The Broken Gift Matthew 19:1-9 Part I

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Proverbs 18 .22 says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing.
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The implication is, of course, also true. He who finds a husband finds a good thing.
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What this is saying is that marriage is a gift from God. Marriage is designed by God to be a blessing.
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To receive this blessing, one must run from that which threatens your marriage. He writes in Proverbs 5, verses 1 -6,
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My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge.
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For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two -edged sword.
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Her feet go down to death. Her steps follow the path to Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life.
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Her ways wander, and she does not know it. The forbidden woman desires to lead a married man into adultery.
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The forbidden woman or man leads the married person who is bound by covenant with one's spouse down the path of death.
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That's what Proverbs is telling us. You can see the strong warning in Scripture about adultery.
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About the great damage that it causes in a marriage. What Solomon tells his son is to pursue the wife of your youth.
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Listen to these sweet words from the same passage in Proverbs in verses 15 -20. Drink water from your own cistern.
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Flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad?
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Streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.
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Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful dole.
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Let her fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love.
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Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the adulterer?
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What the Bible tells you is this. Enjoy your wife and enjoy your husband. Your spouse is a gift from God.
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You have free reign to enjoy your spouse emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
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You have the capability of having a deeper relationship with your spouse than any other human on earth.
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This is God's goal for this gift called marriage. But sadly, this is not always one's experience.
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The sad reality of marriages in a fallen world is that this relationship that started out with so much love, happiness, and hope can be brought to ruin.
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What starts out with a big celebration where all your friends and family gather can end at the courthouse.
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The reason this is the reality in many marriages is because of sin. A man or a woman in marriage, and sometimes both, can go against God's design and see marriage as a place to satisfy one's own desires rather than looking to satisfy the desires of your spouse.
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Jesus said in Acts 20, verse 35, that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
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This is your experience in life. The more you do for other people, whether it's your spouse or anyone else, the happier you will be.
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You want to find the most miserable people on earth? It's the people who are self -absorbed.
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And the best marriages understand this. The more husband and wife are focused on the other and not one's selfish desires, the happier the marriage is.
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But when the world revolves around one's spouse, problems will inevitably result.
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Sin brings great wounds to a marriage and can sometimes even end a marriage. This morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, Jesus talks about marriage.
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And he talks about it as a question is brought to him. He talks about it and the sad end that sometimes takes place from sin.
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But he also talks about the beautiful design that God gives in marriage.
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So this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me and look at Matthew 19. We'll be looking at verses 1 -6 today.
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This sermon is actually verses 1 -9. We're going to look at verses 7 -9 next
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Sunday. If you're using a red Bible, it's on page 979.
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This sermon is titled, The Broken Gift. And here's our big idea.
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Understand that marriage is a permanent covenant between one man and one woman. And this is in your bulletins in the outline.
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But before we jump in, let's read the text and then we will dig into it. Matthew 19, verses 1 -9.
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Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, He went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the
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Jordan. And large crowds followed Him and healed them there. And Pharisees came up to Him and tested
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Him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
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He answered, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?
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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.
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So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
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They said to Him, Why then did Moses command one to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?
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He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.
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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.
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Here's our big idea once again. Understand that marriage is a permanent covenant between one man and one woman.
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And over the next two Sundays, we will see three reasons why. But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one
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Sunday ago. We're always coming from somewhere and going to somewhere. We looked at the end of chapter 18, where Jesus told the story about an unforgiving servant.
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This unforgiving servant was just forgiven an insurmountable debt.
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What we saw is that it was $6 -8 billion in American money.
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And yet, the same person who was forgiven this enormous debt, refused to forgive the debt of his fellow servant who owed him what is the equivalent of about $15 -20 ,000.
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So what the king did, is instead of forgiving him like he did at first, he threw him into prison to the jailers.
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This was a severe punishment and this punishment symbolizes the eternal punishment that awaits the unbeliever who does not forgive.
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One mark of a true believer is the willingness to forgive. All unbelievers to some extent have a pattern of unforgiveness and the unbeliever will not be forgiven, but punished for one's sins.
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Now believers can also struggle with unforgiveness. And when this happens, what this text is telling us is that discipline will come.
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God disciplines his children. So if we hold bitterness, if we refuse to forgive someone, even though we have been forgiven,
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God brings discipline into that person's life so that we will not stay in that place, but be people who forgive.
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Now this leads us to our text this morning that we've already read, but now we will zero in on. I'm beginning by looking at verses one and two.
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Where once again we read that Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the
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Jordan. And large crowds followed him and healed them there. So after Jesus finished telling the story of the unforgiving servant, he intends to travel to Jerusalem.
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Jerusalem is where everything happened. It's where all these feasts happened. And so even if you were a
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Jew who lived far away, during the feast, the place you would travel to was Jerusalem.
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And the most significant feast was the Passover. The Passover is getting closer, but Jesus' plan is interestingly not to go directly south to Jerusalem from the
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Galilean region. He has ways of doing things. And sometimes he doesn't do things the way that we would expect him to. What verse one tells us is that he went southeast to the region of Judea on the east side of the
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Jordan. Jerusalem was located in Judea and to the east of the
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Jordan River was also in the region of Judea. And as he travels once again, large crowds follow him.
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The world's never seen anything like this. A man who drew so much attention wherever he went, people followed him.
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Why did people follow him? They followed him because he did miracles. They followed him because nobody spoke like he did.
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Even his opponents said that. Nobody spoke like this man spoke. Wherever he went, crowds followed him.
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I heard it described one time that Tiger Woods on the golf course, you know, they have all these different golfers and some of the golfers have a small crowd following them.
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Tiger Woods, everybody was following him wherever he went, watching his every move, watching his every putt and drive that he did.
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But in Jesus' day, the crowds followed him. And what's amazing about the crowds following him, in our day, people want so badly for crowds to follow them, right?
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Jesus didn't really care because he was willing to lessen the crowd if he had to because he spoke the truth and people would often leave.
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But it's remarkable to think that the crowds followed him. Unlike anything this world has ever seen.
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He drew crowds and when people came to him, they got help. Their needs were provided.
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As verse two says, large crowds followed him and he healed them there. Anybody who came to him with a problem, he fixed the problem.
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People came to him with an ailment, he healed that ailment. And this was a region full of Gentiles east of the
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Jordan River. But there were also many Jews who were being healed since they were traveling to Jerusalem for the
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Passover, which was not too far down the road. And as Jesus spends time there and heals people, his greatest earthly enemies approach him as we read in verse three.
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And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
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Jesus' greatest earthly enemies are the Pharisees, as verse three says.
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And we've seen that throughout Matthew. These are the people who are a thorn in his side.
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And even more than that, by the way, he is a thorn in their side. And that's why they're so angry at him.
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What we have seen in Matthew over and over again is the Pharisees want Jesus out of the picture.
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The Pharisees were a party of Jews who were the conservatives of their day. And we think, well, that's good.
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We're conservatives, right? But no, they were unhealthy conservatives. They made the religion of Judaism a burden by adding their own laws and they left the true religion of Abraham where one is saved by grace alone through faith alone.
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They made their own religion and they used Jewish language from the Old Testament to justify it.
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The Pharisees were some of the most powerful people in Judaism because some of their own were scribes.
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And the scribes were the people who had authority. The scribes were the Jewish teachers, but they were bad teachers.
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They taught the people a false understanding of scripture. The chief priests and the leadership of the
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Pharisees who were the scribes were in cahoots with one another. It was this corrupt religious system that ran the show in the first century.
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These were the ones who had the power in Israel. And one of the reasons I am so frustrated with the modern evangelicalism movement is because I see a parallel between the corrupt religion of the first century
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Judaism and the corrupt system in American evangelicalism. The goal of much of the leadership of American evangelicalism isn't to stand with Christ no matter what.
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It is self -survival. It is fear of man. It is to be nice to false teachers.
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It is to be okay with compromise and to make excuses for those who are compromising, saying we need to have unity with those who have compromised even though their heresy has been shown and they refuse to repent.
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I mean, if you want to describe modern evangelicalism in America in a nutshell, that's it right there. That's it.
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The greatest enemies of the modern American evangelicalism machine are
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Bible -believing pastors and Bible -believing Christians like you in the pew who are calling out their compromise.
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Titus 1 .9 says that pastors are to hold firm for the trustworthy where it is taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.
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Any corrupt American Christian leader is unqualified to be a Christian leader, but they remain in their churches,
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Christian colleges, seminaries, and parachurch organizations that it really is a good old boys club.
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Very similar to the good old boys club of the corrupt Jewish leaders in Jesus' day. And by the way, if you say this to the wrong people, you're going to get venom back at you as I have.
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We know how Jesus feels about corrupt religious leadership. And by the way, you might be saying, what is some evidence?
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I mean, I would say watch Enemies Within the Church. It exposes this. Not only that,
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I mean, just look at the Southern Baptist Convention president. He was caught plagiarizing verbatim sermons.
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Was he removed? Nope, he's still the president. Not only is he the president, he's also still the pastor of his church.
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So there's this widespread corruption that is everywhere that is very similar to the first century.
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And Jesus hates corruption. And we'll look at this more in Matthew 23 when we get there, how he describes it.
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Jesus hates it when people use religion to gain money, power, and prestige.
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People do that, and it's happening more in our country now than ever. And Jesus hates it, and we should hate it, and we should call it out when we see it, and it abounds in our country.
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Jesus despised the corrupt Jewish religious system of the first century, and he was not afraid to call them out.
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The Pharisees, along with the Sadducees, another Jewish party, wanted him dead.
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In John 7 -1, early on in his ministry, we learn that the Jews wanted to kill him. And so when they come to him here in our text, they want this man out of the picture.
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They do not have a mild grievance with him. There is no one on earth that the
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Pharisees and the Sadducees despise more than Jesus.
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Let's look again at the question they ask him in verse 3. They say to him, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
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And what Matthew says is that they're testing him as they're asking him this. This is not an innocent question.
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They're testing him. They want to bring him down. And what they ask him is, can a person just get divorced on a whim for any reason?
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And as they ask this question, they already know Jesus' answer. How do I know that?
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Well, he already answered this question earlier in the Gospel. In Matthew 5, verses 31 and 32, Jesus said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
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But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.
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And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. What we see is that Jesus has a high view of marriage and he takes a rigid view on divorce and remarriage.
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In order to understand this question from the Pharisees, we need to understand their background on this issue.
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In the first century, there were two schools of Jewish interpretation on the subject of marriage and divorce and remarriage.
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There was a liberal school and a conservative school. The liberal school came from a rabbi named
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Hillel. This man believed that anyone can divorce for any reason. He used
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Deuteronomy 24 to justify this position. And we'll look at that more next Sunday, what Deuteronomy 24 says.
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The Pharisees followed Rabbi Hillel's get out of marriage free position because it was convenient.
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They were religious people, these Pharisees were, but they were only religious on the outside, not inwardly.
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In the Gospels, it says that the Pharisees were lovers of money. And not only were they lovers of money, but they lusted after other women who they were not married to.
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And so this view, Rabbi Hillel's position was a convenient view. And because they held this view, many of the common people did also.
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You can see how this works. False teaching in the pulpit eventually makes its way to the pew.
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Same thing in the first century. False teaching from the scribes makes its way to the common people.
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Now, there was another interpretation that was very rigid. And this came from a rabbi named
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Shammai. His views was no divorce under any circumstances.
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It did not matter what happened in a marriage. For Rabbi Shammai, divorce was never permissible.
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Now, what we will do next Sunday is look at this more closely. And what we're gonna see is that Jesus and Shammai have much agreement on this.
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But we'll also see that he defers a little bit too. So he's more like Shammai than Hillel, but we'll see where they differ.
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But what you must understand is that as the Pharisees asked this question, they know that many people are listening around them.
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And this is how so many of these conversations happen. They would test him and then there's a crowd. They're trying to sway the crowd away from Christ.
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The very people who are around listening and following Jesus are the same ones who used to follow them.
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And they're jealous and they want him out of the picture. The motivation of the
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Pharisees in asking this question is to tie Jesus with the ultra conservative
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Shammai. That this rigid rabbi who said no divorce under any circumstance, this would be super unpopular with the people and they wouldn't follow
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Jesus anymore. That's what they're thinking as they're asking this question. So let's see how
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Jesus answers this question. He answers them in verses four through six as they try to discredit him. He says that 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.
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So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
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So Jesus tells them how marriage should be viewed. If you want a good definition of marriage, look no further.
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This is what it is in verses four through six. In order to have a marriage, you have to have one male and one female.
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Two males and two females does not make a marriage in the eyes of God.
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And of course this is very common in our day. This is very controversial in our day. And you might think only the
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Democratic Party, believes in same -sex marriage. If you think this, you would be wrong. Many Republicans are okay with same -sex marriage.
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Maybe some of you have noticed this trend. One example of this recently came from conservative author and political commentator,
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Dave Rubin, saying that he and his husband have decided to have a baby. And the people that congratulated him were a bunch of conservatives.
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And you'd be surprised, like really? That's interesting. You know what I'm saying? I thought we were the party of one man and one woman in marriage.
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Apparently not. And it does raise the question, at what point are Christians unable to vote?
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I don't think we're quite there yet, but we might get there very soon. And we have to keep an eye on that.
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For a marriage to truly be a marriage, there must be one man and one woman, as Jesus says clearly in verses four and five.
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In other words, the definition of marriage doesn't come from people, right? We don't decide on our own, okay, we want marriage to be this way.
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God tells us what marriage is. This unchanging book, God's holy word tells us what the definition of marriage is.
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And we see that in verses four and five. What we also see is that marriage is the most important human relationship.
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As Jesus says at the end of verse five, the two shall become one flesh. There's no other relationship in the
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Bible that's described that way. The two shall become one flesh. The marriage relationship is intended to be so intimate that husband and wife are seen as one.
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And you see this when people are married for a super long time. I mean, Elvin and Susan are here today. You can't talk about Elvin without talking about Susan.
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You can't talk about Susan without talking about Elvin. That's what happens. They're so connected.
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And that's God's design. The two become one flesh. What Jesus also says in verse six is important to understand concerning the permanence of marriage.
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When he says, what God has joined together, let not man separate.
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Marriage is designed by God to be for life. God has joined the two together and no one should separate the sacred union.
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This is how Jesus answers the question from the Pharisees from verse three when they asked him, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
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He responds with a high view of marriage. He goes back to the creation of Genesis 2 to say that this is
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God's design. This design is upheld even though sinfulness tries to tear down this design.
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Marriage should not be viewed flippantly. You see that in Hollywood, don't you?
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Married, six months. Okay, move on to someone else. Married, maybe a year. Maybe two years. Not very long.
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Marriage, and that's a shame because marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman for life.
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Marriage is not a relationship that you give up quickly on. When things get difficult, it's not time to find another spouse.
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Once again, Jesus says, what God has joined together, let not man separate.
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The marriage relationship between one man and one woman must be taken seriously. But the Pharisees who asked him this question were not interested in staying with one's spouse for life.
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They were interested in getting the Bible to say what they wanted it to say, not what it really says.
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The marriage must be taken seriously. It was convenient for the Pharisees. They took the liberal position that said you could get a divorce for any reason.
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Some counseling that people give today is husband and wife have a problem. They go see a counselor. The counselor says, we'll get a divorce.
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That's not good counseling. Good counseling is how can we save the marriage? What's the problem?
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Let's get to the bottom of it. You don't like the way she chews at the dinner table?
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Then get a divorce. If that was one of the issues, I would be in big trouble. You don't like the way that he snores?
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I would have a problem with that one too, by the way. Get a divorce. You don't like how she gets under your skin?
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Then get a divorce. They thought it was fine to get a divorce for reasons like these as they followed the liberal
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Rabbi Hillel. But what Jesus says is this is not okay. He draws the line.
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He says this is what marriage is really about. He makes it clear to these hostile people who are asking this question that marriage is not to be viewed flippantly.
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By the way, if people are listening, they would have been like, oh, really? I didn't realize you were so strict and so rigid.
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But he doesn't care. He fears his Father in heaven. He follows his
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Father. He always tells the truth. And this is a great model. He doesn't care if people don't follow him anymore.
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He's just gonna keep telling the truth and whoever's with him in the end, great. It's like a football team.
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They have boot camp or they have that really difficult training and they're thinking some people are just gonna quit.
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They're not gonna make it to the end. But the ones who are here, that's who we're gonna go into the season with to play these other teams, to go to war with.
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And Jesus works that way. He's like, you know what? I'm just gonna keep telling the truth and whoever's with me is with me.
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Because that's how you build true disciples. Now, if we're honest, for those who are married or who have been married, when we make those vows on that wedding day, before God and before the people who are present, when we make those vows, this is a pretty big vows, aren't we?
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Aren't they? You can see why people get cold feet. It's a commitment. When you make those vows, you don't know what the future holds.
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You don't know if your spouse is gonna have a serious accident where you're gonna be a caretaker for the rest of your life.
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That happens to people. You're not thinking about how difficult it might be.
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You're not thinking of the tension that will come in marriage, how you'll get under each other's skin. Wife of Billy Graham, Ruth Graham, was once asked,
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Ruth, have you ever thought about divorcing Billy? And she said, oh no, no, no. I've never thought about divorcing
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Billy. I thought about killing him. And every very person's like, yep, that's true.
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This is why it is good in a marriage to reaffirm your commitment with your spouse, to say
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I'm with you, I'm committed to you, I know we've had hard days, but I want to get to the end with you.
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And you might be here today and you might think that's impossible. Your marriage might be so hard that you don't know what to do.
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But God can heal your marriage. He can. And he is the only one who can change things for the better in a deep sense.
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And there might be some superficial change, but if you want lasting change, God is the only one who can heal your marriage for the better.
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It's one of those things in life, it's always good to look at the end. It's a wise person looks at the end.
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We live in the present by looking at the future. And I once heard a pastor say, he told a story about a husband and wife who are in a difficult marriage and what he said is this, imagine getting to the end of your life and you're in a place with beautiful scenery like the
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North Shore, the waves are crashing, the birds are flying by and the sun is setting.
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It's a beautiful day. And you look at each other and you say, we made it.
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Remember those difficult years? Remember those five years when we wanted to give up? We made it.
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We didn't throw in the towel. And my prayer for every married person in this church is to do what you can to get to the end of your marriage.
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In a room this size, the health of marriages are probably all over the place. Some of you have a healthy marriage.
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Some of you, maybe it could be better. Some of you don't have a healthy marriage. What Jesus says here is important for us to hear.
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This is meant to be permanent. It's His design. When you made those vows,
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He was listening and He's telling you, are you going to keep those vows? His plan is to go through this journey with you.
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You're not alone. His plan is that as you follow Him together, you will have a healthy marriage.
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That's His goal for you. That's what He wants for you. And as you go to Him, He can do that.
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Marriage is not intended to be a dreadful experience. Remember what I read at the beginning?
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He who finds a wife finds a good thing. I find it funny, it just says wife, but I think it means husband too, right?
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Yeah, he who finds a husband finds a good thing as well. It's not meant to be a dreadful experience. It is a gift if it is done the right way.
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And if you have a good marriage, keep that up by God's grace. And if your marriage is in a tough place, by God's grace, you can have better days.
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You can experience the gift of marriage and husband and wife, as husband and wife follow
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Christ together. And it's one of those things you might say, you know,
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I'm doing my part and my spouse isn't. And that's where you have to pray, Lord, change the heart of my husband or change the heart of my wife so that we can have the same desire, that we can have the same desire to have a fulfilling marriage as God designed it.
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Because that's what God designed. He designed every marriage to be wonderful. But sadly, in a fallen world, it doesn't always work that way.
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It's meant to be one of the greatest blessings of life. But sadly, it doesn't always work that way.
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And as I wrap up this first point here today, I want to close by just explaining the gospel that even in the midst of the sin of marriage, and even if you've been divorced,
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God forgives you in Christ. And that's what you have to remember. Even with all the sin, there's probably no place on earth where more sin happens than within a marriage.
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You see everything about each other. But the grace of God in Jesus Christ is there for you.
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So remember that. And He can not only heal your marriage, but He also forgives your sins that you have committed within your marriage.
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So understand that marriage is a permanent covenant between one man and one woman.
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And the first reason why is that the sacred union before God shall not be broken.
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The sacred union before God shall not be broken.
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And I want to say this one thing too, is that when we go to a wedding, there's a reason weddings don't happen with just the husband, the bride, and the groom.
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There's witnesses there. And I mentioned that God is with us in our marriages.
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We are supposed to be there for each other in our marriages as well. And I don't mean gossip. We don't want to gossip about our spouse before someone else.
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What I mean is we are there to encourage one another. We have the marriage Bible study tomorrow night.
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That's intended to encourage one another in our marriages. Pray for one another. We want to have healthy marriages.
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We want to have fulfilling marriages as God designed it to be. So that is our goal. And that is
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God's goal. And so may we live it out by His grace. So this morning, we focused on the permanence of marriage.
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Now next Sunday, we will focus on when is it biblical to end a marriage and to have it be okay where you can remarry?
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The Bible does answer that question. So we will look at that next Sunday in verses seven through nine.
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But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we are not fit to do marriage without you.
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In our sinfulness, we're selfish. We want to go our own way.
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And yet marriage is a constant reminder, Lord, that life is not about us. It's about you.
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It's about loving you. And it's about being selfless toward other people. And the best way that that is shown is in a marriage between one man and one woman.
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Between husband and wife. And so, Lord, my prayer is that this message would meet everyone right where they're at today.
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Some are here, Lord, and have a very difficult marriage. Others are here and think, you know what, we could have a better marriage.
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And others have a great marriage. And may that continue. That's our goal. We want everyone to be in that place to enjoy this gift that you have given.