WWUTT 2201 Jesus Teaches About Divorce (Mark 10:1-12)

When Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees about marriage, He said that from the beginning of creation God made them male and female, and a man shall leave his father and his mother, also male and female, and be joined to his wife.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Mark 10 and the Setting for Jesus’ Teaching on Divorce

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we are on to chapter 10, where Jesus teaches here about divorce. Let me begin reading verses 1 -12 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord.

And standing up he went from there to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Crowds gathered around him again, and according to his custom he once more began to teach.

Them.

And some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing him, and began to question him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. And he answered and said to them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.

But Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart he wrote for you this commandment, but from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And in the house the disciples began questioning him about this again. And he said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery. Now of course we read this exchange the way that Matthew recalled it in Matthew chapter 19. Matthew included a few different words than Mark does, but it does not mean that these two men recalled this conversation differently and that one of them is therefore in error.

They both get to the same point. They both have the same ingredients here. It all is the same teaching. But Mark remembers something about this exchange that he wants to highlight specifically. It is the purpose of his gospel to kind of go through things in a more rapid pace.

Matthew will spend more time on discourses and teaching than Mark will. For example, Mark has kind of a short section here with regards to what Jesus taught the disciples after his exchange with the Pharisees.

Matthew included more teaching to the disciples than Mark did, but they're still the same conversation, still in agreement with one another, inspired by the Holy Spirit to recall.

This.

But Mark does have something specific that he highlights, and we'll get to that here as we look back over this passage verse by verse. Now you probably recognize how this divides up. First of all, you have Jesus talking to the crowds in verse one, then the exchange with the Pharisees in verses two through nine, and then his discussion with the disciples in verses 10 through 12.

But all of this is about what God intended when he made marriage, and that the Pharisees were teaching man's commandments. This is what man turned marriage into, but what did God intend for it to be from the very beginning?

That's the same purpose that Matthew has as well. Same point that we draw from this conversation in Matthew chapter 19. We should get that here also. But there's a different kind of a gotcha moment that Mark remembers, or that he includes between Jesus and the Pharisees.

So let's come back to verse one. Standing up, he went from there to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Now remember, he's been in Galilee, he's been teaching his disciples up there. At one point, he was alone with his disciples because there were things that he needed to teach his disciples he couldn't do with the rest of the crowds around.

Sometimes the crowds would flock around Jesus and they would be so inundated with the attention of the people that they couldn't even sit down and enjoy a meal together, the way that Mark had talked about that.

So Jesus went off with his disciples alone. There were things that he needed to teach them specifically, the crowds were not going to be privy to. And of course, we had the transfiguration in there in chapter nine, where Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John.

He comes back into the crowds in Galilee. He's gone even further south from there now into the region of Judea and even crossing the Jordan. So Judea is the southern portion of Israel, but he doesn't go to the west side or even to those southern areas.

He instead crosses the Jordan and he's on the other side of the Jordan, which is practically the outskirts of Israel. It's closer to the Gentiles for sure, but a lot of these people that gather around Jesus are most likely Jews.

Of course, we see the Pharisees that step in and want to challenge Jesus regarding his teaching. Now, verse one doesn't tell us exactly what he taught the crowds. Crowds gathered around him again, and according to his custom, he once more began to teach.

Them.

But we can have a pretty good idea based on other things that Jesus has taught, just because we see the teaching in one place in Mark's gospel doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't ever teach that again.

You know what I mean?

So you saw the teaching there, well, Jesus taught it there. He wouldn't ever teach it again. The teaching came up multiple times, same teaching over and over again. Like the Sermon on the Mount that you read in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Jesus didn't just teach the Sermon on the Mount on a mountain in Galilee right there at the very beginning of his ministry.

That's where Matthew puts the Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of his earthly ministry, but it doesn't mean that Jesus did not teach that in other places in the exact same way to different crowds so that everybody had the chance to hear it.

In Luke's gospel, it's recalled as the Sermon on the Plain, but it's still same teaching just to a different audience so that everybody has the chance to hear the teaching that Jesus went throughout Israel teaching during his earthly ministry.

So here it was probably the same sort of a thing. And you might recall from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that Jesus does indeed talk about divorce in Matthew 5, 31. Now, it was said, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. It could be that in the teaching that Jesus was giving to the crowds here in Mark 10, that he had mentioned that same sort of a thing or something similar to it that prompted the Pharisees to therefore challenge Jesus and say, well, can a man divorce his wife?

And Jesus responds to them, well, what did Moses teach you? Okay. So that may have been what they heard. Jesus teaching something about marriage and divorce and therefore issues this challenge before the crowds as though to catch him in a trap or maybe stumble him on his teaching a little bit to look at the crowds and say, see, you don't have to listen to this man.

He doesn't know. Again, we don't really know for sure what it was that Jesus was teaching the crowds. It may have been something like that that therefore triggers the Pharisees. So here we go with the Pharisees in verse 2.

The Pharisees’ Question and Deuteronomy 24

Some Pharisees came up to Jesus testing him and began to question him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Now there's more to the dialogue in Matthew's recollection because he actually has a quote from the Pharisees when they come and challenge Jesus.

Mark doesn't include that. Remember, Mark is more concerned with action, whereas Matthew spent more time on large discourses. But here, Mark doesn't need to quote a Pharisee, just says that the Pharisees come challenging him about whether or not it is lawful for a man to divorce a wife.

And in verse 3, Jesus answered them and said, what did Moses command you? That's an important question. And we're going to come back to that point, why Jesus responded in this way. Now, again, Mark is recalling something different.

It's not that Matthew and Mark have a different recollection of this exchange. Matthew doesn't include that question. That before Jesus responds to the Pharisees, well, there's a question that he asked them.

First.

Matthew doesn't do that. Mark does, because again, Mark is highlighting something different than Matthew was highlighting. So then, so Jesus answered them and said, what did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.

Now that's the same thing that Pharisees had said to Jesus in Matthew's account as well. That's taken from Deuteronomy chapter 24, where it says, in the law, if a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that 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 from his house, and she goes out of his house and goes and becomes another man's wife.

And if the latter husband turns against 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 husband dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife since she has been defiled.

For that is an abomination before Yahweh. And you shall not bring sin on the land, which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance. So that's the section there, Deuteronomy 24 verses one through four, which I just read.

That's where the Pharisees are getting this, well, hey, Moses said, write her a certificate of divorce and send her out. But you notice something about that. Moses doesn't command divorcing a wife. He commands that if she's going to be divorced, then the husband has to write her a certificate.

Of divorce.

And once they are divorced, and then she goes and marries another man, then the first husband can't take her back. That marriage is over. And those two can't ever be united to one another again. That was the purpose of that law there in Deuteronomy 24.

Because once again, she's been defiled, it would be an abomination before Yahweh, and you shall not bring sin on the land, which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance. So there's no command there to divorce.

There's a command that if she is going to be divorced, then she needs to receive a certificate.

Of divorce.

So Jesus asked this question of the Pharisees, what did Moses say? Their response was to jump to this commandment in Deuteronomy, write her certificate of divorce and send her away. But Jesus responds, verse 5, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote for you this commandment.

Again, it wasn't a command to divorce her. It was a command to write her a certificate. And it's because your heart is hard. You were stupid. That was why you divorced her. Notice that he just finds some indecency in her or she doesn't please him anymore.

And that's why he sends her out. It's really not a justifiable cause for divorce. But he needs to give her a certificate which frees her from that bind to that man and then marries another. And then if something happens to that man, well, she can't go back to the first husband or the first husband can't now have regrets.

Oh, I'm sad that I sent her away. I've changed my mind. I want her back now. This is so there wouldn't be that kind of wishy-washiness and passing around of spouses going on in Israel. So Jesus said, this is because of your hardness of heart.

It was because you were ignorant. You were foolish and sinful. That's why that commandment is there. It's not there to permit you to get a divorce. It's there so that the defilement would not continue in Israel.

So then he says to them, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Now here's the challenge that he's giving to the Pharisees. They quoted from Deuteronomy. Where's Jesus quoting from Genesis, who wrote Genesis, Moses.

So when Jesus asked them, what did Moses command you? That's what he had in mind. What did what did Moses say about marriage in the law? Go back to the very beginning. Look at marriage from the start.

What did God intend it to be? As Moses wrote it in the law. Genesis is just as much law as Deuteronomy or Exodus, Leviticus or Numbers. Moses wrote all five of these books. Jesus goes back to the very beginning.

The Pharisees wanted to find permission to get a divorce. So they twisted that law in Deuteronomy. Jesus is saying, no, your understanding of marriage needs to come from the creation account. Needs to come from the way that God made it in the very beginning.

And so he says to them, but from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. And of course, this is coming from Genesis chapter one, verse 27. And then we have the next portion that comes from Genesis 2, 24.

For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Now there is something natural about this.

That by nature, a man and a woman, when they get together and they consummate their union, these two people have now become a one flesh union. There's something natural about that. God created it to be that way.

All marriage between all men to all women that become their spouses, right? A man to a woman, whether or not that man is a Christian and that woman is a Christian. Whether or not they're believers, they could be complete pagans through and through.

But once they have been united to one another in marriage and that union has been consummated, they've had sex. In other words, once that consummation has taken place, those two have become one flesh.

That's the way that God created that to be. Remember that when the apostle Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for their sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 6, he talked about, shall a man be united with a prostitute?

So if a man goes and has sex with a prostitute, then he's become one flesh with her, Paul says. So it's not just the covenant of marriage and then sex is what creates this one flesh union. It's the act of sex itself becomes a one flesh union between this man and this woman.

That is by nature. It is the way that God created sex to be. Whoever a man has sex with another woman has become one flesh with her. So these two have become one as God made it to be. And by nature, we understand that.

It takes a rejection of nature for you to say that it's okay for a man to have multiple wives or for a woman to have multiple husbands or for a man to have many bed partners, a woman to have many sleeping partners, for women to be united with women or men to be united with.

Men.

All of these things become a rejection of the natural order. We can know it just by general revelation is what we call it. What any man can know, even apart from God, we know it from general revelation that a man and a woman are sexually compatible with one another.

And that union is supposed to be permanent. We can decipher that, discern that even from nature. And so God has done this, whether or not the man and the woman are believers in God, God is the one who has joined them together in this one flesh union, because that's what he created sex to be.

So therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. Do not be looking for reasons or excuses for you to get a divorce. We can also understand this as what therefore God has defined, let no man redefine.

You cannot define marriage to be whatever you want it to be. It's what God created it to be from the beginning. There are nations on earth today, well over two dozen at this point, who are redefining marriage to be between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or triads, or quadruplets, whatever.

They're just redefining it, adding all mix of a number of men and women together, and then calling that marriage. That is going against what God created marriage to be. It is rejection of what God has said.

What God has joined together, let no man separate. What God has defined as marriage, let no man redefine. So then after he has this exchange with the Pharisees, and once again pointing out to them, go back to the beginning.

What is marriage supposed to be? It is right there in the beginning of Genesis. And then after that, Jesus has the exchange with his disciples. Before getting to that, let me kind of highlight something else about that.

Whenever there has been a conversation or exchange with people about what the definition of marriage is, I will point back to Matthew 19. Or if somebody will say something like, Jesus never talked about homosexuality.

He never talked about gay marriage, so on and so forth. I'll say, well, Jesus said everything that he needed to say in Matthew 19, verses 4 through 6. Exactly what he says there to the Pharisees is what we have here also in Mark 10.

Jesus going back to the law, to the created order, and showing them from the beginning, here's what God intended marriage to be. And almost always, whenever I have that exchange, almost every time, if I'm talking to a liberal or somebody like that, some theological liberal, somebody who's pro-LGBTQ, they will say, well, that doesn't count because Jesus was speaking in the context of divorce.

He wasn't talking in the context of homosexuality. And I'll say to them, it doesn't matter. He goes back to what God made marriage to be in the beginning. It might be the Pharisees' question that sets this up.

He's responding to their question about divorce, sure. But the fact that Jesus points back to the very beginning of creation, the way that God made marriage to be, that's all Jesus needs to say. If somebody comes up to him and asks him any other question about marriage, just like the one that you're asking me, like, does God permit same-sex marriage?

Why didn't Jesus talk about same-sex marriage? If Jesus were in America today, and somebody were to have asked that same question of Jesus with regards to same-sex marriage, Jesus would have given the same answer.

What do the scriptures say? Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. He would still give the exact same answer. And it would still shatter every man-made concept of what we try to shape marriage into being. Go back to the way God made it.

What did he say in the beginning of the Bible? He made them male and female, and he joined them together as one flesh. So anything else is contrary to God's design for marriage. It's one man and one woman for life.

That's what it's supposed to be. So now this continued exchange with his disciples in verses 10 through 12. Now, if you'll remember in Matthew's account, the disciples are kind of baffled by this, and they're like, well, who can even meet these demands that you're talking about?

If a man cannot divorce his wife for any reason, then he shouldn't get married at all. And we don't have that here in Mark. So I'm not going to flesh that out. But here's what Jesus says to the disciples when they question him about this again.

He says, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery. Now, of course, in Matthew's account, there's the adultery allowance.

If a man divorces his wife for any reason other than sexual immorality, then he commits adultery against her. So you have the sexual immorality allowance in Matthew's account, which you don't have in Mark.

It doesn't mean, as I've heard some teachers say, very unfortunately, that we can kick the sexual immorality allowance out just because Matthew's the only one that remembers it, but Mark doesn't remember it that way.

That's not really the case. Again, Mark has a point that he's drawing out with this. And his point is to go back to the very beginning creation story and understand that this is what marriage is supposed to be.

And Moses' commandment in Deuteronomy does not automatically give you a pass to be able to get a divorce, because if you're going to get divorced and you start marrying around with other people, you're committing adultery.

You're breaking the commandment that says do not commit adultery, even though you think that in the confines of marriage, that I am able to enjoy sex with my spouse, and this is perfectly fine before God.

Well, if you are passing around spouse to spouse and jumping from one bed to the other, then what difference does it make whether or not you are married, because the covenant doesn't even matter to you.

All you're doing is sticking a label on your adultery to try to protect yourself from hopefully passing over this sin. It's self-righteous. See, I'm not as evil as these other people do, who jump from bed to bed to bed, because at least this person is my spouse.

No, if you are divorcing a spouse and marrying another, and that has been your pattern, then you, too, are just as guilty as anybody else who has multiple sleeping partners. This is still committing adultery.

So whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. You are going against what God created marriage to be in the beginning. A man and a woman, male and female, the two shall become one flesh.

You start breaking this apart and having multiple marriage partners, you're committing adultery. Even the woman, if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.

So the emphasis here becomes on marriage itself. It is meant to be a one flesh union for life between a man and a woman. That's not just countercultural, although it certainly is that, but it even goes against what many people are teaching in churches today.

Many churches will allow this. Incidentally, many churches will teach exactly the way that I've taught here on Matthew 19 and in Mark 10. But even though they teach it that way, they still allow it. There will still be men and women getting divorced and then marrying other divorced people, and the church will go along with it and marry those people and just allow it to happen without telling them.

What did Jesus say about this? What does the Bible say? Don't commit adultery. Be faithful to your spouse till death do you part. Remember, according to what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5, that marriage is supposed to be a picture of the way that Christ loves his church.

Do you see Christ jumping around with all these different partners? Are you concerned that suddenly your salvation is in jeopardy because maybe Jesus will just divorce the church and go find another spouse?

No, he's not going to do that. And every time people get divorced and jump into beds with other people and they treat marriage in this way or redefine it or what else, it is a blasphemy against God. In the arrangement that he has made between Christ and the church, redeeming her, purifying her, washing her, presenting her before himself in splendor on that great day of the Lord, this work that God has started in calling his church to himself and purifying her for the day of Christ.

God is going to see that through to the very end. He's not going to stop in the middle of it and go, you know what, I'm just not interested in you anymore. Here's your certificate of divorce and I'm going to send you away.

Jesus does not jump from partner to partner. And so we cannot either. As imitators of Christ and desiring to be holy as God is holy, then obey his word, his command, and what he has said marriage is to be.

As marriage is a picture of the way that Christ loves the church and is faithful to the church and will be faithful to us to the very end, praise God, so that we have this assurance of our salvation and the great reward that awaits us in eternity.

As Christ has done this for us, so we must be faithful in our marriages as well. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read here, and I pray that it is convicting of heart. We understand the seriousness of adultery and how sinful it is and how sexual immorality, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, is a sin that is committed against the body.

It is unique from all these other sins which are committed outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. May we understand the seriousness of that and desire to be pure, turning from sin to Christ, being purified by Christ, walking in holiness and in righteousness before you.

Continue to purify us until that day we are united with our Savior in glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.