“What God Has Joined Together…”
Matthew 19:1-12
January 6, 2008
NOTE: THE ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE FORMAT USED IN MY MESSAGES IS BORROWED FROM ANDY STANLEY’S BOOK, "COMMUNICATING FOR A CHANGE."
Me: Next month my wife and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.
Some of you think of that and go, “Man, you ARE old!” Others might think, “No wonder you LOOK so old.” And others are thinking, “Rookies…”
I hold the record in my family for being married the longest, other than my father and step-mother, who have been married ten years longer than Debra and I.
I’m thrilled to call Debra my wife and in spite of what she says to her mother, she’s thrilled to be married to me. At least I think…
And once in a while, one of my kiddos will say, “Dad, I’m glad you and Mom married each other.” And that makes me smile.
But I’ve also seen the break-up of marriages among my family. It’s sad to see your family members hurting, and seeing a marriage dissolve in spite of the vows that were made in the midst of emotional highs.
We: I would guess that everyone in here knows someone who has been divorced, and some of you here have been divorced yourself.
You’ve either seen the pain, or you’ve experienced it for yourself.
And you think back to your wedding and wonder how it could have gone wrong, and what you or your spouse could have done differently.
If you’re remarried, you’re determined to make this one work.
All of us who are married or looking to be married want it to last, don’t we?
I think that if we can grasp what Jesus is trying to tell us in Matthew 19, we will go a long way to ensuring a marriage that will last a lifetime.
I want to let you know right now that the purpose of today’s message isn’t to lay a guilt trip on anybody if they’re divorced.
I’m simply not interested in doing that, but more importantly, that’s not the point of the passage of Scripture that we’re looking at today.
So please don’t think that I’m here to beat anyone up about that, okay?
God: This passage is one of the most discussed and argued about passages of Scripture.
And believe me, I was tempted to just skip over it, because Jesus is repeating a bit of what He said in the Sermon on the Mount, and because I wasn’t sure I could do this passage justice.
But I was convicted that I needed to wrestle with this, because one of the jobs of pastors is to marry people, some of whom are divorced prior to the wedding I’m officiating at.
And one of the responsibilities of pastors is to make sure that we are not officiating at weddings that are not allowed in Scripture.
One of those restrictions is that a believer cannot marry an unbeliever. That one is very clear, and while it’s never fun, it is one that I can enforce with no problem, because Scripture is completely clear about that.
Another no-brainer for pastors is not marrying people to animals. Believe it or not, it happens in other countries, as people will marry animals to ward off punishment for their harsh treatment of animals before then.
Aren’t you glad that Christianity isn’t like THAT? I am, that’s for sure!
“Hey, PB! I got this here guinea pig I’d like to marry. I used to torture them when I was a kid, and I’d like to get rid of a bunch of bad karma…”
Another one that should be a no-brainer, but unfortunately is becoming less so in our society is marrying people of the same sex. It goes against Scripture, but God’s Word isn’t good enough for some people…
But when it comes to marrying people who have been divorced, the issue becomes very sticky, and one of the reasons is because of this passage we’re looking at today.
What I want to share with you today doesn’t lend itself to a nice and tidy sermon outline that you can fill out.
So I’d just like you to sit and let some things sink in, and if God puts something on your heart that you’d like to put down on the note-taking guide, then that’s cool.
I do have some application-type stuff near the end that you can fill out.
Matthew 19:1-9 (p. 696) –
1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
4 "Haven’t you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ’made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
7 "Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
8 Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
The crux of the problem presented by this passage lies in verse 9.
The NIV takes the words “marital unfaithfulness” from the Greek word, “porneia,” and while you can guess what particular English word is based on that Greek word, the fact of the matter is that there is a ton of discussion about just what this word means in this context.
In just one commentary I found 7 different opinions of what this Greek word is supposed to cover.
Is it adultery? Incest? Other lewd acts? Some are narrow in their interpretation, others are quite wide in what they include in it.
There are lots of question as to what it all entails, and therefore, lots of questions about under what conditions a person may divorce and under what conditions can a divorced person remarry.
Some commentators say that divorce is simply not an option unless there is a particular sin present, and therefore remarriage is simply not an option.
Others say that remarriage is an option depending on the circumstances of the divorce, if one or the other spouse is engaged in “marital unfaithfulness.”
The Pharisees are referencing a part of Deuteronomy where Moses permitted divorce, and it’s important that we look at the idea behind what God permitted in Moses’ time.
And yet, the commentators still have a hard time with that, because in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the phrase used for which divorce was allowed was “something indecent,” and that could have meant any number of things including adultery, incest, homosexual behavior and other things.
One of the major opinions around in Jesus’ time was that this referred to “unchasity.” But another opinion that was widely held and taught was that “something indecent” included things like cooking a bad meal.
Some of you are REALLY glad that’s not the prevailing opinion nowadays, aren’t you? And some of you might be wishing that was a valid reason, but it’s not really!
So I hate to tell you this, the situation is not nearly as cut and dry and as it may appear to some, maybe even some in here today. It’s something that many conservative Christian and Jewish commentators disagree about and struggle with; even in light the apostle Paul’s words later in 1 Corinthians.
But I find something even more important in Jesus’ words here. Jesus puts the focus of the discussion not on divorce, but on marriage, and that’s what I’d like to spend the next few minutes on.
Because I guarantee you that no matter what I say about whether or not divorce and remarriage are acceptable and under what circumstances, some here will probably disagree with me.
And let me tell you, I’m still working through this. So I’m not coming to you as someone who thinks they’ve got it all figured out, because I don’t.
So let’s go back to verses 4-6, shall we?
4 "Haven’t you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator ’made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Folks, marriage is rooted not in social contracts, not in social or even religious expectations, but in creation.
And Jesus says that, argue all you want about when divorce is acceptable, the fact of the matter is that divorce is not what God designed, and is in fact, a tearing apart of the wonderful union that God designed into marriage.
God created marriage as part of His wonderful plan when He was putting all this together!
When I meet with couples for pre-marital counseling, I discuss the fact that God invented marriage – it was part of the creation story, and because God invented marriage, we need to listen to what He says about it.
And one of the things He says about it is that it was intended to be permanent.
In marriage it’s not just two people standing before a minister or civil authority, saying some nice words that would be forgotten if it weren’t for the fact that the ceremony was videoed.
Marriage is God, Himself, joining two people together in such a way that they become one heart and one flesh.
So many people throw marriage aside saying, “It’s just a piece of paper.” But how mistaken they are.
Yes, there are legalities involved, but it goes way beyond the marriage license.
It is a coming together in the sight of God to be part of something that He invented and ordained as His plan for the family on earth.
To dismiss it with a cavalier attitude and wave of the hand of inconvenience is to spit in the face of God Almighty and say that His plan in creation was just stupid, getting in the way of our casual sexual relationship.
“How dare He do that?! Just because He’s God and all, and He invented it to bring glory to Himself, and He’s the Creator, and gets to make the rules, that’s all!
At times I’ve turned down opportunities to do weddings, because I don’t think the couple is ready or because I don’t think they have the right attitude toward it.
And we spend a lot of time discussing the vows a couple is making because they are saying that they understand that God is the One they are making the vows to, and God takes vows very seriously.
Because in spite of society’s view that marriage is something that can be thrown away as easily as yesterday’s garbage, God says that marriage was intended to be a permanent situation.
Folks, here’s the bottom line of what I think Jesus is trying to say here:
Marriage is rooted in creation, not convenience.
And therefore, it should be viewed as a permanent, God-instituted, God-ordained, and God-bonded relationship between a man and a woman.
You: So in light of all that, let me offer you some suggestions that I think can help us as we work to go against the grain of society’s shallow view of marriage.
1. If you are married, ask God to
reinforce your marriage to reflect the permanence of His creation all the more.
2. If you are divorced, and maybe you
can’t say that you divorced for the reason of “marital unfaithfulness,” then receive God’s forgiveness.
A number of divorced persons sit in churches wondering if they are accepted by God and the church because they’ve been divorced and possibly remarried.
I don’t think you need me or anyone else to try and nit-pick about why you’re divorced and/or if your remarriage was okay in God’s sight.
And while I don’t want to come off as not caring, I want to make sure that I do come off as offering grace.
I’ve never been divorced, so I won’t pretend to know everything involved and the emotions that are part of such a decision.
But I do want to offer you a place where you can simply rest in God’s forgiveness and desire to bless you as you live for Him from this point on.
3. If you are single, then commit to
marrying only someone who understands the permanence of marriage rooted in God’s creation.
By the way, it could be that you never marry. We’re going to discuss that a bit next week.
But should you find yourself exploring the idea of matrimony, you need to make sure that your possible spouse understands the permanence that God intended for marriage.
We: Marriage is too important for any of us to have a casual attitude toward it.
Unfortunately, many in the Church of Christ have just that attitude. The divorce rate among Christians is not much better than that of those who don’t claim to be Christians.
And yet the Bible says that marriage is a picture of the love that Christ has for the church.
So why is divorce so rampant among the church?
I think it’s because the church has bought into the world’s view of marriage, instead of being an influence for the permanence of marriage rooted in God’s creation.
So my heart for all of us here is that whether you are married, single, divorced, remarried, or whatever, that you will do you can to reinforce God’s view of marriage.
Let the world see that we rejoice in God’s plan instead of seeing it as a ball and chain around our enjoyment of life.
And let the world see that when we choose to live in God’s plans, life is joyous and full, even during those times when we have to live out the part where we say, “for better, for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health; ‘til death do us part.”
Let them see the love of Christ for them as they see the love of Christ in you for each other – for the glory of God.
