Introduction:
Two Problems Jesus Has with Divorce (Matthew 5:31–32):
- Divorce TRIVIALIZES MARRIAGE. (Matt 5:31)
Genesis 2:24 – Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Deuteronomy 24:1–4 – 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, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 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, 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.
- Divorce RESULTS In ADULTERY. (Matt 5:32)
Ephesians 5:24–25 – Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:02
Matthew chapter five, are you there?
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This section we are in on the Sermon on the Mount is about the heart of God's law.
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And we saw that Jesus said, "I didn't come to abolish the law or destroy the law." That's what we would call the Old Testament.
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Jesus said, "I didn't come to do away with the Old Testament." He said, "I came to carry out everything that was said in it." It's not irrelevant at all.
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And through this section, you're going to see, as we've already seen many times, Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, "but I say to you." And when Jesus says that, what he's saying is, "You've lowered God's standard." And Jesus is correcting them, and he's correcting us when we take the word of God and just make it purely external.
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God wants your heart.
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God wants your heart.
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That's what we saw a couple of weeks ago.
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Pastor Taylor taught us, you know, Jesus said, "Murder isn't just the physical act of killing someone.
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"It's a heart issue." We saw last week, adultery is not just the physical act, it's a heart issue.
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And in these verses we're looking at today, Jesus is continuing His teaching on the destructiveness of adultery.
01:46-01:49
And today, we're gonna talk about divorce.
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And look, there's so much controversy on this topic.
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And if we're going to be honest, the controversy doesn't come really from God's word because the Bible is clear.
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The reason there's so much controversy is because if you are a divorced person, This gets very personal.
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And it gets very painful.
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And look, I've done so many weddings over the past 20 some years, so many weddings.
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And I can tell you emphatically that nobody gets into marriage wanting a divorce.
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It doesn't happen.
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I've never seen the wedding ceremony where the vows include something like, "I can't wait to be done with you." Or, "I love you today, but in six months, I will hate you more than anybody on the planet." Nobody thinks that.
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Nobody expects that.
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And when divorce happens, it's always, it's just always so painful.
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And we get through a passage like this, and look, I know some of you are going to be tempted to tune out, because you're going to think, well, you know what, Jeff, you don't know my circumstances.
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And you're right, I don't.
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I don't know your circumstances.
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And I'm certainly not trying to be dismissive of the pain that you've gone through, and I'm certainly not trying to be judgmental for what brought about your divorce, if that's your situation.
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And I'm also keenly aware that I cannot exhaust everything that the Bible says on the subject in just one sermon.
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What I want us all to do, it's nothing new, I just want us to do what we do every week.
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We're just gonna take a giant step back And we're going to see what our Lord says on the subject.
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And we're going to see Jesus speaks on divorce here.
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And I can't undo anything that happened in the past, nor can you as much as we might want to.
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It's gone.
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But I'm hoping with this message that we can prevent any future pain and hurt that comes from divorce.
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So let's look at Matthew chapter five, look at verses 31 and 32.
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Jesus says, "It was also said, "whoever divorces his wife, "let him give her a certificate of divorce.
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"But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.
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And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." What is going on in these verses?
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Well, first of all, look at verse 31.
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Jesus says, "It was also said," what?
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Jesus gives a quote, "Whoever divorces his wife, "let him give her a certificate of divorce." You're like, is that what the Old Testament says?
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Ish.
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Here's the problem.
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This statement was used by the scribes and the Pharisees as a gross misrepresentation of a passage in the Old Testament.
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So does the Old Testament say that?
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Yeah, it kind of does, but they took it a direction that the Lord never intended it to go.
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The scribes and the Pharisees took a passage Deuteronomy, we're gonna look at here in a few moments, and they twisted it for their own purposes.
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Jesus says, "But I say to you," and this is one of the most difficult verses in your Bible.
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Jesus says, "I say, everyone who divorces his wife "except on the grounds of sexual immorality "makes her commit adultery." And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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So here's the short version.
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See the scribes and the Pharisees, as I said, twisted this passage in Deuteronomy and they reduced it to this.
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Look, divorce and remarriage is okay as long as it's legal.
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As long as you do the paperwork, it's fine.
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It's just fine.
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It is just fine.
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And I think it's obvious that Jesus did not agree with their assessment because he said, divorce leads to adultery.
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That's the short version.
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So let's unpack that a little bit today.
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And on your outline, excuse me, or just very simply calling this two problems Jesus has with divorce.
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All right, let's look at these two verses very intently.
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And we see there's two problems that Jesus has with divorce.
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And number one, write this down, divorce trivializes marriage.
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Divorce trivializes marriage.
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That's the problem.
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Quick review, marriage was defined once and for all to the first two people that God created, Adam and Eve.
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And I know there have been attempts to redefine marriage.
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Doesn't matter.
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God defined marriage once and for all.
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With the first two people that he created, Adam and Eve, And the most important verse in your Bible on marriage is Genesis 2:24.
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It says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." That's the most important verse in the Bible about marriage.
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And I can say that emphatically because when Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce, this was the verse he quoted, Matthew 19, Mark 10, when the apostle Paul was writing about marriage and divorce and husband and wife issues, this was the verse he quoted, 1 Corinthians 6, Ephesians 5.
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God's plan in marriage is two people turning into one person.
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That's the plan.
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There's not a relationship on the earth like that.
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Not a business partnership.
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Not members of a sports team.
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There's nothing like the marriage relationship.
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This was God's intention of marriage in the very beginning.
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I want two people to turn into one person.
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And when you study Genesis, you'll see divorce was never part of God's original design for marriage.
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Like, all right, well, if it wasn't part of God's plan, where did divorce come from?
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Where did this idea for divorce come from?
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Well, allowance was made for divorce in the Old Testament law.
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I want you to look at this, we'll put this passage on the screen.
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I want you to look at it very closely because this is the passage that's in question here where Jesus is confronting the scribes and the Pharisees.
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This is from Deuteronomy 24.
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Says, again, Law of Moses here, "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, and then she goes and becomes another man's wife, 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.
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Or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, that's husband number one, may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord.
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And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
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Now listen, it's a tough passage, but we're going to get through this together.
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Here's what Moses was saying.
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Divorce had to have a cause.
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And here it's defined in the law as some quotes, indecency.
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It could have been a natural or a moral or a physical defect or whatever.
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It had to be something that they categorized as unclean, whatever that is.
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This limited the possible reasons for divorce.
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This was the purpose, understand.
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The reason Moses wrote this law was so that a man couldn't just divorce his wife for any reason whatsoever.
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You know, just make up some excuse, something frivolous.
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You know, I'm just divorcing you because I feel like it.
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You know, I don't like the meatloaf you made, or I don't like your new haircut, or, you know, those shoes look horrible.
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You can't just willy-nilly divorce your wife.
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Moses is saying, look, there has to be a reason for the divorce.
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So this was actually to emphasize the importance of marriage.
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Like, well, why would he allow the divorce then?
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Why go through this?
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Don't miss this.
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The purpose of divorce in this case in Deuteronomy 24 was to protect the woman.
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You see, when you give her the certificate of divorce, that woman had legal proof that, listen, she was dismissed from the marriage, but it was not because she was unfaithful.
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You see, that certificate for the woman showed, look, I did not have an affair.
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My husband found something wrong with me and dismissed me, but it wasn't because I was unfaithful.
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That's what's going on in Deuteronomy 24.
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But I want you to see here, listen, because this is where the Pharisees and the scribes missed it.
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In Deuteronomy 24, there is not a command to divorce.
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That passage is just simply describing a scenario.
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In that passage, if we're gonna boil it down, we would say this, they were told to write a certificate of divorce if there was a divorce.
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The only command that you see in this passage, the only one in that passage is this.
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If you divorce your wife, you cannot take her back if she's rejected by her next husband.
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Or if he croaks, you cannot take her back.
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Again, the reason for this was to protect the woman.
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It was to keep women from being used and discarded.
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It was to keep men who are hogs, admittedly, it's to keep men from saying, you know what, I'm going to try out women.
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But you know what?
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My first wife was better than this one.
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So I'm going to get rid of her and I'm gonna take the first one back because I preferred her.
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That's a horrible, horrible way to treat a woman.
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And see, that's the heart of the law here.
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Like God's like, no, no, no, no, no.
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You're not gonna treat women that way, men.
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This isn't a high school relationship.
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boyfriend, girlfriend, on again, off again.
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No, no, no, no, no.
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We're not treating women like that.
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Marriage is a very serious covenant and you're not gonna just have a woman on a leash where you let her go and yank her back and let her go and yank her back.
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No, you are not allowed to do that.
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That's the heart of the law here.
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Deuteronomy 24 was intended to stop divorce from happening willy-nilly.
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Everybody on board with me now?
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Okay, because now I want you to see how the scribes and the Pharisees twisted it.
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Look at verse 31 again in Matthew chapter five.
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Jesus quotes them.
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He says, "It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, "let him give her a certificate of divorce." What the scribes and the Pharisees did was, Through their twisting this passage, they actually made it say the opposite of what God intended.
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They used this passage to justify easy divorce.
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That you can get a divorce for any reason at all, so long as the paperwork is done.
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That's what they reduced this to.
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Like, well, look, you studied the Old Testament, It tells you very plainly, if you get a divorce, make sure that all the documents are filled out appropriately.
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And that's really all that matters, right?
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That's all that matters.
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Just that we signed on the right line and we crossed our Ts and we dotted our Is.
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That's really what matters.
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And as long as you do the paperwork, as long as the divorce is legal, hey, everybody's good with that because everything's above board then, right?
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I mean, I'm not like one of those, I'm not like one of those illegal divorcers, right?
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You know, that I get some, that I get some janky, unofficial, illegal divorce document from online, from the dark webs.
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I'm not like that guy.
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You better be sure that when I get a divorce, it's done right.
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That was their mindset.
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The law of Moses commands divorce to be done legally, so make sure that you do it right.
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And see, that's Jesus' problem with their attitude.
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He says, "Your attitude about divorce trivializes marriage.
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"And you have justified in your minds "the mistreatment of women in the name of making sure "the paperwork is filled out properly." That's not what the law's about, Jesus is saying.
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Now, over the years, I have heard all kinds of unbiblical justifications for people wanting a divorce.
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And I don't even have time to get into all that today.
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And we're going to get to the biblical reason for divorce in a moment.
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We need to stop here and say, "Listen, marriage should not be taken so lightly among God's people. The scribes and the Pharisees were so diligent to make sure that the divorce was done right. We, church, should be so diligent to make sure that the marriage is done right. So that's the first problem Jesus has with divorce. You trivialize marriage. You trivialize marriage. Not on board with that, but Here's the second problem Jesus says I have with your attitude towards divorce, scribes, Pharisees, church in 2025, divorce results in adultery.
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Look at verse 32 again.
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Like I said, this is a difficult verse, but this is what our Lord said.
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Jesus said, "But I say to you, that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
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And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." So Jesus is saying, listen, with divorce, even when the paperwork is done properly, divorce leads to nothing but more and more adultery.
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And I think one of the troubling things about this passage is I could see in my mind that I make choices that cause me to be guilty and suffer consequences for my own choices.
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But it's very clear here in verse 32, Jesus is saying that a choice for a divorce results in other people being guilty of sin.
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That's a tough pill to swallow, but that's what he said.
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What does he mean?
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Well, in Deuteronomy 24, that passage we just looked at, when the woman was divorced for something less than sexual immorality, which by the way, sexual immorality breaks the bond of marriage.
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But in the Deuteronomy 24 case, she was divorced for something less than that, right?
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Jesus said, "Even when you divorce for less than sexual immorality, that still makes for an adulterous situation." Jesus said, "The divorced wife moves on, she consummates a new union when there was no grounds to break the first one.
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And if you do that, if you divorce like that, you are now guilty of adultery.
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And whoever marries that woman is guilty of adultery.
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And whoever marries you is guilty of adultery.
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Jesus is saying when you unbiblically break the marriage covenant and people go off and get remarried, he says now we've resulted in more and more adultery happening in other people.
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That's what he said.
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He says, "Now everybody's guilty." So what Jesus is saying to the scribes and the Pharisees is that you could sit here and say, "Oh, I'm not an adulterer.
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"I have never, I have never "slept with another man's wife.
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"I have never committed adultery." Jesus says, "You shouldn't think that way.
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"Actually, you've made adultery worse because you have such a shallow view of divorce." Jesus said, "You lowered God's standard because all you're focused on is the external." I didn't commit adultery.
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Jesus said, "You did.
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You commit adultery when you look at a woman lustfully.
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It proves that you already had adultery in your heart.
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And furthermore, when you divorce without biblical grounds, which Jesus says is sexual immorality.
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Jesus said, "You have committed adultery and you've made her and you made her new husband commit adultery too." Your sin not only affects you, but it affects so many more people than just you.
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And I really don't have to sell people who have experienced divorce, how far reaching the damage goes.
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The pain is not limited to just the two people in the marriage.
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I mentioned biblical grounds for divorce.
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Biblically, now looking at the whole counsel of God, Biblically, I believe that there is one grounds, one biblical grounds for divorce, and it's hard-heartedness.
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You're like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait.
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How do you know when somebody's hard-hearted?
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'Cause it'd be real easy, right?
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They're like, I'm divorcing you because I think you're hard-hearted.
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Like, how do you know that somebody is hard-hearted?
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Well, biblically, hardheartedness in a marriage manifests in two ways.
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One is abandonment.
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I don't have time to get into all this today, but just jot down 1 Corinthians 7:15.
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Abandonment, when you have a spouse who just walks out of the marriage, I'm not willing to counsel, I'm not willing to reconcile, I'm not willing to consider anything, I'm leaving you, I don't care, I am done, abandonment.
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My best understanding from scripture is that is biblical grounds for divorce.
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When you've tried, but your partner is completely unwilling, that gives evidence that their heart is so hard, they're not willing at all to invest in the covenant.
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Abandonment.
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And the other evidence of hard-heartedness in marriage, what Jesus references here, and that's adultery.
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That's your heart is so hard towards your spouse that you were willing to physically sleep with somebody else.
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It's evidence of a hard heart.
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I want you to listen very closely because even these conditions, even these conditions, Even the issue of adultery does not obligate anyone to divorce.
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Because you study God's Word, God's Word never condones divorce and it never commands divorce.
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There is not one passage in your Bible where God says, "If this happens, I command my people to get a divorce." that it is legitimate, an abandonment and adultery, but it's still not commanded.
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So if you're married, you should do everything that you can to avoid divorce.
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See, the scribes and the Pharisees, they lived their marriages with one hand over the eject seat button.
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It's like, I'm not happy with you for any reason.
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I am done.
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Jesus said, no, no, no, no, no.
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That's not how it should be.
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You should do everything you can to avoid divorce.
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You're like, well, what about abuse?
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What if I'm in a relationship where there's abuse?
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That absolutely should not be happening.
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And listen, if you're in an abusive situation, You need to let me know as soon as possible because we will protect you.
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We will get you out of harm's way.
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We will do everything to keep you from being abused.
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That should not be happening.
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Somebody else would say, "Well, what about neglect?
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"What about detachment?
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"What about my husband's a lazy bum?" Do not be too proud to get biblical counsel.
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Because there's something else I've seen over the last two and a half decades or so.
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No marriage is beyond saving.
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I've seen marriages, I've seen couples come in hours away from filing for divorce, whose marriage ended up in a better place than it ever has been through the result of the ministry of the Word of God.
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If both parties are willing, the marriage can be saved.
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And when we talk about, yes, abuse and neglect and things like that, we have to readily admit that there are extreme cases that require extreme action, 100%.
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But in our day, like in Jesus' day, The vast majority of divorces weren't because of that.
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The vast majority of divorces were motivated by sinful, selfish desires.
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The vast majority of divorces result from people treating people like used cars.
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Like, "Oh, this one isn't working out for me.
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"I thought I would like it, "but I'm not really digging it anymore.
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"I'm just gonna trade it in." That's most divorces.
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And Jesus says, "No, you've reduced the marriage covenant, "you've trivialized it, you've made it purely external, "and now as a result, all kinds of adultery is happening "because you're unwilling to take marriage seriously." That should not be among God's people.
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You know, it's a hard passage.
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What I want us to do, just so I don't want anybody to think that this is some oddball passage.
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This is a one-off.
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Because I want you to turn to Mark chapter 10.
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Because what I want you to see here is Jesus teaching the exact same thing, but in a different context.
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In Mark 10, the context you'll see, they were testing Jesus.
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They were trying to trap Jesus.
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They were always trying to trap Jesus.
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And they thought, "Oh, we know how to trap Jesus.
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We'll ask him about marriage and divorce.
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That'll get him for sure." Why?
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Well, you know the story of John the Baptist.
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He objected to a marriage and divorce and he lost his head.
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And I go, "We get Jesus on that, they'll get him for sure.
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We'll trap him." Now we have context, but I want you to see Jesus teaching the exact same thing, but in a different context.
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Mark 10, verse two, the Pharisees came up and in order to test him, asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" They're like, "We got him, we got him, slam dunk." Because see, if Jesus says no, we're like, Oh, you disagree with the Old Testament, which tells us to get a divorce.
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If Jesus says, no, you shouldn't get a divorce, rather.
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You're disagreeing with the Old Testament.
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But if Jesus says, oh yeah, you can get a divorce.
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Oh, now Jesus is taking marriage lightly.
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And we're gonna get him either way.
32:28-32:33
You know, Jesus is disregarding the seriousness of marriage or he's disregarding what the Old Testament says about divorce.
32:33-32:33
We got him.
32:34-32:34
We got him.
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Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
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I love this.
32:40-32:52
Jesus answered them, "What did Moses command you?" Jesus is like, "What's the Bible say?" Turned it back on them.
32:53-32:59
They said, look at this, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce "and to send her away." Do you see?
32:59-33:01
It's about the stinking paperwork again.
33:03-33:05
That's all they were fixated on.
33:05-33:30
"Moses said, fill out form A-27 and you're good." Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart," there it is, "Because of your hardness of heart, He wrote you this commandment, that from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.
33:30-33:38
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother "and hold fast to his wife, "and the two shall become one flesh." Sound familiar?
33:38-33:39
Genesis 2.24.
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Then Jesus comments on it.
33:43-33:46
He says, "So they're no longer two, but one flesh.
33:46-34:00
"What therefore God has joined together, "let not man separate." Verse 10 says, "And in the house, "the disciples asked him again." It was controversial, wasn't it?
34:00-34:03
The disciples asked him again about this matter.
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And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
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And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
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You see, it's the same teaching.
34:20-34:25
Same two points in this exchange that we see in Matthew chapter five.
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Jesus says you've trivialized marriage.
34:32-34:34
And it just causes more adultery.
34:37-34:47
God takes marriage very seriously, especially to those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ.
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Why is God so...
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Why does God seem so strict about marriage?
34:56-34:58
Why does God seem so serious about marriage?
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It's because divorce ultimately misrepresents God.
35:12-35:24
See, God takes marriage seriously because there's a picture that's to be on display in the marriage.
35:26-35:30
But when that picture is broken, God is misrepresented.
35:31-35:34
Ephesians chapter five tells us what the picture is.
35:36-35:49
It says, "Now as the church submits to Christ, "so also wives should submit in everything "to their husbands." Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
35:49-35:53
See, this is the idea behind marriage.
35:53-35:58
The ultimate goal of marriage is the ultimate goal of everything else in the universe, is to glorify God.
36:00-36:11
And the way God is glorified in your marriage is by demonstrating the relationship that Jesus Christ has with his bride, the church.
36:12-36:25
And in this picture, the wife represents the church, following, submitting, honoring, and the husband is to represent Jesus, loving, leading, laying his life down.
36:27-36:35
And when you live this out, God is glorified and your marriage is blessed.
36:37-36:42
But when you divorce, you're misrepresenting God.
36:44-36:52
So my friends, what are we showing the world about God in the way we conduct ourselves?
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in our marriages.
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Our worship team and communion servers would come up.
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It's only appropriate that we close by gathering around the Lord's table.
37:13-37:17
Like, well, what does this have to do with marriage?
37:19-37:20
The answer is everything.
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Because we gather around the Lord's table, we are reminded that Jesus Christ has a covenant love for us.
37:33-37:36
This love that Jesus Christ has for us is forever.
37:38-37:39
It's never going to change.
37:42-37:48
And even when his bride fails him, and we do.
37:49-37:50
Oh, and we will.
37:52-37:54
Jesus isn't gonna give up on us.
37:57-38:03
This is our reminder of what covenant love looks like.
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And this is a reminder of how covenant love is to be demonstrated in our marriages.
Small Group Discussion
Read Matthew 5:31-32 & Mark 10:2-12
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
What are some beliefs you’ve heard Christians believe about divorce and remarriage? How do these line up with Scripture?
Explain what Jesus meant in Matt 5:32, how someone’s divorce even leads to other people committing adultery.
How exactly would you counsel a trusted Christian friend who is considering divorce?
Breakout
Pray for one another.