Alright, here we are this is Matthew
for Beginners. This is lesson number 11, were on chapter 19 of Matthew, famous
chapter 19 of Matthew. The title of this lesson, "Marriage-Divorce-Remarriage" and
this in our narrative discourse, this is discourse, or excuse me,
this is narrative number five. OK, so Jesus' ministry in the
northern part of the country near His hometown of Galilee is complete and now
He prepares to go to Jerusalem. So this particular narrative, narrative number
five, divides itself into two basic sections. So one section are the events
that take place while He's on His way to the city, we read all the time
that He was being followed by crowds, crowds were around Him, things were
always going on around Him as He traveled, there's that part of narrative
number 5, and then Matthew describes what takes place in and around the temple in
Jerusalem when He finally arrives in that city. So this narrative shows
Jesus' reaction to people and their reaction to Him, there's a lot of that in
this particular particular section. Also if you've read through you'll note that
there's the general hostility and doubt that was in the north is even
more evident, more pronounced among the leaders as Jesus enters the city and the
temple area. OK, so let's go to the descent to Jerusalem and chapter
19: 1-2. And if you read in chapter 19 verses 1 and 2 you'll note
that His healing ministry continues to the masses as He approaches the city and
then when He gets to the city He has a confrontation with the Pharisees and
that's what I'm gonna focus on tonight in verses 3 to 15, I'm gonna devote the
entire lesson to this. If you want to look at everything that took place in
narrative number five, because there's not just this confrontation with the
Pharisees, there's more to it than that, but I want to focus on this here because
there's been so much teaching and so much debate on this particular topic, I'd
like to develop this tonight. So let's read chapter nineteen verse 3. It
says, "Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, 'Is it lawful for
a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?'" So Matthew says that this was a
test, a test to see which side Jesus favored in the divorce issue that was
raging at the time. Imagine that, this debate in the church even today about
marriage and divorce, the same type of debate was raging at that time among the
Jews. So they test Him about that particular issue and they're testing Him on the meaning of a particular verse that
they were debating over and that is in Deuteronomy chapter 24. So I want
to read that. Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 1. It says, "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 indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and
puts it in her hand sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house
and goes and becomes another man's wife, and if the latter husband turns against
her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand
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;
for 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." So based on this
passage there was a debate going on at that time and this debate was
represented by two schools of thought, two rabbis; Rabbi Shammai
when he read this, when he interpreted this, he said that the only reason for
divorce was shameful conduct, immorality, sexual immorality; this was the only
reason that a person could divorce their spouse. Of course, in Jewish society only
the men could initiate a divorce, the women could not initiate a divorce, so it's
basically talking to the men. Then there was another rabbi, another school of
thought, Rabbi Hillel. When he read this his interpretation was, well, any cause,
any cause, any displeasure that the husband had with his wife was reason to
divorce her; she didn't look appealing anymore, that was a cause of divorce,
her cooking skills were not that great, another reason for divorce. So we would
say that Rabbi Shammai had a much stricter, more conservative view and
Rabbi Hillel had a more liberal view on the acceptable reason for a divorce. So
this is the question that they come to Jesus with alright? They want Him to
kind of settle the dispute, but it wasn't really, they weren't asking Him an
academic question, they were asking Him a question to test Him, to trap Him. You see
if Jesus sided with the stricter view, He could be responsible, He could be
reproached rather, for His friendly treatment of sinners. I mean He forgave
the prostitute, He moved among sinners and tax collectors and divorcees and so
on, He moved around a pretty rough crowd and so if He says, 'No. No. I
believe that Rabbi Shammai is correct,' well people said, 'Boy, You're a hypocrite. What's going on? You have a strict view of
this and yet You hang around with sinners?' If on the other hand He sided
with the more lax view, then the Pharisees could then side with the
opposite and accuse Him of moral laxity. 'You're easy on divorce,'
that would be the accusation. And then if He declared Himself against all divorce,
no divorce for any reason whatsoever, then they would charge Him with
contradicting the law of Moses which did permit divorce. So there was no
answer to this question. This was like a no-win situation, anyway He would
answer, they would interpret it in such a way to come back and attack Him. So let's
read a little more about this passage, or a little more of this passage. It says,
"And He answered and said, 'Have you not read that He who created them from 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 they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined
together, let no man separate.'" OK, so in responding to their question, Jesus
begins by revealing the error of their thinking; that is that God's will
concerning marriage was fully contained in Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 1 to 4,
in other words, He says to them, 'Hey, you guys are only looking at Deuteronomy 24:1-4, that talks about some of the reasons for divorce, but you're
ignoring Genesis chapter 2 which is the original law or the original teaching,
the original principle about marriage. Now Pharisees, they saw marriage and it's
dissolution, they saw it in terms of law, after all they were lawyers. When they
came up to Him they asked Him the question, 'Is it lawful?' They didn't ask is
it moral? Is it right? Is that God's will? They said, 'is it lawful'? So they wanted a
kind of a legal definition. So what Jesus does when He answers them is He points
them to the original and the basis for teaching concerning marriage and that's
Genesis, all the way back, Genesis 2 verse 24 where God says, "For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife and they shall
become one flesh." And so what does this passage teach about marriage? Well, first
of all it teaches that God created it as the perfect union for man and woman.
Secondly, He created it as a physical and emotional bond and one that was even
stronger than the parental bond, right? OK? I mean a man leaves his father and
mother and cleaves to his wife, so the husband and wife bond is stronger than
the parental bond and to dissolve such a bond was to go against
what God had done and He says that "whatever God joins together, let no man
separate," but here's the mistake: Jesus didn't say you couldn't you couldn't
break the bond, He said you shouldn't break the bond; in the same way like he
says you shouldn't steal, but do people steal? Well, yeah. Thou shalt not murder, that's
the command, but do people murder? Is it impossible for them to murder? Well, no.
They murder. You shouldn't lie, thou shalt not lie, bear false
witness, but do people break that command? Is it possible? Yes. Well when it came to
marriage, God said, "whatever God joins together,
you should not pull apart, because that will be wrong." He didn't say you couldn't
pull it apart, He just said you shouldn't pull it apart. OK?
Very important distinction as we go on in our in our study. So having
established the basis and the basis is the basis for marriage, there are two
scriptures. Genesis 2 that explains what marriage is, man and a woman for life,
united together, you should not break that bond, that's God's command, that's
Genesis 2. And then Deuteronomy 24:1-4, if there is a divorce, the
only justified cause for it is the sexual immorality of one of
the partners. So that's what Jesus answers. There's two scriptures here that
define marriage, OK, and that mitigate divorce.
Alright. So in verses seven and eight, let's keep going. "They," meaning the Pharisees,
"They said to Him, 'why then did Moses command to give a certificate of
divorce and send her away?' He said to them, 'Because of your hardness of heart Moses
permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has it has not
been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality,
and marries another woman commits adultery.'" So the Pharisees assume that
Moses commanded or promoted divorce and their understanding of the entire issue
is based on that premise. Notice what they said? They say to him, 'well why did
Moses command divorce?' Well Moses wasn't promoting divorce, but
they're looking at it in that way. The reality of the matter was that Moses
never changed the original teaching or the purpose of marriage, Genesis 2:24.
He never changed that, but rather he included legislation that mitigated, you
know [what] the word mitigate means? It means to reduce, to tamper down. So Moses included
legislation that mitigated the evil and the hardship that had occurred through
the problems that were created by divorce among the Jewish people.
So Genesis 2:24 was spoken when Adam and Eve were without sin. After sin came into
the world there also came a degeneration of the relationship in the couple and
the family and so what does God do? Well, God establishes a variety of means to
maintain and sustain order in a fallen world until Jesus comes back to save. So
what does Jesus do? How does He enter human history to try to
mitigate some of the evil? Well, the flood because the intent of
man's heart was evil continuously. What does that mean? Well if you leave him
alone, man's gonna self-destruct, so God enters in human history; the flood, He saves a few, starts over again. Or how about the Tower
of Babel when He confused the languages? Once again instead of doing
what God said to separate and to spread out and settle the world, the
earth, and so on and so forth, what do they do? They do the opposite, they gather
in one place, they build a monument, they try to come together so God
steps into human history once again and confuses their languages to spread them
out. And so and what else does He do? Well, He gives the law to Moses. Why? As a tutor
to prepare us for what? Well, for the coming of Jesus. So God enters into human
history to try to mitigate the evil that's in the world
because of sin. OK. So the legislation concerning divorce was not a change in
the principle upon which marriage was based, but rather additional instruction
to help deal with the failed marriages that were bound to occur because of
sinfulness and Jesus simply expresses this idea in verse 8. Divorce was failure,
was sin, and this is how to deal with it. After the sin of Adam divorce was to be
part of the world and part of life and the book of Deuteronomy chapter 24
verses 1 to 4 is one way that God deals with it, OK? Alright, so in verse 9
He says, "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for immorality,
and marries another woman commits adultery." A little bit of background
you have to understand to be able to interpret this correctly. The common
practice among Jews, especially the Pharisees, was to find some pretext to
send away their wives in order to marry someone else and then claim innocence
based on Deuteronomy chapter 24 verses 1 to 4 because they would say, 'well I
fulfilled the law, I gave her a certificate of divorce. I did everything by the book.
I wanted to dispose of my wife, get rid of my wife, sent her
away, so I made sure that I wrote a certificate of divorce according to the
"law" and I handed it to her and I sent her away. My hands are clean, my heart is
innocent. I've not done anything wrong because I've obeyed the "law".'
Alright? And then of course according to Deuteronomy 24 they would not reclaim
her, in other words you weren't allowed to go back and remarry your wife
and they'd say, 'well, I didn't do that either.' OK. So Jesus comes along when they asked Him a question about marriage and divorce,
He comes along and He reveals their hypocrisy by applying the principle of
Genesis 2:24 to their actions as the moral indicator, not just some sort of
twisted view of Deuteronomy 24. Do you understand what He does to the Pharisees?
He's saying, 'yeah, yeah, according to Deuteronomy 24, you've kind of twisted
that for your own advantage to get rid of your wives,' but then He points
out to Genesis 2:24, 'it wasn't always like that,
you violated Genesis 2:24.' In other words, what was one, you've broken into two. This
is how He nails their hypocrisy. In effect He says, 'if you want to judge how
lawful you are, compare your actions to a combined view of Deuteronomy 24 and
Genesis 2. If you can pass muster on both of those scriptures, OK, then you have
something to not brag about, but a claim to some sort of innocence.' So
sending away the one to whom you are joined without proper cause..
and what was proper cause? Jesus answered it. He says except for what? Fornication.
Fornication, sexual immorality, some sort of sexual sin. And so who does
Jesus agree with as far as the rabbis? Well, He agrees with Rabbi Shammai
because remember the original question? They said to Him, 'can we can
we divorce for any reason?' So Jesus answers the question. 'No you
can't. Sexual immorality.' And other passages of Scripture in the Old
Testament bear this out. Numbers chapter 5:12, Deuteronomy 22:13, Deuteronomy 24:1-4 and now Matthew 19:9 all treat the subject of divorce and what is
a proper cause of divorce and all of these passages say only sexual sin. OK.
Now a person can dissolve a marriage, I mean the law permitted this, but to do so
without proper reason was adultery, OK. A lot of people teach 'well, you can't
divorce,' well that's not a biblical idea. Of course you can divorce, but you
can't do it without some sort of guilt, that's the problem. Alright,
so there's a debate on this verse, not just in our brotherhood, but a
lot of people debate, so let's look at the debate shall we? The two, really two
sides. There's a lot of... I've read books that says the seven views of
this thing, but there's really only two, really two views. The first view is what's called the adulterous marriage view and the adulterous marriage view says that the adultery, you know when Jesus says, 'if a man puts away his wife except for fornication commits adultery,' right? So one view, the adulteress view, says that the adultery is committed when the person marries again for the second time and they call that second marriage "an adulterous marriage". Now the reason for this is that the verb in the Greek in that passage 'commits
adultery' is in, they say, a linear or continuous action mode; so the thinking
is this, if you divorce your wife except for cause of adultery and marry
somebody else, that second marriage that's an adulterous marriage.
Why? Because you keep on committing adultery every time you have sex with
your second wife. OK. So that's why the second marriage is an ongoing
adultery. Now one thing we need to understand, there is no such term in the
Bible as adulterous marriage. Human beings coined that term. You go anywhere
in the Bible, you won't see the term adulterous marriage.
Now this line of reasoning, OK, requires that those who have divorced
without just cause and then remarried must break up their existing marriages
and go back to their original spouses or remain celibate for the rest of their
lives in order to properly repent of their sin and if they're not
already baptized, they have to do that before they will be baptized. I mean I've
tried to summarize this argument, but this is pretty much the way the
argument goes. So if you're in a second marriage and you want to become a
Christian according to this line of thinking, your second marriage is a
"adulterous marriage," therefore you have to break up that marriage, go back to
original partner, and if that's not possible, you just need to remain
celibate for the rest of your life and then you can be baptized, OK? Alright,
another point of view, the other point of view is that it is the breaking of the
covenant which is adultery. In other words, the adultery is committed when the
partner violates the marriage covenant. Now the essence of the idea of adultery
is to break a covenant or to violate a promise. We always assume that adultery
means sex, but adultery can mean that, but it also means the breaking of some sort
of covenant. God says to His people 'an adulterous generation.' Why?
They had nothing to do with sex. No, it's because they went after other
gods, they were unfaithful. So in this instance what Jesus is talking
about in Matthew 19, in this instance, it's through sexual infidelity; in
other words, the adultery committed, the breaking of the covenant, is done through
sexual infidelity. So it's been shown also that the verb in the Greek
that commits adultery, because it all boils down many times to grammar,
what do the words mean? So it's been shown also that the verb in the Greek 'to
commit adultery' is not necessarily a linear denoting a continuous action, but
on the contrary according to proper translation should be considered what we
call point action or one-time occurrence. Actually the decision on linear or point
action actually belongs the way you decide which way it goes
is according to context and many, many, many scholars within our brotherhood,
within our schools, teach this idea of a one-time action, point action, in this
particular passage. When we take these ideas together the conclusion on this
verse is that when a person violates his marriage covenant through sexual
infidelity that person commits the sin of adultery whether he remarries or not
and it's a one-time sin. Let me put it this way, it's like stealing a car, you
steal a car, right? And you bring it to your house, you're stealing in
Oklahoma and you bring it to your house in Dallas, OK? And the next day you get
back into your into the car that you stole and you drive it around. Have you
stolen that car a second time? And then the next day you take it and you go to
Phoenix, is that the third time you've stolen that car? And then you come back
from Phoenix, oh is that four times? In other words do you re-steal the car every
single...? Well no. You steal the car once, maybe you have it for a day or a year. You've stolen it one time. One time. One time
action, OK? So if a person divorces in order to marry someone else without
proper cause, the sin that they commit in doing that is called adultery. Why?
Because they have violated or broken the original marriage covenant. When I'm
trying to explain, if I had a blackboard, is that the sin happens when
you break the covenant, not when you remarry, that's the point, OK? This thinking is not being "soft" on
divorce, on the contrary, this line of reasoning upholds one, the principle of
fidelity in marriage because if you're unfaithful in marriage, that's a sin. It
condemns any violation of the marriage covenant as adultery, but it does not
consider remarriages as the adultery after all listen to what Jesus said, 'if
a man puts away his wife except for fornication and marries someone else, he
commits adultery.' He didn't say the marriage was, the second marriage was
adultery. He's saying if you violate your covenant, if you break the covenant, if
you put away your wife for some other reason other than adultery, here's
what you've done, you've committed adultery. Jesus never used the
term 'adulterous marriages.' So repentance, someone will say, 'well what about
repentance?' Well repentance from this perspective means what? Well, A) you
recognize the violation, what have I done? I've broken my covenant. I've committed
adultery. And what do I do about it? I ask God for forgiveness and
then what do I do about it? Well, I never do that again. And the
things that led to that, what are the things that may have led
to that? Selfishness, self- centeredness, perhaps lust, and allowing
lust to grow in your heart, and so on and so forth, maybe you start working on that
so that the marriage that you're in, that one you succeed at. Alright, let's
look at some other things here, OK? Verse ten, in the same passage. So.
"The disciples said to Him, 'If the relationship of the man with his wife is
like this, it's better not to marry.'" So the disciples of course influenced by
the lax divorce laws of the time, they're dismayed. I mean if the only
reason a man has of discharging his wife is her fornication, which was a remote
possibility in that day and age, OK, then it's probably better not to marry. I
mean listen to what they said.How far away they are from God's original ideal
of husband and wife as partners in life, transparent and sharing and mutual
giving and physical and the emotional realm. Jesus has done more for the elevation of women to their proper place
and function at man's side than any other single person in history. So let's
go to verse 11, he said, "But He said to them, 'Not all men can accept this
statement, but only those to whom it has been given.'" So Jesus tells them that not
everybody can accept the saying that it's better not to get married. They
assume celibacy is the way to go if you are to remain faithful, but Jesus tells
them that not everybody can manage celibacy. So let's read in verse 12. He
says, "For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb; and
there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and they're also eunuchs who made
themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who was able to
accept this, let him accept it." So Jesus reviews the causes where celibacy
actually occurs. Some people are like that genetically so, they're born that
way, they have no sexual desire. OK. I know people, I know a man,
I'm not mentioning, but I know a brother in the church, never married, he never
married, never had a girlfriend, he's not gay, he's a "heterosexual" and I remember talking with him and saying, "hey, you know you're in your thirties, you're late thirties, you ever think of
marriage blah blah blah..." He says, "you know, I just don't have any need to be married.
I don't have the need for a female partner. I have no desire
actually. I'm quite happy and content. I have my work, I have my studies, I have
this. I travel, I do this and that, my service to the church," he said, "gives me a
lot of time to be as you know to serve in the church, I teach, I do this and that,
so and so forth," he said, "I'm good. God has blessed me in such a way
that I'm not burning in lust. I'm not lonely. I'm just, I'm a very happy
and content person in the Lord without being married." Well, he's a eunuch. He
was born that way and he's kind of converted that lifestyle into a way of
serving the Lord, exactly as Paul says you should do if you don't marry. And
then he says there's some that are made that way, they're castrated, right? That
was a popular thing to do in those days, especially for people who became high
officials to the king, they would castrate these people; the eunuch for
example, he was a high official to the royal court so that he would
not take over the harem and so on and so forth, mount a challenge to the king. They
would be castrated, alright. The jailer, Joseph's, Potiphar many believed
that he was also a eunuch. And then some of them exercise self-control in order
to serve in the kingdom exclusively and Paul says this is a gift given from
God in 1st Corinthians 7. So it's not compulsory since apostles were all married, Paul encouraged people to marry in 1st
Corinthians and only those who are able should remain single.
So in Matthew 19 Jesus combines Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 rather and
Deuteronomy 24 to present the complete will of God concerning
marriage and divorce, OK? So marriage comes from God and the
marriage bond is sacred and not to be broken by man, that's the basis, it can be
broken by man, but it must not be broken by man, alright. And then if marriage is
dissolved for improper cause, in other words, other than sexual immorality and a
person remarries, what's the sin that they've just committed? Well it's called
adultery, and why is it adultery? Because you violated the covenant of marriage in
some way. In some way. I mean I've known marriages where there was no sexual
immorality, but the divorce happened anyway. Why? Why? They just they didn't get
along, maybe there was alcohol involved or drugs or you know what I'm saying,
it wasn't a sexual sin, but some sin eventually led to the
breakup of the relationship. Well, that's breaking the covenant
without a proper reason because the only reason Jesus says to be able to break
the covenant and say, 'I'm innocent,' is because the partner has committed sexual
immorality. Breaking the marriage for any other reason is adultery, because you're
not allowed to break apart what God has put together. Alright, now in Matthew 5,
and I want you to stay with me, I may go just a little long tonight, just so much
stuff here. Matthew 5:32, a comparable passage, it says here, Jesus says, "I say to
you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity,"
same idea, a different word, "makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a
divorced woman commits adultery." That's a complicated passage because we don't
know how to get our heads around that. So the same issue is addressed previously
by Jesus except in this passage He includes another Old Testament scripture,
that's Exodus chapter 20 verse 14, which is "you shall not commit adultery."
The commandment forbidding adultery as well as Deuteronomy 24 which
was the legislation on divorce in relationship to what God wants in
marriage, OK, so this passage in His Sermon on the Mount, because Matthew five,
the Sermon on the Mount, is describing the conduct and character of those
within the kingdom. So now the difference between this section and the one in
Matthew, what's the difference between Matthew 5 and Matthew 19? It's that
here Jesus describes the nature of the trespass or the offense against the
innocent spouse and that person's future relationships, in other words, the Jews
felt that all obligation to their spouse were over if they obtained a legal
document and just gave it to her. They believed that in providing the
legal formality their conscience in the matter was clear. So Jesus
demonstrates that the one who divorced without proper cause in that
day and time, another sin that they committed was they caused their innocent
partner's shame. In Matthew 19 Jesus talks about the guilty party, in Matthew
5 the one we've just read, He talks about the innocent party. So Matthew 19 He says,
'if you divorce your wife other than for sexual sin and marry again you've
committed adultery, you're guilty, boom.' In Matthew five, He's not talking about the
guilty party, He's talking about the victim. So here we have to examine
grammar again in order to get the exact meaning. The Greek word translated 'makes
her commit adultery,' that should be translated in the passive tense to bring
out what Jesus is trying to say about a man who divorces his innocent wife. It
would be clearer in the passive tense so that it would say 'a man who puts away
his innocent wife stigmatizes her as being adulterous.' See what I'm saying? So
if we use the active tense then the innocent wife becomes guilty of
adultery and that doesn't make any sense. Listen, whoever puts away his wife OK,
she becomes guilty of adultery? How did that, how does that happen? He's the one that committed the adultery, how does the innocent victim also become
guilty of adultery? Well, it becomes guilty of adultery if you translate this
in the active tense, but if you translate it in the passive tense, OK, then she is
the victim of adultery which makes a whole lot more sense in context. It's not
that this woman did anything wrong, but by virtue of her dismissal she now is
seen as being an adulterous person by her society, so this happens to her
because the only good reason for her being put away in the first place is
sexual immorality. You know everybody's saying, 'oh, you got divorced, there must be
something wrong with you, you must have done something bad for your husband to
put you away.' So if she was innocent and divorced anyways, she would be considered
as such and so would anyone else who would legally marry her in the future. So
listen to the sin that these hypocrites do; they put their innocent
wives away for no good reason, give her a certificate of divorce, and
then go on and marry somebody else or get somebody else. In the meantime,
this poor woman here is considered an adulteress by society and if she marries
again, which is the only way she can support herself,
the only life that she has is being married to a person, so whoever marries
her is also stigmatized as an adulterer. So Jesus is saying to the guilty party,
'you're not only guilty of adultery because you broke the covenant, you're
also guilty of putting your wife to shame and also putting anyone else that
she would marry in the future to shame as well. All of this, this is on you. This
is on you.' So for people in that society who were righteous and moral, a divorced
woman was automatically considered to be adulteress
and it's the shameful condition that Jesus is referring to here falsely
created by a wrongful divorce.So in translating we can use the active or the
passive tense, but in using the active tense what we do is we heap more guilt
and suffering on the innocent party and you know what? That's bad Bible
study and that's not good theology and that does not square with the gospel. So
to say that the innocent partners are guilty or automatically forced into
celibacy or adultery, this is not keeping with Jesus' other teachings on grace
and forgiveness. Imagine, imagine the victim becomes shamed, and publicly, and
has the choice of being shamed for the rest of their life or living a celibate
life, really? Doesn't sound like the good news to me. So Jesus in this passage
wants to draw out the extent of the sin and the responsibility of the one who
was sending away his wife without cause. So Matthew 5:32, OK, what He does is He
shows the offense against his partner in causing her public shame and the offense
against her future husband in causing him public shame, that's what He's
talking about in 5:32. In Matthew 19, He shows the hypocrisy of using only
Deuteronomy 24 to judge morality of their actions without considering
Genesis chapter 2. In other words, they're only looking at it from a legal
perspective, they're not looking at what God has said about marriage. And secondly,
the only legitimate cause for divorce according to the law was fornication and
to put away a partner for other reasons, this was another wrong. It was called
adultery. OK, one last thing, in Luke chapter 16 verse 18, Jesus says, "Everyone
who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who
marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery." So here Jesus
is not legislating on divorce or remarriage, He's already explained
that in Matthew 5 and in Matthew 19 and He's explained that Matthew's [marriage's] for
life, sexual sin is the only legitimate cause for divorce provided by the law,
and to divorce without cause does two things; one, it makes one guilty of
adultery, and two, it makes one guilty of bringing shame on the innocent party and
their future partners, OK. In Luke 16, Jesus hurls an accusation against the
Pharisees who were scoffing at Him by charging them with adultery in their
careless divorcing and remarrying for any reason, a claim which they were
guilty; in other words, they were attacking Him at this time here
in Luke 16, they were attacking Him and the way He responded was simply He
showed them how most of them were guilty in their thinking and their practice of
the marriage and divorce in their time. So if Jesus was explaining
rules for marriage and divorce and remarriage here, He'd be contradicting
the law in His own teaching elsewhere, so He's talking to the Pharisees. What He is
reinforcing however is that covenant breaking is what constitutes adultery.
OK, one last thing. In Mark chapter 10 verses 1 to 12, this is another passage
that deals with this subject, I'm not going to read it because it covers the
same ground as the other passages we've done tonight, but it does include the
mention of a wife putting away her husband and since that wasn't possible
in Jewish society we're thinking that Mark put that in there because his
gospel was probably read a lot by Gentiles and that was happening in
Gentile society. Now as for other passages in the New Testament that deal
with the issues of marriage and divorce and remarriage, Paul the apostle
devotes an entire chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians to this
particular subject. I'm not going to do ***that in this lesson here, but if you're
interested in what Paul adds to this discussion, then I encourage you to look
at lesson number 4 entitled, "Keeping the Lock in Wedlock," and that's in our First
Corinthians series and that of course is available on the Bibletalk.TV
website. OK, next time we get together we'll do narrative number five. We've
chosen the subject tonight to talk about marriage and divorce because there's so
much discussion and debate on it. I would encourage you to read the rest of the discourse.
Next time we're going to be in Matthew 23, we're almost done, we're
coming to the end of this series. OK I hope that's given you some more
information about these very difficult passages. This passage here and what we're
going to do next time about the the end of Jerusalem, 70
AD, the end of the world, when Jesus will return, pretty complex passages, but
hopefully we've shed some light on it. Alright, thank you very much.
