Aug. 28 2016 Afternoon Service Beatitudes Part 8 by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, good afternoon, thank you for returning for the afternoon worship and preaching. We continue through the Sermon on the Mount. I had thought as I looked at the portion before us in the Sermon on the Mount, which really begins at chapter 5, verse 21, and goes through the end of that chapter, verse 48, the six antitheses that Jesus pronounces, the, you have heard, but I say, six times.

I thought I'd be able to group them together, at least in pairs, present them to you two at a time. I have not been able to. Had I this afternoon done that, we would be here for quite a bit past the three o 'clock at which we normally adjourn.

There's just so much here. This afternoon we have some of the most controversial and often misused words that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke. Pastors and scholars have examined these verses, they've looked into the grammar, the syntax of the original language, they've taken apart the Old Testament references that are here, they've coordinated all that, and they've come up with a doctrine of divorce.

Divorce and Remarriage in the Sermon on the Mount

Divorce and remarriage. And this is where we will be this afternoon, verses 31 to 32, in chapter 5 of Matthew. This is a terribly important question, divorce. You know, lives are at stake here, sometimes quite literally.

God's honor seen in His obedient children is in play here. Everyone knows that divorce is a terrible, awful event. It's so traumatizing that many people avoid risking it by declining marriage in the first place.

Since it has a 50 -50 or better than 50 chance of ending in this terrible state, then why bother even risking that? Let's not get married at all. And sometimes it's avoided just on the basis that it's a man-made, archaic tradition that only ends in disaster.

So for that reason, let's not do it. I have no statistics for you on first century divorce. Excuse me. I don't want to overwhelm you with statistics on divorce today. It's enough to say that we all know divorce is rampant today, that marriage is in the biblical definition, at least, on its decline.

It seems that the people who are most in favor of marriage these days are actually the ones who are in favor of a marriage that's redefined in a way that the Scripture would never recognize and would, in fact, call iniquity.

They suit their own ideas of what marriage is and who may enter into it. And so here we are. We are the church. We're standing firmly on the word of God, wanting to know what Jesus would have us to do, and sort of with farragut, ignoring the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

We stand. We follow. We believe in the word of God. And with that, we forge on with this high view of this binding covenant instituted by God between a man and a woman. I will tell you before I read the couple of verses that we will attend to this afternoon, this is not going to be an exposition of divorce and remarriage this afternoon.

We have a time in our afternoon messages, which are generally shorter than the morning. Even in a full length, an over length morning message, we would not be able to cover this in any great extent. That would be for another time when we take up that topic, if the Lord should ever lead that way or become necessary.

We will attend to what Jesus Christ says. Remember, please, that this is one of the six antitheses. The six, you have heard but I say, you have heard but I say. And what controls our understanding of all this?

As a brief reminder to you, there's a couple of verses that are generally thought of to be the key to the Sermon on the Mount. One which we covered a few weeks ago, chapter 5 verse 17, Jesus says, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. And therefore, these are seen as Jesus bringing up the higher meaning, the meaning that was lost of what the law should always have brought us to understand of ourselves.

The other key to the Sermon on the Mount, and this is where I stand, for I tell you unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. This is what Jesus is here describing.

He's comparing the false righteousness that they have heard from the teachers and scribes, from the Pharisees, from the rabbis who are taught in that way, that's the wrong righteousness, it's a sub-kingdom righteousness, I will use that term again and again, sub-kingdom righteousness.

And that's as compared to the righteousness which is meet with, comports with, the kingdom of heaven. So as we look at these two verses about this terribly important, this gigantic subject of divorce, remarriage, keep this in mind.

This is what Jesus is driving home to us, is the righteousness that exceeds that of the Super Bowl champion expert scribes and Pharisees. The righteousness that he would have for those who would come into his kingdom.

This is the key. Now in Matthew 5, 31 -32, here's what he says. It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

The issue, as I said, is righteousness that comports with the kingdom of heaven. It has to be a superior righteousness to what was said, and in this case, what was said was a quote from the Old Testament laws, a quote from the word of God, and that righteousness was inferior to what Jesus would have for a few reasons.

The righteousness that was being purported by those who they had heard speaking, Jesus' audience, you have heard that it was said, they used to tell you this. It is inferior to what Jesus would have because it's a misuse of God's law.

It's a looking for the out for the loophole. It's an intricate pulling apart so that you can find a way to satisfy your own predilections. Anyone can understand what is said in Scripture. The matter at hand is the heart that the law was supposed to expose.

Now I want to give you, in the time that we have, a clear position on the subject of divorce that's based on Jesus' words here. And as I do this, keep in mind that what we're looking for is direction towards that superior righteousness, that righteousness that exceeds the expert, that opens to us heaven itself.

So I want to look at this with you, and I will take apart the Scriptures about divorce that are contained here. It means we're going to leave a lot on the table this afternoon. Now, first thing we need to look at is what was said.

Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, it was also said to you, however you want to word that. What he says in Matthew 5 .31, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

That's what you've heard. That's what the experts told you. Now what Jesus is referring to there is their use of the Old Testament way back in Deuteronomy 24. Now if you want to turn there, I'll give you a moment to flip.

I didn't get the page number for your pew Bible, but Deuteronomy chapter 24. Here's what they're referring to. Here's what they land on. Here's what they stand on, I should say, in order to say, whoever divorces a wife, let him give her a certificate.

Deuteronomy 24 is their support for their position. When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, right, that's not a comfortable place to stop, is it?

That's not the end of the sentence, is it? But that's where they sort of stopped. They ended there. They say, she departs out of his house, okay, good. Found what we want. Justified our position. So now we can close our scripture, go home, have a nice dinner, go to sleep, and rest well.

We'll see that this is a, as I keep saying, sub-kingdom righteousness. Very much in our understanding of Deuteronomy 24, which is what was being referred to here, rides on the definition of the word indecency.

Indecency is a very hard word to translate. It's used in only one other place in all scripture, and then it stands for, and is rightly translated, to mean human defecation. So it's a strong word. It's speaking of a post-marriage discovery of something that makes the wife unfit to be the man's spouse.

But notice what is ignored here. Do you still have your Bibles open to Deuteronomy 24? Notice what was ignored. The rest of that paragraph, which is verses 2 through 5, the rest of it says that a woman who's been divorced cannot, under any circumstance, return to the first husband.

Now if you read verses 2 through 5, which I would commend to you after we're done here, because I'm not going to read them, I'm not going to take the time, that's what they come down to. If he puts her out, he gives her the certificate of divorce, she goes over here and gets married again, he doesn't like her, he sends her out, she can't go back to husband number one.

That's the upshot of all those verses. The first husband puts her out because of some indecency, she goes to number two, he doesn't like her, he puts her out, she cannot go back to number one. And that's the upshot of the whole thing.

John MacArthur points out that this word indecency cannot mean what we often think of, which is adultery. It cannot mean adultery because the law would have demanded capital punishment, not divorce. The adulterers, male or female, were to be executed, not just divorced.

And he goes on, John MacArthur goes on to show that the certificate protected her by proving that she was single and eligible to remarry. Now the Pharisees in Jesus' day would say that, okay, if all I have to do is put a certificate of divorce in her hand, and for some indecency, then it could be a messy house.

It could be a burned dinner. It could be anything that displeases me. Now in Matthew 19 .3, quite a bit past where we're at in the Sermon on the Mount, they really unmask themselves when they ask Jesus, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Now Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount doesn't say, you've heard that you give her a certificate of divorce for any cause that comes up. He doesn't say that here because of who he's speaking to. But in Matthew 19 .3, it's the Pharisees challenging him with their doctrine, which is very similar to what we have there in Matthew 5.

Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? What are they referring back to? Deuteronomy 24, where their interpretation was, you don't like her, give her a certificate, and off she goes. You're done.

If only they were looking for a way to refute a teaching. If only they were coming to Jesus and saying, Jesus, we've heard that you can do this for any cause if you give her a certificate. Give us an answer so we can go back and correct this.

But that's not what they were doing. If only they were doing that. If only they were looking for an answer. No, the balance of our Lord's interchange with them shows that what they meant to do was trap him to prove that he was an iconoclastic radical.

They looked at Deuteronomy 24 at verse 1, and then they stopped. They ignored the greater concern, which was what? In Deuteronomy 24, what's the concern? It was to curtail real adultery. It's to constrain such a spread of things.

So unable to define indecency with precision, the Pharisees defined it as anything that I don't like. And that's why in 19 .3 of Matthew they say, for any cause. Now, I want us to have a view of what it is to have righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

A kingdom righteousness, one that is superior to that. And to do this, we can stay right in the Old Testament. To get God's view of marriage, to have a righteous, a kingdom righteous view of marriage and how strong that bond between a husband and wife should be.

It's a rather long passage, and I will just tell you what the passage is. And I'm going to summarize it for you. It's fairly long. Again, you can read it later. I'll just tell you what it means. But it's Numbers 5, verses 11 to 28.

I would commend that to your reading. It's a very interesting passage. Look at it this evening. It's pretty long. It's pretty involved. So I want to summarize it for you. This is something that has to be totally ignored in order to come up with divorce for any cause.

To look at Deuteronomy 24, divorce for any cause, you have to ignore verses 2 through 5. But to come up with their doctrine, you also have to ignore this other passage, also given in the law through Moses.

Okay, so I want to summarize to you what this is about. It's sometimes got the superscription, the subtitle, A Spirit of Jealousy. It's the law of how a husband's suspicion of adultery gets resolved. It's very important as you go through it to notice that he's not able to just say, I've got a spirit of jealousy, so she's out of here.

He cannot do that. Marriage is too lofty an office for that. What he has to do, he has to go to the priest, and she is there in front of husband and priest, tested according to this very intricate ceremony.

Now, he says to her, the priest, have you done this? She says, no. He takes a piece of paper and a pen, and he writes out the curses that will come over her if she has actually been unfaithful. And the curse is from the law.

And it's made your belly swollen, your thigh rot, and you're going to be in terrible pain. You're never going to have children. It's just going to be awful. And he writes them all down. And when it dries, he scrapes it onto the ground, and he gathers it up with the dust, the ink that the words were written with in the dust, puts it in a glass of water, stirs it all together, and she has to drink it.

And when she drinks it, she puts herself under oath, says, if I have been unfaithful, if I'm lying, may these curses come upon me. But in that very passage it says, if she is not lying, if she's told the truth, she has been faithful, then God is going to vindicate her with children.

And the husband must follow the conclusion. He's not allowed to mistreat her, not allowed to treat her as anything other than his revered and faithful wife. Notice he can't just write out a certificate of divorce.

He has to go to the priest. He has to go to an arbiter, who according to God's ways, determines what's going to happen. And notice also that the husband, let's give him some credit here, because he's looking rather sinister, but notice that he by faith goes to the priest, and he by faith must stand by the priest's conclusion.

So if the curses don't come upon her, then she's been faithful. All this ignored by, give her a certificate of divorce for any cause. Do you see how high God holds the institution of marriage? Do you see what leads up to in Hebrews 13, where it says the marriage bed must be honored among all?

There's more here than just sexual and moral conduct. Though it's here. It's simply having a high view of this office, if you will, this office that God instituted between a man and a woman. Having a high and kingdom righteous view of this office.

The Pharisees' doctrine of divorce was a sub-kingdom righteousness, always looking for an out, always looking for a loophole, always looking, in God's word, for a way to justify having the flesh get its own way.

And this is just what Jesus meant when he said in Mark 7, verses 9 through 13, it says, See if you agree with me that what I'm going to read to you is very like what we read from Matthew 5 .31. You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

For Moses said, Honor your father and your mother, and whoever reviles father and mother must surely die. But you say, if a man tells his father or mother whatever you would have gained from me as Corban, that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down.

And many such things you do. Do you see any correlation, any similarity between what Jesus says here in Mark 7, and you have heard it said, give a certificate of divorce for any cause? Is it right for a man to divorce for any reason?

They're joined by people who search the scripture for causes to hate, for example. We're told to love our enemies. We're told to do good to those who persecute us. The Pharisee, we dealt with this a few weeks back in Matthew 5 .21 -26, on anger.

The Pharisee, he looks on some holy sounding reason to do just the opposite. You're told to love your enemy, but you wanna hate him? You're gonna find an excuse in God's word to hate. You're gonna find something like Psalm 139 .21, where David says, do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

And you say, there it is. I can hate. As long as I hate those who hate him, then hatred's allowed for me. And Jesus' words, you shall love your enemy, you shall do good to those who persecute you. Bless and pray for those who persecute you.

You say, yeah, that all sounds good, but I've got a verse. And it says, I get to hate. And we're gonna come to this when we get to Matthew 5 .43 -47. You love your neighbor and hate your enemy. It's no different than the Corban exception.

It's kin to divorce for any cause as long as there's a certificate. Do you see why this righteousness that they purported was sub-kingdom? Why it was a righteousness that God has no pleasure in? Because it's a misuse of his word.

It's an ignoring of so much of his word. Here's what Jesus has to say about dissolving the bonds of matrimony. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes or commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

The Pharisees' inferior piety ignored Deuteronomy 24, 2 -5. But see, Jesus here, he upholds what they mangled. The very law they saw as allowing them to be judge and jury over their wife's fate makes it clear that in God's eyes, divorce is rare, it's cataclysmic, it's traumatic, it's a course taken only in the direst of circumstances, which is sexual immorality.

Now when Jesus says that word, it's translating, sexual immorality is translating the word porneia, which means fornication. Not sexual sin generally, physical adultery, period. And if that makes you wonder if you're okay, so long as you avoid this final act, if you're now cataloging all the things that might be allowed, then I have to refer you back to chapter 5 of Matthew, verses 27 -30, which is about adultery in the heart.

I have to refer you back to Corban in Mark chapter 7. You are toying with a righteousness that is sub-kingdom. It's really no righteousness at all. What Jesus is saying is simply this, there is only one ground for divorce.

1 Corinthians 7, notwithstanding, and that will, it seems, be a subject for another day, and as we go sequentially and regularly through the Bible, we should get there. But 1 Corinthians 7, notwithstanding, that's what he is saying right here.

The marriage bed must be honored among all in the church. A husband and wife are models of that love that is pure and not sensual, that is mutually giving, mutually sacrificial. The way Ephesians 5 .22 and all that follows it would tell us.

It's obviously a hard teaching. The disciples in Matthew 19 .10, after his interchange with those Pharisees, they say to Jesus, if such is the case of a man and his wife, it is better not to marry. Easier to avoid the whole issue, isn't it?

If that's what's at risk, forget it. No, Jesus replies, no, only for some. Only for some is it given to live that way, and that's as high and honored in the state as being married. What is better is for a man and a woman to be permanently bound together, dedicated solely to each other.

As Jesus says, well, God has joined together, let no man separate. So it's a hard lesson. It is a hard lesson. Why must there be allowances made for dissolution? It's because of the fall. Because of sin, our hearts are hardened against God.

Because of sin, our hearts get hardened against each other. So we fight and bicker and murder each other with our words. Because of sin, we quarrel. Because of sin, we find ourselves almost wishing that the other would cross that one line and give us an avenue of escape.

Because of sin, we search the scriptures with the Pharisees looking on with approval, and we ask, but what if he, and can I find something that I could give her that certificate? If only she did. And on and on and on we go.

Living so far beneath that righteousness that Christ says is the righteousness of the kingdom. A righteousness that takes God's word to mean simply what it says. A righteousness that trusts when Christ speaks this way.

He doesn't just speak in order to constrain us, in order to lock us into something because he's a prude or something. Because he's God and because it's for our good. Because God does nothing except what is good for his people.

Even chastising us, even rebuking us, is treating us as adopted children and proving that we really are truly his. I referred to Ephesians 5 a moment ago. It's 5 .22 to 33. Has that whole passage about husbands and wives where husbands have to love their wives.

And remember, this is not a metaphor. They say, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Not like just using Christ as a concept. He means the Lord Jesus Christ. Husband, love your wives as Christ loved the church.

Wives there to submit to their husbands as the church does to Christ. This is the model of righteousness. These aren't just laws to pound us into a mold. This is kingdom righteousness we're speaking of.

The relationship between a husband and wife is a picture, this living parable of the relationship between Christ and his people. We should be no more willing to break the covenant between a man and a wife than we would be willing to believe that Jesus would ever divorce his church for any cause.

Would he? Would Jesus ever abandon his people? He says, I will never leave you or forsake you. All that the Father has given me will come to me, says the good shepherd, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

My Father is greater than all, says our shepherd. Would he ever abandon the church? Would he ever not do what is good for the church? Would he ever not bring the church into compliance with his will so that we grow into the image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?

This is what he does. And this is the way marriage in the righteousness of the kingdom has to work. Why? Just so we don't get divorced because everybody else out there is getting divorced? No, that's not the reason.

The reason is so that we husbands are more like Christ. So that when our wife looks at the way we treat her, it's a righteousness that mimics the way Jesus Christ himself, who gave himself for the church, treated the church.

Why are wives told to submit to the husband? Just because we men want to be able to be in charge for our ego's sake? No, because it's a picture of the beautiful relationship between Christ and his church and the way the church submits to Christ.

So the wife to the husband. Because it's a model of that righteousness that is a kingdom righteousness. Now we all know that the wife is not the church. And certainly we husbands are not Christ. We're even close.

So in that sense, yes, it is a metaphor. It is a picture. But the standard is not. The standard is not. Jesus Christ is held before us as he is the one who is the model for how we treat our wives. The church, which is his body, is set before you wives as the model for the way you two submit to your husband.

Because that is kingdom righteousness. That is a righteousness that looks to God's word and takes him at his word and doesn't bandy about trying to look for outs and creases and loopholes and little nuances to get us out of things.

That's a righteousness that trusts God that his ways are right. Not just better than ours, but right. What does the church do? Do we not get divorced because everybody out there is getting divorced? Do we hold marriage high because they're holding it lower?

Do we stick to the fact that it's a man and a woman because out there it's been redefined and they're doing differently? We do those things. But that's not why. We stand on those things because that is what God's word says.

We stand on those things because that's what Jesus says is kingdom righteousness. We stand on those things because he died on the cross in order that we can be saved. And by being saved, have the spirit in us making us able to even do these things.

Only in the gospel of Jesus Christ are these relationships possible. Only by the gospel of Jesus Christ can we hold marriage in its proper state. Only by faith in him can we even want to do this much less be able to.

But with God, nothing shall be impossible. By faith in his son and the forgiveness we have in him, we can know and we can live the righteousness that is meet with the kingdom which is what the whole Sermon on the Mount is about.

Amen.