Divorce — Part One (Archived)

returned this morning to the Gospel of Mark add to chapter 10 where we'll read from verse 1 to verse 12 if you would like to read from the Bibles that are around you in the pews then you'll find this reading on page 715 and I encourage you to turn there mark chapter 10 verse 1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan again crowds of people came to him and as was his custom he taught them some Pharisees came and tested him by asking is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife what did Moses command you he replied they said Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away it was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law jesus replied but at the beginning of creation God made them male and female for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one therefore what God has joined together let man not separate when they were in the house again the disciples asked Jesus about this he answered anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another man she commits adultery thanks be to God for his word we pray together before we look at this passage father we thank you this morning that the Holy Spirit is the one who illumines the printed page to us who takes the blinders off our eyes who conducts that divine dialogue with our souls where we're able to look beyond and listen beyond the voice of a mere man and from you so open our eyes that we may behold wonderful things in your word for we pray in Jesus name Amen in the course of pastoral ministry over a number of years now some 35 years I have on more than one occasion listened as a man has sat with me and spoken along these lines quotes I must divorce my wife because I have fallen in love with another woman and we are perfect for each other I made a mistake in marrying my present wife I am so much in love with this other woman it must be right to which I reply on the contrary it must be wrong because you already have a wife in returning to our studies in the Gospel of Mark we discover in this section that Jesus is fielding a question regarding divorce and he is providing instruction concerning the nature of marriage we turn to this particular passage of Scripture in the course of our studies in case some of you are visiting and wondering whether there is some particular reason for these verses on this day I'm sure there is but none of which I am personally aware we have been studying mark we've taken a break and it's time to return and we come to these verses at a point in our nation's history when the institution of marriage is rejected by many and is in the process of being re-engineered by son it is routinely regarded in its traditional historical form as nothing more than an outdated outmoded impractical idea in fact on a website yesterday I was just checking these things out I came across a foreign against website and one of the foreign against positions that was established was simply this marriage is an outmoded outdated impractical idea a vote for or against this motion and apparently there were significant numbers who were happy to vote marriage completely off the page now there's nothing new in this where we are at this point in time those of us who have lived for any length of time is particularly those of us who are part of the baby boomers can recognize that the seeds of much that we now experience in terms of the ugly fruit of the disruption of the marriage bonds has its foundation much deeper than the 60s but the 60s gave expression to it part of my summer reading has been a book by a lady called Frances Beckett entitled what did the baby boomers ever do for us and the subtitle is why the children of the 60s lived the dream and filled the future live the dream and fail the future what she's actually suggesting is that all of those great liberal revolutionary concepts that mark the 60s generation have now been swallowed up as a result of the hippies becoming conservative both politically and economically and in some cases socially and so she says they have actually failed the future because although they live the dream the dream has died somewhere along the way that would not be my thesis I haven't completed the book yet but I would say that many of the seeds of the 60s are about us and that the ideas and the concepts that were so quickly and freely espoused and embraced at that time are around us in their ugly form I remember fairly clearly and I keep notes fairly accurately and so I can quote to you from Jill Tweedy in the Guardian in the mid-60s because I tore it out and kept it and it was so revolutionary to me that I its Lords in my mind I don't need to go find it in my files she wrote an article in The Guardian entitled when marriage is just a cage when marriage is just a cage and in the course of that she concluded by saying so I hope now that it will be outside the bonds of Christian marriage that we are able to discover for the first time what true love is all about in other words if we can just get beyond all of this archaic stuff all of this restrictive stuff then in our discoveries of freedom and a free love and so on then we will be able to make great gains now she was writing at a time when much of the contemporary hymnody the secular hymnody was reinforcing the same kind of thing and some of you will have been a fan as I was of Joni Mitchell and you will perhaps recall Joni Mitchell song my old man who was Walker in the park and a dancer in the dark who when he went away wrote Joni Mitchell but when you're gone me and those lonely blues collide the bed's too big the frying pans too wide poetry like that is just goes in my head and never goes away but four times her refrain came did you remember the refrain we don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall keeping us tied and true we don't need this stuff marriage is simply legitimization of what we've chosen to do and we'll be able to get by without any of that we don't need that well whether she needed it or she didn't need it from her perspective she didn't remain tight and true for very long I don't say that for cheap gain so that period of time when you fast forward 50 years or so you discover where we are today and when we conduct wedding here at Parkside almost without exception in our preamble to the wedding service we point out to all who have gathered that marriage which is ordained by God is not to be entered upon lightly or carelessly but thoughtfully with reverence for God with due consideration of the purposes for which it was established by God and then we articulate three of those purposes one the companionship that husband and wife ought to give to each other through life to the gift of children from God to be brought up and trained to love and obey God and three the welfare of human society which can be strong and happy only when the marriage bond is held in honor that then is not simply a personal issue but it is a cultural issue is it it is a societal issue when a culture turns its back on the creator's design there are moral psychological social spiritual implications that inevitably follow I was going to bring something here just as an illustration for some of the young people that are here with us this morning because of the Sunday school and I thought no don't do it because you'll get yourself so tied up in knots that the benefit will be outweighed by how pathetic you are at it but what I was going to bring was a piece of a piece of equipment and the and the instruction manual and I was going to take a moment to point out how if you pay attention to the instruction manual then you'll be able to you know construct the thing accordingly and if you don't you'll get yourself in trouble but then I realized I'll get myself in trouble either way and so the illustration will break down but it doesn't break down here when we turn our back on God's creative purposes then there are ramifications and I would defy anybody anybody to take the newspapers of this weekend to take the magazines are offered to us this week to take the material that is up on the web and be unwilling to acknowledge that there is a societal chaos in our culture that is in large measure directly tied to the unwillingness of men and women to do what God says and so what we have in this instruction in mark 10 is another opportunity for us to put into practice the exhortation of Paul at the beginning of Romans 12 when after he has laid down the basis of freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ the nature of salvation and so on he then says so this is how you should live in light of that and you remember he says and I don't want you to allow the world around you to squeeze you into its own mold but I want you instead to have your minds transformed transformed in thinking now so often those verses at the beginning of Romans 12 have been taught in such a way as to suggest that what the Christian is to do is somehow or another live in another worldly dimension but that's not what Paul is saying at all Paul is really saying that the Christian is to be marked by a holy worldliness that is hol why there's a paradox in that isn't there so that our engagement in the routine of life is to be marked by holiness by the fact that we are not as we once we're we have been set apart we have been changed we are different and as a result of that difference everything is viewed from a different perspective that's why we love the quote from CS Lewis isn't we quoted all the time I believe in Christianity said CS Lewis as I believe in the rising of the Sun not simply because I can see it but because by it I can see everything else so that the Christian perspective on the world on science on the arts and here in this instance on marriage itself is constrained in a vastly different way than that which is represented in a culture that has rejected the makers instructions now with all that by way of introduction let us come to the first verse of chapter 10 and notice that here we are just some fifty two verses away from Jesus arrival in Jerusalem mark tells us that the Ministry of Jesus in Galilee is now over he has moved into the region of Judea across the Jordan and once again we discover that crowds of people came to him crowds of people came to him they didn't come just in dribs and drabs he often went to the individuals but it seems as though people came not so much as individuals as they came in vast numbers and one of the lovely things in reading the Gospels is to see the way in which people were attracted to Christ they were attracted to the fact that he spoke with clarity that he spoke in a way that was understandable that was wonderfully clear that his talks were not like some of the boring talks of the religious leaders that it was not mumbo-jumbo that he didn't pull his punches that he said things that were so clear so compelling and so many times the Pharisees were muttering under their breath about what he was doing but the crowds were coming and here we're told that they came to him and he taught them he taught them now those of us who've been reading mark know that from the very beginning he was teaching them yes there were signs that accompany his teaching he healed the sick and so on but you remember after that first amazing encounter with the demonic people and with those who were sick when the disciples had come to him and said Jesus everybody's looking for you now he said we've got to leave here and go somewhere else they must have thought I was very strange but he said I need to go somewhere else to teach the gospel because that is why I have come in other words he says I didn't come to do miracles these miracles are merely a sign of the kingdom of God and who I am and remember what he had said the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is near repent and believe the good news very straightforward the people who knew their Old Testament understood what he was saying in other words I haven't appeared out of nowhere he says I am now here in the economy and the unfolding plan of God the prophets of spoken of the Messiah was to come and Here I am I'm not here just to tickle your ears to encourage you to become little religious people I am here to say to you you need to do an about-turn for that's what repentance is by nature you're going your own way by nature you're making your own plans by nature you're redesigning your own agendas now I'm asking you to have a change of heart a change of mind a change of direction I'm asking you to believe the good news that is embodied in me and one in another men and women then and now and today and here at Parc site are hearing that message understanding who the Messiah is returning from all that represents of our sinful rebellion and disinterest in him and are turning to believe this glorious good news that there is forgiveness in him that there is freedom in him that there is a future in him and so on and if you've never done that and you want to find out about it then when our service ends through the doors to my right to your left you'll find folks that can help you and guide you and give you literature in that regard well in verse one the crowd is coming to him and in verse two the Pharisees are coming for him they're coming for him some Pharisees came and tested him in other words they weren't coming to do simply investigation they were coming to see if they could catch him off guard they were trying to catch him out now let me just point out to you that this is routine on the part of these individuals you turn back a couple of pages to the eleventh verse of chapter eight and there you discover the Pharisees came and began to question Jesus and here's the word again to test him they asked him for a sign from heaven to test him that little verb there to test is an interesting verse the first time we read it in Mark's Gospel actually is in the 13th verse of chapter 1 and Jesus was in the desert for forty days being tempted or tested by Satan so say it's the same word same word when you go to chapter 12 and I'll just point this out we need belabor this but chapter 12 and verse 13 later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus notice to catch him in his words to catch him in his words there's all the difference between the person who comes and ask you a question if you're if you're a teacher in school who asks you a question because they have a genuine inquiry and they need to discover something and the person is just a complete pain in the neck they're just trying to take up your time or prove that you're not as clever a teacher as you thought you were that's the lateral approach the approach of the Pharisees that's why in verse 15 of chapter 12 it says that Jesus knew their hypocrisy why are you trying to trap me he asked why are you trying to trap me fascinating isn't it because it is the record of religious people using the word of God in attempt to undermine the identity and the work of the Son of God did you get that religious people using the word of God to if they could undermine the very work of the Son of God not a lot has changed as it people say them on mr. source is a very religious person you know he refers to the Bible all the time I don't doubt it for a minute but to what end to what end is the Bible being employed is it being employed in order to set forward who Jesus is and what he's done the truths of his resurrection the reality of his return the nature of his atonement or is mr. religious or mrs. religious or miss religious simply seeking to bring the Bible to bear upon us in such a way that they might tempt and test and undermine and seek to disprove that which is there too in his pages because remember and that's why I took you to chapter 1 of mark remember that the roots of this activity lie with the evil one himself and in Matthew's Gospel where you have the record of the testing or the tempting of Jesus in the wilderness when you read it for your leisure in chapter 4 of Matthew you discover that the evil one is doing exactly that he uses the Bible he uses the word of God to try and trip up the Son of God loved ones don't be so naive as to think that just because somebody makes reference to the Bible now there is an orthodoxy about that the Bible speaks of those who rest the scriptures to their own destruction and these Pharisees come now to Jesus not because they have an honest inquiry about which they longed for an answer but because they have an agenda of their own which they're seeking to establish and their testing of Jesus comes by way of a specific question and the question is recorded for us at the end of theirs - is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife it's a pretty straightforward question isn't it and it'll take us until this evening to really get to Jesus complete answer to this which comes when it is react by his disciples in verses 10 to 12 is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife now the background to this question needs to be understood in Jesus day there were largely two groups who express their convictions concerning divorce that is to teaching groups to Jewish groups one group was very liberal permitting divorce for any and every reason and the other group was far more conservative and strict when it came to the issues of divorce so these Pharisees come and say let's try and get him to commit to one site or the other and that way if he goes with a liberal group then he'll be out with the conservative group and vice versa Jesus of course knows that's why later on he's aware of their hypocrisy there's no reason to believe that he isn't aware of it here as well and so he turns the tables doesn't he verse three let me ask you a question he says what did Moses command you was it saying the Old Testament what are the prophet Moses have to say about this well verse four they reply Moses permitted a man to write a significant a certificate of divorce and send her away he provided pieces of paper so that a man could say as long as I have the correct form filled out properly then I can go ahead and divorce this lady but what we need to understand is that Moses didn't institute that process in order to make it easy to be divorced but he instituted that process in order to regularize and to control the ensuing chaos which was resulting from the fact that the religious individuals were beginning to say if my wife burns the toast I can divorce her if she feels to do this in the way that I want I can divorce her and that's why Jesus goes on to point out that it was on account of the hardness of the people's hearts that Moses wrote the law because they had hardened hearts to God's purposes and plans because they were unprepared to accept the nature of love within the framework of the Covenant of marriage that God had intended because their primary interest apparently was in seeing how far they could go and yet still remain within the letter of the law Moses responded in that way now what we need to understand or will go wrong is this that these certificates were actually for the purpose of prevention but the individuals viewed them as the key expression of permission permission so it was easy as long as you could get the piece of paper so if we don't need no piece of paper from the City Hall to make marriage marriage these guys were saying all we need is a piece of paper from the City Hall if we can get that bit of paper signed properly then we can be out of the door and on our way to the next adventure with somebody else sounds kind of contemporary doesn't it it sounds a lot like what we've experienced in the last 30 years in the United States in the radical change in the civil dimensions of the nature of marriage I say to you again when a culture turns his back on the work of the creative handiwork of God then the implications are unavoidable so you'll notice what Jesus does he doesn't get buried at this point in an in-depth discussion as to the validity or invalidity of these certificates he does what everybody ought to do when the question of divorce is raised and that is he takes it back to first principles and he says let me talk to you about how it was from the beginning let's make sure that none of us misunderstand the nature of marriage itself and so he quotes to them from the first couple of chapters of the Bible and you may like to turn here just to ensure that it is actually there where I'm suggesting Genesis chapter 1 easy to find verse 27 so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them alright we are again at the end of all these years of Darwinian thought and it is impossible to read your Bible without recognizing that this stands up and says oh no mr. Darwin Oh No and in verse 24 of chapter 2 for this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife what did Moses do he gave out certificates very interesting said Jesus but let's just think about how it was from the beginning at the beginning of creation incidentally for those of you who are interested in fiddling around with the first eleven chapters of Genesis who think it's tremendously intellectual of you to suggest that what we have here is something other than history do not miss this that Jesus does not quote this as an allegory he quotes it as factual do not miss this that when Paul argues in Romans chapter 5 concerning the nature of what it means to be in Adam and to be in Christ he is not arguing from some mythological or allegorical material he is arguing from the historical evidence the Bible provides of the nature of creation itself and the activity of the evil one from the very beginning was always to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of people beginning with Eve concerning God and his revelation and his purposes that's why it should be no surprise to us that we as sinful men and women sin having clouded our understanding come to the doctrine of creation thinking wrongly come to the doctrine of marriage thinking incorrectly predisposed not to say oh yes but predisposed to say oh no predisposed to seek to tamper with to tinker with to re-engineer things in order that it might be well for us so says Jesus let's go back to basics marriage is not a human invention marriage is not a social convention marriage is not something drummed up in time to help men and women make sense of their existence marriage is a creation ordinance a creation ordinance so that at the very beginning of time when God makes man and woman he establishes for them exactly how things are to be in the world that he has made and since he is the maker he has every legitimate right to explain to his creation how they work and why they should act and live in this way now we can't unpack it all no because our time is almost gone but if you look at the quote they are from Genesis 1 and 2 for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one there are at least four things that are obvious in this number one that marriage is exclusive it is exclusive it involves a man and his wife it involves a man and a woman it doesn't involve two women or two men it involves a man and a woman even human physiology makes that clear to the average thirteen-year-old boy he's got it figured out it is exclusive it is heterosexual secondly it is disruptive disruptive yes it disrupts in a wonderful way the relationships that have previously existed in the family unit from which these two individuals emerge right so you have a mom and a dad I'm the dad there's a mom I have children we're very happy together they send me notes we've gone the case together and everything else and then one day some chap shows up and the unfolding drama is horribly disruptive no matter how nice the fellow is he's basically saying can I disrupt your family I want to take this girl and I want to live with her and sleep with her and have children with her what you can't do that with my girl you're not going to do that with my girl well it's disruptive for this reason a man will leave and part of the reason for messed up marriages in their infancy is because the leaving never happens the fellows a mummy's boy or the girl is always tired always phoning up you can do that that instruction is for another time it's exclusive its disruptive thirdly it's permanent it's permanent there's no slip out the back jack there's no makin you plan Stan there's no need to be coy Roy just get yourself free there's no slip on the bus Gus no there's not that's why it's interesting isn't in the marriage service you never asked how you feel no one ever asks how you feel when people write their vows today young people come to me sir I'd like to run write my vows I told them no if you want to write your vows do that in your honeymoon but you're not doing it where I'm involved it's too embarrassing because I don't want to hear how you feel about her not in public at least and furthermore how you feel about or is irrelevant we're having a marriage here all the questions are volitional do you do you do you will you will you will you they're all promises they're all expressions of the will for better worse richer poorer sickness health love cherish till death us do part there is no back door in the plan and purpose of God it's exclusive it's disruptive its permanent and it's sexual they will become one flesh they're no longer two but one they've been joined together you see that's why the public social civil dimension of marriage is so crucial sleeping with somebody is not marriage sleeping with somebody is an intrusion in the marital bonds but it doesn't make a marriage because marriage is all of these things exclusive disruptive social societal civil and everything else and sexual that is why incidentally God says that the privileges of sexual activity the benefits of procreation are set solely exclusively within the context of a heterosexual monogamous permanent relationship did you get that set within the context of a heterosexual monogamous permanent relationship why because God is a cosmic killjoy because God is interested in making this experience as miserable as he possibly can enslaving us in a cage robbing us of the potential of real freedom and real love and real enjoyment not for a moment not for a moment by the time they got to Woodstock they were half a million strong there it was there it is I think it's fair to say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and that's why when you take sex out of the framework of heterosexual monogamous permanent monogamous permanency you make a mockery of it it's absurd it was never meant to be that's why I can never satisfy because that one dimension of that one flesh Union cannot exist on its own it is set within the framework of a psychosomatic social spiritual intellectual every bit of what that means there's one cynic put it in the 60s if you want to know what a man means when he says he needs a woman just look at the empty cigarette packets as you walk up this pavement and then he said no one keeps the packet when they've smoked their cigarettes Roger McGough the Liverpool poet put it like this the act of love lies somewhere between the belly and the mind and I've lost the love some time ago so I have only the act to grind high on bedroom darkness we endure the pen to mind the ship that was banging in the night runs aground on the sands of time so in the morning its cornflakes and goodbye another notch on the headboard another day wondering why because the act of love lies somewhere between the belly and the mind and I lost the love some time ago so I have only the act to grind thank God that we have a God who is able to restore the years that even the locust of Eden thank God that we have a God of second third fourth and fifth chances thank God that we have a God of grace but in all of that lead not mitigate in any way or fashion at all the absolute clarity of the instruction of Jesus let me he says talk to you about how it was from the beginning and it is in this realm that you will find freedom and there you will find fullness and that you will find fun fun can I just ask and not a show of hands but it how are you mister married are you are you having fun I mean fun so we're involved in Christian marriage no we were just on there's no fun in our marriage he has been for some time we're not going to finish with a song but I'm going to finish with a quote from a song one of my one of our friends Paul Overstreet wrote a song that contains these words well the guys that I work with they work real hard and they like to have a good time at the end of the day it's time to play and they'd like to go and unwind and they make a lot of jokes and they laugh they poke fun at me because I don't stay long and they can't understand why a married man is in a hurry to ever go home and I just tell him all the fun that I'm ever going to need I've got waiting at home for me and she likes to dance and she loves romance and she throws a great party now there's never any dull moments around here something's always going on and all the fun that a man could want I got waiting for me at home for those of you who are on the knife edge of separation and divorce let me give you one word if you will if you will first of all bow down before Almighty God and admit your need of him and promise to expend 50% of the energy that you are presently expending on trying to break your marriage up then the delights will more than outweigh all the disappointments because God is no one's debtor and he created us in this way for this purpose for his glory and for our good and then the disciples said when they got him on his own yeah but what about the divorce thing and so I have to come back to that this evening let us pray gracious God we thank you for the Bible we thank you that we can go home and read it to see if these things are so we thank you that you the Great Creator another one is is the one who recreates us so that when we come to you in our brokenness and our fallenness and our mess and in our disappointment that you are the one who restores redeems restraints and who renews may the grace of the Lord Jesus the love of God the Father the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one now and forevermore amen

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 26,777

Rating: 4.8709679 out of 5

Keywords: Marriage, Sexuality, Obeying God, Repentance, Restoration

Id: 3owhZQOihwI

Length: 42min 43sec (2563 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2011