Matthew 19:1-12

Transcription

We are in Matthew 19. And so, let me cap for you just kind of where we're at in the broad picture of Matthew. We looked at Matthew 18. He talked about, hey, if you want to be great in the kingdom, you need to be like this little child, demonstrating a heart of humility and dependence upon God. And then he goes right into this theme around offenses. And he says, look, if there's things in your life that are offending God, You need to cut it off. If you're going to be in my kingdom, your disposition to your behavior, the behaviors in your life that don't belong, they need to get cut off. Then we go into the section about listen, if your brother is offending you and sinning against you, here's the path to restore your brother. The whole conversation there is again And it relates, it orbits around this idea of sin being a reality. Sin is a reality in the kingdom, but we're putting it off. We're helping each other put sin off, right? We're cutting it off in our life. When somebody's sinning against us, we're in a gentle way trying to correct them. But man, if they're not receptive to correction, we're saying, "You don't get to have the privilege of church life any longer. You need to take a break until you're ready. ready to separate yourself from your sin. And then last week we looked at forgiveness and this whole idea of listen when your brother is ready to repent of their sin and they're saying to you please forgive me. I am so sorry and they're confessing their sin then forgive them. Forgive them over and over and over again and over again some more. That is a part of the kingdom and the basis for it is how was the king? How did Jesus worked with you, he forgave you. And so you have this wellspring of forgiveness that you can extend to others around you. And we're going to continue um in this kind of this social ethic. Imagine that you were going to start your own kingdom. And one of the things that all of a sudden you'd end up with, let's say you had a a big property and you ended up with 500 people living on your property and you had a vision of like this is how we're going to do life. One of the things that you would have to do is you'd have to say, "Listen, here's how we work with each other. Here's how we relate. Here's how we treat one another." And so in this section of Matthew, um Matthew says, "I want to tell you about an incident that occurred between the Pharisees and Jesus." Do you remember who the Pharisees were? The Pharisees were the ones who were talking and challenging and testing Jesus over and over again. They hated Jesus because he challenged their authority. He was a threat to their position of influence within the Jewish culture. And Jesus just did things so differently from how they wanted it to be done. They could not surrender to his authority. And so what we're going to see is that these Pharisees bring to Jesus a question. And I'm going to read the text to you. and then I'm gonna ask you a question based off of what we read. So, it's 12 verses. So, pay pay attention here as we go through this and uh see what's going on. When Jesus had finished saying these things, he departed Galilee. That's important. He departed Galilee. He went into the region of Judea across from Jordan. It's important because we've been in Galilee for a long time in Matthew. It's where he spent a lot of his time doing ministry. But he's leaving Galilee. He's heading towards Judea, which happens to be where um closer to where Jerusalem is at. Large crowds followed him. And he healed them there. Some Pharisees approached him to test him and they asked him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds?" "Haven't you read," he replied, "that he who created them in the beginning made them male and female. He also said, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God is joined together, let no one separate. Why then, they asked him, did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away? He told them, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning. I tell you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." His disciples said to him, "If the relationship of a man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry. He responded, "Not everyone can accept this saying, but the only those to whom it has been given, for there are unics who were born that way from their mother's womb. There are Unix who were made by men, and there are Unix who have made themselves that way because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who is able to accept it should accept it." All right. So, what is this text about? What is this text about? What's the question that the Pharisees ask? Is it okay to divorce your wife on any grounds? And we're going to talk about where that question's coming from. Okay, that's that's the you guys are tracking. Good. Okay, here's what I want to suggest to you. The Pharisees in this context want to ask Jesus about divorce. Jesus is going to respond by talking about about marriage. So, this is incredibly practical. Some of you uh there's a number of you that have uh are divorced or have gone through divorce or remarried. There's some of you have never been married. So, this is going to be an extremely practical conversation about what does marriage look like in the kingdom of heaven. So, let's we're going to talk about that, but let's pray. What? That's right. We're going to talk about that. That's in my sermon cuz We're in Baltimore. Let's pray. Lord, we are so grateful that you care deeply for us and that you give a grand vision for life. And we pray that you would just inform our hearts with your vision and that you would soften our hearts that we wouldn't be people who are hard-hearted, but instead would be open to your beautiful vision, your original design. And so lead us as we go through this text. Guide us. We pray for clarity and wisdom that you would be our teacher and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. So here we are. We find ourselves in verse three with this teaching um and this question by the Pharisees and they pose a question to Jesus based on a cultural issue. So this is the first question. Can you get divorced on any cost? cause. Can you get divorced on any cause? Again, here's it. Here it is. Is it lawful for a man divor to divorce his wife on any grounds? So, we we understand that qu that question in our context. If we were to, you know, turn on Oprah and see, well, what's Oprah got to say about this? She may have some opinions on like or Dr. Phil may have some opinions on here's the good time to get divorced and who's not, right? But But our job as we read the Bible is not to read it through the lens of Oprah. Our job is to understand back here when um Jesus is having this conversation what was going on there. So once we understand that then we can bridge the gap and jump over into our culture. And there's some really important things that you need to understand about the Pharisees and a debate that was going on. There was a debate that existed between two schools of thought. There was one group that was the school of Shemi. He was a um scribe, kind of a theological teacher for the Jews. And he had a very strict view about Deuteronomy 24 where Moses talks about divorce. He had this strict view that divorce was only permissible in cases of sexual immorality where the the man or the woman uh in this case it would have been the woman was sexually unfaithful. to the man. Now, in this culture, it was only the man that could go and file for divorce. The wife did not have any rights to file. But God's law did say, "Hey, listen. Either way, unfaithfulness either way violates that law." But there's another school. There's a school of Helio. He took a more lenient and liberal approach allowing divorce for various reasons, including trivial matters like like burning a meal. So, let's just say, you know, your wife burns the toast and you're like, "Hey, listen. I'm not happy with her. She's just a serial toast burner. I'm filing for divorce." Right? So, those were the two grounds, right? Those were the two basis. Okay? That's a big difference, right? But here's the thing you got to understand. This is the debate. This is the de This is the debate that's going on at the time. And and here's what you got to understand. This is the arena where the debate is going. Is Jesus going to answer this debate by jumping into it or does he have something totally separate to say? He's got something totally separate, right? He's not even going to start by answering this question. He he he's going to get he's going to get into the debate a little bit later on. He's going to reference this debate. He's actually going to quote Shimi. But he doesn't start there on answering the question. He actually says in his response, he says, "Haven't you read?" Again, here's Jesus. What we're talking about in our church is being followers of Jesus. And when we have questions about how to do life, about relationships, because listen, marriage relationships are some of the hardest relationships that you can be in. It's the fire. It's the f I did I heard a hallelujah on that, right? Yeah. It's the fire because it's the truest version of you. Now, you can go down and talk to your neighbors. You can go work with your co-workers and put up a mask, but man, you're the person you're married to knows who you are. They know who you are. They know who you are on your worst day. And it is a difficult setting. And if we're going to be followers of Jesus, he's not asking you to, hey, follow me. and fake it in the rest of the world. He wants you to be a follower in your home. And that's one of the most difficult places to be a follower of Jesus. You can come and play church ever all you want, but my heart for our church is that when we leave here, this is nothing like my passion, my heartbeat is like what happens tomorrow morning when I wake up, you know? What does my life look like to my kids, to my wife? Could Do they see me as genuinely wanting to follow Jesus? That's all that really matters. I love you guys and I care what you think about me, but I really don't. I really care about the people who really know me. That's right. Do they know me as somebody who genuinely wants to follow Jesus? And what does Jesus say in answering the question? He says, "Haven't you read?" There's a correlation. Hey, If you're a follower of Jesus and you've got questions, Jesus is going to ask you, "Have you been reading your Bible? Have you been reading your Bible? Have you read?" Right? Are you living your life saying, "I got baptized. I want to follow Jesus, but I really have no idea what the Bible says." Amen. That then you're living an impoverished life like you like are saying you're following Jesus, but you're really ignorant of what's been written. So he says, "Haven't you read that he who created them in the beginning made them male and female?" What is what's he talking about here? What's he That's right. And where's Adam and Eve at in your Bible? In the very beginning. So let's say you got your reading plan and you're like, "It's a new year. It's January 1st. I'm going to read through the whole Bible." But you know, they give up. You know, people give up by the 18th of January. It's like, but listen, Even if you only read it for 18 days of the first of the first part of the year, you got to these verses. You covered this material in your Bible reading. At least you got through the first two chapters, right, of your Bible reading plan. And he says, "Haven't you read this from uh Genesis that he who created them in the beginning, he made them male and female?" Then he's going to quote from chapter 2. And he also said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh. Right? So he pulls this from Genesis 1 and2 and he is I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to put it up here on the screen here in just a second. But he's going back. So the debate between Heliel and Shimi is from Deuteronomy. before, which I'm going to read to you in a minute. But Jesus goes before Moses, right, in the Bible, right? He goes back before the the uh fifth book of the Bible. He goes back to the very first book of the Bible where God creates male and female. And then he in that chapter 2, there's the account of God saying, "It's not good for the man to be alone. I'm going to make a helpmate, a companion. for Adam, for this man who's going to be a perfect companion because the animals who had already created the animals were not a perfect companion. I know a dog is a man's best friend, but they're not a companion as God designed companionship. God God created like the heavens and the earth after each day he said, "This is good. This is good. This is good." The first time he says it's not good is when he s looks at Adam and Adam doesn't have a companion. He doesn't have this suitable partner, this perfect puzzle piece fit for his life. He says, "Nope, that's not good enough. I'm going to create the woman." And so he takes Adam, he h puts him basically anesthetiz him, put him into a deep sleep, takes half of Adam, we say it's a rib, but literally it's a half of him. And he creates the woman from the half of Adam. And now you have the woman and you have the man. He's created two from one. And he says this is um and Adam sees her and says this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. You're going to be named woman. And so we have male and female. But then we have this from chapter 2. For this reason, a man will leave his mother and father. Now Adam and Eve didn't have a mother and father. But there's this um uh narration here as the story is being told. It's saying this is what will go on. The the man will leave his parents and be joined to his wife and the two become one flesh. So Jes Jesus as he's answering this testing question from the Pharisees is like, I want you to see the original design. The original design pattern. This is what it was supposed to look like again. So, um, we'll get to verse six in just a second. We'll come back to verse 6 because this is his, um, takeaway from quoting from Genesis. But again, Genesis 1:27, God created a man in his own image. He created them in the image of God. He created them male and female. So Jesus is saying this was the design. And then you go a chapter later. This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife and they become one flesh. So Jesus here wants to put in front of his followers and these Pharisees the original design. The Um, there's a couple of things that are significant about this. If you read Genesis 1 and 2, it's like there's two accounts of creation and Jesus is pairing the two together. And so, if there's any question, sometimes there's scholarship that says, you know, these are two different versions of the creation account. Jesus sees it as one story. Um, we see him saying referring to that there's male and female. He's emphas izing the strong separation between the two almost setting up this idea of the two becoming one in the next verse. They're radically different but capable of becoming one flesh. And then when he talks about Genesis 2 and the oneness of the one flesh, he's highlighting the profound unity that marriage creates. So we have this divine design. We see marriage's divine design. We see um the nature of marriage that it's this one flesh bond. We get this um definition of marriage that it is um not a human thing that's created, but that it is God's creation. So imagine if you don't believe the Bible and you're looking at people entering into marriage. You think, okay, well, this is just a cultural custom. But the Bible says to us that marriage is something that God made to occur. And what's marriage's purpose? It's to fulfills God's creative intent for human relationships. So, there's this fulfillment that exists. Now, many in our church are not married, either have been married or would like to be married but are not currently married. And he's going to teach about that. That's the signup sheet I did not make. So here's what Jesus says. Here's his takeaway. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Okay? So Jesus says, here's the ideal from the beginning. Therefore, since God joins them together, don't separate it. That's the ideal. Okay, that's the answer. That's how Jesus answers this first question. What are the grounds for divorce? Don't separate it. God put it together. Don't separate it. Well, the Pharisees actually have some more questions. And the second question is, well, then why did Moses allow for divorce? Here's the question. Why then? They asked him, did Moses command us to give divorce papers and to send her away? So if God makes it and you're saying to us Jesus, what God joins together, don't separate, then why did Moses have this instructions to give divorce papers? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Uh Yeah. Wow. Okay. And each one. Okay. Yeah. What happened? It happened for a long time. Yeah. And it happened in Europe too after the second war. because a lot of men died in the war. He figured Yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up because we're going to talk about because in in the Old Testament, some of the heroes have multiple So they're they're in polygamous relationships. So you're talking about in Islam, it is lawful to have up to four wives if they're provided for. That's a carve out. Yeah. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to push back on that a little bit because what and what Jesus would say is like this is the way that God designed it. The ideal was one man and one woman. But you get to Deuteronomy 24, you get to 1 Samuel and we have David having seven wives. At least seven wives. We have what? Yeah. Yeah. And so the question is, is that right? Yeah. Angel, what's your question? Yeah. Angel, go ahead. What? In Africa? Yes. My dad and our family lived in Africa. And the question that the pastors there had is when somebody becomes a follower of of Jesus. When they have their three wives, what do you do? Do they continue having sexual relations with all three? Do they just have sex with one and but be responsible for the other two? How do you handle that? Right? Life is messy. Baltimore is messy. Your lives, your lives might feel messy. But here's the thing. Here's the good thing. Listen. When Jesus wants to talk about marriage, he says, "Let me point you back to the original design. Let's go back to how it was designed in the beginning. But then we're grateful that the Pharisees have this question because what's going on in Deuteronomy 24? If if the ideal is don't separate, then why is Moses saying you can get divorced, just give these divorce papers? Are you ready to see Jesus's answer? Well, let's go into Deuteronomy. Let me read to you the Here's what Moses says. If If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, he may write her a divorce certificate, hand it to her, and send her away from his house. If after leaving his house, she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the second man hates her, writes her a divorce certificate, man, that's rough, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house. Or if he dies, the first husband who sent her away may not marry her again after she's been defiled because that would be uh detestable to the Lord. You must not bring guilt on the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. So what in the world is going on there in Deuteronomy? Well, first of all, you can divorce her, but you can't bring her back if she's gets done with her second marriage. We don't fully know why. One of the reasons though that it's thought is because in their culture, they would practice a dowy. You there would be this ex monetary exchange and it would be kind of cheating the system. If you were to bring her back again a second time, it would be unfair. I see two questions. Yes. Why is she been defiled? She got married two times. She didn't commit adultery. She had So why was she defiled? I don't know. I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that question, but I can send you a link to a really good podcast because that language is used elsewhere. But it's this I think the language goes back to the um relationship is so important. That marriage relationship is so important. You go and you're with somebody else because she was divorced. Yeah. And she and she had sex with the second with the other guy. Yeah. She wasn't basically I feel she wasn't faithful to that original. She divorced him. Well, he divorced her. He divorced her. Yeah. She even divorced. I think they would say, "Well, you know what? You can't go with someone else. She's not trash. She got married a second time. Yeah. So, why couldn't she marry? The question the real question is why did God say you can't go and remarry her? And there's something there. There's something there's something there that needs to be kind of like unpacked and I'll try to I'll try to work on it. I'll send some links out if you want on that. I What I want you to see though is this is the context that the Pharisees are referencing back to. And so they're saying, "Wait a second. God gave us the law through Moses. You set up the society of Israel and you're letting us get divorced." So why is that the case? Right. Yeah. I I'm I'm going to need some time to work on why he says she's defiled. I'm not going to even I'm rubs you the wrong way. And it does. I think that that's not I don't think that's your problem that it rubs you the wrong way. Those one of those things where it's like let's wrestle with with it. Look at what Jesus says. Look at the answer. So, we're asking the question, why did Moses allow for divorce? Here's Jesus's reply. Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of the hardness of your hearts, but it was not like that from the beginning. There's a really important principle here. What God is saying or what Jesus is saying, who is God? He's saying, listen, Moses provided you with an accommodation. When Adam and Eve were created, they're brought together as a husband and wife. They're in a sinless state. They're not fallen. World is not under this curse of death and decay. But now the world is. So Moses is coming along creating society. And he flat out said, Jesus is like, "Yeah, you want me to tell you why Moses gave you that accommodation? It's because you have a hard heart. You have a hard heart. And if you go and you look at marriages that fall apart, how oftent times is it that there's just a hard heart? There's not a willingness to follow Jesus. Somebody in that or both parties had a hard heart. I'm going to say something that's maybe sometimes a little bit offensive, okay? But just, you know, I love you. There are some people that I've known that have been single for a long, long time because they have a hard heart. They're just not tender. They're not open to who God might bring. It's easy to get a hard heart. It's easy to get burned. Some of you have been married and you're like, "Never again. Never again." And that is kind of funny to a degree. I was trying to be serious, but you guys are funny. It's okay. It's Baltimore. I know it's like, isn't that life is messy. Life is messy. But listen, listen, we've talked about this a lot of times on Sunday. How much does Jesus want us to have soft hearts? And Jesus is like, "Yeah, Moses had this carve out, this accommodation because your hearts are messed up. There's a hardness of heart there. And so I just I just commend that to you just as you're thinking. Oh man, I didn't realize we were almost Are we already at 11:30? Okay, we're going to have to wrap up here pretty quickly. Did you want a couple more? Yeah, take some of those. Yes, Angel. Thank you. I know. I love my wife. People do change. That is right. Yes. I knew this was going to open a can of worms and I love it. I love it. This is uh this is what I'm here for. for let's see how we're going to truncate this sermon. Okay, here's what here's what we're going to end with. Here's what we're going to end with. So, Moses gives this carve out and what here's what I want you to know. The Bible and Jesus's ministry, Jesus doesn't come, you know, and die on the cross because we're all perfect. Jesus enters into our mess. And so a lot of the wisdom of scripture is counseling us and advising us in the midst of the mess. And it's not the ideal. So I want to show you I think it's either four or five different areas where there's accommodations but not the ideal in scripture. Okay. The first is this area of polygamy. We see that people that wrote the Bible were in polygamous relationships. David for one. Solomon for another multiple wives the accommodation God regulated rather than immediately prohibiting the practice. So he said here's the guidelines here's the parameters on how you do marriage. There's a carve out there but the ideal is one man one woman as established in Genesis 2:24. That's the ideal. Somebody's getting directions already. They're like, "Get me out of here. Here's another one." Okay. Slavery. Now, this is not racebased slavery. Can you marry slave? You can. You can. That's in there, too. Well, someday we're going to go through the Old Testament if we ever make it out of Matthew. The practice. So, there's widespread slavery in ancient cultures. The accommodation of scripture. It regulates and protects slaves rather than immediately abolishing slavery. So, it accommodates it. But the ideal is human dignity and equality as imagebearers of God. The more you understand the Bible, the more you're like, man, slavery is untenable. There's no way to be a follower of Jesus and have slavery as a society. Yes. I'm assuming that there's a class system in the Bible, right? Kind of. Yeah. Can a man up here marry a slave? So, that's culture. Yeah. No, you can marry a woman. Yeah. What? Can a woman marry a woman? No. Man and woman. We have man and woman. Man and woman, right? Marry. Man and woman are getting married. That's the idea. That's what I'm trying to show you. I'm trying to show you that God has a plan. That God has a plan. He has a design, but he's giving structure within society that accommodates for hard hardness ness of heart and fallenness. Okay, I know this is this is kind of crazy territory. We might have to preach on this like multiple weeks. Okay, and here's another one. The monarchy in Israel, right? So God so we had Israel had its kings. God allowed for them to have kings. He grants their request but warns them of the consequences. The ideal though is that God wanted to be their direct ruler as their king. That's his That's the ideal. But he accommodates their heart, their fallenness, their brokenness. Here's the last one. Food laws and dietary restrictions. There's detailed regulations about clean and unclean foods. The accom accommodation is temporary distinctions for Israel's separation, but the ideal is that all foods declared clean under the new covenant. So this idea of um the the ideal versus the accommodation. That's what I want you to see, Jesus. So, you're stepping into the the kingdom of God, right? You're like, "Jesus, I'm ready to follow you. Teach me about relationships. I'm in a hard marriage. What do I do?" I think maybe maybe what I'll do over the summer, maybe I'll take a couple weeks and we'll teach on marriage because this is not the only place. There's all 1 Corinthians 7, there's Ephesians 5. So, maybe we'll cover this in a future date because I know y'all live in different kind of scenario you interact with this. Maybe you had a like parents that were a mess. I don't know. But what I want you to see is Jesus is trying to give his followers. He's trying to give us a vision for what is good. And he's saying based on the vision like go for what's good. Have a tender heart. But there's these carveouts. There's these. So yeah, I will come back to like let me just give you the three, right? So if if you come to me, if you come to me and you're like Josh Can I get divorced? Right? The um that's a good question. Right? Jesus here in this text gives adultery or sexual immorality. You violated sexually violated the marriage. That's one grounds for divorce. In 1 Corinthians 7, abandonment is another. So, let's say your uh husband or wife um commits a crime and they get incarcerated for their lifetime. They've essentially abandoned you in the marriage and you have ground for divorce. But in the passage in 1 Corinthians 7, it says um in such cases plural, there are other cases similar to abandonment which I would say one clear one is abuse. Um where abuse not not um you know he was mean to me but like malicious ongoing abuse is going on that is also a grounds for marriage. Those are the three common ones in in the church where we say yeah the marriage has been violated serially and there's grounds for divorce. Okay. Outside of that, we need to work on our hearts. 1 Corinthians 7 says, "Listen, if you're if you're a Christian and they're not a Christian and they're willing to stay with you, you stay with them because God's going to use you in their life. That's a possibility. Marriage is hard. Don't bail on your spouse just because it's hard. If they're cheating on you, they're abandoning you, or they're abusing you, you can go. I'll help you. I've helped other people in the past, but outside of that, stick with it. I I I told a friend, I'll close with this. I had a friend called me really having a hard time in his marriage, but he didn't fit those three criteria. And I told him, listen, God can work in the most amazing way through your marriage, even if it never gets better, because marriage is the fire. And you were chosen by God to be shaped into the image of Jesus to re be redeemed. out of sin and to experience the kingdom now as you anticipate the kingdom future. And in your marriage, you have this ability to just depend upon God for grace, to work on your character, to endure hardship, to have this just incredible experience with God in the midst of a very difficult setting. Don't run away from junky, hard settings. Embrace the tough. Embrace the pain. Let God shape you into who he wants you to be. And who knows what's going to happen in your difficult marriage. And I pray I pray that you end up with a beautiful, awesome marriage. But that's hard. It's hard to get there. All right. So, I know I'm totally leaving a bunch of open-ended things. I realize as I'm standing here, we need to come back to it, but we're not going to cover it all this morning. All right. Yeah, we'll have Well, next week is Easter. We're not going to cover divorce next week on Easter Sunday, but I will I see that this is helpful and we will we will try to revisit sooner rather than later. We're going to take communion together in just a minute. Let me uh pray. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to um learn from you and we ask for wisdom. We want to we want to be getting closer and closer to the ideal. We don't want you coming up with carveouts and accommodations. for our stupid. We really want to be a people that obey you. And we're getting closer to just that that garden experience of the kingdom. So Lord, thank you for your word. I pray for every marriage here, every broken marriage here, every person that's divorced or every single person that wants to get married. I pray Lord that you would work in this way, in this context towards the ideal. We commit our marriages to you that you would work beautifully. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.