“Holy Matrimony” Mark 10:1-12
SCRIPTURE INTRO: Mark divided in two halves.
First half of Mark answers the question: Who is Jesus?
The answer is that
he is the Christ, the Anointed One.
Second half of Mark answers the question: What did the Christ come to do?
The answer is that
he came to set things right by his suffering and death.
Part of the suffering that Jesus experienced on the way to
the cross
was
the increasing opposition from the religious leaders.
They attacked everything that he taught, tried to undermine
him.
In this passage we
will read how Jesus’ views on marriage and divorce
were
attacked by the Pharisees. And how he
tried to teach his disciples
God’s
will for this important part of life.
INTRO: Scott puts lots of thought into his
selection of the songs we sing
in
the worship service. Not just musically,
but also lyrically.
He wants songs and
hymns with words that tie into the theme of the sermon.
Last week Scott asked me, What are
you preaching on this Sunday?
I said: Hell.
He said: Great. There are lots of songs about hell.
This week he stuck his head in my study and asked, What are you preaching on?
I said: Divorce.
He just stared at me and disappeared.
Few minutes later
he came in and said:
I wrote a country song several years ago and the chorus goes
like this:
I don’t want to
hear no cheatin’ songs,
I don’t want to
hear about a love gone wrong.
What about that for special music on Sunday?
That was funny, but divorce itself is not.
Every one of us here has been touched by divorce in some
way.
Either you have
personally been divorced,
or
you have gone through it with parents, friends or family members.
Even the mention of the word “divorce” carries with it
a
huge weight of sorrow and loss, disappointment, anger, regret and guilt.
And you know that even though country songs are hokey—
they
do put a finger on this tragedy of life in a fallen world.
That is what divorce is—it’s a result of the Fall.
You see the seeds of it in the Garden of Eden,
when
God said to Adam, “Did you eat the fruit I told you not to eat?”
And Adam says: “The woman you gave me” . . . and points his
finger at Eve.
Why does Jesus say there is divorce?
Because
of the hardness of your hearts.
So divorce is a result of the Fall.
It is a consequence
of our hard hearts.
And that would be
depressing but for one thing—
Jesus came to push back the effects of the Fall.
He came to suffer
and die to set things right.
He came to cure our hard hearts by giving us new hearts.
By removing our
hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh.
That means his work
is making us into people who love God and each other.
Part of that is helping us understand marriage as God
intended it to be.
One of the very first things that you should notice about
this passage
is
that when the Pharisees asked Jesus about divorce—
he
refused to get drawn into an arguments about it.
Instead, he responded by talking about marriage.
He reminded them of
what God had said about marriage at the beginning,
and
what he intended for the human race.
It wasn’t that Jesus was afraid to talk about divorce
itself—
he
did later with the disciples, and other times is his teaching ministry.
But his emphasis was on marriage.
This passage shows us that because of the Gospel,
we
ought to be marriage-affirming people.
Yes, we live still live in a fallen world,
divorce is all around us,
but
divorce is best addressed by affirming marriage as God created it,
and
the power of the Gospel to transform lives.
Let’s look at this passage under two headings:
1. Our hard hearts
2. Christ’s
redemptive work
MP#1 Our hard hearts
What does this story show us about our hard hearts.
The Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him a question about
divorce.
Not an honest
question. It says they wanted to test
him.
Who were the Pharisees?
They were the church leaders of
There were two
religious parties, Pharisees and Sadducees.
Sadducees were
theological liberals.
Pharisees
the theological conservatives.
They believed the whole Bible the Word of God.
Believed in
miracles, and heaven, and the day of judgment.
But the thing they spent the most time on was arguing about
the law.
What behavior does the Bible permit, what
does it forbid.
One of their big arguments was about divorce.
What are the
biblical grounds for divorce?
When can a man
divorce his wife in accordance with the law of Moses?
The reason this was such a big debate, is that in the whole
Mosaic law,
there
is only one place were divorce is mentioned.
And in that
passage, divorce is not even the main focus.
And so the debate came down to one word.
Let’s look at the passage.
It’s Deuteronomy 24:1-4
If a man marries a woman who becomes
displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he
writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his
house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of
another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a
certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he
dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to
marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the
eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving
you as an inheritance.
What is this indecency?
There were two
schools of thought, constantly arguing.
One school said:
Indecency means sexual immorality.
Only
grounds for divorce is marital unfaithfulness of sexual nature.
This school was the
minority.
John the Baptist
held this view. Remember what happened
to him.
Other school said:
Indecency mean anything unpleasing to husband.
Rabbis in this school said that if displeased with cooking,
could divorce.
Or if man
displeased with wife’s looks, saw prettier woman, could divorce.
And this was the majority view.
Divorce, among the Pharisees was rampant.
In fact, on of the
most famous Pharisees outside of the Bible,
the
historian Josephus was himself, divorced.
That might surprise you.
Think of them as such a strict bunch.
They were. Very strict that you did it
right when divorced your wife.
So they came to Jesus with this question.
But they knew were
Jesus stood—would have affirmed minority view.
This was fine with them because they were hoping if Jesus
began
to argue for this view, it would get him in trouble.
See, this was not
Remember he had married his brother’s wife, Herodius.
John the Baptist
had criticized her divorce, and their remarriage.
John had paid for
it with his life. Head
on a platter.
So the Pharisees had this in mind.
Hoping
to get Jesus into political trouble with Herod.
So Jesus asked them: What
did Moses say? They quote Deuteronomy
24.
Expecting Jesus to
say: Well, indecency means . . .
But instead he turns the tables on them.
It was because your
hearts were hard that Moses wrote this law.
And Jesus was exactly right.
When we read Deuteronomy 24 a moment ago, did you notice
what
it was really about—preventing serial marriages.
Woman
going from one man, to another, back to same man.
Deuteronomy the second giving of the law,
right before entering
Among pagans in
God stepped in and said, this will not be allowed among my
people.
I not only order
marriage, if there is a violation of the covenant of marriage,
I will regulate how
that is handled, not you.
And the impact of this passage was to limit and regulate
divorce, not allow it.
And more than that, the spirit of the law is clear, God
wants to preserve marriage.
Any believing
Israelite who read this law would never say—
This gives me
permission to divorce, would say—Lord values marriage.
Pharisees, in their eagerness to be free to divorce, twisted
letter and spirit of law.
So here are the Pharisees, the church leaders—
Didn’t come to
Jesus and ask:
How can we be
better husbands?
How can we
strengthen our marriages?
Jesus, so many marriages in
No, they wanted to talk about loopholes.
They wanted to be
sure that they could justify their divorces
and
their remarriages and use the Bible and their religious tradition to do it.
That’s why Jesus said:
Your hearts are hard.
It’s so easy to criticize the Pharisees—but if you stop
there, you miss the point.
We have the same
hard hearts towards God and people.
We are also self-justifying.
We look for
loopholes in God’s law.
And in the matter of marriage in particular—hearts can be
very hard.
I was at the soccer field last week, met one of the dads,
believer,
member of a local church.
Woman sitting near him, didn’t
realize it was his wife.
Until
she leaned over and asked him a question about the game.
He responded with a
very sarcastic reply.
At first I still didn’t realize it was his wife. Till he did it again.
That’s not divorce,
but that’s the spirit of divorce, hard heart.
But I’ve done the same to Allison, and my children, and
other people.
Because
I have a hard heart, and you do to.
We need Jesus.
That brings us to the next point.
MP#2 Christ’s redemptive work
After pointing out the Pharisees misuse of Deuteronomy 24,
hard hearts,
Jesus continues to
speak.
He refuses to talk about the grounds of divorce with them.
Not because this is
not an important topic,
other
times, Jesus does talk about this with his disciples.
Jesus, and the apostles make clear
in other places that divorce permitted
for
two reasons—marital unfaithfulness of sexual nature—
adultery,
incest, homosexuality. And desertion.
Those are another topic, raise lots of perfectly legitimate
questions.
And those are good
questions, but not in this sermon—because following passage.
But in this conversation, Jesus does not answer their
question—
because
for them it is a loophole,
and
Jesus didn’t want to talk about loopholes for getting out of marriage.
It would just harden their hearts more.
He wanted to talk about something much bigger—his redemptive
work.
And so he says: In
the beginning. Once
upon a time.
And he goes back to
the very beginning, to Genesis, the Garden of Eden.
And he tells the
story of the first marriage.
How God created
marriage for the good of mankind.
Jesus was making a point.
I haven’t come to deal with behavior.
I’ve come to
reprogram the world, and restore it to the beauty that God intended.
Jesus says three basic things about marriage as God
intended.
First, marriage is a
promise.
Verse 7, the man is
united to his wife, old translations speak of cleaving.
So Jesus is reminding them that marriage does not rest on
feelings,
or
sexual attraction, or having your needs met—but on a promise.
And this promise is simply that I am yours and I will never
forsake you.
Never,
never, never will I leave you.
Never will I forsake you.
That’s the heart of marriage—a permanent promise.
That’s what we all want.
One night this week, in
Turned on oldies
rock and roll station—Songs from 80s.
High school songs. Songs about eternal love. Journey.
Called Allison on
cell phone, can you hear this sap.
I can’t believe
that moved me at one time.
Why is it that when you get older, become more cynical?
Shouldn’t it be the
opposite.
Because we know how precious it is
to
have a lasting promise that we will never be left or forsaken.
Second, marriage is
intimacy
Jesus reminds us that in the Garden, when God made them, two
one flesh.
God said that everything he made was good—
but
it was not good that Adam was all alone.
So he made Eve from
his rib, brought her to him.
And they were no longer two but one.
Intimacy of marriage is the union of minds, bodies, future
plans, callings,
every
part of life. This is how God created
marriage.
Let me make just
two important applications.
The intimacy of marriage is the reason God says no to sex
outside marriage.
God intended the
intimacy of marriage to include every part of life—
emotional,
spiritual, vocational, sexual—it’s a package deal.
Whenever you tear the sexual part off and have sex without
the
full commitment and intimacy of marriage, it harms you.
Hardens your heart towards God, people, makes harder for you
to give
yourself
fully to a person in the intimacy of marriage.
The intimacy of marriage the reason God says no to believers
marrying unbelievers.
How can you ever
have full intimacy with a person if outlook on life so different?
And not only your
outlook on life, your eternal destiny—
you
are going to heaven, and he is going to hell.
Once again, whenever you tear off spiritual commitments and
beliefs,
you
will never be able to enjoy intimacy as God intended.
But every part of life can flourish in the intimacy of
marriage.
Third, marriage is
power.
Way this is expressed is in leaving father and mother.
They no longer have
the priority in your life, someone else does.
Spouse has more power over you than anyone
else.
Your spouse’s criticisms and compliments have tremendous
power.
If everything going bad in the world, but
spouse is for you—can make it.
If everything going
well, spouse against you—things are grim.
At its best, the power of marriage can transform two people.
It is a tremendous
sanctifying power, moving toward Christlikeness.
So marriage, Jesus says:
Promise that you
can’t break.
Intimacy you can’t
compromise
Power
that can transform you.
But none of us are capable of this.
Is Jesus just
giving us an impossible ideal?
Where do we get the
power?
In Ephesians 5, Paul writes something fascinating. Talking about marriage.
Quotes this very same verse from Genesis:
“Therefore a man
will leave father and mother, be untied with is wife, two one.”
But instead of saying what Jesus says next:
Therefore what God
has joined together, let man not separate.
Paul writes
this:
“This is a profound
mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
What that shows us is that Jesus is not just talking about
marriage—
he
is giving us a window into the Gospel.
See, the Bible not only starts with a wedding—Garden of
Eden.
It also ends with a
wedding—wedding supper of the Lamb.
That final wedding
is the consummation of our salvation.
It’s life with Christ in the new heavens and new earth.
At that wedding, the bride, which is
us, the church,
is
given bright, clean linen to wear.
Why do we get to wear white, when our hearts are so heard?
Why do we get this
great happiness when we are so full of selfishness,
self-justification,
so often look for loopholes so that we can do things our way?
Because we don’t provide the clean linen, Jesus does—it’s
his righteousness.
He got it for us by
his perfect life, and his death on the cross.
Remember what the second half of Mark is about—the cross.
The
Messiah’s suffering and death to set things right.
In the cross we see
the perfection of marriage.
The cross is the ultimate promise:
Jesus says, Never will I leave you, I’ve died for you.
Nothing can
separate you from the love of Christ.
Ultimate intimacy:
I’ve seen the depth of your soul, every dark corner,
and
I love you and want to know you in this life and the next.
I want to be
involved in every part of your life.
Ultimate power: My
righteousness is not just going to cloth you—
it’s
going to be reproduced in you.
I’m going to make
you a holy and good person, person God intended you to be.
When the good news of the cross sinks
in—that this is Christ’s marriage to you.
That empowers you
to be the spouse God has called you to be.
And to help those
whose marriages are troubled.
And to speak the
truth in love about God’s standards for sex and marriage,
and
divorce and remarriage.
And to find hope and comfort if you’ve
been divorced.
And
patience if you aren’t married and want to be.
And contentment
with whatever estate of life you find yourself in.
So the important thing is this—keep
your eye on Jesus, on the cross—
and
your hard heart will be softened, and you will experience,
even
in the is fallen, broken world—
a little foretaste of the happiness
of the world to come,
and
that great wedding feast, at which you will be the bride.