Divorce & Remarriage

Well, let me say the outset this morning that there are few subjects that I have personally
struggled with more, both theologically and practically, than the subject of divorce
and remarriage.
And the reason for that is really too fold.
The first is that Jesus, throughout the gospels, makes some incredibly strong statements, both
about divorce and remarriage.
I'll listen again to the verse that we just read a few moments ago, Matthew 532.
I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her
to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
Now in one form or another, Jesus repeats this statement a number of times throughout
the gospels.
In fact, this is one of his milder statements.
If you look at the parallel statement in both Luke and Mark's gospel, then you discover
that what he does is he leaves out what's known as the exception clause, except for marital
unfaithfulness.
Here is how he words it in Luke 16 verse 18, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries
another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
That's pretty strong language.
So Jesus makes some strong statements, and then the second reason the subject is often
giving me a struggle is because it represents, of course, a significant pastoral challenge.
As long as divorce might be, in many instances, from God's point of view, the fact of the
matter is we live in a fallen world, and in a fallen world we have lots of relationships
that fail.
As a matter of fact, statistics in our country tell us that for every ten marriages that
take place in the course of a year, there are 3.7, maybe even a little bit more, marriages
that end in divorce.
That's where the figure of one out of two or one out of three comes from.
It's a little misleading because that doesn't mean that one out of two or one out of three
marriages in the country fails.
It means that for a given number of marriages that take place in the course of a year, half
to one third end up in divorce.
The statistic overall is actually much less, something like 2 or 3% of all marriages,
although statistics also indicate that over a 30-year period, something like 37% of all
marriages are thought to end in divorce.
Very complicated figures, but you get the picture even in the church.
Many of us here have gone through divorce, a number of us have been remarried as the years
have gone by.
And so you can see, pastorally, what an issue that is, not only for pastors like myself,
but for churches as a whole.
How do you uphold a high standard?
The standard that Jesus appears to be teaching in the gospel.
And how, on the other hand, do you deal pastorally in a sensitive and in a compassionate fashion
with those who have struggled in their marriages, whose marriages have failed and who in many
instances have chosen to remarry?
That is the dilemma on the issue of divorce and remarriage.
And I think the best way to try to grapple with that issue this morning together is to
not only understand what it is that Jesus is saying here in the passage you before us,
but also why.
And so let's begin, then, this morning, taking a look at these verses that we have just
read together.
And I want to begin by making the observation that, again, the context is critical, because
the context you will recall is Jesus correcting a misinterpretation that the Pharisees and
the teachers of the law are giving to Old Testament teaching on this subject.
That's why Jesus words it the way that he does.
It has been said, he says, "Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of
divorce, but I tell you, anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness
causes her to become an adulteress.
And anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery."
And Jesus is correcting the Phariseical interpretation of Old Testament teaching on divorce and remarriage.
Now as you may or may not know, there's really only one passage in the Old Testament that
talks in any significant way about divorce and remarriage.
And that is Deuteronomy chapter 24, the first four verses, let's read them together.
If a man marries a woman, these are the words of Moses to Israel, as they're getting ready
to go into the Promised Land, 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.
Three things in that passage I want us to note, the first is that it recognizes the reality
of divorce even among God's covered in people.
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, then these things are supposed to be happening.
Not every marriage is made in heaven, and not every relationship manages to survive.
Some people are incompatible.
They don't have what it takes to do relationships and so terrible as divorce may be in terms
of its consequences and the great pain it might cause to both husband, wife, and certainly
children.
The fact is even among Christians, marriages fail.
As a matter of fact a number of years ago, George Barna, who was a noted researcher, got
himself into all kinds of hot water because his research indicated that the divorce rate,
now listen to this, among conservative evangelical Christians was higher than that in the world.
And that really threw people for a loop because you've heard the expression people
who pray together, stay together, well apparently that's not always the case.
Moses and Deuteronomy 24 recognizes the reality of divorce.
Secondly, he says divorce needs to be regulated in a legal fashion.
He writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house.
And for that is that divorce as well as marriage is not simply a private individual thing.
It has huge social implications.
You need to know who's married and who's not married, less to inadvertently plant your
seed in somebody else's garden or if you assume somebody is committing adultery when in
fact they have been appropriately and properly divorced.
So Moses recognizes the reality of divorce.
He says divorce must be regulated and then most interestingly enough, and this is the
one that really throws you for a loop, he goes on to say that under no circumstances can
a man having gone through this divorce, remarried his first wife if she has been married
a second time, notice how it is worded.
And 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 and 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.
Interesting, isn't it?
Now why is that?
Well listen really carefully, because everything Jesus says in the New Testament about divorce
and remarriage ties in to this issue.
Because from God's point of view what happens in marriage is not just two people who start
living together for whatever convenient reasons under the same roof.
No, you have two people from two different walks of life becoming one flesh, one in spirit,
one in soul and one in body.
That is a mystical union before the face of God.
And when a man divorces his wife under those Old Testament provisions for frivolous reasons
it will talk more about that in a few moments and she ends up having to marry somebody else
to look after her.
That one flesh bond remains unbroken in the eyes of God.
And so now when she marries the second man she actually commits adultery and that bond
defiles her.
And that bond that only defiles her it defiles the land.
Because now if she goes back to her first husband she aggravates the situation and everything
becomes a mess.
Now really understand the importance of what the Bible calls this one flesh relationship.
So here you have Moses's Old Testament provision for dealing with a reality that not everybody
can remain married.
It recognizes the reality of divorce.
It says divorce has to be regulated and it says you cannot remarry your first wife.
And if you study up on religious Jewish divorce laws today you will find that that is still
in effect in Orthodox and Jewish communities.
Now what did the Pharisees do with this kind of Old Testament teaching on divorce and
remarry?
Well you can guess what they did, can't you?
What they did was they stuck to the letter of the law as they always did conveniently
but they ignored the spirit of the law.
And so here is how they interpreted this Old Testament law about divorce and remarriage.
First of all they said it justifies divorce.
That is to say if you can't get along with each other you get rid of each other because
in fact they'll go further than that and they will say under certain situations you are
commanded to divorce.
And that's why we read in Matthew 19 verse 7 they come to Jesus and they say to him why
did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away.
In fact if you look at Jewish divorce laws today then you will discover that when one partner
has committed adultery the other has to divorce even if he or she doesn't want to because
that is their interpretation of the law of Moses.
And they don't understand that what is happening here is that Moses is making provision as
Jesus says later on for the hardness of heart.
There are situations where you can't get along with each other and if you can't get along
with each other rather than fighting all the time it's better to go your own separate
ways.
That is a long shot short of saying you must divorce because Jesus as we'll see in
a few moments applies grace as opposed to the letter of the law.
So they used it to justify divorce not only but they used it to justify divorce for frivolous
reasons and you see that again in the question they asked Jesus in Matthew 193 where the Pharisees
come to him and they say is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every
reason.
See that goes back to Deuteronomy 24 where Moses says if a man marries a woman who becomes
displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her and he writes a certificate
of divorce.
The big question is what does it mean to find something indecent in your wife?
And in the days of Jesus there were two schools of thought.
There was a conservative school of thought and there was a liberal school of thought.
And the conservative school of thought said the indecent thing of which Moses speaks
in Deuteronomy 24 is marital unfaithfulness understood in the context of somebody committing
adultery.
And they said if somebody commits adultery then he asks you have legal and biblical grounds
for divorcing yourself from that person.
But there was a second school of thought that said that doesn't make sense because under
the old covenant of you committed adultery it wasn't just a question of getting divorced
it was a question of being stoned to death.
And they said Moses meant that if you saw something in your wife that you did not like or
if you were more attracted to a more recent model give her a certificate of divorce then
you just tell her to get lost and divorce is alright.
And so these Pharisees they're trying to trick Jesus of course and they're trying to
put him in a situation where he has to contradict what Moses was teaching them and we'll talk
about that in just a few moments.
The net result was this under a legalistic interpretation of the law the Pharisees made
it very easy and very comfortable to divorce for frivolous reasons.
Even today again if you read up on Jewish divorce law you can divorce a woman for any
reason or no reason.
The Talmud specifically says that a man can divorce a woman because he spoiled his dinner
who would not end the few marriages.
Or simply because he finds another woman more attractive.
And the woman's consent to the divorce is not required.
All the man has to do is write a bill of divorce.
So they used it to justify divorce, they used it to justify divorce for frivolous reasons
and then of course they were extremely self-righteous about this.
As long as they did it the right way and the Pharisees were masters at doing it the right
way.
And so even today Jewish divorce laws goes on to say to prevent husbands from divorcing
their wives recklessly or without proper consideration, what do their wives do?
They created a system of complex rules regarding the process of writing the document, the
delivery and its acceptance.
In other words they strain out the net, they swallow the camel and they try to build in
protection by doing the letter of the law.
But what's the upshot of all of this?
Well the upshot of all of this as you can imagine is that women and children were left if not
completely without defense, virtually without defense.
It was up to the man, if he didn't want her, he got rid of her.
As long as he followed proper procedure she had no recourse and so the net result is that
often in situations like that a woman would be forced to take up with another man because
of course in that culture unless the woman was independently wealthy, she had no means
of support.
And so that's what Jesus takes all on here in Matthew 531 when he says it has been said
anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce but I tell you
that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness causes her to become
an adulteress and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
And so we can summarize the teaching of Jesus in this fashion.
First of all he says divorce was never God's intention.
He says in Matthew 19, "Haven't you read that at the beginning the creator made the
male and female and said for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and
be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one.
Therefore what God has joined together let not man separate.
Now I got to tell you I love the King James let not man put a sunder.
And here you're back to this one union flesh, this one flesh union.
In marriage a man and a woman come together and they are joined in spirit and they're
joined in soul and they're joined in body.
And for a marriage to be successful and for a relationship to be successful and this
is very helpful for young people to understand particularly as they contemplate marriage.
One's order is you begin with a spiritual union.
You progress to an emotional union and you climax it with a physical union.
That is to say first you make sure that you're on the same wavelength together.
You're serving God.
You're committed to his kingdom.
The Bible talks in very negative terms about relationships that are unequally yoked, why?
Because if you have a wife that is trying to follow the Lord and a husband who is not
trying to follow the Lord you're always going to be going in different directions everything
will become an issue.
Sunday morning rolls around you want to go to church.
You want to go fishing with his buddies.
Saturday night rolls around.
You want to prepare for a Sunday maybe prepare for teaching a Sunday school class.
He wants to go out and quarouse with his friends and try as you might.
The only reason unequally yoked marriage is seemed to work for a season is because one
or the other is compromising their set of values.
The more you grow in Christ and the more your other partner does not the more spiritually
you're going to be mismatched and people sometimes say, "Well, you know, the unbelieving
partner will become a Christian through the witness of the believing partner and sometimes
indeed that's what happens and when it does it is a wonderful gift of God's grace."
But I've been around long enough to know that for every one time that happens at a 10,
nine times at a 10, it goes the other way.
And the person who started out being a committed Christian ends up in many instances compromising
his or her values because otherwise it's to live intention all the time.
It begins with a spiritual union and then it progresses into an emotional union.
There is a liking of each other, a similarity of interests, a comfortableness with each
other, a place where you can just really admire respect and love each other.
And then is that relationship deepens and people enter into a covenant relationship
publicly speaking, the sexual aspect of that relationship becomes the capstone of that
spiritual and emotional connectedness.
That's God's order and you don't have to be around the world for very long to know
that the devil tries to reverse the order.
He begins with a physical and if you begin with a physical you don't always get to the
emotional and you certainly don't get to the spiritual and a lot of relationships never
blamed, never get off on the right footing and never mature and never progress because
they're built upside down and backwards.
Marriage is not just about sex, it is about the sum total of two lives becoming intertwined
very few people understand the full impact of that before God.
You become a one-flesh relationship.
That's why after you split up it's like a piece of you is missing.
That's why a lot of people when they go from one relationship into another into another
relationship after a while they don't know who they are anymore because they have left
pieces of themselves behind.
That doesn't mean they can't be restored, doesn't mean they can't be redeemed, doesn't
mean you end up living with that brokenness for the rest of your life but please hear
me and understand me.
That does a lot more happening when two bodies connect, then sex.
It makes us one in spirit and once we are one in spirit we are infused into each other
and that was God's original intention and so Jesus says God's original intention was
not to make divorce mandatory even in cases of adultery but rather it's always been God's
intention.
Whatever else happens, try to honor the one-flesh relationship.
You see the difference between recognizing what God values and what we ought to be striving
for and the theoretical interpretation that says well you don't like each other, good
rid of each other and on with life you go.
So that's the first thing you've heard it said but I tell you the one-flesh union is critical.
Secondly he goes on to point out then that Moses, what Moses teaches in Deuteronomy 24
about divorce is only a concession geared to the hardness of heart.
Remember that earlier conversation why did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate
of divorce and center away and Jesus has answered he permitted you to divorce your wives because
your hearts were hard but it was not this way from the beginning.
Why did Moses allow for divorce because he recognized that divorce was a reality even
among the people of Israel and why was it a reality because people's hearts were hard
in it.
See the fact of the matter is that no matter how much God is committed to this one-flesh
relationship and no matter how much God wants us to stick it out until death do us part.
Fact of the matter is some people can't do relationships.
Some people are too broken, some people are too wounded, some people are too stubborn,
some people are too rebellious.
Don't ever think that just because a marriage falls apart, that that automatically means
people are wicked and bad.
Now it often means that people desperately want to make this work but the dynamics between
the two of them is of such a nature that they don't have what it takes to overcome difficulties,
they can humble themselves before each other, little issues mount and more heals become
mountains and before you know it it cascades into rejection and recrimination and try
as you might, the end up going in different directions.
Now when that happens you can do one of two things.
You can try to stay together, fight it out for the rest of your lives and kill each other.
Or Moses says you can recognize, listen, this is not ideal, we can't do this, we're failing
at it for the sake of peace, let's separate.
That is the concession that Moses makes for the hardness of heart.
There are some people that should never get married, you know that?
And there are some people that should never marry each other, why?
Because they ain't got what it takes to do their relationship.
Is that tragic?
Yes.
Is that a blight in the name of God?
Yes, especially when we're Christians.
Is it reality?
You bet your bottom dollar.
And even the Apostle Paul in the New Testament talks about a believer and an unbeliever
being married and there being nothing but conflict in that relationship.
The unbelieving partner wants to leave and God says in that instance you let him go, why?
Because God has called you to peace.
So here's what Jesus says, divorce was never God's intention.
God has always been emphatic on the one flesh relationship, rather it is only a concession
geared to the hardness of heart.
And then says Jesus, and this is where it becomes really interesting, the only biblical ground
for divorce where you can legitimately enter into it is marital unfaithfulness.
In other words, he sides with the conservative interpretation of the Mosaic law that says
you can send your wife away if you find in her some indecency.
Now again, walk this through with me because we need to understand why this is such a critical
issue from a biblical point of view.
It goes back to the one flesh relationship.
Remember, God is obsessively concerned about this one flesh relationship between a man
and a woman that ought not to be severed until death to your part.
Now when you sow your seed and somebody else's garden, when you commit adultery, then by
that act of adultery, you are breaking that original one flesh commitment.
And the person who is quote unquote innocent in that relationship is then allowed by God,
not only to divorce, but to remarry because the one flesh relationship has already been
broken by the adultery.
That s why Jesus says, if you divorce your wife, accept for marital unfaithfulness.
You are committing adultery.
Now raises all kinds of questions, doesn t that?
What exactly comprises marital unfaithfulness?
Is it just literal adultery?
What about the wife who refuses to ever give herself physically to her husband?
What about the husband who may not physically cross the line but who emotionally has his
heart engaged someplace else?
What about the woman who nags her husband to death that makes life hell?
At one point is marital unfaithfulness, a breaking of this one flesh bond.
And at one point is it end legitimate grounds for divorce because that has huge implications,
not only for divorce, but also for remarry.
So those are the issues the church has struggled with over the years.
Those are also the issues our society has struggled with over the years and every time divorce
laws are changed or have been changed.
That is the controversy that is at the root of what is really happening.
In the middle of all of this, how do you apply grace is adultery the unpardonable scene?
Does it mean if I have committed adultery that I can never ever remarry with God's blessing?
Do I always have to go around wearing a big "A" on my forehead because I have failed?
How do you uphold a high view of what Scripture teaches about this one flesh relationship as
Jesus, quoted Moses, has just spelled it out for us, and how do you pass really live
in a real world where we live in a real scene and real failure and need real forgiveness
and real help?
Well, Lord willing, next Sunday morning, we're going to come back to that and you need to
give some thought in your own heart and in your own mind about what does Scripture really
teach?
How can we live in community?
We can have a high view of Scripture and yet where we can extend grace to one another
in a way that makes life honorable and noble in the sight of God.
Change my heart, O God, make it ever true, change my heart, O God, may I be like you.
Change my heart.
Change my heart, O God, make it ever true, change my heart, O God, may I be like you.
You are the butter I have been made for me and may be this is what I pray.
Change my heart, O God, make it ever true, change my heart, O God, may I be like you.
You are the butter I have been made for me and may be this is what I pray.
Change my heart, O God, make it ever true, change my heart, O God, may I be like you.