JANUARY 26, 2003

"DEATH OF A MARRIAGE”

MATTHEW 19:3-9

In preparing this message, I have drawn heavily on two excellent sources. The first is an article by Dr. Paul M. Bassett titled, “Divorce: Unacceptable, but . . .” It first appeared in the December/January/February 1986-87 issue of Preacher’s Magazine. The second source is Dr. Alex Deasley’s excellent book, Marriage and Divorce in the Bible and the Church.

Frank and Esther were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. It was a wonderful event put on by their children. All of their closest friends were there to congratulate them. It's quite an achievement, fifty years. And Frank and Esther appeared to be no worse for the wear. They were still healthy and vibrant - very active in their retirement years.

The only thing that had really changed much was that Frank had become quite hard of hearing. So after the party was over and everyone had gone home, Frank and Esther sat on the front porch and reflected on the events of the day.

Esther turned to Frank and said, "You know honey, after fifty years you've been tried and true." Frank said, "What'd you say?" Esther said, "I said after fifty years you've been tried and true." And Frank responded, "Well frankly dear, after fifty years I'm kind of tired of you, too!"

Keeping a marriage alive and vibrant is a challenge for ten years, much less fifty. It is and can be a wonderful blessing but it is also, without a doubt, a huge commitment and involves some hard work. The kind of hard work that fewer and fewer people in our world are willing to commit to, at least not for the long haul.

That fact has never hit me more profoundly than when a couple planning to be married asked me if they could write their own wedding vows. I very hesitatingly told them they could write a draft and then we would go over it together. When they came to the next meeting with their vows, I began to read them and I was actually quite impressed. They were pretty good. But then I came to a line that expressed the scope of their commitment to one another and it said, "As long as we both shall love."

I said, "Oh, there's a typing error here --this says, "As long as we both shall love." I think it should be "as long as we both shall live." They said, "Oh no, that's what we want. That other stuff just isn't realistic anymore."

The standard of life-long commitment has quickly given way to short-term convenience. When the first no-fault divorce laws hit the books in California in 1970, a flood-gate was opened that has led to the kind of statistics we quote today.

Cohabitation has become as common as marriage once was. The myth is that in living together we can have a more solid foundation for our marriage. Wrong. The divorce rate for cohabitating couples that become married soars to 75%.

The stats are so grim that fewer and fewer people will even consider entering marriage. In 1970 only 9% of men between the ages of 30 and 34 had never been married. Today it's over twenty-five percent. And only 55% of the American adult population is married today, the lowest percentage ever. What's worse is that those statistics don't even touch the reality of emotional divorce. The legal divorce rates among Christians are not significantly different than the culture. But I shudder to think what the realities are when we talk about emotional divorce. Couples who would never take the legal steps and feel very self-righteous about it, but emotionally they walked a long time ago.

When I started this job of pastoring, I never would have imagined how often I would find myself in divorce court, trying to offer some measure of support for people who lives are unraveling before their eyes.

It's a cold, heartless process. And if I've learned anything from watching it, it's this: there are no winners--only losers. And it may have become something of a cliché in our time, but it is so true, the biggest losers of all are the children.

Not just small children, but adult children as well. Young children deal with the feelings of rejection and isolation. They think, "Hey, if mom and dad can stop loving each other maybe they can stop loving me." And so often take the blame. "Maybe if I had behaved better this wouldn't be happening." It impacts adult children in different ways.

Listen to what one adult woman wrote after watching her father leave a thirty-five year marriage: "I feared that my own marriage had somehow been contaminated, tainted by something I couldn't control. With my father's announcement came a sensation of being genetically rearranged--made heir to a new disease: unfaithfulness."

What has happened? And what are we doing about it? Well obviously, it is my rather unpleasant task this morning to talk to you about divorce. I really don't want to do it. There are certainly much more pleasant things to talk about. But this is an issue we must openly and directly confront in the church of Jesus Christ.

Do you know, by the way, who in the church is most adamant about there being strong and bold teaching on the sanctity of marriage? Divorced persons. Not very many days ago, a man who has been and is still going through the process said to me, "The church has become far too accepting of divorce." I know he's right.

Now if you came today hoping that you would leave really feeling good about life, let me apologize to you right now. I have no intention that we will leave worship today feeling happy. Don't misunderstand. I want us to leave with hope and with confidence in the power of the gospel. But I also intend for us to leave today with a sense of grief over what we have done to God's beautiful creation called "marriage."

I recognize that many of you have walked this road of divorce. In fact I've talked with some you in preparation for this message. I hope you know that my purpose is not to heap false guilt on you today.

This is one of those times when it is critical that we understand the difference between condemning the sin and condemning hurting and broken people. I would never intentionally cause hurt to persons who have suffered the pain of divorce. But I will be painfully truthful about what God's word says about this epidemic of our time.

There are really two questions that we need to deal with today: 1) what does God say about divorce, and 2) what are we (the church) going to do about it?

First, what is God word on this difficult subject? The passage we read together this morning has an interesting context. The Pharisees are questioning Jesus about divorce, not in order to learn, but in order to trap him and get him in trouble.

I understand. Talking about divorce seems like a no-win situation. They were either trying to get him in trouble with Herod by getting him to publicly condemn divorce (something that got John the Baptist beheaded), or they were trying to get him trouble with Jewish men who liked their system of easy divorce.

You see, there were two schools of thought about divorce in Jesus' time. One school said, "Divorce is acceptable but only for the cause of an unfaithful wife." (By the way the divorce laws of Jesus time all had to do with the mans' rights because women had none)

That was the stricter school of thought. But there was another school that said, "Divorce is the right of a Jewish man for any reason he deems appropriate. If the woman displeases him, he can put her away."

So the question to Jesus is, "Is it lawful to divorce for any and every reason?" Now what the Pharisees had in mind here was the provision in the law of Moses, Deuteronomy 24, for divorce to happen.

They speak of it as a command, looking for the loophole, but Jesus rightly states that there is nothing in Moses' law explicitly providing for divorce. Deuteronomy 24 refers to divorce but in no way endorses it. It recognizes the reality of divorce that was already going on and provides some guidelines to protect the women from having to live on the streets as beggars.

And Jesus said, "Moses gave you that provision, not because that's what God designed, but because your hearts were hard." You are set against God's will.

Then Jesus says to them, "If you really want to know what God thinks about divorce don't go to Deuteronomy 24 go to Genesis. Let's talk about what God originally had in mind.

You see “Jesus rejects the already compromised position of the Pharisees. They had the wrong text! They ask about divorce and quote a passage that tells them how to do it.”

But Jesus points back to Genesis 1 and 2 and what God originally created to be the relationship between husband and wives. He shifts the discussion from what Moses wrote to what God commanded. He moves from divorce to marriage.

The primary concern of the Jews is their rights and what they can by with. The primary concern of Jesus is the will of God. Not much has changed has it?

So much of what is written and preached today about the issue of divorce comes from just that kind of self-willed perspective. What are my rights here? What can I get away with and still be okay with God?

And one of the biggest culprits in this whole issue is the lie of our culture that we have bought hook, line, and sinker. It’s the lie that we somehow have a fundamental right to be happy.

How many times have I heard that one? "I'm just not happy anymore. I just want to be happy. Surely God doesn't want me to be unhappy."

Who ever told you that you have a fundamental right to happiness? That's an ideal from the American Constitution, not from God's Word. According the gospel of Jesus Christ, these are your rights:

The right to die to your self-directed will.

The right to surrender your life completely to him.

The right to lay down your life for another.

The right to lose your life so that you can find it.

The right to bear in your body the marks of Christ and suffer in the name of Jesus.

Now here's the mystery of the gospel: when you surrender your selfish will to God and die to your own rights and agenda, this is indeed where true happiness is found.

You will never be happy as long as you are ordering your life by the perverted notion that life is all about my comfort, my ease, my pleasure, my happiness. Stop being duped by this hedonistic culture of ours.

So what happened in Genesis 1 and 2? In chapter one we get one part of God's ideal: "God created them male and female and united them in order that they might fulfill a divine command: be fruitful and multiply."

Genesis two gives us the heart principle of the marriage covenant, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."

It's a wonderful plan. But then we turn to chapter three and something goes terribly wrong. This man and woman that God had joined, “suddenly act independently of one another and all hell breaks loose.” They blame each other for their predicament and they suddenly become ashamed of their nakedness, the most profound symbol of their unity.

They had been naked and unashamed. Now they tried to hide from each other and from God. They were now ashamed of their nakedness and embarrassed with one another. What a change!

They were created for absolute openness. Now they would “mistrust, veil, conceal, and manipulate appearances.” But look at how God responds. In Genesis 3:21 God makes garments of skin for Adam and Eve, and he clothes them.

He does it not as a way of accepting things as they are, but “in gracious concession to the mess they had made of everything.” He does not encourage their attempts to hide from one another, but he does show that they need “protection from each other in the moral chaos that they have created.”

“There is grace here, but not divine approval.” What God does is, in his great grace he works around the problem we have created. In fact much of what we call God's law is his effort to deal redemptively with our disobedience.

It does not represent his original plan for us. That's what j

Jesus wanted these Pharisees to see. The law of Moses about divorce, was nothing more than an adaptation that God graciously provided because of our sin.
The ideal of God is unchanged. What God has joined together should never be taken apart by man. We need to be absolutely clear: divorce is never the "holy option." It is never the will of God.

But Jesus makes it clear that while divorce is never the will of God, it is sometimes permitted as a “divine concession” to the human hardness of heart.

Dr. Paul Bassett said it well, The only reason God ever allows divorce “is to keep us from doing our very worst to each other.” When there are situations of abuse and sinfulness and danger, it may serve no redemptive purpose for that situation to continue. But while God allows it, he never approves. In fact, if I can say it this way: he always grieves, he always cries. Divorce “is not to be seen as making anything necessarily better. And it makes nothing good.” (Bassett)

The worst that we can ever do as Christians is to exercise the gracious concession of God to our sinfulness and then somehow call it God's good will for our lives. We sometimes talk about the "biblical grounds for divorce" as if God is quickly pleased about divorced if it happens because of adultery. The truth is there is no biblical ground for divorce. There is only the acknowledgement of our sinfulness and the profound statement of God's grace. Don't look for God's approval of your divorce. You won't get it.

And one of the most dangerous attitudes we can ever have is trying to hedge our bet ahead of time. Trying to manipulate the scripture as the Pharisees were doing. Saying, "I'm sure God will forgive me for what I'm about to do."

There is only one will of God regarding the marriage relationship and that is that we are to cleave to one another and become one flesh. The word of God is abundantly clear on this matter. We simply refuse to submit ourselves to its teaching. Which leads me into the second question: "Where is the church in all of this?"

As one who represents Christ's church, I am embarrassed to report these facts to you, but I must. To a large degree, the church has simply become part of this nation's divorce problem. Over 75% of all marriages are presided over by a pastor, priest, or rabbi. And yet 50% end in divorce. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a large percentage of the time, the church has become nothing more than a wedding factory. (see Mike McManus’ book, Marriage Savers).

Part of the problem is that if I refuse to a marry a couple without pre-marital counseling they can go find a church down the road that will accommodate them.
But it comes closer to you than that. Do you know that in the past five years we have had no less than twelve marriages disintegrate right under our noses? And more that have been on the brink.

What are we doing about it? I do think we're doing a better job and coming alongside and offering support and help in the aftermath. But what are doing to prevent this?

I know this: a sermon once in a while on divorce will not cut it. As a matter of fact, if we are ever going to see any significant difference happen in helping couples in crisis, then we have to move way beyond what I as pastor can do.

A group of us sat around in our home a few weeks ago and talked at length about what we can do as a congregation to go beyond offering marriage enrichment for basically healthy couples. We need to be ready to come alongside couples in crisis and make a difference in helping them to work through the issues they are facing. There are probably a number of options here, but there are specifically two things that I would love to see happen.

One, we need to have some mature couples with a healthy relationship who are willing to be equipped and trained to hook up with an engaged couple before their wedding and work with them all way through their wedding and through their first year of marriage.

It's called marriage mentoring and it works. It's being tried and proven in many places across the country. Given the number of couples that I work with in pre-marital counseling at one time, there is no way that I can give all of them what they really need.

So I need some mature Christian couples who would commit to mentor, to guide and help and spend some time with these young couples. I have the tools available right now to train those kinds of mentor couples. All I need is some willing people.

The other part of that is that when we are working with couples in crisis, we need the same kind of ministry to happen. Again, the pastors are limited in what we can offer simply because of the sheer numbers of persons we are working with at any given time.

We need more people to be involved in these helping ministries with us. Now I know some of you are doing that kind of ministry on your own informally and I thank God for you. But let's be intentional about it and expand the bounds of this kind of helping ministry. Because here's what I believe: If we are overwhelmed at the number of couples who are struggling and talking to us about it, how many are struggling, how many are right on the edge of giving up and yet they are suffering in silence?

Now our job is not to become a bunch of armchair psychologists. Our job is to point people back to the truth of God's word. There is power in the truth of God's word to heal broken and hurting marriages. I've watched it happen time after time. When we are willing to submit ourselves to the principles that God designed for marriage, then there is nothing can tear us apart.

But sometimes we need others to help us get there. We become so consumed with our own pain and our own disappointment, we lose hope--so we need Christian bothers and sisters to come alongside and help guide us back to wholeness.

Folks, I believe that as a congregation we need to declare war on divorce. We don't just have to give in the way of the world. Jesus Christ died and was raised again to redeem broken marriages.

And in the cases where we have a Christian spouse and a non-Christian, we need to become tenacious about praying for that non-believing spouse so that he or she will surrender their life to Christ and then be able to surrender their marriage to Christ.

We simply cannot go on as we are. We must not be apathetically accepting of divorce.

We need to have our hearts broken over the condition of marriages in our church.

We need to be driven to our knees and humble ourselves before almighty God and cry out to him to heal our families and to heal our marriages.

Will you join me in that kind of prayer? Jesus died so that your marriage wouldn't have to. Jesus was raised again, so that your marriage can also live again