Synoptic Gospels - Matthew 19:4

Matthew 19 and the Authority of Scripture

We are in Matthew chapter 19, section 252 of the synopsis, synoptic. We started this section last week and I started waxing eloquent on it. And so we're still here. And we did so because we're dealing with an issue that while it is somewhat controversial in the sense that we're discussing divorce and celibacy in this particular section, it likewise I think is even more important because of the foundational truths that lays out for us in regards to Jesus' own teaching on the subject of God's initial creative design.

And as I emphasized last week, when the issues of marriage, what marriage is, and Jesus' view on both marriage and sexuality come up, and they do, ironically, in my experience they're normally raised by unbelievers who want to challenge Christians and say that in essence Jesus never addressed these issues.

Now this is normally said by people who really don't have a clue what they're talking about. They've heard somebody say this, they've read some rhetorical literature, some propaganda from the Metropolitan Church.

If you've ever heard of the Metropolitan Church, we have one I think over on, is it 7th Street or Central? Probably 7th Street. We have one somewhere nearby. There's a Metropolitan Church. Not like we're driving around much on a Sunday morning, but when you go by it you'll see the multicolored flag out front and so on and so forth.

But the Metropolitan Church is a church made up of homosexuals that believes that homosexuality is compatible with Christianity, etc., etc., etc. I debated the quote unquote pastor of the Metropolitan Church in Salt Lake City.

Yes, they do have Metropolitan Churches in Salt Lake City. A number of years ago. And I think we have that available like in MP3 and stuff like that. On video as well, yes. And so these issues come up because they produce propaganda.

And sadly, many evangelicals just aren't challenged in their churches anymore to have a solid foundation to be able to recognize solid teaching versus non-solid teaching. And so this material is out there and people will challenge us.

And so we started looking at this and I made the point that we can't just cite this text and expect modern secular minds to just go, ah, fine. We have to recognize what elements of the text are directly undercut by secular thinking and be prepared to emphasize them, defend them, press them upon the conscience of the person to whom we're speaking.

Because we function on the foundation, or we should be functioning on the foundation, that the person to whom we're speaking is living an inconsistent life. That is, they are created in the imago Dei, the image of God.

But they are suppressing the knowledge of God. And we need to realize that the secular mindset that views the world with man at the center and everything else is the object of knowledge of man, including God.

Rather than a Christian worldview where God is at the center, we are out here and to have true knowledge of anything else, we need to have that knowledge through God by reference to the Creator. If He made all things, then He defines all things.

If He has a creative decree, then what is, is because He Himself has determined it to be so. And so to have true knowledge where my knowledge is true because it is gained in light of the Creator and His purposes, rather than just a scattered knowledge where, you know, I might have...

A secularist can understand how my prescription sunglasses here correct my vision. They can understand how photons work and they can understand how light refracts in a lens and how the eye works. And therefore, you know, because once you get past 40 or 45 years of age, you start developing presbyopia because the lens in your eye isn't as supple as it used to be and the muscles attached to it aren't as strong as they used to be.

So you can't pull it enough to focus on things that are close up anymore and that's why your arms start getting shorter and all the rest of that kind of stuff. The secularist can have knowledge of how all of that works, okay?

But to have true knowledge in looking, for example, at the human eye is to recognize its Creator. I mean, if you can look at the human eye and go, wow, man, random chances, great! You may understand the function, but I submit to you that your actual knowledge is flawed.

It is disconnected from the reality that surrounds it, okay? So the secularist can have knowledge of the world around, but to have true knowledge has to come from recognizing the centrality of God and gaining our knowledge in light of Him.

So basically, we as creatures need to think as creatures rather than as random accidental results of a random purposeless process. When we view ourselves in that way, I submit to you, it makes a massive impact upon our worldview and our behavior.

And I think we are seeing the results of that in the decay of Western culture. Not the advance of Western culture, the decay of Western culture that we see all around us. So we had looked at Jesus' response to the question that was asked of Him.

When Jesus had finished His words, He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Large crowds followed Him and He healed them there. Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

And we mentioned last week, this was the Shammai Hillel argument in the Jewish schools of the day. And He answered and said, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.

The two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. But therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Now, we all know this text. We've heard it many, many times before.

But the danger is we hear it within our church context, rather than within the context of someone we would be speaking to might hear it. And I had suggested to you that this is one of those texts that gives us opportunity of addressing our society in a very direct way.

And I had mentioned that, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female immediately runs us up against a huge barrier on the part of the thoroughly secular child of our society today.

Much more so for the 20-somethings now than in my day. For though secularism was definitely on the march when I was a 20-something, that generation still, we still had close contact with a generation where God was still very much a part of the cultural discussion.

But our teenagers and 20-somethings today may well be coming from a context where they have had almost no exposure whatsoever to a Christian worldview. They may be the children of that first secular generation, and so they themselves are purely in that generation.

And the first thought across their mind may well be the foolishness of believing that there is a creator God and that there is a purpose in creation, there is a transcendent law, etc., etc., etc. And so the first statement is, Have you not read, and we talked about the primacy of Revelation, I think we talked about the primacy of Revelation, the fact that once again right here we have an example of Jesus holding men accountable to the Scriptures.

There's all sorts of things we need to recognize that when Jesus, Jesus doesn't say, I simply say to you. Jesus says to the Jews, Have you not read? He does the same thing in Matthew 15, Matthew 19. He so often holds men accountable to God's Revelation.

Now some might say, Well, yeah, he's talking to Jews, so he's just dealing with them within their context. Well, you will notice that later on he's going to talk about Moses. He clearly believes that this is the divine revelation that comes from God.

And yes, he is talking to them in their context. But he is demonstrating that the ultimate authority for the answering of such questions comes from divine revelation and not from any other source. He does not make reference to tradition, even though there was lots of traditions he could have referred to.

In fact, I would argue that in this text, Jesus is saying something extremely relevant to the argumentation that is to be had regularly, and I will be having again multiple times this fall, in regards to Roman Catholicism.

Because the question that is asked of him by the Pharisees, testing him, was a question that derived from a conflict within Jewish oral tradition. The various schools interpreting the tradition had come to different conclusions, and therefore they were trying to drag him into taking sides in a current controversy.

A controversy that was primarily based upon tradition rather than Scripture. And so, by short-circuiting the traditional argument, Jesus was giving us evidence of how we should handle the same type of situation today, I believe.

And that will come up over and over again, as I have three, possibly four debates this fall, starting as early as next month, with Roman Catholic apologists once again. So, have you not read, he is holding them accountable to the Scriptures.

But then his first statement is, that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female. Now, very clearly, what you have here is an assertion of God's creatorship, and you have an assertion of God's purpose.

That purpose is from the beginning, and that purpose is expressed in the creation of mankind as male and female. Yes, sir?

I've got a question for you, James, and it's not a question from me directly. Our visitor, Steve, I don't know if you remember him, he asked me a question after your lesson last time, on the same text, and the question was this.

He said, OK, you know, we're reading through this, and it's very clear that God approves of marriage. And he asked, you know, God approves of marriage, creation ordinance, all these things that we went through, and he said, well, in the eyes of God, what makes the marriage valid?

You know, is it the ceremony? Is it the intercourse? Is it the, you know, something else? And then he looks at me, you know, directly, and he says, do you have the answer to that? I'm hoping you have the answer.

And so I said, no, I don't have the answer. But maybe James does. Why don't you ask him? Oh, no, no, no. I told him I'd ask him for it. So I'm not so sure that it's, you know, to me that's kind of like the question of, at least that I know, when was the instant I was saved?

You know, I don't know that it's necessarily at least the answer, but that's the question.

Yeah. Well, it is a little bit off the topic, but the question, if you couldn't hear it on the tape, is, in essence, what makes marriage when you consider someone to be married? The statement of the Lord in verse 5 is, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

I don't think there's a whole lot of question as to what is marriage. It is amazing that people complicate it. I think most people recognize that when a man leaves his family and a woman leaves her family, and it is the intention of this couple to be joined together as husband and wife, and the two become one flesh, that a marriage has taken place.

The fact that it is sad in my experience. I see this fairly regularly. There are people, and the Internet has helped to promote this, but there are people who want to try to get around the obvious meanings of words and say, well, you know, I can't find anything.

The only thing I find in the Bible is a condemnation of adultery, which is having sex with someone who is other than your husband or your wife, but if you're not married, then it doesn't matter. And I run into that all the time.

I run into people who call themselves Christians who say, as long as you don't intend to be married, then it's fine. And the hyper-technical arguments they try to present are enough to curl your hair, but I just have to wonder how Jesus would have responded in light of this particular text, because it is painfully obvious what Jesus is referring to.

It's not just a matter of a ceremony, because there is no single ceremony laid out anywhere in Scripture. There just isn't. I mean, the Jewish ceremony is significantly more elaborate and in-depth and long-lasting than what we have.

I mean, it's days long and it's extremely complex, and I really don't think that Pastor Frye would like if someone were to throw glasses on the carpet in the other room and smash them into the carpet and things like that.

It's obviously very, very different. You all weren't planning anything like that, were you? We're going to do the smash the... Sorry. I don't think that's going to go over well. But, you know, muzzle-box!

You know, we all know how that works. But it's not the ceremony, though I think that there is something perfectly proper, good, and godly in the public exchanging of vows and in saying, this is my intention, and I give myself fully to be the husband or the wife of this particular individual.

Clearly, there is likewise the intention and then the reality that is mentioned in verse 5 where the two shall become one flesh. There is a joining, a mysterious joining that is a life-giving joining that is referred to here.

So, that they are no longer two, but one flesh, and that therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate. And so, some have understood this to mean that the sexual act itself is marriage. I don't see that, that God is joining, for example, when there is a non-marital act.

I don't see that's God doing that joining together. What God has joined together, let no man separate, would refer to, of course, that intentionality on the part of those who are engaging in marriage.

That's what makes adultery outside of marriage the evil that it is because it undercuts God's intention in the marriage relationship itself. And the two no longer one flesh, but there is a breaking of that covenant and there is a lack of holiness, therefore, that flows from that outside of the forgiveness of God.

So, I actually heard him asking you that question, and he had seemed somewhat upset that we had run out of time. So, I think he was going to ask that question. But, be that as it may, returning to the text, you have the creation ordinance here that defines male and female.

Creation, Human Knowledge, and the Secular Mind

Now, one of the things that we need to understand today is that man, as his knowledge of the function of the creation has increased in his arrogance, has decided that the more we know about the creation around us, the less we have to be concerned about God.

And this plays itself out. I saw this. I was a science major throughout college. Completed my major in biology with an emphasis in genetics. In fact, my senior project was in genetics, mapping the gene for the white eye in Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly.

Raised over 30 ,000 of them my senior year. I can still see those little boogers in the microscope, you know, counting what color eyes they were, hours of that. It was lots of fun. Anyway, as man has, for example, over the past just few years, mapped the human genome so that we have an idea of what each part of the DNA structure in our cells does, though that really hasn't answered a lot of the questions we had.

It's only complicated things. But we understand X and Y chromosomes. And we have begun to use our technological skill to bend the categories. You heard that recently, just within the past couple of months, scientists took the genetic material of one living creature, took out the genetic material of a different kind of creature and transposed them in the process of artificial cloning.

And there were people discussing, well, have we now created life? Well, we didn't, but there are people who want to view it that way. And the secularist says, see, all the mystery that was once the mystery of the divine is gone.

We now know why there's males and females, and we know that sometimes genetics makes a mistake, and you have people you can't really tell. And therefore, there's no reason for God. It's all just nature.

And they don't seem to recognize, because of Darwinian presuppositions, that things are the way they are for a purpose and that the complexity of the mechanisms whereby male and female arise and exist absolutely defy any kind of random origination.

And so it's sort of like what we observe in our own children. When our children are very small, mommy and daddy are extremely powerful creatures because you have keys, you can open doors, and you have phones, you can talk to people, and you can read things, you can figure out instructions and put toys together and operate microwave ovens.

But then as they get older and they start acquiring some of these skills themselves, all of a sudden, you're not quite as omnipotent as you once were. And that's where we are. It's like we've figured out part of the written instructions and therefore we think, it's not quite as much mystery to it as I thought.

It's an amazing attitude. And the contradiction in it is fascinating because the more we've learned on the biochemical level, I think I played for you a number of months ago the video of the cellular pump in the mitochondria that allows for the reconstituting of ATP from ADP.

Adenosine triphosphate is the primary biofuel that your body runs on. You're using it right now. Every muscular contraction, the power that your muscle has to do that comes from breaking a phosphate molecule off of adenosine triphosphate and converting it to adenosine diphosphate.

Well, your body has this wonderful capacity of rebuilding ATP from ADP. And we've found out how this works and actually there's a number of different pathways, but one of the most amazing is this pump that literally has a little rotor in it and it utilizes ion differences across a membrane to spin this rotor and that mechanical spinning, just like in our, you know how they generate power at a dam.

The water comes through the turbines, the turbines spin, you have a magnet inside a magnetic field and it produces electricity and it's the water going by that creates the mechanical motion that creates electricity.

Well, these little pumps, and there are billions of them in each one of us, are using ions instead of water and this turns the crank, it turns the pump and it's that mechanical energy that then literally moves molecules and because of their shape grabs hold of phosphate molecules and adds them back onto ADP.

So ADP comes along, gets attached to this, the movement grabs phosphate, attaches it right back to ADP, disattaches and now you've got ATP. And then there's all sorts of other structures that then get that ATP back out to the cells that need it to do what we do.

And that's happening over and over and over again every moment in your body while you sleep, while you're awake, whatever else it might be. The irony is that as we have come only in the past 50 years to understand these things is at the very same time where secularism is on the rise in Western culture.

And so we can see something that is far more complex than anything we could create. I mean we're making little nano stuff now. We're making small things but not that small. We can't even get close. This is making stuff out of molecules based upon the shape of the molecules.

We don't have that capacity but we have the capacity to be so stinking arrogant that once we figure out how it works we go, well, we didn't need God to do that. No, did we? It's amazing. The brighter the light, the tighter we clench our eyes is in essence what you have here.

And like I said, I have that science background and it's amazing to listen to the scientists who in describing these things cannot help but to be amazed at its complexity and its beauty. And the language sneaks out.

They don't mean to say it but they'll talk about design. They'll use terminology of order and even beauty and then immediately catch themselves and say but of course we know it all arose randomly. It's almost like, did anybody see me do that?

It's sort of like Spock in Star Trek there is that one original episode where he thought he had killed Kirk during Amik time, if you all remember that one. I'm really exposing myself here. But Rich, you got that?

Good, all right. He thought he had killed Captain Kirk and Kirk comes walking out through the door in the sick bay and Spock's face lights up and he goes, Jim! And then, hmm. Well, that's how scientists are.

For a moment they're like, I hope you didn't see me do that because I'm a secularist, you know. I'm a good scientist. I don't want to lose my job. That's what I see at this point in time. How in the world I got there from Matthew 19 I'm not exactly sure but the point is that he made them and this all ends up on Sermon Audio now too so all sorts of other people get to listen to strange illustrations he used there.

It's sad now because I'll listen to people talking who sit there going, yeah, I remember watching Star Trek when it was on. That's Captain Picard. And I'm like, pfft. That's the modernist version, man.

I watched it when it was really on. You know, come on. Back in the late 60s, early 70s. Woo-hoo. Anyway. Dating myself just a little bit here. When the secularist here has made them male and female in the secular mind, male and female it's just a genetic thing.

Yeah, genetics are under God's control too. And God designed that genetic system that created male and female and woe to the culture that finds those gender roles to be offensive. And yet, that's our culture.

That's our culture. I don't know about you but I was offended out of my socks by what happened about, what was it, 18 months, two years ago? Approximately. There was a general testifying before Congress.

And an ultra-leftist, liberal, basically communist senator, a female, from the People's Republic of California. The general, as I had been taught as a child, was responding to her questions by saying, yes ma 'am and no ma 'am.

I was taught to do that. I still do that. People look at me strangely. But I was taught to open doors for ladies. And, you know, I know we don't need to worry about this much out here but back East, if you had an umbrella and it was raining and you saw a woman who was getting drenched you offered her your umbrella.

Just weird, strange artifacts of an ancient age that somehow made it into my upbringing. And especially in the military, it's still a part of the military. Yes sir, no sir, yes ma 'am, no ma 'am. Well, remember what this senator said.

She rebuked the general. I am a United States senator. I have earned the right to be called senator. Well, this particular woman offends me on every single level but I was particularly offended by that because it was just part of this whole attempt to make what God has done in the male and female roles something that's unnatural and inappropriate.

It is an expression of the rebellion of man's heart to reject God's sovereignty in this matter. It is an expression of rebellion against God. It is sinful for mankind to seek to undo what God has done in the creation of mankind as male and female.

Now, there have been all sorts of abuses of biblical language in the past in regards to men and women. And it's very easy to go back, especially in the medieval period, a period where biblical literacy was almost non-existent and where the traditions of men once again eclipsed the clear teaching of scripture and demonstrate that theologians literally did sit around arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin and whether women actually had souls.

There was in the early church, and I would argue that this did not come from biblical influences, but definitely came from pagan influences. There was in what would be called early Christianity an unhealthy and unbiblical view of marriage, an exaltation of celibacy to the point of being greater than marriage and therefore if you really wanted to be holy, then you couldn't engage in marriage.

And since men were the primary leaders in the church, once you were committed to celibacy, women sort of became a stumbling block. And so there was, for example, you've heard of the early church writer Jerome, but you may not have heard of Paula.

It's been a long time since we did church history. We're going to have to do it again someday. We talked about it then, but that was sometime in the 1990s, I think. But this was a woman, a female ascetic, and what they would do is they would seek to dress in such a way as to never let their form be seen, not to be anything attractive about them, let their hair become ratty and cover their faces because they viewed themselves as a temptation to the holy men.

And so they should, we're not talking about just dressing modestly here. Dressing modestly is one thing. That's a biblical command. We're talking about making yourself as unattractive as possible so as to not be a temptation to the men who need to be as holy as they can be.

And the women, it was a pretty steep slope as far as the view of the woman is concerned. And so it's easy to go back to those things and demonstrate that in the history of what calls itself Christianity in a broad spectrum, that there have been all sorts of abuses of the male-female relationship.

That's a completely different thing than taking the biblical view, recognizing that God has a purpose for the man and he has a purpose for the woman, and accepting those things and seeing that there is no male.

When we see that phrase in Galatians, there is no male or female in Christ Jesus. That does not mean that Christ Jesus wipes out the male and female roles. What that means is that the male and the female together stand before God on an equal basis in regards to salvation and redemption.

Many people want to take that and expand it all the way out to where it is simply a denial of God's creative purpose that is announced right here. But Jesus himself answered and said very, very clearly that to address the subject of marriage and divorce, you have to start with what God's purposes in marriage were and to understand that, you have to start with God's creative decree.

God has the right to determine what these roles are because he created man, male and female. Mankind is expressed in the male and female roles. And even when you go back to this phraseology in the Old Testament, when you go back to Genesis, when it talks about God being made in our image, male and female created he them.

It needs to be recognized that the emphasis is upon the fact that both male and female together bear the image of God. It is not just the male, and then the female borrows from this or something like that in some subject role.

But that male and female together bear the image of God. And you have to have a foundation to start from, and that is the foundation that Jesus starts from. That is not the foundation the vast majority of those who will cite Jesus.

Well, he never talked about gay marriage. He never talked about this. They don't want to start with where Jesus started. They want to start someplace else. And we can't allow that. We have to allow this text to speak for itself.

So, having been quoted from that text of Scripture that is under so much attack today as being mere poetry, as being something we really can't take seriously in what it says, Jesus takes it seriously, asserts the creative purposes of God, the goodness of the male and female roles, and then as a result says what we have in verse 5, specifically, Now, he's asking this rhetorically.

He's saying, have you not read this? As if the impact of this, the import of this, is sufficient to answer the question. The problem with that from the perspective of the Pharisees that were testing and tempting him would be, that's not what we're asking you.

We know about that text. But you see, because of their tradition, their tradition keeps them from seeing that the text answers their question. That's what happens when you deny Sola Scriptura. That's what happens when you functionally adopt an authority outside of that which is Theonistos, outside of that which is God breathed.

You can't argue the way Jesus did if you don't understand that to be the case. And so, I actually don't think we got anywhere today. I think that we were at the beginning of verse 5 last time, and we're at the beginning of verse 5 this time.

But we talked about a lot of stuff in the process. That's true. And we also reminded ourselves of Amik Time, and Spock, and Kirk, and things like that. So, I mean, anybody who can do that without actually covering a verse is doing pretty well, I think, personally.

But it's real easy to find our spot next time around because we know exactly where we are because we didn't go anywhere. So, the seat will be warm and the place quite familiar. I'm not sure if Mr. C is back next week or not.

I don't think he is. Might be. Don't know. But if not, then I'll be back again, and we'll just press on. I can pretty much guarantee we will get through verse 5. Because I would get embarrassed if I spent three weeks and never really got anywhere.

So, let's close our time with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word and the freedom that we have to look into it. And once again, we ask as we struggle to be prepared to give an answer to the hopes within us, within this secular society, this godless society.

Lord, give us wisdom, give us understanding that we might be able to discuss these things with those around us and be a light, a light to those who walk in darkness. Be with us now as we go into worship.

Lift up our hearts. Give me clarity of thought and expression that you may be honored and glorified. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.