“From the Beginning” - Part II

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 5:31-32

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Well, this morning we are carrying on with what we began last week as we considered this third antithesis in Matthew 5 in the
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Sermon on the Mount. And so we've begun this series of six and we've worked through anger and lust and now we've come to the matter of divorce and we began looking at Matthew 5 verses 31 and 32 last
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Lord's Day. Now, of course what we sought to do is to lay out a broad foundation really following Jesus' instinct in answering the the sort of challenging question of the
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Pharisees about the nature of divorce and whether it's lawful under any circumstances to pursue divorce and Jesus responded by returning to Eden.
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In other words, he as we saw from Matthew 19 said from the beginning it was not so and so we we sought to establish in that way the the larger paradigm of marriage.
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What was true from the beginning as Jesus seeks to build the foundation so we can properly understand what marriage is in order to understand when divorce is permissible and that's what we want to press into this morning as I was sort of providentially encouraged to pursue a little bit further these matters of divorce and I hope you'll be able to sympathize as we work through some of these issues together this morning.
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This is not an easy subject. It's not easy on the first hand just because there's so much debate.
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Still throughout church history throughout the centuries there's been a number of debates over how to understand several of the passages, how they apply, how divorce is to be understood, what the ramifications are in terms of a confession of faith, in terms of church discipline.
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These things are complex. They're also very difficult because of the personal nature.
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I know many lives in this room are affected by divorce, perhaps split families broken in the way that you were raised, perhaps you yourself have experienced that.
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So we're all, if you just look at the divorce rates, I think it's something like 48 % in our country right now.
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So most of our lives intersect with divorce in one way or another. Most of our families have direct if not indirect experience with the heartbreak and the tragedy and the consequence of divorce.
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And so these things are personal. These things are difficult for that reason. Well, let me just pull out a few things that we covered last week as we break new ground this morning.
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Let me first begin by reading Matthew 5 verses 31 and 32. Jesus says, furthermore it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
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But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.
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And whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. So we began with the big picture of marriage from Matthew 19.
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Of course, Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 24. At least he's referencing Deuteronomy 24.
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That is the passage which the scribes and the Pharisees had all of their debates over. We talked about Hillel and Shammai, these different schools of interpretation last week.
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And Jesus in answering their challenge says, from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.
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That's Matthew 19. The exact same argument he poses in Matthew 5. So Deuteronomy 24 is the central text.
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And Deuteronomy 24, which we looked at in detail last week, the whole point is that it's forbidden for a husband, once he obtains a certificate of divorce and puts his wife away, to ever seek to remarry her.
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That is the abomination that pollutes the land, as far as Deuteronomy 24 is concerned.
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What Jesus does in Matthew 5 is he takes that term, sexual immorality, sometimes translated adultery.
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That's far too restrictive, far too precise in my understanding. The Greek word porneia, translated here sexual morality, is far more broad.
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And there's a point to that. It's somewhat ambiguous. It's not precise. It's uncleanness or immorality of many different kinds.
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And that's true from Deuteronomy 24. Because of some uncleanness, Moses permits divorce.
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And so we have to recognize there's a broad term there. Now the fact that it's a broad term is half of the debate that ever since the church began, there's been this debate, this struggle, to understand what are the biblical grounds for divorce.
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Are there any? Some would say none. Is divorce permissible, but remarriage is forbidden?
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That was the predominant view in the early church. Is there a ground, a biblical grounds, not only for divorce, but also for remarriage?
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And if so, what are those grounds? These are the things we want to unpack together this morning. We notice how important this is just because, as I said, the divorce rate today.
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And this is a trend that we can expect to increase. 48%, I think that's down a couple percentage points from where it was at least a few years ago.
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But in my mind, I think it's only down because people are refusing to marry now. It's not because marriage is being salvaged.
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It's because people will just spend 35 years living together, but refusing to marry. They'll have everything that marriage often affords, and yet they won't actually make that commitment.
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They always want the escape clause. They want the way out. And so we can expect divorce of a variety to continue.
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And that's part and parcel of having this casual approach to relationships in our day. Relationships aren't taken very seriously because sexuality isn't taken very seriously.
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In one way, our culture absolutely idolizes sexuality. They've become enamored, obsessed with it in certain ways.
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But in another way, they've so degraded it and hollowed it out that it doesn't carry any sort of transcendent value.
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It's something almost mechanical in its import. As Vodie Bauckham points out, modern American dating is really just glorified divorce practice.
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You pursue someone, you become romantically entangled with them, you make a certain level of commitment, not only in sort of your emotions, but even perhaps physically, and then you split for some reason and you start all over again.
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You do this four, five, six, seven times. What are you doing but preparing yourself for divorce?
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You're training yourself that commitment is not really a commitment. It's not something that's going to require self -denial.
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It's an arrangement for a time. It's something that only serves your convenience, your gratification, your satisfaction.
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And when that begins to dry and wither up, then that's as far as your commitment goes. That's essentially how our society views relationships.
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Well, in the days of the New Testament, in the days that Paul the Apostle is writing, Roman culture viewed relationships in a somewhat analogous way.
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Romans made divorce very easy. In fact, there were property laws that essentially allowed the wife and the husband to keep their property separate.
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And the idea was when it comes time to separate, it'll be very convenient. You don't have to go to a court and hash out who gets what, you know, who gets the dog, who gets the camper, etc.
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It's basically everything was sort of a clean split. Remarriage was a way of life, especially for the elite class because marriages were often forging political alliances.
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And so it was out of the hands of the spouse so often. If you had one that was in a position of authority, they could simply say, you're going to divorce and marry so -and -so because I need to have a business arrangement with them, or I need to sort of build up that alliance.
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And so they would just will divorces left and right. And that was the sort of casual, lax view into which
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Paul is finding converts coming into the church, for example, in Corinth. We'll get there in a moment.
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The prevailing view about marriage and divorce in the Roman Empire began to drastically change as a result of Christian influence.
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Now, I'm going to give a 10 ,000 -foot overview, and there's always exceptions that prove the rule.
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There's always exceptions. So I'm painting with an incredibly broad brush. The bristles run from wall to wall.
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In a few paragraphs, I'm simply going to try to help you understand the way the debate has forged over church history.
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Prevailing views about marriage and divorce began to drastically shift as a result of Christianity.
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With the exceptions granted, most of the church fathers in the early centuries of the church permitted divorce on the grounds of adultery.
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Remember, I was talking about that word that's translated sexual morality. That's a good translation. The term itself is porneia.
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It was treated as adultery exclusively, largely because the Vulgate, the
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Latin translation of that term, created this terminology of fornicatio, fornication, and that was translated to mean not only fornication prior during the betrothal period, but also adultery.
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And so for a long time, the church fathers were looking very strictly at the category of adultery as the only biblical grounds for divorce.
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Some even required it. In other words, it was out of your hands whether you wanted to reconcile.
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This is what was necessary. You must now divorce. At the same time, remarriage was usually forbidden.
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Again, not all church fathers held this, but most church fathers did. You could divorce on the grounds of adultery, but you could not remarry.
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You must remain single. Many in the church regarded marriage as an indissoluble bond, and that was not only in life, but even in death.
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There was this indissoluble bond, this joining of both body and soul.
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Now, of course, at the same time, the church had a lot of baggage in these early centuries. There was a huge drive toward what we call asceticism.
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In other words, this renunciation of the flesh. And marriage was seen as sort of a necessary need for procreation, but beyond that, it was an obstacle to personal holiness.
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Far better to actually devote yourself exclusively to God. Far better to go into the desert in an exclusively devoted life as perhaps a monastic.
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And so you read the desert fathers in this way, or even see the rise of monasticism in early church history.
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And so again, because of these views, because of the repression of sexuality, because of the restrictive view of adultery, remarriage was usually forbidden in the early church.
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You have early councils like the Council of Orals. They disallowed remarriage, but moved away from excommunication, as some of the fathers pushed for that.
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In time, eventually, you get toward the 4th century, Augustine becomes the foundation of the views of divorce in the
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Roman Catholic Church. Part of that is because Augustine taught, and the church ever since had held, the
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Roman Catholic Church, that marriage was a sacrament. One of the seven sacraments of the church.
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Of course, we as Reformed Protestants only hold there to be two, what we call ordinances, but you might as well call them sacraments as well.
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Occurring between two communicants in the Roman Catholic Church, marriage became indissoluble. If there was an unequal yoking, then you could seek a permitted divorce.
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Now this, during the Renaissance, leading up to the Reformation, this began to receive a lot of pushback. Thomas More, Erasmus, among others, pushed against this view.
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But it prevailed. In fact, as a response to the Reformation, the Council of Trent codified it.
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Although within that council, they allowed various reasons for marriages to be annulled. So in some ways, they ratcheted up, they made concrete the binding indissoluble nature of marriage, but in another way, they gave all sorts of reasons that a marriage could be granted an annulment.
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Well, the Reformation comes in. The Reformation seeks to clarify what the Bible has to say about divorce.
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Now again, even in the Reformation, there's all sorts of exceptions. But generally speaking, the
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Reformers all rejected viewing marriage as a sacrament. They saw it as a creation ordinance, not as a sacrament.
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And they allowed there to be remarriage by the innocent party if the divorce was upon biblical grounds.
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Now, getting a little bit closer to our own neck of the woods in church history, when the Reformation took hold, confessions began to be drafted in order to explicate what was held in common from the
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Scriptures. So you have confessions of faith being drafted, and they're ironing out and working out what they understand the
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Bible to teach, what they commonly confess together for the sake of unity in the churches of God.
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And here, when it comes to the confessions, we can see very clearly that the divorce was debated.
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Divorce is a controversial subject in the Reformation time. So the
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Westminster Confession of Faith. All right, our confession comes downstream from this.
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The Westminster Confession of Faith was first commissioned as advice to the English Parliament. And bear with me,
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I know this is sipping church history from a firehose, but bear with me. We are getting somewhere.
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The Westminster Confession of Faith, this is easily forgotten, was published as advice to the
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English Parliament. It was published in Scotland in 1646. However, it was not approved and then republished by the
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English Parliament until 1648. This is very significant for the issue of divorce. In 1646, the
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Westminster Assembly had its draft, and on their chapter, chapter 24 on marriage, they had two paragraphs, paragraphs 5 and 6, on divorce.
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However, by the time the English Parliament received that advice, they felt that those two paragraphs on divorce were not truly grounded biblically, were not truly defensible biblically, and so they took them out.
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The problem is, within those two years of the advice being given to the English Parliament, that was the version that had been published universally.
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And in fact, for a long time after, it was the 1646 version printed in Scotland that was held to be the
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Westminster Confession of Faith. And so you had these two paragraphs on divorce, and let me just briefly read these for you.
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First, paragraph 5. Adultery or fornication, notice again this restrictive view, adultery or fornication, committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, gives just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.
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In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue a divorce, and after the divorce to marry another, as if the offending were dead.
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Okay, so that's paragraph 5, paragraph 6. Although the corruption of man is such, as is prone to study arguments, unduly to put asunder, in other words to take apart, what
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God has joined together in marriage, yet nothing but adultery or willful desertion, these are the two exceptions that are given.
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Notice we have an advancement on adultery now. It's not just adultery, which we would say is more broad, sexual morality.
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It's also desertion. We'll get into that. Or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient to dissolve the bond of marriage.
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They say a little bit more about the nature of the civil magistrate therein. So these are the two paragraphs that by the time it comes to the
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English Parliament, they say, no, this doesn't belong in a confession of faith. Ten years later, the independents, the
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Congregationalists, take their Westminster Confession of Faith, highlight, copy, paste, and they too say these two paragraphs don't belong in a confession of faith.
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About 20 years later, the Baptists take that Savoy Declaration, highlight, copy, paste, and they agree with the
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Savoy, yeah, these two paragraphs on divorce don't belong in the confession of faith. So our confession doesn't have anything to say about divorce.
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In fact, when the Savoy framers wrote their explanation for how they utilize the
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Westminster, they said this, a great part of the 24th chapter on marriage and divorce was omitted.
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These portions were so doubtful and so unsuitable to our confession that the
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Honorable House of Parliament, in their great wisdom, thought fit to lay them aside. And so they're seeing something about the contested nature of divorce that it was unwise to actually publish these paragraphs.
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And so our own confession says very little. However, as a local church, we have to have a view about divorce, don't we?
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Because we have to deal with divorce, don't we? And so our own church has a book of order within our
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Constitution, and we have there a statement on divorce. I just want to pull out a few of the points that are made there and then use that as a framework to elaborate this morning.
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This is what our church holds to in terms of divorce. I hope it'll be informative and instructive.
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Well, the first thing we say from our book of order is this, divorce is not a part of God's original design for marriage.
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Isn't that what Jesus said in Matthew 5? Isn't that what Jesus says in Matthew 19? Isn't that what Paul says in Ephesians 5?
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Everywhere we read about marriage, we understand God's good design for a man and a woman to become one, and how this is a presentation of Jesus and his bride, the church.
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Divorce was not part of God's original design for marriage. However, after the fall, divorce not only became a possibility, but a reality because of the sinful and hard heart of men.
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Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 19? Moses permitted divorce because of the hardness of your hearts.
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Therefore, God has given commandments concerning divorce so as to protect the sanctity of marriage and to protect a marriage partner from intolerable abuse of a wicked spouse.
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These intolerable abuses are the only grounds for divorce and these grounds must be discerned from the scripture.
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So what are the grounds, biblically speaking? The biblical grounds for divorce as set forth in scripture are uncleanness.
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We have that in scare quotes. That's good. That's right. That's as specific as scripture is.
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Uncleanness, Deuteronomy 24. Sexual immorality of some nature, according to Matthew 5.
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That's certainly not less than adultery, but it is more. Very important to say that.
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But also, secondly, the desertion of a believer by an unbeliever. The abandonment of a believing spouse by an unbelieving spouse.
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Now we could be a little more specific that there are cases of abandonment, plain and simple, which prove that one who had made a profession is really no believer at all.
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And so that's a roundabout way of saying abandonment or desertion. But here we're really hugging 1
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Corinthians 7, which I'll read in a moment. The abandonment or desertion or departing of an unbelieving spouse toward a believing spouse.
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And then we conclude that paragraph by saying divorce must never be considered as a solution to marital conflicts between a
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Christian husband and a Christian wife. All right, divorce is not breaking the glass case and slamming the red button.
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This is not how marital intrigue, marital difficulty is dealt with. You don't clobber each other with the looming possibility of divorce when there's no biblical warrant, when there's no biblical grounds for such.
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That has to be clear. Now, I want you to notice that a lot of the details about that statement, as well as a lot of the debate about divorce throughout church history, really centers on the application of 1
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Corinthians 7, in conjunction with Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 16, and so forth.
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So 1 Corinthians 7, we read before I approached this morning, 1 Corinthians 7, beginning in verse 10.
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Paul says, to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord. In other words, this is what the Lord himself has taught expressly.
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A wife is not to depart from her husband. But even if she does depart, now just pause there.
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Already, Paul is giving a command in a way that is perhaps surprising to us.
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Here is what the Lord commands. A wife is not to depart her husband. But if she does depart, let her...
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Wait, I just thought you said the Lord gave a command, and you said that command is for a wife not to depart.
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I think your very next sentence is, well, if she does depart, let her do this. So Paul is already qualifying the command, or we could say making a concession.
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This is what some New Testament scholars call the Pauline privilege of 1 Corinthians 7. Not to the married
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I command, yet not I, but the Lord. A wife is not to depart from her husband. You begin there.
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That is the foundation. God hates divorce. But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.
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A husband is not to divorce his wife. In other words, it's the same for the husband. Now, this is very significant because as we see in Matthew 5,
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Matthew 19, the parallels in Mark 10, Luke 16, as we see from Deuteronomy 24, where they're all drawing from, it's all put in the position of the husband.
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The husband is the one who will make a decision about divorce. That's true in terms of the
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Jewish culture. By the time you get to the Corinthians, what we know about Romans is the wife could sue for divorce, too.
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It wasn't just the husbands that were pushing divorce, it was the wives that were pushing for divorce, too. And so Paul here lays out, wives, you should not separate from your husbands.
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This is a privilege that wasn't thought of in Jewish culture, that the wife could actually pursue divorce in this way.
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And so Paul says, a wife is not to depart from her husband. Neither is a husband to depart from his wife. And he says, in fact, and he's speaking to the church, if there's a separation, if things are so bad, so volatile, that a separation is warranted, then they must remain unmarried or be reconciled.
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Now he presses further, to the rest. Now he's speaking not to those who are married within the church, but to those who have a marriage that stretches beyond the church.
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To the rest, I, not the Lord, say, if any brother has a wife who does not believe, and I want you to note those words, you're gonna see this as a constant refrain.
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If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her.
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13, and a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him.
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For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.
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Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they're holy. But, if the unbeliever departs, let him depart.
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A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace.
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For do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?
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See, Paul's main concern here is about the way that the gospel is going to inhabit the marital relationship.
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He says, in the case of those who are married in the church as professing believers, they cannot separate.
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They must stay together. If things are so volatile, so messy, so ugly, that there must be a time of separation, they cannot go anywhere else.
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They cannot remarry. They either remain unmarried, in other words, remain separate from one another, or they reconcile.
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However, if there's a marriage where one has come to faith, and now there's an unequal yoking, the believer must do everything they can to remain within that marriage.
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They have no grounds to separate, unless the biblical grounds becomes a warrant. In that case, they must abide by their marital commitment, unless the unbeliever wants out.
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If the unbeliever wants out, then let them go, and you're free. You're not under bondage in such cases.
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And though there's debate about that, I would argue verse 15 implies remarriage. So you're not in bondage.
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You're free, in that sense. But notice Paul's language. I love verse 16, this little rhetorical twist.
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For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? How do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?
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Do you see what he's doing there rhetorically? He's reminding them of their marital commitment as he addresses them.
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How do you know, wife? You are married. You do have a husband. How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?
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That's why you should stay in your marriage. Because you are married. How do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
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Do you see what he's doing? He's reaffirming the marital commitment, reaffirming the tie. So he begins with God's affirmation for marriage, a spouse is not to depart.
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That's what the Lord expressly teaches. That's Matthew 5 writ large. He then moves to the case of an unequally yoked marriage stemming from a later conversion.
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You don't have two professing believers where they're going, you know, I'm just so much more sanctified and therefore I've become unequally yoked.
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No, if there's anything of a profession of faith, then there's no biblical grounds for separation.
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Paul very clearly urges spouses that are unequally yoked because of one having faith and one being an unbeliever not to divorce the unbelieving spouse.
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That's clearly his intention. 1 Peter 3 says the same thing to wives. You get the sense in the early church that generally speaking that the women were converted.
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Isn't that true of Timothy's own profession? It was his grandmother, his mother. We have no idea where his father was or what he was up to or whatnot.
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It was generally speaking a lot of matrilineal conversions in the early church.
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1 Peter 3 assumes that wives that are married to unbelievers are given the same advice. Be subject to your own husbands, even if they don't obey the word, that they might be one without a word by the conduct of the wife.
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So rather than seeking for an opportunity to get out of the relationship, if only I could have a Christian marriage, Paul, like Peter, says, no, this is about salvation.
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You don't know whether God will be pleased to use you to bring your spouse to faith.
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You don't know, wife, you don't know, husband, what the Lord's intentions are. So be faithful, be committed, be patient, be merciful, be winsome.
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That's the Lord's command. Now of interest here, of course, is verse 15. If the unbeliever departs, let him depart.
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A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. This is essentially where the next qualification for divorce is given.
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This is desertion or abandonment. If they depart, if they abandon you, if they desert you, you're not under bondage.
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In other words, this is a biblical grounds for divorce. The marriage union is dissolved and a remarriage can be granted and upheld in holiness.
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Now, it's not always appreciated how broadly the Puritans applied this category of desertion.
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It's not contained within our confession of faith, as we say. And perhaps the most we can say is the biblical grounds for divorce are sexual immorality and abandonment or desertion.
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But the Puritans had a lot to say about desertion. They had a lot to say about what qualifies as abandonment.
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And especially, this may be surprising to, depending on your view of patriarchy, it may be shocking to you how certain 17th and 18th century views would seem surprisingly egalitarian in the nature of the cases.
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Beginning with Thomas Cranmer, his circle of influence, Peter Martyr Vermiglie, Martin Busser, as they sought to address reformation in the church according to marriage and divorce.
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And so the beginning push is there. And then you come to Richard Baxter, who in his encyclopedic
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Christian directory lays out almost every perceivable case of what constitutes desertion.
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And that includes even being driven away by cruelty. That's Richard Baxter. In other words, that a husband or a wife is so cruel, so fierce, so hostile in an unrepentant and willful way that this would constitute on the part of the inflictors a sense of desertion or abandonment of the marriage or the marital duty.
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So there's broad, perhaps too broad of a view of abandonment here. Now, these took a long time to enter into civil law.
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It begins in the church and it takes a long time to seep into the civil courts.
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And as it began to seep into the civil courts, it then went way too far, far beyond what the scriptures hold out.
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In fact, in England, as Peter Masters points out, for a long time, divorce was only a privilege for the wealthy, for the elite class.
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Up until 1857, you had to have a private act of parliament to gain a divorce.
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That's how serious marriage was taken. A private act of parliament to grant an annulment or a divorce.
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After 1857, people could petition for divorce on the grounds of adultery.
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It was only much later, actually 1937, that the ground of desertion or cruelty or insanity was granted as a grounds for divorce.
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And then in 1969, the law was changed so that marriage could be annulled or a divorce could be granted if it had broken down in some irretrievable way as a result of even having a period of separation.
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You've been separated long enough. You're practically divorced. We're just going to grant you the divorce. Even without a sufficient grounds.
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And then after 1969, by the time you get to the 1990s, anything goes. You don't need a reason at all.
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As long as you both agree you want a divorce, that's good enough for the courts. So this is where we've gone in the past 200 years.
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Christians are not to play into this degradation of marriage. At the same time, Christians need to understand there are legitimate grounds for divorce.
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This is the hardest thing to wrap our minds around. We don't want to play into the degradation of marriage, which a casual, lax understanding of divorce plays into it.
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It hollows out what marriage really is. But at the same time, one of the ways you uphold the high and holy calling of marriage is by understanding the legitimacy of divorce.
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Moses permits divorce. Jesus seems to uphold that permission when he says, any reason except sexual immorality.
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In other words, that is a sufficient reason to divorce. Instead of trying to find loopholes, on the one hand, in God's commands, we want to shout from the rooftops about the holiness of marriage.
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We want that display case of Christ's relationship to his church to be bright and luminous. We know how winsome that is to a culture that has no understanding of what it means for a man to deny himself and give himself over for a wife, for a wife to deny herself and become one, as it were, a help meat to her head.
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The culture has completely lost that picture. So we know how winsome, how powerful that is. But at the same time, one of the ways that we uphold the holiness, the calling of marriage is by understanding the legitimacy of divorce.
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Now, let me just make one aside. From our book of order, we say, and this is very important for 1
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Corinthians, any divorce and subsequent remarriage that occurred before a person became a
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Christian. In other words, the situation of the Corinthians, you had two pagans that got married and one of them converts, and Paul is saying in chapter 7, here's how to deal with that.
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Well, what about, what about the person who had been a pagan is now a Christian? How do they regard their own divorce if it comes?
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Maybe they were divorced far before they became a Christian, a divorce and years later down the road, the Lord finds them and they become a believer.
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How are they to understand that? Well, this is really dealt with in chapter 6. As Paul talks about some in the
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Corinthian congregation being fornicators, adulterers, in other words, those who really should have been if they weren't truly divorced.
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And Paul says, but you were washed, you were cleansed, you were sanctified. And so any divorce or remarriage which occurred before conversion is considered forgiven, cleansed, washed.
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It's part of a past life. And so that sin is not held to account.
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God has seen fit to cleanse, to cancel the guilt, and so the church does as well, Christians do as well.
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That's not something that's held. However, that doesn't mean that Christians are unaffected by their past.
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Christians are those who are always affected by their past. It's not just my present sins that are ever before me, it's also my past sins.
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How could I have been like that? How could I have done that? I shouldn't feel the guilt. The enemy can use that as a foothold to torment the conscience, but I should allow it to bear the fruit of humility.
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I should allow that the sorrow of what I was before Christ to bring the beauty of what I am now in Christ.
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So as believers, we're wholly different. It's not just because we now have a transformed life as new creations in Christ Jesus, but it's also because of the humility that is borne out in our walks as a result of having a life apart from him.
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We know what it was like to run in that same flood of dissipation. That's why we're humble and meek.
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That's why we're poor in spirit. That's why we're able to be merciful. All the things we saw from the
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Beatitudes. We also know that the remnants of sin remain. We know that new believers will seek not to be callous, but part of that means they'll never justify past sinfulness.
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No, all's well that ends well. No, there'll be sorrow for those scars, even though there's tremendous healing and transformation in Christ.
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And so again, the godly resolve is born out of a recognition that although I am forgiven, cleansed, freed in Christ Jesus, there are consequences to sin and our lives are still in some ways marked by it.
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Now, when it comes to divorce in our church, this is the practice that follows. If there is some reason within a marriage for a member to seek divorce, elders are responsible to investigate, to adjudicate whether or not there is a biblical ground for divorce.
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And of course, the whole time along in seeking to address this, we're seeking to do everything in our power to affect reconciliation.
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Let there be peace, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. This is the desire. You do everything in your power to affect reconciliation.
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However, there may be biblical grounds for divorce and a divorce may be granted and therefore remarriage may be permitted.
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Nevertheless, remarriage is pursued with caution. The church would do what it can to make sure that patience and proper counsel is given and that there's absolutely no circumstance which could preclude reconciliation in that dissolving marriage.
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That's what the church aims for. But recognize, a biblical ground is a biblical ground. Now, we know that divorce is the fruit of hard -heartedness.
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We know that one party may be innocent and therefore the church has an obligation to treat the innocent party as innocent.
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This is not something that churches do well. We tend to guilt trip people into, how could you not forgive?
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How could you not forgive? How could you not forgive? How could you even be a Christian if you don't forgive? And of course, the answer to that is,
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I've forgiven, I just no longer desire to walk in this marriage. In other words, forgiveness does not equal abiding in the marriage covenant.
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When there's a biblical ground for divorce, it's simply the will of the innocent party whether they'll continue in that marriage covenant.
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I'm going to elaborate this in a moment, but I want to make that clear. It is wrong for a church, it is wrong to somehow have the specter of church discipline or utilize church influence in a way that says, you have not really forgiven the wrong of the spouse if you don't abide in your marriage.
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There's a biblical grounds for divorce that also upholds the high and holy calling of marriage. Therefore, no guilt should be cast on the part of the innocent party.
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When there is a biblical grounds for divorce, they're not treated as a second class citizen. They're not treated as second class
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Christians. They're not viewed condescendingly as somehow unbelieving or callous. This is to take marriage seriously.
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This is to take the marriage covenant seriously. Of course, the innocent spouse should seek reconciliation and be sought to seek reconciliation, but not compelled, not leveraged as if they're doing something wrong.
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For the spouse who has been wronged, forgiveness should be evident and that may take time, which is why these things are dealt with patiently.
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They're not rushed. The feeling of a moment, the feeling of a season may not last, and yet foolish decisions and resolves can be made in that season.
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So the church is very patient, very prayerful when this heartbreak arises. But again, the marriage is a separate issue from forgiveness.
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The marital commitment, the renewal, the reconciliation is a separate matter. Even forgiven sins still have consequences.
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That's the point. And the consequence could well be the end of the marriage altogether.
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Martyn Lloyd -Jones makes this point crystal clear. Now, he's speaking specifically of adultery. And again, I'm going to qualify this in a moment, but let me just get it out.
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Martyn Lloyd -Jones, in his great explication of the Sermon on the Mount, he says adultery breaks the marriage relationship.
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And if the husband has been guilty of adultery, the wife is no longer bound to give him obedience in all things. She can divorce him.
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She's allowed to do so by scripture. She's entitled to do so because adultery breaks the unity, breaks the relationship.
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They're now separate. They're no longer one. He's broken the unity. He's gone out of it. So we cannot interpret this scripture as teaching that the wife is thus irrevocably, inevitably bound to an adulterous husband for the rest of her life.
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She may choose to be, but that is for her to decide. Scripture does not command it. Scripture does not make it inevitable.
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Now, that's right on. R .C. Sproul, very passionate on this point as well. And you can trust these men, these ministers, were dealing with a lot of these issues firsthand.
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It's for the innocent party to decide. However, several things must be taken into account.
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Wronged spouses must guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Satan loves to take the tragedy of one person's sin and spread it around until we're all sort of infested with sin.
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Wronged spouses must guard their hearts and minds. Bitterness and hatred will almost invariably be the result of betrayal.
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And bitterness and hatred are always, always, always sinful. Remember what
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Jesus says, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to divorce your wives.
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Now, clearly, that's an immediate reference to the hardness of the heart of the offending one. But it can also apply to the one who's been offended.
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Their heart can grow hard. Their heart can grow callous. They can start breeding resentment.
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And this, too, goes against God's desire. There's biblical grounds so that this won't fester, so this won't become a stumbling block to a life of faith.
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But it must be done biblically, patiently, consciously, prayerfully. The concession, of course, is not a loophole.
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It's not something that Jesus is granting. In fact, when Jesus is talking about the hardness of the heart, he's referencing
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Jeremiah 3. He's using specific language from Jeremiah and his prophecy against Israel and against Judah.
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Behind Jesus' answer in Matthew 19, because of the hardness of your hearts, Moses permitted divorce,
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Deuteronomy 24. That's taken up out of this prophetic denunciation. And in some ways,
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Jesus is pointing to the larger ramifications of how God has dealt with an adulterous partner in a covenant relationship.
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That's Jeremiah 3. In Jeremiah 3, God warns Judah that judgment is coming unless she repents.
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He reminds her that he has been a covenant husband to her. With the same language we see in, for example, Isaiah 54,
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Ezekiel 16. God, as a husband, wants to shower her with blessings. This is what
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I sought to be to you. This is what I want for you. This is what I long for. And yet, the bride of the
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Lord prostitutes herself toward other gods, becomes uncallous, unfeeling, unthoughtful toward him and the relationship she has with him.
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And so, Jeremiah is taking up this language of Deuteronomy 24 when he prosecutes
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Judah's faithlessness. Interestingly, in Jeremiah 3, the term that Jesus uses because of sexual morality, that's right there in the
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Greek translation of Jeremiah 3, pornea. That's Israel's sin. Because she took her uncleanness lightly, he says, and polluted the land.
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Because she took her immorality carelessly and polluted the land. That's verse 9.
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Repeatedly, Judah's sin is seen as this adultery in the marriage relationship. And that's why, in the language of Jeremiah 3,
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God sends a certificate of divorce. In other words, the whole prophecy of Jeremiah, this prophetic rebuke, is being taken as a certificate of divorce.
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Here's the grounds for divorce. Here's what you've been to me. Here's why I'm going to send you away. Now here, being put away is not necessarily being put out of the marital bed or the marital home.
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It's actually being put out of the land altogether. This is, in other words, the threat of exile. God is sending away his adulterous wife.
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And the reason given, the summary statement for chapter 3 is found in chapter 4, verse 4.
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It's because of the hardness of the heart. That's what Jesus is referencing. The same term is used in Greek.
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Because of the hardness of her heart, God is putting her away in divorce.
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So if divorces must happen at all, we recognize it happens because of this hardness of heart.
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It happens because of this careless, thoughtless, unfeeling act of treachery.
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It persists in unrepentance. That's clear from Jeremiah 3.
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And for that reason, churches, again, we don't have confessional statements, but local churches draft statements on divorce.
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And many of them, appealing to Jeremiah 3, they recognize the nature of this persistent, willful rebellion on the part of the adulterous partner.
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And they say, therefore, the grounds biblically for divorce are persistent, willful rebellion, persistent unrepentance.
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That's a biblical ground. I think that goes too far. The context is brought to bear.
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I'll just give you one example of many. So John Piper, who's very outspoken on this, and I disagree with his take entirely, but they drafted in the late 2000s a statement on divorce.
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And in part, the elders of Bethlehem came up with this. Divorce may be permitted when a spouse decisively and physically deserts the relationship, commits repeated unrepentant adultery, or is guilty of protracted unrepentant life endangerment.
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Now, on a whole, that's a good statement, but I think they err. They go too far by saying repeated unrepentant adultery.
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That's going beyond Scripture, frankly. It implies that divorce is illegitimate unless there is a repetition of unrepentant adultery.
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That's not what Scripture says. It simply says because of sexual morality. That's a biblical ground.
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We have to be clear with that. That's a biblical ground. Such is the high and holy calling of marriage.
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So the high and holy calling of marriage is not just reinforced by how we talk about marriage or how we deal with marriages.
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It's also in how we talk about divorce and how we deal with divorce. And the reason
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I want to make this point clear is because the shock value of that. Oh, it's not repeated like Judah's adultery.
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It's not repetitious. It's not unrepentant. What about, you know, he's repentant now. Therefore, you cannot divorce him.
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That's going beyond Scripture. Again, it's on the part of the innocent party's decision. It's on the part of the commitment of the innocent party.
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Whether they will or not retain that marital commitment. And the reason I want to allow that shock value to rest is because of where we just were in Matthew 5.
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Think of how abominable sexual immorality is to God. When God is the one who says,
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I hate divorce in Malachi 2. And then says, but you can do it if there's sexual morality.
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So how much does God abhor sexual morality? No wonder Jesus says you have to gouge out your eye and cut off your arm if you'd enter the kingdom.
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So it's not because we take marriage too loosely. Or we think of divorce too highly. It's because we don't think of sexual morality enough.
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This applies not only to marriage then, but personal holiness. Sexual immorality is the evil that God abhors.
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Men only are concerned about the marital commitment. What am I obligated to? How long do I have to put up with this? God's concerned about the holiness.
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Are you immoral? Are your hands clean? Is your heart pure? Who dares ascend the holy hill?
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That's God's concern. A marriage is meant to be the promotion of these very things.
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The help, the comfort in the midst of the difficulty and the struggle. But the high and holy calling of marriage is such that divorce can be granted because of sexual immorality.
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And there's no guilt. There's no shock. There's no, you're just not forgiving enough.
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It was righteous to do so. Joseph was righteous to seek to put away Mary.
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That's what Luke 2 says. I want to be crystal clear about this. But having said all that,
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I need to be very clear about something else. If you're the wronged spouse, if immorality has become an aspect of your marriage, a painful part of your relationship with your spouse, and you have chosen to forgive them, forgive them.
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Forgive them. This is not a whip you take out every three years when you're having some blowout argument.
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The one thing you'll never let go. Don't you glorify God that He doesn't treat us like that? That isn't, say, nine years later, you know what?
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I just woke up in a foul mood. I'm going to remind you of everything you were before I took you to myself.
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I'm going to remind you of all your failures, of all your shortfalls, and I'm going to punish you for them.
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I'm going to be distant, I'm going to be cold, just because I'm struggling to get over it. Aren't you glad that you serve and worship a
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God who says, as far as east is from the west, that's how I deal with your sin. So if you have chosen to forgive, which is your prerogative if you're the wronged spouse, but if you take that prerogative to stay, then forgive.
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This is not a whip you take out at your convenience. This is not the lingering cloud or elephant in the room that you can use to somehow give yourself leverage, to somehow alleviate yourself of your own struggles and failures in your marriage.
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If you forgive, forgive. I remember seeing a dissolving marriage early on as a young man, and it was of close family members, ones that early on Elisha and I had spent a lot of time with.
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We were in their home quite often. In a lot of ways, they were used to kind of formulate our relationship together. But there had been adultery on the part of the wife, and the husband, who didn't really seem to be a believer, the wife at the time, she's not today, claimed to be a believer, seemed to be a believer, and they both were working through the marriage.
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The husband seemed to want to reconcile, but was struggling. The wife almost beat him over the head.
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Instead of showing any sort of remorse or humility, it's almost like, hey, I'm forgiven, get with the program. Jesus forgives me, now you forgive me.
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And she would actually be more upset at him than upset about her failures against him. And so when it came time to them to go to pastoral counseling, one of the insights that I overheard that had been given to this man, who wasn't sort of Roman Catholic, seemed to be concerned about spiritual things, but by no means was a believer, the marital counseling that was given to them was, well, basically she has to grovel now.
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That is horrible advice. That's misleading to her and to him.
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Now, I can understand why it's given. She's showing no humility at all. It's almost like she was completely and entirely unsympathetic to how it had affected him, and therefore their marriage.
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But he was seeking to reconcile. But this advice was given, well, basically now you've kind of got her around your finger.
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Now she kind of owes you. Now she kind of has to grovel before you. No. If you have chosen to stay in the marriage, you forgive.
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She doesn't owe you anything. You've chosen to remain in this commitment. You're choosing to be a husband to her.
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She doesn't owe you anything. So if you choose to forgive, then forgive.
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But if you're the one receiving that forgiveness, be humble. Be humble.
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The wrong spouse is not to use past sins as a constant whip. At the same time, where reconciliation is sought, resentment may remain.
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Resentment lingers. Satan knows how to flood our memories, flood our thoughts. And so that means that even when you do decide,
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I want to remain, even when you do say, I'm going to forgive, even when you're seeking reconciliation, it may be really hard.
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And that may mean that you're doing well for a season, then another season, struggles are bringing up old memories and old wounds, and you need some help.
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You need some counsel. And so realize in this church, you have people that want to sympathize, want to help.
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But with that, let me say, when at times people are struggling, they don't believe that counsel or help is really going to make a difference, and therefore they don't seek it.
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And I would say those people grossly underestimate how God will use fellowship, accountability, counsel, and prayer in their life to deal with their sins.
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OK? So on the one hand, people that don't seek help grossly underestimate help. On the other hand, people who find this cycle, this recurring cycle of struggle, may be grossly overestimating counsel.
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In other words, they're receiving counsel. They're seeking the help. It's been 19 years, and they still can't get over it.
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And at that point, it's not the counsel that you need. You just need to do the work. Put into practice the things you've received.
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Counseling will not do the work for you, so don't overestimate it. But if you're struggling, you may need help.
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Don't underestimate it. You'll need to walk in forgiveness one way or the other, and the only way you can walk in forgiveness is by clinging to the forgiveness of Christ.
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And sometimes the best counsel is just the people that will help point you to Christ, help you draw a little bit closer to Him.
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He is the great physician for all of the woes and troubles of our marriage. And let me just encourage you as well.
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It's not that God in callousness says, here's my certificate of divorce, this oracle from Jeremiah the prophet.
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I can't wait to send you away from me. That's not the heart of God. In fact, in the very act of giving the rebuke to Judah and Israel, God is also pledging
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His mercy toward them. It's one of the most profound things about Jeremiah 3. Three times, and remember the emphasis in Hebrew.
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Repetition equals emphasis. Numerology may be important. There's threefold emphasis, three times.
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As the Lord is rebuking His faithless wife, He says, return to me. Here's my certificate of divorce.
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I'm taking you out of the land. Won't you come back to me? It's essentially the heart of God.
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They say if a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's, can he return to her again? Wouldn't the land be greatly polluted?
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That's Deuteronomy 24. That's exactly the concern of Deuteronomy 24. Can't send you away and then take you back.
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That's defilement. That's abominable. And yet, you've played the harlot with many lovers,
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He says. And what does He say right after that? Return to me. I'm willing to take on the pollution and the defilement.
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Such is my commitment to you. Return to me, He says. And then again, verse 12.
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Return. Backsliding Israel, says the Lord. I won't cause my anger to fall on you. I'm merciful.
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I won't remain angry forever. In other words, He's saying, I'm angry, I'm impassioned at the moment.
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Such is my zeal for you, my desire for you. But come back. I won't be angry for long.
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Verse 14. Return, the third time. Oh, backsliding children, says the
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Lord. Because I'm married to you. The divorce certificate threatens.
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The exile judgment is going to come. God will not dissolve His marital covenant.
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God will not allow His anger to overtake His mercy.
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Return, He says. Return, He says. Return, He says. So on the one hand, the high and holy calling of marriage is held forth by a husband and a wife selflessly, sacrificially loving one another and their commitment to the
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Lord and to the commitment of building a home and fueling, as it were, godliness into the generations to come.
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That's a tremendous display of the high and holy calling of marriage. On the other hand, where sexual morality or abandonment has dissolved that marital union, the high and holy calling of marriage is reinforced by a biblically grounded divorce.
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We have to be clear about that. Yet, I'm convinced the
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Gospel never shines more glorious than when a faithless, immoral, defiling spouse hears the loving, merciful, patient call of her lover, return to me.
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I'm married to you. Come back to me. And isn't that the heart of our
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Father? Listen, if you believe you can be happier outside of the will of God, then you are held captive to a lie of Satan.
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If you have some willful desire in your flesh to find a reason to break away from your marital commitment, if you're convinced somehow it would be so much better apart from them, with someone else, in some other direction, then
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Satan has a hold of your mind, has a hold of your heart. And God is not mocked. Whatever you sow is what you're going to reap.
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And so you can't think, I married the wrong person. I was so young, and I was so ignorant, and yeah,
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I guess we're believers now, but things could have been so different and so much farther along than they were, and it was just a big mistake.
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And if I could do it all over again, I would do it all over again. Well, the person that God wanted you to be with is the person that you're with.
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And so if you're struggling with these thoughts of resentment, or doubt, or discouragement, you need to own those, acknowledge them before the
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Lord, and say, Lord, help me to be what you want me to be in this marriage. And as far as it depends on me, let me be the very means that I might save or further sanctify my spouse.
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That has to be your heart. If you feel somehow, but you don't understand, that all around me
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I see these tokens of love and these marriages that seem to be flowering, and there's just no love in my marriage. And I know that God wants me to be happy.
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Well, he does, but not in a direct way, or at least not at first.
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God far more wants you to be holy. Only then can you really be happy. And so if you feel somehow the love is gone,
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I don't have those romantic feelings that I once had, when it was so easy to make the vow, and now it's painful to keep it.
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But you recognize that this is what Christ has called you to. You love your spouse. If you can't love them as your spouse, you love them for the sake of Christ.
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You love them out of obedience to your true husband. You trust that God will help as you seek to love them for Christ's sake, that Christ himself will give you a sincere love.
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And there's no shortage of testimonies in church history of this being the case. And I mentioned
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John and Susanna Wesley. Just cast them out of your mind. You love your spouse out of obedience to Christ, and out of that same obedience, a sincere love, a sincere desire for your spouse will soon take root in your own heart.
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Bonhoeffer said so well, it's no longer your love that sustains your marriage, but your marriage that sustains your love.
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It's the fact that you've committed yourself. You said, I am yours and you are mine. Come what may.
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That your heart is ever like the Lord's. Return to me. Whenever you seem cold, whenever you seem away, whenever you seem distant, whenever you're struggling, my heart for you is return to me.
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That's the heart. It's the heart of the prodigal's father. You know,
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I love Luke 15, but every analogy breaks down somewhere. Luke 15, it's the son that eventually returns to the father's house.
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And of course, as soon as he catches sight of him, the father's out running. And we go, oh, what an amazing sight, the father running out to receive his repentant son.
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But we know the Gospel goes so much deeper than that. It's not that God is passively waiting, saying, oh,
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I hope he'll return, I hope he'll return, I hope he'll return. It's the God who goes out to the far country himself.
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The father who says, I will seek and save my son who is lost. I'll scoop him up.
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Though he is in rebellion against me, I'll bring him to myself. I'll carry him away to my house. That beautiful hymn,
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I sought the Lord. Afterward I knew, it was not I but thou that seekest me. And perhaps you're struggling this morning and you're thinking, well, my whole marriage feels hopeless.
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My past sins, my past failures, the immorality and uncleanness that I've brought in, that's ever hovering over me.
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It's staining my conscience. It's making my marriage unbearable. Even the best of marriages have these seasons, have these downturns, have these stains and wounds and scars.
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And let this never become an excuse to depart. For your happiness consists in God's call on your life and nothing else.
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If your happiness is subject to your circumstance, I would argue it's not a real godly form of happiness.
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The joy and the peace that you can have in Christ will transcend even the most difficult, troubling, wounding marriage you could possibly have.
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And so put your hope in the only place it can actually be satisfied. Put your hope in the
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Lord. Don't put your hope in an earthly marriage. Don't put your hope in a different spouse. Don't put your hope in a divorce proceeding.
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Don't put your hope in anything but what the Lord has done, will do, undertakes to do for you in your marriage.
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Trust Him and reflect His faithfulness, His heart to return to the very end.
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Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank
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You for Your Word. Lord, I know You're dealing with us all in different ways this morning.
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I pray for those in this church that are, as it were, going through it, Lord. Minister to them.
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Help those, Lord, who need help but are reticent to receive it, to reach out.
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Help those, Lord, who are receiving help or have in the past to put into practice what they've received.
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May Your Gospel shine underneath and through and beyond all of these things.
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May we never forget that every marriage is meant to be an illustration of the perfect marriage we have with You.
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Our heavenly bridegroom awaiting the marriage supper of the Lamb. And therefore, Lord, may no disappointments, no failures or shortfalls ever truly discourage us toward hopelessness or faithlessness.
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But may we press on and endure in faith. Lord, I pray for those who are married,
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Lord, perhaps in a season of peace and happiness, Lord. Reinforce them. We know that storms come.
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Perhaps, Lord, they're still walking in the humility of past seasons of strife.
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I pray, Lord, as this new year begins, that we'd see the marriages in this church grow in maturity and sanctification and self -sacrifice.
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I pray, Lord, for the marriages that are forming even now, about to be, or marriages that will be, perhaps unknown even to the people in these rows,
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Lord. Might You prepare their hearts. Might You help them to see the high and holy calling of marriage.
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And Lord, as I even anticipate gathering with my brothers tomorrow night to talk about purity and cleanliness,
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Lord, may You remind us of how seriously You take sexual morality. Will my brothers in this room,
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Lord, who perhaps had begun to put the saw to their elbow, not cease to do so now that it has passed.
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May we ever be about the high and holy calling upon our lives for the sake of the one who loved us and gave