Amen, and please be seated. Let me invite you if you have a Bible to turn with me to Matthew chapter 19 this morning. We're in verses 5 through 6, though we'll read 1 through 12 for context. It's a second look today at this passage, we looked at it last week, and it's Jesus' response to a question about divorce, and then a follow-up comment from His disciples.
And last week we noticed Jesus emphasized four big ideas. We saw that He mentions that God created us either male or female, and then He speaks to God's design for marriage, and then He does directly address the question of divorce, which we'll look at next week, and then He speaks to issues after that about singleness. And we also said last week that these topics raise all kinds of questions for us in our generation as they did in theirs, and we simply cannot address all the questions we could think of comprehensively in one sermon, even on each topic. But we do invite your questions.
We welcome discussion. I would love to follow up with you if you'd like to grab coffee or just email back and forth about these things, or if you just simply want prayer, perhaps about your relationships. This morning we'll focus on the affirmation of Jesus here of God's creational design for marriage and the union of one man and one woman at one time for a lifetime. And we need to think about God's plan for marriage here, because most people spend the majority of their adult lives coupled.
Now, some people are rejecting marriage in favor of other kinds of coupling we understand. But some of you are already married, and you need a refresher on, well, what God intends for you, so you can recommit to God's purposes for your marriage. And perhaps some of you are dating or thinking seriously about marriage, and you need to think about what it is you're getting yourself into. And others of you, of course, are young, and you may not even have thought about marriage at all, and it just seems like an adult topic, I get it.
But listen, one day you probably will get married, statistically speaking, and you need to learn even now about marriage, not only from watching your parents' marriage, who won't have had a perfect marriage because there are no perfect marriages, but you also need to learn from God who created marriage in the first place. And Jesus, who married his bride, and knows how to be married. Or perhaps for you this morning, you've been through the very agonizing experience of divorce. Or perhaps your parents have, and you watched and shared in the suffering of that, or somebody else that you love.
And you were perhaps trying to process your own grief, or maybe you're trying to help a friend process their grief, and it's possible you might be tempted to be cynical about the institution of marriage. And I want to say to you before we get to the text that Jesus here reminds us that he really genuinely cares for us. He cares for people, and people in difficult and painful situations in a broken world. We're not only sinned, but misery is pervasive.
We saw that last time, and forgive me if you weren't here, you'll hear it in the passage. The Pharisees put the question about divorce to Jesus, and they're not doing it because they really care about people. They're actually seeking to destroy Jesus and his ministry in the eyes of people by testing him and getting him to trip up. But last week we noticed that Jesus is actually out-ministering two people because he cares for them.
He's among the crowd will read. He's healing people because he cares for them. He's ministering to their needs, and we're going to hear one of our needs. One of the needs of the crowd is to be taught God's truth, because as Jesus said elsewhere, the truth will set you free.
I invite you then to consider Jesus and this truth about marriage, reading Matthew chapter 19 verses 1 through 12. Here now the holy and inspired Word of God. Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And large crowds followed him and healed them there.
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And 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 not man separate. They said to him, why did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? And he said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.
And the disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But he said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.
Amen, this is God's word, let's pray together. Oh, Father, and Heaven, teach us your word, grant that in learning the truth, the truth would set us free. Help us by the Holy Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen.
Mayo and female, marriage, divorce, singleness, these are controversial issues in our day, but they're not simply a theoretical, of course, these are issues of how we live, of how we understand ourselves and how we understand our relationships, and they're issues of what God has made of us, made us to be, and what God intends us to be and to do, and how to live. Last week we noticed that in answer to the question put in verse 3 about divorce, Jesus responds by saying, let me remind you of God's good gifts to humanity from the very beginning. The Pharisees ask him, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? And in answer to Jesus begins with Genesis chapter 1 about God making us male and female, and then he turns to Genesis 2 about what marriage is intended by God for, and notice again at verse 4 which we studied last week, he answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?
That's from Genesis 1. Now, why does he begin that way? Well, first to humble the Pharisees, we saw that last week. They prided themselves on being students of scripture and teachers of scripture, and that's how everybody thought of them, and Jesus says, y'all haven't read the Bible, have you?
I mean chapter 1, let's go back there. Don't you know that God clearly said from the beginning, in the days of Adam and Eve, what he wanted us to know about male and female and marriage? Now obviously this puts Jesus in the camp of those who believe that the Bible is the word of God, that even Genesis 1 and 2 can be trusted as God's own authoritative explanation of what it means to be human and what marriage is for. But he has another purpose here we didn't look at last week, not only to rebuke the Pharisees for not paying attention to God's word, but to rebuke them for their very male centric approach to the issue of divorce.
I mean, you can hear it in their question, can't you? Is it lawful to divorce one's wife, not spouse? They're thinking about the whole issue from the man's perspective. And Jesus says, well, you're wanting to talk about a husband and his right to divorce his wife, but you're not asking the question when might a wife have the right before God to divorce her husband?
There's no thought in their question about the possibility of wives divorcing their husbands, and that's because in their view, by and large in their day, males mattered more than females to males. And the right to the privileges of husbands dominated their discussions. In their day, for example, marital sexual intimacy was so often considered the privilege of the husband and the duty of the wife. His enjoyment not hers was primary.
That's why Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7, has to explain to them the correct view about the mutual responsibilities and privileges of wives and husbands. And concerning divorce as another example, which is before us, they stacked the deck in favor of men against women. Some are abi's taught that a man could divorce his wife simply by saying, I divorce you. And a justifiable reason for some was simply that she burned his toast.
And for that he could kick her out and marry another. But they had no such comparatively easy divorce for women. No comparatively very much more difficult for a woman to divorce her husband. And they required her to jump through all kinds of hoops and to go to court and to prove that she had sufficient reasons and, well, burning the toast couldn't be one of them if he did it to her.
So with the outset, Jesus confronts their male chauvinism, their disregard for the rights of women, their disregard for the well-being of wives who some of them were simply casting off on a whim and leaving destitute and vulnerable and alone. And Jesus says, these females you're talking about divorcing, they're made in the image of God just like you. And we know that because the passage where he says God made the male and female was right out of Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27, where God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish and the birds and so on. So God made man in his own image in the image of God.
He created him male and female. He created them. He's made us equal in our essential dignity and personhood as image bearers of God. And yet he has obviously made males different than females and females different than males, complementary even to one another.
So that males are males, not females, and females are females and not males. We're different than one another, but we're equal in creation, equally made by God to represent God on the earth, to have dominion over the creatures, and we might add we're also equally fallen and equally redeemed or redeemable in Jesus and equally going to be glorified. So he begins his answer to the issue of the divorce reminding them of God's good gift of making us both male or either male or female. And we should embrace his gift as he's given it with gratitude and contentment, not envy of others or hatred of ourselves.
And then Jesus turns from Genesis 1 to quote Genesis chapter 2, verses 24, in verses 5 and 6, which is where we'll spend our time. Middle of verse 4, he created them from the beginning, made the male and female, and verse 5 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 one, or two, but one flesh. Let me invite you to consider six or seven things about marriage first.
Marriage is a covenant relationship, as opposed to a contractual relationship. In a contract between two people, it might go like this. You agree to make a thousand widgets and I agree to pay you a certain amount. I'll give you half up front, you give me the widgets and I'll pay you the second half on the back end.
And we might set a time frame for you to deliver that, and when you do your part and I do my part, we fulfill the obligations of the contract, nobody gets sued, each goes away happy, assuming the widgets work. And we may never do business again, or we might renew the contract monthly or annually or whatever until it is that one of us decides, well, we don't want widgets anymore, or perhaps the other says, I don't want to make widgets anymore. That's a contract. But a marriage covenant is very different.
It's a binding mutual relationship in which we give ourselves completely to another person for life, as long as we both shall live. It's not a relationship where you give 50% of yourself and expect 50% of the other person making together 100% of what's needed to make the marriage last. But it's a relationship in which you promise to give yourself 100%, and they promise to give themselves 100%. For this reason, I love the traditional marriage vow.
I do promise and covenant before God and these witnesses to be your loving and faithful spouse in sickness and in health, in abundance and in poverty, in joy and in sorrow as long as we both shall live. The two become one in a binding mutual covenant relationship. That's what marriage is. That is, secondly, that marriage is a public and social relationship.
Verse 5, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. He leaves one kind of public and social relationship as the son of those folks. And he takes up a new kind of public and social relationship, living with his wife, creating a new home. I mean, he's still the son of so-and-so.
But now he's the husband of so-and-so, and that's a priority. That's more important. It's a new family. It's not private.
It's not an arrangement that a couple secretly has that his parents don't know about or her parents don't know about. It's not a relationship where the guy tells the girl, I love you and I want you to be mine, so let's enjoy all the pleasures and privileges of being married, but let's not tell anybody. Let's live like we're married, but not actually get married. No, it's not that.
It's to be understood in the community. The father and the mother get it. The community understands it. A new social unit has begun.
And they are now off limits to everybody else. They're to be off limits. They're not to be pulled apart by the intrusion of others. They're now instead, in fact, to be encouraged by the community, to hold fast to one another.
I say community because marriage in Genesis 1 and 2 predates the redeemed people of God. We can speak of the church, one another's brothers and sisters, supporting marriages, and we ought to. But marriage is a universal human experience across all peoples and cultures. We are to seek to protect marriage, to promote the well-being of other people's marriages, and the exclusivity and the perpetuation of their marriage.
That's the second thing. It's public and social. And thirdly, marriage is for the mutual help and companionship of husband and husband. They begin to have a union of their minds and hearts, cares and concerns, hopes and dreams, as well as a union of their bodies.
They become a mutual help to one another. From the beginning, you remember that it was not good that Adam should be alone. Even in the Garden of Paradise. This is amazing.
The Garden of Paradise were God walked in the garden of the day. And Adam was the son of his father. It was not yet good. Not yet very good until God made Eve for Adam and brought them together.
Male and female. Different, but alike. And for each other. And to be a mutual help together, walking before the face of God.
Walking in the enjoyment of God. Walking in service and obedience to God. That's what marriage is for. That companionship is a very different view than the historic practices by some branches of the Christian church.
Historically speaking, the Roman Catholic view of marriage isn't that it's primarily for procreation. Not primarily for companionship. And John Calvin and the other reformers in the days of the Reformation and the Puritans after them vigorously opposed the idea that marriage was somehow second best. That single-distance celibacy was the best model or that celibacy was a higher and more holy way to live.
And that marriage was somehow second best and given by God chiefly for reproduction. Marriage, the reformers said following Genesis 2, was for companionship in life. And so we have those beautiful words of the wedding ceremony. You've probably heard them dearly beloved.
And you're gathered here today in the presence of God to join this man and this woman in the holiest state of marriage, which is instituted of God regulated by his commandments. Blessed by our Lord Jesus Christ and to be held in honor among all people. Let us reverently remember therefore that God has established. And sanctified marriage for the welfare and happiness of mankind.
Our Savior has declared that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and buy his apostles. Get this. He has instructed those who enter into this relation to cherish a mutual esteem and love to bear with each other's infirmities and weaknesses to comfort each other in sickness, trouble and sorrow, in honesty and industry, to provide for one another in temporal matters, and to pray for and encourage each other in the things that pertain to God and to live together as the heirs of the grace of life. It's for the mutual help and companionship and that blessing.
That's the third thing. The fourth is that marriage is in fact a sexual relationship. Verse 5, 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.
That is, when a man and a woman take their vow before the Lord, God joins them as one and they go on to consummate the marriage, their bodies joining together in the marriage bed, physically and sexually. They become one flesh. As we said, they become one flesh in other ways. One flesh socially and financially and ideally one believer in another spiritually in Christ, walking together, all kinds of other things as they are bound up with one another, but that union is certainly not less than the one flesh sexual relation.
And here again the Reformers understood that God had given even the pleasures of the marriage bed, which is honorable for the mutual enjoyment of the wife and the husband. But tragically since the days of Augustine in the early church, it's not always been understood that way or propagated by the Christian church. I mean Augustine is helpful as he has been to the church and he is a giant in so many ways and so helpful in so many ways. And this issue, you may know that he had all kinds of hang ups with sexual intimacy because he had been very promiscuous before his conversion to faith in Christ and after his conversion to faith in Christ he held as many others did.
Well that sex was a kind of necessary evil, a bad thing you ought to accomplish a good thing bringing children into the world, but that wasn't really its primary purpose. But the Bible of course from the beginning in Genesis, through the Song of Solomon, through 1 Corinthians 7 and Hebrews 13 sees the marriage bed as honorable and as God's good gift. And the Reformers understood that this sexual relationship was not only capable of reproduction but of mutual enjoyment and blessing as the two enact and reenact. Even again and again physically they're one flesh union.
So fifthly we see as well that marriage was designed by God from the beginning to be between one man and one woman at one time. It's the union of a male and female in a lifelong mutually committed relationship. And it's obvious from the beginning. And then reaffirmed here by Jesus that one of God's purposes for marriage is the expression of our sexuality with the opposite sex and only with one at one time in marriage.
That is from the beginning our sexuality was to be expressed heterosexually and monogamously within marriage. And saying that is not homophobia, it's not transphobia, it's not polyamorous, phobia, it's not polygamous, phobia, it's not hate of anyone. And you don't have to hate anyone to assert what Jesus asserts, what God at creation has asserted, which is for the blessing of people and the honor of God. And it certainly shouldn't be characterized as some kind of hate crime as if the Bible advocated violence or the unjust persecution of people who believe differently.
Nor is this even about the hypothetical question of whether two men or two women could be faithful to each other and not cheat. The issue isn't whether some other arrangement of human beings can see those human beings remain committed to one another and not break vows of fidelity to one another. The issue is whether two men or two women or some other arrangement of three or more could form some sort of union and still be faithful to their creator and still be faithful to the purposes for which God created marriage. And a world of males and females.
Marriage is to be between one man and one woman at one time because our creator designed it that way. And six, why? Why did he design marriage to be that way and not some other way? And the answer has everything to do with Christ.
Paul, the apostle in Ephesians 5, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit who faithfully revealed and preserved the words of Jesus here in Matthew 19 and first gave them to us in Genesis 2, tells us in Ephesians 5, 31, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, he says, and I am saying it refers to Christ and the church. What the apostle is saying is that the marriage of a man and a woman is about the marriage of Christ and his bride, the church. God from before the foundation of the world planned to create a world in order to prepare a bride for his son in order to unite humanity to himself in a saving redemptive love.
12th century theologian Richard St. Victor in his book on the Trinity put it this way, the infinite God the Father so loved God the equally infinite son that he brought into being ex-neil out of nothing. A finite material world to be people with creatures in the likeness of his son. In order that as the son's bride they could share in the beatitude of the divine life in a way appropriate to finite creatures in God's personal image.
And he goes on to provide a beautiful bride for his son, the eternal father created an entire universe and in a world which previously had no existence whatsoever as the nursery and home in which the bride would be reared. So Jesus the bridegroom marries his bride the church and the two become one in everlasting union. That's why the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5 then in speaking to husbands will say the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church his body and his himself is Savior and he'll go on to command husbands in their exercise of their headship. Well how should they express that?
How should a husband be the head of his wife? Certainly not by domination, not by oppression, not by coercion, not by neglect, not by passivity, not by abuse of any sort. But by love, sacrificial love, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for that's the command self-denying self-sacrificing love. And so there be a higher calling and in response to the loving respect of a wife or her husband so that together they reflect and model and are modeled upon the relationship of Christ in the church.
That's why God made us male and female the same but different as Christ incarnate is like us but different. And this is why God made one man and one male and one female for marriage as Christ himself marries one bride, not many, one church, not many. And so if you're married your spouse is to be your most important human relationship. You even leave father and mother for your spouse.
Even as Jesus was sent out by the father to redeem his bride the church. And in marriage you were to hold fast to your spouse. You were to keep them close to you in a permanent lifelong relationship. Because in redemption Jesus unites himself to his bride and he never lets her go.
And in marriage that you become one flesh because in redemption we're united to Christ. As a body is united to its head as branches are united to a vine as a bride is united to her husband. And so Jesus concludes then at the end of verse 6 what therefore God has joined together. Let not man separate.
And that makes our seventh and last point. It is God who makes marriages. Not man. In his providence he brings people together.
He sets them apart from the world and for each other and buys command there to live together as one. And so even if you didn't know God was involved when you got married he was. He joined you to your spouse. And the reason Jesus is saying all of this is because as Jesus says he ferrises.
Before I will even talk to you about the very difficult and painful tearing asunder of what God has joined. You need to remember not to be hasty in divorce. Because marriage is God's idea. It's a binding mutual covenant relationship of one man and one woman.
And it's a public and social relation as well as a sexual union and given for the mutual help of husband and wife and is to be modeled after that glorious reality of Christ's love for his bride. And union with her. And so I would say to us then would you remember then amidst all the failures of husbands toward their wives. And all the failures of wives toward their husbands and all the failures of both toward God.
Would you remember that the bride whom Jesus loved and married and never let's go. He found her wallowing in filth living in idolatry committing spiritual adultery by loving anyone and everyone other than God. And he loved us and he gave himself for us to reconcile us to God. And then to reconcile us to one another.
Would you keep that gospel front and center in your marriage. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven make it so. Forgive us we pray.
And grant that we would forgive our debtors. Bring good out of trouble and pain and loss and sorrow. And redeem the years the locus of Eden. In Jesus name I pray.
Amen. Let's stand and sing.