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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/william-skates/the-exception-of-matthew-19v9/
Let's turn to our Bibles, to the Gospel of Matthew please, chapter 19. Matthew chapter 19, reading at verse 1. And it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these sayings, now that's obviously referring back to chapter 18, where there was the subject of forgiveness and the Lord introduces the local assembly in prospect for the first time.
Now, the Lord finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee and came into the coast of Judea beyond Jordan. So that's the Parian area beyond Jordan. And great multitudes followed him and he healed them there.
And the Pharisees came unto him, tempting him and saying unto him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And Jesus answered and said unto them, have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female?
And said, quoting from Genesis 2, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
They say unto him, why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you, permitted you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
So the Pharisees had referred to Deuteronomy 24 when they made that statement and the Lord makes his observation about that writing from Moses. Now verse nine, and I say unto you, so here's the teaching of the kingdom.
I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife except to be for fornication and shall marry another, committeth adultery. And whoso marrieth her, which is put away, doth commit adultery. His disciples say unto him, if the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.
But he said unto them, all men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. Now over to Mark chapter 10. For Mark's comments on the same day, the chapter starts very similarly to Matthew 19.
As to the movements of the Lord Jesus, it records there how the Pharisees came to him and so on. And the Lord reiterates verse five, Jesus answered and said unto them, for the hardness of your hearts, he, that's Moses, wrote you this precept, but from the beginning of creation.
So it's the same event. And the same conclusion, verse nine, what therefore God had joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house, now notice, in the house, that is later after the multitudes, what he has said to the multitudes in the house, his disciples asked him again of the same matter.
And he saith unto them, whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committed adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committed adultery.
Now that will suffice for our reading. We trust with the Lord's blessing upon it. Now, having asked and having been granted liberty by the conveners of this conference, I turn to this subject this afternoon.
I've been exercised to try and give clarity, if possible, from this text of scripture, which we have read together. Divorce and fellowship is a difficult and a motive subject, especially as it touches real lives, real individuals, and real assemblies have to deal with this real problem.
Sadly, there are individuals, couples that have experienced marriage breakdown and divorce. When we come to this subject, our only recourse should be the scriptures of truth and not the opinions of men.
One principle of study of a, at least of a complex or complicated subject such as this, I found it helpful to focus on a clear scripture that gives a full treatment of the subject. And if you can have that clear in your mind and heart, then other, maybe more obscure scriptures, you'll have to work that into the clear framework that the scriptures have provided.
So that would be my exercise for the afternoon here to take a look at Matthew 19 in particular, and to see if we can come to the scriptures with the principles of interpretation and find out what the text is saying, what the Lord is actually saying to his disciples, to the multitudes and the Pharisees on that occasion.
Now, any discussion on a matter like this, because it is so emotive, should always be done with a calm, prayerful spirit. Too often, voices get raised, you know, the tempo of the discussion is fast and furious, and all reason is lost in the fog of war.
So we want to keep that in mind for any discussions leading on from this. I wasn't long in the real estate profession as an appraiser to discover that there are three main items that must be considered when you're appraising a property, and they are location, location, and location.
And I think someone recently mentioned as well that when it comes to the scriptures, there are three things that need to be kept in mind as we try to interpret what is being said, and those three things are context, context, and context.
So let's take this scripture, Matthew 19, in context. Matthew's theme, as is known, is the coming kingdom. He has opened his gospel presenting the credentials of the king. They have been presented to Israel, and the genealogy and so on of the Lord Jesus is the legal genealogy given through Joseph's line.
The principles of the kingdom are set out in the Sermon on the Mount in chapters five through seven, and there follows the validating power of the kingdom in the miracles that the Lord does. By the time you come to chapter 12, the leaders of the nation have turned against the Savior, and they're actually not only rejecting him, but they're seeking to put him to death.
Chapter 12. Now follow the progress as we move. Come to chapter 13. Our brother took us there this morning. There is new revelation given concerning the kingdom that wasn't known before. One of the principal things is this, that there's going to be a delay until the kingdom comes.
Let both grow together until, you see, and then there is a description given in the various parables, eight in all, of conditions and processes that will pertain here on earth until the kingdom comes.
Chapter 13. When we come to chapter 16, we find the church universal is anticipated. I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That's chapter 16. Chapter 17, the Mount of Transfiguration.
Peter makes it clear that that event was a preview of the coming kingdom, the glory of the coming kingdom. Now notice, the church universal has a part in that, in the glory of the coming kingdom. Chapter 18, we find the local assembly is introduced in prospect with the difficulty that has arisen, and the Lord sets out the fact in verse 17 that if it's not resolved, then it should be told the matter should be brought before the church.
The first mention of the local assembly in our Bibles, they're spoken in prospect, coming into effect, of course, on the day of Pentecost. So the local assembly introduced in the context of a difficulty, and we come to chapter 19 now, and here's a difficulty that assemblies still face to this day.
All right. So here we are in chapter 19. I have to confess that I have not fully carried out the commission that the Lord gave to his disciples, in that I have tried to, well, we've shunned away, haven't we, brethren, from this particular subject in public teaching.
And yet, as he gave that commission in chapter 28, he said, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. I take it that would include the content of the gospel of Matthew. So chapter 19, the Savior is traveling now beyond Jordan into a region known as Perea, and the Pharisees come to him.
They're going to put him to the test, and in the presence of great multitudes, they ask the question, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Now, let's pick up on, let's unpack that question for a moment.
Put away is the word for to free completely, to dismiss, and it's a wife being involved, divorce. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for every cause? For any particular reason, on a whim, he doesn't like her anymore, can he divorce her?
That's the question. Now, another word that needs to be looked at in that question is the word wife, because the word gune, which is used here, can mean a woman, a betrothed maiden, or a wife, as we use the word today.
The word doesn't define things any further than that, but the context defines what is meant. So when we come to that, we want to notice how did the Lord treat that word wife in the context? He begins to answer the question by citing Genesis 2 and verse 24.
Genesis 2, 24, and he says, for this cause shall a man leave father, mother, cleave to his wife, and they, twain, shall be one flesh, physically joined. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
So the immediate context is indicating to us that when the Lord picks up on this word wife, he is talking about full-blown marriage. He treats the word wife as a married woman in the full sense of the word.
So what he's saying to these Pharisees now in response is this. Your thinking is all wrong. You're thinking how can you get out of marriage, but you should be thinking of God's intention that you stay married.
That's normal. That's normal. And so he goes back to the Old Testament and he draws that scripture from Genesis 2. So he answers the question initially, setting out the sanctity of marriage. What is normal?
Stay married. Don't be thinking of getting out of marriage. Well, not letting up the Pharisees, they continue, and they're going into the realm now of the exception. They're still working at trying to trip him up and they bring in an exception.
So they refer to Deuteronomy chapter 24 and the first four verses of that chapter. And they say, why did Moses command us to give a bill of divorcement and put her away? Verse 7 of chapter 19 here. Well, the Lord corrects them.
He points out, first of all, Moses suffered you. He allowed you. He permitted you to put away your wives. And he says it's in the context of hard-hearted sin. For the hardness of your hearts, he permitted you to put away.
So what the Lord is doing now, he's setting up the context in which he will give verse 9, the exception in verse 9. And he's setting that up by referencing now these scriptures. And it's against the background, he says, of hard-hearted sin.
Now, for those of you that are not familiar with Deuteronomy chapter 24, it was a provision whereby a wife could be divorced on the grounds of the husband finds some uncleanness in her. Not adultery, not immorality, otherwise she should be stoned under the law.
So it's something short of that, which is described as some uncleanness found in her. And so that woman could be divorced with a bill of divorcement. She was certifiably divorced so that she could then remarry, only not back to the first husband.
So there was a regulation given there about remarriage. She was free to remarry, but couldn't go back to husband number one. So again, you'll notice that Genesis 2 and Deuteronomy 24 are both speaking about full-blown marriage in the context.
Context, context, context. So by way of summary, so far what we are noticing is this. It is normal to stay married. That's God's intention. An exception to normal would be hard-hearted sin where divorce is permitted and remarriage could follow.
The scriptures handled already set that out. The Lord does not qualify that further. But now what the Lord does is he gives teaching that will be in effect until his kingdom come. Chapter 28, until the end of the age.
And he says now, verse 9, we come to it. I say unto you, whosoever shall put away, to free completely, dismiss divorce, his wife, except it be for fornication, there's the exception, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit adultery.
So what is normal is set out in the verse. Two conditions are set out. What is normal and what is an exception. What is normal is for a married man and wife to stay together without dissolving the marriage bond.
Otherwise, it leads to other intimate relationships and adultery is committed. So what is normal is stay married. Again, the Lord is indicating that right here. But then the exception. With that background of hard-heartedness, there is unfaithfulness that has come into play.
There is sexual immorality found in one of the partners. And says the Lord Jesus, that can be the exception where the marriage bond is dissolved by divorce. So again, only on the ground of hard-hearted sin.
The Lord has already set that out. So divorce in this context is exceptional. And I would take it since the Lord does not further qualify Deuteronomy 24, it carries with it the right of remarriage. Now then, I want to come to some objections because there are those that have taken a different view.
And I've sought to set out what this scripture is saying. But there are some objections that would be raised which need to be dealt with. First of all, we could call this the Jewish ground objection. Some will claim that since we are on Jewish ground in Matthew, then this teaching is only for the Jews.
And they might go back to chapter 1 where Mary was betrothed to Joseph. And there she is called his wife. Same word as here, by the way, Guni. But there Mary is betrothed, not fully married. But the argument goes, therefore, since you have that in chapter 1 to a betrothed woman, you should carry that word, that meaning of the word through to chapter 19 and treat it as a betrothed woman that is being put away.
So what the Lord was speaking of then, if that's right, would mean that divorce was for an unfaithful betrothed woman. And Joseph was going to act in that way. However, you will recognize, won't you, that the Lord's teaching in Matthew 5 and 32 and here in verse 9 of chapter 19 was new revelation that was given at least 30 years after Joseph and Mary in chapter 1.
Joseph was not acting according to the Lord's teaching, the new revelation that would be given at least 30 years later. In fact, if Joseph had been acting under the law, Mary should have been stoned according to the light that he had.
Unfaithfulness and betrothal required stoning. That's Deuteronomy chapter 22, verse 24 and 26. Also, you'll notice that the church has been introduced in chapter 18, so we are not solely on Jewish ground.
Now, there's the two words objection as well. Let's think of that for a moment, the two words. Where you get adultery and fornication, they're distinct words. In the same context, it is held that fornication would only refer then to premarital relations between a man and a woman.
However, fornication pornea is the word in the New Testament, covers every form of immorality. Now listen carefully, not just illicit relations between a man and a woman. I don't need to expand on that in the day in which we live.
Keep that in mind. This teaching of the Lord is superseding the provisions of the law by actually raising the bar. The permitted grounds of divorce is being restricted now to fornication, which is the umbrella term, which actually includes adultery, by the way, where it would involve another married person, would be included under fornication.
So he is raising the bar from any form of uncleanness, Deuteronomy 24, permitted under the law, to this narrow field of immorality by one of the partners. I come then to a third objection, and that would be the synoptic question, which would be something like this.
Does the teaching of the two other synoptic Gospels, that is Mark and Luke, would that override Matthew's teaching? Because after all, Mark seems to address the Roman mind, Luke is a Gentile himself addressing the Greek mind, and therefore does that leave Matthew separate only for the Jews?
It's a nice argument, but under the Roman system and under the Greek system, they had betrothal as well. It wasn't exclusively Jewish. Let that factor into your thinking as well. So the short answer to the question, do the synoptic accounts override Matthew 19?
The short answer is no. There can be no contradiction of Scripture. So then what does distinguish Mark and Luke from chapter 19? Because in Mark and Luke, as most would know, there is no exception mentioned, but we have it in chapter 19 of Matthew.
So what distinguishes Mark and Luke's account when the Lord is dealing with this subject? What we want to notice is this, right up front, that Mark and Luke both are reiterating what is normal in marriage.
You stay married. That's what's being taught in those two Scriptures. It's Mark chapter 10, the first 12 verses where we read, and Luke chapter 16, one verse, verse 18, just before the rich man and Lazarus, right there in Luke 16.
Luke 16, let's handle that first of all. It is not a parallel passage to Matthew 19 in that it is not obvious that it was on the same day, but here the Lord is saying in the context of Luke 16, I can't take time to read it, that even though the teaching of the kingdom of God is superseding the law and the prophets, yet it has not changed morality in this regard that marriage has a sanctity about it and you should stay married.
So the context is that he is supporting the teaching of the kingdom of God with reference to the morality involved in staying married. That's it. Then when we come to Mark, this is a parallel passage to Matthew 19, and it has a difference, however.
It starts off publicly with the discussion with the Pharisees before the multitudes, but then you'll notice in Mark that he goes with his disciples into the house, and the disciples are asking him further about this subject.
Now, their difficulty was this. If one can only get out of marriage because of this narrow field of hard-hearted immorality by a spouse, then it's better for a man not to marry. That seems to be the reasoning.
I note something there as well. When the disciples said that, they did not say it's better for a man not to be betrothed, better for a man not to marry. See, their understanding of what has been talked about, full-blown marriage.
So they want to adopt and go to the other extreme. They want to adopt an aesthetic stance and don't marry, don't marry. But no, the Lord reiterates to them now, Mark 10, the normal expectation of marriage.
Get married, stay married, don't divorce. So he's emphasizing that again to the disciples who had come to the conclusion, in view of Matthew 19 now, the same day, and maybe only a short time later, they're asking for clarity because they figure you're better not getting married then.
But the Lord reiterates what is normal, get married, stay married, don't divorce. So the conclusion then is that the Lord is not overriding his public teaching in Matthew 19 with what is being said privately to the disciples later on in the house.
You cannot construe that the Lord is overriding what he has already taught in a public way. No, what he's doing is, he's re-emphasizing the normal expectation of marriage. Now, what about then divorce before salvation?
When I was being raised back in the old country, the assembly that I was raised in, the teaching was that some people are eligible for salvation and heaven, but cannot be eligible for the assembly because they have divorce in their background before they were saved.
Now, that was an easy thing to hold back in the old country, back then when I was young, long time ago, but there was hardly any divorce at all. Things have changed and are changing, but it was easy to hold that and it seemed to be the moral high ground.
But I think that Paul's teaching to the Corinthians here should help us. He said that before those Corinthians were saved, some of them were actually fornicators and adulterers, and embedded in those words, there was evidently all kinds of debauched behavior in their background, and some were likely divorced and remarried in all kinds of permutations because Corinth was a grossly immoral place.
That was their background. In fact, Paul endorses that that was indeed these believers' background because he says, and such were some of you. But now you're washed, but you're sanctified. You're fit for sanctuary experience.
You are justified. You're declared righteous by God himself in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Notice, in the name of the Lord Jesus. The grounds of gathering is under his lordship and by the indwelling Holy Spirit of God.
To bar any from fellowship on the grounds of a pre-conversion behavior, I take it would be a denial of this beautiful verse, and it would be a denial of the full scope of God's salvation. There's been repentance and cleansing in the hearts of these believers.
They are fit for sanctuary experience, and says the apostle a little earlier that the local assembly is the naos. It is the holy of holies. It's the sanctuary where God dwells with his people. And these former fornicators and adulterers have been sanctified.
So that should help us. I take it that salvation cancels immoral behavior in the past, and that believer is fit for sanctuary experience. Now the study is incomplete. I'm going to sit down. It's incomplete.
There's all kinds of complicated cases that arise. What I've tried to do is stick with a clear scripture, and if we can get that embedded in our hearts and in our minds, then other unclear or different scriptures that would factor in can be built on that framework.
There are some red herrings that come up from time to time in discussion. For example, Romans chapter 7 is brought in where death severs the marriage bond, and it is claimed therefore only death severs the marriage bond.
But you see, that doesn't fit the context. All Paul wants from that illustration of marriage is the fact that death does sever a marriage bond, period. He's not obligated to give her every exception. He's stating what is normal.
We were talking a little along these lines at the break. Another example of a scripture not covering every exception would be, for example, Hebrews chapter 9 verse 27. It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.
Well, what about Enoch? What about Elijah? They haven't died yet. What about men like Lazarus, the widow of Nain's son, Jairus' daughter, who evidently had to die twice? See, the point is, it is appointed unto men once to die.
That's normal. But in the Bible, there are exceptions. So let's get a hold on what is normal in marriage. It's God's intention, and it's the teaching of God's word that you stay married. If immorality occurs, that's the exception, a narrow ground where, according to the teaching of the Lord Jesus, divorce may occur.
But complicated cases will arise, and brethren are called upon to deal with them. It is often stated that each should be taken on its own merit. Brethren would need more wisdom than Solomon, think of it.
He didn't have much wisdom in the marriage area. Brethren would need more wisdom than Solomon to deal with some of these problems. So I hope that this little review of Matthew 19 will be helpful. There's much more other things that could be said, but let's carefully consider the word of God, and we trust that the Lord will give us good understanding from his word in these things.
Trust the Lord to bless his word.