we might think, wow, how liberated and how progressive they were back then. No, no, this was a bad deal for women.

Because the women weren’t getting half of the estate. Okay? And the women were just, you burn dinner?

Okay, I’m tired of you. You nag me a little too much? I’m tired of you.

And then he gives her a bill of divorcement, or maybe he doesn’t. He just divorces her because he’s tired of her. And he sends her on her way.

She’s left destitute. And she can’t remarry. She has no way to support herself.

no legitimate way to support herself, and women ended up in poverty or they ended up in less than reputable ways of living. And so this was a bad deal for the women. The Pharisees came to Jesus and said, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

And he answered to them, verse 4, he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female? doesn’t say, well, here’s my opinion. Jesus goes back to the book of Genesis, which, guess what?

It was part of the law that God gave to Moses to write down. Now, the Genesis part is the history, but those are considered the five books of the law. It’s all the law, okay?

Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? He quotes Genesis different places there. Then he says in verse 6, so then they are no longer two but one flesh.

Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. He said, wait, you’re trying to make it too easy. Just divorce for any reason.

Why would you do that? God took male and female and he put them together and said, you’re now one flesh. And why would you rip apart what God has put together, he says.

Verse 7, then they said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away. Oh, wait a minute. Moses said we could give her a bill of divorce.

Moses said we could give her a piece of paper, and it was okay. And what Jesus’ answer is, yeah, Moses said give her a piece of paper, give her a bill of divorcement, but it wasn’t that Moses was encouraging divorce here. He says in verse 8, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

He said this was not God’s design. This was not God’s plan A for you, to just you got tired of your wife, She burned in her. She nagged you.

You’re tired of looking at her. And so you get rid of her. And he said, Moses allowed it to happen because many of you were hard-hearted.

He said, but the whole thing about the bill of divorcement was to protect the wife when she was cast aside. You’re going to do it anyway. Let’s build some protection for the woman in here and give her a bill of divorcement that’s proof that she’s not just out living an adulterous lifestyle.

She needed some kind of legal proof, you know, that her husband had just gotten tired of her and that she wasn’t just some loose woman running around without a husband. It was a protection for the woman that Moses instituted there. But he says in verse 9, And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.

And whoever marries her and is divorced commits adultery. So you had these Pharisees and you had some in the. .

. Oh my goodness. Not everybody who professes to be a religious leader or shepherd of God’s people lives like one.

I started watching a documentary last night when I was trying to go to sleep. Charlie said, what are you watching? I said, I don’t know.

It was supposed to be about politics and the Renaissance. And they were talking about way too many people with their clothes off. And I ended up changing it.

But they were talking about Pope Alexander VI, I believe, and his four children. And I said, wait a minute. I didn’t think Catholic clergy could marry.

Oh, no, they said in the time of the Renaissance, virtually every cardinal in the Catholic Church had a mistress and a concubine. And apparently that sort of thing was going on here, too, where some of these holier-than-thou religious leaders looked down their noses at everybody else, but they thought they could just divorce their wife for whatever reason and upgrade to a newer model, because there was no sense of commitment, no sense of loyalty. And so Jesus said, you know, Moses said, if you’re going to do this anyway, let’s give some protection for the wife.

He said, but I’m telling you, if you go and divorce her just because you’re tired of her, you go divorce her just because you want to marry somebody else, you divorce her for any other reason than unfaithfulness and go marry somebody else. He said, you’ve committed adultery. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The Pharisees prided themselves on the fact that they kept the law. They were perfect according to the law. Now, that was their deal. We are the law keepers.

And for Jesus to say you’ve committed adultery was a huge slap in the face. now is one they deserved, especially considering their hypocrisy on the issue. I’ll take somebody who says, yeah, in my youth I divorced my wife for a stupid reason.

I mistreated her. I was wrong. I’ll take that guy any day over the Pharisee that says, here I am perfect.

I did what Moses said. I gave her the bill of divorcement, and I’m free to go do what I want to do again, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But Jesus said it’s adultery.

And by the way, I’ve been asked this question a couple times. So I had a very dear older couple at a previous pastorate. And I wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t told me that they had kind of lived rough lives when they were younger and they’d each been married multiple times.

Like, shockingly, a number of multiple times. And yet here they are serving God and here they are devoted. And they came and asked me one time, are we living in adultery?

Because we’ve both been married before, and they were divorced, and it wasn’t because somebody was unfaithful. They just got tired of the other person back in there before they were saved days. They said, are we living in adultery?

And I guess the question was, do we need to split up? They said, first of all, the Bible makes it clear God hates divorce, and adding another one onto your track record isn’t going to somehow make things better with God. I said, but my reading of it, and I did some research, and I read some people who are much more knowledgeable than I am, but my research, based on the grammar of the Greek here, is that it was an act of adultery, but not a state of adultery.

Does that make sense? That the act of getting married was to commit adultery, but it’s not as though you’re living in adultery for the rest of your life as long as you stay married. It was a one-time thing.

At least that’s my understanding of it. You go study that for yourself. But the idea at all that the Pharisees had committed adultery was horrifying to them.

And so his disciples, verse 10, said to him, If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. They said, wow, if you’re going to be that strict, it’s better for us just not to marry at all. And there’s some wisdom in that.

Some people should not get married. I’m not going to say who. I don’t have anybody in particular in mind.

Well, okay, Hollywood celebrities. If you’re going to go into it with 45 minutes worth of commitment, and that’s as seriously as you take it, probably ought not to just get married in the first place. Anyway, verse 11 says, But he said to them, and by the way, I want to be clear, I’m not trying to pick on anybody.

I hope none of this comes across as mean. I’m just trying to tell you what Jesus said here. All right, verse 11.

He said to them, All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s wombs, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.

So it says there is a place for people just to remain single. There is a place for people just to remain unattached. Let’s look at Mark chapter 10.

It says some of the same things. Chapter 10, verse 1. Then he arose from there and came to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan, and multitudes gathered to him.

and as he was accustomed, he taught them again. The Pharisees came and asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, testing him? And he answered and said to them, what did Moses command you?

So here, well, we’ll come back to that. What did Moses command you? They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her.

And because Jesus answered and said to them, oh, and Jesus answered and said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. In the house, verse 10, in the house, his disciples also asked him again about the same matter.

So he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Now some people will look at what, anytime you’ve got two passages in the gospel accounts that say slightly different things, people will point and go, see there, contradiction, contradiction.

But I’m going to tell you nothing that either of these men records, either John, Mark, or Matthew, nothing that they record of what Jesus says contradicts what the other says. They may include some facts that the other doesn’t, and one may omit facts that the other leaves in, but there’s nothing that they say that’s contradictory. And if there were a wreck when we leave church, and several of us witnessed it, and the highway patrol comes in and says, well, okay, what happened?

They’re going to sit four of us down and get statements from the four of us. We may all include four different sets of details that can all be easily harmonized. The says here in verses 11 and 12, he just says in Mark, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

Matthew records Jesus saying, he who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness and marries another commits adultery against her. And some people will say, well, there’s a contradiction there. No.

The gospel writers are pretty open about the fact that none of them include everything that Jesus said. It was impossible. John said, if we were to write down everything that he said and taught, everything that he did and taught, the world itself could not contain all the books that would need to be written.

Mark recorded what he records of what Jesus says, he records accurately. What Matthew records of what Jesus says, he records accurately. But there are some that are so determined to go beyond.

Here’s other when it comes to marriage, that they start doing violence to the text of the scriptures. Because there are some that we put on the left of the discussion that say, you know, all of that’s outdated. Jesus really didn’t mean this.

It was just for that culture at that time. So there really are no rules for marriage as far as God’s concerned. There are preachers who preach this.

There really are no rules. Those principles are outdated. Just love whoever you want for however long you want, and then go love whoever else you want.

There are others on the far right of the discussion who say, oh, it’s Mark. There’s no divorce, no reason, never, there’s no grace, no acceptance here. You know, you get divorced, you’re committing adultery, period.

And what they have to do in either case is deny part of the scriptures. In the case of saying, oh, there are no rules, you have to deny everything that Jesus said in this passage to say there’s no reason, There’s no acceptance. You have to deny what Matthew said, and you have to start claiming contradictions in the scriptures, and you have to start pretending that Matthew was just made up later.

And I’ve seen that this week. Can we not, as I’ve been studying this, people saying that, well, Matthew, that was added later, that exception clause about adultery. No.

I mean, Matthew was written a few years later, but there’s no reason to think that was just made up. Read any of the accounts. None of them follow exactly and cover all the same details of what Jesus said.

That’s why it’s important that we have four eyewitness accounts to Jesus’ teaching. Because you put them all together and you get the whole picture. So it’s important.

We need to be very careful. As Christians, as controversial as this is all around us, I never would have thought marriage would be controversial. But as controversial as it is, we need to be careful not to go beyond what Jesus says on any of these controversial issues, including marriage. We need to be careful not to just, Jesus said, you know, here are the standards.

We need to be careful not to go beyond them and say, oh, just do what you want. Jesus is all about love. We also need to be careful not to go beyond what Jesus says and say, you know what, we’re going to make the standards stricter, and we’re going to say, forget about what he says in Matthew, let’s go to the strictest thing, the strictest interpretation of the smallest amount of data here in Mark.

We need to take it all together. And what we get from this picture of all of this together is that there is a godly standard for marriage, and that God is also gracious, that as he is with all of his law, God is gracious to those who fall short of his law, which includes all of us, when we repent and come to him through Jesus Christ. But we need to see that Jesus affirmed Old Testament teaching on marriage and intimacy. It’s the first thing we need to see.

Jesus affirmed Old Testament teaching on marriage and intimacy. And I told you, for those who say, well, Jesus never talked about these topics. Again, if you believe like we do that Jesus is God, you believe that all scripture is breathed out by God, then yes.

If Paul wrote about it, Jesus said it. But beyond that, in the red letters of your Bible, you will see that Jesus affirmed what Moses said. When they asked about marriage, when they asked about divorce, Jesus asked them, what did Moses tell you?

Jesus went back to the scriptures of the Old Testament. Jesus went back to the law as a starting point and said, what does that say? And then Jesus goes back to Genesis, which is part of the law, and quotes in both these passages that God made them male and female.

God created these two genders. He did that from the beginning. And that God designed it for a man to leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and for the two to become one flesh.

Those are direct quotes from what Moses wrote down in the law in the book of Genesis. Did Jesus ever say anything about marriage and intimacy and sexuality and all those things? Absolutely.

He said, what did Moses say? What did God already say in the Old Testament? And we see that in verse 3.

What did Moses command you? Now within this, as he points us back to what has God said all along? What has God said all along was Jesus thinking?

What was God’s intention all along? This passage teaches at least three things that are part of God’s intentions and God’s design for marriage. And these are things that the church needs to stand for.

These are things that the church needs to uphold. If we’re not living according to these things, then we need to. Not as a matter of salvation, but just as a matter of honoring God with our lives.

First of all, God designed us. This is lost in our world, but God designed us for purity outside of marriage and faithfulness within marriage. It’s very important we understand both of those things.

God designed us for purity outside of marriage and faithfulness within marriage. You see, for years we’ve taught teenagers, oh, just don’t do this, don’t do that. You know, and I don’t want to get into any graphic discussions of it, but we all know what kinds of things people aren’t supposed to do.

And the question, when I was working with teenagers as a college student, the question would come up, well, how far is too far? Where’s the line? If you’re having to ask, you’re probably already there.

But where’s the line? That’s like saying how far can I run at full speed toward the Grand Canyon and stop and expect not to fall over the edge? Okay, we’re asking the wrong questions.

How close can I get to sin without sinning is the wrong question to ask. It should be how far away from sin can I get. See, it’s not about just don’t do this, don’t do this.

It’s about purity. And it’s more important that we teach purity than we teach not to do this or this or that. That our hearts are supposed to be pure before God.

That God wants us devoted to him. And so outside of marriage, I know it’s outdated to say this nowadays, but outside of marriage, God’s ideal, God’s design for us is purity. There are consequences.

There are consequences when we go against that. And I’m not saying, oh, God’s going to strike you down. He might.

But I’m saying there are natural consequences where this will hurt us and this will hurt our children and our grandchildren if we don’t teach them purity before the Lord outside of marriage. And God also designed us for faithfulness within marriage. Okay?

Within your marriage, you stay faithful. You don’t go date half the town or anything else. And you live a life of faithfulness where people know they can trust you, where your spouse knows they can trust you.

It never occurs to me that Charla may not be where she says she is. It probably never occurs to Charla that I’m not where I say I’m going to be because I call her all the stinking time when I’m gone. But you know what?

You should be able to trust one another. And as we look at Matthew 19, we see this. Turn back to Matthew 19.

We see this in verses 8 and 9 and again in 11 and 12. Let’s just look at verse 9. He says that the one thing significant enough to break the marriage, to break the trust irreparably in the marriage, is sexual immorality.

And so he’s warning them, avoid that. Don’t commit adultery. That will destroy a marriage.

By the way, it doesn’t have to. God wants us, you know, I’ll be careful how I say this, and we’re running short of time anyway, but God wants us to be forgiving and seek reconciliation if that’s possible. It’s what I tried to do, and it’s one of the hardest things in the world to offer is forgiveness after somebody betrays you in that way.

But God ultimately says it’s best for us if there’s reconciliation. But he said that is such a, the reason why the sexual immorality is in here in verse 9 is because it’s such a betrayal. We’re taught to be faithful in marriage. And in verse 10, we get the response from the disciples that if you can’t do that, it’s better just to not marry.

And that’s absolutely true. God designed us, we see in verses 11 and 12, he talks about these eunuchs. And there are some who have foregone marriage, there are some who have just sworn, you know, I’m not going to get married, I’m going to stay single for the purpose of the kingdom of God.

And the idea of a eunuch was somebody who couldn’t engage in physical intimacy. Now whether they physically could not, or spiritually they were and said, I’m just not going to, the idea here is purity. And so we see in what Jesus taught, the purity outside of marriage and the importance of faithfulness within marriage.

If you’re not married, if you’re not married, purity is what God designed you for. If you are married, faithfulness to your spouse is what God designed you for. Second of all, we see God designed marriage to be the union of one man and one woman.

I was asked this recently, how do you define marriage? I went into a long, y’all are not surprised by this, I went into a long spiel, and the guy looked at me and said, no, I just want to know, do you believe it’s one man and one woman? I said, oh, yeah.

Ask what you’re asking. Yes, it’s absolutely. And I realize that’s controversial to say nowadays.

But Jesus said, he created them male and female, and for that reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. God designed marriage to be the union of one man and one woman. Marriage, the word means something.

It’s the union of one man and one woman, just like Jesus called it. And then finally, in Matthew 19, verses 5 through 9, we see that God designed marriage to be a lifelong commitment. He designed it to be a lifelong commitment.

He said we’re supposed to cleave to one another and be one flesh. no longer two but one flesh and that what God has joined together man shouldn’t separate. And we see the pain that’s caused by the breaking of that marriage covenant.

We see the pain, the anguish that’s caused not only in what he describes in the scriptures but we can look around our own world and see it. We can see the pain that’s caused by the breaking of these commitments. And that’s part of the reason why God designed marriage the way he did.

It wasn’t to spoil anybody’s fun. it was to protect us from what was going to hurt us. Because marriage is designed, it’s supposed to be a safe place, a union of a man and a woman who trust each other implicitly.

It’s supposed to be a relationship that honors and glorifies God. If we look at Ephesians, where the woman, please don’t hate me for this, but where the woman graciously submits to her husband, but the husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church and gave himself for her. It’s not just about the woman submitting and being a doormat.

It’s about the husband loving sacrificially the way Jesus Christ would, laying down his life for that woman. It’s a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church. It’s a relationship that’s supposed to bring glory to God.

And our society has cheapened it and has redefined it to our own detriment. This is what the scriptures say about marriage. This is what Jesus says about marriage.

I want to close on one thought. Because I know that there are some in the room who’ve been through these circumstances. And I don’t know what your circumstances were.

I don’t know if you have the reason that Jesus outlines in Matthew chapter 19 for the divorce. My goal this morning is not to beat anybody over the head about a divorce. My goal is to present you these are what the script