Jesus' Teaching on Divorce
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 4 May 2014
Now we come to Matthew 19. In this section we have the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ on the subject of divorce. There are few other subjects as pertinent to our own time as this one. Our society has redefined marriage and divorce continues to have an enormous effect on our society as a whole. So let us learn from Jesus, our creator, what He says about divorce.
Matthew 19:1-6 says, “Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there. 3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” 4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
In Newsweek, a journalist asked this simple question - Is there anyone left in the land who has not heard a friend or a child or a parent describe the agony of divorce? No. Divorce has become prevalent to the point where all of us are touched by it in our family or circle of friends. Millions of people each year are impacted by divorce. All fifty states in America now have "no fault" laws which require no reason to get a divorce.
In the past, families and marriages were held together by three reasons. First, there was family moral force. In other words, the family meant a lot to you. Life revolved around family. There was love, hope, comfort and security there. But as the family began to fly apart by the invasion of the internet, cell phones, Facebook and the redefinition of marriage in our society, the family began to disintegrate. There was no longer that cohesive unit that could force a moral value system on its members.
There's a second reason and that was community expectation. A certain amount of community tradition, a divorced person was a scandal, well not anymore. There was a certain pressure applied by the expectation of a community that valued traditional marriage. Now instead there is a lot of pressure from proponents to accept same sex marriage. Community today has totally changed that tradition and redefined biblical marriage.
And then there was a third reason that held marriage together and that was the doctrine of the church. But that too has been jettisoned conveniently as the slide has progressed and now you have even in the Christian church a weakening of the biblical statements about divorce, so that the church has moved to acquiesce to the demands of its constituency which is pleading for more and more concessions all the time.
Now, that brings us to our passage tonight and there are only two choices. We can either follow the world's opinion or obey the Lord's Word. Either we go with the flow of what's happening in our society, and give in to the worldly system or we hold up the Word of God and say – “This is what God requires. And as for me and my house, we will follow and obey the Word of the Lord.”
The Bible is very clear on what it says about divorce and remarriage. The problem is not that the Bible is unclear but that our own thinking is fuzzy. We can't look at a problem and say - In order to stop the problem, we'll take the Bible's standard and just raise it. That's not right. But on the other hand, you have the people who say - Look we've got to minister to these people; we've got to accept these people, so let us just lower God’s standard.
What we must do is go back and see what Jesus said in the pages of Scripture. Matthew 19:1-2, “Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished these sayings that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. 2 And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there.” Stop with me for a moment, did you know that those first two verses spell the end of the Galilean ministry?
Since Matthew 4:12 the Lord began His ministry in Galilee, He has been flowing through that area of Palestine, ministering, preaching, teaching and healing. It is to Galilee of the Gentiles that the light has come. But as always, men love darkness rather than light, and the mass of the population never really came to the light. And now that light goes out in the sense that that part of His ministry is over.
Jesus now is headed to Jerusalem and we begin the last phase of the life of our Lord as He moves toward the cross, toward His passion and His resurrection. So, this is a critical point. The people had their opportunity during the Galilean ministry, they had their moment of truth, and now it ends for them. And how sad, how pathetic that even in His own town, they still tried to kill Him.
It also says, "When Jesus had finished these sayings." What is it referring to? Well, the sayings of Matthew 18, when Jesus had finished teaching on the child likeness of the believer. He had on His lap a little infant and He used that infant as an illustration, and taught all those great truths that we learned in chapter 18. Now that little statement itself signifies the conclusion of a major discourse.
So where did Jesus go? He came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan River. The Lord is leaving Galilee but instead of going straight down to Judah, He goes east, crosses the Jordan River, goes down the backside of the Jordan, and then will cross again south by Jericho, ascend up the mountain to Jerusalem. And it is of great importance that He takes that route because it takes Him into a very interesting region.
The area beyond the Jordan was called by the Jews, "The Beyond," an area known as Perea. So from the Galilean ministry, we enter into the Perean ministry. And chapters 19 and 20 discuss our Lord in that area of Perea. Recently, it had become rather densely populated. It was a territory under the control of Herod Antipas. Remember he was the one who had John the Baptist beheaded.
Also, any Jew traveling from the north to the south would go that way because if he went straight south, he would have to go through the land of the Samaritans. They considered the Samaritans to be a defiled people. So, there would be a lot of pilgrims going that way as well. So, the Lord would be able to minister to the inhabitants of Perea as well as to the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem.
Now, in chapter 19 we enter into the final phase of the gospel of Matthew. From here on out we have the final presentation of the King and the final rejection by the nation Israel. So, He presents Himself and is ultimately finally rejected and crucified. While interspersed through all of that, He taught more lessons for the disciples so that they are able to carry on the ministry. So, it's a time of transition for the Lord.
Now, as Jesus moves along with this crowd and the healings, we come to Mathew 19:3, “The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” The Pharisees were always looking for an opportunity to discredit Him and take His life. They were the religious establishment and they were being attacked directly by virtue of the truth that Jesus was preaching.
Obviously they wanted Him to look bad in front of the people. They had two things in mind. They wanted to discredit Him with the people so He would lose popularity. And secondly, they wanted to destroy Him. And so they have concocted this calculated test. Now, on the surface it seems like a rather simple question, but it is a clever question and an astute question meant to attack Jesus Christ.
Divorce was a volatile issue among the Jews. Everybody knew about it and divorce was very common. Women were treated as if they had no rights at all. And the Pharisees were leaders in this, not only by what they taught but by the example of their lives. They were constantly divorcing their wives. And they were also teaching that you could divorce your wife for any reason.
In fact, Rabbi Hillel said you could divorce your wife for putting too much salt on your food. You could divorce your wife if she spun around in the street and somebody saw her knees. You could divorce your wife for speaking to men. You could divorce her if you found somebody prettier because then she became unclean in your sight. You could divorce her if she was infertile. You could divorce her if she didn't give you a child that was a boy. So in effect they already practiced no-fault divorce under the guise of any-fault divorce.
Now, the Pharisees knew Jesus didn't teach this. In Matthew 5:27-28 it says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus said in Matthew 5:31-32, "Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.”
So, they are hoping that Jesus will respond with some strong statement on divorce and alienate all the people. They want to show Jesus as being intolerant. And they also want to show Him as not following the teachings of the Rabbis and the teachings of the Pharisees. And they are hoping they can discredit Him by describing Him as a legalist who is against the popular view.
There was a fortress in that area, and a palace called Machaerus and Herod Antipas had also a prison there. One of the prisoners he had kept there was John the Baptist. He was put in prison because he criticized Herod about God's law on divorce. And because of that he had his head chopped off. The Pharisees were hoping that Herod would act and treat Jesus in the same way.
But notice Jesus response in Matthew 19:4-6, “And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus didn't answer their question immediately from His own viewpoint, He went beyond Himself, beyond their customs, beyond their Rabbis, beyond their traditions, He went all the way back to God. Your argument, He is saying, is not with Me. God's Word is the foundation of this issue. Let's go back to the Word of God. We know they've been reading it. And He quotes Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24, Have you not read, He says?
And then He goes on to quote God out of Genesis and He gives, and here's the main part of what we're going to learn this evening, four reasons why it is not lawful to divorce for any cause. Let us listen to God, He says. Let us just let God speak. Four reasons why it is not lawful to divorce.
Reason number one - One man was created for one woman. Did you get that? One man was created for one woman. Look at it, verse 4, and He quotes from Genesis 1:27: "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning, made them a male and a female." Now the word ‘made’ here means ‘created’. He says - Have you not read about the creation? Are you not aware of it? You see, God created Adam and Eve. He did not create Adam and Eve and Ethel and Albert.
He didn't not make provision for polygamy. Divorce for Adam and Eve was out of the question. God set in motion for all of human history, how it is to be, one man, one woman, inseparable. God never intended two people to be married and to be fooling around seeing if they like somebody better.
Second reason why divorce is not permitted is that God created a strong bond. It says in verse 5, "For this cause," that is for the reason of this union between a male and a female, "a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife." This is Genesis 2:24, still prior to the fall of man. God's divine wonderful order, and the word ‘cleave’ means basically, to have a bond that can't be broken. It means to be glued stuck.
So we have two hearts, diligently and committed to pursuing one another in love, stuck together in an unbreakable bond; glued in mind, glued in will, glued in spirit and glued in emotion. That's why I Corinthians 7:4 says, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does,” it is an exchange, it is a total abandonment of myself to my partner.
The third reason why marriage does not allow itself to be broken and that is because of one man and one woman become one flesh. Jesus says in verse 5: "They two shall be one flesh, wherefore they are no more two, but one flesh." They are not separated anymore. They have become one person in the union of marriage. It is an indivisible number.
Now, what does that one person mean? When those two people get married, they literally, in God's view become one person. They become the total possession of each other, they are one in mind and spirit and goals and direction and emotion and feeling and will. And that oneness, ultimately, is best seen in the child they produce which is the perfect emblem of their union, because that child represents all that they are in one.
And a fourth reason, is in verse 6, “therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." This is not talking about how you view each other, this is God saying - I make marriages, and you better not take them apart. I put two people together in a union. It's a God ordained institution. Every time a couple comes together and experiences the joy of friendship, or the joy of sex or whatever else, they are experiencing the miracle of God.
The miracle that a man and a woman can surrender themselves to each other in the fullness of a meaningful intimate relationship is an act of God. And even unbelieving people can enjoy the joy and the meaningfulness of a loving union. Every child born into the world is a creature of God. It doesn't matter if their parents are both unbelievers who don't have a clue about God.
And the same is true of marriage. The marriage that produces the child is an act of God whereby two people are brought together to enjoy the fullness of life. Abortion is to childbirth what divorce is to marriage. As abortion kills the creation of God, so does divorce. That is His answer, but that's not all the answer. We're going to pick it up from here next Sunday. Let's bow together in prayer.