Marriage, Divorce, & Remarriage | Week 75

All right, so we are in a wonderful series called The Ministry of Jesus. As most of you know, we are walking through different episodes, different chapters of the teaching of Jesus. We’re diving in deep to learn from Jesus, to watch his life, to hear his teaching. Today we have come to Mark 10. Now, you guys know that in the Broward Church, we love to worship God in song. We love to pray to him. We also love deep Bible study, don’t we? If you’re ready, I’d like to engage in some deep Bible study and just dive right in. Let us look at Mark 10. We’re going to be talking about God’s design for marriage. We’re going to end our message today with a short talk before we go to the Lord’s Supper on God’s design for us as individuals. Jesus then left that place. By the way, that place is probably Capernaum, we know from Mark, Chapter 9. He’s doing that thing again where Jewish people in Galilee often travel from Galilee down into Judea to get to Jerusalem for the different feasts. So it says, Jesus left that place and went into the region of Judea, across from the Jordan.

 

Again, the crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? What did Moses command you? He replied. They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. Now, our text has three slides. But before we move on from this slide, I just want to show you something we’re going to circle back to. So Jesus says, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted us. And so this distinction, I’m just showing you this here right now, we’re going to circle back to that in a few minutes, but it’s a legitimate distinction. Both Jesus and the Pharisees know what they’re talking about. So this is a distinction I want you to keep in mind, commanded versus permitted. So as we continue, it says, It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law, Jesus replied. But at the beginning of creation, God… Now there’s a quote here because he’s going to quote verbatim, word for word, Genesis 2:24. It says, God made them male and female.

 

For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Before we move to the third slide, I just want to point out that marriage is not just a social and a governmental institution. It says God has joined them together. This is an institution created by God, sanctioned by God. God is actively involved on the wedding day. He’s bringing two lives together as one. Now here’s a second conversation. When they were in the house again, so Jesus is teaching publicly. Now he’s going to go into his house and it says, The disciples asked him about this. He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery. Now, before we move on, I just want to point out here that you’ll notice that Jesus is gender equal here. What goes for the man goes for the woman. I just thought that was significant. We are come to the teaching on marriage, divorce and remarriage.

 

This is a difficult and sometimes uncomfortable topic, and there’s no way around it. Jesus is bringing this up and we have a clear time that we need to stop and consider what Jesus is teaching us about this God given design of marriage. Now, I realize probably almost all of us in this room have been impacted by divorce and remarriage. When I was 21 years old, my mother and my father got a divorce. I’m the oldest of four siblings, and because I was 21, there was no custody battle for me, but there was a custody battle for my younger siblings, in particular, my two younger sisters. I grew up with a mother who had schizophrenia. All my childhood growing up, actually starting in about the fourth grade. And so my dad pretty much left my mom because her schizophrenia had made home life at times virtually impossible or intolerable in his view. There was a nasty custody battle and because my mom had schizophrenia, my dad won the custody battle. I know everybody’s situation is different, but I know if you yourself have not been divorced, you may have known or had a family member or maybe your parents or your adult children have gone through this.

 

I just want to say that the point of this lesson is not to make anybody feel guilty, not to make anybody feel any shame about this. The goal of this message today is simply to examine what the Bible says about marriage, divorce, and remarriage, and get the plain facts. But I want to let you know, that Christianity is a religion given to us by God of fresh starts, of being born again, of getting new chances of being forgiven. And if there’s something in your past, in the area of marriage, divorce or remarriage that you’re ashamed of, or that you feel remorse about or guilt about, the blessing of God, the grace of God is that we can be forgiven. We can start over. If we did it wrong in the past, we can do it right and correctly as we move forward to be godly in our lives. And so all of us have done things, whether it’s divorce and remarriage or any other area of life, all of us have done things that were wrong or a mistake. But we’re not covering this here. You squirm. We’re covering this because there’s hope in Christ.

 

Amen. Jesus, in this text we just read, he did not give them the set of rules. Did you catch that? The Pharisees are asking, give us your version of the set of rules. For those of you Bible nerds, you know that there was a debate between a Rabbi called Hillel and a Rabbi called Shamei that disagreed with each other and they had these camps. It was called the House of Hillel and the House of Shamei. The Pharisees are trying to draw him into this really popular debate of the time. Jesus, instead of doing that, He’s going to appeal to God’s timeless plan. Right out of page two of the Bible, Genesis Chapter 2, and he’s going to appeal to God’s timeless plan right out of page two of the Bible, Genesis 2, and he’s going to go to the Spirit, the heart behind the commands. Here is what is the spirit in the heart of marriage? It begins here, page two of the Bible. It says, The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for a man to be alone. Can I get an Amen? ‘Amen. Amen. I will make a helper suitable for him.

 

I would say that there’s two things we learn about marriage that might surprise you. It’s basic, but it’s not how we think about marriage usually. This says marriage is intended for companionship and mutual help. Do you see that? It’s a whole lot more difficult to go through life alone and handle all the chores of being an adult alone. God had a glorious design, and He said, Let’s let people team up and have companionship and mutual help for one another. That’s what I put here. God’s purpose for marriage is mutual companionship and to help each other, including a commitment to love your spouse more than anyone else. So this is it. This is God’s design. One man, one woman for life. That’s the design. And although the topic can be difficult, but the plan is glorious. Can you see that? It’s a glorious plan that God has made. On your wedding day, should you have a wedding day? The promise you make to your spouse is unique. You are promising that you’ll be someone’s lifelong companion. You are saying, you can count on me. When the going gets tough, I will be there for you. In the hard times, in the easy times, through thick and thin, I am loyal to you.

 

This is the foundation of marriage. The question is, when a person gets married, will they actually be that faithful companion, or will they abandon their spouse when the going gets difficult? That’s the issue that we’re facing here. Here’s where a lot of the surprise may come for many of you, that the scriptures give us a successful foundation for marriage, companion and mutual help. The world gives us a faulty and unsuccessful foundation for marriage. Many people believe, some of you right now in this room may believe that the foundation for marriage is feelings of love. Like, I love you, you love me. That’s why we’re married. Of course, the other side of the coin is, if I fall out of love with you, or you fall out of love with me, deals off, we’re getting a divorce. Do you see how this is a faulty foundation? Is romantic love part of marriage? Of course, it’s part of marriage. It is not, hear me out, it is not founded actually on that. It’s a more simple, easier process. You’re promising lifelong companionship. The footnote here is, when I fall out of love with you, I’m going to decide to fall back in love with you.

 

Any married people understand this? All right. Marriage is not based on having your needs met. I’m getting married to you because you’re going to meet my needs, or I’m going to get married to you because you’re going to make my dreams come true. I was really unhappy when I was single. Now that we’re married, you’re going to make my dreams come true. That’s the deal. I have watched Walt Disney World movies, and that is how it plays out. My marriage to you is based on the fact that I’ve been looking and I have decided you are my soulmate. To make a long story short because I am on the clock, I don’t have time to unpack this, but scandalous, I don’t believe in the soulmate idea. I just don’t believe in it. I will say Dave and Chantelle Heron, a week or two ago said that they thought, I thought this was wonderful. They thought a soulmate could be forged in marriage rather than picked when you’re engaged. In other words, you might not be some inherent soulmate, but as you go through married life, you can learn to be what that other person needs.

 

It’s a theory. Nowhere in the Bible is divorce commanded, but a few passages permit divorce. We already looked at that and that contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. Divorce is never commanded that you are obligated, but it’s permitted. Let’s get back into the heart of this and dive back in here into the scriptures. The core of the discussion for what I’m going to cover today is in verses two through 6. Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? What did Moses command you? He replied. They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law, Jesus replied. But at the beginning of creation, he made them male and female. So just for starters, instead of giving the Pharisees a list of rules, Jesus has answered with God’s heart for the issue. This is a common practice. You’ve seen other passages of scripture where somebody asks Jesus a question and he does not directly answer the question. The reason is not that he’s dodging the question.

 

The reason is he’s using the opportunity of the question to teach an even bigger, more important principle that will circle back, answer the original question and answer a whole bunch of other questions at the same time. That’s just how Jesus rolls. That’s just how he does things. That’s what he’s doing here. They said, Is it lawful? And what he goes is, I’m going to tell you the original design that back at the beginning, God created them male and female. What about the hardness of heart? There’s one thing, only one thing that destroys a marriage, and it’s unrepentant sin. It’s that hardness of heart. By the way, that has not changed. I’m not sure all of what the ramifications are, but it’s not like people had hard hearts in the days of Moses, but now everybody’s wonderful. It’s like everybody still has the same human nature today that they did back then. This is still a problem today. I would like to read you a really unique and interesting list of sins, because this list of sins are the sins that usually destroy a marriage. In this list of sins, we do not find the big famous ones.

 

This list of sins does not have adultery. It does not have murder. It does not have theft. It doesn’t have those 10 commandment sins. These are the little daily, petty sins that tear down a marriage. I think it’s good for us to know this. But mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves. Are we already getting traction? Already, this is an issue that’s going to destroy a marriage. Lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving. How disastrous is it in a marriage if a spouse or both spouses are unforgiving, seeing as you’re hurting each other all the time because you live together every day. Slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying his power have nothing to do with such people. So here’s the tension. God’s plan is one man and one woman for life. But because of our sins, divorce comes into view because of our sins, we don’t always participate the way we should in God’s design for marriage.

 

And so to look back at our scripture, it does say down at verse 6, it says, But at the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. So Jesus does not offer a list of escape clauses for marriage, because marriage should be characterized by loyalty in the first place. As I was preparing this lesson, the thing that kept surfacing for me is the virtue of loyalty. Do you think of marriage in terms of loyalty, of faithfulness, of devotion, of commitment? There’s a foundation for marriage and it’s love, but the other shared foundation is loyalty. And Jesus is not in this passage, he’s not giving any outs. They’re asking, So what’s the deal with divorce? He said, let me tell you what the deal is with marriage. I’m going to tell you what the deal is with marriage. What God’s design is, his ideal. We still have the question on the table. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? We are going to get into that with the 10 or 15 minutes we have left. We’re going to cover the issue of divorce and remarriage at a 30,000 foot view. We are not going to have time to cover every single scenario because when we go against God’s design, chaos ensues.

 

There’s all these different situations that can come up in marriage. I’m only going to cover 11 of them, but there’s a whole lot more that I’m not going to cover. Let’s just plunge in and I want to tell you that among Bible scholars and church leaders who believe the Bible is God’s word, there’s still a wide range of interpretation on marriage, divorce and remarriage. I just want to let you know there’s not a hard, fast, undebatable list of when you can get divorced and when you can get remarried, we’re entering into a difficult conversation here. I just want to support, show you this. In Romans 14, it says, Except the one whose faith is weak without quarreling over disputable matters. In the Bible, it’s not scandalous. There are debatable, disputable matters in the area of marriage is one of those things where sometimes on a case-by-case basis, it’s difficult to decide what’s best and what’s not best. On a range, you have times where divorce, this is about divorce and remarriage. You have times when it’s clear that a person could have a biblically supported divorce, which many people believe would open you up to remarriage.

 

You could remarry and not be committing adulry as Jesus warned against. There’s some times that it’s clear, and on this continuum, there’s some things that are a lot less clear. Then all the way at the other end, there’s some reasons that a person could want divorce that are simply unbiblical. They’re against the Spirit and the letter of the teaching of the Bible. It’s not right to get divorced for those reasons. Bible scholars are all over this continuum. I’m just telling you, there’s a pretty wide spectrum. Now, this week, because I was preaching on this, talked to the other senior leaders in the church, Tony and Tom and Monte, the elders and our evangelists. We’re all on the same page on the big pictures. There’s even some minor differences and nuances in the Broward Church leadership on this because there’s a lot of different situations that can come up. The first thing that I want to talk about is clear reason for divorce or remarriage. The first one is being widowed. Now, of course, if you’re widowed, there’s not even a divorce involved. But I want some people have this idea that is not a Biblical idea.

 

They have the idea that you can only have one marriage in your life that once you get married, you can never, under any circumstances, get married again. That’s not accurate. That’s not accurate. I’ll show you a scripture here. So it says, a wife is bound as long as her husband lives, but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. By the way, there’s two other passages that are very clear about remarriage of widows, whether they’re men or women. And that’s Romans 7 and 1 Timothy 5. So what this is saying is a widow is free to remarry. That would be biblically supported. But this is an encouragement that Christians marry Christians. There’s another passage many of you know, 2 Corinthians 6:14, that also teaches whether you’re widowed or not widowed, just a single person. Christians are obligated in the spirit of the scriptures to marry Christians, not somebody who is an unbeliever. There’s a clause for divorce in the Bible that some of you may be unfamiliar with, but it’s a pretty clear teaching and it’s about being abandoned by someone who is not a Christian.

 

If your spouse is not a believer, I want to read this to you. Like I said, for some of you, this might be new. Paul says, To the rest, I say this, I not the Lord. If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. So if your spouse is not a Christian, that’s not grounds for divorce. As a matter of fact, just the opposite. If you’re a believer, your spouse is not a believer, you still have that same God designed commitment of marriage to them. And if a woman, so here’s, same for the man, same for the woman. And if a woman has a husband who’s not a believer, he’s willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. Verse 15, But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so the brother or sister is not bound in such circumstances, God has called us to live in peace. So for starters, if your spouse is not a believer and they want to leave, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. If they’re not a member of the church community, it may not help for the church leaders to talk to them.

 

They’re not even a part of the church. Pretty much Paul is saying, look, don’t let this make you feel terrible or make you feel like it’s ruining your life. They have stepped away from the faith, and now they’re stepping away from you. You are not bound in such circumstances. Here’s the gray area. Can they remarry? They can’t be married. But the Bible doesn’t say. It doesn’t say a lot of gray or difficult areas in marriage and divorce because God doesn’t want to spell out every single version of chaos that comes out of a marriage that’s been destroyed. Now, let’s talk about adultery. By the way, let me see if I can go backwards. I want you to notice I bumped over adultery a little bit here, not because that’s a typo, but because actually in the minds of some, it’s a minority, not a majority. But in the minds of some Bible scholars, adultery is not even grounds for divorce. Now, the great majority of Bible scholars would support the idea that adultery is grounds for divorce. Here’s where they get that. It’s taught a couple of different times. Matthew 19 and Matthew 5. It has been said anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.

 

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Forgive me, I got to take a sip of water here. Are you guys okay? I know this deep Bible study, right? We’re digging down deep here. The Greek word for sexual immorality is actually not the same word as adultery, but sometimes this is translated into English. The NIV here is using the term sexual immorality. But a lot of Bible translators put the word adultery in here because sexual immorality in the confines of marriage is a type of adultery, is adultery. This term sexual immorality simply means any sin that’s against what the Bible teaches. What we see here in the minds of many Bible scholars is an option for a divorce, not a command for a divorce. I’m of that position. I would say that if your spouse has committed adultery on you, the option of divorce is now in view. Now, the way I feel about it, the way the church leadership here in Broward Church feels about it, the way most people feel about it in the Christian community is, if the marriage can be repaired, it should be repaired.

 

Like if a marriage can survive adultery, you’re not commanded to do the divorce. If it can survive adultery, then you ought to make efforts to repair that marriage. What often happens, unfortunately, is that the spouse who commits adultery is unrepentant and they keep doing it. In that case, divorce becomes more and more reasonable as a biblically supported choice for divorce. And so the view that I have is that these three areas, being widowed, being abandoned by someone who’s not a believer, and especially chronic adultery, are grounds for being able to be divorced and be remarried in the church. Now, I’m colorblind, and I think this is gray. Is it gray? Yes. Okay, good. I got lucky. I’m not kidding you. I tried to use gray because this is more of a gray area. Let’s talk about the most difficult stuff. What if your spouse is abusing you? What if the spouse is physically abusive? What if is looking at pornography? What if your spouse suffers from alcohol addiction, drug addiction, gambling addiction? What if, like in the case for my mother who had schizophrenia until the day she passed? What if you’re married to somebody who suffers from mental illness?

 

These are difficult things and I want to touch on these things. Every single one of these is a long discussion that we don’t have time to go through in-depth, but we still need to touch on these things. There’s a passage in the Bible that does not use the word abuse, but it is often used in cases of abuse. I’m going to show you, you’ll see what I mean. So in 1 Corinthians 7, it says, To the married, I give this command, not I, but the Lord. A wife must not separate from her husband. Look at this. But if she does, well now wait, it just said she could not. It says, But if she does, she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and a husband must not divorce his wife. What’s the deal with, “but if she does?” I think the scriptures are acknowledging a married couple should not ever be separated. But sometimes there’s circumstances where it’s so bad that temporarily or unfortunately, maybe even permanently, they need to live apart. And there’s no more classic example than if one spouse is endangering the physical health or even maybe the life of their spouse.

 

So if you have a spouse that is physically abusing the other spouse, this makes sense that they separate. There’s not a clause for divorce. Can you see that? Now, again, this passage never mentioned the word abuse, but we don’t have a passage of scripture in the Bible that says, if you’re being abused, here’s the rules. We’re working on Biblical principles. But this passage of scripture says, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. I just want to point out something real quickly to you. Remaining unmarried in the eyes of the Bible is not torture. No, I’m trying to be funny, but I’m trying to be serious. Celebacy is not ruining your life. What you see is the Bible is saying you made that lifelong companionship commitment to your spouse. If something happens where you’re forced to separate, you need to keep yourself faithful to your spouse and try, if you can, to be reconciled to your spouse. See, it wasn’t that easy. Just kidding. We didn’t even solve abuse, did we? There’s a tension in these things. If you do things in God’s design, it’s wonderful. If you break from God’s design, chaos results.

 

What about pornography? So the most common scripture that people apply to this is in Matthew 5. You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin or causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right-hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. There’s different camps of viewpoint on the issue of pornography. Some people say, Look, if a man looks at a woman lustfully, that’s the same as adultery. We now have grounds for divorce. There’s a different camp, and I’m in a different camp, and you’re not forced to agree with me. I’m going to give you a viewpoint of interpretation on the scriptures. Almost 100 % of men are guilty of looking at another woman lustfully.

 

I’m just saying, men are wired visually. Almost every single married Christian man in his marriage has looked at another woman in an impure way. What we do, what I do is repent. When I first became a Christian, I had to literally… The way I looked at women as a non-Christian was not at their face. I literally, when I became a Christian, had to learn to raise my head about 20 or 30 degrees. I literally had to teach myself to look at women in the face first. There’s just that repentance that Christian men need to do. They need to go, I’m going to be faithful to my wife, not only in my physical actions, but with my eyes and in my heart and what I think in my head. That is, unfortunately, I just don’t know how to break it to you wives, but it’s a battle. It’s a battle that Christian men fight. It just is. That would mean almost 100% of Christian wives have grounds for divorce. I don’t agree with that. I just don’t agree with that on the basis of common sense. So pornography is simply a version of this issue of looking at women lustfully.

 

There’s a term used a lot by Bible scholars and church leaders on issues of divorce and remarriage, and it’s the term case-by-case. There’s so many things that are handled case by case because everyone’s situation is unique. If a person is caught up in the sin of pornography, what exactly are we talking about? Are there any other sins that in addition to the pornography that are circling around this lifestyle of pornography? What’s going on? Now, that’s the case with abuse. That’s the case with addiction. That’s the case with a lot of these other debatable areas. What’s the big picture? What’s really going on day by day in the life of this marriage? A lot of these things are, I hate to say it, but they’re matters of judgment. They just are. I am not of the view that pornography is automatic grounds for divorce. I’m just giving you my interpretation for your consideration on this issue. I believe it goes along with this idea when Jesus says, if your eye causes you to sin, pull your eye out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut your hand off. Jesus is not, in my view, advocating pulling your eye out and cutting your hand off.

 

What he’s saying is I’m trying to tell you guys how serious the sin is and what the consequences are. You can pluck your eye out, and if you don’t change your heart, it does no good. I think Jesus is using a poetic device called hyperbole, which is where you’re making an exaggerated statement and it’s not meant to be taken literally. I believe when a man looks at a woman lustfully, that is not at the same level as full-blown physical adultery. You’re just having that heart and you need to repent. On these issues of abuse, of pornography, of addiction, of mental illness, you have three interpretation camps. One is this, and this is the camp I’m in. If you have a spouse that’s suffering with these things, these sins, which is also making you suffer, I believe this calls for a great sacrifice on the part of their spouse. I would not want Pam to abandon me if I got addicted to something. I would not want her to bail out on me in a time where my life is beginning to become glued. Are you with me? I think a lot of times people who are suffering with these things, you may want to get out because it’s a hardship, but this is the time that might be exactly the time they need you the most.

 

I’m in that camp. Now, there’s other people that think that these are also, along with adultery and abandonment, also grounds for divorce due to hardship. I’m not in that camp. I’m just telling you it’s out there, that interpretation. Then there’s a convoluted interpretation, but I just need to let you know about it. There are some people that believe if you’re being abused or your spouse is involved in pornography, they, as a Christian, are acting like an unbeliever. Therefore, even if they keep calling themselves a Christian, you might have an out of divorce because of the abandonment of an unbeliever. The only snag there is in the abandonment of the unbeliever, it would never be the Christian that actually files for the divorce. It would be the non-Christian. Some people will say, Well, my husband is acting like a non-Christian. I’m going to file for divorce. It doesn’t really fit under this abandonment idea. I’m just telling you, people have tried to use this to say, my spouse with his addictions, acting like a non-Christian. By that, he’s communicating to me he doesn’t want to be in the marriage, so I’m going to file for divorce.

 

It’s a viewpoint, not one that I support. Even though these issues often result in great hardship, no clear support for divorce is given in the Bible. These situations often call for heroic, faithfulness and sacrifice. Church leadership input on these issues is handled on a case-by-case basis. I think there’s an important scripture here. In Ephesians 5, it says, Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. I want to point out two different things. Why would it command husbands to love your wives if you already love your wife? Well, I think here we have a scriptural precedent that when you fall out of love, you need to fall back in love. Like Jesus is telling, husbands make a decision to love your wife. Now, here’s a foreign concept in our culture. Love can be a decision, not just a feeling. When it comes to loving your spouse, there’s a wonderful thing. Often feelings can follow an initial decision. Make a decision. My spouse is irritating me so much, but I decide to love them. Then you’re like, Oh, I remember why I fell in love with her in the first place.

 

It all comes back to you. But I was talking to another elder in the church, Monte, yesterday about this, and he said something, I hope I’m paraphrasing him correctly, but he said, Every marriage involves a cross. What he meant was every marriage for both of the spouses, not one spouse, but usually for both of the spouses, there’s areas of self-sacrifice, of dying to yourself that need to happen not just in the big ways, but in the daily rhythm of life. You’re saying, I’m not going to be unselfish. I’m going to be considerate of my spouse. This is this idea that Jesus, in Ephesians 5, it talks about the church being his bride. It’s a metaphor of marriage. It says, Jesus loved the church and sacrificed himself for her on the cross. We ought to imitate that also in marriage. Now, here’s the last. You can see we’ve covered seven areas. The last four areas I just have to be brief with. Most, the great majority of Bible scholars and church leaders see these areas as not sufficient for biblically supported divorce and remarriage. One is the idea that I have fallen out of love. I no longer love this person.

 

Therefore, there’s no reason to be married. That’s not God’s design. He didn’t plan for it to be supported just by emotion. The other is irreconcilable differences. I just feel like we can’t get along. We don’t get along, so I’m out. That would not be justifiable. Or I have needs that are supposed to be met in marriage. They’re not being met in marriage, so I want to file for divorce. Or a husband, let me explain this, who’s derelict. By that, I simply mean, what do you do if you have a spouse that’s unemployed or a spouse that’s spending your money out of control or a spouse that’s overcome with laziness or whatever? Many people suffer with this. A spouse that I have termed derelict. These are not justifiable reasons for divorce, even though our modern culture is telling us that they are. Here’s the advice I have in this category. Decide to love and learn to live together. Learn to live together. My wife, Pam, has had to teach me how to love her. I didn’t do it right when we first got married. There were needs she had and ways her personality was organized that I did not discover until we got married, like everybody, married people, you know exactly.

 

It’s not wrong. It’s just the way it is. She had to teach me how to love her. Repent of your sins. You want to improve your marriage? Repent of your sins. Forgive them. Work towards reconciliation on ongoing help and get help from God and from other mature Christians. I’ve already said this, but this is my second to the last slide. I’m going to read you our last slide and we’re going to go to the Lord’s Supper to communion together. But I just want to let you know that this is our church senior leadership. I wanted to talk about, again, one last time about our position on these areas. Our church leadership is one evangelist, three eldership couples. I’m just going to read this. We agree with each other on the major issues of marriage, divorce and remarriage, but we reserve the right to come to our own convictions from our own personal Bible study. Tom Hattaway does not have to agree exactly with me on every single issue. We’re not forced as a church leadership to all see things exactly the same. We’re able to read our Bible with our own conscience, with our own thinking, and work together to try to have cohesive leadership for the church.

 

Now, this leads to minor variations and openness to change a viewpoint after further study and discussion. We don’t have a tight list of all the different rules. Jesus didn’t give it to the Pharisees, and I’m not going to be able to give you a tight list of rules. What I am going to hold up is this. God has a marvelous design. Amen. Amen. One man, one woman for life. As we go to the Lord’s Supper, I want to ask you, what is God’s design for you as an individual? Not for marriage, but for you. We’re going to read this scripture, and then I’m going to pray, and then we can take communion together. From one man, God made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth, and they marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. You know, in the design of marriage, you can participate or rebel. In the design of the individual, God has made you, wired you to desire a relationship with God.

 

You can participate in that or you can rebel against that. But Jesus suffered on the cross and was resurrected to fulfill this. If you will simply participate in this, you were designed to walk with God and to have a relationship with him. Let’s pray together. Holy Father, your designs are miraculous. Father, your wisdom in this is perfect and complete. Your designs are perfect and complete. Thank you. Help us to be grateful. Help us to be responsive. Help us, Father, to be willing to participate in the designs you have for our lives. We know in that is blessing. We know in rebellion against your design, Father, is chaos. We love you and pray in your son’s name, Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. You want to stay on the other side? Thanks. All right. Good. All right, now you go first. Thank you.