There may be no more difficult subject to address these days
than divorce. Every pastor has felt the tension of faithfully proclaiming
the truth of God’s Word on this issue, yet exercising appropriate care
for those who have been scarred by divorce. This passage obviously speaks
to the issue of divorce, but many Christians have inappropriately used it
as a proof text for neatly approving divorce in situations of marital infidelity.
Careful exegesis of the text reveals that the confrontation between Jesus
and the Pharisees speaks to a much broader teaching from Jesus on the whole
subject of marriage.
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.
It should be noted that this message was preached in the context
of a fairly long-term pastoral tenure. It is direct and even confrontational,
but in the context of the pastoral relationship it was delivered with tears
and with a heart of love. This is an important homiletical element in sermons
that deal with such sensitive subjects.
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, 50 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
50 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
50 years I’m kind of tired of you too!”
Keeping a marriage alive and vibrant is a challenge for 10 years,
much less 50. 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 lifelong commitment has quickly given way to
short-term convenience. When the first no-fault divorce laws hit the books
in California in 1970, a floodgate 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 percent.
The stats are so grim that fewer and fewer people will even
consider entering marriage. In 1970 only 9 percent of men between the ages
of 30 and 34 had never been married. Today it’s over 25 percent. And
only 55 percent 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. There are 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 whose 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 they 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 35-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 of 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’s 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 in 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 man’s 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 get 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 OK 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 to 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.
(For the balance of this sermon manuscript, go to www.preachersmagazine.org.)
