Latest / Reformed Thinking / When Divorce Is Easy but Covenant Is Heavy: Jesus on Marriage, Adultery, and Grace (Matthew 5:31–32)

Transcript

When Divorce Is Easy but Covenant Is Heavy: Jesus on Marriage, Adultery, and Grace (Matthew 5:31–32) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. We're doing a deep dive today
• 0:02
  into a topic that feels pretty casual in our culture but
• 0:06
  carries an immense, almost staggering weight in Scripture.
• 0:09
  That's right, we're talking about Christ's standard for
• 0:11
  marriage and divorce. And it's so important that we,
• 0:14
  you know, we really get into this because the modern view
• 0:17
  often treats divorce as almost routine.
• 0:20
  You hear phrases like no fault or just moving on.
• 0:22
  Yeah, very neutral language. Very neutral, and we're going to
• 0:25
  contrast that with the gravity of the Bible assigns to the
• 0:28
  marital bond, which it sees as a covenant, a covenant made before
• 0:32
  God. O our mission for this deep dive
• 0:34
  is to look really closely at that divine standard.
• 0:37
  We'll be focusing on Jesus teachings in the Sermon on the
• 0:40
  Mount, Matthew 5, and how they connect back to the Old
• 0:43
  Testament law. I think the core idea we'll
• 0:46
  unpack is that Jesus wasn't getting rid of the law.
• 0:49
  He was correcting how people were abusing it, how they
• 0:52
  twisted it with their legalism. So he re anchors marriage.
• 0:56
  He re anchors it to God's original design from creation,
• 0:59
  and when he does that, you see that this bond is so much
• 1:03
  heavier, so much more serious than any piece of human
• 1:07
  paperwork. I get that then we have to start
• 1:10
  where scripture starts. We have to back to the
• 1:12
  beginning. OK, so let's go all the way back
• 1:14
  to Genesis. This is where the whole biblical
• 1:18
  idea of relationships is set. U and marriage from the very
• 1:22
  start isn't presented as some human custom.
• 1:26
  No, not at all. It's a divine act, an
• 1:28
  institution that God himself establishes.
• 1:31
  And that's really the critical difference, isn't it?
• 1:33
  It is the nature of marriage is creational and it's covenantal.
• 1:36
  It's a divine joining, not just a human contract that you can,
• 1:40
  you know, renegotiate whenever you feel like it.
• 1:42
  It's not a flexible social. Arrangement.
• 1:44
  Exactly. And that's why Jesus, when he's
• 1:46
  arguing with the Pharisees laid in hand, he goes right back to
• 1:48
  this. He says what?
• 1:49
  Therefore God is joined together, let not man separate.
• 1:53
  That one sentence just completely changes the game.
• 1:56
  It does. It removes human feelings or
• 1:58
  human autonomy as the final judge.
• 2:00
  The decision to break it apart becomes an offense against the
• 2:03
  one who started it. God Hashtag tag.
• 2:06
  Hey Jimmy. Divine institution and one flesh
• 2:08
  union. So the foundational text for all
• 2:11
  of this, I mean, it has to be Genesis 2.24, right?
• 2:13
  Absolutely, that's the one. It details the whole process of
• 2:16
  the one flesh. Union.
• 2:17
  It lays out those three specific actions a man will leave his
• 2:20
  father and mother. All fast to his wife.
• 2:23
  And the two become one flesh. And I think we really need to
• 2:26
  unpack that last phrase. What does 1 flesh actually mean
• 2:30
  here? Well, the three parts together
• 2:32
  describe this total reorientation of life.
• 2:35
  You have a rupture of the first primary bond, your family, and
• 2:39
  the creation of a brand new one. A new primary bond.
• 2:41
  New primary bond and one flesh or basar Akkad in the Hebrew is
• 2:45
  this all-encompassing concept. It's spiritual, physical, even
• 2:49
  legal so. It's more than just a physical
• 2:51
  union. Oh, much more.
• 2:52
  It includes that, of course, but it points to a kind of
• 2:53
  metaphysical merging of two people into one new reality
• 2:57
  before God. They are united in a way that's
• 3:00
  totally new and is meant to be permanent.
• 3:02
  And this idea, this one flesh union, it dictates what marriage
• 3:05
  is for. You see this reflected later in,
• 3:08
  for instance, the Westminster Confession of Faith.
• 3:11
  You do. The confession frames marriage
• 3:13
  as a covenant that God ordered for specific reasons.
• 3:17
  And it lists three of them. That's right.
• 3:18
  First, the mutual help of the husband and wife.
• 3:21
  Second, raising a godly seed which points right back to that
• 3:24
  creation command to be fruitful and multiply.
• 3:27
  And 3rd. The prevention of uncleanness.
• 3:30
  Prevention of uncleanness, which is a very realistic
• 3:33
  acknowledgement of our fallen nature.
• 3:35
  It says that this powerful human drive for intimacy needs to be
• 3:38
  channeled within the boundaries God set up.
• 3:40
  It's a structure for holiness and for stability.
• 3:43
  So the whole theological anchor is this idea that God is the one
• 3:47
  doing the joining, forming this new one flesh reality.
• 3:51
  And that means any talk about divorce has to start from the
• 3:54
  position that this bond is designed to last forever.
• 3:57
  Hashtag tag tag be Divorce is covenant treachery and violence.
• 4:00
  And once you accept that God instituted marriage, well, the
• 4:03
  whole moral status of divorce just shifts completely.
• 4:06
  It's no longer just ending a contract.
• 4:08
  Right. It becomes what the Bible calls
• 4:10
  covenant treachery. You see this so powerfully in
• 4:12
  the prophet Malachi. He's rebuking the men of his day
• 4:16
  for dealing treacherously with the wife of your youth, your
• 4:20
  companion, and your wife by covenant.
• 4:23
  That phrase wife by covenant is so important.
• 4:26
  It wasn't just that they were leaving their wife.
• 4:27
  No, it was that they were betraying A solemn sworn oath, a
• 4:31
  covenant they made in the presence of God himself.
• 4:34
  So it's being unfaithful to the spouse and to God at the same
• 4:37
  time. Absolutely.
• 4:38
  God was the witness to the vow and Malachi.
• 4:41
  Then he really drives the point home with some pretty severe
• 4:44
  language about how God views. This he says God hates divorce.
• 4:47
  He does. He says God hates divorce
• 4:49
  because it is like covering ones garment with violence.
• 4:52
  I mean, that is a dramatic and frankly shocking metaphor.
• 4:55
  Covering ones garment with violence.
• 4:57
  What is that picture supposed to make us feel?
• 5:00
  That's so much more than God disapproves.
• 5:02
  It is in the ancient world your garment often symbolize your
• 5:06
  identity, your public character and the word for violence here
• 5:10
  Hamas in Hebrew it suggests destructive force, injury,
• 5:14
  injustice. So you're.
• 5:15
  Staining your public identity with this act of destruction.
• 5:19
  You are. It suggests that unjust divorce
• 5:22
  is not some morally clean administrative act.
• 5:25
  It's an act of violent treachery against your covenant partner.
• 5:29
  Tearing the relationship apart is like a physical assault that
• 5:31
  leaves a visible, lasting stain on you.
• 5:33
  OK. But that brings us to the big
• 5:35
  question. If marriage is this permanent,
• 5:38
  divine, one flesh covenant, why does the Law of Moses have rules
• 5:42
  for divorce? Right?
• 5:44
  I mean, we're talking about Deuteronomy 24.
• 5:45
  This law seems to acknowledge the practice, even regulated.
• 5:49
  This is where we run smack into the reality of sin.
• 5:51
  The creation ideal was broken, and broken quickly, and Moses is
• 5:55
  a addressing this not by commanding divorce, but by, you
• 5:57
  could say pragmatically regulating an evil that was
• 6:00
  already happening. So Deuteronomy 24 is a
• 6:02
  concession. It is fundamentally A concession
• 6:04
  to a fallen world. It is not an expression of God's
• 6:08
  perfect creational plan. It's a sad recognition of human
• 6:11
  failure. Hashtag tag, Tag A.
• 6:14
  The reason for the concession? And it's Jesus himself who gives
• 6:17
  us the final authoritative interpretation of this law.
• 6:20
  He cuts right through all the rabbinic debates.
• 6:22
  He does, and this is the key moment.
• 6:25
  The Pharisees challenge him, and Jesus confirms that Moses
• 6:28
  allowed divorce. Because of your hardness of
• 6:31
  heart. But from the beginning it was
• 6:33
  not so. That statement is just decisive.
• 6:35
  It roots the legal permission not in God's desire, but in
• 6:38
  human sin. So the.
• 6:40
  Law wasn't a positive command from God like go and divorce.
• 6:44
  It was a response to a negative reality.
• 6:46
  Exactly. It was a response to the sin of
• 6:48
  hard heartedness which was showing itself as cruelty, as
• 6:52
  neglect, as men just abandoning their wives.
• 6:55
  It was a failure of the kind of covenant keeping character God
• 6:58
  demands. So the allowance was a pragmatic
• 7:00
  measure to try and manage the fallout from that sin.
• 7:03
  It was it was a legal restraint on a practice that was already
• 7:06
  happening, rather than some kind of positive endorsement of
• 7:09
  dissolving a marriage. So really, if we want to
• 7:11
  understand Deuteronomy 24 correctly, we have to read it
• 7:14
  through the lens of what Jesus said about.
• 7:15
  It you have to, it's an exception based on sin, not a
• 7:18
  charter for freedom. Hashtag tag tag Chibi B
• 7:22
  Regulation and protection. That's a good way of putting it,
• 7:24
  a charter for freedom. It definitely wasn't a
• 7:28
  celebratory charter of divorce, so let's talk about its
• 7:31
  practical function. Its main purpose was to regulate
• 7:34
  and restrain an evil that was already there.
• 7:37
  It assumed that marriages were failing because of male cruelty
• 7:40
  in a hard hearted culture and it was trying to contain the
• 7:44
  damage. And a huge part of that was
• 7:45
  protecting the vulnerable person in the relationships and in that
• 7:49
  society that was almost always the wife.
• 7:52
  Almost always she had very little economic independence.
• 7:56
  And that's the real intent of the certificate of divorce.
• 7:59
  It was a protective measure. It stopped the woman from being
• 8:02
  treated like, you know, a disposable piece of property.
• 8:05
  Taken and discarded, and then maybe taken back again when the
• 8:08
  husband felt like it. Exactly.
• 8:09
  So by requiring a certificate, the law did a few things.
• 8:12
  It made the whole thing official.
• 8:14
  It forced the husband to slow down and actually consult
• 8:16
  someone to write it out. It also gave the woman legal
• 8:19
  proof of her status so she had permission to remarry.
• 8:22
  It did, but most importantly, it included that rule against the
• 8:26
  first husband remarrying her if she had married someone else in
• 8:29
  the meantime. OK, So that rule, that
• 8:31
  prohibition, what was the point of that?
• 8:34
  It was a powerful check on frivolous divorce.
• 8:38
  A man couldn't just dismiss his wife because he was annoyed with
• 8:40
  her for a week, go try things out with someone else, and then
• 8:43
  decide to take her back. It made the decision final from
• 8:46
  his side. It did.
• 8:48
  It prevented him from trapping her in this cycle of abandonment
• 8:51
  and reclamation. It forced a degree of legal
• 8:54
  seriousness onto what could have been just a casual act of
• 8:57
  cruelty. It put the burden on the hard
• 9:00
  hearted husband. So that's the original intent of
• 9:02
  Moses. A reluctant concession meant to
• 9:05
  restrain sin, Yes. But by the time of Jesus, the
• 9:08
  religious leaders had found a way to flip it on its head and
• 9:11
  use the law to license sin. This is the critical turning
• 9:14
  point. The restraint of Deuteronomy 24
• 9:17
  got completely distorted by religious tradition, and it
• 9:19
  happened mainly through what you could call legalistic
• 9:22
  minimalism. Focusing only on the external
• 9:25
  act. Exactly.
• 9:26
  Ignoring the heart, ignoring the furiousness of the covenant, and
• 9:30
  just focusing on the procedure. And the entire debate in 1st
• 9:34
  century Judaism really hinged on one little phrase in Deuteronomy
• 9:38
  24. One.
• 9:39
  Phrase. A husband could divorce his wife
• 9:41
  if he found some indecency in her.
• 9:45
  The Hebrew is Erwat Davar. And that phrase became the
• 9:48
  theological battleground. It literally means something
• 9:51
  like nakedness of a thing or something indecent.
• 9:54
  Which is vague. It's very vague, and that
• 9:56
  vagueness allowed for two major schools of thought to emerge
• 9:59
  with completely opposite ideas about whether marriage was
• 10:02
  permanent or disposable. So on one side you have the
• 10:04
  stricter school, the school of Shamay.
• 10:07
  Shamay's followers tried to keep a high standard.
• 10:09
  They interpreted indecency to mean serious sexual immorality
• 10:14
  and nothing else. Why?
• 10:15
  What was their reasoning? They argued that the phrase
• 10:18
  airwatt davar was often used in the Old Testament in context
• 10:21
  that had to do with illicit sexual acts, so they wanted to
• 10:24
  keep the exception as narrow as possible to uphold that original
• 10:28
  creational ideal. But then you have the other
• 10:30
  school, the more lenient one from Rabbi Hillel.
• 10:33
  Right. And Hill School was
• 10:35
  unfortunately the one that became much more popular.
• 10:38
  And this is where the distortion really takes off.
• 10:40
  Because they just blew the definition wide open.
• 10:42
  They did. They argued that some indecency
• 10:45
  could mean literally anything that displeased the husband.
• 10:49
  His subjective preference became the legal ground for ending the
• 10:53
  marriage. And this stretched what was
• 10:55
  supposed to be a regulation of sin into this broad permission
• 10:59
  slip for divorce on the most trivial grounds.
• 11:02
  I mean, when you look at the examples from rabbinic writings,
• 11:04
  it's actually shocking how trivial they are.
• 11:06
  Like what? Well, Hillel's school said a man
• 11:09
  could divorce his wife if she burned his dinner.
• 11:11
  Burned his dinner. Yes, or if she was just a loud
• 11:15
  woman. And the most famous example is
• 11:17
  that a man could divorce his wife simply if he found another
• 11:19
  woman who was more beautiful. Wow, so losing your physical
• 11:23
  attractiveness becomes a valid reason to break a covenant?
• 11:26
  It just reduces the wife to a temporary servant who can be
• 11:29
  replaced at any time. So Hillel's view completely
• 11:32
  trivialized the covenant bond. What Moses allowed because of
• 11:36
  wickedness was now being used to justify pure selfishness.
• 11:40
  Precisely the legal fence that was built to protect people from
• 11:43
  cruelty was repurposed into a convenient escape hatch.
• 11:47
  Men could hide their sin behind a cloak of religious legality.
• 11:51
  Hash attack, Tax B. The peril of procedural
• 11:54
  correctness. And that trivializing of the
• 11:57
  grounds for divorce set the stage for the second major
• 12:00
  problem that Jesus takes on. Which is the obsession with
• 12:03
  procedure over morality? Yes, Jesus quotes the popular
• 12:07
  saying of his day. Whoever divorces his wife, let
• 12:10
  him give her a certificate of divorce.
• 12:11
  And that saying is so revealing because look what it leaves.
• 12:14
  Out it's completely selective. It is.
• 12:16
  It focuses only on the external piece of paper, the procedure,
• 12:20
  and it totally omits any mention of the cause, the indecency that
• 12:23
  the original Mosaic law requires.
• 12:25
  Just bureaucratic box checking. Got the paper?
• 12:28
  You're fine. That's the peril, exactly.
• 12:30
  The process became a kind of bureaucratic shield for a hard
• 12:33
  heart. As long as a man followed the
• 12:35
  procedure, got the certificate written up, he could feel like
• 12:38
  his conscience was clear. No matter how cruel or selfish
• 12:42
  his real reason was. It didn't matter.
• 12:44
  This legalistic minimalism created a deadly sense of
• 12:47
  complacency. It was a way to hide treachery
• 12:50
  right under a thin layer of procedural correctness.
• 12:54
  So they managed to turn a reluctant permission for
• 12:56
  hardness of heart into a simple administrative formula.
• 12:59
  The concession became a license. It did.
• 13:02
  And Jesus shows that focusing on the certificate reduces this
• 13:05
  massive requirement of Kingdom righteousness to just an
• 13:09
  external act. A husband could use that piece
• 13:11
  of paper to make his sinful desires look respectable.
• 13:14
  Using human laws to sanitize his own unfaithfulness.
• 13:18
  And wrongly believing that if it's legal, according to the
• 13:20
  rabbi's, it must be moral before God.
• 13:22
  Jesus just insists that a certificate can't clear your
• 13:25
  conscience before the one who sees the heart.
• 13:27
  And that whole context is what makes Christ's words in the
• 13:30
  Sermon on the Mountain so explosive.
• 13:32
  He doesn't just offer a small critique, he asserts his own
• 13:35
  authority and Yanks the standard for marriage back to where it
• 13:39
  belongs. Right back to God's design, He
• 13:42
  insists on a righteousness that goes into the heart way beyond
• 13:45
  just external procedures. Hashtag, Hashtag A Surpassing
• 13:49
  the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.
• 13:51
  He sets this up right away at Matthew 5.20.
• 13:54
  He says your righteousness has to surpass that of the scribes
• 13:56
  and Pharisees to even enter the Kingdom.
• 13:59
  And their righteousness was all external, wasn't it?
• 14:02
  It was something you could measure.
• 14:03
  I didn't murder anyone. I didn't commit the physical act
• 14:05
  of adultery. I gave the certificate.
• 14:07
  Check, check, check. But Christ demands A
• 14:10
  righteousness that gets underneath all of that.
• 14:13
  It has to go to the motive, the intention, the hidden thoughts
• 14:16
  that no human law can ever touch.
• 14:18
  And he uses that formula. You have heard that it was said,
• 14:22
  but I say to you, he uses that to do 2 things.
• 14:25
  First, he's confronting their comfortable domesticated
• 14:28
  tradition that was based on Hillel's easy rules.
• 14:31
  And second, he's reasserting the original seriousness of the law.
• 14:35
  He's rescuing Moses from their misuse.
• 14:38
  He's basically saying you think you're righteous because you
• 14:40
  checked a box, but God's law demands truth in the inner
• 14:44
  person. And that move from the external
• 14:46
  act to the internal motive is probably the most radical thing
• 14:50
  Jesus does in the whole sermon. It completely redefines what sin
• 14:53
  is. Hashtag tag tag be heart,
• 14:55
  adultery and outward dissolution.
• 14:57
  And you can see that redefinition so clearly in the
• 14:59
  way Matthew organizes this section of the.
• 15:01
  There's a crucial link here. Jesus doesn't treat lust and
• 15:04
  divorce as two separate topics. He connects the inward sin of
• 15:08
  lust directly to the outward act of dissolving a marriage.
• 15:11
  So let's trace that sequence. Where does the sin actually
• 15:14
  begin for Jesus? It begins in the verses right
• 15:16
  before the teaching on divorce. He exposes lust as heart
• 15:19
  adultery. Matthew 5.2728.
• 15:22
  Right. To look at a woman with lustful
• 15:25
  intent is to have already committed adultery with her in
• 15:28
  your heart. So the sin begins inside, in the
• 15:31
  desire, long before it ever becomes a public scandal or a
• 15:35
  legal action. And so the teaching on divorce
• 15:37
  that follows immediately after that shows how that inner sin
• 15:40
  works its way out into the real world.
• 15:42
  Exactly. It shows how it affects life
• 15:44
  structures and decisions. A man who lets sinful desire
• 15:48
  rule his heart, who is lusting after another woman, will
• 15:52
  eventually want to act on it. And he might try to make it look
• 15:54
  respectable. He might try to cloak his
• 15:56
  infidelity and legal respectability.
• 15:58
  He divorces his wife, gets the certificate from the Hill of
• 16:01
  Light rabbi, and marries the other woman.
• 16:04
  The world might call that moving on.
• 16:06
  But Jesus calls it what it is. He calls it adultery multiplied
• 16:09
  and socially sanctioned. He sees the Direct Line from the
• 16:12
  lust in the heart to the treachery of the divorce.
• 16:15
  So the outward divorce is just the legal cover story for the
• 16:17
  inward sin of lust and wanting a new partner.
• 16:20
  It's an attempt to baptize unfaithfulness with a piece of
• 16:23
  paper, and Jesus just rips the cover off that he insists you
• 16:28
  can't dissolve a marriage based on your desires because God's
• 16:31
  covenant is still in effect. Hashtag, hashtag Stacy, The
• 16:34
  moral stain of unjust divorce. And Jesus makes it clear that an
• 16:38
  unjust divorce is not some morally neutral event.
• 16:41
  He says everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of
• 16:45
  sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.
• 16:47
  That is a staggering statement. It is the moral weight is placed
• 16:51
  entirely on the man who initiated it.
• 16:53
  It puts the guilt right where the treachery started and to
• 16:56
  really feel the force of that you have to understand the
• 16:58
  social situation for a woman in 1st century Judea.
• 17:01
  A woman dismissed by her husband was in a very dangerous
• 17:04
  position. Perilous.
• 17:05
  She lost her economic security, purity, her social standing.
• 17:08
  Often she had no choice but to find a new husband just to
• 17:11
  survive. So if the first marriage was
• 17:13
  dissolved without a biblical reason, meaning in God's eyes
• 17:16
  the covenant was still valid, then she's still bound to her
• 17:19
  first husband. That's right.
• 17:20
  So her next marriage, even if she entered it out of necessity,
• 17:24
  is adulterous in God's sight, because the original divine bond
• 17:27
  is still there. And Jesus says the first husband
• 17:30
  is the one responsible for that entire chain of sin.
• 17:33
  He says the husband made her commit adultery.
• 17:36
  He's guilty not just for his own treachery, but for creating the
• 17:39
  immoral situation that forced her into an adulterous union.
• 17:43
  He's the one who broke the covenant, no matter what his
• 17:45
  certificate says. And then he gives that final
• 17:48
  warning, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery,
• 17:52
  Assuming of course, the first divorce was unjust.
• 17:54
  And that just shatters the illusion that if something is
• 17:56
  legal, it must be moral and unjust.
• 17:59
  Divorce, even if the local rabbi signed off on it, is still a
• 18:02
  covenant breaking act before God.
• 18:04
  Christ is drawing a hard line between human law and divine
• 18:07
  righteousness. OK, so we've set up this
• 18:10
  incredibly high standard from creation, which Jesus affirms.
• 18:14
  But the New Testament is also realistic.
• 18:16
  It recognizes that this covenant bond can be shattered by certain
• 18:19
  very serious sins. These are the grounds where a
• 18:22
  divorce might be permitted without that charge of adultery
• 18:25
  following a remarriage. This is a really important point
• 18:28
  of pastoral clarity, because while divorce is never God's
• 18:31
  ideal, there are two kinds of grave sin that so violate the
• 18:35
  one flesh union that, yes, a dissolution may be permitted.
• 18:39
  Hashtag tag. Tag a sexual immorality cornea.
• 18:42
  The only explicit exception question that Jesus himself
• 18:45
  gives is except on the ground of sexual immorality.
• 18:49
  That's the exception clause that makes all the difference.
• 18:51
  It does, and the specific Greek word that Matthew records Jesus
• 18:55
  using here is pornea, and that's a deliberately broad word.
• 18:59
  It's not the specific word for adultery.
• 19:01
  No, the specific word for adultery is Moy kea.
• 19:04
  Pornea is much more general. It covers all kinds of illicit
• 19:07
  sexual activity, fornication, prostitution, incest and
• 19:10
  adultery. So why would Jesus choose the
• 19:12
  broader term when he's talking about marriage?
• 19:15
  I think the use of pornea shows that the offense that breaks the
• 19:18
  covenant isn't limited just to the act of adultery.
• 19:20
  It covers any kind of illicit sexual union that destroys the
• 19:24
  sanctity of that one flesh bond. So, for example, if a marriage
• 19:28
  turned out to be incestuous under the Old Testament law.
• 19:31
  That would be covered. The point Jesus is making is
• 19:34
  that sexual unfaithfulness in all its ugly forms is a breach
• 19:38
  so serious that dissolution can be permitted.
• 19:41
  And the reason is that the one flesh reality has been shattered
• 19:44
  by the guilty person. So in a way, the act of porneia
• 19:48
  has already broken the covenant. That's the key.
• 19:52
  The bond is dissolved by the unfaithful person's action.
• 19:55
  The legal paperwork that follows is just the official recognition
• 19:58
  of a spiritual and physical break that's already happened.
• 20:01
  Which means the remarriage of the innocent party doesn't have
• 20:04
  that same adulterous character. Right, because the covenant was
• 20:07
  already torn by the one who was unfaithful.
• 20:09
  But even here, even with this clear exception, divorce is
• 20:13
  still a concession. It's not a command.
• 20:15
  That's so important for pastoral care.
• 20:17
  Just because you have permission doesn't mean you have an
• 20:19
  obligation. The person who is sinned against
• 20:22
  may divorce, but they are not required to.
• 20:24
  Forgiveness and reconciliation are always the higher goal, if
• 20:26
  they're possible, but the door for dissolution is open.
• 20:30
  Hashtag tag be willful desertion.
• 20:32
  And the New Testament gives us a second ground, a second sin that
• 20:36
  violates the marriage covenant so deeply that a dissolution is
• 20:40
  permitted. Yes, and this one comes from the
• 20:42
  Apostle Paul. We're talking about willful
• 20:44
  desertion. That's right, from First
• 20:46
  Corinthians 7 the context is usually a believer married to an
• 20:50
  unbeliever and the unbelieving spouse decides to leave the
• 20:54
  marriage for good specifically because of their partners
• 20:57
  Christian faith. And Paul says if the unbelieving
• 20:59
  partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or
• 21:03
  sister is not enslaved. Not enslaved.
• 21:06
  That's the key phrase. So why is desertion treated with
• 21:09
  the same level of seriousness as cornea?
• 21:12
  The Reformed view has generally held that persistent,
• 21:15
  unrepentant adultery, or this kind of willful desertion, or
• 21:19
  the two sins that can shatter the covenant desertion,
• 21:22
  especially when it's driven by hostility to the faith, is seen
• 21:25
  as a fundamental act of covenant treachery.
• 21:27
  It's a kind of spiritual death blow to the marriage.
• 21:30
  It is when the unbelieving spouse leaves, they are actively
• 21:34
  choosing to destroy the covenant and Paul says the believer who
• 21:37
  has been deserted is not enslaved, which grants them the
• 21:41
  freedom to dissolve that relationship and if needed, to
• 21:44
  remarry. Because the original purpose of
• 21:46
  the marriage has been irreversibly destroyed by the
• 21:49
  one who left. Exactly so.
• 21:50
  Even with the high ideal of permanence, these two grave
• 21:54
  acts, sexual unfaithfulness and malicious abandonment, are
• 21:57
  recognized as sins that have already ravaged God's good gift.
• 22:01
  And the Church has to hold both of those things in balance, the
• 22:04
  high standard from creation and the sad reality of covenant
• 22:08
  breaking sin. That's the challenge.
• 22:09
  Divorce is always a tragedy, but in these two specific cases,
• 22:12
  it's a sad recognition of a break that has already happened.
• 22:15
  It's so important to see that Jesus is high standard for
• 22:17
  marriage isn't just an arbitrary rule.
• 22:20
  It's not just about being strict for the sake of being strict.
• 22:22
  No, it's tied directly to something much bigger.
• 22:25
  It points to the ultimate divine relationship.
• 22:28
  It reveals what Paul calls the mystery of marriage.
• 22:31
  Hashtag Tag Tag a The living parable of Christ and the
• 22:34
  Church. This theological link really
• 22:37
  changes how we see marriage. It's not just a personal
• 22:40
  arrangement anymore. Yeah, it becomes a living
• 22:41
  parable. It does.
• 22:43
  Paul in Ephesians 5 says that earthly marriage is a mystery
• 22:47
  that refers to Christ and the Church.
• 22:49
  So every marriage is supposed to be a picture of that
• 22:51
  relationship. A tangible living picture of it.
• 22:54
  Christ is the true bridegroom. The whole story of the Bible
• 22:58
  contrasts the infidelity of Israel, which is called
• 23:01
  spiritual adultery, with God's steadfast faithfulness as a
• 23:05
  husband even when his people wander off.
• 23:08
  So spouses are called to reflect that, to reflect the steadfast
• 23:11
  sacrificial love of the bridegroom who never, ever casts
• 23:15
  away his own. That's the high calling to love
• 23:17
  as Christ loved the church, giving himself up for her,
• 23:20
  making her holy, cleansing her. That's an immense weight for any
• 23:24
  marriage to carry. It is.
• 23:25
  Every marriage becomes this little fragile mirror reflecting
• 23:28
  the vast permanent covenant between Christ and his people.
• 23:31
  And that whole story ends with the great Marriage Supper of the
• 23:34
  Lamb in Revelation 19. The final union.
• 23:36
  The final consummation when Christ is fully united with his
• 23:40
  bride, the Church. Our earthly covenants are meant
• 23:43
  to point to that perfect fidelity, and when they break,
• 23:46
  that sacred image gets distorted.
• 23:48
  Hashtag tag tag be Law, gospel and Pastoral council.
• 23:53
  So the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5, it's not just a
• 23:55
  historical debate. It functions as law first today.
• 23:58
  It exposes our own self righteousness.
• 24:01
  It does, and it confronts a few very common modern errors.
• 24:05
  Like what? Well first it confronts secular
• 24:07
  autonomy, the idea that marriage is just a fluid contract for my
• 24:09
  personal fulfillment. Second, it confronts that
• 24:12
  legalistic minimalism we talked about hiding sin behind
• 24:15
  paperwork. And 3rd, 3rd and maybe this is
• 24:17
  the most common 1 today. It confronts the therapeutic
• 24:20
  approach, the one that uses vague, non biblical ideas like
• 24:23
  incompatibility or we just fell out of love as legitimate
• 24:27
  grounds for divorce. So the Church has a duty here to
• 24:29
  speak clearly, to actually call unjust divorce and illegitimate
• 24:32
  remarriage what Jesus calls them sin, adultery.
• 24:36
  Yes, we can't afford to call evil good or to smooth over what
• 24:40
  Jesus calls covenant treachery. But this is where the gospel has
• 24:44
  to come, right after the law. The law is sharped for a reason.
• 24:48
  It's sharp so that the grace of Christ doesn't seem cheap.
• 24:51
  The gospel is fully sufficient for real covenant Breakers, for
• 24:55
  real adulterers. Christ bore the judgment that
• 24:58
  these sins deserved. His blood is enough even for the
• 25:01
  most tangled stories of marital failure.
• 25:04
  So the church shouldn't be a museum for people with perfect
• 25:07
  marital records. No, it should be a hospital, a
• 25:10
  place where the wounded can be cleansed and set on a new path
• 25:13
  of repentance and discipleship. And that requires a careful
• 25:16
  pastoral balance. A very careful balance.
• 25:18
  The church has to be courageous about God's standard, never
• 25:21
  lowering it, but at the same time show deep compassion and
• 25:24
  announce a full pardon to sinners who repent.
• 25:27
  It means distinguishing between the one who was sinned against
• 25:30
  and the one who pursued an unbiblical divorce.
• 25:33
  It does, distinguishing between the victim of desertion or
• 25:36
  adultery and the person who needs to confess and seek
• 25:39
  forgiveness. The goal is always restoration,
• 25:42
  truth telling, and holding fast to Christ's standard hashtag tag
• 25:46
  outrolance. So we've come full circle.
• 25:48
  We've traced marriage from the Creation covenant through the
• 25:51
  Mosaic concession to the rabbinic distortion that made it
• 25:54
  all about legal convenience. And we ended with Christ's
• 25:58
  correction, which demands a faith that is rooted not in a
• 26:01
  piece of paper, but in the sincerity of the heart.
• 26:04
  Kingdom righteousness really requires A vigilant holiness in
• 26:08
  marriage, a constant guarding of the heart.
• 26:10
  It's a call to cultivate patience and forgiveness and
• 26:13
  sacrificial love instead of letting lust or bitterness or
• 26:16
  just plain selfishness compromise what God has put
• 26:19
  together. The big take away, I think, is
• 26:21
  that stark difference between human bureaucracy and divine
• 26:24
  reality. Jesus just shatters the idea
• 26:27
  that if it's legal, it must be moral.
• 26:29
  So maybe the the ultimate question that Jesus teaching
• 26:32
  leaves us with isn't just what are the biblical grounds for
• 26:34
  divorce, it's something more personal.
• 26:36
  It builds on that whole problem of legalistic minimalism.
• 26:39
  The question for you to Mull over is this.
• 26:42
  In what specific ways am I tempted to substitute procedural
• 26:45
  correctness, that human need for box checking, and external
• 26:48
  rightness for genuine heart fidelity in my own
• 26:51
  relationships? Where am I tempted to use human
• 26:54
  structures to try and sanctify my own selfishness?
• 26:56
  That's the searching question from the bridegroom we all have
• 26:58
  to answer.