[MUSIC PLAYING] Start building the home
of your future today-- Smart Home. Love the Christmas season. And unfortunately this
is a topic that, say boy, way to bring a Christmas
season to an all time low. At the same time it is precisely
this season of the year where people who have struggled
through a bad marriage, or are suffering through the
weight of a divorce, that's when they feel it the most. So in that sense
it is appropriate. But I'd like you to
turn in your Bibles, please, to Matthew,
chapter 19 this morning-- Matthew chapter 19. I was talking to my wife
Lenya and I said, Lenya, will you love me when
I'm old and unattractive? And she said, of course I do. [LAUGHTER] Well, that's a good thing. When I was in college
in 1975, Paul Simon released a song that
became an instant hit. I bet many of you
know that song. Some of the lyrics
are, "the problem is all inside your
head, she said to me. The answer is easy if
you take it logically. I'd like to help you with
your struggle to be free. There must be 50 ways
to leave your lover. If you just slip
out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan. Don't need to be coy, Roy. Just get yourself free." You know the song. Unfortunately, marriage
begins as an ideal that can soon turn into an ordeal. And at that point people
are looking for a new deal. When that happens, divorce
is in their sights. We're doing a series
called Smart Home-- how to build a home of
the future, Smart Home. I found, however, a business
located up in Denver, and also in Chicago, that is advocating
what they call a smart divorce. It is called Split Simple. That's their title,
Split Simple. Hope you're not like writing
this down to find that. But Split Simple, and they
advertise a smarter way to divorce. Their tagline, no stress-- I read that, I go, no stress? In what universe
are you living in? No stress, less
expense, less time. It's easy! Let's make it easy. Let's take out the stress,
let's take out the fuss. A book called Divorce,
How and When to Let Go. The authors write this, and I'm
quoting, "yes, your marriage can wear out. People change their values
and their lifestyles. People want to
experience new things. Change is a part of life. Letting go of your
marriage if it's no longer good for you can
be the most successful thing you've ever done. Getting a divorce can be a
positive, problem solving, growth oriented step. It can be a personal
triumph," end quote. Well, not everybody
agrees with that. Ask all the kids of
those relationships what they think about
the positive change that takes place. Broken homes
produce broken lives that produced broken
homes that produce broken lives that produce broken
homes and the cycle continues. No wonder millennials,
that generation, they're not beating down
the door to get married. Millennials are saying
they would rather go slower and wait much
longer and enjoy the fringe benefits of a
marriage relationship without any of the commitment. A study done by the National
Center for Family and Marriage Research explores the views
of two generations, Gen X-- Generation X-- and now
the millennial generation. And the interview and the study
was on marriage success rates. They discovered that two out
of five of those generations, two out of five, said that
marriages have failed for most of the people they know. So you've got this
generation looking out at the world around them,
wide eyed and understanding, why should I get
into that institution when it does not work for
the people that I know? Well, the subject that
I'm dealing with today is one that I treat carefully. And I am sensitive to the
fact that many people here have gone through or are
going through a divorce. I also understand that it is
that very painful experience that awakened your
need for Christ and brought you to Him,
for which we are grateful. And though I tread
carefully and prayerfully, I also tread
unapologetically because I have seen the
devastation in countless of lives for many, many years. And I am comforted by the fact
that in our text of scripture Jesus was asked the
question about divorce and he did not skirt
the issue at all. He didn't marginalize,
didn't push it away. He honestly confronted
popular theories, the popular theories of his day
and age, with Biblical truth. So Matthew chapter 19 is
that conversation and it's pretty straightforward. It's a question between
religious leaders and Jesus himself. Jesus is gaining popularity. The religious leaders
don't like that. So they come with a strategic
question in order to trap him. And it's a question
about marriage, knowing that It's
a volatile issue. So they ask a question. He gives a direct answer. They don't like his answer. They give a rebuttal. Jesus gives what they would
call in legal parlance a surrebuttal, a
rebuttal to the rebuttal, and brings it to a close. All of that in nine versus. Verse 1, Matthew
19, "it came to pass when Jesus had finished
these things that he departed from Galilee and
came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And great multitudes followed
him and he healed them there. The Pharisees also came to Him,
testing Him, and saying to Him is it lawful for
a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?" Now, just a little FYI. He's in the area
beyond the Jordan. It was an area called Perea. Perea was the place where John
the Baptist was put in prison and beheaded because he
brought up the issue of Herod having an illicit marriage
with his brother's wife. So in that region, they
asked Jesus the question about marriage to
test him, probably hoping that it's going to
create such a discrediting stir among the people that maybe
Jesus will get beheaded. So they ask him, is
it lawful for a man to divorce his wife
for just any reason? "And he answered
and said to them, have you not read that He who
made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said for this reason a
man shall leave his father and mother, be
joined to his wife, the two shall become one flesh? So then, they are no
longer two but one flesh. Therefore , what God has joined
together, let not man divorce." That's the word, [NON-ENGLISH]. Same word Paul used
in first Corinthian 7 for divorce, let
not man separate. "They said to him,
why then did Moses command to give a certificate
of divorce and to put her away? He said to them, Moses because
of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to
divorce your wives. But from the beginning
it was not so. And I say to you,
whoever divorces his wife except for sexual
immorality and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries her who
is divorced commits adultery." Now, the passage that we read
reveals four characteristics about divorce for any culture
at any time for anyone. First, divorce is
a practical issue. They brought it up because they
dealt with it all the time. It was common even in
the Jewish culture-- and I'll explain why-- to deal with the
subject of divorce. It was a common question. And I would say it still is. There's not a person
here who has not been touched in
some way by divorce, either in your family
or someone you love. Now notice, again
in verse three, the Pharisees came testing him. You see, they just
didn't come up with this at the last minute. They strategically
brought in a question hoping that by bringing it
up and having Jesus answer the issue would discredit
Jesus, would trap him, so that he would lose
popularity among the people. Why'd they do that? Because they knew divorce
had been a topic, and still was at that point, a topic
of hot debate among the Jews. And it was. And by New Testament times
there were two different schools of thought regarding divorce. I'll speak that in a moment. Now theoretically--
theoretically-- there was no nation on earth
that had a higher standard when it came to the
covenant of marriage than the Jewish nation. They regarded it
as a sacred duty. In fact, did you know
that one of the sayings-- they have many of them. But one of the beliefs was
that the only reason that would exempt a man
from getting married was him devoting his whole life
to the study of Torah, the law. That was his only out. If he refused to
marry and have kids it was said that he broke
the positive commandment to be fruitful and multiply and
he lessened the image of God in the world. Furthermore, if he
didn't get married they said he has slain,
killed, his posterity. Now the rabbis had all sorts
of wonderful lofty sayings about marriage and how
infidelity and adultery ruins it, et cetera. Here's a few of them. One of their sayings
was, unchastity causes the glory
of God to depart. A second saying
that was famous was, every Jew must
surrender his life rather than commit idolatry,
murder, or adultery. And a third saying,
the very altar itself sheds tears when a man
divorces the wife of his youth. Now those are beautiful sayings. They're lofty sayings. But talk is cheap. The truth of the matter was,
women of that day and age had no legal rights. They could never
divorce their husbands. But the husbands could
divorce their wives. Women had no legal
rights whatsoever. So they come to
Jesus with a question and they follow it
up with a rebuttal, about this Moses
giving a command. Now, what was in their minds
when they approached him? What was in their minds
was a text of scripture from the Old Testament-- I'm going to read it to you. The book of Deuteronomy, fifth
book in the Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 24. It's the only passage in the
Old Testament that even speaks about a divorce procedure. Deuteronomy 24 reads this. "When a man takes a
wife and marries her and it happens that she
finds no favor in his eyes because he has found
some uncleanness in her and he writes her a
certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and
sends her out of his house, when she is departed
from his house and goes and becomes
another man's wife if the latter husband
detests 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 husband dies who took her as his wife, then the former
husband who divorced her must not take her back to
be his wife after she has been defiled for that is an
abomination before the Lord and you shall not bring
sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving
you as an inheritance." That's the text. That's the text in
their minds as they say, is it OK to divorce
your wife, to dump your wife for any reason? And why did Moses then
give this commandment? Now, that's the text. But there were two
opposing viewpoints as to what that text meant. One was a narrower view,
a more conservative view, and that was the view espoused
by one of their esteemed rabbis in history, a guy by the
name of Rabbi Shammie-- S-H-A-M-M-I-E if
you're taking notes. Rabbi Shammie interpreted
Deuteronomy 24 and that clause, uncleanness in her, to be only
adultery, only unchastity. It was a very strict view. There was another
rabbi, however, who had a different idea of
the meaning of that text. And he was a more recent rabbi. He was just about a century,
even less than a century before the time of Christ. His name was Rabbi Hillel-- H-I-L-L-E-L. Rabbi Hillel had
a liberal view of the meaning of that text. He believed and
defined uncleanness in the widest possible way. If a wife put too much
salt in her husband's food, that was unclean. I'm not making this up. He actually said that. So if she burns his
bagels, doesn't prepares his meal right,
that's an uncleanness and it's up for divorce. If she is a quarrelsome
wife, that's an uncleanness. If she went in
public with her head uncovered, if she spoke
to men in the streets, if she spun around in
public so that people could see her knees, if she
spoke disrespectfully of her husband's parents. Wow-- all grounds for divorce. That was the liberal view. Now to make matters
worse, another rabbi came much later named
Rabbi Akiba even after the time of Christ
who widened it even further and said, if there is a husband
who finds another girl more attractive than his wife, he can
divorce his wife to marry her. Now, I have a question for you. Given those two interpretations,
which was the most popular among men? Not the first one,
not the narrow one, not the conservative
one-- the liberal one! Because sinners always
go to the lowest level. So they thought, I like Hillel. And so all you had to
do to make it legal is provide a
certificate of divorce, because it's mentioned
in Deuteronomy 24. Here was the bill of divorce. It had to read this. "Let this be, for me, thy
writ of divorce and letter of dismissal and
deed of liberation that thou mayest marry
whatsoever man thou wilt." That's all that
was necessary is, come up with a legal paper
that says you're done. And she was done. So, what does all
that translate into? And it's simply this. By the time of Jesus,
there was rampant no fault divorce taking place. Men, even religious men, even
leaders like the Pharisees, were dumping their
wives for any reason. That's why they
asked the question, is it lawful for
a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? They knew the controversy. They were trying to trap him. Now I agree with
whoever wrote this. There are two
processes that ought never to be entered into
prematurely, embalming and divorce. But they were entering into
divorce at the drop of a hat. So it was a practical
issue they brought up. Now Jesus gives his answer. And this gives us the second
characteristic of divorce. Divorce is a biblical issue. And Jesus takes it
back to the Bible, takes it out of the culture
and back to the Bible-- back to the beginning, in fact. Verse 4, "and he answered and
said to them, have you not read--" I love Jesus. I love this. You know, there's
sarcasm in those words. He knows he's addressing
Bible scholars, guys who read their Bibles and
teach and memorize scripture. So there's, well,
in all your reading have you never read, "that he
who made them at the beginning made them male and
female and said for this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and
the two shall become one flesh. So then they are no
longer two but one flesh." How do you divide one? Therefore what God
has joined together, let not man [NON-ENGLISH]----
divorce, separate. Now, first of all
notice Jesus does not give them a direct answer. They asked him a question. He answers it with a question. They asked a question
about Deuteronomy 24, and his question brings them
back to Genesis chapter one verse 27 and Genesis
two verse 24. Takes them all the way
back to the very beginning before Moses was ever born
and God spoke on the issue. Now here's what I love-- one of the things I love. I love so many
things about this. Jesus gives to us a good
model of Bible study. Have you never read? Jesus expects you
to read your Bible and to know what He says
on a number of issues. This question could be
asked of many Christians, have you never read? I was speaking to a young man
this week about some issues and prayed with him, and had
just a little bit good time of just sharing and
counseling out in public. And after I did
he said, you know, Skip, I was told to
go to another church because Calvary is too advanced. Because you're always giving
Bible studies all the time. You meet and you
have Bible studies. And so I heard that guy. I did not know quite
how to take that. But I said, let me ask
you a simple question. How can you ever obey God if
you don't know what God said? How are you ever going to know
what God wants if you never read what God wants? You have no knowledge of it,
how are you ever going to do it? So the reason we teach and
emphasize Bible exposition is, this is our response
to the biblical illiteracy of our culture, and I would
even say Christian culture. Too many Christians are
biblically illiterate. Have you not read? It's there for the reading. Well, the Pharisees want
to talk about divorce but Jesus takes them back
before divorce to marriage, to the beginning, when God
first established marriage. Before you can
understand divorce you have to understand marriage. Before you can
understand anything you have to understand why that
anything was designed to exist. So if you're going to
understand divorce, you have to understand marriage. If you're going to
understand marriage, you have to understand
what it was originally designed to do and be. Make sense? So Jesus gives to us
in a nutshell what it's designed to do and be. Number one, marriage
was God's idea. It didn't come from some
brilliant sociologist or some cultural
innovation over time. It came from Heaven. God made them. God did this. Number two, marriage is
between a man and a woman. Notice how Jesus
parses his words. "Have you not read that he
who made them at the beginning made them male and female." And in the original
language, male and female are in the emphatic form. One of the most damaging
things done today is to blur the lines
between male and female. I understand we live in a free
society, a democratic society, and that all people
should be given basic human rights--
heterosexual, homosexual, transgender. I believe that
and I affirm that. However, we must take a
stand for God ordained the historical
definition of marriage between one man and one woman. That's how God made them. One man, one woman. [APPLAUSE] So you Pharisees can
talk to me about divorce, but let me take you
back to the beginning. And this is what God said. He made them, one man and-- He made Adam and Eve. There were no spares. He didn't make Adam
and three women and if Eve didn't work out
he had a couple more to go. He had no options. He made them one and one. So, marriage is God's idea. Marriage is between
a man and a woman. The third thing Jesus
affirms about marriage is that it was God's plan to
create oneness with marriage. He quotes Genesis. "For this reason a man shall
leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife," the King
James word, cleave to his wife. "And the two shall
become one flesh." That's the process we
spoke about weeks ago-- leaving, cleaving, weaving. Leave mom and dad, establish
a new relationship, cleave means to be glued. I've had people
say I feel stuck. Good. You are. I'm hoping it's the
good kind of stuck, not the bad kind of stuck. But that's the
concept of the word. You are glued. You are stuck together. "And the two shall
become one flesh." So if you take two and make
one, how do you divide one? You can't cut them in-- cut one in half and have
two, you have a half. So that's God's arithmetic-- 1 plus 1 equals 1. So, marriage is a
romance novel in which both the hero and the heroine
die in the first chapter and a new person is created. That person is one flesh. "The two shall become one." Jesus then goes on
to say that there's a fourth component of
God's original design, marriage was designed
to be permanent. He says therefore--
I love Jesus. Just sort of come to a
conclusion really quickly. "Therefore, what God
has joined together, let not man separate." So he's telling them, look,
whatever your view of marriage is and divorce, God's
view of marriage is a high view of
marriage, that it's to be a permanent
lifelong commitment. Divorce was not in God's
original blueprint in Genesis, even though He permits it
in limited circumstances. We'll talk about
that in a moment. So, get the idea. The Pharisees see Jesus. They come to him with
one verse in mind, one little concept
in mind, negating all of the other
versus of scripture-- one verse in mind. By the way, this is
classic proof texting. They just want to just
force their interpretation. Jesus goes back to
the beginning to show God's intention of one flesh. And if they're one flesh,
how do you break that up? That's his point. How do you separate what is one? So therefore, for
a guy to say, I'm going to dump my
wife because we're going through some
problems, that's like a guy saying I'm going to
cut off my leg because I found a splinter in it. There are other ways to deal
with it than an amputation. Takes us to a third
characteristic of divorce. It's not just a practical
issue and a biblical issue, it is also a
controversial issue. Look in verse seven. They're not done. "They said to him,
why then," you could see their feathers ruffled. "Why then did Moses command to
give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?" Can you spot the misconception
in their question? Can you hear it? Well let me ask
you, did God ever, through Moses or
anyone else, ever command anyone to divorce, ever? Was there ever a
command in the Bible where God says I command
you, divorce your wife. Never. Ain't one. But they ask him the
question, why did Moses command for that to happen? Now that's their proof texting. That's their scripture twisting. They have made a
divine concession into a divine command, which
it was never intended to be. By the way, that's the
definition of divorce-- a biblical definition. Divorce is a divine
concession to human weakness. A divine concession to
human-- never a command. God invented marriage,
man invented divorce. And in certain cases God will
concede or permit a divorce to take place. Now the question is still
sort of hanging in the air. They're thinking
Deuteronomy 24 in mind. So what does
Deuteronomy 24 mean? You've got these two
definitions, the narrow view and the wide view,
Shammie and Hillel. So what does it mean? First of all, understand
how God feels about divorce. We know how He feels
about marriage. But God feels something
about divorce. And you know
probably the passage in Malachi chapter two, where
it says, "the Lord God of Israel hates divorce." Does not hate divorced people. He loves divorced people. But He hates divorce. So because of that,
you're never going to find any scripture
anywhere that says, if you don't like your
wife or husband, dump him. Unload the turkey. You'll never find that. Second point on that, a careful
reading of Deuteronomy 24 reveals that it's not
teaching about divorce. It's not even teaching about
the certificate of divorce. Those are incidental. It's teaching about remarriage. It is forbidding
marrying a former spouse that you have let go
of, you pushed out, who has remarried and
now divorced again. It's forbidding the
remarriage of that. Why? To protect the woman. So there's a little
phrase in there that Shammie and Hillel
were arguing about. "When a man takes a
wife," Deuteronomy 24:1 "it happens that she
finds no favor in his eyes because he has found
some uncleanness in her." And so the question is,
what does that refer to? Something improper or
something impure, but what? Well, let me suggest it
cannot refer to adultery. You know why? You know what the
punishment for adultery was? Not divorce, death in the Old
Testament-- stoning to death. So whatever the
uncleanness was, it must have been some
infraction that falls short of actual
adultery-- some impurity, some promiscuity perhaps. We're not told what it is. Whatever the uncleanness was,
it did not warrant a divorce. How do I know that? In verse 4 of that
text, Deuteronomy 24:4 says, "then her former
husband," husband number one, who's divorced her. Now she's on two and divorced
from him and he thinks, I want to take her back. "Must not take her back
to be his wife after she has been defiled for that is an
abomination before the Lord." Now, how'd she get defiled? By her first husband
divorcing her, pushing her out for any reason. For some reason
short of unchastity. And then she subsequently
got married again. That brought the adultery
to the relationship. It was the first
husband's fault. So the text is not
advocating divorce. It's protecting the woman
from the first husband. Listen, in that day and
age it was a man's world. As I said, women had no rights. And this was a law given
by God to protect a woman. So in the controversy they
bring to Jesus about divorce as Jewish scholars, they're
neglecting the one thing God wants to protect
and that is that woman. One rabbi, a recent rabbi,
a contemporary rabbi, believes that divorce can
actually be worse than death. He said in death,
the big difference is death has closure. Divorce is never over. So, it's a practical
issue, a biblical issue, a controversial issue. Don't have to tell you that. The fourth and final,
divorce is a moral issue. It's a moral issue-- verse 8. Jesus now is rebutting
their rebuttal. He answers them, he says this. "Moses, because of the
hardness of your hearts permitted," notice
the difference. Moses commanded! No, "because of the
hardness of your heart Moses permitted you to
divorce your wise. But from the beginning
it was not so. And I say to you that
whoever divorces his wife," notice these are red letters. These are Jesus' words. "I say to you whoever
divorces his wife except for sexual
immorality and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries her who
is divorced commits adultery." Now, as silent as it is
right now in this room-- and I think people
are going, whoa. That's heavy. I'm guessing that the
response in the crowd that day when Jesus spoke
those words was, whoa. This is heavy. You know why I know that? Verse 10. "His disciples said
to him, if such is the case of a
man with his wife, it's better not to marry." They got it. They understood. Wow. That is the biblical
standard from the beginning and that hasn't changed. Now Jesus here gives the
right interpretation. He gives it to them. He unfolds Genesis and
Deuteronomy and says, this is the meaning of it. And he says it's because of
the hardness of your hearts. Divorce always includes a
hardening of the heart-- always. Whether you're the victim
and you've been abused and somebody has
cheated on you and you feel the horror of that
and you harden your heart against repairing anything. Understandable or not,
that's what happens. Or, somebody says I'm just
going to divorce my wife. I don't love her anymore. I found somebody
prettier, more exciting. He hardens his heart. Whichever, it always involves
a hardening of the hearts. A friend of mine
that I knew who's now in Heaven, Terence
Kelshaw said, divorce tells us the truth about man. It tells us nothing
about marriage. Now here's the core of Jesus'
teaching in these two verses. It's called the
exception clause. Have you heard that before? The exception clause
is, no divorce except-- and here's the clause. Except, the only
permissible reason, except for sexual immorality. That's the exception clause. The word sexual
immorality is pornea-- one word in Greek, pornea. It's a word that describes a
wide variety, a wide range, every kind of illicit
sexual intercourse. And the way the
verb is written it indicates a repeated,
unrepentant, ongoing pattern of behavior-- no change. That's the only allowable
reason for a Christian to initiate a divorce. No wonder the disciples said,
it's better not to get married. To which Jesus will respond,
and we've already covered that, well, since you brought
that up, that can be a gift from God as well-- to remain single, right? Now I'm going to read to
you another passage that's a parallel to this. Same book, Sermon on the Mount. Everybody loves the
sermon on the mount. I meet unbelievers who say, ah,
I love the Sermon on the Mount! And I always get
mystified by this. You do? Yeah. I live by the
Sermon on the Mount. Oh, really? Wow. I need your autograph
because you're the first one I've ever met. In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus said-- and there were Pharisees
and common people. He said, you have heard that it
has been said by those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you if you
lust after another woman in your heart, you've committed
adultery in your heart. And then he said this,
Matthew 5, furthermore, it has been said whoever
divorces his wife, let him give her a
certificate of divorce-- Deuteronomy 24. But I say to you,
whoever divorces his wife for any reason
except sexual immorality causes her to commit
adultery and whoever marries a woman who is
divorced commits adultery. So here's how we approach it. This is what you've heard. You've heard that it was said. You heard by Shammie
and Hillel and all the different interpretations
by your system that all you need is the certificate. That's the paperwork. But I say to you-- now, when
he said that he's saying, this is what you've heard. But I'm saying the opposite. I don't allow divorce
for any reason. And he gives the exception. Now what Jesus said was
more than they required, but not more than
Moses required, and certainly not more than
God, the Father, required. Now the Pharisees
were in the crowd. They were priding themselves
in the fact, well, I've never committed adultery. Now, they've divorced several
wives for any reason-- salted their food
too much or whatever. And Jesus sort of nails
them on to things. You guys pride yourself that
you've never committed adultery but you know what? You lust after women and
you divorce your wives for any reason, therefore
you are spreading adultery all over the place. You're spreading it around. Every time a man divorces
his wife without proper cause and remarries commits
adultery and causes her to commit it as well. His words. J. Allan Peterson
wrote a book called The Myth of the Greener Grass. It's a great title. The myth, the grass is always
greener on the other side. The Myth of the Greener
Grass, and he writes this. "A call for fidelity is
like a solitary voice crying in today's sexual wilderness. What once was labeled
adultery and carried a stigma of guilt
and embarrassment is now an affair-- a nice sounding
almost inviting word wrapped in mystery, fascination,
and excitement, a relationship, not sin. What was once behind the scenes,
secret and closely guarded, is now in the headlines,
a TV theme, a best seller, common as a cold. Marriages are now open and
divorces are now creative." I want to give a final word to
those here who feel the weight. They're being crushed under
the weight of a divorce for whatever reason. Maybe you were unfaithful
in their relationship and this has happened
and you're looking back with regret, and remorse,
and shame, and embarrassment. Others of you a going
through one right now. You didn't cause it. It was caused by your spouse. I want you to know something. God understands. And I want to encourage you to
let forgiveness rule the day. You've come to the right person. He specializes in forgive-- say, well, divorce is sin! You're right. That's why it's forgivable. It's precisely why
it's forgivable. The reason that God speaks
so strongly about divorce is that He was divorced. That's right, God was divorced. In the Old Testament He speaks
about His people, Israel who has committed
unfaithfulness, broke the covenant, they
committed spiritual adultery over and over again. Jeremiah, the prophet,
was given the message that God has given her
the nation a certificate of divorce. So He understands the pain. And if you have failed,
if you have sinned, understand the meaning
of the name of Jesus that we celebrate
this time of the year. The angels said, you
will call his name Jesus for He will save his
people from their sin. That's what he's about. He forgives sin. And just in case there's some
hard liners around who think, no, you need to
get harder on this. It is sin! I'm going to read to you-- I marked it somewhere. Yeah, here it is. And I hate to be quoting
from my own book, but I-- I wrote a book on this subject. There are several chapters
about this in the book. I'm only giving you
a smattering of it. But it's not real-- I'm quoting somebody. I got this illustration
from somebody that I knew, Allan Emery from
the Billy Graham Association. "He said, one night his father
got a call informing him that a well-known Christian
was passed out on the sidewalk drunk. Immediately his father sent
his chauffeured limousine to pick up the man. Meanwhile, his mother
prepared the guestroom. My friend watched as she turned
down the beautiful coverlets, revealing the monogrammed
sheets on the exquisite old four poster bed. But mother, he
protested, he's drunk! He might even get sick. I know, his mother
replied, but this man has slipped and fallen. When he comes to, he
will be so ashamed. He will need all the
loving encouragement that we can give him." And let me suggest any
divorced person you know needs all the love
and encouragement you can give them. If they have fallen down,
if they have caused it or if they are the
victim of it, they need love and encouragement and
they need a hand up, help up. Father, we want
to commit to that. And as we close and we
consider a very heavy topic that Jesus was not in any
way willing to skirt, dealt with it head on, very
honestly and openly, giving God's original standard,
setting the record straight. Thank You for that
clarity in Your word. There's no way we're
ever going to do what You say unless
we know what You say by reading what You say. And so Father, we have applied
ourselves to that today and I pray You give us
grace in our own marriages. And I pray also, Father,
for those who have fallen and they need our encouragement,
our love, our help, our smiles, our counsel, our prayers. That's the body of Christ. Help us be that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We hope you enjoyed this message
from Skip Heitzig of Calvary Church. How will you put the truths
that you learned into action in your life? Let us know. Email us at
mystory@calvarynm.church. And just a reminder, you can
support this ministry with a financial gift at
calvarynm.church/gift. Thank you for joining us for
this teaching from Calvary Church.
