Jesus' Teaching on Divorce, Part 3

Matthew 19:1‑12

                                               Let's open our Bibles together to Matthew chapter 19. Returning to the section on Jesus' teaching on divorce ... Matthew chapter 19 and we're looking at the first twelve verses.

 

For the past two weeks, our study of this great passage has focused primarily on the divine creation of marriage, as we've looked at the first six verses. And now, as we focus on the second six verses, 7 to 12, we're going to be looking more particularly at the issue of divorce.

 

Now remember that verse 1 says: "It came to pass that when Jesus had finished these sayings." We told you that that means the finish of a discourse. And the discourse which He completed was that in chapter 18 on the child likeness of the believer, a great discourse. "And when He had finished that, He departed from Galilee." And we noted that that meant the end of the Galilean ministry, a period of several years in which He had articulated His Messiahship, in which He had gathered and trained His disciples had now come to an end and He was leaving that place. It says He: "Upon leaving, came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan," known as the beyond area called Perea. So, He entered into Perea and in chapters 19 and 20, we find the ministry that He had in Perea.

 

Now, He is moving through Perea to the south because He is headed for Jerusalem where He will die and rise again. So, we are moving toward the climax of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the Perean ministry, we find in verse 2, that great multitudes followed Him. Mark 10, you'll remember, added that He taught them and then Matthew says, "...and He healed them there."

 

So, we see then, the Lord Jesus moving the same kind of ministry of teaching and healing and demonstrating His Messianic credentials from Galilee to Perea, a place now populated by many Jews who would need also to be exposed to their Messiah.

 

Now, while in Perea, He is confronted by His archrivals, the Pharisees. And we find in verse 3 the attack...the attack. And that was the first point in our outline ... the attack. "The Pharisees also came unto Him testing Him and saying unto Him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for every cause." Now, they wanted to confront Jesus with a question that He really couldn't answer. They wanted to trap Him. They knew what He believed. They knew that He believed that it was not legal or lawful to divorce for every cause and they wanted Him to say that so He would be unpopular with the people. They wanted Him to say it, also, so that He would be unpopular with the resident ruler who ... Herod Antipas by name...had already beheaded John the Baptist for saying something similar to that, for he himself was one illegitimately divorced and remarried.

 

And so, they really ask the question in verse 3 to put Jesus in an impossible position with the people and with the ruler of the area. We come to verse 4, then, and the answer. That's our second major point in the outline...the answer. "He answered and said unto them," and as He speaks, He gives four reasons why divorce is not lawful for every cause. But He answers the question in such a way that they can't hold Him responsible for it because He answers it with Scripture. And He says to them, in a very almost caustic way, "Have you not read," are you ignorant of the Scripture, you who purport to be the teachers of the law, you who assume that you know every in and every out of all of God's revelation, "Have you not read that God said that He made them at the beginning male and female?" That God said, "For this cause shall a man leave father, mother, shall cleave to his wife, they two shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more two but one flesh and what therefore God hath joined together, let not man divorce."

 

I mean, haven't you read what God said? And so, Jesus takes His stand on Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 and says, I'm simply agreeing with God which, in fact, puts the Pharisees in an impossible position. And everybody else, too. Because if they're going to argue with Him, they're going to have to argue with God.

 

Now, you remember that I told you there were four reasons given there why the answer is no, it is not lawful to divorce for every cause. Reason number one, God created one man for one woman. Reason number two, God created a strong bond indicated by the word "cleave" in verse 5. Reason number three, He made them one flesh, verse 5. And then verse 6 says and once you're one flesh, you can't be divided cause you're not two anymore. That's the third reason, one flesh. And finally, marriage is a work of God and so what God has joined together, let not man divorce. So, four good reasons why divorce is not lawful for any reason.

 

And we saw that in saying that, Jesus really reaffirmed the Old Testament standard for marriage. He affirmed that God desired marriage to be a lifelong monogamous relationship between two people. We, last time, sort of traced that thought, didn't we, through the Old Testament. And we saw that it never changes. You come all the way to the end of the Old Testament, you come into the book of Malachi, the last book, and in that, God reiterates exactly what He said in Genesis, He says in Malachi 2 verse 16, "1 hate divorce." So, God has not changed His view. From the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the Old Testament, He still hates divorce.

 

Now, someone might ask in response to all the things we talked about in the Old Testament, "What makes a marriage? When we say What God has joined together, don't let a man divorce ‑ what is it that makes a marriage?" And some people have tried to say, "Well, sex relationship is what makes a marriage, so all you have to do is have a sex relationship with someone and you're automatically married because that's the essence of one flesh and that's what marriage really is." But that is not true biblically. If sex made a marriage, there would be no such thing as fornication, because two people having ex who aren't married wouldn't be committing fornication, they'd be getting married...if sex made a marriage. But God says that when two people unmarried commit an act of sexual relationship together, that is not a marriage, that is a sin ... that is fornication.

 

Further, in Exodus chapter 22, verses 16 and 17, it says: "If a man lies with a woman, he is therefore, because he has taken her virginity, to marry her." Which is to say that just lying with her didn't cause a marriage. He is to marry her, or if her father refuses him, then he is to pay the father a sufficient sum to compensate him for what, in some sense, he has stolen from his daughter, but he is not seen as married by that sex act, rather responsible to at a later time get married.

 

Further, adultery does not dissolve a marriage. In Malachi 2, as I mentioned, it says God hates divorce. But it also says something else in verse 14, it says: "You have been...the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth against whom you have dealt treacherously, yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant?" And what that is saying is this, ‑ No matter what you did in committing adultery, and that's what they had done, you dealt treacherously against her but she is still your wife. And how so? Because she is the wife of your...what? ... your covenant. It is not the sex act that makes a marriage; it is the covenant that makes a marriage. It is the coming together of two people who pledge lifelong covenant of companion‑ship. The Bible affirms that the covenant makes a marriage. Marriage is a covenantal arrangement for lifelong companionship. And so, when a person has a sex relationship with someone, that doesn't make a marriage, and when a person in a marriage has a sex relationship with someone else, that doesn't make another marriage. That just is a sin against the marriage the person is in by covenant. So, it is the binding covenant of lifelong pledge of companionship that constitutes a marriage. And anytime that happens, anytime two people make that covenant, whether they're saved people or not, they come together in a God ordained and God‑created union which therefore should never be divorced, that's the essence of what our Lord is saying.

 

And so, that's His answer. Now let's go on to the third point, this morning, and see how far we can get‑‑the argument ... the argument, verse 7. "They say unto Him," the Pharisees, "why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorce and to divorce her?"

 

Now, what amazes me here is that they are not all interested in the divine ideal that the Lord has just presented. The Lord has affirmed lifelong marriage, the Lord has said God hates divorce, in essence, from the very beginning, God never intended that. But they are not interested in the divine ideal. They are only interested in the exception. And this is how it is with sinful people. They're not interested in abiding by the law; they're only interested in finding the loopholes, that's all. And the Pharisees are classic cases of people looking for loopholes in God's law. On the one hand, they want to be thought of as keeping God's law because that's how they enter into God's favor. On the other hand, they want to find every way out they possibly can. And so, the exemption is what interests them in order to accommodate their lust and accommodate their multiple divorces and adulteries. And they are, again, pretty wily about it because they seek to pit Jesus against Moses. And if they can do that, that's just another way they can discredit Jesus with the people, right? Because the people revere Moses, next to God, and if they can set Jesus against Moses, they will have accomplished something significant.

 

And so, they say, "Why then did Moses command to give a writing of divorcement and to divorce her?" In other words, if You say all that is true, then why did Moses command divorce? Now, that's a loaded question because Moses didn't command divorce. But they chose their own words. Let's find out what Moses did say. Go back in your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 24 because that is the passage they have in mind. It is the only passage relative to Moses that gives any definitive statement about divorce. Deuteronomy, chapter 24 ... now in order to understand this passage, we have to acknowledge in the beginning that the Authorized Version of the King James has not settled on the proper interpretation or the proper translation of the text and so we are in debt to the New American Standard Bible for correctly translating this so that it makes proper sense. Let me read it to you, very, very carefully so that you'll understand what it is saying. Now, this is the passage that they leaned on, this is the passage where they said Moses commanded divorce, listen to what it says:

 

"When a man takes a wife," we're reading verses I to 4, "and marries her and it happens that 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 from his house and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife." Now, we'll stop there.

 

Now ..You get the picture? This is the first two verses. This guy marries a lady and it happens that he doesn't like her, she cannot find favor in his eyes. "...because he's found in her some indecency." And so, he writes her a certificate of divorce and he puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house and she leaves the house and goes now because she's legally divorced by that paper and she becomes another man's wife. Now I want you to know at this point, there is absolutely no editorializing on this incident. The text does not say that the man did what was right, the text does not say that the woman did what was right, it doesn't say that the man did what was wrong, or the woman did what was wrong, it doesn't say anything. It doesn't say that God commanded him to divorce her. It doesn't say that he had to divorce her. God doesn't say he did the right thing in divorcing her. There's absolutely no editorial comment from God at all, or Moses. It simply an illustration of a guy who married a woman, saw an indecency, wanted to unload her, wrote her a divorce certificate and sent her out of the house and she remarried. That's all, that's as far as we've gotten in the first two verses. Now, let's pick it up in verse 3.

 

"If the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce," now, husband number two decides that he doesn't like her any better than husband number one did, and "...he puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife since she has been defiled." She goes to number two and husband number two doesn't like her so he divorces her and sends her out, and then husband number one, in the meantime, is saying ‑ You know, I'm kind of lonely and the food hasn't been nearly as good since you've been gone and I've got a lot of work around the house and I miss your companionship and I want to marry you. And the Bible says he cannot‑he cannot marry her. That is the first comment on the incident.

 

There is a command in Deuteronomy 24, but it is not related to divorce, it is related to remarriage. He is not permitted to remarry her. Even if husband number two dies, and she is widowed, she cannot go back to husband number one. Why? She has been defiled. And that is an abomination before the Lord and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. To marry that woman is a sin. To marry that woman is a sin because she is defiled.

 

Now, the Jewish Rabbis did not so interpret this passage. They interpreted it as a command to divorce, that husband number one, when he found an indecency in her, divorced her because he was commanded to do that. And they took it that the command here was to divorce that woman. And you're surprised at that, the King James does the same thing, because it reads this way: "When a man has taken a wife and married her and it come to pass she find no favor in his eyes‑because he's found some indecency in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of this house." So, they picked up the same rabbinical traditional interpretation but that is not the way the text reads. And I'm not going to take you into the protasis apodosis of the Hebrew to show you, but you'll have to trust me for it. The rendering of the text has nothing to do with a command to divorce, it says if a man does this ... and if he does this ... and if he does this ... then he can't take her back. The command is that he can't take her back, not that he can... that he should divorce her. But it was this interpretation of the passage, upon which the Pharisees had based their many divorces. And so, they say to Jesus, "Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and divorce her?" And the whole thing was a misinterpretation of Deuteronomy chapter 24. The passage does not condone divorce, mark it, the passage does not advocate divorce, the passage does not command divorce, the passage regulates remarriage. It is a passage designed to regulate remarriage.

 

Now, just for your own information, there are several other places in the Old Testament where divorce is mentioned. Deuteronomy 22 verse 19 and 29; Leviticus 21, verses 7 and 14 up to this point...also mention divorce but they do not condone it, they do not commend it, they do not command it. They only comment that it exists. And this passage does the same. It just acknowledges the existence of divorce. It is not commanded, it is not even approved.

 

But in the passage, we find there was a cause for this divorce. And let's look at it and we'll understand the passage. "Because he found in her some uncleanness, or some indecency." Let me tell you what the literal Hebrew is...the nakedness of a thing. He found in her the nakedness of a thing. Now there are all kinds of possibilities for this in Jewish tradition. The Jews said it could be anything. As I told you last time, loose hair, spinning around in the street saying bad things about your mother‑in‑law, burning dinner, talking with men, anything. And they found that to be an indecency or an uncleanness or the nakedness of a thing, as they interpret it. But if you want to know how to interpret the Bible, you don't interpret it by wh, the way you like to interpret it, you inter­pret it by its context, and if you just simply go backwards a little bit into chapter 23, you'll find the same term is used and it's very interesting. Chapter 23, verse 13, here is a regulation about dealing with elimination, physical elimination. "And thou shalt have a shovel among thy weapons and it shall be when thou will ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee for the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp to deliver thee and to give up thine enemies before thee, therefore shall thy camp be holy that He see no.." and there's the term, "...uncleanness," no indecency, "no unclean thing in thee and turn away from thee." It's simply saying, bury your excrement. That's what it's saying. Because God walks in your camp, along with a lot of other folks, by the way. It seemed to be a very obvious issue of decency. And that is the very same term that is used in 24:1, he found in her some indecency, some unclean thing, some dirty thing, some vile thing, some shameful thing, some improper thing, something unbecoming to a woman', something embarrassing to her husband.

 

But, it cannot refer to adultery. Because adultery, at this point, resulted in...what? ... in death. And it would have said adultery. It is something dirty, something embarrassing, something gross but not adultery because Deuteronomy 22 very clearly says that there is to be death for adultery, in verses 22 to 24. So, this has got to be something short of adultery. Now, we don't know what it was, but let me give you what I think is the proper understanding.

 

If you knew in your society that adultery ended in death, you might do a lot of things but you generally would control yourself just short of adultery, true? I mean, you really wouldn't want to die. And so, apparently what happened was, there were people who were entering into shameless indecent, habitual indulgence in sexual sin or other sin but coming just short of actually committing adultery, acts that stop just short of adultery. And that appears to be what happened in Deuteronomy 24. Here's a woman who is shameful, who is vile and she stops short of adultery so the death penalty cannot be applied. But she commits these evil things and her husband just divorces her.

 

And you say ‑ Well, you know, maybe there's a good reason for that.

 

I remember when I was young in the ministry, a couple that were divorced because the wife said that the husband was...was shameful in his physical hygiene habits. And I'll never forget it. It can happen and perhaps there was even that possibility, I don't know. But he divorced her.

 

But do you know what happened? She went out of that union and married another guy and immediately became ... what? ... defiled. You say ‑ Why? Because that was no basis for ... what?...for divorce. And as soon as she entered into another on‑going relationship with a man, even though she had a paper in her hand, she was nothing but an adulteress.

 

You say, "It wasn't her fault, he dumped her."

 

That's right, he made her an adulteress. And that's exactly the way the Lord puts it in Matthew chapter 5 when He says if you divorce your wife for anything less than adultery, or fornication, you make her an adulteress. She became defiled. And that's why, even if her second husband died, he couldn't take her back because God doesn't want him marrying a defiled adulteress. And so, the point of Deuteronomy 24 is that if you divorce your wife for anything short of...what? ... of adultery, you cause her to ... what? ... commit adultery. And whoever married her ... what?...commits adultery. And then when you remarry, what do you do? Commit adultery and the woman you marry... commits adultery. You literally proliferate adultery all over the place.

 

She became defiled because she had no basis to end the first union, so the second union was unacceptable to God and she found herself in the very same category as we read in Matthew 14, from last time, you remember, where we knew that Agrippa had married Herodias, but the Bible says ‑ she was his brother Philip's wife cause God does not recognize the dissolution of the first union, He does not recognize the marriage therefore of the second union legitimately and consequently all he is living in adultery. So, Deuteronomy 24 does not command divorce. It commands that you not remarry an illegitimately divorced person. It's a very strong word, my friend. You don't want to marry an illegitimately divorced person because you're marrying someone who is defiled.

 

Now, you see, God is protecting marriage. And He's saying this ‑ You can't just divorce your wife for anything you want, or you're going to turn her into an adulteress, whoever marries her into an adulterer, yourself and who you marry into one, so just know that. And that ought to help you when you think about getting rid of your wife. Because you're just going to become an adulterer and whoever you marry is going to fall into that category and so is everybody else. And you see, God is, in a sense, trying to insulate that one man/one woman, monogamous, lifelong relationship by making the alternative one of disaster.

 

And so, this text does not command divorce, it commands that you do not remarry an illegitimately divorced person.

 

Now, let's go back to Matthew chapter 19. And I want you to notice verses 8 and 9 and we move from the attack, to the answer, to the argument in verse 7, they argued with Him, and now to the affirmation...the affirmation in verses 8 and 9...the affirmation. "He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, that was never intended to be." It's what that means. It was no command because of the hardness of your heart, Moses ... what? ... permitted it, tolerated it. But may I hasten to add? He didn't tolerate it for indecency, did he? He didn't tolerate it for shameless behavior, so he wouldn't have tolerated it for anything under that. He couldn't have been for burning the dinner if it wasn't for vile ... if I can coin a phrase ... extramental kind of behavior. If it wasn't for that, for living on the thin‑edge of vice and adultery and lewdness if it wasn't for that, it wouldn't be for anything less than that, would it? Because you found somebody nicer, or because your wife talked to the wrong guy, or because you decided you wanted to go on to some other adventure? No. if it wasn't for something right on the edge of adultery, it wouldn't be for anything less than that. So, Moses did permit it, but it wasn't in the Deuteronomy 24 passage that it was permitted, frankly, dear friends, we don't know where in the Old Testament Moses actually permitted it because it doesn't say that. But we do know that it must have been permitted for a legitimate basis or it wouldn't have been discussed for illegitimate basis in Deuteronomy 24. But the Old Testament does not give us a text where it says I permit you to get a divorce on the basis of this. So, we have to sort of draw that out. And I think there's a reason for that. I think God avoided saying it. It is a permission, but it's sort of way behind the scenes, it's not overtly stated lest people hurry to that passage to justify themselves.

 

Now, the point of the, Old Testament is this, then, divorce for less than adultery leads to adultery. And, of course, when there was adultery, God dealt with that with death. But, in His grace ... and here we come to this verse 8... in God's grace there was a transition in the Old Testament from death to divorce for adultery. We have to understand that. Because God is a gracious God, He did not always enact the death penalty, did He? For example, did David commit adultery? Yes, many, many times. Did he die? No. God was gracious. And many others committed adultery. Solomon, did he commit adultery? Heaven only could record. The point being there is the grace of God manifest in the Old Testament. And somewhere along the line, God in His tolerance, spared life and allowed divorce. If marriage could only be severed by adultery through death, then I'm convinced that God would have only allowed marriage to be severed by divorce in the case of adultery. And then, only where you had hardness of heart...hardness of heart.

 

END OF SIDE ONE

 

SIDE TWO

 

You see, the point is this, when there was an irreconcilable problem...in other words, you've got a partner in a marriage who is in an adulterous relationship and will not sever it and will not sever it, and there's no way to bring it back, there's no way to restore it, God may be gracious to that adulterous person, but where that hard heart is not softened, God permitted divorce for the innocent party to be free to remarry. I believe where you have an unrepentant, irreconcilable adultery, you have a hard heart.

 

And you are pursuing your adultery in a hard‑hearted way, then Moses allowed, not condoned, not commended and not commanded, but allowed divorce ... when God was gracious and didn't bring death. That's all we can understand about it, otherwise nothing makes sense. We cannot give any more latitude than the Word of God does. It was a concession on account of sin to make life more bearable for one sinned against.

 

Then, I believe, that God would not punish the innocent victim because he was gracious and didn't kill the guilty one ... do you understand? Because if God killed the guilty one, the innocent one would be...what?...free. But just because God is gracious to the guilty one, doesn't mean He's going to have to penalize the innocent one. Moses allowed divorce, but that was never, verse 8 says, the beginning, that was never God's original design.

 

Now, I hope you understand this because it seems to be such a confusing thing today when the Word of God is rather clear on it.

 

So, Deuteronomy 24 does not authorize divorce. It only stipulated no remarriage. And by the way, in case you're confused about a passage in Mark chapter 10 where it speaks of Deuteronomy 24 as a command. Deuteronomy 24 is a command but it's not a command to divorce, it's a command ... what? ... not to remarry. So, don't be confused by that. So, it is then a prohibition for remarriage, that's what Deuteronomy 24 is.

 

But what are the grounds of divorce? As I said, the only thing we can see is the grounds of divorce would be adultery ... adultery. Let me just see if I can't help you to see this. Go back in the Old Testament for a moment to Ezra chapter 10... chapter 10, and this is kind of a difficult portion but it has to be dealt with, Ezra chapter 10, verse 3. "Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and such as are born of them." Now, here are the people of God saying let's make a covenant with God to divorce our wives. "...according to the counsel of my lord and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law." Now, the reason for this is that they had married pagans. God had forbidden them to do this and they had entered into mixed marriages. They had become spiritual adulterers. They had abandoned God, they had abandoned God's commandments, they had married these wives of adultery. So, they said ‑ Let's get rid of these wives, for this matter belongs unto thee; we shall...we also will be with thee, be of good courage and do it. "Then arose Ezra, made the chief priests, the Levites and all Israel swear that they should do according to this word. And they swore."