"From the Beginning"

Well, this morning we continue on in our study here in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, and it's been several weeks now since we began this series of antitheses, where Jesus is explicating a tradition of the law, or a certain understanding of the law, or even simply a quotation of the law, you have heard it said, and then the antithetical statement, but I say to you.

And so we see the authority of Jesus as the Lord who has given the law, the

Lord who fulfills the law, the Lord who fulfills the righteous requirement of the law in the lives of His followers.

And so when we considered verses 19 through 21 as sort of a prelude to the antitheses, we remember that Jesus spoke of a greater righteousness, an exceeding righteousness, that would belong to those who dwell in His kingdom.

And here we are pressing further and further week by week into what this exceeding righteousness looks like, and we recognize that these words are challenging words, costly words, as we saw even last week, words that call us to gouge out an eye, to maim an offending arm, whatever is necessary to enter into the kingdom of Christ.

And this morning we look at a rather thorny topic of divorce and remarriage, and this will not by any means be an exhaustive sermon on the subject.

In fact, there's really five major passages in the New Testament that need to be synthesized in order to understand what needs to be said about divorce and remarriage, and so we're looking at one piece of that between Matthew 5 and, as we'll see,

Matthew 19, the parallel statements in Luke 16 and Mark 10, and then a very significant passage in 1

Corinthians 7. And it would take several weeks to synthesize all of that properly, and you should know that just about every decade there's some major debate about how to understand marriage, divorce, and remarriage in the

Bible, and a lot of that is based on the historical context of Judaism, the historical context of Roman society, as well as how the early church interpreted and upheld that.

And this also has comprised major differences between Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, and so you can see there's so many angles of complexity on this subject, and I don't pretend at all to give you something comprehensive this morning, but we are tracking along with what

Matthew has to say about this topic. So let me read beginning in verse 31, simply working through these two verses this morning.

Now you see the bridge from last week, the topic last week was how lust equates to adultery, and if lust for another man's spouse brings adultery, then divorce in this next antithesis also brings about adultery, and this is the challenge of exceeding righteousness.

Jesus also turns from the last two antitheses, which were more matters of thought, matters of the heart, and now we're talking about actions, activity, and that'll carry us through the last four of these antitheses.

These are actions that comprise the exceeding righteousness He expects of those who follow

Him, and these are hard words. As you look at where Jesus has to teach about the nature of marriage and divorce, even the disciples in Matthew 19, they say, this is a hard teaching, it's better for no one to get married.

They can't believe how Jesus understands and upholds marriage. So these are hard words.

Jesus is not here quoting from the Ten Commandments, what He's done for the first two antitheses, but He is referencing

Deuteronomy 24. I'm not going to read it yet, we'll get there in a moment. But Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4, that is one of the major Old Testament teachings on divorce, and it was a subject of debate long before Jesus, as we'll see.

The debate really is over what are the grounds for divorce? In what sense does

Moses allow there to be a certificate of divorce that is granted, and with that, implied the freedom to remarry?

The only reason that's given is somewhat ambiguous, and this is why there was so much debate, not only after Jesus' time, but even long before it.

The reference, as we'll see in Deuteronomy 24, is translated as some uncleanness, some indecency, and really not more of a description is given than that.

Now the metaphor of marriage and divorce is taken up in Scripture, and you can see that perhaps adultery is the fitting issue, but arguably it's much broader than that.

Some uncleanness, some indecency. Not specifically adultery, though when you read, say,

Jeremiah 3 or Isaiah 50, you see God Himself using this language from Deuteronomy 24.

Have I not myself sought to give a certificate of divorce to my people? And yet in mercy

I say return to me. And so He also is using the imagery of marriage and divorce to show the kind of patient forgiveness that He shows toward His bride,

Israel. Jesus speaks to this contested passage in no uncertain terms.

His understanding of Deuteronomy 24, 1 through 4, is simply this. 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. Now in the

Old Testament law, you should also know there are some situations, some cases,

Deuteronomy 22 speaks to this, where divorce cannot be permitted. Certain situations where God will never grant a divorce.

Also in the Levitical codes, the priests were not allowed to marry women who had been divorced.

And so there you have some implication of what the righteousness is that is required, at least in Levitical terms.

Now it's helpful that where Matthew doesn't explain much here in Matthew 5, that it's not the only time in Matthew we're dealing with divorce and remarriage.

The next major passage in the Gospel of Matthew is Matthew 19. So in Matthew 19, beginning in verses 3 and following, we see that Jesus has a lot more to say about this topic, but He hasn't changed at all what

He lays out here in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, He essentially says the exact same thing as a conclusion.

But just to situate the context, to help you understand the nature of the debate, and how this sermon would have come across to His hearers, it's helpful to look at Matthew 19.

So in Matthew 19, beginning in verse 3, we have Jesus passing over to the region of Judea across to Jordan, the region of Perea according to Mark 10, and the

Pharisees are seeking to test Him. Matthew 19, verse 3. The Pharisees also came to Him, testing

Him, and saying to Him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?

That's a particular question. You might read past it, but they're tying into the debate about Deuteronomy 24.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? Before we unpack that, just notice the

Pharisees have come to test Jesus, and that's important for the context. Their motive was not to gather to this teacher who teaches from his own authority.

Their motive was actually to come and trap Him, come and test Him. You can almost picture them.

I always, whenever I think of the scene where they come and they have that burning question, and you can imagine the whole crew has come together.

Maybe there was a dozen of them, or 20 of them, maybe 30 of them, and they're all excited and they've figured out exactly who the spokesman's gonna be, and he's gonna unload that question, and they're daydreaming about Jesus being stunned into silence, having to sort of tuck

His tail and run away, and them being shown to be the real experts of the law. And so they must have had a lot of time of preparation prior to that.

This wasn't some spur -of -the -moment question. I like to picture them as being in someone's living room, and just stacks of Domino's pizza all around them, and they've got the whiteboard and crumbled up paper all around them, and they're going,

No, no, that won't do. No, no, He'll see right through that. And then they find the perfect question, the perfect challenge.

They're all excited the next morning, rolling up their sleeves. We can't wait to lay this before Him. What do you have to say about a man who divorces his wife?

Is it lawful for any reason? Well, divorce itself was not the debate.

All Jews in all sides of the debate before Jesus' time, they all understood that divorce was a possibility.

That's just a bald reading of Deuteronomy 24. There is a provision given for divorce. And so we don't have any sources denying divorce, although, interestingly, when we're talking about holiness codes or exceeding righteousness, at least some commentators point to a

Dead Sea Scroll, one of the temple scrolls, I believe it's 11Q, that they don't allow any of their members to divorce.

They saw that as, again, an impurity or an aberration. So that may speak, again, to this exceeding righteousness, one of the, perhaps, minority views at the time.

But the Qumran community sought an exceeding righteousness, and they removed themselves from the temple cult and a lot of the other civic aspects of life in Israel.

Now in Deuteronomy 24, again, they understood that divorce was a possibility. The debate was over the grounds.

What are the grounds that makes it legitimate to have a certificate of divorce? When is it lawful for one to depart from their marriage and become remarried?

Well, primarily, the debate runs across two different schools, two different lines of thought.

And this, perhaps, is the exact background to the test and to the issue of Jesus' teaching.

About a generation before Jesus, there were two prominent schools of thought represented by two prominent rabbinic leaders.

You had the school of Shammai, tended to be far more conservative, and the school of Hillel. The school of Shammai, the thought was that divorce was only legitimate in the case of adultery.

So the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24, when there's been adultery, and that's their understanding of what indecency or uncleanness means in that context, according to that school, that's the only grounds that is granted for divorce.

The school of Hillel, on the other hand, was far more broad. And they would actually say there's just about any reason that a man can divorce his wife.

And in that sense, as long as they obtain a certificate of divorce, she is not bound. She is free to remarry.

So we read later sources that may follow some of the implications of the school of Hillel.

There's a Mishnah tractate, Gittin. Some of the reasons listed there are if a man insults his mother -in -law, that's a grounds for divorce.

A lot of stand -up comics would be getting certificates, wouldn't they? Turning publicly in a way that is revealing or immodest, something that is scandalous that brings embarrassment or shame to the husband, that would be a grounds for divorce.

One of the more famous examples from this tractate is burnt food. You know, lasagna comes out a little too well done, time to go get that certificate, you know?

You've had it out, you've had it up to here, you notice that those chicken wings are a little too dark and crispy, time to cut the tie of marriage.

That's how loose, that's how tragically loose the standard of commitment had become.

So you have the Shammai interpretation, only adultery, and the Hillel interpretation. Which do you think was more popular in Jesus' day?

Do you think it was the high standard of an actual case of adultery, or do you think it was pretty much anything goes?

Even if the supper didn't turn out that well, maybe it's time to just break apart, right? Which do you think was more popular?

And so the Pharisees and the scribes, they were always looking for the loopholes that would legitimate the ability to divorce, and this is what

Jesus is responding to. So the test is laid down and Jesus responds, Matthew 19, beginning in verse 4.

He answered and said to them, have you not read, you notice that Jesus always does that when he responds, don't you know?

I thought you guys were scribes, I thought you guys were experts in the law. Do you even read, bro?

That's kind of what Jesus is saying. Do you even read? Don't you know what the word says? You're supposed to be experts in it.

Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female? He quotes Genesis 127 and said, now 224, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

We just read Ephesians 5 moments ago. You notice that wherever marriage is brought up, both Paul's instinct because of Jesus' instinct is to go back to the beginning.

So then, Jesus says, they're no longer two, they've become one flesh, therefore what God has joined together let no man separate.

So Jesus doesn't begin in Deuteronomy 24 where Hillel and Shammai and all later interpretation was beginning, essentially, let's start at Deuteronomy 24 and try to figure it out from there.

Jesus says, well, you've got to go back to the beginning. Don't start at Deuteronomy 24, start at Genesis 1.

From the beginning, God's design was to take two, a male and a female, and make them one flesh through a covenantal commitment of marriage.

God has joined them together in that way. And therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. That's Jesus' understanding.

So Jesus turns a discussion towards Scripture. That is the arbiter of authority.

And he knows that the Pharisees know that as well. He also knows that Moses did give instructions regarding divorce in Deuteronomy 24.

And because we're talking about that, let me read Deuteronomy 24, again, the first four verses. This is what

Moses had laid down. When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, again, some indecency.

It doesn't say more than that. There's far more precise terms if adultery was the only case in point, which is one of the matters of the debate.

But nonetheless, he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.

When she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as a wife, then the former husband who divorced her must not take her back.

That's the issue in Deuteronomy 24. It's remarriage to the former spouse.

That's the issue, right? What would be in bold, red, italic font would be this, the husband, the former husband who divorced her must not take her back.

That's what Moses lays down. For that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin on the land which the

Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. The passage itself is hard to understand.

Why this law? If divorce can be granted provisionally, if remarriage can be granted provisionally, then why is the issue about going back to the former spouse?

Wouldn't you think that would actually be ideal? Go back and sort of rectify what had been broken?

Wouldn't that be better? Well, according to Deuteronomy 24, that's an abomination to the Lord. It may be because the finality of divorce needed to be emphasized, and this would have protected the woman from accusations of adultery.

So a certificate is put in the hand, and it's clear in public, it's a testimony to all, she's not an adulterous woman.

It could be that the first husband's attempt is to sort of ruin her second marriage, and so again, this is giving some legal protection, some legal recourse.

It may also be a means of preventing the first husband from exploiting his divorced wife from financial gain.

In other words, he could remarry her and then reclaim the dowry, or maybe even get the inheritance that belonged to her second husband.

So any of these could be a reason, perhaps there's more than one reason given. All we know is that in the hands of the

Pharisees, this was the debate, this was the issue. How are we to understand divorce? So that's the passage that led to different views.

That's the passage the Pharisees have in mind. And that's their trick question, their trap question, and this is how

Jesus responds. So Jesus points back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, but they're still not satisfied.

Verses 7 and following, they said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?

And Jesus said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

So again, Jesus is saying you have to go back to creation. And notice also they're implying, hey,

Moses commanded us to divorce our wives with a certificate. And he says, no, Moses permitted you.

He allowed this. And if you understand contextually, it's because of how rebellious and hard -hearted you were. So he made a concession to your own fallen nature, your own fallen desire as a way of preventing further evil to abound in the lives of the spouses.

But from the beginning it was not so. People who are seeking after exceeding righteousness will not be content to the squabble between Shammai and Hillel.

They'll want to go back to the beginning to understand what is God's desire? What is God's design? What is the purpose for which he has created marriage?

So Jesus brings the Pharisees to acknowledge Moses never commanded divorce. He permitted divorce.

It's a provision. It's a concession in light of human sinfulness. A great parallel to this, and this isn't my observation, but Dale Ollison's observation, you see the same way that in Deuteronomy 17 you have the law of the king.

And there God is giving all sorts of instructions about what is required of the king who will reign over his people.

But you remember in Judges 8, you know from 1 Samuel 8, God did not desire for Israel to have a human king.

He sought to be their king and their leader. It was because of their own rebellion and hard -heartedness that as a concession he allowed them to have a human ruler.

So this wasn't God's purpose or design for his people. It was a concession, and then he started giving laws about that concession.

It's the same thing here with divorce. This is not God's design nor his desire, but because of the sinful situation here on the earth, he allows there to be concessions and he gives laws accordingly.

So these Pharisees, they're looking for loopholes. What can we get away with and still be considered lawful?

But notice also that the Pharisees have come to test him. They don't come to him and say, teacher, tell us how we can grow in faithfulness in our marriages.

Teacher, tell us how we can understand the blessedness of a marital union.

Tell us how we can actually better lead God's people as experts in the law to uphold the righteous requirement of the law according to their marriage.

That wasn't their intention at all. How can we get divorced? Is it any reason? That would be great if it could be any reason.

That's essentially what they're saying. But notice also it was a trap. Earlier in Matthew, what do you have?

You have John the Baptist who's out in the wilderness calling people to the way of the Lord, preparing the way of the

Lord, and he has the same message as Jesus. And you remember, he comes to a grisly end. That certainly would have been the hope of the

Pharisees and the scribes. Not only was John saying, repent, generally speaking, repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand, he also turned to Herod and said, it's not lawful for you to have this woman as your wife, because Herod had divorced his wife.

And so you have John the Baptist essentially saying, I uphold this righteous requirement of the law in the same way that Jesus does.

It's not lawful for you to put away your wife for any reason. It's not lawful for you to have her.

And so John declared, this is evil in the sight of God. Jesus is essentially saying the same exact thing.

It's not lawful. Now what happens to John as a result of preaching on this issue?

He's beheaded. That certainly would have been the hope of the Pharisees. Let's get them really riled up about this.

We're already in the territory of Herod. Wait till that gets into the throne room. Maybe Jesus' head will be on the platter next.

Perhaps, they hope, Jesus too will be hauled away and executed because he upholds this understanding of the law.

But notice that Jesus doesn't waste the opportunity to set the record right. He doesn't shrink back from the truth. He redirects the

Pharisees to what God himself has laid down from the beginning, and that's the key phrase.

From the beginning, it was not so. And look at what he says right after that. So that's verse eight, the end of verse eight.

From the beginning, it was not so. And what's the very next verse in Matthew 19? It's verse nine.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery, and whoever marries her, who is divorced, commits adultery.

That's an exact quotation of Matthew 5 .32. The exact same point is being made about marriage.

Now you'll notice that in Matthew 5 and 19, you have what's called the exception clause. This is not an absolute statement.

From the beginning, it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. That's not the absolute statement.

You have an exception. Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality.

Now, the term there is so hotly debated. In fact, just a few months ago, a brand new book by Andrew Doss came out about remarriage in early

Christianity, and almost an entire chapter was just about how to properly understand and interpret this particular verb.

And so the, or noun, I should say, because of sexual immorality, and the term there is porneia.

Now, in Latin, that was translated in the Vulgate, brought over to the term fornicatio, fornication.

That's where you get the idea. It's tied now to something a little more specific, whereas porneia, especially in the first century, was very broad.

It could speak to any aspect of sexual immorality. And so, perhaps translations that want to target on adultery are being a little more specific than the term itself is in the time that it's taught.

Sexual immorality, uncleanness, it's as ambiguous as Deuteronomy 24 is. It's something unclean, it's something sexually immoral, but it's not, perhaps, as specific as adultery.

I think we have to be able to say that. But nevertheless, contextually, most of the examples we have are adultery, and even when we look at 1

Corinthians 7, you have some sense that they had formerly been fornicators, adulterers, and now they had been cleansed and brought in to the

Lord. And certainly, that's the backdrop in chapter six for chapter seven and some of the issues therein.

Another example we have is this, in the beginning of Matthew's Gospel. Perhaps a lot of you have been recounting it these past few weeks.

In Matthew 1, Mary has received this glorious news that she is going to bear the

Son of God into the world, and she's betrothed to Joseph, and Joseph finds that she is with child, and what does he seek to do, according to Matthew 1 .19?

He seeks to put her away quietly. What does that mean? It means he's going to acquire a certificate of divorce and break up the betrothal.

At the time, the betrothal was legally binding. It was something that required that kind of formal disengagement.

Now, in Matthew, we read that because Joseph was a righteous man, he sought to put her away quietly.

And we assume the quietly is the aspect of his righteous character, but another way of understanding that is he sought to put her away because he was a righteous man.

He wasn't going to wed himself to an adulterous spouse. It was because of his righteousness that he sought the certificate of divorce.

That's just his understanding of Deuteronomy 24, and Matthew seems to imply, yeah, that's right on the target.

That's how Jesus himself is going to teach about this. So betrothal carried legal weight, and Joseph is a righteous man in seeking to put away his wife until the angel comes and says, no, she hasn't been immoral at all, and so you must remain betrothed to her.

You must seek her. And then Joseph himself now has to bear the shame that Mary was beginning to bear, that communal shame and the whispers and the gossip.

But he had heard from the Lord, so of what matter was that to him? Jesus' teaching here is hard.

Hard words. But remember that these hard words were for hard hearts, and that's what

Jesus says about this matter of divorce. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts permitted divorce.

So these are hard words, but they're hard words for hard hearts. From the beginning, it was not so.

The concession that God gives through Moses is not to be a loophole for people to do, you know, I'm getting tired of this marriage.

This marriage has gotten rocky and difficult. Is there any way I could just break away? Is there any reason I can?

Why does Jesus say that divorce is permitted as a concession? He says, because of the hardness of your hearts.

So you have to begin there. Divorce is never something that God countenances, never.

Divorce is always a result of hardened hearts. Now, there may be an innocent party, but the point is, in the marital breakdown, as a result of a hardened heart, that is what has led to divorce.

Divorce, in other words, is the fruit of hardheartedness according to Jesus. One party may be innocent, but there's always at some root, the sin of a hardened, rebellious heart that has no regard for the marital union or the marital covenant.

The God of Deuteronomy 24 is the God of Matthew 19. It's the God of Malachi 2 who says,

I hate divorce. That's God. I hate divorce, he says. He allows concessions for it, but he never sanctions it.

He never commands it as something positive to pursue. He hates divorce. It is never good, although because of our sinfulness and because of the sinfulness of the world around us, sometimes it is necessary.

It's never good. God hates it, but sometimes it is necessary, and so as a result of human sinfulness, he allows there to be certain concessions, 1

Corinthians 7 being the famous example. Jesus' point is that divorce was never a part of God's intention for marriage, and that's why he says, again, from the beginning it was not so.

And when we have a teaching on marriage, we have to always be planting our feet in the soil of Eden, recognizing what is

God's design and desire for our marriages. God made them male and female so that the two would become one flesh.

This is what God laid down from the beginning. So we live in a time that views marriage as a convenient arrangement, maybe just a social construct.

You have people now that they'll have children together, they'll live together for 30 years, and they're still boyfriend and girlfriend.

They have everything that marriage would formally bring about in due time, and yet they're not married.

And that's how casual marriage is seen as sort of a ball and chain that should be eschewed, a social construct that is antiquated and no longer necessary.

Some sort of arrangement that can include any and all relations. It's not necessary to have a male and a female becoming one flesh, you can marry anything.

We see Scripture in some ways as a preventative for the direction our culture is going.

Jesus is very helpful to say, from the beginning, this is what marriage is. One man joined to one woman to become one flesh.

That is the definition of marriage. All else is an illusion. All else is a sinful distortion. All else is no marriage at all.

So what we see in Scripture as underlined by Jesus points us to God's design, and it's a mystery.

In this mysterious way, two distinct individuals, a male and a female, become one. And in this marital union, there is a priority that now eclipses every other human relationship in their life.

This is why, as we read from Genesis 1, for this reason, a man shall leave his father's house and be joined to his wife.

What had bound him in with a certain allegiance and loyalty to the family, now that is dissolved in a certain significant way as a result of a new union, of a higher loyalty and allegiance.

There are now two that have become one in a way that no son, no daughter, no brother, no sister, no uncle or cousin could ever become one.

There's no blood tie that's as powerfully uniting as the marriage covenant. Now, of course, not only is it a covenantal commitment, but physically there's a commitment.

The two have become one flesh in a very profound way, physically as well as spiritually, in the sight of God.

A man and a woman complement one another physically, of course, that's part of the mystery of the God's design.

Eve taken out of Adam's side, and in that sense, they are apart, but then they come together as one.

And this is the fullness of the image of God. This is the fullness of humanity.

It was not good for Adam to be alone. In God's image, he created them, male and female, they he created.

So there's something about the image of God that involves both the male and the female becoming one flesh, the fullness of the image.

It's part of the mystery of how this speaks to Christ and his bride.

Jesus, in Mark 10, gives the command, what God has joined together, let no man separate.

That's the command. That's his understanding of Deuteronomy 24. God has joined this together.

God has made the two one. Men have hard hearts, women have hard hearts, but this is not

God's will. Marriage is a sacred union accomplished by God himself. No man, according to Jesus, has the right to rip that union apart.

In God's sight, the two have become one. It doesn't matter who solemnizes that union.

What God has joined together is what is binding. And that's why God, that's why Jesus says here in Matthew five, to divorce is to cause adultery.

By implication, the two had become one in the sight of God. God had joined them together. They were one flesh.

Therefore, the only result of breaking that apart with implied remarriage is adultery.

That's what Jesus is saying. It's a hard teaching. Now Paul, of course, in Ephesians five, which we read at the beginning, speaks of the great mystery of marriage, and he's not shooting from the hip.

He's not trying to find some abstract analogy that can help us understand something about Christ and his church.

He says this is the mystery that it was always pointing to. Somehow, always, marriage had been a pattern that pointed to Christ and his bride.

So not a social tradition, not a practical arrangement, never a Supreme Court decision, but something rooted in creation, an ordinance that was always a mystery that, as it were, glimpsed at and portrayed as a picture to the world, the marriage of Christ and his bride, as it were, the everlasting bridegroom who came and sought his bride.

All of history, then, hurdles toward this marriage, and every other marriage is a microcosm of this divine marriage, the marriage between Christ and his people.

It's the mystery that is contained within the first marriage there in Eden. And therefore, it's glimpsed in every other marriage ever after, including every marriage represented here this morning.

That's why divorce is not some loophole that can be casually sought. Nowadays, you have divorce granted for simply this statement, irreconcilable differences.

Eh, we're just different. Duh, you're two different people. You're going to be different.

The point is that those differences have been joined together by God in the marriage covenant. The point is to reconcile the differences in the one flesh unity you have in your marriage.

Irreconcilable differences is not a grounds for divorce. The only reason that's given by Matthew is sexual immorality.

You also have the idea of there no longer being monogamy, being a one -woman man, but serial monogamy.

I'm always a one -woman man. I just keep going through women, one woman after another. I'm only ever after one.

I just have a lot in a row. It's serial monogamy rather than simply monogamy. There's one that I've pursued, one that I've bound myself to, and I'm a one -woman man.

Well, some have taken these verses to mean that Jesus allows divorce, but rules out remarriage.

I mentioned Andrew Doss' most recent book. That would be an argument that he puts forward. It was an argument that, after a very watershed book in the mid -80s by Gordon Wenham, that's been part of the debate and the thrust over the past 40 years.

But it's important to understand that this is highly debated. There's almost, every time you ask one question and come toward an answer, two more questions arise.

Synthesizing all of the relevant passages is beyond the scope of what we're seeking to do this morning. But just by way of brief summary, some have taken these verses to mean that Jesus allows for divorce, but rules out remarriage.

Divorce can happen, but you're essentially then separated, and remarriage is not an option. This seems unlikely when we simply glance through 1

Corinthians 7. Paul seems to reinforce the idea that where divorce has taken place, there's freedom to remarry only in the

Lord. Paul's main concern is that whatever's happened to the marital union as a result in the context of an unbeliever and a believer becoming married, or having been married prior to conversion, that now, if remarriage is sought, it must be in the

Lord. And Paul seems even to be conscious of things that he's laying down as general advice, rather than commands from the

Lord. He can say at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 7, now the Lord says, not I, and he lays out instruction.

And then later on, now I say, not the Lord, here's my advice. The challenge, theologically, is that it's all part of inspired scripture, and therefore it's all authoritative, even that advice is really, really good advice, because it's inspired advice.

You can look at other passages, including Deuteronomy 24, and remarriage is certainly in view.

The implication is you have a certificate of divorce so that you are free to remarry. So by its very definition, divorce meant remarriage.

That's implied just on the face of reading Matthew 5. The reason that a divorce causes adultery is because it's implied that there will be a remarriage.

So at some level, we can't understand these verses to say that there's a permission for divorce, but there's absolutely no recourse for remarriage.

Again, that goes against my understanding of 1 Corinthians 7. Jesus acknowledges the reality of divorce in verse five, but he in no way condones it.

He views it as contrary to God's will. The point of his whole response is that divorce is contrary to God's purpose for marriage, arises from hardheartedness, and will lead to adultery.

That's a present tense verb, and some lean into that and say, basically, you're in perpetual adultery when you remarry.

Again, I think that's stretching a little too far. There's good reasons to understand that as what grammarians call a nomic present.

In other words, it is initially an act of adultery that needs to be repented of. So in the

Eastern Orthodox tradition, interestingly, they give you sort of a seven -year span of showing your repentance because of remarriage.

In some ways, they're a little distinct from how Roman Catholics regard it and how

Protestants regard it, but they say there's sort of a marital ideal that is laid out here in the Sermon on the

Mount. And then there's the necessary concessions from 1 Corinthians 7 and so forth.

And where a remarriage has taken place, so long as it's in the Lord, repentance should be sought and demonstrated in various ways over the course of seven years.

And so you begin by being noncommunicant. I think the first year is weeping, which is simply lamenting being removed from every other aspect of the service.

And then after that first year, you are still withheld from communion, but you're no longer weeping, and after two years of that, you have three years where now you can partake, but you're still sort of humbled in prayerfulness, and then you enter into the full communion in the seventh year, and that's how they've approached it.

Now again, the idea here is they're trying to show the significance that a marital union being broken is not something casual, it's not something minor.

God hates divorce. I don't think that means we should apply as a tradition of men some seven -year stretch of demonstration.

Paul doesn't seem to have that logic at all in 1 Corinthians 7. You're free in the Lord to remarry, right?

But we have to understand what Jesus is getting at here in the Sermon on the Mount. Divorce is always tragic.

It's always a failure of a sacred covenant. There's a cavalier attitude of the

Jews of the day, and it's the same cavalier attitude of Americans in our day. Marriage is treated lightly.

Divorce rates are what, 50%, 48%, something like that? This is a challenging teaching that needs to be heard.

The saddest aspect of that statistic is that the divorce rates are the same in the church as in the culture. That's tragic.

The divorce rates in the church should be microscopic compared to the culture. If we could recover what

Jesus has to say about righteousness in marriage. In God's eyes, it's always tragic.

It's always a failure. It's always adulterous when it leads to remarriage.

Because of the one -flesh union, because of the nature of how God designed that union. So divorce is always a result of sinfulness.

Again, there may be an innocent party, but the point of Jesus is, from the beginning it wasn't this way. And we should want what

God has laid down from the beginning. Now God makes concessions for divorce, but he never sanctions it.

And again, it's ironic that Christians today will turn to these passages, and others like it, because they're desperate to find some legitimate grounds for divorce.

They might as well be a Pharisee that goes to Jesus and say, isn't there any reason that we can divorce? Can you give me some loopholes so I can finally get away from this marriage?

And Jesus is rejecting that when it comes from the Pharisees. He certainly would reject it when it comes from the pews.

From the beginning it was not so. That's his answer. You know what that sounds a lot like? My favorite three words.

Grace restores nature. From the beginning it was not so. What was marriage meant to be at the beginning?

That's what grace will seek to do. Grace restores nature. So grace won't allow there to be some hostility.

Yeah, we have a marriage, but it's a hollow marriage. We occupy the eastern and western edges of our home.

We pass like ships in the night. It's sort of this hollow marriage.

Grace restores nature. What was marriage meant to be from the beginning?

That's what grace will seek to do insofar as it depends upon you. Abraham Kuyper makes this point, a colleague of Bavinck.

Jesus was not bent on nor intending to institute a new ordinance for married life. He was not creating a new

Christian kind of marriage. Notice that Jesus didn't say, well, I know what marriage has been, but let me tell you, in my kingdom there's a whole new way of marriage.

Marriage 2 .0. That's not what Jesus says. He just goes back to the beginning. Let me tell you what marriage was always meant to be.

And that will help you understand why divorce is always a result of sin and it leads to sinfulness. He simply goes back to Eden.

So it's not a Christian kind of marriage. Again, Abraham Kuyper, he was intent on nothing new. He himself created nothing new.

He took marriage as it had been given in paradise. An order for marriage, in other words, already existed.

It was rooted in the very creation of man as man and woman as woman. And Jesus does no more than to wipe away a layer of men's dust under which the purpose of marriage had become disfigured and to show it once more in its original purity.

That's what Jesus is doing. You've forgotten what marriage is and why it was given. So the question as we move now to application, the question is, the marriage is, and I'm speaking because Jesus is speaking about marriage,

I'm primarily speaking to married couples here in the church. Are you projecting

God's purpose, God's design in your marriage? Do you understand what marriage was from the beginning?

And is your marriage approximating what marriage was always meant to be from the beginning? This mysterious unification of one man and one woman into one flesh and one common life.

Does your marriage project that? Does your marriage inhabit that? Is your marriage not only drawing from the well of God's design in Eden, but is it also portending of that divine marriage to come, of Christ being united to his bride, of the consummation of all of his redemption at the very end, at the marriage supper of the

Lamb? Maybe to ask a more detailed question, are you experiencing God's blessing upon your marriage?

It's a loaded question, isn't it? Can you say your marriage is blessed this morning? Your marriage has

God's blessing upon it. It's fruitful. It's happy.

You're one. You are savoring something of Christ because you're nourishing and cherishing one another in this mystery of the marriage commitment that you've made.

Can you say that? Would your children be able to grow up, would the children in this church be able to grow up and say, all

I know is I need to marry someone in the Lord. I know that a Christian marriage is a blessed marriage and far be it from me to even think about marrying someone who's not in the

Lord. I know that the Lord has to be first if there's any hope for marriage. And where the

Lord is an afterthought, where the Lord is on the margins of a marriage, there can be no blessedness, no true lasting happiness.

How are we understanding the nature of our marriages? According to Jesus' teaching here, he's teaching about divorce and remarriage, but as we saw in the 10

Commandments, he teaches about something negative. He talks about what is forbidden and then there's a whole positive aspect of it.

If that's what's negative, if that's what's forbidden, then what is positive, what is required, what is promoted? And that's simply saying, how do we understand our marriages?

I was reading a family studies survey put out by IFS and they were saying, right now among young men and women aged 19 to 34, one out of four say that in the future,

AI will replace romantic relationships, one out of four. Where do we even go in the

Bible to deal with things like this? This is how deluded our culture has become. Is there someday going to be pastoral counsel for an

AI romance, what? This is how selfish and self -engrossed people have become, that they'd rather have all of their emotional needs, all of their sensory needs met by AI than put up with God's design of another person who you are meant to become one with.

That the other is then transcended by the oneness. Marriage, of course, is meant to be this picture frame of the

Lord Jesus and his bride and it will never be a joyous or blessed marriage unless it's beholding that picture, portraying that picture, being grounded in and motivated by that picture.

So as we come to a close, let me just give four very brief points of application and I hope encouragement about how to behold that picture practically.

Because I trust you're thinking something like, yes, it's a blessed marriage but not as blessed as I want it to be, not as blessed as it could be, not as blessed as it should be.

Well, the first point is this, simply the biblical command, love your spouse. If Jesus is saying that righteous requirement of the law, the exceeding righteousness that he requires, far from seeking the loopholes, seeking the concessions, is actually to commit yourself to the covenant, is actually to love your spouse.

Husbands, love your wives. Wives in the pastorals, love your husbands.

Love your spouse. That is to say on the safe side of what Jesus is warning against.

If seeking the loophole, if dwelling in the bitterness or the resentment of marriage is to, as it were, break the very design and purpose of marriage, then to love your spouse, to give yourself freely to your spouse is to get a little bit closer to God's desire, to God's purpose.

This is a biblical command, of course, love your spouse. Is that not held out to us in Christ's love for his bride?

Is that not held out to us by the Father in his love for the nation of Israel in the Old Testament?

Every day calling, calling for her to return. Morning by morning, mercy's renewing, saying come back to me, be wed to me.

Love your spouse. Of course, loving your spouse, it's the easiest thing to read when it's easy. When things are going well, you read that and you have a smile on your face.

Smile, you feel the warm fuzzies, the butterflies you felt 19 years ago. Of course I love my spouse.

And this command is a very hard command when things are hard. You grit your teeth. Instead of butterflies, your stomach is churning.

Love my spouse. Have you met him, have you met her? Things aren't so well.

Now, interestingly, the primacy of this command is given to the husband. The husband is always, as it were, the wellspring of marital leadership.

And so it really falls on the husband to love his wife and lead a marriage in a loving way.

It always begins with the husband. All marital counseling begins with the husband, frankly. There's a lot more to say to the wives, but you begin with the husband.

Now, Ephesians 5 begins addressing the wives. I think it's because Paul wants to fix the husband to Christ as he elaborates on his depiction of Christ in the mystery of marriage.

But example, Ephesians 5, 28, you can see the same thing in Colossians. Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself. Radical one -flesh union, this call to love is actually as if you were just loving yourself.

To love this one that you have become one with is like loving yourself. And Paul says, no man ever hated his own flesh to the degree that you feel resentment, distance, coldness, coolness in your marriage.

It's as if you were hating yourself, hating your own flesh. Isn't it ironic that a lot of marriages, they struggle because the idea is, well,

I'm not gonna degrade myself. I'm not gonna put up with the, I'm not gonna, you know, crawl on my knees and be this way.

I'm not gonna insult myself for the sake of trying to patch up our marriage. But the reality is, insofar as you're maintaining that distance, the two -ness rather than the one -ness, you are hating yourself.

You are degrading yourself. It's as if you hate your own flesh because of what you are. You're one with your spouse.

If you don't love your wife, you don't love yourself. If you don't love your husband, you don't love yourself. The way you degrade yourself as a spouse is by maintaining that resentment rather than dealing with it, cutting it out at the very root, reinforcing and recommitting yourself to the one -ness of your marriage.

Love is, as the Puritan Richard Steele said, love is the great reason and comfort of marriage. Isn't there a comfort in the love of marriage?

There's a comfort. Remember we said some weeks ago, God's all about the comfort of his people. And one of the ways he gives those that are called to marriage comfort is through marriage, as a result of marriage.

So there's not merely romance, but genuine affection, a genuine concern, a care.

Marital love isn't based on beauty or wealth or things that pass. It's not even based on piety.

It's really important you understand that. Piety wanes too. I think a lot of young women, and maybe it would be prone as we think of younger ladies growing up in a circle like ours, in a church like ours, they might be really attracted to the apparent piety of a young man.

Here's a young man who's really seeking God. Here's a young man like David. And then they get married, and all of a sudden there's a season of disillusionment.

He's not as pious as he seems. Well, that's no reason to be distant or cool in your affection.

Marital love isn't based on beauty. That passes. Wealth, that passes. That can come and go. It may never come at all.

It can't be based on piety, because that wanes. And we have trials, and we have seasons, where perhaps one spouse is doing more of the pulling in the yoke than the other.

But again, the marital commitment says, however things are, we are one flesh. However things may be, and even where there's a sort of seesaw in these dynamics in our life, we still approach those things as one seesaw, not as two separate logs split across the field.

So it's not based on beauty. It's not based on wealth. It's not based on piety. It's based on God's command.

That's the only thing that won't change. Love your wives. Love your husbands.

That's the command that doesn't change. Everything else in the marriage may change, but God's desire,

God's purpose, God's commands, those will never change. Notice that the marriage vows replicate this.

They say for better or for worse. On the wedding day, and Lord willing, in this coming year, we'll have one at maybe two weddings, and on the wedding day, it's so easy to say those vows.

You say for better because you assume it's only gonna get better. And then it's like, ah, for worse, but you don't even have to think about that.

Worse us? I remember when I first went to marital counseling when Alicia and I were engaged.

I remember just having this thought in the back of my head, like, other people need this. We don't need this. We got this.

We don't need this. It's cute. I guess we'll go through the motions, but trust me, we don't need premarital counseling.

That's for the birds, right? You marry for better or for worse.

Love your spouse. The great counterexample is the pitiful marriage of John Wesley.

Talk about a pious man, frustratingly pious, and he had one of the worst marriages in history.

He married a woman that he met within the week. Now, I'm all for abbreviated courtships.

When you know and you're ready to commit, then you could almost say like the Ethiopian, what prevents me from marriage?

But I would say a week is probably a little too short. A week might be a little too abbreviated.

I don't know if I would condone that. Well, he married his wife, Molly Vizel, in 1751, within the week he met her.

And by all accounts, it began swimmingly. They were quite romantic toward one another, and then it ended in utter hostility.

It was said of Wesley, he had searched the whole kingdom and would hardly find a woman more unsuitable than the one he married.

Out of all of England, he chose the one that was the worst match for him. There was one account of a man, if I remember right, he had come unexpected to ask

Wesley a question. And so he knocked on the door, and they must have had a maid or one of the servants open the door.

And by the time he came to the room where Wesley was with his wife, he just caught across the threshold the wife dragging

John Wesley by his hair across the room. I don't know if he had a question about marital counseling.

That would have been ironic. I'm really struggling. I should probably go to Reverend Wesley and see if he can help straighten me out.

Well, after years of conflicts, 20 years to be exact, Molly eventually left, and she never returned.

And Wesley, he kept a journal neurotically. In fact, just about every 15 minutes he would make an entry when he was awake.

He would recount almost everything. Again, he was frustratingly pious. I'm all probably sympathetic to Molly, to be honest.

He would have been a hard man to marry. In his 15 -minute entries throughout pretty much most of his life, he only ever wrote once about his wife, once.

And he wrote when he found that she had left him. That was the only time he wrote about Molly. And he said, finally, she left for good.

I didn't forsake her, I didn't dismiss her, but I will never recall her. That's what he wrote. Brothers, sisters, love your spouse.

Love your spouse. For all of his attainments and pursuits for the kingdom of God, he failed at what would have been the most profound, to project the love of Christ for his bride in the world.

Perhaps it would have been better for him to have had a happy, contented marriage than to ride by horseback, make himself sick with exhaustion and trying to be righteous in every thought, deed, and word when he was essentially alienating himself and isolating any affection toward his wife.

Love your spouse. Secondly, connected to this, help your spouse. Help your spouse.

That means you're looking out for each other's needs, difficulties, tendencies. You know, it takes some time to understand the habits, the tendencies of your spouse, how they react to situations, areas that are maybe difficult emotionally, emotionally charged, maybe things that have happened in the past that require just a lot more care, and you end up realizing,

I've heard this story 30 times now, but I'm just gonna pretend I haven't heard it and listen to it again.

If it's meaningful or significant for them, then it's meaningful for me to hear it again, to talk about it again.

So you're looking out for each other's needs, each other's difficulties, each other's tendencies. This is all part of caring for yourself in the one flesh union.

That means you understand what each other's tasks are, what you're called to in your work. You understand each other's goals and desires accordingly.

There's certain short -term goals that are part of our labors, part of the callings that we have that are unique to our roles.

We need to understand and be aware of those things, do what we can to help each other in those things. In other words, you're trying to help your spouse, not hinder your spouse.

It's always hard in marriage when a spouse becomes a speed bump rather than fuel. You help even when it's hard to help.

It's part of this selfless way of giving yourself to the other. You recognize marriage comes with a cross.

So you seek to, as it were, bear the weight of the cross for your spouse.

Help them as they seek to help you. Newlyweds, of course, expect only to have pleasant times in marriage, and they should open their eyes to this.

There's gonna be times where you have to die to yourself in order to help your spouse. Hard times will come. It may not be between you because of any sin or disagreement between you.

It may just be simply difficulties in life, hard times in life. Maybe you face loss in certain ways, loss of health, loss of worldly good, harm to children, affliction from enemies, maybe even affliction from friends.

You're gonna have to help each other. In other words, you marry one who you come to know, not just so that you can understand them, but you come to know them so that you can help them.

In that sense, it's what a true friend is. Jesus defines a friend in contrast to a servant.

A servant doesn't know what his master is doing. A friend knows, and why does that friend know? A friend knows so that he can help his friend accomplish what he seeks to do, and that's what you're trying to do in marriage.

What is it that God has called you to do? What is your role? What kind of hindrances and obstacles do you face in that?

How can I help you? The highest end of marriage in this way is to pursue the oneness that requires cooperation, that we have to learn how to cooperate according to the rules that God has given us, and there's a way that part of a husband's leading is dying to himself in this way in order to help, and of course, definitively for the wife, she is to be a help meat to the calling of God for her husband, but in that sense, they're not like two nations diplomatically trying to make agreements.

They're to do this as one flesh, so there's to be a mutual help and comfort, so what that looks like for the husband is simply what

Peter says. Dwell with your wife in an understanding way. That's helping her. You understand her. You dwell with her where things are pinching, where things are difficult.

You seek to be helpful. It's walking with her in an understanding way, living with her, being one with her in an understanding way.

For a wife, again, just going back to Genesis 2, Eve was to be a helper comparable to her husband.

She was to be a help meat to him, to complement and be one with him in the calling of God in his life.

Third point, so love your spouse, help your spouse. Third, again, very brief, endure your spouse. What I mean by that is be patient.

How much is divorce a result of impatience? Trials get too hot, resentment builds so fast, and rather there being patience.

Taking a step back and getting a big perspective and saying, let's consider how long we've been together, what our lives have been as a result of coming together, what we have built together, however imperfectly.

Let me take a big step back and realize that this storm maybe isn't as big as what lays beyond it.

Though it's the only thing I can see right now, I know that past the dark veil of those storm clouds, of those pains, there was something far more worth maintaining, far more worth pursuing.

So endure your spouse, endure your spouse. Be patient with one another.

This is the duty that we owe to all. There's a general requirement of a Christian to be patient toward all, that we're not quick, we're not reactive, we're not snatching, we're not sniping, but we're patient toward all.

And if we're to be generally patient toward all, Ephesians four, then we're also to be particularly patient toward our spouse, perhaps the most patient toward our spouse.

There's a problem when you can, as it were, cascade with patience toward anyone around you in the church or in the workplace.

Oh, don't worry about it, no, no, no, I'm happy to help, and I'll take care of that by tomorrow. Ah, what a patient, kind man he is.

Then you get home and you're barking around the home, snapping, that's a problem.

Be patient with one another, endure one another. There's a myriad of temptations week by week to become impatient with one another.

And there needs to be a meek and quiet spirit, something very precious in God's sight, that's true of husbands as well. There should be a meekness.

Moses was the meekest man in the face of the earth. What does this require?

It means in order to endure your spouse, you have to learn how to wink at lesser faults. Not every imperfection is a hill you're going to die on.

You pray about it. If it's something persistent, you seek to address it in a patient, persuasive way.

You don't make everything a battle. You don't make every fault and failure something to become a whip or a lash or a constant reminder, a continual dripping.

You're patient. You recognize splinters perhaps, but you also know you have planks in your eyes and you deal with your lumber yard before you take the microscope to deal with the splinter.

So it means you acknowledge your own faults. You confess your faults to one another. You apologize for your failures, for the ways that you fall short.

And in that, you try to comfort one another. This is all part of enduring in marriage. Richard Baxter, in his

Christian directory, he gives very good advice on issues related to marriage. A big bulk of that is about marital issues.

And one of the points he makes is if you had married someone who was lame, in other words, someone who had an injury, say, on their leg, you wouldn't be angry at them for limping.

You married at them and you knew that they had a leg that was off. You're not gonna be angry at them, impatient with them, because they're limping.

You realize in marriage, you're not two angels that have come together in perfection. You're two sinners saved by God's grace.

And now you're walking together in marriage. Don't be shocked and don't be angry and impatient when you fail each other.

It's going to happen. Be patient, as God is patient. Endure your spouse.

And then lastly, evangelize your spouse. Evangelize your spouse.

In the same way we would say the gospel isn't something initiatory, something that begins the

Christian life and then you forget all about the gospel and you move on to the meat of the word. No, the gospel is the

Christian life. You're never done with the gospel. The gospel's always behind you, in you, in front of you.

It's everything. It comprises everything. And so in that sense, you're always evangelizing yourself with the gospel.

You're preaching the gospel to yourself continually, reminding yourself that it's Christ who died,

Christ who is your righteousness. You preach to yourself the good news of Christ and his birth, his death, his resurrection.

And in the same way then, you have to evangelize your spouse. Don't take her for granted. Don't take him for granted. You should view the mission field as beginning in your marriage and then ever expanding from there.

And there's a sense where you're always sowing the good seed of the gospel wherever you are. So primarily, that's gonna take place in the marriage.

Don't take it for granted. That's where a lot of the impatience comes from. That's where a lot of the lack of love begins to form is that you expected more out of the one you're one with and you forgot that you need the gospel just like they do and you need to win them with the gospel.

And perhaps at times, you need to be won by the gospel. Think about this, brothers and sisters.

Adam and Eve had the only perfect marriage in human history. Perfect marriage.

The perfect unity. Utter unity, perfect harmony.

They never felt annoyance. There was never a hard sigh or a rolling of the eyes.

All the jokes were laughed at genuinely. None of the lasagna was burnt.

They had a perfect marriage. They dwelt in perfect harmony with every aspect of their lives, of their emotions, of their activities.

As they worked, as they worshiped, as they rested, they could not have been more unified than they were.

They could have not been more other -oriented than they were. And God, as a result of the fall, brought all of the sins of their hardened hearts and rebellions to bear upon their marital relationship.

What had meant to become the blessed union now became a cursed union. And in that sense, all of a sudden, the perfect husband and the perfect wife became two sinners staring at each other, both dealing with guilt, dysfunction, and shame.

And marriage has been that way ever since. But here's the hope to evangelize your marriage.

It's the same hope Adam and Eve had. Yes, sin disfigured and distorted what their marriage had been and what it was meant to be.

But God came in their shame, in their sinful estate, in their nakedness, and he covered them.

He took away the fig leaves of all their attempts, all their vain attempts to try to make things right, to hide from his presence.

He took that all away, and he simply covered them. He clothed them. And that was the only hope for their marriage as a result of the fall.

That was the only hope for their marriage was the covering of the Lord God. And that's the only hope you have for your marriage is the covering that God himself provides.

The slain lamb, slain for the sins in your marriage, the sins you commit as a spouse, the sins committed against you as a spouse.

The only hope for your marriage is the covering of the Lord. And what a glorious, mighty, hopeful covering that is, which is why you need to evangelize your spouse.

Remind yourself of this. Our only hope is in the Lord. My hope is not my spouse. My hope is in the

Lord. My covering is not my spouse. My covering is in the Lord. My freedom is not in my spouse.

My freedom is in the Lord. Do you see? So their hope becomes our hope.

The Lord makes this covering. It's how we open the whole service from Psalm 45. He takes this bride, and she dwells gloriously in his palace.

And it says, she'll be brought to the king in robes of many colors. It's not a scant covering.

It's a rich, glorious covering that God provides for his people. And so the marriage is able to overcome all of the disfigurements of shame and sin and failure, all the aspects of pain and misery, resentment, hostility, areas of discouragement, areas of real turmoil.

Why? Because the covering is so rich, so thick, so glorious, you need to evangelize your marriage.

You say like the hymnist, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness my beauty are. My glorious dress.

That's the bride of Psalm 45. You recognize marriage as the sweetest gift that God grants to a man and a woman who are called to it.

And then you look very carefully to see if there's any hardness of heart within your marriage. Is there any area where you're a lot closer to what

Jesus is teaching against, rather than what Jesus is calling us to return to from the beginning?

You're given to each other in marriage for spiritual support, to love, to help, to endure with all patience, and to preach the gospel.

As one of the Puritans said, I believe it was John Brinsley, in writing to his wife, and he would always sign to his wife in this way, your husband for a season, your brother for eternity.

You evangelize your spouse because the only hope for your marriage is the only hope for your soul. It's the hope we have in the

Lord. So let us remember what marriage is from the beginning so that we can ponder its ultimate end, amen?

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word, Lord. Please bless it to us. Lord, I pray for the marriages represented in this church.

Lord, every marriage has seasons. Every marriage has trials, difficulties, gains, losses.

Every marriage here is unique, Lord. There's no two alike. And yet the two within that marriage are meant to be one.

They truly are one as you have joined them together. We pray,

Lord, that we would understand what you have laid down from the beginning, to understand your own heart, your own purpose for our marriages,

Lord. You knew the goodness and the happiness and the blessedness of your design, and you also knew the sin and the failure and the misery of its failures.

And therefore, Lord, you gave a covering that pointed to our only hope in the gospel.

We pray, Lord, that marriages would be cured, preserved, bearing fruit as a result of the gospel, and that the marriage picture itself would bear fruit for the gospel as a testimony.

We pray that you'd do this work in our midst. We pray for those that are about to be married, Lord, that they'd take these things to heart,

Lord, that they wouldn't take for granted the feelings or the season or the expectations of their spouse as they are unproved, untested.

That they would take to heart your command, your desire, your purpose, and know that marriage will require them taking up their cross as any other calling in life.

We pray for those also, Lord, who are not married, but if it's your desire for them, that in providence,

Lord, you would lead them to that relationship, lead them to that blessed design. If it's not your purpose in their life,

Lord, that they would have that exclusive devotion to you that would become a picture and testimony unto itself.

We pray that in all these ways, Lord, you and your grace would be magnified in our midst. And that in this way, we would be salt and light for the world.

Lord, I know that this week we'll be seeing many relatives and friends around Christmas, Lord.

And perhaps the most salt and the most light we can show is simply how we dwell as husbands and wives.