Let Marriage Be Held in Honor Among All Matthew 5:31-32

It is good to be back with you this morning. Last week, Pastor Paul from New Life preached, and I'm sure that that was a great blessing to each of you by the word that he brought.

This morning, we are going to continue our sermon series through Matthew, and our text is

Matthew chapter 5, verses 31 and 32, and I encourage you to turn there with me right now.

And if you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 963. And I have a big idea for this text, but I don't have any points, or main points, which is unique.

And I guess when you have only two verses, that happens sometimes. And here is my big idea.

Marriage is designed by God as a union between one man and one woman till death.

Marriage is designed by God as a union between one man and one woman till death.

So we will look at this in our text, and we'll see this this morning. But before we jump into our text, let me give you a little recap of where we have been.

The last two Sundays in Matthew, we looked at two heart sins, anger and lust.

When Jesus addressed the crowd, he was correcting the faulty interpretation of the

Old Testament by the Jewish leaders. Jesus was not completely correcting their teaching, but he went much deeper than they went.

The Jewish leaders rightly told the masses that they should not murder, but Jesus went much deeper by telling the crowd that if you have anger in your heart, this is considered heart murder.

The Jewish leaders also rightly told the masses that they should not commit adultery. But what they meant was just physical adultery, and Jesus went after the deeper sin of heart adultery, where you think of a lustful thought of someone in your heart.

What Jesus is teaching the crowd and us at Eureka Baptist Church is what the

Bible teaches from Genesis to Revelation. God cares about the heart. He is not impressed with one who fulfills external obligations but does not have a heart of devotion toward God.

What goes on inside of us in our thoughts and feelings matters a lot to him.

One who truly wants to please God with their life cares about their thought life because God wants us to have pure thoughts and he wants us to have the right motives in all of our actions.

Now this leads us to our text this morning. We are going to look, as I already mentioned, at verses 31 and 32 of Matthew 5.

So as we begin, let's read these two verses together. It was also said,

Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. As we read this, you might wonder how are we going to have a whole sermon on two verses?

Well to answer that question, it's not very difficult. There have been whole books written on this topic.

There is a big debate over the meaning of these two little verses.

The big question we need to ask is, does the Bible allow for divorce and remarriage in certain circumstances?

So let's look at the text closely and we will answer this big question today. And what we will also see, we'll see our big idea come to focus.

We will see God's design in marriage and how important it is for each of us to understand this.

And you may be single today here and wonder what relevance does this sermon have to me?

Well it does have relevance to you. Some of you may be married in the future and so understanding this text will of course be very helpful to you when you are married.

And what about if you never get married? This text is still relevant because you know people who are married and one responsibility that God gives all of us is to encourage others in marriage.

It's interesting that when you go to a wedding, what's the purpose of going to a wedding? Is it just to go and recognize a big celebration?

Well yeah, that's true, but you go for something much more important than that. You are an eyewitness to a covenant that is being made between one man and one woman and what you're saying is,

I was there to see you make this commitment and you know what? I'm going to make sure that you keep this commitment.

So, this is why marriage is relevant to everybody. You don't need to be married to see the importance of it.

Now at this time, let's dig in. In verse 31, Jesus once again corrects the teaching of the

Jewish leaders. He says, these words, it was also said, so he's referring to this oral tradition that took place between the

Old Testament and the New Testament periods, this period known as the Intertestament period. And what he says is, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

Okay, so he's quoting what the rabbis, that these Jewish leaders would have said.

In ancient times, divorce and remarriage were very common. If you think they're common today, they were probably even more common in ancient times.

When God wrote the laws for Israel to abide by, he wrote them in the context where the practice of divorce was widespread.

And this is why the Lord commanded Moses that divorce was allowable, but the

Lord made it so that seeking a divorce would be costly, so that people would think twice before doing it.

Okay, so the Lord didn't want everyone just to go divorce. He wanted people to be very careful about it.

So let me read this to you. Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 -4 says this about divorce.

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, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates 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 man dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the

Lord. That's probably a passage from Scripture that maybe you're not too familiar with, but that's what

Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 -4 says. As you can see, the Lord made it so this law would uphold the sanctity of marriage and also protect women from being easily divorced.

The Lord made it so that husbands would not want to give up their wife and move on to someone else because they would not be able to get her back.

Now the Jewish leaders, after the Old Testament period, who were largely false teachers, used that passage from Deuteronomy 24 to let people get divorced for any reason.

If you want to know how ridiculous this became, hear this.

From one tradition of the rabbis, they said this, He may divorce her even if she spoiled a dish for him.

Okay, so a bad cook, you can divorce her. Alright, we can laugh a little bit about that one.

Another said, He may divorce her even if he found another fairer than she. So you marry someone and you think, you know what?

I like that person better. Okay, divorce and remarry.

So the rabbis were telling people that Deuteronomy 24 said that you could do this.

But of course, this is not the case. What Jesus would later say in Matthew 19 when answering the question from the

Pharisees, these Jewish leaders who agreed with this tradition of divorce on demand, is that divorce was a last resort and that the marriage covenant between one man and one woman was meant to be permanent.

This is the conversation that Jesus had with the Pharisees. I quoted this in the call to worship, and I will read it again right now, because we have to understand that the

Pharisees have this in their mind, this divorce on demand understanding. And so they asked

Jesus this question in thinking about this. So they asked Him, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

He answered, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said,

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast 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 not man separate.

They said to Him, Why then did Moses command one to give her certificate of divorce and to send her away?

He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed 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.

So the Pharisees thought that widespread divorce for any reason was prescribed in the

Old Testament law. But Jesus disagrees with that. And of course when

Jesus speaks, He always speaks the truth. So we know that they were wrong. What Jesus tells the

Pharisees is that God made this law to address the widespread divorce that was already taking place.

God knew there would be divorce in His land, and so He put a law in place to prevent divorces, not to promote them, and to take care of the women who would be taken advantage of by men if this law in Deuteronomy 24 were not put in place.

So in ancient Israel, when a woman married a man, the woman's father would give her and her new husband a sum of money.

The first husband would be able to keep that money if he found some indecency in her and divorced her.

And that indecency was very general. However, if she remarried, her father would give her another sum of money that her and her second husband would have.

But as we saw from Deuteronomy 24, the first husband, if he wanted his first wife back, could not get her back and take that second sum of money.

So the first husband couldn't have the strategy of,

I'm going to divorce my wife, marry another, and then if that person dies, then my backup plan is to remarry my first wife and get that money also to enrich himself.

So Deuteronomy 24 does not argue that divorce was allowable for just about any other reason.

It was more a law that was put in place to address the common divorce that was happening.

Jesus said the only reason God put this there for Israel was because you were so sinful.

He says because of your hardness of heart. He had to put it there. Now what we're going to see in New Testament times, which applies to each of us, is that the standard is much higher for divorce and remarriage.

So it is important to understand that when the Pharisees asked this question to Jesus in Matthew 19 -3, what they were doing is they were setting him up, which they often did when they asked him questions.

There was another smaller rabbinic tradition that said that the

Old Testament law did not allow for divorce and remarriage under any circumstances.

So there was this very rigid view that was held by a small number of rabbis

There was these two views. You could divorce and remarry for any reason, and you could never divorce and remarry.

And so they're asking Jesus with these two views out there. And what's interesting is that the

Jewish leaders asked this question to Jesus because they want him to become unfavorable in the eyes of the people.

We know from Jesus' ministry that all these people were just flocking to him. He would teach, and the crowds would just follow him.

And what happened during this is that the Jewish leaders were losing their power. The people used to go after them, and now they're going after Jesus.

And so by asking this question, they're trying to make him say an unpopular answer that would make him less favorable in the eyes of the crowd.

They knew Jesus' position on divorce and remarriage. How did they know it?

Because our passage today in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5, verses 31 and 32, he told the crowd.

And of course, the Pharisees would have heard this news about what Jesus believed about divorce and remarriage.

So when the Pharisees ask Jesus this question, they know that he's going to give an answer that's more rigid than the people are used to.

And of course, people wanted to get divorced if they were unhappy with their marriage.

And so when Jesus makes the standard much higher, they're thinking, well, maybe the crowds are going to stop following Jesus, and maybe they're going to start following us again.

And they also put Jesus on the spot because of another important figure in this region who divorced his wife and married his brother's sister.

Anybody know who that is? Such as an H? Herod. Yeah, King Herod committed incest.

He divorced his wife and married his brother's sister. And Jesus, in Matthew 19, was teaching in the region that Herod overlooked.

Where before, in Galilee, when he's giving the Sermon on the Mount, he's not teaching in Herod's region.

Okay, so you can see why they're putting him on the spot here. Because if Herod gets news of this, maybe

Herod will do to Jesus what Herod did to John the Baptist. What did

Herod do to John the Baptist? He beheaded him. And why did he behead him? Because John the

Baptist called him out for his divorce and his marriage of his brother's sister.

So it helps to get this context of why they're asking him this question. They're trying to paint him as this rigid, no fun teacher.

But Jesus just tells him the truth. He says God's original design in marriage is a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman until death.

And he says, So Jesus points to the creation design for Genesis 2.

And he says what God has joined together, let not man separate.

So Jesus makes it clear that when a man and a woman enter this marriage covenant, this is a covenant that should be kept over the long haul.

Now what we see in our text, and later on in Matthew 19, as we've been looking at Matthew 19 a lot, is that Jesus' view of marriage is much higher than the

Jewish leaders of his time. And with that understanding, with Jesus correcting the

Jewish leaders on divorce and remarriage, let's return to the question I asked at the early part of our sermon.

And that question is this. Are there grounds for divorce and remarriage in Scripture?

And what you will notice in both texts that we looked at, both Matthew 5, 31 and 32, and Matthew 19, 9, there is the presence of an exception clause.

What this means is that in almost all circumstances, divorce is not allowed.

But there is at least one where it is. What Jesus says in both passages in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 is that divorce is permitted when sexual immorality takes place.

Did you notice that as we read that? Now there are two positions when we ask the question, are there biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage?

One view is yes, it is permitted under very limited circumstances, and one of those circumstances is adultery.

Well, the other view is that no divorce is allowed, and therefore no remarriage under any circumstance.

Now you might wonder, how could there be a view that says there is no divorce and no remarriage if our text explicitly says that when sexual immorality happens with one spouse, then the innocent party is allowed to divorce.

So why is there another view that says no divorce, no remarriage?

Well, here is why. You will notice that the text says sexual immorality and not adultery.

The reason the text says sexual immorality is because the word that is typically used for fornication, which is sexual sin committed by who?

Unmarried people. The word that is typically used for fornication is used here in this passage about marriage.

The Greek word translated sexual immorality is porneia. This is where we get the

English word pornography. On the other hand, the Greek word for adultery is the word moikeia, and that is the word we would expect to see in this text with marriage as our context.

So you can see why there might be two views here. The lack of the word moikeia and the use of the word porneia in verse 32 of Matthew 5 is the primary reason that there is another view on the issue of divorce and remarriage.

That view is that divorce is never permitted in the New Testament as Jesus has a higher view than what

Deuteronomy 24 taught, where for a time, because of the way that Israel was,

God allowed for there to be divorce, but he made it so that it would be costly.

But what this view says in the New Testament is that there is, under no circumstances, no divorce, no remarriage.

So let me explain why some hold to this view. As I mentioned above, the word porneia is used and not the word we would expect.

The word for adultery, which is sexual sin within marriage, and that word is moikeia.

So they kind of rhyme, porneia, moikeia. Porneia, sexual sin by unmarried people, and moikeia, sexual sin by married people.

What the no divorce and remarriage advocates say is that Matthew is different from the other Gospels when discussing this subject.

In Mark 10, verses 11 and 12, Jesus says that if a divorced person marries another, that person has committed adultery.

But he gives no exception clause in the Gospel of Mark, which is interesting. Same thing in the

Gospel of Luke. In Luke 16, verse 18, there is no exception clause.

So what is different about Matthew that includes the exception clause of sexual immorality?

Advocates of no divorce, no remarriage under any circumstance argue that Matthew 1 .18

describes that Joseph and Mary were betrothed, and what betrothed means is pretty much what engagement means in modern times.

So what Jesus is describing in the exception clause are those cases when sexual immorality takes place before marriage, and therefore the betrothal should be ended.

Okay, so does that make sense? In Matthew 5, Jesus is making this passing comment about, okay, if during the betrothal stage there is sexual immorality, then you can end the betrothal.

And in fact, the word divorce is even used at the beginning of Matthew because when

Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant, he was thinking that she committed sexual sin. However, once he found out that it was a virgin birth, he was like, okay,

I will stay with Mary. So, just so you know,

I do not take this view, this rigid view of no divorce, no remarriage under any circumstance.

And I will explain why. What are the problems with holding this position? Well, there are a number.

The first one is that in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, Jesus is not talking about the betrothal stage.

He is talking about marriage between a man and a woman. In Matthew 19, the

Pharisees are not asking him about the betrothal stage. They are testing him about his view of marriage.

In Matthew 19, the Pharisees, when they ask him this, they do not have betrothal in their mind.

They have marriage. And they are going after Jesus' rigid view of divorce and remarriage in marriage, not betrothal.

And two, this is consistent with what God did to Israel in the Old Testament. In Jeremiah 3 .8,

what the Lord says is that he sent Israel away with a decree of divorce. And he did this because of their spiritual adultery.

And he did this because they went and played the whore. That is what the text of Scripture says.

It uses that language to describe Israel's sin against God. Israel committed spiritual adultery against God, and God divorced them.

So God is divorced, at least for a time, in the Old Testament. Now why does

Jesus use a word in Matthew 5 and 19 that is typically meant for sexual sin of the unmarried and not the word that is typically used to describe the sexual sin of the married?

Well, the word pornea, which again is sexual sin with unmarried people, this word pornea sometimes is used to describe general sexual sin in the

New Testament. For example, in Galatians 5 .19, when Paul lists the sins of the flesh, he mentions pornea, and certainly adultery is included in the meaning of this word.

So pornea can be used to mean adultery. And I think those who take the very rigid position of no divorce and remarriage under any circumstance,

I think they're overthinking the text. And one can do that when trying to understand the

Bible. The best way to read the Bible is to find the plain reading of the text.

And the immediate context of Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 tells us the plain reading is that divorce is permitted if the marriage bed is defiled.

And therefore, the innocent party, let me be clear on that, the innocent party is free to remarry.

Jesus is talking about marriage in our passage and in Matthew 19. And what he tells us is that if adultery is committed, then this is grounds to break the marriage covenant.

Now we need to ask the question, does this mean that one should automatically get a divorce if their spouse cheats on him or her?

And the answer to that is no. If I were to counsel one on this, what I would say is do your best to save the marriage.

This covenant that you made between you, your spouse, and God is sacred.

God cares about you keeping your word to him. And you made a promise that you would stay with your spouse until death.

So you should work to keep it that way. Think about that. When you stand before those people, and most importantly before God, think of the commitment that you're making.

And if we're honest, I don't think people understand the commitment that they're making. You don't know what the future is going to hold.

You don't know if your spouse is going to turn out to be someone completely than you thought. But what you're saying is,

God, till death, I'm staying with this person in marriage.

No matter how hard things get, I'm committing to this. Think about that. That's a pretty big promise that we're making.

And we should aim to keep that. If the spouse who committed adultery is sorrowful for what he or she did and desires to change, then

I would say, for sure, you should stay remarried. However, there are cases where the one who commits adultery is unrepentant and continues to be unrepentant.

And this unrepentance is over a long period. And in this case, then this would be the circumstance where it would be right to divorce the unfaithful spouse.

But this would be a last resort. From what we can see in our text, Jesus gives permission to move on from the marriage covenant when the other party has violated the covenant in such an egregious manner through adultery.

But as I mentioned, this is only if the guilty party is unrepentant and plans on continuing as a serial adulterer.

Then divorce is understandable and the innocent party is free to remarry. So as we can see in our text in Matthew 5 .32

and the equivalent text in Matthew 19 .9, there is at least one condition where the covenant between man and woman can be broken, and that is adultery.

So many questions are raised as we look at this. You're probably asking questions right now, and I'm going to try to answer these questions here.

There are some more questions that we need to answer. What we saw in the passage previous to ours is that Jesus tells us that simply thinking of a woman or man lustfully is considered by God to be adultery.

It is obvious that physical adultery opens up the opportunity for the marriage covenant to end, but what about heart adultery?

Were you asking that question as we were talking about this? The Bible does not give us a clear answer on this, so we need to do our best to think through this.

My answer to this would be this. If a husband or wife continues in heart adultery and is unrepentant and disrespects the other spouse so much by continuing to look at other women or a specific woman and think of them in a lustful manner, or women can look at men too, then this too would qualify as adultery that can break the marriage covenant.

The key, once again, is whether repentance is there. If repentance is there, then for sure stay with your spouse and be gracious and be committed over the long haul.

But if there's this serial adultery, even if it's not physical, then I think

Scripture would give us grounds for divorce and therefore remarriage. Breanna and I, we have friends who are going through this right now, in fact.

The husband has been a serial adulterer, not physically, but it's been made open that he's had a long history of heart adultery, and specifically pornography.

And the spouse, the wife here, we believe, and even the elders at her church believe that she has grounds for divorce.

But what was neat is that she started to see a turn in him and she is being patient.

She's not thinking, okay, that's it. You want to be patient with your spouse. You want to do everything you can to save the marriage.

And by God's grace, that is what she is doing, and so it's neat to see her patience and her graciousness through it.

And it seems like things are turning, so there's hope that this marriage can be saved.

So there's my answer to that. But there's another question we need to ask, and that is, does the

Bible give any other reason to end a marriage besides adultery? Let me read a passage from 1

Corinthians 7, verses 12 through 15 that I think gives us one other circumstance where a divorce is permitted to end from Scripture.

So this is the Apostle Paul talking to the church in Corinth, and this is what he says. To the rest

I say, I not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.

If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.

Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.

In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.

So what we just read is the Apostle Paul tells us that if your unbelieving spouse deserts you, then let him or her go.

So this is when the marriage is unequally yoked. There's one believer, there's one unbeliever.

If the unbeliever leaves, it appears that Paul is giving permission to let the person go, which means divorce, and therefore if he's permitting divorce, then he's permitting remarriage.

That's the position that I take. Now the problem is most divorces that take place in our world are not done on biblical grounds.

What usually happens is that one spouse is unhappy with the other or there is mutual unhappiness, and so the marriage is ended.

However, in God's eyes, if there are no grounds for divorce, then

God views those two as still married, even if the state doesn't, which is interesting.

So it is true to say that many people in our world are married to more than one spouse because, in God's eyes, they remain bound in a marriage covenant till death.

But if one has biblical grounds for divorce and that person pursues a divorce, the

Lord would no longer see the two as married, and this opens up the door for the innocent spouse to remarry.

There's another question I need to ask. This is really an interesting sermon, unlike any sermon

I've preached. And that question is, what if you get divorced for unbiblical reasons and then you remarry?

Is the remarriage considered continual adultery?

My answer to that would be that the initial act of the marriage would be considered adultery, but I do not believe it would be continual adultery.

I think that God forgives that and overlooks it once the marriage moves on going forward.

And the reason I say that is because when Jesus was talking in John 4 to the woman at the well, what

He said is that she has five husbands. So each one is considered a legitimate husband.

And so therefore, He sees each of them as a legitimate marriage, and therefore it's not adultery taking place.

So another question that needs to be addressed. So I hope that some of this made a sense.

This is a lot of information. But the point we need to come away with, even though we explain are there grounds, and in limited circumstances, yes, there are.

What we need to come away from in this sermon is that Jesus is driving home as He speaks to this crowd that marriage is designed by God as a union between one man and one woman till death.

A strong commitment to one spouse through all of life is what Jesus wants us to see in these verses.

And this is the clear teaching throughout Scripture that marriage is till death.

So what we can see is that God's design in marriage is that it would be till death. And when you have committed or will commit to marry someone, you are committed till you take the last breath.

And like I said before, that's a big commitment that marriage is. And Jesus is telling us that marriage should not be treated flippantly.

You hear about Hollywood marriages and how easily people in Hollywood divorce and remarry another.

And those marriages are shameful and very dishonoring to God. The same goes for our culture where people do not take their marriage vows very seriously.

People are willing to jump ship for lots and lots of reasons when Scripture gives, as far as I can tell, only two reasons where it is okay to end a marriage.

And we need people. We need to be people who mean what we say. When we say,

I do, to our spouse, we are making a promise to our spouse and God that this marriage union is till death.

And with that, I want to close with these words from Malachi 2, verses 14 -16.

And as we listen to this, the Lord is stressing how important this union is between man and woman in marriage and how important it is to keep that commitment.

This is what He says, 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, 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.

Or we can insert, to the husband of your youth. 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.

So we see how much God values this covenant between one man and one woman in marriage.

And that is what Jesus says in our text as we have seen this morning in Matthew 5, 31 and 32.

So may we heed these words and be faithful to the wife and husband of our youth and the wife and husband of our old age and may marriage be held in honor by all.

Now next Sunday, we will look at what Jesus says about oaths, which are also promises that are made.

And we will see this in Matthew 5, 33 -37. Let's bow our heads in prayer at this time.

Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word. Lord, some sermons are different than others and this sermon certainly is a different one as we wrestle with this topic of divorce and remarriage and are there any grounds for divorce and therefore the ability to remarry.

And Lord, I'm just doing my best to understand what the Bible says. And so I hope that this was helpful and I pray that it would be helpful to each one here as each one thinks of this.

And Lord, we're so grateful that You are a forgiving God. In our marriages, Lord, we make mistakes.

We sin. And we thank You, Lord, for Your grace this morning. You are so gracious to married people.

You're gracious to divorced people. And thank You for that, Lord. Thank You that Jesus paid the penalty for all of our sins at the cross.

And may we be faithful, Lord, to this commitment that we have made for those who are married.

And if those who are unmarried, Lord, may they see the importance of marriage and their role, Lord, in encouraging others to stay committed to their spouse till death.

And so, Lord, use this sermon, use this text to teach us,

Lord, about Your expectations of this and how important it is. And may we live that much more,

Lord, to please You in this matter. In Jesus' name, Amen.