Jesus' Teaching on Marriage
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 25 May 2014
We have been examining Matthew 19 and we find that the first twelve verses contain our Lord's teaching on the subject of divorce. And it is important that we do that in order that we really understand God's will relative to marriage and divorce. Much like the Galilean ministry only shorter, the Lord preaches, teaches and heals and the crowds follow Him in Perea. And so He is confronted in verse 3 by His enemies, the Pharisees, to test Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
So our Lord is confronted with a question in a time where marriage attitudes were similar to our time. To hold a strong view of marriage and a strong biblical view of divorce, means that you are very unpopular, not only outside the church, but in some cases even in the church. And so, they were attempting to discredit Jesus in the eyes of the people by having Him become a hardline kind of legalistic person that nobody likes.
But Jesus says no, you cannot divorce your wife for any reason based on what God has said. And there are 4 things said: God made one man for one woman; God created a strong bond; God made them become one flesh; and this is His creative work that men therefore cannot break apart. And then the Pharisees use this argument, verse 7, they said to Him, if God’s intention was no divorce, “why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce?”
They took that from Deuteronomy 24 but they twisted it because in the text of Deuteronomy 24:1 to 4, Moses does not command divorce. We saw that Moses tolerated divorce and that's the same of what our Lord says in verses 8 and 9, "He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
At that point, the Pharisees disappeared. The reason they disappeared was they had just been exposed as adulterers, because they had to face the reality that any divorce for reasons other than adultery causes you to become an adulterer when you remarry. The fact is they had done that many, many times, and they were just adulterers showing others what adultery looks like. So we don't see them anymore.
But by this time, the disciples are enraptured with this teaching of our Lord. And the scene moves into a house in verse 10. And the Lord sits down with the disciples and I'm sure they continued that discussion with a lot of other thoughts about marriage. We wish we had that discussion, but we don't, so we just get the response.
The disciples are actually shocked by it, because Jesus has not expanded the Old Testament law one bit, He simply reaffirmed it, no divorce. And, frankly, if God killed all adulterers with the capital punishment that He assigns in Leviticus, there never would be any divorce. But God in His grace has let some adulterers live and so divorce is a merciful concession there only when that adultery is hardhearted and irreconcilable.
There is still a place for forgiveness where there is repentance. And so the disciples are very curious about this because they have grown up in a culture where divorce was rampant, very much like ours. And what the Lord has said leaves them struggling and so we come to the next point in this discussion of these twelve verses. How do they handle this? It is foreign to the experience of their day, the way they have been taught.
In that Jewish culture, divorce was actually a virtue. This is a quote from the Talmudic writings of the rabbis, "Among those who will never behold the face of hell is he who has had a bad wife, such a man is saved from hell because he has absolved his sins on earth." "A bad wife is like leprosy to her husband. What is the remedy? Let him divorce her and be cured of his leprosy." "If a man has a bad wife, it is a religious duty to divorce her.”
So watch their reaction in Matthew 19:10, “His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” Wow, if you get into that deal and you cannot get out of it, it would be better to never get in it. But they were wrong, it isn't necessarily better to be single. There are a lot of people who are like them today; they avoid marriage because they are not ready to make a lifetime commitment.
And they forfeit the richest meaning in life and that is a true relationship of love that lasts a lifetime. They settle for a cheap counterfeit. Listen to Proverbs 5:15-19, “Drink water from your own cistern, and running water from your own well. 16 Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? 17 Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you. 18 Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. 19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.”
In other words, there is a marvelous, wonderful element of marriage and that is a good thing, it is a blessed thing, it is a God-given and God-created thing. Proverbs 18:22 says, "He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the LORD.” And Proverbs 19:14 says, "A wise wife is from the Lord." So, the Bible says that marriage is a good thing. 1 Peter 3:7 calls it the "grace of life." It's kind of like the whipped cream on top of the dessert, it is the best thing about life.
The reason marriages don't last is because people don't get married for the right reasons! They get married without make commitments. They get married without any understanding of virtue and character. Basically people today pursue romantic feelings, romantic emotions, all those hearts and flowers, puppy love and infatuation that does not last. Romantic feeling is that high euphoria where people make relationships based on romance, and when they lose that feeling, they quickly go to somebody else.
But that's the way the world lives. So they go from one romance to another romance to another romance and the result of it is just what we see in our society today. The saddest result is that we are producing a generation of disoriented, unloved, lonely, isolated kids who are often turning into criminals and misfits because they don't have any meaningful long-term relationships. They have never experienced the love in a family that has a good marriage.
Listen, if you get married for an emotional feeling, you're making a big mistake. Now, there should be some of that there, but you better be able to see beyond that to virtue and to character. You better be able to see beyond that to common spiritual values, common life values. And you better understand that you are making a life long, one man, one woman bond, becoming one flesh and God-made. That is God's plan.
And the disciples needed to hear what people today need to hear, what you and I need to hear, and that is that marriage is a lifelong commitment and that is not reason to avoid it, my brother, that's reason to get in it. Because in the genuineness of that lifelong friendship, God will bless you in ways you will never experience as a single person. You ought to start having different criteria to evaluate the people. Well, I guess that needed to be said.
So you better be looking for character and when you find a godly person with whom you share common values in Jesus Christ and with whom you can build a deep, profound and meaningful companionship of life, then you better grab on to that opportunity. And I believe God will give you some emotions that will make you happy and thrill you, but there better be more than just that romance.
And if you don't know that yet, then you better slow the process down. Otherwise you may spend your whole life trying to keep a relationship together. So find someone with like precious faith and like values who loves Jesus Christ and has a life goal the same as you do and ask if God might not bring you together. If you find someone you want to marry but he or she does not have those values, you better back off.
Marriage is a sacred thing. And it is the greatest gift that God could ever give. When you have two people who love Jesus Christ and love each other and live a life together under God's leading and direction and in the power of the Spirit, it gets so good sometimes you have to pinch yourself to realize it's real. And that's as God intended it.
So, what happens? What does the Lord say? He says to them in Matthew 19:11, “But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given.” What saying? The saying, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But Jesus says - Look, not everybody can handle being single, except those to whom it is given. This is not for everyone.
Matthew 19:12 describes those people to whom it has been given, "For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb," a eunuch meaning one who does not engage in sexual activity with the opposite sex. And we would say that that is congenital, and they have no capability of functioning in that way, no desire to function in that way.
“And then there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men." This is talking about castration. And in history, there were people chosen to work in harems and they were castrated so that they could not have sex with the women in the harem of the king. There were also religious pagans who believed that castration was a way to please their gods.
And then thirdly, Jesus continues, "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs, for the kingdom of heaven's sake," and this is not by physical surgery but this is by dedication and commitment; they have made themselves eunuchs. In other words, there are some people who are not married for God's sake.
Now it is interesting that Jesus mentions only just those three categories. There is nobody there who is not married just because they don’t want to make a commitment they can't get out of, because that is not what God designed. That just leaves you in a state of singleness where you are faced with worse problems, such as trying to satisfy your own desires.
Now, look at the end of Matthew 19:12 where the Lord says this, "He who is able to accept it, let him accept it." This is an important statement here because the Lord puts this in there knowing that most people are not going to be able to accept this, right? You see, many people do not agree with this. Many feminists say they do not need a husband and many males do not feel they need a wife.
Because they do not know the Lord Jesus and therefor do not love Christ, the Bible has no authority in their life. And so, what it says in it is meaningless to them. In other words, if you are under the authority of the Word of God, then you better receive this teaching. And the teaching is: you are married for life or you are single for the glory of God or for some other physical reason, not so you can just play around and not make commitment.
And so as Christians, we should be hearing this and receiving it. But there are a lot of questions. And you know what? Those aren't answered in this text. But there is in the New Testament a commentary on the teaching of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 7. And what Paul does is this, Jesus lays down the very strong clear divine pattern and Paul helps us deal with the mess we are now in.
There are six reasons for marriage and we will discuss them all. Reason number one, procreation, having babies. Genesis 1 brought a man and a woman together, married them, told them to fill the earth, to have babies. Children are a heritage from the Lord, like arrows blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them, as Psalm 127 says.
Do you know that approximately 35 percent of all marriage-age, childbearing age couples today are permanently sterilized? Why? Because they look only for romantic love and they want to be able to flit from one relationship to another and kids become a long-lasting problem, right? But God knows that kids become a binding force too. Nothing is clearer that you two are one when you see yourselves in that one child that's born of your union.
Two, Marriage is for pleasure. Hebrews 13:4 says, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled.” You can experience the greatest pleasure with each other as long as your place has not been defiled. 1 Corinthians 7 says, your body is not yours and her body is not hers, they belong to each other. And the Old Testament talks about the satisfaction of the physical relationship, the pleasure that God has created as long as we stay within the boundaries He has set.
Three, Marriage is for purity. In 1 Corinthians 7:2, the Bible says that to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife. The best way to prevent any form of adultery is to have a loving, satisfying relationship with your wife. And after you have put your relationship with God first, marriage is second area you need to concentrate on. Start by practicing your faith first in your own family.
Four, Marriage is for provision. Ephesians 5 says that the man is to nourish, cherish, provide for, to care for, to be like a Savior to his wife. The Bible teaches that marriage is a provision of security. In fact 1 Timothy 5:8 says, "If a man doesn't provide for his own household, he is worse than an unbeliever." Marriage is a provision for the care of the weaker one and so that she may be fulfilled in childbearing and companionship.
Five, marriage is for partnership. When God made Eve, He said He made Adam a helper, somebody to come along side, so you don't do things alone, you do them together. There's strength in that fellowship, isn't there? And I confess to you that my wife is strong where I am weak. She tells me when I need to be told and if she didn't she wouldn't be strength to my weakness. We learn to compliment each other as God has chosen our partner.
Finally, marriage is picture of Christ and His church. Ephesians 5 is a graphic demonstration in the face of the world that God loves and has an unending relationship with the church, His bride, whom He loves and for whom He lives and dies. Who's the most important person in our life? Christ. That settles the issue really, because now we can say I accept it, if you Lord say it. I’ll do it because You are teaching us that. Let's bow in prayer.