D-I-V-O-R-C-E AND HOW TO STOP IT
INTRODUCTION
A. My assigned topic is “Divorce and How to Stop It in Christian Homes.
B. I wish I could stop every divorce, but I know I can’t. However, if tonight, I can stop just one, I will have meat to eat you know not of.
C. This sermon will touch some more than others, but its purpose is not to prosecute or vindicate anyone, but to see divorce for the sickness it is. Many of you could tell of the pain of D-I-V-O-R-C-E much better than I because my personal knowledge of that pain is that of a grandpa who has not seen a dear little grandson since he was five, and he is now 22 years old.
D. Tammy Wynette captured some of the pain of divorce:
Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man
So we spell out the words we don't want him to understand
Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E
But the words we're hiding from him now
Tears the heart right out of me.
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
Watch him smile, he thinks it Christmas
Or his fifth birthday
And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play
I spell out all the hurtin' words
And turn my head when I speak
'Cause I can't spell away this hurt
That's drippin' down my cheek.
Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today
Me and little J-O-E will be goin' away
I love you both and it will be pure H-E double L for me
Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
E. We begin with faulty views of marriage and divorce.
I. A FAULTY VIEW NUMBER ONE IS VIEWING PEOPLE AS OBJECTS
A. We begin our journey in the Old Testament by looking not at divorce, but at polygamy, which may seem irrelevant to us.
1. God made concessions, as he did with divorce, but he limited the number of wives a man could take; and, under no circumstances, could a wife take more than one husband.
2. Exodus 20:17 may give us some insight into the hearts of the time:
“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
B. Women were the property of men, either their fathers or husbands. So long as those of the opposite sex are viewed as objects to be possessed for our enjoyment, trading old models of husbands or wives for new ones will be as easy as trading cars.
II. THE SECOND FAULTY VIEW THAT CREATES MARRIAGE DILEMMAS INVOLVES HUMAN SEXUALITY.
A. Many of us were born into a world dominated by Victorianism, in which sex is an act designed for procreation in marriage and not something to be enjoyed, especially by the wife.
B. Those born since the sexual revolution have been born into a world in which sex is seen as an activity—a game to be played, as in the lyrics of a song: “…love is a name, sex is a game, forget the name and play the game.”
1. Sex is not something one simply does; it is something we are—male and female in every cell in our bodies, as this statement from Stanford University states:
“No amount of surgery, hormone injections or anything else will change someone's DNA from a man's to a woman's (or vice versa).
As you know, for humans, sex is determined by the presence of a Y chromosome -- humans with an X and a Y chromosome are male and those with two X chromosomes are female. No current (or probably future) technology can replace a chromosome in all of our trillions of cells.
In fact, it probably wouldn't matter if they did. The genes on the Y chromosome sort of get the ball rolling for becoming a male. Once that has happened, the system can go on indefinitely” (Stanford at the Tech/ https://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask35)
C.. There is no such thing as casual sex—uncommitted sex, yes; casual sex, no:
a. Hear Paul: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:16-17).
b. Hear C. S. Lewis as he speaks through the senior tempter Screwtape: “Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love," but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes "one flesh." You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of "being in love" what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call "being in love" is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy” (C. S. Lewis. “The Screwtape Letters,” XVIII).
D. When we take the view that persons are things and sex is an appetite or activity, we have marriage dilemmas, and when we have marriage dilemmas, we have divorce dilemmas
III. OUR BASIC ERROR REGARDING DIVORCE IS TO VIEW GOD’S PROHIBITION OF IT SIMPLY AS A LEGAL CODE AND THE INDISSOLUBILITY OF MARRIAGE, SOMEWHAT LIKE THE DOCTRINE OF THE INDISSOLUBILITY OF THE UNION.
A. Throughout my ministry, which spans 62 years, a firestorm has swirled around Matthew 19 and what is and is not legal in divorce. The Pharisees asked about the law, and Jesus lifted the discussion from what is lawful to what is the mind of God.
“Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
B. The lawyers were not content:
“They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery’” (Matt 19:7-9).
C. Some call this “Jesus’ law of divorce and remarriage.” This is a law in the same sense that the law of gravity is a law. We can violate the law of gravity but not nullify it. When we violate the one-flesh nature of marriage, we do not violate legislation but our own nature, as C. S. Lewis explained so graphically.
D. So long as the discussion is about what is legal, we will have ecclesiastical lawyers who will adjudicate acting as prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys, but we will be no closer to the mind of God than were the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.
E. If there were no divorce laws, secular or divine, there would be the same pain, the same tearing apart of the one flesh, as there is now. Divorce isn’t destructive and painful because God hates it. God hates it because it is destructive and painful.
F. Many people who reject premarital counseling when considering marriage, or marriage counseling when a marriage is struggling for life will seek a preacher of a body of elders to act as either a divorce lawyer or a presiding judge and interpret Matthew 19:1-9 for them—they have already heard conflicting arguments and judgments, but they want someone to render a binding verdict that will excuse them and accuse the other party. I have no authority to examine anyone’s marriage but my own.
G. I shall draw your attention to three laws that trump all others.
1. We often seek to identify the guilty party. Sometimes, this is more difficult than we might think, and we shall see this as we look at the third law. There is no doubt about David’s guilt, and he knew it:
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions” (Psa 51:1).
a. David also knew that a simple “I’m sorry” won’t get it:
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psa 51:17).
b. If you believe repentance is too easy, you’ve never done it.
c. We are faced with a guilty but penitent party. What does the law the law of mercy say?
“For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jam 2:13)
2. We have now come to a second law, the law of redeeming love:
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Eph 5:25-29).
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8).
3. The third law is the law of shared responsibility:
“But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt 5:32)
“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Cor 7:3-5).
CONCLUSION
A. We have considered three things that cause marriage dilemmas, often resulting in the death of those marriages:
1. A faulty view of persons—a thing to be possessed.
2. A faulty view of sex—an appetite or an activity to deny or indulge.
3. A faulty view of divorce—it is not the cause of failed marriages but the death certificate for those that do fail.
B. Are you married? Do everything you can to make it work.
C. Are you unmarried? I leave you to ponder Paul’s advice
(1 Cor 7:8-9)
“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
