This morning the Scripture reading is taken from the Gospel of Mark chapter 10 verses 1 through 12 and repeating that Mark chapter 10 verses 1 through 12 and If you do not have a Bible available, the Scripture is also printed in the order of worship
Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan Again crowds of people came to him and as was his custom he talked to him 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 the 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 into a house again the disciples asked Jesus about this he answered Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her and As she divorces her husband and marries another man She commits adultery The word of the Lord Please be seated. Let's go to the Lord in prayer
Father, I pray that you would speak to each one of us now Take away the Flaws in my human words and be pleased to use this time Lord For your word penetrate deeply into our lives and in particular I would pray for any who are Going through significant pressures in their marriages That you might break through Lord as you are prone to do That you would break through into our lives and for others Lord you are simply living in a state of hardness of heart or that you would That you would surprise those individuals with your goodness with your authority And that you would in all of our lives whether we are married or single Would you draw us more closely Together today to our great bridegroom the Lord Christ in his name. We pray amen
Several days ago I was visiting with a friend of mine Sam Adams and Austin. He's a Christian counselor And he was telling me of some recent statistics with respect to marriage and divorce And I said the others are incredulous. Sam. I can't believe that. So I went and did an internet search And sure enough the Barna Institute George Barna who's a Christian researcher So he wouldn't be biased you know from the liberal left Came up with the following statistics Individuals in our country who consider themselves to be born again Christians and we could debate all day about what that is But let's just leave it there those who consider themselves to be born again Christians Have now and this is last year statistics of a very high number of people So the margin of error is not very high now have a three percentage point higher Divorcerate than the non-Christian or the person who does not consider themselves to be born again Christian. Did you hear me on that Born again Christians divorce at a higher rate in our country now than non-born again Christians Now if that weren't enough The denomination unfortunately maybe fortunately there are most statistics that I'm aware of for our denomination the PCA But the denomination that leads the way nation-wide. I'm not going to say which one it is But it's one that for many of us we would consider to be the most conservative among the major denominations And the only group that surpasses that denomination are the collection of conservative churches that call themselves non-denominational churches In contrast to that atheists and agnostics are well below the norm a full 10 percentage points between atheists and agnostics and those that I just mentioned
Now those of you that have little girls are well aware of the children's animated series Madeline You remember miss clavelle who wakes up in the middle of the night. She runs an orphanage in Paris wakes up in the middle of the night startled and says something is not right Something is quite wrong And friends, I'm here to say today something is not right Something is indeed quite wrong in our country There is a problem with divorce And it's not anything new, but it doesn't seem to be getting any better At least the problem in this respect is not getting any better that the church is supposed to be distinctively different The church of Jesus Christ being the body of Christ is to be the presence of Christ in the world We're to be the salty influence the preservative agent in this culture that is going literally to hell We're to be the lighthouse in the midst of darkness. We're to be the hospital for those who are broken and hurting And yet we are more sick And more in the dark And less salty on this issue than those that we ought to be helping There's a problem with divorce And this morning I want to use this passage in the gospel of mark To address that problem with us in a very candid And sober way as a church Jesus as you know in the gospel of mark Was spending a great deal of time up in the north and gallantly and yet with this passage and the gospel of mark Chapter 10 mark moves us at a rather quick pace Down into Judea And of course when we hear that if we have ears For the geography of Israel we know that he is really heading not just to Judea But to Jerusalem Jesus is moving to his death march at this point And so the repeated refrain throughout this section mark that he must suffer and die at the hands of sinful men And it is with this transition that the issue of marriage and divorce comes up Jesus has this incredible popularity people are following him and as he was accustomed to he was teaching them From God's word And yet off in the corner the naysayers as they always seem to be There were legislators the Pharisees in this case And they posed to Jesus a question it was a problem a problem with divorce We don't know exactly why they raised this but it may have been Because they wanted to stump them the word used there is test and we'll talk about that in a few minutes It's a pretty significant word But I really think they wanted to trip Jesus up because one of the issues in which the Pharisees themselves divided upon Was on divorce some were more strict in their view And others were more liberal and so they thought you know here's one He can't place any of the religious leaders on and they asked Well, let's use this as a picture for us To consider how is it that you and I might avoid the problem of divorce in our own lives But let's also think in terms of our community here at Christ the King How can we avoid the problem of divorce in our community? And there's two things I want you to see primarily Two things that we need to be about as individuals and people to avoid the problem of divorce The first is we need to be Shaping our view of marriage Indeed our whole view of life By the Bible We need to be shaped increasingly by what God says and not by what the world says Now think about it when and I am not in the construction business I'm probably giving a poor illustration at this point to those who are in the know But when you are building a home and I see one home builder out there don't look at me now When you're laying a foundation you don't just go out for a minute right you first have to build What sort of a frame that you pour the wet cement into you have to build a mold So that it holds up and it's framed the way that you intend it to be That's what the word of God is the word of God is like that mold That you must have down before before you pour Your life and your views on anything but in this case it happens to be Marriage otherwise it just spills out and it doesn't have the intended shape that God had in mind Now the Pharisees came to him and they asked him the question they said what did They said in verse two is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife And what is Jesus did Jesus said what didn't Moses command you So they came to him to test him and he turned it right back at him and gave him a Bible test He says do you know your Bible? Let's start with the most commonly accepted books Let's start at the very beginning where God begins the Bible in the first chapter nonetheless Chaffer's one and two What did God have to say about these things and so that's the very first principle that you and I need to think about when we come To terms with the concept of divorce that God invented marriage Does it not stand to reason that if God invented marriage? And he also gave us a user's manual That we should come to him and bow to him and hear what he has to say on the subject but our human nature of course is to think about our opinions and so Every single one of us has our opinions on this subject Some of you may be feeling this morning that you're not loved by your spouse Some of you may feel like you you're saying Leo. I understand what you're saying about God and his word But look I'm trapped I'm trapped with a husband that disregards me that could care less about me Or I'm trapped with a wife that doesn't respect me Certainly you can't be expecting me to believe that God wants me to stay in that kind of a marriage and be miserable for the rest of my life I'm a young person And so these these are our opinions and and there's that those are fairly extreme But we've all got our opinions and and the first thing that we need to ask every day when we wake up Is God what does your word say about my life What is your word say about my marriage If you're single what does your word say about the kind of person I should be thinking about marrying The Bible says that it believers shouldn't be United together with an unbeliever unequally yoked All says there's lots of freedom you can marry anyone only in the Lord
So we need to be asking these questions what does God say what is his word say not first of all what my opinion is The Pharisees have their opinions We have our opinions that you know what This may seem a little harsh, but our opinions are irrelevant Our opinions as Christians as followers of Jesus Christ our opinions are relevant Until we have considered first What Jesus has to say on the subject Jesus said if you want to save your life What then get rid of your existing spouse because you live a miserable life that way and go find a much better one Find a better looking one find a happier one find a more supporting one
He says if you want to save your life lose it Application at this point if you want to save your marriage Get rid of your opinions Stop thinking of how you can get out of this stop thinking about how you can pay revenge and get it out And lose your life in the midst of that marriage beginning with considering What Jesus says on the subject now let's think about this for just a second in terms of the Bible Doesn't it stand a reason that if Jesus created marriage if God created marriage and he gave us the users manual that when you and I deviate from that Things are bound to go bad on us That It's not going to be the lot the fulfilling satisfied life that we think it'll be But it actually backsfires on us and I think that's what Jesus had in mind when he at the end of this passage said basically look if you follow your faulty reasoning on Marriage and divorce Pharisees Then you actually lead people into gross heinous sin that certainly the Pharisees would have admitted a adultery Anyone who divorces his wife and Mary's another woman commits adultery against her And if she divorces her husband and Mary's another man she commits adultery against him But there's a principle here and that is whenever you and I deviate from God's plan It is bound to go bad on us things are to bound to sour on us and not prosper us Why should we follow God's word? Two reasons primarily one because it's right and And anything that's right is going to be Harmonious and healthy and good and so that's the second point that if you follow God's way even though it doesn't seem like it in your mind Even though it seems like the difficult course it is the healthy course and when we bow to God and follow his way Then what life was intended to be to the fullest extent that it can be in this fallen life will be known I may have mentioned this before but tiger woods talks about getting into zone Have you heard about that before where you know he will just Begin to hunker down and focus upon His game and the essentials that he must employ to be at his a game And eventually maybe after a couple of holes he gets into this zone and it's like there's no stopping All right for the Christian When you come to God's word, it seems unnatural at first. It may seem like you're shanking it off or hooking it You know Mulligan's right and left But the more you focus in and commit yourself and bow to God's word The more he begins to place us in that zone where things fit And things work Because we are giving ourselves to God and his plan Now the Pharisees would never have said that they were getting rid of God's word. That's why when Jesus said, you know, what does God's word say? What did Moses say? They knew where Jesus was going. I feel sure they knew Jesus was going back to Genesis 1 and 2 The verses that Jesus eventually quotes here in a couple of minutes on the permanence Of the unity of marriage But see they wanted to push the envelope as far as possible They wanted to use the Bible to actually suit their own selfish purposes And religious people are the best at that. The longer you and I are around the Bible the more potential we have of distorting God's word That's why I think we now have these horrible statistics that we talked about at the beginning But what the Pharisees did was they quoted a different passage from Deuteronomy chapter 24 They said Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce And send her away And it's not exactly what happened there When you explored Deuteronomy 24 It is there's no command first of all about divorce it simply is assuming In a hypothetical situation divorce has taken place and it was actually put in place To protect women from being abused in a male-dominated culture I'll read the couple of verses though they may be ambiguous to you Deuteronomy 24 1 if a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something Indecent about her and he writes her a certificate of divorce Gives it to her and sends her from his house And after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man And her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce Gives it to her and sends her away from his house Or if he dies Then her first husband who divorced her is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled This would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord Here's the idea okay A woman's living with a man they're married And for whatever reason again the passage isn't disgusting the reason She becomes displeasing to him He writes her an official certificate of divorce into sends her away So the point is the woman has been divorced She can go off and she is free to remarry But let's say in that second remarriage In that second marriage either there's a divorce again or the husband dies That woman now is in no relationship with that first husband He can't simply go take her back as his wife at that point In other words it was this passage was there to protect the woman So she wouldn't be abused by the culture's view of divorce And so Jesus is saying now you have misunderstood this. This is not the point of the passage What does Jesus do? Well, he goes on to quote from Genesis chapter 1 and 2 He says at the beginning verse 6 of creation man uh god made them male and female for this reason a man will believe his father and mother But united his life and the two bit will become one flesh so they are no longer two but one What god is joined together therefore let man not separate and there's a lot of little things here Let me just rattle off a few of them first of all He is saying here the obvious that a marriage A suitable marriage in God's eyes is between a man and a woman These are two different genders male and female God created them to bring them together And so the implicit assumption is that marriage and sexual relationships are to be within the confines of a relationship Between a man and a woman before God Secondly That God when he takes this man and woman together And they vow before him vows of marriage They are mysteriously united into one person that is they no longer individuals It's not that they lose their individual identity because they're both created in the image of God and have infinite dignity and worth But They are drawn together and become one flesh one union J.I. Packer puts it this way marriage is an exclusive relationship in which a man and a woman commit themselves to each other in covenant For life and on the basis of his solemn vow become one flesh And then in verse nine What is very clear is that whatever God puts together How dare human beings even miserable human beings Try and separate You are tampering with things divine God says Don't touch marriage It is holy Now what what if you're saying but I don't feel united to my spouse Well, it's something that we have to work at cultivating that union with one another in Christ If you don't cultivate it then what happens to it well it sort of slips into a business partnership of sorts or maybe what happens along the child rearing years as it becomes a partnership Based on the sole purpose of raising children in the world and that's why After the first couple of years Where there's a high divorce rate the biggest divorce rate takes place as the children go off to school because the parents Sit back it's quiet and they realize We have absolutely nothing in common There's no Functional unity here that's been cultivated so let's just You know not prolong the inevitable and let's get divorced because there's no real unity And I don't agree with that but that's the thinking at least It just becomes a partnership or social contract but the bible says God hates divorce in the prophet malachi chapter two verse four It says those words God hates divorce why well think of it this way If you are becoming one person Then when you are divorcing what are you doing what's like an amputation When you and I Witness and someone who has had an amputation we pity them we say that is unnatural We we turn away we don't want to stare When someone divorces that's what happens Now one of the things that you need to understand if you're a member of christ the king Presbyterian Church Is that if you pursue divorce It is a family matter The elders of the church must be involved Because don't you see it's not just that you as individuals are Having this amputation but you just become by a vow through which you submitted yourself to the government of the church You become part of this particular expression of the body of christ Therefore you're not just hurting yourself or your spouse you're hurting all the rest of the body You're pulling a hand away from the body of christ Ouch You're you're ripping an eyeball out of the socket of the body of christ It's not only unnatural It's painful and it's wrong God hates divorce A few more specifics about this church Anyone that I marry now is privileged to do a marriage last night in Austin to a Jeff and tanya andrian new members of our church Anyone that I marry the first thing I talk about He is that I will not agree to do the marriage unless you agree that divorce is not an option There's not an option now I recognize and Jesus recognized if you look at Matthew 19 and the apostle Paul and 1st Corinthians 7 There are probably two legitimate Reasons why someone could pursue divorce in christ church one would be if they were offended through their spouse committing adultery against them Or secondly if their spouse abandoned them Then the scriptures appear to give permission at that point But it's not commanded Reconciliation first is to be pursued and if that becomes functionally impossible Then God permits divorce I believe though not all evangelicals agree on that point but the point here is That I want anyone that I marry to agree to the permanence of marriage or I will not be involved And if divorce ever becomes a talking point that they pull me into the picture and pull the elders of the church in And if they don't pull us in we will pull ourselves in and that is for the health of The entire body of Christ It's to protect the one who is being offended and it's to keep you If I can put it bluntly for making a dumb mistake That if you understood the totality of God's plans for your life That you simply do not exist for temporal happiness in the here and now in this day But you exist for his glory and for the welfare of his kingdom Then all things they can take on a different light
And then I would say That for those who have been divorced and I recognize there's a number of people in this congregation have been divorced Maybe you were the offended party Maybe you were the offender For those who have been through divorce This is a church that opens wide its doors and offers healing in the name of Jesus Christ That healing however is never a permission slip for those of you who are attempted to pursue divorce to do so You need to expect church discipline and the elders the church to move in lovingly but firmly Now I need to move along quickly the first point which we've been talking about this whole time is what is it that you and I need to do is Individuals in the church to avoid the problem of divorce Firstly, it is to let our lives and our church and our marriages be shaped by God's word But secondly That will be futile That will be legalistic We will find a short circuit around that If our hearts are not bowing to Jesus Christ as Lord Because Jesus said look the real problem with the Pharisees is and the people of the Old Testament that due to The ronomy 24 was written to was their hearts first five your hearts Were hard that was the real problem with divorce Now let me go back to the word test in verse two where it says the Pharisees tested Jesus It's used four times in the gospel of mark Three times referring to Pharisees the other time It's referring to the work of Satan the devil In commentators In Claire Ferguson who I read this last week said this is a major point To recognize that the word test here is used symbolically by mark to say as if the words of the devil are clothed in the presence of the Pharisees The opinions that you and I have That seem to curb the strictness of God's word those are not mere opinions those come no mast They come to us at instruments of the devil Of this evil world that wants to do anything it can to submerge subvert the beauty of God's Plan in marriage think of the very first marriage with Adam and Eve When Eve was tempted by the devil through the serpent Eve trusted her feelings and emotions over against the strictness of God's word It says in Genesis 3 when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food that is This seems like the healthy thing to do and pleasing to the eye This seems like the enjoyable fun thing to do God's word is to confining and regulating This seems like the liberating thing to do and pleasing excuse me and And also desirable for gaining wisdom that is it's going to be good for me in the end Then it will fulfill me and really blossom my life intellectually and otherwise. Well, we know it did just the opposite It was panic and dread and alienation and curse from that point forward The same thing for you And for me whenever I find myself in a position of doubting the good pleasing and perfect will of God for me In my once for all marriage to my wife
The problem you see is that our hearts don't see the problem Our hearts don't see the problem The Apostle James gives us a very helpful remedy I think and I want to bring it to the conclusion at this point He says in chapter 4 Not necessarily talking to marriages, but I think it's a great marriage passage He says would cause his fights and quarrels among you Don't they come from you being married to the wrong spouse From you being married to a selfish person Don't they come from the desires that wage war within you you want something But you simply cannot get it so you go to no end To get what you want Even divorce You and I have to look at the heart and we have to come to God as As people who are proud People who bow before him and say, God, I'm a proud man. I value my opinions and my feelings more Than the beauty of your plans for my life. I bow to you. I repent. Repent means a change of mind We have to change our minds about the opinions and feelings that we have And line up a fresh with God's word and the only way we can do that Is by coming a fresh to our bridegroom to our spouse Christ It's the beauty of marriage in the Bible. Jesus begins his ministry at a wedding in Canaan of Galilee To say if you really want to know life and enjoyment and celebration come to me the bridegroom And he tells his followers that Paul begins to Teach us about in Ephesians 5 that marriage in the human terms is really not about a human relationship It's about a divine relationship between God and his people and it's a mystery that you and I dare not tamper with But our marriages as we come to the bridegroom to Christ and drink upon him Our marriages become more full We become more soft and humble and repentant And we line up with his plan that is indeed good pleasing and perfect the Bible concludes With these words in in Revelation 22
He says the spirit and the bride say come and let him who hears say come Whoever is thirsty let him come and whoever wishes let him take the free gift of the water of life That's pray our lord we give thanks that the spirit and the bride say come And we know where to come to to come to the waters to come to our bridegroom to come to the one who turned water into wine And ended his life on earth by blessing that wine that we might drink of him Drink of the waters of eternal life and no true life and cleansing In this life and indeed the life to come we bless you and we praise you and we need your help lord For these things are far beyond us Give grace to us as individuals give grace to us as married couples Give grace to us as a church to the elders of your church to all of us that we might Defy the statistics of this day and be that salt and light Through which you might show forth the wonders the healing wonders of our blessed Redeemer Jesus Amen