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Oct 20, 2024

When 1 Becomes 2

Passage: Mark 10:1-12

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Gospel of Mark

Keywords: children, husband, wife, parents, divorce, remarriage, spouses

Summary:

Our nation has one of the highest incidents of divorce of any nation in the world. So the teaching of Jesus on this topic could not be more timely. This message seeks to clarify Jesus' teaching on the topic, its connection to the Old Testament teaching about which He was being questioned, and the application to our current church and national context.

Detail:

When 1 Becomes 2

Mark 10:1-12

October  20, 2024

 

Fellowship Question:  Tell someone anything you want about your experience with marriage (yours, your parents’ or someone else’s). 

INTRO:  Welcome to moving from last week’s passage which was the “frying pan” of our actions that affect particularly children to the “fire” of one of the most difficult, painful and culturally-conflicted issues of the day, namely divorce. 

PRAY for clarity, truth and no misunderstanding. 

Let me give you a really brief snap-shot of where divorce stands today in America:  [see overheads]

  • By year
  • By age at marriage
  • By generation
  • By ethnicity
  • Men vs. women filing
  • Heterosexual vs. Same Sex
  • Leading causes

Virtually everyone listening today has been affected by divorce whether directly or indirectly.  21-22% of all adults in America have experienced divorce first-hand.  (Contrast this with the estimated divorce rate in Jesus’ day of under 4%.)  You think what Jesus has to say about divorce might be important to us?

            Of all the topics Jesus addressed during his ministry, this is definitely one that has caused many people great difficulty in a.) accurately understanding, and b.) faithfully applying to life.  My goal today is not to give an exhaustive treatment of the Bible’s teachings on divorce.  Adequate explanations are quite extensive and very complex/technical.  My goal is to

a.) present as accurate an understanding as I can of Jesus’ teaching on divorce and,

b.) help us all faithfully apply that teaching and its implications to our lives, families and futures. 

            Mark 10 is one of the primary passages in the Gospels regarding Jesus’ teaching on divorce.  Here is a list of where the others can be found:

  • Matthew 5:31-32
  • Matthew 19:1-12
  • Mark 10:1-12
  • Luke 16:18

I will tell you right now that there are a host of different interpretations and opinions both on what the Bible teaches about divorce and how we are to apply that.  The arguments involve the original languages of Hebrew and Greek, delve into both the Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures of the day, and are sometimes very technical in nature. They result in 4 basic camps or positions regarding divorce and remarriage:

  1. No divorce, no remarriage permitted
  2. Divorce, but no remarriage permitted
  3. Divorce and remarriage permitted for very limited reasons (usually adultery or desertion)
  4. Divorce and remarriage permitted under a variety of circumstances.

So, as you can see, it is a rather broad continuum.  And, as you can imagine, this message will probably provoke even more questions than last week’s.  So please write them down.  I hope to have time for questions again today.  If not, I’d love to receive them in writing and post my response at the end of this message when I post it on-line. 

NOTE:  I’m drawing heavily today from a published article posted at this website by Rev. William F. Luck, Sr. a former Professor of Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute.  See https://bible.org/series/divorce-and-re-marriage-recovering-biblical-view

Let’s start by looking at today’s passage in conjunction with its parallel passage in Matthew 19.  Here is what a combined story putting all the different pieces together would look like.  The material peculiar to Matthew in BOLDFACE and the material peculiar to Mark in ITALICS. Normal font is common material.

“And some Pharisees came up to him, testing him, and began to question him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife, saying, “Is it awful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”

And he answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?”

And they said. “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send Her away.”

And he answered and said, “Have you not read, that he who created them from the beginning of creation made them male and female, and said, ‘for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and send her away?” [But]

Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery “

And in the house, the[y] disciples began to question him about this again. And he said to them. “Whoever divorces 

his wife, and marries another woman commits adultery against her, and if she herself divorces her husband and 

marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

The disciples said to him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”

But he said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 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 there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it”

Now, let me just say that, prior to this, Jesus’ primary teaching on divorce was in His great Sermon (The Sermon on the Mount) in Matthew 5:31-32.  Without exegeting that entire passage, I think that the focus of that teaching was that men who treacherously/wrongly divorce their wives in order to marry other women…or are party to breaking up someone else’s marriage in order to claim the newly divorced woman…are guilty of adultery in the eyes of God.  He reaffirmed that in a subsequent exchange with the Pharisees in Luke 16.  The later exchange with the Pharisees that we have here in Mark 10 and Matt. 19 was probably provoked by the Matthew 5 teaching. 

So, let’s take this bit by bit.  Notice the context:

“And some Pharisees came up to him, testing him, and began to question him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife, saying, “Is it awful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”

First, the Pharisees were, as usual, looking for a way to trap or ensnare Jesus.  So they created this question about divorce that they hoped would show that Jesus’ earlier teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5) disagreed with Moses and the Law. They were, like good politicians, looking for a wedge issue that would discredit their opponent. 

            The O.T. Law clearly gave a husband the right to divorce or put away his wife from him for adultery, more specifically by her death/stoning (Ex. 20:14; Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22-27). 

But the Pharisees were probably asking this question from the only text they seemed to use to talk about divorce by this time, Deut 24:1-4--“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house….” 

The great debate in this passage was, “What constituted “some indecency in her””?  I don’t think it could have been sexual unfaithfulness because the O.T. law was consistent on that:  death was the punishment.  It had to be something less than that.  By the time of Jesus, one of the dominant schools of thought on it was, “It can be virtually anything that the husband doesn’t like—a burned meal, some sort of public embarrassment, some private issue.  It was effectively today’s “no-fault divorce” system.  You didn’t really need a reason. You didn’t have to prove fault on anyone’s part.  You just had to do the legal step of ‘divorce court’, i.e. a written certificate of divorce allowing the woman who was kicked out to find protection in another marriage without public judgment.

            This passage was actually written as a protection for the wife.  She couldn’t just be dismissed.  She had to be sent away in a manner that allowed her to remarry, i.e. with a divorce certificate that specifically stipulated that. 

            Jesus’ previous teaching on marriage (Mt. 5) seemed to deny this permission of divorce due to the “exception clause”—“except for sexual immorality,” (5:32).    At least the Pharisees were hoping Jesus would say, “No, Moses didn’t permit divorce,” because then they could come back with Deuteronomy 24.  Instead he used the Socratic method of answering a question with a question:  “What did Moses command you?”  They cautiously respond, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” 

            Jesus makes them face the fact that God never commands divorce, no matter what the sin (including sexual immorality).  They wisely answered that God, however, “permitted” it in some instance (though they aren’t sure which).   

            Now Jesus frames the divorce argument where it should be:  in the context of God’s gift and high view of marriage rather than in looking for the ‘escape clause’ to marriage.  God’s intention for marriage is permanency.  God had given marriage as a covenant.  He issued the covenant so husbands and wives didn’t have a unilateral right to dissolve it. 

            Jesus is not denying here that divorce can ever take place.  That’s what the Pharisees would have loved for him to say, in contradiction to what the Law of Moses said.  He was affirming the obligation of married couples to stay together.  While it is immoral to severe the marriage bond, it is not impossible.  His use here of a different term than that usually used for divorce indicates this.  Chorizo means “to sunder”.  It is not right to sunder a marriage covenant but he does not deny that a spouse may have a right to do so because the “sundering” has already taken place.   

And he answered and said, “Have you not read, that he who created them from the beginning of creation made them male and female, and said, ‘for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

The Pharisees, however, assume that this statement supporting marriage was the sort of absolute prohibition they were hoping Jesus would make.  So they go on the offensive:

“They said to him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate and send her away?”  Now they are back to trying to make divorce almost a command instead of a prohibition.  Jesus shows them how completely they have misunderstood the Mosaic law they are quoting. 

“But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment—Moses permitted you to divorce your wives—but from the beginning it has not been this way.””

            Jesus is not saying that a hard-hearted spouse, usually the husband in that culture, had a right to stay hard-hearted and divorce his wife.  This certificate of divorce was a protective permission for the wife of a hard-hearted man.  The fact that he had gotten to that unloving, uncaring place with his wife was to his shame.  He couldn’t just dismiss his wife with a simple triple “I divorce you” statement.  That would leave her under horrible and irreparable suspicion and accusation in the culture.  People wouldn’t know why she was divorced or whether she could remarry.  So, to protect the innocent woman from a treacherous husband, he had to release her legally, in writing, as not the culpable party and thus free to remarry.  (This, by the way, is what Joseph was going to do with Mary, privately, so that she would not be unduly stigmatized. See Mt. 1:19.)

            Marriage was meant for keeps.  The Pharisees’ view that it could be less than that (i.e. temporary, fluid, transient and tradable) had not been God’s plan from the beginning.  Deut 24:1-4 was meant to minimize the effects of a husbands treachery against his wife, not increase no-fault divorce.

              Then Jesus summarized God’s heart for marriage:  “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”  All of a sudden, Jesus makes it clear that the man who divorces his wife for anything less than unrepentant vow-breaking adultery is actually the adulterer (thought sex may not have been involved at all).  It is the person who is divorcing to get out of marriage and remarrying to get into it with yet another person who God sees as the adulterer.  It is doubtful that it is even the remarriage that is the adultery.  The vow-breaking husband is the one committing adultery when he abandons the vow to live conjugally with his wife, especially with an eye to taking another woman. 

              The disciples are clearly left wrestling with this kind of complete destruction of the prevailing “no-fault” divorce taught by the leaders of the day.  (Maybe you’re feeling the tension too?) As they so often do when they don’t understand something Jesus was teaching, when they are alone, they express their confusion: 

“And in the house, the disciples began to question him about this again. And he said to them. “Whoever divorces his wife, and 

marries another woman commits adultery against her, and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”

NOTE:  Many commentators think that this was also a clear reference to the very condemnation John the Baptist had made of Herod and Herodias (Mt. 14; Mk. 6).  They had both divorced their first spouses so that they could marry each other.  John rightly condemned that, and for it, was beheaded.  The Herod/Herodias escapade would have been headline news of the day.  Everyone knew about it, especially since John had been killed over it.

              The grammatical construction of the “and” in the statement makes it clear that both the divorce and the remarriage are a unified intentional act.  That Greek conjunction can actually be translated “for the purpose of” which makes the connection abundantly clear. So, Jesus is saying, “Whoever divorces his wife with an eye to getting free of her and marrying another woman, effectively commits adultery against his first wife…and the same goes for a woman that does the same towards her husband.” 

            Now we come to the close of this discussion with the disciples rather confused conclusion:  The disciples said to him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”  But he said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 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 there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it”

              Jesus is effectively saying, “Wait a minute.  You draw the wrong conclusion to propose celibacy for everyone. Celibacy isn’t for the majority but these few minority cases—eunuchs born that way or made such by others actions, or those who choose celibacy/ singleness for themselves for ministry purposes.  But everyone else is obligated to embrace this view of marriage—that you marry with a commitment to never trade it in for another.” 

              Of course, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 looks at divorce in the case of an unbelieving spouse who abandons the believer.  In such a case, his instruction seems to indicate that the abandoned believer is free to remarry or stay single.  This accords with the O.T. teaching in Exodus 21 (vs. 10).  There we are told that material support of “food, clothing” are required of the husband in marriage as well as a third aspect “marital rights”.  “Marital/conjugal rights” referred to more than sexual relations.  The whole package is one in which the husband is required to care for his wife as well as treat her well.

              This is affirmed in the last book of the N.T., Malachi 2:16 when God affirms his condemnation of a man leaving his wife to marry another:  the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

              Jesus clearly supported that in his statements about marriage and divorce.  Paul clearly supported that when he called for husbands to “love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” (Eph. 5:25).  Peter supported it in 1 Peter 3:7 (“be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect….”)  Wives were equally required to respect their husbands through the same kind of loving submission we are all to have to Christ (Eph. 5:22-24; 1 Peter 3:1-6). Since the beginning, this is the kind of marital relationship God has wanted for His creation.  Only when we depart from this does marriage suffer, spouses suffer and children suffer. 

              Which brings us back to where we are as a culture as well as God’s people.  It is not terribly surprising that “no-fault divorce” over the past 55 years in America has produced some of the highest rates of divorce and resulting negative family issues in the world.  (BTW, Ronald Reagan was the first Governor to sign no-fault divorce into law in 1969.  Surprisingly, NY was the last state to adopt it in 2010!  Washington is one of 17 states that has fullest no-fault divorce with the others having lesser variations.) 

              What is surprising is that divorce has invaded the people of God to the degree it has.  Rates of divorce are virtually identical in “the church.”  Which, to me, betrays the reality that too many people in the church are really not experiencing the transforming work and redemption of Christ in their lives.  Too many are living just like their unredeemed neighbors without the life of the Holy Spirit.  Where Jesus is Lord and the Holy Spirit is filling a person or a couple, God’s plan for nurturing, loving, sacrificial, respectful marriage will be unfolding. 

ILL:  The difference between my parents pre-Christ and with-Christ.  The change in their lives individually produced a real change in their marriage…as it should. 

              Having said that, the reality is, it takes 2 to marry and just 1 to divorce.  That doesn’t mean that there is always just one guilty or problematic party in a divorce.  But it does mean that one spouse can be driving the divorce train by their unrepentant, sinful actions that destroy the marriage and their spouse.  They may not be the one who ultimately seeks the divorce but their actions may be largely responsible for the other spouse doing so out of protection of themselves and/or their children. 

            It is very interesting that this discussion of divorce in Mark is sandwiched between two discussions about children:  Mark 9:42-49 which we looked at last week and Mark 10:13-16 where the disciples were hindering the little children from getting to Jesus. 

It is no accident that the last word on divorce in the O.T. found in the prophet Malachi, chapter 2, links breaking faith with your spouse with the loss of godly children. 

14 The Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

Divorce has major consequences for children, regardless of who is at fault. (Please, I’m not condemning anyone who has had to single parent because divorce was inflicted on them.)  But so many divorces, even among the people of God, are not what should happen or even has to happen. 

Having counseled troubled couples for 30+ years of ministry now, I wish there were some way to show couples contemplating divorce the pain and problems divorce will bring them even as they seek to escape the pain and problems of their marriages.  Too many times couples divorce because they think the unknown problems of a divorce will be better than the known problems of the marriage that they should and often could work through.  They usually are not. 

Regardless of whether the children are young or adults, divorce is always a very troubling choice for offspring to deal with.  It is more evident than every through a host of studies we have today WHY God intended marriage to be fought for rather than exchanged for divorce.  Let me give you just a handful of examples. Studies show that children from divorced families experience a broad range of damaging effects:

  • Their children divorce at higher rates. One study [If My Parents Are Divorced, Is My Marriage Doomed to Fail? | Psychology Today] found that if a woman’s parents divorced, her chances of getting divorced increased by 69%. And if both of a married couple’s parents divorced, the possibility of their divorce increased to 189%.
  • Children whose parents have divorced are increasingly the victims of abuse. They exhibit more health, behavioral, and emotional problems, are involved more frequently in alcohol and drug abuse, and have higher rates of suicide.
  • Children of divorced parents perform more poorly in reading, spelling, and math. They also are more likely to repeat a grade and to have higher drop-out rates and lower rates of college graduation.
  • Economically, almost 50 percent of the parents with children that are going through a divorce move into poverty after the divorce.
  • Religious engagement/worship, which has been linked to better health, longer marriages, and better family life, drops after the parents’ divorce.

All this and much more in our society has cause marriage rates to drop by 60% over the past 50 years in the U.S.  That’s the wrong solution to the divorce problem.  That’s like the disciples saying that celibacy is the solution.  It’s not.  Rediscovering the life and power of God to transform marriages is.  Rediscovering God’s plan for marriages and families is.  It’s not about just getting married.  It’s about being the kind of marriage partner God wants us to be and enjoying this transformational journey with someone very different from us that makes us more like Jesus as we are becoming “one flesh” in marriage. 

APP:

  • Why Mosaic needs to invest more into families—marriages, parenting, ministry to children, teens and young adults.
  • Why we need to develop marriage mentoring before problems arise. Couples of all ages should be spending regular time together building into their marriages through retreats, small groups, podcasts and books.  No matter how long you’re married, we all have things to learn and grow in when it comes to being Christ to our spouses.  And if you’ve “arrived”, I can guarantee you that a few marriages around you haven’t and could use some of your wisdom.
  • If your marriage is struggling…or you are hiding things from your spouse…GET HELP! The stakes of losing your marriage are way too high!  For the sake of generations to come, talk to a pastor, Christ-centered counselor or marriage therapist.  Pursue the growth that you need to turn a troubled or average marriage experience into one of life’s richest blessings you will ever experience. 
  • Don’t let the failures of others scare you out of a great marriage, be they parents or peers around you. We have the God who designed marriage living in us.  There is NO REASON, if you are surrendered to Christ, why you cannot learn to love someone else in marriage in a way that brings great joy to your life. 
  • To those of you who have experienced the pain of divorce, don’t live there; learn from it. Repent of anything that you were responsible for in the divorce.  Ask forgiveness.  Make amends insofar as possible.  And don’t write off that God may have marriage yet in your future.  (But that is a different sermon for another day.) 
  • Divorce is not the “unpardonable sin.” Fact is, God is a divorcee!  Check out Isaiah 5:1 and Jeremiah 3:8. 

QUESTIONS?

Prayer for every married person here and for singles who would like to be married…and our children who will someday marry.

BENEDICATION:  Sing The Blessing