WWUTT 2057 What God has Joined Together (Matthew 19:1-6)

When Jesus told the Pharisees and his disciples what marriage is, he went back to Genesis, to the very first two chapters of the Bible, to show here's what God created from the very beginning, when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Jesus Confronts the Pharisees on Divorce in Matthew 19

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we have finished up the fourth discourse and are now on to chapter 19 with Jesus teaching on divorce. I'm going to begin by reading verses 1 through 12 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these words, he departed from Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

And some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him, and saying, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? 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. They said to him, Why then did Moses command to give her 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 not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits 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. So as I said, we come to the conclusion of the fourth discourse in Matthew's gospel. That's at the end of chapter 18. There's five discourses or five main speeches or bodies of teaching from Jesus in Matthew's gospel.

And they all conclude with some statement of when Jesus finished these words or finish these sayings. So we have right at the start of chapter 19. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these words, so we know we've come to the conclusion of another discourse, and we enter another section of Matthew's gospel.

The fifth discourse is the Olivet discourse, and that's coming up in chapters 24 and 25. Here it says that Jesus and his disciples had departed from Galilee. They came back into Judea, Jesus getting closer and closer to Jerusalem because this is building up to what's eventually going to be the triumphal entry.

That's at the start of chapter 21. So we've got two chapters before we get there, 19 and 20. So as he comes back into Judea, the people come to him and he heals them. And then some Pharisees come to Jesus and test him.

So this section we're looking at today and tomorrow, verses one through 12 is split into three parts. You have this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees with two statements from the Pharisees. First of all, they make a statement about, can a man divorce his wife for any reason at all?

And then they say, then why did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send.

Her away?

Jesus responds to those two statements from the Pharisees. Then after that, the disciples ask a question and Jesus responds to the disciples question or their statement in verses 11 and 12. So that's the way that this chapter or this section of scripture we're looking at over these two days is broken up.

And of course, this having to do with Jesus teaching on divorce. It's not the only place that he teaches on divorce. We've heard some similar things, similar things to what we're reading right here had come up back in chapter five in the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus had said even there, if someone divorces and marries another, then he commits adultery.

If, if a person, if, if a man gets divorced for any reason other than sexual immorality and marries another woman, then he has committed adultery and he causes her to commit adultery. So we'll see that expounded upon again here in this section is Jesus comes back to this teaching with this challenge from the Pharisees.

So in verse three, the Pharisees come to Jesus testing him and saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? And this was, this was what they had in mind. They thought that a man could divorce his wife for any reason.

So they're coming to Jesus and they're testing him on this because they think that's what the law says. They think that that's right there in Deuteronomy, that a man can divorce his wife for any reason.

So they're testing Jesus on this to see if he will contradict what it is that they are saying. Are they, are they going to, is he going to respond in a way that is going to go against.

The law?

That's the way they're trying to trap him because they know his teaching on this from what he had said back in the sermon on the Mount. And Jesus responds to them and says, have you not read? Now that's an incredibly indicting statement for Jesus to say to the Pharisees, have you not read?

This was like when Jesus was confronting Nicodemus in John three and says, are you not the teacher of Israel and you don't understand these things? The scriptures are right there. God has said, are you going to twist them so bad that you demonstrate you haven't even read this?

And Jesus goes back to creation. He doesn't go to the law that the Pharisees are referencing. He goes back to the way that God had created marriage to be originally when he made Adam and Eve and set them in the garden of Eden.

It's from Genesis two that Jesus quotes here when he says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? That's Genesis one. But then this next part is from chapter two and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together. Let no man separate. So you have here the first challenge from the Pharisees and Jesus first response. Now again, as he's quoting from Genesis two, if you go to Genesis two and read that, this is where God has made Eve.

He's made a woman from the rib of the man and brought the woman to the man and the man responds with the first song that is sung in scripture. This one finally is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

This one shall be called woman because this one was taken out of man. That's what that means. Woman means out of man. And then it says in the narrative, this is in the narrative portion. So this is not Adam speaking, nor is it, it's not dialogue of any kind.

So it's not a quote attributed to anybody. It says in verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

So that verse is not a quote from anybody. And yet it is said here, Jesus says, 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 that statement in Genesis two 24, which is not attributed to anyone. It's just part of the narrative. Jesus is saying that God said that. So he's saying that, that what is written in the old Testament is the word of God.

Even if it's not a quote that's attributed to somebody, it is the word of God. God said this, Moses wrote it down, but God is the one who said it. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

The point Jesus makes here is that the two are one. So God has joined this together. He created the union of marriage. This was on day six of creation that he created marriage. It is the first relationship between human beings that God has established from the beginning marriage, a man and his wife holding fast to one another and becoming one flesh.

So since they are one flesh, divorce is not the ideal. Divorce is not the thing that you should be flippantly playing with and deciding, well, I don't like this woman anymore. So I'm going to go find myself another one, which is really what the Pharisees want.

They want, that's what they want Jesus to agree with. Jesus says they're one flesh and what God has joined together because he created this.

Union.

He brings this man and this woman together to be one flesh. What he has joined together, let no man separate. Don't be looking for reasons or excuses to get divorced. Rather, your desire should be that two people be reconciled and the marriage union be restored.

That's what you should want to have happen. This is what we're reading here with regards to divorce. This flows so beautifully out of the parable that we just read at the end of chapter 18. So we just read this parable about forgiveness.

And as I had said to you yesterday, you need to have a heart that desires to forgive even if another person doesn't come to you and admits they are wrong, confesses their sin to you and asks you to forgive them.

You still need to be willing to forgive. You need to have such a disposition and a condition in your heart that you'd be willing to forgive them the moment that they come to you asking for forgiveness.

Now, something that I said yesterday is you shouldn't go around forgiving people that don't ask for it. That's not to say that you shouldn't have a forgiving heart. You absolutely should or that you're permitted to hold the grudge until the person comes to you and asks for your forgiveness.

But a person who's sinned, a person who has done wrong, needs to know that they are wrong and that there are consequences for their actions. If they are in a serious unrepentant sin before God, then they may still be under God's wrath and you don't want to say to a person you're forgiven and have them believe that, oh, this is all taken care of and they never have to come before God and confess their sin and ask for his forgiveness.

Ultimately, all sin is sin against God. Yes, we can sin against other people. We can do others wrong, but sin ultimately is against God. Even when you wrong somebody else, it's first a wrong against God before it's a wrong against that other person.

So it's not a good idea to just be going around and saying, hey, I know you're not sorry, but I forgive you anyway, because then that person feels vindicated. Then it's just a matter. It's a difference of opinion.

Well, you think I wronged you, but I don't think I did anything wrong. That person does need to know that they did something wrong, but we can't have an attitude or a heart that is ready to hold grudges against people.

We need to be willing to forgive. And so as we have just read that with Jesus saying to his disciples, you need to be forgiving and keep on forgiving and don't even keep track of the number of times that you forgive another person.

Right after Jesus had taught his disciples that here we have this question, this challenge that comes from the Pharisees against Jesus regarding divorce. And Jesus is telling the Pharisees, don't be looking for reasons to get divorced.

A man and his wife are one flesh and they should aspire to that one flesh union, not looking for a way out, but looking for ways when there is disagreement that they can be.

Reconciled.

So again, you have that grace that has been poured into your heart by God through faith in Jesus Christ. If you know you've been forgiven your sins, you've been forgiven much. So you need to be willing to forgive much.

The disposition in your heart toward your spouse is always going to be, I'm in this to the end. So no matter how bad things get, let's work this out. Let's be reconciled. Let's make it happen. You always have an attitude toward your spouse.

I'm ready to forgive you. You might do or say something wrong, but I'm going to have a forgiving heart and we're going to work this out. And we're in this for the long haul. That needs to be your commitment in your marriage.

My wife and I have shared on this podcast before about how we have never had a fight. That doesn't mean that we've not had a disagreement. We have had disagreements. We've never yelled at each other, have never raised our voices to one another, have never called each other names.

We've probably made false accusations of each other. I'm pretty sure we have. I can't think of anything that comes to mind, but I've probably said to my wife that she did something that she didn't really do.

And she may have done the same thing to me just to show you how little we keep record of wrongs. I can't even remember a circumstance like this, but maybe we've done it before. So we've had those kinds of disagreements.

It just does not turn into this drag out fight where we're belittling one another and yelling at each other. We've never raised our voices to each other. Now, I get pretty excitable when I talk. You've probably heard me do that on the podcast before.

You may have heard me do that in a sermon that has played on the podcast. So you've heard my cadence go up and me get excited when I'm describing things to my wife sometimes or I'm frustrated with something else that happened.

Yeah, my voice can go up like that to her, but I'm never yelling at her. She knows that. She knows her husband can get pretty excitable about things, especially when it comes to theology and a disagreement over theology.

So we resolved very, very early on. This was when we were going through counseling before we got married. We decided divorce just was never, ever, ever an option. We're never going to use the word. We don't even use it as a joke.

We don't say things like, oh, my wife did this. I guess I'm going to have to divorce her now. We don't do that. It's not funny. It's not something to play loosely with. It's like it's like how you need to be very careful in the ways that you talk about even life and death, because divorce is the death of a marriage.

If you take one flesh and you rip it apart, you destroy that person, that body. And so we are committed that we won't use that word. It is as much a swear word as any other swear word. We don't use the word divorce.

The disposition that we have toward one another daily is one of being forgiving. I probably have disappointed my wife on occasions that she's never brought up, never even said.

It.

I expected you to do this. You didn't do it for me. And I was disappointed in you for that. She has in her maturity decided this was not even a matter that was worth bringing up there. Sometimes there's disagreements we've got to talk through, but there's other times I've done the same thing.

I think to myself, is this something that I need to address or is it just better that.

I let it go?

This doesn't need to be a thing at all. And letting those things go has has been something that has sustained our marriage in tremendous.

Ways.

We demonstrate continuous grace toward each other each and every day. And when the disposition in our hearts is to be loving and accepting and gracious because we know that God is daily loving and gracious toward us, boy, it sure makes this marriage a lot of fun.

And the last 13 years of our lives together, almost 14, with the last 13 years of our lives together has been the best decade plus of my life. I have loved every moment with this woman and I'm so grateful to God that he gave her to me and we've had wonderful children together.

They are adorable. My favorite moments in life have been as a husband and a father. I laughed with my siblings and with my parents in ways I did not think could ever be topped. The moments of humor and enjoyment that I got with the family that I grew up with were amazing and yet I laugh more and have even greater memories and experiences with my wife and kids.

This is an incredible blessing to be married and to be a parent. It is a blessing from the Lord and I want to do everything possible to preserve this, to nurture it, to sanctify my wife and grow her in the washing of water with the word as a husband is instructed to do according to Ephesians 5.

Love your wives as Christ loved the church. So I die to myself and look for ways that I can encourage and build up my wife every single day. I will say that I probably do better at that with my wife than I may do with my kids.

The relationship with my wife is the most important relationship I have anyway. My kids know that I love them when they see the way that I love their mom. So when I tell my children I love them, if I wasn't loving their mom, they don't have any reason to believe me.

But because they know I'm committed to God first and my marriage is built on a foundation of Christ and then I love their mother, then they know this is a house that has been built on love and they feel safe and secure in this home that has been established on Christ.

I need to do a little bit better with my children when it comes to dying to myself and considering my kids because I can be shorter with them than I am with my wife. But this has been a great relationship that God has given to us and it's been a lot of hard work.

I'm not saying that it comes easy for us. My wife and I have used our wonderful experience of the years that we've shared together to try to encourage others. You can have a marriage like this. Now it takes both people.

You can't just automatically decide, well, I am going to have a marriage like this and your partner is not involved in that commitment. It takes a commitment from both people, but you can have a happy marriage and you can have a marriage that is honoring of the Lord every day.

It's something that you look forward to every day and this person is someone you enjoy spending your life with and creating these memories and these experiences together. This is the one flesh union and this needs to be our disposition toward marriage.

No matter what, I'm willing to be gracious and forgiving and build this thing up. For as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, he who loves his wife loves himself. It's like loving your own body because we are that one flesh union.

And so this is the way that we need to be toward one another. It's exactly the thing that Jesus is trying to convince the Pharisees of when he says, it was intended from the very beginning that a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So we've been through verses one through five here. We'll come into the next part tomorrow with the Pharisees responding. Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?

So now they issue another response to Jesus. We've been through six verses, one through six. So we're going to start in verse seven tomorrow and go to the end. Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for what you have given to us every day.

Your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Every single day we should be waking up praising God for the forgiveness that we have been given in Christ. And as we have been forgiven, teach us to be forgiving.

Help us to forgive others. Just as we read yesterday at the end of chapter 18, that we need to be willing to forgive and our Heavenly Father will forgive us. But if we do not forgive others, then neither will we be forgiven by our Father who is in heaven.

For those of us who are married, the person that is nearest to us that we need to be exercising grace with is our spouse. And so teach us to do that every day. Help us to be patient, exercising that definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, 4.

Love is patient. Love is kind. It is not self-seeking. It is not rude. It does not boast. But we would even, as said in Philippians 2, consider the needs of others ahead of our.

Own.

As you have shown us much grace and love, teach us to show grace and love to one another. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues. You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com.

Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.