Mark 10:2-12 God’s Commands and Promises Concerning Your Marriage October 14, 2012

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 God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.” When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus 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.” (NIV)

During the summer we often drop Dish Network for a few months and save quite a bit of money. However, they continue to give you whatever the free preview channels are at a certain time. This summer one of the channels had frequent reruns of Frasier. I was reintroduced to the storyline of Niles Crane's secret attraction to Daphne Moon, the housekeeper of Niles’ brother Frasier. Over time, Daphne had a secret attraction to Niles as well. After a number of seasons of this, Niles married a plastic surgeon named Melanie, while Daphne was about to get married to a lawyer named Donny. Frasier decided to get involved by revealing to Niles and Daphne their attraction for one another. The show ended with Daphne leaving Donny at the altar and running away with Niles in his father’s Winnebago. That is, the show ends with basically two divorces. The show ends with two people destroying their marriages, breaking the lifelong promises they had made to others. The original storyline aired 12 years ago, so perhaps I have forgotten--but I certainly don't recall any societal outcry concerning this episode. And while perhaps memory has become somewhat hazy, I highly doubt there was one. I don’t know percentages--and they differ according to who you talk to--but in a nation in which a high percentage of adults have gotten a divorce, you wouldn’t have expected there to be a wailing that the show Frasier would soon cause a decline in the nation’s morals. And the fact is that the show probably didn’t cause a decline in the nation’s morals. It was probably too late for that. If the producers of Frasier had intended to be cutting-edge trend-setters, they didn’t choose their subject matter very well. Far from setting the standard for the nation’s morals, attitudes, and beliefs concerning marriage and divorce, the show simply reflected them. But what I did find interesting is that there is one area in which the writers of the show were cutting-edge, one area in which they stepped outside of the usual pattern for sitcoms. And the fact that they felt free to do so is, I think, instructive of the attitude of American society. Since the people who produce television tend to be shameless manipulators of our emotions, you would have expected that Niles and Daphne would have been married (or, in Daphne’s case, engaged to be married) to tyrannical, overemotional, uncaring, completely dislikeable people. TV writers typically do this so that we waste no energy mourning for the other parties in the broken marriages, instead spending our emotion on rejoicing at the fact that the two are finally free of their brutish (or shrewish) spouses and have finally found each other. The writers of Frasier didn’t bother with that. While Melanie and Donny both had their flaws as human beings, they were not the monstrous caricatures that we have come to expect in such situations. It appears that the show’s writers decided the American public no longer needed to have divorce justified by having the characters being treated unfairly in their current marriage. It appears that now it is no longer necessary for the characters to be involved in a marriage that “can’t work” in order for them to be justified in getting a divorce. Now the American public simply needs to suspect that those characters might come closer to “finding themselves” and “self-actualizing” in another marriage. Let’s say it. In the land of television, the mere possibility that an individual might be happier in another marriage is now good enough reason to break off the current marriage. That’s the case in the land of television, it is more and more becoming the case in the land of what we call “real life”, and it is, I fear, becoming more and more the case in the minds and the thoughts of those who call themselves Christians. Test yourself. When Daphne showed up in that Winnebago, did you find it to be a happy ending? Were you pleased that the show had ended with these two people whom destiny had been trying to bring together for years--finally together? Or, if you’re unfamiliar with Frasier, how about this–when you saw the movie Titanic, did your heart feel as though all was right with the world when Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio finally had sex? Was there just something that felt “so right that it couldn’t be wrong” when Kate Winslet cheated on her fiancee’, the one to whom she had made a solemn promise to get married, with someone she had known for all of a couple days? More to the point, how many of you have a friend that you have thought should dump their spouse because they were being “held back”, their “spirit was being restrained”, or a whole host of other phrases which are often used? In fact, have you sometimes wondered if you wouldn’t be happier in a different marriage than the one you are in? Have you even perhaps considered pursuing “outside interests” with an eye open towards the possibility of abandoning your current marriage? Have you even told yourself that something that feels so right and makes you so happy can’t possibly be wrong? Whatever your thoughts and plans are in this area, you ought to clear them first with the one who is in charge of your marriage. That’s not you. That’s not your spouse. No, the person who is in charge of your marriage is God. Let’s hear what he has to say about your marriage. We read that the Pharisees came up to test Jesus by asking him whether it was OK to get a divorce. If Jesus were to say that it was OK, I suppose that people could have responded in 2 ways. They could have immediately marched home, kicked their wife out, and told her that the prophet Jesus said it was OK. Or, perhaps the more likely of the two with this group, they would have declared him a false prophet for speaking contradictory to the words of God in Malachi: “I hate divorce.” (2:16) But at the same time, if he were to say that it was not OK to get a divorce, they could then accuse him of opposing Moses, someone very near and dear to the heart of every Israelite. For in Deuteronomy 24 Moses had indeed made provisions for a man divorcing his wife. Jesus anticipates all this and answers with a question of his own : “What did Moses command you?” Perhaps twisting the question a bit, they don’t speak about what Moses commanded. Rather, they tell what Moses permitted , saying, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

Indeed Moses had, but Jesus answers tells them why Moses had done that. He says, “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.” In other words, “Moses saw that in the past you had chosen to get divorces, and he knew that you were going to continue to do so in the future. Therefore, in order to keep things orderly and in order to limit the damage that could be caused by such divorces, God had Moses institute some rules and regulations by which this would be done.” Our government takes a similar approach today, offering “no-fault divorces” in which both parties agree to simply end the marriage, without needing to provide any justification for doing so. But was that ever OK in God’s eyes? Was that ever God’s plan for marriage? Not at all! Jesus goes back to the beginning of marriage, back to the Garden of Eden when God set up marriage and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Jesus then goes on to say, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” Jesus is clear. It does not matter if you get divorced with the intention of marrying the “true” love of your life. If you choose to get a divorce for any reason other than the two reasons permitted in Scripture--marital unfaithfulness and desertion--you...are...sinning. Keep this in mind as you counsel friends whose marriages are struggling. Ponder this carefully if you yourself begin to even consider a divorce. There may be such a thing as a no-fault divorce in the eyes of the state, but in the eyes of God, there is no such thing as a no-sin divorce. In the case of every divorce, someone, at least one of the two parties is guilty of sin against God. Either one spouse has committed adultery or deserted the other--therefore breaking the marriage, or else the spouse (or spouses) who initiates the actual divorce is sinning. The fact that your husband does not match the standard which God sets for him in Ephesians 5, the fact that he does not love you as perfectly as Christ has loved his Church, the fact that he does not always give himself up for you as Christ gave himself up for the Church is not cause for divorce. The fact that your wife doesn’t match the standard God set for her in Ephesians 5, the fact that she doesn’t submit to you as perfectly as the Church submits to Christ does not give you permission to divorce her. The guess that you will be happier without them, the possibility that the “real you” will be better able to come out, the realization that your marriage is not operating exactly the way God wants it to, and even the “so good that it can’t be wrong” feeling that may come from an affair or the contemplation of an affair-- none of these are cause for divorce. Frasier, Titanic, advice columnists and opinion polls will tell you otherwise, but I cannot say it any plainer than Jesus did. “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” You don’t have to ask me or anyone else what God’s will is for your marriage. God has already stated his purpose for marriage--including yours. God’s will is that you stay together. So what about those times when we haven’t spoken clearly on divorce to our children, when we've passed up the opportunity to contrast the attitudes expressed on television or elsewhere with the commands expressed in God’s Word? What about the times that we ourselves have fleetingly thought of separating the marriage into which God joined us? What if we ourselves have in fact gone and done exactly that--pursued and received a divorce in spite of the fact that we had no biblical basis for getting one? Well, it’s more than likely too late to change what happened. The sin has been committed, those particular opportunities to speak have been lost, those selfish thoughts have been thought, and the papers have been signed.

But while the effects of those sins may not be changed, the sin itself may be forgiven. In fact, it is forgiven. God indeed hates divorce as he hates all sin, but in love he sent his Son to wash away those sins. He sent a Son to suffer the punishment that we deserved for those sins. Today we ought to individually consider our sins against God’s wonderful gift of marriage, and we ought to confess them in sorrow. But then we ought to take those sins and lay them at the foot of the cross that they may be washed away forever by the blood of Jesus. And then we need no longer continue to look back at them. Because they’re gone. Instead we can look ahead. Because there is something more in these passages than a firm prohibition of divorce. There is also in these passages hope and promises for your marriage. That hope and promise is found in the verse that I just read: “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” Did you catch that? God has joined you two together. Your marriage is not the result of two sinful human beings foolishly thinking that they were compatible with one another. Your marriage is not the result of two people hastily entering into matrimony before they had met their true “soul-mates.” Your marriage has been allowed and brought about by God. Therefore your marriage is a holy thing. And God does not create things with the intention that they will fail. He didn’t cause the two to become one with the intention that someday soon the one would become two again. You can get that impression by listening to people talk about the marriages of others and about their own marriages. You will hear them say, “That marriage was doomed from the start.” Friends will tell you, “Our marriage doesn’t have a chance any more. Too many things have been said. Too much has happened for us to ever go back to the way it was now.” Can that really be true? Can it be that the all-wise God joined you together in error? Or can it be that the two of you have made such a mess of things that the all-powerful God is unable to mend your marriage and make it work? Of course not. God has joined you together. He can keep you together. And he can cause you to prosper together. He can cause for you to have in your marriage every blessing that he intended for Adam and Eve. He can give you what is perhaps the biggest thing we are looking for in marriage--companionship. God himself said in Genesis, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) God can give you companionship with all its blessings. But he will do that if only you do not refuse companionship with God himself. The problem with many marriages is that while the couple allowed God to bring them together, that was the last time he was allowed to have a role in their marriage. And that can be disastrous. Statistics vary, of course, and there are those who like to point out that those who claim to be Christians get divorced roughly as often as non-Christians. But statistics will bear out that Christian couples who actually attend church together on a regular basis are considerably less likely to divorce than couples who attend irregularly or not at all. What’s the point? That sitting together in a certain building for an hour a week will make your marriage sin-proof and failure-proof? No. It is always possible that a couple will be hearers of the Word, but not doers of that Word. It’s always possible that a couple will hear the Word, but not take the promises and blessings contained there to heart. But what will more likely happen is that you will come and hear God’s Word, you will see what a true marriage relationship ought to be as you consider the loving, self-sacrificing relationship which Christ has with his Church, and you and your spouse will be blessed.

You will also be blessed in that you will know how to handle it when your spouse sins against you, when your spouse is oppressive, shrewish, short-tempered, distant, and thoughtless. You will learn from God how to handle that. For many have been the times when we ourselves have shamefully acted shrewish, short-tempered, distant, and thoughtless towards God. Many have been the times that God would have had every reason to file for divorce, to claim that this marriage could never work. How did God react when we sinned against him in those ways? Did he claim that we were holding him back as a God? Did he shout that our incompatibility, our sinfulness paired with his sinlessness, was grounds for a divorce? Did he complain to others about us in hopes of gaining a sympathetic ear? Did he file for divorce? No. He filed for forgiveness. He sent his one and only Son to pay the price for our sins--our sins of laughing at his blessing of marriage, our sins of disobeying his commands for marriage, our sins of unfaithfulness to our spouse--whether in thoughts or also in actions, our sins of unfaithfulness to him. He sent Jesus to suffer the punishment for the heartache that we had caused by our lives. He sent Jesus to once again join us together with him. So when you are trying to figure out how to hold your marriage together, learn from what God did to bring you and him together. Forgive. Forgive your spouse their sins against you, forgive them for the fact that they don’t always “bring out the best in you”, forgive them for the fact that they sometimes hold you back as much as they spur you on. Now that God has joined you together with himself, now that God has joined you together with your spouse, may he continue to be joined with you in your marriage. God’s richest blessings on your marriages. Amen.