Sunday Sermon: What Jesus Said About Divorce (Matthew 5:31-32)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. In Matthew chapter 5 verses 31 to 32, this is

Matthew writing the words of our Lord Christ. It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, as we come to these scriptures today, I pray that we would have the mind of Christ and not the mind of a man.

This is a subject that has particular sensitivity to it and may be very personal to a lot of us.

We come to this text this morning with some preconceived notions, our own opinions, maybe an idea of what we think this text says or what we want it to say, but I pray that would not be the attitude of our heart.

Our desire first and foremost is to honor God and to sit under the authority of Your Word.

We don't try to put ourselves over Your Word, but we come into submission to what

You have said through Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Convict our hearts this morning, forgive us of our sins, and lead us in the way of truth according to Your Word.

Help us to know how to speak the truth in love to one another so that we may be of mutual benefit to the body of Christ, Your bride, the church.

We pray these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. I don't know where I was in my study of the book of Matthew before I realized that some of the topics that I was going to be preaching on as we go through a series in Matthew were going to be some of the hardest hitting sermons that I've had to preach, particularly with the subject of divorce.

This is one that we've addressed before, but not with the directness that is given here by Christ.

And there are two places in Matthew's gospel where Jesus addresses this subject.

Here in Matthew 5, verses 31 and 32, and then we see it come up again in Matthew chapter 19.

And we're going to look at both of those passages this morning. God willing, we'll come back to this again when we get to Matthew 19.

But I want to begin today by understanding both a cultural and a biblical definition of divorce.

Then we're going to take a closer examination of our text, just these two verses today. And then finally, we're going to draw out some practical applications.

But first let's get really basic. What is divorce?

Well, very simply, divorce is the end of a marriage. The dictionary defines divorce this way, a judicial declaration dissolving a marriage in whole or in part.

That was new to me. I didn't know that you could have a partway divorce, but especially one that releases the marriage partners from all matrimonial obligations.

We as Christians hold to a biblical definition of marriage, also known as the true definition of marriage as God has created it.

A marriage is the covenant union of one man and one woman for life. So if we have a biblical definition of marriage, we must also have a biblical definition of divorce, which is to break that covenant between a husband and a wife.

There are some 30 passages in the Bible addressing the subject of divorce, and none of them regard divorce as a good thing.

It is regarded as grievous as death, for that's what divorce is.

It is the death of a marriage. But we believe in a

God who raises the dead, and God can also revive a marriage that we might look at and otherwise think of as doomed.

If you live in a bad marriage, trust in the God who saves. Maybe your spouse has already abandoned you.

Maybe your spouse hasn't physically left you, but they've divorced from you emotionally.

Maybe your spouse has been unfaithful. Maybe your parents got divorced, and you don't feel like you've ever really recovered from that.

I tell you to trust in the God who is always faithful, who will never leave you nor forsake you.

Maybe you have been through a divorce. You must humble yourself before the Lord. If you have recognized your sin in the matter and have been convicted in your heart,

Jesus died on the cross even for the sin of divorce. Turn to Him in repentance, and He will forgive you.

Desire to walk in the way of Christ on the path of righteousness and holiness. Never think of the grace of God as permission to get a divorce.

Make no mistake. The Scripture is clear on this. God hates divorce.

Malachi 2, verse 16 says, and this is in the New American Standard, For I hate divorce, says the

Lord, the God of Israel, and Him who covers His garment with wrong, says the

Lord of hosts. So take heed to your spirit that you do not deal treacherously.

Now here in our passage this morning, as Jesus is addressing the subject of divorce, just these two verses, you might have noticed that there was an exception that was given.

Everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality.

We'll examine that further as we continue. In our considerations, let us desire first and foremost to uphold the

Word of God as our utmost authority. We want to know what God has said about this subject, not what we want

Him to say. Now, whenever the subject of divorce comes up, you almost always hear this statistic.

50 % of all marriages in America end in divorce. That statistic is not true.

According to a 2017 article in the New York Post, which just happened to be an article about the split between the movie stars

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, but there were some divorce facts in the article as well. The peak of the divorce rate occurred with the baby boomer splits in the 1980s, and that's where we got that 50 % of all marriages end in divorce statistic from.

But it's been on a steady decline ever since. Still, of the couples who married in the 90s, almost 35 % of them ended in divorce.

One of the reasons that statistic isn't higher than it is, is because more and more

Americans aren't even getting married at all. Divorce is a practice that is so prevalent in our culture, it has its own cottage industry.

The dissolving of marriages and the division of property and earnings is a $50 billion a year industry.

And that's not even counting the amount of money that it costs our economy every year.

Of course, there are divorce lawyers who make a lucrative living out of divorce litigation.

There's even a market for throwing your own divorce party. I did a search for divorce party on Amazon, and there are all kinds of divorce party favors with such heartwarming messages like, not untied, free at last, and the end of an error.

You can purchase a banner that says, just divorced. Your former groomsman can wear badges that say, divorce party support crew.

Your former bridesmaids can order shirts that say, we never liked him anyway. You can buy divorced hats, divorced mugs, divorced balloons.

There's even a I hate my ex -husband coloring book, sweary midnight edition, a swear word adult coloring book of 40 funny relatable breakup insults.

This is not merely off in a dark corner of the culture somewhere. This is right smack dab in the middle of pop culture.

Tabloid newspapers would not even exist if not for superstar divorces and reporting on who got what.

When pop star Robin Thicke divorced his wife in 2014, he threw himself a divorce party.

When musician Jack White and his wife Karen Elson got a divorce, they invited friends to a divorce ceremony, which took place on what would have been their sixth wedding anniversary.

The invitation read, please help us celebrate together this anniversary of the making and breaking of the sacred union of marriage with our best friends and animals.

I find it hard to believe that they really thought of marriage as being something sacred. But for all of the culture's attempts to dress this up or celebrate it or even make divorce into something fun, anyone who has ever been through a divorce or knows somebody who's been through a divorce, no one would really say that this is any fun.

Does anyone get into marriage thinking, meh, I can always get divorced later?

No, people get married thinking that their love is the greatest love that has ever been loved and no one has ever loved you like I've loved you and ours is the greatest love above every other love that's ever been and on and on it goes.

That's how we think of the love that we enter into marriage with.

We have the greatest love. Even our secularist culture understands this.

Marriage is meant to be something permanent and unbroken.

John Mayer has a song called Home Life in which he sings, I can tell you this much,

I will marry just once and if it doesn't work out, give her half of my stuff.

It's fine with me. We said eternity. Now, excusing the nonchalant line, it's fine with me,

I believe that Mayer recognizes that marriage is supposed to be a lifelong covenant, an oath bound relationship between a husband and a wife.

He recognizes this so much that if it doesn't work out, I'm not going to marry anybody else.

Our understanding of this covenant relationship is why marriage ceremonies almost universally include the giving of an oath or the exchange of vows and these vows traditionally declare you and no other to have and to hold from this day forward for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.

That is God's intention for marriage. And dare I say, I believe this is bound up in human nature, the way that God has created humanity even to think about marriage.

We should be able to understand through general revelation the lifelong commitment that marriage is supposed to be.

We were not meant for serial relationships or jumping in and out of one another's beds.

That is nothing but selfish. Humanity cannot survive that kind of carelessness.

Marriage is the foundation of a solid family. And you know, without me having to tell you, families are families for better or worse of all the different relationships that exist in a family.

Whether you're talking about brothers and sisters, mothers to their children, fathers to their children, grandparents to grandchildren, there is no relationship that exists in the dynamic of family that we believe that we can dissolve except for marriage.

We think that's the one we have control over, that's the one we can break up. But it doesn't change the fact that a family is still a family.

Without families, there's no community. Without communities, there's no society.

The family is still the basic building block of civilization. And this

Wuhan virus pandemic, I believe, has served to make that all the more apparent. A loving family begins with a loving marriage, a husband and a wife committed to one another for life.

We get this. We just don't want to. We should understand how this is supposed to work.

We just don't want to make it work. So then it's through special revelation, the examining of God's Word, that we are cut to the heart when we read about God's intention for marriage.

It's in Genesis 1 .27, God created man in His own image. And then in Genesis 2 .18,

the Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and God took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Because marriage is a one flesh union, divorce is the death of that one flesh.

If you take one person and you cut them in half, what happens to that person?

They will die. And so that is the case with a marriage. It's why the

Lord said in Malachi 2 that those who get divorced cover their garments with violence.

There are massive ramifications to divorce. It is not ever merely a disagreement between two people.

Children suffer. Families suffer. Communities suffer. The culture suffers.

According to the website of a Florida law firm, 50 % of all children in the

United States will witness the end of a parent's marriage. So it may not be that 50 % of marriages are ending, but 50 % of children will see their parents get divorced.

50 % of those children will witness the breakup of a parent's second marriage.

Children of divorce are 35 % more likely to have a divorce of their own. Children of divorce are 50 % more likely to develop health problems.

Teens in single -parent homes are three times more likely to seek psychological help than teens from two -parent homes.

Children from broken homes are twice as likely to attempt suicide. Children of multiple divorces get lower grades in school and are twice as likely to drop out of high school.

Children from fatherless homes are four times more likely to grow up in poverty and seven times more likely to become pregnant or get someone pregnant as a teenager.

Now I grew up hearing statistics like this, and perhaps you've heard them as well, but maybe you've noticed you've heard them a lot less often than you used to.

There's a reason for that. Our culture has come to believe that statistics of this kind are demeaning toward children of single -parent homes.

We will think less of those children and come to expect less of children from divorced families.

Therefore, let's not mention these statistics at all, lest they become like some sort of self -fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe if we don't say it, then it won't happen. But that's completely impractical.

That's like saying, maybe if we stop talking about the Wuhan virus, it will stop spreading. Or maybe if we call it the coronavirus, then it didn't really come from China.

We have to address these things. And I say to you, it would be unloving if we did not.

Divorce is a serious wrong. We must know its devastating effects so that we can love those properly who have been affected by it and we can strive to prevent this disease from spreading.

Another way these statistics are often brushed off is to say that divorce is nuanced. There are thousands of reasons marriages end in divorce.

And sometimes divorce is a good thing. Sometimes people get divorced because they were in an abusive relationship.

Sometimes life got too hard and they just couldn't help it. So we shouldn't mention statistics like this because it casts blame on the person when the real reason they got divorced might have been because they just weren't from a more privileged circumstance.

But if good marriages only happen under the best of circumstances in ideal environments, then we will never have good marriages.

Adam and Eve had a marriage in paradise. How did that go? They couldn't keep it together.

Eve did not submit to her husband. Adam did not lead his wife. And when

God said to him, Did you eat the fruit of the tree that I told you not to eat from? Adam threw his wife under the proverbial bus.

The woman you put here with me gave me some of the fruit and I ate it.

Our purpose here this morning is not to cast blame. It's to do what is right in the sight of God.

We must be aware of sin and its consequences so that we don't do it.

And so that we will repent of it and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and be forgiven our sins.

And by the grace of God, we will walk in His goodness and His righteousness.

What He has said is right. What He created marriage to be.

This is a labor of love, by the way, that everyone must do even if you are not married.

Hebrews 13, 4 says, You, as a fellow brother or sister in Christ, are obligated to help your other brothers and sisters in Christ be faithful to their marriage vows.

The marriage is to be held in honor by all. Whenever I have conducted weddings,

I stand up here, usually this spot on the stage, if the wedding is done here in this sanctuary.

The bride comes down the aisle. Everybody's standing when the bride comes in the room. And she is arm -in -arm usually with her father as he walks her down the aisle.

The groom is standing right here with a big stupid grin on his face. And they get to the end of the aisle and the music stops.

But before I say, who gives this woman to be joined to this man? I look out at the congregation and I say,

Marriage? Marriage is what brought us here today. No, I don't really do that, but I couldn't help it.

I have to do that at least once, and I've still never done that yet. So I look at the congregation and I say,

We are gathered here today to witness the joining of this man to this woman in holy matrimony, right?

You've heard a pastor say that before. Even more specifically than that, I will say,

You are here not as spectators. You are here as participants, as witnesses to the exchange of these vows.

As friends and family, brothers and sisters in the Lord, it will be your duty to hold this couple accountable to the vows that you are about to hear them make.

There is an enemy out there who hates this covenant of marriage.

Marriage is to be a picture of the way that Christ loves His church and the way that the church submits to Christ.

And Satan hates that. This union will be tested. The storms of life will come.

And when that happens, when marriage gets hard, you must come alongside this brother or this sister, out of love for them, out of love for their family, out of love for their marriage, and you must remind them,

I was there when I heard you say, For better or worse, till death do us part.

And I'm here to hold you to that. As I've said to you many times, quoting from Tim Challey, Sanctification is a community project.

We need each other, even to be sanctified in our marriages. Mankind is fallen.

We are driven by our sin nature. And it's because of that sin nature that we treat marriage and one another so carelessly.

We're sinners. You are a sinner, and if you're married, you're married to a sinner.

You need grace, and so does your spouse. Marriage is not for your glory.

It is for God's glory. But when you think of your marriage as something that is supposed to be making you happy, and suddenly you find yourself becoming unhappy, well, then you may also find yourself looking for a way out.

Sometimes a man literally walks away from a woman and the vows that he made to her, and sometimes a divorce happens in the heart, as if to say,

I'll agree to live with you, but I don't have to love you. And if that's you, turn back and repent.

Psalm 9411 says, As we've been going through this study in the

Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been directly confronting matters of the heart. When we were here in chapter 5 and verse 21, we read,

You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the counsel, and whoever says,

You fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. In verse 27 we read,

You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

In the same spirit of this, we come to verses 31 and 32. It was also said,

Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. We read about the certificate of divorce.

Like, where is Jesus talking about this certificate of divorce? Or where did the Pharisees get this notion from when they were telling people,

If anyone divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. This comes from Deuteronomy chapter 24, verses 1 through 4.

Here's what we read. When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the

Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Believe it or not, this is the only Old Testament law about divorce.

It's not the only place in the law that divorce is mentioned, but it is the only place that puts divorce into law.

But it is in no way condoning, suggesting, or encouraging divorce.

Romans 3 .20 says, Through the law comes knowledge of sin, and that is the function of this law.

It gets to the heart of the matter. This law was written, and God arranged it in just such a way that the people will know

God considers divorce an abomination. It is a sin that begets more sin.

Verse 1 begins, When a man takes a wife and marries her, so far so good, if then she finds no favor in his eyes.

Okay, why? Why does she find no favor in his eyes? Because he has found indecency in her.

Some translations say he has found uncleanness in her. Now, what does this mean?

It does not mean adultery, because otherwise the wife would be stoned to death, according to the law.

It also does not mean suspicion of adultery, because in Numbers 5 .11

-31, there is a process that one must undergo to test a woman if her husband suspects her of adultery.

I went through several different commentaries, and there are many different ways in which indecency or uncleanness is translated.

Many different theories as to what this means. There was one commentary that I read that said this was to prevent a man from collecting two dowries.

So he collects one dowry when he marries the woman the first time, and then he divorces her.

She goes and gets married to another man, and then when she divorces that man, or that man dies, then the first man who sent her away cannot marry her again, as though to collect another dowry.

But I tell you, if that's the explanation of this passage, then you've missed the point. You missed the point of the passage.

Scrutinizing over this misses the point of the text. By the sequence of events, here is what we know.

The divorce that took place was illegitimate. The husband did not have a just reason to divorce his wife.

Notice again in verse 1, he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs his house.

That's a painstaking process that's being outlined there. It's to make sure that if a divorce is going to take place, it is not made with some sort of a rash decision.

I don't like you today. Get out of my house. That's not what's happening. The signing of an official document had to be witnessed.

So the law is getting involved here, and it often involved an exchange of money.

So by making this a legal process, it forces a man to consider why is he doing this.

Is this really that big a deal? He puts the certificate in her hand.

He sends her out of his house, and in so doing, if this has been an unjust divorce, which it is, that's what's being outlined here in Deuteronomy 24, 1 -4.

So when he puts the certificate in her hand, and he is sending her out of the house, he is condemning himself.

Verses 2 -3 say, And if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, the man who took her to be his wife.

So the woman becomes unmarried again, but this is now for any reason. It could be she's unmarried because she was unjustly divorced again, or the husband died and made her a widow.

Verse 4, Then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the

Lord. Why? Because he did not have just reason to divorce her in the first place.

So when she went out from him and married another man, she committed adultery.

And the man who sent her away, the first man, caused her to commit adultery.

Do you see what's happening here with divorce? It's a sin that causes someone else to sin that causes someone else to sin.

It's sin that begets sin that begets sin. That's the point of this law.

Divorce is unjust. It causes one another to deal unjustly with each other.

This man who divorced his wife made an adulteress out of her by divorcing her for no good reason, and then she went and married another man and slept with him when in the eyes of God she was still married to the first man.

Is this not exactly what Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5 verses 31 and 32?

Look at it again. Jesus says, Hey, that's

Deuteronomy 24 .1. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

My friends, this is Jesus exegeting Deuteronomy 24 .1 -4.

He is plainly explaining the meaning of the text which the Jews were using as an excuse to divorce for any reason, as long as they gave her a certificate.

I can get divorced. I just have to give her a certificate. And Jesus said,

No, you have missed the point of the law. Divorce is unloving.

It is destructive. It makes adulterers out of one another. You have caused your wife to commit adultery, and you have caused the man she married to commit adultery, just as the law said, and you have, as it says in Deuteronomy 24 .4,

brought sin upon the land that God gave you as an inheritance. You defiled her.

Another man was defiled with her. This cycle continues, and it continues until the whole land is infected.

This is exactly the law that the Pharisees brought up again with Jesus in Matthew 19.

Turn with me over there to Matthew 19. In Matthew 19,

I'm going to begin reading here in verse 3. The Pharisees came up to him and tested

Jesus by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

Notice the way they asked that question. That's how they interpreted and taught the law given in Deuteronomy 24 .1

-4. They thought that they could qualify indecency or uncleanness as justification for divorcing a wife for whatever reason they wanted to.

I just don't want to be married to this woman anymore, so all I have to do is give her a certificate. So they asked

Jesus, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And Jesus answered them not by explaining the law again, for he already did that in the

Sermon on the Mount. This teaching was already widely known, which was likely why the

Pharisees were challenging him on this again and asking specifically a question about it. And they tried to do what the devil tried to do in the wilderness.

They used the Scripture against Jesus. But Jesus is the author of Scripture, so that never goes over very well with anybody, whether it's

Satan or these Pharisees. This was as if they were saying, Hey, chapter and verse, we got it right here.

He has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce.

So is it not lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?

Rather than explaining the context of the law again, Jesus took them back to the very beginning of the law, the book of Genesis.

Look at Matthew 19, verse 4. He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said,

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore

God has joined together, let man not separate or redefine or do with however he wants to do with it.

In other words, Jesus was saying this. No, it's not lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause.

Divorce is contrary to God's order. It is not in keeping with God's order.

Then in verse 7, the Pharisees responded by asking, Why then did

Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send her away?

Again, they're attempting to point to the Scriptures and say, Hey, it's right here in the law.

The problem, of course, we know is not with the Scripture. It's with their twisting of the

Scriptures that they were doing to suit themselves, not to honor God. In verse 8,

Jesus replied, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning this was not so.

In other words, Jesus was saying divorce is not anywhere commanded.

That's the word that the Pharisees used. They said, Why then did

Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce? Jesus is saying, No, no, no. This is not a commandment.

Moses allowed you to get divorced because your hearts were hard, but this is not what the

Lord intended. Divorce was not lawful.

It was allowed because the people were wicked, but it is not commanded.

Jesus goes on in verse 9, I say to you, and keep in mind, this is

God speaking, though the Pharisees didn't understand this. When Jesus said, I say to you, Jesus was saying,

Thus sayeth the Lord. I gave this law, and I'm telling you what it means. Then he proceeds to tell them what he already said in the

Sermon on the Mount. What he already said on Mount Sinai. Verse 9 again,

I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.

This is exactly what we've just read in Matthew 5, 31 through 32. So let's go back there. Turn back again to Matthew 5.

So you've got it in front of you here. And let's understand the exception that Jesus provides.

Jesus gave this exception in Matthew 19, and he gives it here in Matthew 5.

Look at verse 32. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality.

So this is the only provision that is given for a just divorce.

A man has just cause to divorce his wife or a wife has just cause to divorce her husband if the spouse is found to have been sexually unfaithful.

Now recognize something about this. Why wasn't that then written in the Law of Moses? Well, because what was written in the

Law of Moses about adultery? If there's sexual immorality, the person is put to death.

Sexual immorality is the same as if a person has died. That's what we have to understand about this.

That's how serious sexual immorality is. And what it does to a marriage. Yet we must be very careful here, lest we commit the same error that the

Pharisees made. How we understand or define sexual immorality.

You might be tempted to throw anything under that label of sexual immorality and justify divorce for any reason, just like the

Pharisees did. For example, you could say something as foolish as, well, because a husband and a wife are sexual partners, then any kind of sin he commits against her would be sexual immorality and she's therefore justified in divorcing him.

You think I'm making that up? There are people that would go that far with that definition. Sexual immorality is adultery.

If a man has sex with another woman outside of marriage, he has committed adultery.

She is justified in divorcing him. Or if the shoe is on the other foot, he is justified in divorcing her if she has committed adultery.

There is no wrongdoing on the part of the person who did not commit this sin.

Remember that marriage is a covenant between two people. The adulterer has broken the covenant and, according to the law, has done something worthy of death.

He has brought death into the marriage. This sin is so great, it is as if the adulterer has died.

The offended spouse is not to be punished and is no longer obligated to the marriage vows.

Consider these words from the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 24 of Marriage and Divorce, paragraph 5.

Adultery, or fornication, committed after a contract, being detected before marriage.

In other words, adultery during an engagement. Giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve the contract.

In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and, after the divorce, to marry another as if the offending party were dead.

And I think that the Westminster divines got this right when they wrote that confession.

Before I met Becky, I had been engaged to another woman, and that woman was unfaithful to me.

Adultery was committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, and the engagement was dissolved.

Before Becky met me, she was married to another man, and he committed adultery after marriage.

Becky sued out a divorce, and after the divorce, she was free to marry another as if the offending party were dead.

Becky and I investigated this thoroughly before we got married.

We went through marriage counseling, and we received counsel from four different pastors in two different denominations.

All four pastors were in unwavering agreement. We had just reasons for our separations, and our marriage to one another was pleasing in the sight of God.

Our efforts were not an attempt to find someone who would tell us what we wanted to hear.

We wanted to do what was honoring to one another, and we wanted to do what was honoring to God.

But there were many that did not agree with our wedding. My side of the family consisted of a few independent fundamentalist

Baptists who frowned upon our getting married. I was even contacted by an ex -girlfriend who told me that I was committing adultery by marrying a divorced woman.

The passage she threw at me was Romans 7, 2 -3. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.

But if her husband dies, she will be free from the law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

After all, isn't that what Jesus is saying here in Matthew 5, 32? Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery?

Once again, this statement was given in the context of explaining Deuteronomy 24, 1 -4.

It is not an isolated statement that applies to all divorced women, or else it would contradict the exception clause that Jesus had just given.

Everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality makes her commit adultery.

And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again, understand the context.

Whoever marries a divorced person who was divorced for a reason other than sexual immorality commits adultery.

If a man cheats on his wife, she can divorce him justly, bringing no blame upon herself even if she gets remarried.

As a pastor, I have said to someone, you have biblical grounds for divorce.

And I have supported a person who had biblical grounds for a divorce.

But not before I said to them, if at all possible, be reconciled to your spouse.

Which would give more honor to God? That you get divorced or that you be reconciled?

See, we have all been unfaithful. And yet our God is ridiculously faithful and merciful to us.

What you have done in rebellion against God is far, far worse than anything anyone will ever do to you.

Just as God raised you from the dead, He can bring a broken marriage back together as well.

And I rejoice to have witnessed marriages be healed and restored. And you have probably seen that too.

But too many times I've watched marriages fall apart as you surely have also.

When grace is gone from a marriage, there is absolutely no way it can survive.

The husband says, she owes me this. The wife says, he owes me that. And both are making demands and neither one's demands are met.

That is a marriage from the pit of hell. Would we treat God this way?

Would we point the finger at God and say, you owe me? Or would we say to God that this relationship that we have just isn't satisfying enough?

You gave your son to die for my sins, but that just doesn't do it for me. I'm feeling a little bit smothered.

I need to be free to see some other people, and I need you to be okay with this. My friends, open marriage is not a marriage.

There's another word for an open marriage. It's adultery. James 4, 4 through 7 says,

You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the

Scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace.

Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. We often forget this, that God has gone through a divorce.

In Jeremiah 3, 6 through 10, we read, The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah, Have you seen what she did, that faithless one

Israel? How she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore?

And I thought, After she has done all of this, she will return to me. But she did not return, and her treacherous sister

Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one

Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.

Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear. But she too went and played the whore.

Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree, worshiping idols is what's being meant there.

Yet for all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the

Lord. In other words, came back and pretended like I had repented, but in the heart had really not turned from my sinful ways, and come and humbled myself before God.

But what does the Lord say to those who genuinely repent of heart? And they turn and come back to Him, like the prodigal son who returned to the father.

In Isaiah 44 -22, God says, I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist.

Return to me, for I have redeemed you. Jesus Christ gave

His life for us, the church His bride. He sanctifies us by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that we might be holy and without blemish.

God gave us marriage to be a picture of the way that Christ loves His bride, the church.

So submit yourself, therefore, to Christ, and love

Him with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. Repent of your sin.

Walk in holiness and faithfulness before the Lord. Now, I said that I would conclude with some practical applications, but I think that the practical applications here should be easy to understand.

God is faithful to you. God is faithful to your spouse. So be faithful to God and be faithful to your spouse.

The end. Let us come before the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, as we have regarded these things today,

I pray that it indeed cuts us to the heart, that we would not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but with sober judgment, that we would humble ourselves before God, that we would cast our cares upon You because You care for us, that You would strengthen us in our time of need, and that we would indeed see that we are sick and needy.

We need a healer, and that healer is our Lord Christ. Forgive us our sins.

Humble us in our pride. Let us regard one another the way that we've been told to regard each other, considering others' needs ahead of our own, speaking the truth in love, teaching and admonishing one another with all wisdom, forgiving one another as God has forgiven us, loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving one another because we know that God has demonstrated

His love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

May we uphold the sanctity of marriage. May our nation be convicted of the way that it is regarded marriage, even trying to redefine it.

May people come back to a biblical understanding of what God created marriage to be, a picture of the way that Christ loves

His church. A day is coming on which Christ is going to return, and His bride is going to be presented to Him in splendor and in glory.

Those who are in Christ Jesus will be united with Him forever in that great wedding supper of the

Lamb. But those who do not know the Lord Christ will be cast away into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Before that day comes, may we be bold to speak the gospel of Christ, and may there be many who would be convicted of heart to turn from their sin and to the

Lord Jesus Christ and live. Lead us in your truth. Uphold us with your mighty right hand.

We pray and ask these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, Amen. May we bear

All because we do not care That we should never be disturbed

Who will all our sorrows ease?

As those our every weakness Take it to Are we weak and heavy laden?

Does Savior still our rest? Take it to the

Lord in prayer Do thy friends despise forsaking?

Take it to the Lord In His arms

He'll take and shield thee Thou wilt find a solace there

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.