Sermon: Jesus Teaches on Marriage and Divorce  Matthew 19:1-12

Truth Taught- Divorce is never to be the first response but is, in some cases, permitted by God

Introduction

Jesus has just finished teaching on what life in the Kingdom of God looks like.  He taught on sin, going astray, repentance and forgiveness.  Jesus told us about our responsibilities to lovingly confront the sinner who claims to be a brother, to take necessary steps if needed to reconcile the brother and then when the brother repents, we are responsible before God to forgive them from the heart. 

This is the teaching of Jesus to us His Church.  What might be the worldly response to this truth?
The lost person’s response is to bring into question this truth by seeking to discredit Jesus by finding a loophole in which His doctrine can be cast aside as unworthy of our attention and labor to obey it. 
Even here in this setting, there may be those who have already talked themselves out of doing what Jesus has commanded be done.  You perhaps have talked yourself out of it with convincing argumentation. 

So, it is a natural worldly response to bring our Lord’s teachings into question.  If His teaching can be questioned then His authority and even His person can be questioned and all of this for the lost world accomplishes one thing in their minds.  They are not bound to this truth, they think.  I can continue my lifestyle of sin and not feel bad about it.  This is the goal of the lost world.  Do whatever it takes to free my conscience from the burden of obedience to Jesus and His teaching.  They have deceived themselves into thinking that their efforts actually free them.  They have deceived themselves to think that they are not going to be held accountable when the King settles His accounts.  They are deceived.
So, we see this next section as the attempt of the lost to trap and test Jesus hoping to find some loophole in which they could feel better about their own sin.

Matthew 19:1–12 (ESV)

19 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. ² And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

³ And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” ⁴ He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ 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’? ⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” ⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” ⁸ 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. ⁹ And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” ¹¹ But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

1.  Can a Man Divorce His Wife for Any Reason?

19 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. ² And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

³ And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

The Pharisees are out to entrap Jesus.  They hate Him with a vengeance.  They want Him gone at any cost.  So, their question is not a legitimate question but one designed to get Jesus to say something they can use against Him.

During the days of Moses, the people were so hardhearted that they were divorcing each other for any reason.  Men had the social power in those days.  The woman had no rights much at all.  Men could divorce their wives as they pleased for any reason at all.  Because there needed to be some checks put in place to slow this down God through Moses enacts some biblical principles…

Deuteronomy 24:1–4 (ESV)

24 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, ² and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, ³ and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, ⁴ then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

This truly didn’t do a lot but it did limit divorce a little in the situation where the husband thinks he’s found someone else he likes better or for whatever reason decides he simply does not want to be married to his wife any longer.  What this did was to at least limit quick divorces and eliminate divorces where the husband wants to because he thinks that later he might want her back.  According to this text once a husband divorces his wife and she remarries the first husband cannot get her back.  In other words, it’s a done deal.  So, he could not divorce her and think he can someday get her back if he wants.

This text also forces the husband to, if he chooses to divorce his wife, he must give her a certificate of divorce which then frees her to remarry.  This is the you- can’t- have- your- cake- and- eat- it- too text for husbands who want to divorce their wives for any reason.  The Law of Moses forces men to slow down and take care.

Divorce was so easy that men could divorce their wives for any reason at all.  In one ancient book not found in the Bible but a collection of Jewish teachings called Ecclesiasticus tells us they taught a man could divorce his wife for any reason.  One account is a divorce took place because a wife burned dinner another because the husband found someone, he thought was prettier.  Even in Jesus’ day the Mosaic Law had been twisted and read to the husband’s advantage.  So that even then divorce was basically for any reason at all, showing the utter hardness of the human heart.

Verse three of our text is very clear.  The Pharisees could care less what God’s Word had to say about marriage they wanted to entrap Jesus.  Throw Him a curve ball and watch Him incriminate Himself.  Maybe Jesus would get on a roll like John the Baptist did and speak negatively of the Herodian Dynasty which had turned marriage into a joke, divorcing freely without any regard to God’s Word.  John the Baptist called Herod to account for his sin and it cost John his head.  Maybe Jesus would also say something Herod wouldn’t like and ole King Herod would take care of Jesus for them?
This was their goal and purpose not to learn from Jesus.  Our Lord, teaches anyway.  He knows what’s going on.

2.  Jesus Goes Back to God’s Original Plan

⁴ He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ 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’? ⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus does something here that from a hermeneutical perspective is truly amazing.  He hits their curve ball out of the park.  We can learn much from how Jesus handles God’s Word.
The Pharisees in their attempt to trick and trap Jesus began with Deut. 24:1-4.  They started with God’s answer to the sin of the Hebrews during Moses’ day.  Divorce in general was never God’s plan but because men are sinners it was given as a provision.
Jesus begins not with Deuteronomy but with Genesis where God’s original intention regarding marriage is given.

Genesis 2:18–25 (ESV)

¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said,

       “This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

       she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

The Pharisee’s teaching was how divorce is to take place and Jesus’ teaching was how marriage is to take place.  Jesus begins with God’s Word for Marriage the Pharisees begin with God’s Word on divorce already assumed.  They want to know how divorce is supposed to work not how marriage is supposed to work.
There is a huge difference between beginning with the presupposition that marriage is before God and meant to glorify God verses a presupposition that divorce is expected and when it happens how is it supposed to work?

Jesus takes them back to the beginning.  Even in this setup where Jesus knows they’re out to get Him, He uses their incriminating question to teach His disciples or we might say re-educate them from what they all had been taught by the Pharisees to God’s intention.
The first thing we must state plain and clear here at this point is that Adam and Eve were real people that God created.  They were not myths, Neanderthals or whatever else you may have been told.  Next, God’s original teaching is that because Eve (female) was taken out of Adam (male) they are one flesh.  So, marriage is one man and one woman.  So, we also must say here that God’s intent in marriage is one man and one woman, not same sex marriages.  These are not marriages in God’s sight but the very abomination of God’s plan.  Same sex marriages are not marriages before God.  They are anti-marriages that is they originate from the pit of hell from the devil himself.  They are Satan’s perversion of God’s institution.  Satan likes to mimic God only in a perverse way.  So, through the god of this world true marriage is marred and perverted into a sinful abomination. 

At this point we are forced to see that Jesus is not playing the game.  He’s not going to be caught up in their sinful argument that is completely void of God’s Word and original plan.

Before we move on to the next section, I want us to see together how Jesus makes His case with the Pharisees.  He relies on God’s Word as the source of ethics and morality.  What is the right thing to do?  We must discover what the right thing to do is based on what God tells us in His Word.  ⁴ He answered, “Have you not read…

This truth is universal, it spans time and is meant for all people.  When we need answers, we too must seek to find answers in God’s Word.  Remember, what the Bible says, God says.  As God’s people, we cannot form an opinion that we have reached on our own but must turn to Scripture to find the answer and then we must obey what we find.

Now we are about to see how lost people interpret God’s Word… 

3.  The Misinterpretation to Endorse Sin

⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” ⁸ 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. ⁹ And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Here is the debate…  The Jews believed Moses commanded divorce for any reason the husband should decide is good enough and he should give his wife a certificate of divorce.  Jesus, however, uses the more accurate word permit or allow verses their command.

Moses permitted divorce because of sin but it was never commanded by God.  That’s Jesus’ point here. 
The Kingdom of God is best reflected when the husband and wife stay in the one flesh relationship.  Divorce is never to be the first response but, in some cases, it is permitted by God. 

Jesus is very clear here in this text.  Divorce is permitted when there is sexual immorality.  Here, He is referring mainly to the sin of adultery.  If the husband or wife commits adultery the other spouse is permitted to divorce them.  In this case, divorce is not sinful but allowed by God.  It’s not to be done lightly and never the first option but in this case, it is not sinful.

Jesus gives us the first exception clause.  Divorce is allowed in the case of adultery and perhaps other sexually immoral sins.
The other exception clause comes from the Apostle Paul as he writes under the authority and inspiration of God he tells us…

1 Corinthians 7:12–16 (ESV)

¹² To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. ¹³ If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. ¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. ¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. ¹⁶ For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

Paul’s reasoning for divorce is that if the unbelieving spouse leaves then the other is also permitted to divorce them.  Again, it’s not the first option but it is not sinful either.

There may in fact be other reasons for divorce but they exceed the scope of this passage.  Here Jesus is seeking to reign in the fact that divorce in ancient times was way too easy and it was never God’s plan when He created mankind.

4.  The Re-Education of the Disciples

¹⁰ The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” ¹¹ But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. ¹² For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

The disciples are very troubled by Jesus’ teaching.  They are troubled because all they’ve ever heard has been the Pharisee’s version coming strictly from their twisted interpretation of Deuteronomy.  Jesus has taught them that marriage is not based on human convenience and ended whenever you want to.  Marriage is the purpose of God and not the purposes of man. 

Jesus is finishing His teaching by telling us that everyone’s individual calling is different.  Some will marry and others will not.  God has various gifts and plans for His people.  Some marry and some choose not to be married.  He ends this section by saying some are unmarried for the sake of the Kingdom of God. 
What’s important is that whatever your calling serve Christ and love Him with all your heart.

Conclusion

If you are married seek to remain married.  Divorce is not something that you should ever pursue as the first option.  In some cases, God permits divorce and in those cases, it is not sinful. 
Some are called to be married and some are called to not be married.  Whatever your calling serve Christ and love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

Resources Used

Matthew by RT France

Matthew by Daniel Doriani