Mark 10:1-12 - Broken Covenants and Steadfast Love

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We've got a really interesting passage of scripture that we're going to be walking through today.

And I want to mention on the outset, this is one that I've spent a ton of time in study and in prayer on study, both today and in, man, especially the last year or so of my life, have looked a lot at this topic.

And so I say that not to say like, hey, you should be like really impressed or something, or you should definitely listen to me more today than you do normally.

I say that because of this, what we're gonna be talking about today often carries with it a lot of baggage, emotionally and spiritually.

And I want to hopefully just lay out from scripture what God's word says, but I am aware that not everyone has always said the exact same thing that I'm going to say today on the topic of divorce.

And perhaps if you've heard someone give an alternative view before, or if you have someone that maybe doesn't believe what I believe on the topic, I want us to remember Paul's words in Colossians 4, where he says, let your speech always be seasoned

with grace. That the kind of reaction that we should have, especially when we come into contact with difficult Bible teaching, is always one of humility and a realization that if the other person says, hey, whatever God says, I want to obey it, I

want to believe it, then that person is on our side. That person is not our enemy, just like we heard about, I think it actually may have been last episode that we went over it, maybe two episodes ago, where the disciples interact with this guy, that

he's not traveling with Jesus and them doing demon casting out and that kind of stuff. He's off, but he's doing it in Jesus' name and Jesus is saying, hey, he's not against us, he's doing it in my authority. And so he's on our side.

That's a good thing.

So whether or not you agree with me or not at the end of this episode, I want you to realize, even if you disagree with me, you are still my brother or sister in Christ, and hopefully you would afford that same care and appreciation and hopefully

after, man, I think we're easily over 150 episodes of Tabernacle Talk at this point, I think. That that would have given you some measure of reason to believe that I genuinely care about the word of God, and I want to be faithful to say what God says

in the way that God has said it, and I want to believe all of scripture, not just the parts that are convenient or that line up best with my own personal thoughts. So, all of that being said, let's dive into Mark chapter 10, verses one through 12.

So Jesus is going through, all the way through, we've been seeing what Jesus does, his miracles, his teachings, his healings.

We've seen how people have misunderstood who he is, and even those that say, hey, Jesus is the Christ, we believe in him, he's the Messiah. They don't really know what that actually entails.

And so Jesus has been going through and showing, here's what it means for me to be the Messiah, the son of God. And here we enter into a kind of trap question from the Pharisees.

This is one of the ways in which the Pharisees were trying to pigeonhole Jesus and put him in a box, and it doesn't work for reasons that we'll see. Mark 10 and verse one, he set out from there and went to the region of Judea and across the Jordan.

Then crowds converged on him again, and as was his custom, he taught them again. Hearing the word from the word, how cool that would have been. But some people don't appreciate that.

Verse number two, some Pharisees came to test him, saying, asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?

Okay, as we read that in general, especially today, we would read that question and we would think, okay, they're saying is it basically is it a sin or is it not a sin for a person to divorce their spouse?

That was not the question that was being asked.

When you look at the parallel passage in Matthew chapter 19, the phrase Matthew gives the fuller explanation of the question that as we look back in world history and at the history of Judaism, we can see why would they ask this question?

That seems kind of odd. So there were two main streams of pharisaical thought when it came to divorce. One group held that you could only divorce your wife if sexual immorality had taken place, that if she cheated on you, you could divorce her.

And whenever in the Bible, as you look through, whenever divorce is allowed, you are allowed to remarry. It has to be someone else was what was outlined. I think we may have even gone over that in Leviticus.

If not, it's in the Book of Deuteronomy. You could not remarry the spouse that you had divorced. You had to marry someone else.

You couldn't get back your wife if you divorced her. That was, hey, this marriage bond, this covenant has been broken, and it is broken forever. So you could divorce someone, and when divorce happened, it always carried with it.

You are now free to marry someone else. So one group said sexual immorality, her cheating on you is the only way that that divorce can take place.

Then there was another group that took the specific phrase in Deuteronomy, basically saying something along the lines of if the husband finds something wrong, wayward about his wife, then he can divorce her.

And they took that phrase to mean anything that a husband does not like about his wife. So as you can read the writings of the rabbis during this time, you would see guys that would say, if she burned your soup, then you can divorce her.

There's even one that I've read that said, if you see someone that you think is more attractive than your wife, then you can divorce your wife.

And so here the Pharisees are trying to bring Jesus in to either label him as, oh man, you're super strict. You're just like rabbi so and so. You're in kind of that camp.

Or on the other hand, you don't really care about the law and observing what God has said. You're too loosey goosey with the law. So they're trying to pigeonhole him into one of these two camps.

This is the same type of circumstance that Jesus is talking about in Matthew chapter five in the Sermon on the Mount. So as Jesus is being tested, tempted, so this is not Jesus's definitive final words, complete thoughts on the topic of divorce.

For that, I would strongly encourage you go to 1 Corinthians chapter seven. It is a notoriously difficult chapter for a number of reasons.

I know at one point or another, either in sermons or on the podcast, gonna be walking through 1 Corinthians, really looking forward to that time.

But in 1 Corinthians seven, Paul deals with like four or five different instances of, okay, in this situation, here's what you should do. In this instance, yes, you can be divorced. You are free from this particular thing.

Hey, in this instance, no, stay with your spouse. So he walks through a couple of those. So verse number three, Pharisees are gone.

Hey, do you fit in camp A or camp B? And Jesus replied to them, what did Moses command you? So here he's answering their question with a question.

And they go, well, Moses permitted us to write divorce papers and send her away. He goes, well, what is, basically, what does the Bible say? They go, well, the question is not what the Bible says.

It's what does the Bible mean when the Bible says that? So they say, well, Moses said, yes, we can. That doesn't answer the question of if you are strict or loose with it.

But Jesus told them, verse five, he wrote this command for you because of the hardness of your hearts. But from the beginning of creation, God, and here he quotes from Genesis, made them male and female.

For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. He says, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.

Here, when they say, okay, Jesus, like, we want to know, in what cases can we divorce? And are you team strict or team loose with it? And Jesus goes, I don't like divorce at all.

Here, he's saying, don't try and pigeonhole me in. He says, God's design was not, hey, let's look for how we can escape from this institution of marriage.

God's goal from the beginning was that you have this husband and wife, that they leave their old life behind and they make this new life together. And he says, God has joined them together in marriage.

And in our world's view today, what makes a marriage is two people that, again, audio people, I'm putting your quotes here, that love each other and love is defined as if I have happy, sappy emotions towards the other person, if I have happiness when

I think about them, if I want to be around them, then that means that we can be together. But if I lose the happy, sappy emotions and they're frustrating to be around and they're annoying to be around, or I think that I could have more fun or do more

things or be more successful or find more joy outside of being in this marriage relationship with them, then I should do that. And I can get divorced for that reason. And Jesus says that is not the way that God designed it. God designed it.

That it's one man, one woman, for one life.

I think I've mentioned before as we were going through Leviticus, even as we interact with our culture today, that God does not have the design to be one man and multiple women, or one man and one man, or one woman and one woman.

God made it male and female by His design. And we need to listen to what our God has said.

For those of you maybe that are just kind of passing and watching, and you would say, okay, well, shouldn't people just be able to do whatever they would want to do as long as it's not hurting anyone?

And frankly, that would be fine if we did not have a final authority to whom we answer.

The person who gives us our every breath and life, the one who created us, the one who is in charge of our world, the one who is the Lord, the King, the one to whom we owe allegiance because He has given us everything we have.

And He has said, here is my plan and so we need to be obedient to that, that we follow His design for marriage. Maybe some of you today, you have a marriage where the other person just frustrates you to no end.

Maybe they're really bad with finances and it's just killing you. Can I encourage you? God puts you together and here the admonition is, don't let anyone separate that.

Don't be looking for the easy way out saying, okay man, I just wish they would cross this line and then I could be rid of them. Let's not have that design.

Let's have that heart of God that would say, I love you and I've loved you with an everlasting love and I will not give up on you. I do want to mention this. Oh, I forgot the particular thought train I was going down.

So, that's God's design is that marriage is to last. It is not something that you look for an easy way to get out of. Verse number 10, when they were in the house again, the disciples questioned him about this matter.

He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another or the word there, divorces his wife in order to marry another. It's kind of how the Greek in there is phrased. Divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her.

Also, if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

So, here Jesus gives like a very declarative statement against, in particular, the kind of loosey goosey type of divorce that was going on, which was, I found someone more attractive, and so I'm going to divorce my spouse because I don't find them as

attractive anymore, and I'm going after this new person. And Jesus says that, even though the divorce has dissolved like your legal obligation to that other person, if you are divorcing someone in order to marry someone else, he says that is

adultery. You are abandoning your spouse. You are betraying your covenant that you have made, that the other person, they didn't break the covenant. They didn't cheat on you.

You cheated on them in your heart, and you pursued this with your actions. I say that because of this.

Occasionally, there has been a line of thinking that has said, what Jesus says may be here and in Matthew 5, is to be understood as a complete prohibition and condemnation of divorce, period. That to divorce is a sin in and of itself.

That that action is wrong and sinful. And so Jesus says, in no circumstances other than if the person has cheated on you and broken that vow, that is the only possible way in which divorce can take place.

And even then, you should really not do it because it's a sin. Here's the thought that I want us to think about. Jeremiah chapter 3.

God, in describing his relationship with Israel and Judah, says that he gave a certificate of divorce. He gave a bill of divorcement to Israel, and he is no longer married to Israel.

If divorce is a sin, and God says, Hey, I divorced Israel, then God would have sinned or God would be saying, Hey, I have metaphorically, I have proverbially sinned, and God would not be perfect. That's not the case.

Divorce, in and of itself, is not a sin. A breaking of the marriage covenant is a sin.

Divorce is a sad but unfortunate reality that God instituted not first and foremost in reaction to the culture, but God placed it into his perfect law to be able to care for, especially as he has written in Exodus and Deuteronomy especially, to care

for women who could not have the same resources and type of life as we see today. So back in ancient Israel, a wife gets divorced. Well, she can't just like go out and get a job at the local Kmart. That's not how it worked.

And so she would now go like back to her father's house if he was still alive, and if there was maybe still that healthy relationship between them, and she would kind of be destitute. She would be looked down on.

And so as you look at what God says about the topic in Deuteronomy, he puts in all of these protections, one of which was if you divorce your wife, you can't take her back.

Like you have said in front of God and everyone, I don't want this person anymore. And so God says once you have dissolved that marriage bond, there's no putting that thing back together. Again, that is the Old Testament.

We are in the New Testament with a new law under Christ, the law of love, and the New Testament does not outline for us, hey, if you've divorced a wife and maybe you did it when you were younger, and you then come to know the Lord, maybe you lead her

to the Lord or vice versa, and you guys go, man, we really butchered this when we were younger, but now, we're with Jesus, now you can get married and you're not under the law. That's not a prohibition for you anymore.

You can remarry a spouse that perhaps you had once divorced. The other thing that's mentioned multiple times in 1 Corinthians 7 is this language of being bound or loosed.

Do you have a legal obligation to stay with, or are you free to divorce and then afterwards remarry? So, as Paul is going through in 1 Corinthians 7, he says, if the other person wants to stay married to you, stay married to them.

The one exception that will give to this is if there is an instance of abuse.

In 1 Corinthians 7, one of the allowances that Paul specifically mentions of, hey, if your spouse does not want to be with you, they are an unbeliever, you're a believer, and they don't want to be with you anymore, they don't want to be married, he

says, you are free, you are loosed from that particular marriage bond, you are free to be able to divorce in God's sight, God isn't whatever you for that. In a case of abuse, especially physical abuse, where someone through their actions is

emphatically declaring, I am not a Christian, at least with the way that they are living. And maybe they put up a good front in front of other people, and they say they know Jesus, but in their works they are actively destroying and damaging and

bruising and harming and all sorts of things. God's image in you, if someone is doing that, you are not bound to stay with that person. Get to safety as soon as you can.

God does not have a desire for his children to be harmed, to be placed in harm's way.

We just went through a bunch of different verses and studies in the book of Genesis in our sermon series on what it means for us to be made in God's image, that we are like that picture of God, that if the illustration that I gave in the sermon was I

gave a bunch of the kids a picture of me, and I told them, hey, rip up the picture and stomp on the picture, and I said, if someone does that, if I gave them a Christmas card or something, and that's how they treated my Christmas card, it would be

very insulting because it's an image of me. It's a picture of who I am. And so to demolish and destroy the image of God is a deeply anti-Christian, it's a very demonic activity, that as you look at the Book of Genesis, that God says, here's the

punishment for those that kill images of God. When you look at James 3, you can see all the statements of, you've got to be careful even with your words because people are made in the image of God.

And so perhaps if you are in a very abusive, in an abusive situation, I would encourage you, God's design is not for you to actively be destroyed through being in this marriage.

The person is acting in such a way that specifically disavows them being a Christian, at least with how their current actions are. And they are showing through their actions that they are not loving you, caring for you.

They are, in Paul's words from 1 Corinthians 7, they are not pleased to dwell with you anymore. And so don't feel as though you need to remain in harm's way, destroying the image of God in you day after day or week after week or month after month.

That is not God's intent. In fact, all of the things that he mentions with divorce in the Old Testament, they are not strictly for like convenience of how easily can I get out of a marriage.

It's here are the protections that I am putting in place so that those who have been cheated on, for those that have been cast aside, I want to care for them and protect them. That's God's plan.

It's not, okay, this isn't really convenient for me anymore. This isn't fun for me anymore. I don't really like it.

No, no, God is caring for the needs of people. So one other thing that I'll mention.

After Jesus mentions these statements in verse number 11 about whoever divorces his wife to marry another commits adultery, in Matthew 19, the parallel passage, the disciples say, wow, if that's the case, then it's better for a person not to marry.

They're shocked that Jesus would say this. This was not the prevalent opinion at the time. It was a very new thing that would say, wow, you can, you know, there's a condemnation.

It's adultery. If you divorce your wife to marry someone else. And Jesus tells them, he says, not everyone can receive this statement.

He says there are some people that were born eunuchs, born without marriage.

There are some people that have become eunuchs, that those that have, especially back in that day and age, literally been made that they could never have a family or anything like that.

He says there are some people that have become eunuchs for the Kingdom of God. The people that have said, hey, I am placing my relationship with God way more than any like human marriage.

And even if my marriage doesn't have maybe a spark, the other person doesn't, they're not crazy in love with me.

He says even if it means that it's basically like I don't have a wife, that I'm still loving and following God because I'm following his way, I'm not just following my emotions. I'm not just following my sexual passions.

Instead, I'm dedicated to God. And whether that means that I have a wonderful marriage or if it means that my marriage is tough because she doesn't have that same commitment to the Lord or to me, he says I'm not getting rid of this marriage.

So many other things could be said. Again, if you have any outrage, any deep angry thoughts, please message or text me. I would say our world is watching in many of the different things that we do, especially online.

So as a general rule for all things Christian, don't blast other Christians and believers online. If you have something to say and objection to say, go personally to that person, like Matthew 18 says among other passages.

But I hope that my heartiness is clear. Number one, God loves marriage. Marriage is God's design.

Divorce was not God's design. But if and when divorce is absolutely necessary because of the destruction of the marriage bond, that God cares about people. He cares about those that are divorced.

God is the only specifically mentioned divorced person in Scripture other than perhaps Herod and Herodias.

I can't remember super vividly if it says that Herod just married Herodias or if he had Philip divorce her or her divorce him and then they got married. It's not specifically stated in Scripture.

But the one person that is definitively mentioned as having been divorced is God. And so let's allow that reality to color how we think about those that have experienced divorce.

If you have divorced someone and it was not a biblical divorce at all, it was not they cheated on you and they broke that marriage bond, something like that happening. God has forgiveness and love and restoration for you that you are His child.

Romans chapter 8, there is no condemnation now to those who are in Christ Jesus. It does not mean that we just do whatever we want, but realize that our sins are cast as far as the east is from the west and He does not remember them any longer.

He has not dealt with us according to our sins, our iniquities, but He has lavished His love on us. So there is forgiveness, there is restoration, there is hope, you are not forever tainted with a black spot because of your sins.

God has forgiveness and love for you. Choose in whatever situation you find yourself now that you are going to go forward with a heart of Christian love and faith and commitment.

If you're married, that is your very, very last marriage until death do you part. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for your patience and dealing with a very fraught subject that can bring up so many emotions.

May God bless you today. Thank you for tuning in. And I promise tomorrow's episode so much lighter, so much more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Thank you.