Well, hello friends, and thank you for joining me in our daily reading from God's Holy Word. Today, we're reading Mark chapter 10 verses 1 to 12. In this lesson, Jesus teaches us about the blessing of marriage and the sorrow of divorce. In speaking of it, He points us to His love, His patience, and His faithfulness.
Now before we read, let's pray. Our Father, heaven, teach us your word and then help us to walk in your ways. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Amen. Mark chapter 10 verses 1 to 12. And He left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to Him again. And again, as was His custom, He taught them.
And Pharisees came up and in order to test Him asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And He answered them, what did Moses command you? They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, He wrote you this commandment.
But from the beginning of creation, God made the male and female. Therefore, 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. And what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
And in the house, the disciples asked Him again about this matter. And He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Amen, this is God's word.
Now Jesus here didn't say everything about marriage and divorce. He says more in fact throughout the Bible. So today we tackle a difficult subject but briefly. And that means many helpful things will be left unsaid.
But let me highlight here three things about Jesus. In us, first Jesus loves people. So we can trust Him with our relationships. The Pharisees asked Him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
Now they ask Him that not because they want to help people. And not because they care about keeping marriages together. In fact, most people in that they follow Rabbi Hillell when he said that a man could divorce his wife for burning the toast or over salting the food or talking so loud in the home that Abraham could hear or even speaking to a male stranger. Now the reason the Pharisees ask Jesus about marriage is they want to trap Him to make the people distrust Jesus.
Because Jesus loves people, He answers their question. He cares about people and the pain of broken relationships. And He knows that the truth is good for people even if it hurts to hear it. So He speaks not to add to pain nor to ignore pain, but because He loves people.
So you can trust Him with your relationships. Now second, Jesus is patient with relationally broken people. And we can depend on His grace in our relationships. Jesus asked them, what did Moses command you?
They refer to Deuteronomy 24 where God through Moses permits and regulates divorce. Jesus schools them then on their own book. He takes them to what God originally meant for marriage back at creation in Genesis 1 and 2, where it says, the two shall become one flesh, no longer two, but one. God joins husband and wife together.
Now the Pharisees quoted Moses in Deuteronomy as if God gave his stamp of approval on divorce. But God there wasn't commanding divorce. He was permitting and regulating it to soften the blow of it, to ease the harm because of their hard hearts. I mean a hard-hearted man who won't live with his wife, love his wife, sleep with his wife, or forgive his wife, might come to want a new wife.
He may even be violent if he can't get what his hard heart wants. What should be done in that situation? Well, protect the wife is what God said through Moses. First, physical protection.
Let the man leave, said Moses. Second, financial protection. Make him give her a written certificate so she can prove to others she is no longer married, so that she can then remarry if she wants and not be left destitute. Third, emotional and sexual protection.
Keep her from being traded around like a piece of property, by not letting the husband divorce her and then remarry her and then maybe do that again and again. God was saying, I want you to think real hard about this because you can't have her back. Now the rabbis mistook God's gracious provision in allowing divorce for the wife's protection because of the hard-heartedness of man. And God's, and they mistook that as God's approval of it.
Yet God was permitting what he did not intend for the sake of limiting and restraining worse things because of human hard hearts. The alternative to God permitting and restraining our human evil is God immediately judging us for it. But then there would be no more marriages and there would be no more world. So you see how patient Jesus is with people.
Third, consider his faithfulness in his marriage and look to him for help to be faithful in yours. Behind the willingness of Jesus to teach on a controversial topic is, as we said, his love for people and his patience with sinners. But also this, his commitment to the gospel. For marriages to tell the story of the gospel.
It is meant to be a human reenactment of the greatest love story ever told. Of God marrying to himself his bride, the church. Husbands then, we learn elsewhere, to love their lives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Wives are to respect their husbands.
For the husband is the head of his wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. Now, Jesus never leaves his bride, never exchanges her for a different lover and never abuses her, always loves her. This is why the two are to become one as long as they both shall live. That's how he treats his bride.
Hence, he's very strong statement that in Mark, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. He's pressing against this hard-hearted attitude that casts people off because he doesn't cast away his bride. Now, in this statement, Mark doesn't report the exception to the rule, which Matthew does report in Matthew 19.
There, Jesus says, except for sexual immorality. If your spouse commits adultery, you are free to divorce and to remarry. You don't have to, but you can. And then also in 1 Corinthians 7, Jesus, through the apostle, adds desertion.
If an unbelieving spouse deserts you, you are free to remarry. The point is, Jesus is faithful. He wants us to be faithful, and he can help us be faithful. Don't fear then to ask him to make you faithful, because he loves us and is patient with us, having died for our unfaithfulness and married us as his beloved.
J.C. Ryle says, happy are they who, in the matter of marriage, observe three rules. The first is to marry only in the Lord, and after prayer for God's approval and blessing, the second is not to expect too much from their partners. And to remember that marriage is after all the union of two sinners and not of two angels.
The third rule is to strive first and foremost for one another's sanctification. The more holy married people are, the happier they are. Let's pray. Father, in heaven, make it so.
And forgive our failures and help us to love as we have been loved by you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for listening in, and I hope you'll join me next time.