Divorce -- Clearing The Confusion — Shane Idleman

Seeking Grace and Clarity for the Message

Lord, I do pray tonight, dear Heavenly Father, that you would season my words with grace. Lord, not only season my words with grace, Lord, but give me clarity. Lord, I pray that you would infuse marriages tonight, infuse the lives of those who are distant from you, Lord, begin to draw them to you.

Lord, we ask that you have your way in this service tonight. Lord, we're here to honor you, to seek out what your word says. And as always, Lord, we give you this service, but we also pray for our nation tonight, Lord, a nation that has rejected you, rejected your word.

I pray that you'd begin to draw her back through the preaching of your word, that the pulpits would be aflame again with righteousness. Lord, preaching the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit. Lord, draw your church back to you.

Lord, wake us from this lukewarm state, Lord, so we would seek you with all of our hearts. The more we seek you, we will find you, and the more we find you, we will seek you. Lord, I thank you so much for calling me to this, but I pray now that you give me, Lord, not only the boldness, but the clarity and the grace and the love to deliver this message.

And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. You know, it's ironic is 20 years ago, you would never caught me singing those verses. You know, that's not a man's song. But let me remind every man in this room that you will bow to Jesus Christ on this side of heaven, or you will bow to him on the other side, and then it might be too late.

Worship as a Response to God's Grace

Because every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Christ is Lord. And when you truly know him, you have to worship him. You have to worship him. So worship is just a reflection of what's going on in the heart.

And I just want to challenge you tonight, if worship is boring, and you're not sure, just, oh man, come on. There's something wrong in your heart. You should have a worshiping heart, a heart that's following heart after God.

And I just want to challenge you in that area, especially men. Sometimes we think, oh, the songs are sappy or this. Well, it's not manly to do this. No, it's not manly to worship God. David was a man of war, and he danced so much in front of God that his clothes fell off and his wife mocked him.

Worship's not for women. Worship is for men as well, to worship God and to recognize what he's done in our lives. So just think about that next time. It's not some sappy love song. It's a broken, humble sinner thanking God for what he's done.

If it was not for the grace of God, there go I, locked up on that prison right there on Jane 60th. Oh, yeah, I would be there if it wasn't for the grace of God. So let's not forget that that's why we worship.

We worship because of who he is and what he's done for us. So with that said, let me transition now into the message, and I want to be careful on this topic. Some people are saying, oh Lord, why is he speaking on this?

Framing the Teaching on Divorce with Grace and Truth

Other people are saying, thank God he's speaking on this. Other people are saying, well, this isn't relevant to me. Well, we're in Matthew. We're in chapter 5, and we're on this verse. So that's where I have to preach from, number one.

Number two is, I think this will be one of those verses like when I spoke last year on same-sex attraction, balancing grace and truth, and we've had people from the homosexual lifestyle actually come out of that lifestyle from it.

We've had a lot of feedback on that message, and it's one of those main verses that we can say, here's our church's stance, preaching the truth, but still loving that individual. So this will be another message that I can send out as far as, this is the church's stance on divorce.

We're going to clear up the confusion today, because there's so much confusion. Divorce people walk around with the big D right here. It's the unpardonable sin. No, the unpardonable sin is rejecting Christ, not divorce.

But on the other hand, we've this culture we've created, now no-fault divorce, I just don't love you anymore, don't like you anymore. Look at all the Hollywood actors, just, you know, just let them go, get somebody else.

So I'm trying to find the balance between grace and love and mercy, at the same time holding to the truth of God's Word. So help me get through this for an hour, and just understand that that's where I'm trying to go.

Compassion for the Divorced and Hope for Restoration

But let me first say up front that I have nothing but compassion for those who've experienced divorce. It's like death. It's because two people come together. God says, let man and woman come together, and let nothing separate them.

So when that separation happens, guess what? It's like gluing two pages together and ripping it apart. There's going to be damage. It feels like death. And if you remember, I spoke on this probably last year, a year and a half ago, and they're interviewing, I think she's passed away now, but I'm focused on the family.

She was released from the concentration camps, and then she also experienced divorce. But she said that the pain of her divorce was greater than the pain of the concentration camps, and it still lingers.

It's devastating. So don't think for a minute, I'm coming up here and going, wow, wow, wow, you just got to this. As somebody who's experienced this pain, the consequences of bad choices, the regret, the heartache, the just walking around with a big D on your chest, and you just feel.

I also want to bring a word of encouragement. So trying to balance encouragement and truth is a little challenging, because sometimes you're going to err on the side of the truth, and it's going to hurt.

But we need to hear it. But at the other side, we're also going to focus on grace and love and mercy. And let me remind everybody here, no matter what you've been through, where you're at in this stage, if this doesn't apply to you today, it might apply to you next week.

So listen up, and I guarantee you know somebody who this will apply to, and we'll have this message posted soon. You can get it out there. But let me encourage you that God is the God of restoration. Even though the marriage may never be restored, He can restore your healing.

He can heal you. He can deliver you. As a matter of fact, the greater the pain, the greater the blessing. It's actually the pain of my life that has driven me to the cross. It's why I have to worship Him.

It's why usually I'd be thinking about leaving here and going to schooners afterwards, but now I'm thinking about worshiping Him more and more, because He's radically changed my life. So that's a great hope.

If you can use that brokenness to propel you to Christ, it's a wonderful thing. If you use that brokenness to propel you to bitterness, it's a terrible thing. It's our choice. As you've heard before, life makes you bitter, or it makes you better.

It's what you do with that. Because if you know God, once you know Him as Restorer, He actually restores your life, and you rebuild your life, and you look to Him. If you know Him as Provider and Shepherd, you know all the old Hebrew terms, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Nisi, Jehovah Rapha, all those.

They knew Him as Provider, and their shelter, and their banner. If you know it, the only way to know Him as those things, to not just read about in the Bible, but to know Him, is to go through it. Because I won't know Him as a Provider unless I've been on my last month's income.

I have no other option, Lord, unless you provide, I will not make it. And if you don't know Him as your Redeemer, unless you've been saved from a sin of life and death. Or a sin of death, basically, not life.

But you won't know Him as these things unless you've experienced it. So those people who go through the pain of divorce, they either come out very broken, and humble, and seeking God, and a deeper relationship with Him.

And that's one of the good things about problems in marriages, is it'll drive you to the cross. Or it'll drive you to divorce court. You're steering the vehicle. You're driving it, in that whatever direction.

Personal Testimony and the Call to Repentance

So I have this long introduction, and one of those points was, I need to say up front that I have nothing but compassion for those who've experienced divorce. Actually, there's a lot of groups out there who've said, I can't pastor because of my past and my 1990s.

If you go hear my testimony online, you can hear it's on the homepage. I can't even pastor. Not only that, I'm living in sin, and my wife is living in adultery because of what happened to me in 1990s.

I get those emails, how can you be up there and preach? You were once married. Yeah, it was abandoned, and she filed, and she left. I mean, what do you want me to do about that? Just sit there and linger in that?

But because of that, that's what God used to bring the prodigal son back home. The hammer of God came out and said, okay, boy, here's what it's going to take. Bam, now I need you, God. Now I'm everything to you.

As I drew closer to Him, she drew further apart. She's gone, and I'm left falling hard after God. So He rebuilds, and He restores, and it's from that that this passion came. So that was actually a turning point.

And God knows what He'll use. He'll take your finances, your health, whatever it is. Why? Because we have all these idols. We have a Sunday God, but not a Monday through Saturday God, and He wants everything.

And just a caveat, next week we're going to be in Matthew. We're going to talk about God's at war, dealing with idolatry in the heart. And it's already firing up in me. So it's going to be, bring your friends.

We're going to talk about idolatry, and what do we do with that? And how do we crush those things from our lives? However, the culture of no-fault divorce that we have created is alarming and destructive.

Adultery has reached epidemic levels. Children are being ravished, and families destroyed, and humility is nowhere to be found. Let me say that again. When I see the devastation, talk to families, I don't see a lot of brokenness and humility.

I see a lot of this, and name-calling, and pointing, and blaming. No wonder there's no restoration. Our hearts aren't right to receive that. Somebody's got to be the better person. Somebody has to be that better person.

So my challenge is, I have to offer hope and warning, comfort and conviction. God desires restoration, but He also desires repentance. See how He works like that? He wants to restore, but is there always hope of restoration?

Not at all. Because it takes two. You have to realize that it takes two people when the choices of one will greatly affect the other, and it'll put the other person in a position where they have no other choice.

It's almost like they created this environment. The other spouse created this environment of divorce, and it's not necessarily a certain person's fault. Although it does take two, and I'm going to get into that in a minute.

Malachi and the Divine Opposition to Divorce

And of course, we know this one. God hates divorce. We know that, but it bears repeating that He told Malachi, I am the Lord thy God. I hate divorce. I believe it was Malachi. Don't quote me on that. But the problem is a lot of people look for loopholes and excuses that I found.

See, there's usually not a heart of, and I'm not, again, saying everybody. I'm saying the majority of people that I talk to. There's not a heart of restoration. There's a heart of, let me find this loophole and this excuse to make my way through.

See? See, Jesus said, okay, that should be the last resort, not the first. And now let's get into that for a minute. And this is why I really value the value of systematic study. Because if you just take the Scripture out of context, and while you're turning there, I'm going to go through that.

It's Matthew chapter 5. We're still in Matthew. We're going through the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 5, verse 27. And the reason, what I mean by systematic study of the Bible, do you know what that means?

Do you know that we can pull out Scripture and make it apply to almost anything? God wants you to be healthy and wealthy. See? You should never be sick. See this Scripture? You should never divorce ever.

Jesus said it. See? I mean, you can pull out, I mean, you can, pretty much anything. You can just take a little Scripture and pull and make it fit. So systematic study helps. What it does, it shows you the whole counsel of God.

What does he say about a particular subject? And as I reminded everybody earlier, divorce is not the impartable sin rejecting Christ is. So be encouraged by that. It's not the impartable sin. It's rejecting Christ is what is the impartable sin.

Adultery in the Heart and the Necessity of Radical Repentance

Okay, adultery in the heart. Jesus said, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Wow. Wow, there's a lot of adultery going on, isn't there? Well, I didn't do it. I didn't meet somebody. I didn't hook up. Well, this says you're committing it here. Now you see my big issue, one of my big issues with modern day entertainment.

A lot of you guys are going to bed each night, adultery in your mind. Let's just be honest. We're lusting in our minds. Where's the mind goes? There the body goes. Jesus is, because basically as the heart thinks, as the mind thinks, so be it.

That's how a man, that's who a person is. So Jesus say, okay, although you might not have done the act, you've thought about it. You think about it regularly. You commit adultery in your heart. In a nutshell, that's what pornography is.

Right? That's why it's so devastating. I think I just looked at earlier. I think this is pretty close. In 2011, there were 227 million searches for sex and video in one month, one month. How many of us have added to that search in the church?

See, we think I haven't committed adultery, but that's why pornography destroys relationships and families. Because you're having sex with somebody, not physically, but mentally. Your sin will find you out.

The consequences are the same. That's why transparency and honesty and repentance is so vital. It's not some secret little thing we can just keep over here as if it won't affect. Perfect example. My wife can validate this.

This morning, this morning, I'm on our VIMO where all our videos are hosted. I'm trying to look, okay, what's that message I gave on lust and temptation? I do a search on that. And there's a lot of videos in our mind that came up right there on the screen.

I said, Morgan, look at this. Just so you know. Hey, I'm just confessing. My flesh says, don't confess. Don't tell her. But I said, listen, look, what is it? We have to find a different place to host our videos.

It's right there. But that transparency, that openness is what has to happen. That repentance and not wanting it. We have to see sin the way God sees it. Jesus is saying you're committing adultery in your heart.

If you keep looking at women and lusting or men, pornography is now on the rise with women. Did you know? It's out there. Half the shows we're watching now, soft core porn. It's drawing people in. Because he said, okay, the devil says you might not do the act physically, but you're going to do the act mentally in your mind.

It's still just as devastating. It draws you away from your spouse. You have unrealistic expectations. I just don't love you anymore. No kidding. You don't love her anymore because there's no intimacy.

That's why I laugh sometimes when we're getting divorced. Why? We just don't love each other anymore. No kidding. That's why you're getting divorced. That's a no-brainer. You see, love doesn't leave people.

People leave love. Because if you go through the Bible, love is a choice, not necessarily a feeling. A lot of young adults say we're so in love. They're in lust. The hormones are raging. They're in lust.

They don't know anything what love is. Because love is a commitment. Love is honest and pure and upright. You know Corinthians. Love is patient. It's kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. So Jesus is basically destroying their hypocrisy and annihilating their pride, saying, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You say all this, but you even look at a woman. You're committing adultery with her in your heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. So next time somebody says, man, you're a little extreme.

You're a little hardcore. You're a little narrow. You're a little fundamentalist. You're, well, Jesus says, I got to remove those things that are hindering my walk. I have to remove those things that are pulling me down.

And you can't just do that, because if you just do that, it's what psychologists called for the last 50 years, behavioral modification. That's modifying your behavior is good, but you have to go after the idol that's causing that behavior.

And that's what we're going to talk about next week. So be here next week, because that's where we're really going to talk about getting these idols out of our heart. And he goes on to say, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Jesus said hell. You guys, Jesus said hell. Can you believe it? Just turn the other Jesus that the media likes. He said, you'll be thrown into hell. We don't want to confuse this here with, okay, if I'm a good person, I do good things, I won't go to hell.

Basically saying, sincere believers who have given their life to Christ, who are following God, will take the necessary steps to remove those things from their life. And if you don't, it just is a reflection of your heart, and you'll be cast into hell.

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. This is why these are great scriptures for if your computer's a problem, put it in the garage or put some software on it. If the TV, if you're always just lusting every night, it's okay to unplug it, turn it off, have a cable.

I haven't had in 13 years, and I'm still alive. I'm still doing okay. Well, we don't want to get legalistic in this. I'm just saying, if it cuts it out, I'll sit there for three hours. 150 channel, Duck Dynasty, renewing your house, this, this, this, this, this.

It's just a bunch of garbage. So he's saying, listen, if anything is going to pull you in that direction, remove it. And this is a good time to remind you of what I spoke about last year. I know I bring a lot of my old stories, but they keep fitting.

Confronting Pornography Through Transparency and Accountability

When I was up at a men's conference in Lake Arrowhead, and the guy came up, he said his wife is leaving him. He's addicted to porn. He doesn't know it. This is his last resort. And we prayed, of course, behavioral modification.

But we walked him through, okay, what is triggering this? Okay, every time, I mean, when you feel that, what do you do? Because there are things you can't put in place. Text your, say, hey, this and this.

I mean, there's so much. This isn't really a sermon for that. But to make a long story short, he said, well, it starts a lot of times when I'm watching ESPN and the commercials, the cheerleaders and all.

That's really what starts to fuel this. All this stuff that keeps coming on TV. And I said, well, call me stupid, but plan A might be start getting rid of all this stuff. Show your wife you're serious.

Get this out of here. And begin to worship God. Put on worship music. And he looked at me, he said, are you crazy? I'm a sports fanatic. Well, how bad do you want it? How bad do you want your wife is about ready to leave, and you have the audacity and the arrogance to tell me I'm a sports fanatic?

That's the problem with the church. Everybody loves their entertainment. They love their idols. They don't love holiness and purity, or they would seek God with all their heart. That's what Jesus is saying.

There's no wiggle room here. Whatever is causing you to sin, cut it off. Cut it out. No wiggle room, no gray area. And you know what happens once you begin to do that? Then you're filled with the spirit of God.

And then you can have some boldness behind your actions. And you start being filled with God's word. You love his word. You love his worship. Why? Because you're obeying his word. Everybody says now we're too busy.

We're too busy. You know what they're too busy doing? They're too busy chasing their idolatry. They're too busy being entertained. I just went online. The national media, the national survey, the average household has the television on seven hours a day.

Yet we're too busy to read the word of God. We're too busy to worship. We're too busy to seek Christ. No, we're not too busy. You've got an idol on your heart and Christ is in the back. Oh, I didn't come to be a cheerleader today.

I'm sorry. It's time to convict and challenge that heart that's crushed the idols. Because you know what people do? They just replace an idol with another one. They put it over here. You've got to crush it and annihilate it.

Get it out of your life. When the children of Israel used to hide their idols. Well, let's just take Astaroth and this carved image. Let's just kind of get rid of them for now. We'll seek God for now.

But then they always go back to their idols. Go back to their idols. Idolatry is what leads to all other sin. Martin Luther would say you can't commit all other nine sins without first committing idolatry.

Everything is linked to idols. That's what we're speaking on next week. I mean, I don't keep building this up, but I want to preach on it now. I've already been putting it together. And there's actually a really good book written by a guy named Kyle Eidelman.

Wow, people have been asking me if we're related, but I should meet this guy. But he wrote a new book. It's called God's at War. Talk about convicting. He goes from everything from food to sex to power to success.

All these idols. And he made a statement in there. He says whatever disappoints you has probably got an idol tied to it. Think about that. Work's disappointing me. My money, my financial state. Why? Because it's your idol and he's letting you down.

And then he said God will often judge you in your area of your idolatry. He doesn't feed his competition. So if your idol is money, watch out for some devastation. If your idol is sex, watch out for some dissatisfaction.

If your idol is power, watch out for some humility and demotion. Think about that. It's powerful. So I'm giving him all the credit because I'm going to use a lot of his stuff. With biblical text, of course.

But that's basically what Jesus is saying. It's in your heart. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Cast it out from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Jesus said it twice. So that's for next week. But then it gets to this week. Furthermore, it has been said whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

Wow. Taking that face value. That's pretty powerful. That's pretty narrow. And I don't want to take or add to this at all. What I want to do is unpack it. But we have to remember that Jesus is not overriding the law in any of these texts.

Jesus Clarifies the Law on Marriage and Divorce

What is he doing? He's clarifying it. You've heard it said, but I tell you. You've heard it said, but I tell you. And he would clarify the heart of God. What would happen? The Pharisees get really rigid and legalistic.

We see the same thing today. But God says, but I tell you. See, a lot of people have the letter of the law, thou shalt not, but they don't have the spirit of the law behind it, which is the spirit of the law, grace and love.

They have to be married. So you can pound the law into somebody, but without grace and love, it goes nowhere. And that's what he's saying here. Listen, you've heard it said, but here's what it means. Now, what I want to do is grab from Mark 10 to bring this.

This is kind of the same discourse in a different book of the Bible where Jesus elaborates a little bit. So now you have this picture. Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that if you divorce her without any reason except sexual morality, you are committing adultery and whoever marries her is committing adultery. So Mark 10, Jesus then left the place and went into the region of Judea across from the Jordan.

Again, crowds of people came to him as was his custom. He taught them. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Well, what did Moses command you? Jesus replied as if he doesn't know.

This cracks me up. They said, well, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. Go, go, go. Well, Jesus said, it's because of your hard hearts that Moses wrote this law.

Jesus replied, but at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be united with his wife and the two will become one flesh.

That's why this issue of adultery is so important because the two becoming one flesh is almost like a spiritual bond. That's what sexual intimacy is for. A great gift from God turns into perversion when you pervert what it's for.

So the two come together not to know 10 other people before they get married, but to know the one person, that glue that knits them together, that bond, how God created them. So Jesus is clarifying, listen, this is what God has put together.

They become one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. Do not separate this. When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery. So what we have to do here, let's look at three things. And D. Martin Lloyd-Jones was helpful at this point. He's a great Bible teacher.

He died about 50 years ago. He wrote on the Beatitudes. And I drew from a lot of what he said because he breaks it down into three areas. And this was really helpful for me. Number one, what did the law teach?

Number two, what did the Pharisees teach? And number three, what did Christ teach? So this whole thing of divorce is going to be really going to make sense in just a minute here because we're going to pull everything together.

The Mosaic Law and the Certificate of Divorce

What did the law teach back with Moses? Well, divorce wasn't an option when adultery occurred. What was the option when adultery occurred? You have some big rocks around here? Stone them to death. Somebody committed adultery, there's no need for divorce.

We're getting big three-pound, four-pound rocks. They'll usually be down a little crest like this. People will be up on a hill, a little mountain, and just start stoning the person to death. That was the cost of adultery.

You say, wow, we don't do that anymore. Well, that doesn't excuse it. The penalty usually reveals how God would view it. The heart of God. Listen, this is so wrong, so corrupted that it will cost a person their life.

So basically, the spouse was released when this happened, right? A woman was caught in adultery or a man, they would be stoned. The other spouse is now released. Why are they released? Death has occurred.

So they're released. The Mosaic Law was actually to help women. It controlled the chaos and the suffering. It limited divorce under the title of uncleanness. So what the guys were doing is like, ah, I don't want this one.

Let me trade in for a new model. Let me do this. And Moses said, uh-uh. Unless there's an uncleanness there, morally, spiritually, physically, you cannot divorce her. What you have to do is write her a certificate of divorce.

So now she can say, I am released. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't commit adultery. Don't stone me. My husband, I have a certificate of divorce. He released me. So we usually view it as, oh, yeah, here's your divorce.

But it was to protect women, to protect the children from suffering. Because divorce was just, oh, I just want this. I want that. You don't cook well. You don't do this. You couldn't divorce them unless they met the guidelines of uncleanness there.

And so they would write them a divorce. And the woman would have that as being legally divorced from her spouse. So with that backdrop, the certificate of divorce showed that she was dismissed, released, and he could not marry her again.

So that's what the certificate of divorce was. The husband decided to do that. It was a very serious thing. She was released. She's provided for, I don't know how, with the children. She's not going to be harmed.

Because in that time, if a woman was divorced, they'd all be, oh, why did he divorce you? What's going on? Is there adultery there? Do we need to stone her? What's going on? So he actually looked like the bad guy.

Like, OK, I'm divorcing you because of these issues, this uncleanness. So that was the law. That was the Mosaic law. That's what happened there. But then what did the Pharisees teach? Of course, what they like to do is take the law of God and then put their own twist on it.

The Pharisees taught that the law actually urged men to divorce their wife. It was like a license. So they taught, see, Moses said you can write him a certificate of divorce. See? Divorce, divorce, divorce, divorce.

No, Jesus is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. He did that because of the hardness of your hearts. That's not God's plan. He did that because of the hardness of your hearts. And so the Pharisees taught, well, you can do it whenever.

But the hardness of our hearts had to be controlled, just like an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It's in that same setting. Jesus says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Well, in the Old Testament, whatever you take from a man, you take out a man's eye, it's going to be required of you.

You take out a man's tooth, it's going to be required of you. It's in that same setting. So if you divorce your spouse, it's not a license for this. This is very seriously, very serious. So allowing divorce is not commanding it.

See, that's the distinction. God allowed divorce because the hardness of their heart, but he was not commanding it. He wasn't promoting it. He wasn't saying, this is the better plan. It's almost like saying, because you're going to kill people, you're going to go to jail.

Well, God must say that killing people is okay. No, he's just saying, because the hardness of your heart, because you're killing people, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, you're going to have the ramifications there.

You're going to feel the penalty. Now, what did Christ teach? So Jesus comes on the scene, he's sorting through all this. Adultery no longer requires stoning. That's pretty obvious. Could this be the turning point where people are no longer stoned?

I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there. Because Jesus didn't say, yeah, go stone them. He said, you are released because of adultery. And people might be divided on that. I'm just throwing that out there, food for thought.

The two become one, man and woman. The only thing that can break this is adultery. His relationship to her is as if she is dead. That's why Jesus brought this in, adultery and being dead. That's what happens.

You kill the marriage, basically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. Anybody who's been through that knows it's hell. You kill the marriage. The relationship is dead to the person. An innocent party is entitled to remarriage under these certain circumstances, what Jesus is saying.

Restoration, Repentance, and Legitimate Grounds for Divorce

So I put the Idleman Commentary on this. This isn't what the Bible said. This isn't opinion. This is what I think the heart of the message is. Jesus is challenging a destructive sexual lifestyle. The man is an adulterer.

Because God's heart is always repentance and restoration. And what I mean by that, let's say, God forbid, I'm not going to, but I have to bring in examples without you thinking, oh, he's promoting this.

I'm just thinking a one-night stand, somebody's totally broken. I can't believe it. My marriage, I almost lost everything. And they're totally broken compared to a man who every year just seems to have this, you know, just can't get this out of my system.

He's an adulterer. Jesus said, let that fool go. Get rid of him. You have grounds for divorce, crystal clear. Because he keeps breaking that union that was never supposed to be broken. So he's going to the heart of the issue here.