BST No.9 Divorce

Mark chapter 10 from the first verse. Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again, crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? What did Moses command you? He replied. They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law, Jesus replied.

But at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man will leave his father and 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 man not separate. When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery. May God enable us to take in and understand his word this evening. Yes, Lord.

♪ Lord, to be alone with you ♪ To be still and know you are God ♪ To listen to your voice ♪ To dwell within your peace ♪ Brings joy overflowing to my soul ♪ Lord, to walk through life with you ♪ And to know that we'll not part ♪ To lean on you in trials and rejoice in victory ♪ Brings peace overflowing to my soul ♪ Lord, to know your shepherd's love ♪ Though I'm weak, you make me strong ♪ My faith in you and your everlasting love ♪ Brings praise overflowing from my soul ♪ Still is Jesus, he who died ♪ Yet lives, for he is risen ♪ His life hath paid the price for me ♪ Oh, lift his holy name ♪ For you alone are worthy, Lord ♪ Of honor, glory, power, and praise ♪ Oh, Jesus, Jesus ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ Oh, Jesus, Jesus ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah We just come before your throne as we look into a very controversial and a very essential subject for Christian people and indeed even for those who are not Christian. We ask, Lord, that as we work out some of the implications of the gospel message, rather than just the gospel itself, tonight that you'll be with us. We are largely representative of a young congregation here and we thank you for this and we just pray that you'll help the concentration of our younger friends as we come to grips with one of the most important issues that confronts us outside of our salvation.

Help us in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen. Now I'd like you to have your Bibles open at Mark's gospel in chapter 10.

Mark's gospel in chapter 10 and I shall in a little while be making reference to these verses. We're compelled to look at this question of marriage and divorce inasmuch as my colleague Ted Davey has said it's been our practice up to Christmas to look on a Sunday evening into Mark's gospel. We've worked through it reasonably systematically taking a fair passage at a time and endeavouring to lift out particularly aspects that relate to the gospel.

And it didn't seem right to me to leap over these first 10 verses of Mark 10 simply because this subject is somewhat controversial. So we're coming to inquire into the teaching of God's word right now and it seems to me that there are several other factors besides the situation we find ourselves in of working through Mark's gospel which might encourage us on a Sunday night to look at the question of divorce and indeed the whole question of healthy marriages. What are those reasons? Well, because marriages today are under threat.

Of that there can be no doubt. I quoted you one industrial city in the north of England where marriage breakdown is running at one in three and some moving towards one in two. And then there's another reason why I think there needs to be a firm restatement of the Christian view of marriage.

And for want of a better term it's because of what I would call the Dallas mentality. I boasted before that I'm one of the few peculiar people in the world that has never seen an episode of Dallas. And I'm not particularly gunning for that program because I think from what I gather of its contents, it's representative of so much other rubbish on the television, where taken for granted is infidelity.

And when this is pushed out time and time again across our screen and across our radio sets and in books that we peruse, the possibility is, if not the nigh-on certainty, that we are going to accept as a norm what is biblically regarded as being unorthodox. The idea of going from one woman to another woman, from one man to another man. A book which has had phenomenal sales in the United States of America with good reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post has been written by the editor of that so-called sophisticated woman's magazine, Cosmopolitan.

And in this 500-page book entitled Having It All, there is a so-called defense of this new permissiveness of this anti-biblical concept that a woman can gain satisfaction from several illicit relationships as she still entertains a marital bond. Utter non-biblical conclusions are drawn and the advice that is proffered is therefore unhelpful and unhealthy. And perhaps it wouldn't be so bad coming from this woman unless you recognize that Cosmopolitan magazine is widely sold throughout the world across 17 different countries.

And there is another reason why I think that we ought to be looking at the question of marriage and divorce. And that is the consequences that the breakdown of marriage is having not just upon the offended party but upon our children. Now, it seems to me that when you come to Mark's Gospel and the 10th chapter, it's not accidental that the three verses or four verses following the ones that Ted read to us have to deal with the Lord Jesus taking little children to Himself and blessing them.

Now, I don't feel that the narrative, the order of narrative in Scripture is accidental. I believe that the inspiration of the Spirit caused one event to be recorded after a preceding event. And here in the opening of Mark's 10th chapter, reference is made not so much to marriage or rather not so much to divorce but the indissolubility of marriage and the importance of children and the recognition that Jesus gives to children as though the two are linked as indeed they are.

I tried to argue last week and touched on this week the fact that on a Sunday morning as we've been going through Ephesians, the fact that the devil is launching an assault upon marriages and upon the concept of the family. And here is the teaching of our Lord on marriage and on children linked together in what is it? Some 16 verses of Scripture. So then, let's come to this passage and deal with it.

Obviously not covering as I think was indicated by David or maybe it was in a prayer that he had with us on the elder before this meeting commenced. Not dealing with every aspect, that would be impossible but highlighting some of the more essential and the more obvious points that our Lord brings to our attention. Here is our Lord Jesus and he's described in the first verse as moving from Judea or into Judea across the Jordan.

In other words, he's coming from his home territory of Galilee towards Jerusalem. Now, when Jesus moved around in his ministry he didn't need a publicity machine. He didn't need large handouts of tracts as we hope you're going to do this coming week advertising that Dick Saunders will be preaching here next Sunday.

Our Lord did not need this particular means of attracting folk to himself. Why? Well, because his reputation was widespread and in Jerusalem it was well known that he was making his way towards the capital city of Palestine and as he neared Jerusalem many people came out. We read in the second part of verse 1. They came to listen to him and he's always willing to teach.

Now, amongst the community of people who came to Jesus were those who wanted to know and those who wanted to ensnare, those who wanted to trap him. And so we find these disagreeable people, at least they're very often disagreeable as recorded in Mark's Gospel, who are also in with the audience and they try to ensnare the Savior, the Pharisees. We've come across them in the second chapter and also in the third chapter of this book.

And what they put up to Jesus is a question that is designed to trap him. Some Pharisees came and tested him. They've done this before, you remember, in regard to keeping the Sabbath, in regard to healing on a Sunday, or on a Sabbath day rather, in regard to this matter of who is able to forgive sins.

Well, they come to trap the Lord Jesus and they put up this question, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Now, in what way was that a trap? Well, do you remember, and here I'm asking you to shake your heads and really get your minds throwing back from your subconscious what I tried to teach you some months ago here on a Sunday evening. Do you remember a case of an unorthodox marriage in Mark's Gospel? Well, you should do. In the sixth chapter of Mark's Gospel we are confronted with the position of a man called Herod.

Herod the king. The king of northern Palestine. And Herod has taken to himself a woman whose name is pretty similar to his own, Herodias, and he's married her.

Now, the reason why that was unorthodox is that Herodias was already married. And so here they are in their palace in northern Palestine and somebody comes into the banqueting area of the palace and denounces their illicit relationship. His name, you guessed, John the Baptist.

And the Baptist says to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother Philip's wife. And as a result of the stand that John the Baptist took on the sanctity of marriage, he was killed. He was done to death.

Now, Jesus is moving towards Jerusalem, all right? Who will be at Jerusalem when he arrives? Well, there'll be many thousands of Jews and there'll be the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. But there will also be the political leader of northern Galilee, Herod. Here is the trap.

Whose side are you on in this business of marriage? Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? In the parallel reading, that means a reading that covers the same ground as this, but it's a little wider. It contains more information. In Matthew's Gospel, chapter 19, the question is, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? So the Pharisees put this question to the Lord Jesus.

On whose side, in this marital situation, do you put yourself? And maybe there was another reason why they were trying to trap him. You see, as with many political parties, the Pharisees didn't represent just one. You know that within the Labour Party there is the right wing and the left wing, and similarly with the Tory Party.

Well, also with the Pharisees. On this issue of marriage, there were those who were saying that a man could divorce his wife almost at whim. I'm not joking when I say that if she produced him a bad meal, he could say three times, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you, and that was the end.

And there were some Pharisees who were saying that this lax approach to marriage was quite in order. And there were other Pharisees who were saying, no, you can't just dismiss your wife like that. It must be for some reasonable default, defect on her part.

And it must really be as a result of her sexual misconduct. Well, where did Jesus find himself? On which side did he put himself? On the side of Herod? On the side of John the Baptist? On the side of the lax group within the Pharisees? Or on the side of the sterner, on the side of the stricter sect? Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? Well, that's the question that's put in the second verse. So Jesus replies, look at verse three.

He replies with a question himself. He often does this. He tries to get them thinking.

And so he says to them, well, what did Moses tell you? Now, you're probably aware that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. That is, he edited the first five books of the Bible. And the Lord Jesus is endeavoring to discover from the Pharisees what they have learned of the teachings of Moses.

Now, there are several places that perhaps they could have turned their attention to in responding to Jesus' question. And the one that they opted for is in the 24th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. And their reference is made to Moses' teaching on divorce.

And Moses apparently had told the people that if a man was to divorce his wife, there were certain restrictions that were to be imposed upon her. Three things that Moses seems to have in mind in putting down this teaching. First of all, he doesn't want a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all.

Because in the days that Moses lived, as today, marriage was very much under threat. And so Moses, wanting to stop this lax approach to marriage, says that if a man is to divorce his wife, then he must give her a certificate. Now, why is a certificate of divorce necessary in Moses' time? Well, for this reason.

You see, the Jewish law was very much against women, as the Roman law was very much against women. The Jewish law permitted a man to divorce his wife, but it didn't permit a woman to divorce her husband. So you can see the terrible dilemma that a woman might be in.

Here is this man, and he says, I don't want you anymore. And he goes off with someone else. And maybe she decides to remarry.

Or maybe she is physically involved with another man, and she has got no proof at all of the breakdown of her initial marriage. Well, Moses wants to stop this. And so he says that if a woman is divorced, then a certificate must be given to her.

And he also says this in those opening verses of Deuteronomy 24, that if a woman has been divorced, and the man remarries, and that second marriage breaks down, and he wants to return to his original partner, he cannot do that. Moses is teaching that one cannot play fast and loose in this marriage relationship. One has to deal with it seriously.

And so they bring to Jesus the suggestion that this is what Moses taught in the fourth verse. Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. Now, what's Jesus' view on this? Was it right? Did Moses get it right? Or is there something else that ought to be brought into consideration? Well, let's go to the fifth verse.

Why did Moses allow this? Well, the Lord Jesus replies, It was because of your hardness of heart. What does he mean by that? Well, the Mosaic law, the rules that Moses brought in the name of God to the people, were rules that were given to deal with a sinful generation. In other words, this business of divorce, ideally speaking, it should never have happened in any case.

But it did happen. And Moses was presented with this terrible problem of womenfolk being very badly used indeed. And so to secure their position, he brings out this whole business of divorce and the issuing of a divorce certificate.

But it's because of your hardness of heart, says the Lord Jesus. Ideally, originally, verse 6, at the beginning of creation, God didn't intend this to happen. And he quotes back to Genesis 1, from which the Pharisees could have quoted, but they decided that they would opt for Deuteronomy 24.

And he quotes from Genesis 2 and 3. And he gathers together the teaching, and he shows how at the beginning, ideally, the Lord God made man and woman for each other. And he goes on, verse 7, quoting Genesis, for this reason a man will leave his father and 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.

When God made a partner for Adam, he only made one woman. You heard about the schoolboy who said of Christianity, Christianity only allows for one wife, and that is called monotony. In one sense, it's true.

If monotony means staying with the same thing, or in marriage, with the same person, time after time, month after month, year after year. God only made one Eve for Adam. Put the other way, there was only one Adam for Eve.

This was God's original ideal plan for man and for woman, and they were so tailor-made for each other that God indicates that seen apart, after they have been married, then there's something strange, there's something lacking. The two will become one flesh. That's why we've got the terminology, the colloquial expression, our better half.

As though you don't function properly after you've been married, if for any length of time you're away from one another. That's when Rowena was in South Africa during these past two weeks. Everything that conceivably could have gone wrong in her home did.

The cooker broke down, the fridge broke down, the car broke down, the cat had diarrhea, and I finished up having to ring Abba carpet services to get the place clean just for when Rowena came back. Functioning on three cylinders instead of six, it was a hopeless business. See, when God designed man for woman and woman for man, he designed to make them complete, to function together, so that if they're separated at all, then there's something wrong.

This is what God has in mind as ideally the situation for marriage. Thus, verse 9, therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate. So let's just break off for a moment or two.

I followed through the Lord Jesus' teaching as he's gone back to Genesis 1 and 3, but let me put up this question. What do you think marriage is? If I asked you to define marriage today, what would you say? Well, there are three answers that are given. First of all, the Catholic Church will tell us that marriage is a sacrament.

That means to say that you're not properly married outside of the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church can dispense grace, can dispense permission to get married. It's a sacrament inasmuch as they believe that the Mass is a sacrament, the turning of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ. And only the priest can do this.

Only the priest has this particular authority. And marriage is on the same basis. It can only really be dispensed, be authenticated by Mother Church.

And for a man or a woman so married to break would be as bad as treading the bread and the wine or the body and the blood underfoot and trampling on it. The Catholic Church has a high view of marriage. Unfortunately, there are many exceptions, and you can get your marriage annulled.

And sometimes in history the ones who have managed to do this are the ones with influence and the ones with money. But by and large, one acknowledges the high position that the Catholic Church gives to marriage, even though I fail to comprehend that marriage is a sacrament in the terms that they teach it. The other end of the scale, there are those who say that marriage is agreement.

It's simply that. Here you are, two people, they fall in love, it seems as though they can get things together in terms of their emotions, in terms of a physical relationship, and they're going to live together. And this is the secularist view.

And once again, I'm not necessarily denouncing it inasmuch as there are some who are irreligious people, and yet they're very much bonded together in marriage, and thank God, even for non-Christian marriages that are successful. But it's within that area that the fallout is high, and where the ethic obtains that, well, once she's lost the luster, or once he no longer has an attraction, then you can separate and go your own way. You see, it's just an agreement.

There's nothing more to it than that. But there is another possibility, another option of understanding marriage, and it's not the word sacrament that I'm angling for, nor the word agreement. It's the word covenant.

Now, it seems to me that this is what really describes a biblical marriage. Here are two people, and they come together in church, though not necessarily in church. The time of the Reformation, there were some people who did not believe that marriages must, of necessity, be conducted within a church.

I think it's a reasonable thing to come to church and to have a pastor or a minister to conduct a ceremony. But the thing that is of vital importance, no matter where the marriage is conducted or how the marriage is conducted, two people agree in the sight of God that they are made for one another. The word covenant in the Hebrew takes us to the term cut, and to cut a covenant in the Hebrew idiom is to engage in something of great importance.

And so, in the lovely wedding service of the Church of England, we are told that when one enters into a marriage, one should not do it thoughtlessly or lightly. And indeed, one should not. For what reason? Well, this is the most important covenant.

It's a contract entered into in the sight of God. So, here are these disciples, and indeed these Pharisees who put up the question, the rest of the people, and they're listening to the Lord Jesus, and He is outlining the solemnity of marriage as ideally taught in Scripture. I want to say this to young people.

Don't come to me and ask me to marry you unless you have really thought through the implications of what you're doing. Don't come to me and ask me to marry you if you're careless in your relationships with the opposite sex, if you sleep around, if you anticipate your marriage in a careless fashion and you have no sense of repentance nor remorse. You see, my understanding of marriage makes me say that I have it on a much higher plane than what is commonly taught by the media.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that if in sexual areas you ever get yourself into difficulty, you shouldn't seek counsel. But what I am saying is this, that the man, the woman, the boy, the girl who is trying to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and the teachings of Scripture will look upon marriage as a hallowed thing and their body as a hallowed thing to be used within the terms of reference that Scripture gives for the marital relationship.

Now, it seems to me sometimes when I read Mark 10 and Matthew 19, rather humorous what follows next. You see, in the tenth verse we move from the public to the private. The disciples go back to the house where they've been staying and the Lord Jesus is there.

And here you really need to bring Matthew 19 into the picture. In fact, I think I'll go to Matthew 19 because these disciples are getting very worried indeed. Why are they worried? Well, you see, Jesus has been underlining monogamy or, if you like, monotony.

He has been underlining the fact that there can only be one partner for one partner throughout the whole of this life. And the disciples begin to think that this is impossible. Verse 10 of Matthew 19, the disciples said to Him, the Lord Jesus, if this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.

You see the point? And in one sense you can understand that, can't you? You see, it needs discipline to keep yourself for one person. It needs discipline to concentrate your mind, let alone to discipline your body functions. And here is the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is teaching the solemnity of marriage, one man for one woman.

And the disciples say, well, if this is the situation between a husband and wife, it's better not to marry. But Jesus responds and says, no, not everyone can accept this teaching. And you have to place what I am saying within the gamut of the whole Christian gospel.

You see, marriages in one respect, though I don't believe in the sacramental teaching of the Catholic Church, they are made in heaven. And I do believe that it is possible. In fact, I don't just believe, I preach with absolute certainty.

It is possible for one man to keep himself for one woman and for them to live in happiness throughout the whole of their marriage experience. But that possibility is related to the grace of God. It needs to be worked at.

And it's this that the gospel makes so gloriously possible, as it teaches this dynamic Christian ethic of marriage, that it can get better and better and deeper and deeper, even though from time to time there are difficulties that have to be worked at. And so the Lord Jesus lays down this tremendous, colossal ethic on the sanctity of marriage. But the question obviously has to be faced.

And it seems to be covered by the reply that the Lord Jesus gives to the disciples in the eighth verse of Matthew 19. What happens when one partner in the marriage has committed adultery, if she or he has played fast and loose with the respective partner? And to that the Lord Jesus says this, I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness and marries another woman commits adultery. Now at this point there is a division within the evangelical church in its understanding of that verse.

Following Reverend John Stott and Martin Lloyd-Jones, my own appreciation of that is that there is a permission, though by no means is it mandatory, that when a partner has been played foul by his husband or wife, as the case may be, in the area of infidelity, when every possibility has been made for forgiveness and reconciliation, if that goes beyond the point of any obvious return, he or she is free for remarriage. I believe that there is another case, though there is no time to go into it this evening, also cited by the Apostle Paul in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, where on the part of someone who is a believer, who is deserted by his or her partner, who is not a believer, then they are no longer bound to that marriage. As I recall, my Indian interpreter in North India who was forced into marriage when he was a youngster within the Hindu culture, when he converted to Christianity, his wife left him, his uncles made an attempt on his life and he was ostracized from the family because of his Christian faith.

That is an example I would cite of another occasion where there could be the consideration for remarriage. So then, here is our Lord, making this teaching very clear. He's been asked a question on divorce, but the major part of the answer that He gives underscores the solemnity and the sanctity of marriage.

And therefore, we've got to make these conclusions ourselves. If God places such a high premium on marriage, should not we? I believe that the Bible is God's instructions like the manufacturer gives instructions for a piece of equipment that is retailed. If you bought a television and you wired up the plug in a way that fell foul of the regulations, the instructions within the package, and when you switched on the electricity, the thing blew up, you could not blame the manufacturer.

The fault would lie within yourself. Here are God's teachings on marriage. They're wonderful teachings.

They're possible teachings. They can be literally applied within His grace to any marriage represented here in the tabernacle. If you live your life by them, you can know the greatest of blessings.

You can know what it is despite some of the problems and the difficulties of living with one person all your life, to go deeper and deeper in love and to discover the infinite permutations of becoming one. You can know if your marriage is shaky and on the rocks what it is to recover the ground that you lost. I remember two people coming here several years ago sitting up in this balcony.

They had determined that they would divorce. They heard the gospel, they fell in love with Jesus Christ, and there along they fell back in love with one another. That, I believe, is God's ideal.

We have a picture in the prophecy of Hosea of a man whose wife played him fast and loose. It wasn't just a question of adultery, it was adulteries. It wasn't just a question of an affair, it was prostitution at a most public level.

And when you remember that the man who was sinned against was a prominent preacher in those days, the crime has an enormity all of its own. And yet within the grace of God, this man, far from applying a clause of divorce, holds his heart open towards the love of God and towards the woman. And ultimately, Gomer comes back to Hosea.

The greatest story, or one of the greatest stories in the Old Testament, I wish it could be transferred and screened on the television as opposed to Dallas and the rest of the stuff that we feed our minds on these days. It is possible to recover from the most creaky, the most unpromising marriage situation within the grace of God. And as an attempt is made on the part of both to get things together again.

My final comment. No, the next to final comment. How do we treat those in the tabernacle whose own marital state is, shall we say, unorthodox? We treat them with the same grace and love and firmness as the Lord Jesus Christ treated the lady who was caught in adultery and first dismissed her accusers.

Our hearts are always open to any person who has found themselves maritally or in any other area in trouble. Our concern is to enable this person or this couple to get back onto a right relationship with the Lord. And in the love and in the grace of the gospel, we will minister to you.

We will never bend our own principles to cover an unorthodox situation. We will not call right what is wrong. And those who have found themselves in what I've called an unbiblical relationship, having spelt out two accepted clauses, we would expect you to recognize the normal biblical ethic and even perhaps by negative example of your own mistake be a testimony and an inspiration to other people.

This is what I did. I regret it. This is the mess into which I got myself.

But God in his grace has brought me back and I recognize if I could take my life again, I'd live it by the wisdom of the manufacturer's instructions. My final comment, the most intimate relationship that is possible on planet Earth that I enjoy in my life is not with great respect to my wife. And that would imply to any of my brother elders here in the tab and their wives.

The most important relationship which sometimes in scripture prefigures or is taken as an illustration of or this illustrates that of marriage is a relationship that I have with Jesus Christ. Because the Bible rather beautifully says of Jesus that he is the bridegroom and people like you and me are the bride and he loves us and he wants to be wedded to us but we're unworthy to present ourselves in holy matrimony with him. And so he comes into our world and he dies on the cross of Calvary and his blood cancels out the deepest sins that we have ever committed.

And as a result of acknowledging his love toward us and committing our lives to him we are united with him in a bond that could well be described as a spiritual bond of engagement which awaits the final day of his return for its consummation. From that relationship there is no question of divorce. Jesus never turns anyone back even though spiritually they've committed infidelity he always makes himself available for reconciliation and for repair.

So I commit to you from the depths of my heart with a limited understanding that I have of scripture the doctrine of the sanctity of marriage and the invitation for all of us to ensure that we are wed to our saviour even Jesus the Lord. Amen.