In his sermon 'Bringing Sin on the Land,' Scott Brown explores Deuteronomy 24:1-5, focusing on the complexities of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. The passage addresses the legal and moral implications of a man divorcing his wife due to uncleanness and the subsequent marriages that occur. Brown emphasizes the societal consequences of violating God's principles of marriage, describing it as bringing sin upon the land. The sermon also highlights the importance of protecting marriage, as it symbolizes our relationship with God. Furthermore, it discusses the implications of remarriage laws and the cultural misunderstandings surrounding them, referencing how Jesus affirms these laws in the Gospels. The sermon concludes by offering practical advice on the first year of marriage to avoid the pitfalls that can lead to divorce, stressing the importance of nurturing and bonding in the early stages of marriage.

Our sermon text today is Deuteronomy 24, 1-5. When a man takes a wife and marries her, if she then finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, and puts it in her hand, and sends her out from his house, and she departs from his house. And if she goes and becomes another man's wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce, and puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her out, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, For that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord is giving you for an inheritance. When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty.

He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken. May the Lord bless the reading of the Word. This morning we have a text that will help us learn more about marriage. And what we find here is Moses is a wise and experienced shepherd and he's a good judge and he understands the real problems and issues that surface in marriage. He brings, you know, therefore to us a situation that might seem hypothetical, but I'm confident was not hypothetical for Moses.

And it's a complex situation that he brings about for consideration that requires lots of wisdom. And you can see right off the bat that it's a heartbreaking situation in that it describes the death of two marriages. And so God is bringing here help for us so that we would be protective of marriage. God's laws protect marriage. And in doing so, God is protecting society at large.

For the violating of the marriage covenant, of rejecting God's order and principle of marriage, has serious consequences, so serious that Moses calls it bringing sin on the land. And we have to understand again that here this is the Word of God, Deuteronomy 24, falls under the statement in 2 Timothy 3.16 that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and it is profitable. It all falls under the statement of the Apostle Paul that the law is holy, just, and good. So even though we might read this and we'll we reel and our brains you know go to flubber or something because we're not exactly understanding what he means we have to understand this is the Word of God. This is the every word that I have commanded you that the Lord Jesus spoke of when he issued the Great Commission saying that we should teach these things.

These are some of the things that we should be teaching as part of the evangelistic enterprise that God has charged us to. So Deuteronomy Chapter 24 brings us more laws about the protection of the family. We've seen many before. And again, they explain various matters of theft here, because Moses is doing exposition on the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal. So there are ways that you steal in marriage from one another.

And these laws have to do with various forms of deprivation or theft against a family or someone you have married. And of course these are controversial. They're culture-defying and they're often misunderstood because they're often ripped to bleeding and screaming out of their context and other passages of scripture are not consulted. The Lord Jesus actually deals with this passage in two places. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus interprets and clarifies this law.

In Matthew chapter 5 and also in Matthew chapter 19 when Jesus refers to this law. He's not in opposition to Moses, but rather he upholds and confirms this law that is stated in this passage of Scripture. The other thing that we see from this, and it's been a blessing to me to hear this come to our ears a couple of times this morning from both Jorge in our time of prayer and then Jason as he read in the book of Revelation that marriage is a symbolic relationship And it symbolizes our relationship with God. Whenever you hear something about marriage, there's a double meaning in it that we need to seek out. And so it is here in this passage of scripture.

Now, let's dive into the text. So first of all, I would like for us to consider kind of a slow and careful reading of this text so that we understand the literary structure of the first four verses, because it's very important. And I'll just have to confess, I really didn't get this until yesterday, late afternoon. I was reading this text wrong. I think we were reading it wrong on Tuesday morning in many respects.

We had our focus on some things that absolutely were in the text. But the laser beam focus of Moses was missed on Tuesday morning when we were together. So let's read it very, very carefully. Verse 1. First of all, verse 1 is about a first marriage.

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house. So this is a marriage that has taken place and then there's a divorce. Verse 2 and 3 talks about a second marriage. When she has departed from the house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of the house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as wife. That's the second marriage.

Notice in verse 4, the word, then. Now we get to the focal point of Moses' Law. So far, there have been no laws. There just has been a reporting of two broken marriages. But now, Moses comes and he gives us a law, and this is the heart of this text right here.

The law is then, her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord. So verse 4 is the heart of the matter and then in and at the end of verse 4 Moses explains the reason for the law and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance." So a slower reading of this might help us not to get mixed up by details of certificates of divorce and things like that, which do play in, so that we would have a laser beam understanding of what the law, Moses, is advocating here. And it's a law of remarriage. That's what it's about.

This text is about remarriage. And why issues of immorality are so important for the land, for the whole of society. That sins of immorality are not just sins committed between private individuals. They actually bring sin on the land. As God has placed us in a land, it matters how we affect the land.

Our moral character, our moral behavior, somehow has an effect on the land. And it brings sin on the land when we flagrantly reject God's commandments. So that's sort of a fly overview of the literary structure of this law and what Moses is driving at. And he's driving at the issue of remarriage. Okay?

Now, let's now drill down a little deeper into each marriage and then in each section, the law itself and then the explanation for the law. We'll spend the rest of our time doing that, and then we'll have some time to apply it. So he speaks of this first marriage in verse 1, and things don't go well, there is a detesting that rises up in the heart of the husband toward his wife. And this just shows us again how realistic and true the Word of God is. It shows how life is in the world, that there are often devastating problems that rise up in marriage, that there are hatreds, that there are sins against one another that happen.

This is realism. This is the way that it happens. Moses is bringing a law to help relieve these problems and to come with something from heaven to help them be rectified. And what went wrong? She finds no favor in his eyes, but for a very important reason.

He found some uncleanness in her. So there was some uncleanness in her. So it wasn't just an arbitrary decision. It wasn't just, well, I woke up this morning and I just don't feel the love that I once had for you. I detest you, in fact.

I am sick and tired of your carping at me. I'm putting you out of my house. No, no, this is nothing like that at all. This is not just getting sick and tired of someone. This has to do with a matter of uncleanness.

There was a persistent immorality and uncleanness in her that was undermining the marriage. And the word that Moses uses to describe what is destroying this marriage is uncleanness. And It refers to nakedness. It has to do with sexual organs and perhaps private parts being uncovered. So there's this systemic, pernicious, continuous, unstoppable uncleanness in the life of a wife.

That's what's causing the displeasing. And it becomes intolerable. There's an evil way of living that is destroying this marriage. And it has to do with what I would just call a pernicious, unstoppable adultery of the body in the life of the wife. And so the husband takes a legal action.

It says that he writes her, he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house. Have any of you seen an actual certificate of divorce? This is a legal document that declares the nature of the problem of unchastity and the various issues that have caused the lawful breaking of the marriage. In 2006 there was a certificate of divorce that was filed in the state of South Carolina, which reads like this, my marriage to so-and-so was commenced through a covenant of marriage on a certain date, based on biblical and religious grounds. It was commenced without a state of a marriage license, and it is thus fitting that it is a religious dissolution that should be initiated on biblical and theological grounds rather than in a state court.

In defiance to God, her wedding vows, my wife has refused to be submissive and has refused to change her ways in spite of much biblical counseling. She has admitted in her sworn disposition that she does not want to be reconciled to her husband, that she has broken her wedding vows, that she believes that her wedding vows based on the Bible made her a doormat, that she no longer accepts or agrees to her wedding vows, that she voluntarily left the marital home in 2006 and abandoned her husband, that she took the initial steps for filing for divorce as a plaintiff in the court, known as a separate support and maintenance heretofore in this document. She committed fraud. She has, without regret, not followed biblical procedures in confronting her husband. She blames her husband for her many marital and sexual sins and refuses to own up to them.

Moreover, she has used the state police to assail her husband. She has used the state's power to deny her husband carrying out his proper God-ordained role as a father. She has lied under oath to the police, attempting to harm her husband and her children. She has been abusive to her husband emotionally, physically, and verbally, and has withheld a marital promise. She has lived in open and unrepentant sin with respect to her husband by her present mistreatment of him.

The Bible teaches that a man may divorce his wife not for any cause, For if he finds some indecency, which Jesus called pornea, violating the covenantal agreement by spiritual adultery, which is idolatry, he may give his wife her certificate of divorce and send her away. The certificate of divorce is God's means for a person to deal with their covenant-violating spouse. Deuteronomy 24, 1-4, Matthew 5, 31, Matthew 19, 3-9, Mark 10, 2-12. He may treat the covenant-breaker as an unbeliever who has departed from him. 1 Corinthians 7, 10 through 15.

However, the two are bound, are never again to marry once a certificate of divorce has been issued. Therefore, upon consulting of my pastor and regarding all these things, let it be executed. I, the undersigned notary public for the state of South Carolina, County of Greenville witness on this day. Well, this certificate of divorce, which was perhaps something like this one, was issued to this woman. And so, and then she departs and then there's a second marriage, verses 2 through 4.

And when she is departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife. So here the same thing happens. If you look at the language, it's like a step and repeat of the language. It's just the same old thing again happens. This is flagrant immorality of a woman who goes from man to man.

Uncleanness is the theme of her life. Jesus met a woman like this at a well one day. We'll get to that later. I have my Bible open to that text here, and we'll deal with it when we get to the end of our time. So this second marriage falls apart in the same way, for the same reasons, and the same legal process is executed.

And then Moses gives the law in verse 4. Then her former husband, whose divorce she must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled for that is an abomination to the Lord. So her husband may not cannot marry her again because she has been defiled. Now this means that there are certain boundaries that you cross, that you never can recover. You cannot go back.

That's a principle here. It's a principle of the Gospel, which is implied in all of these things here, that There is a point where you finally drop eternally into perdition and there's no hope of going back. This is a picture of that, where there is a divorce and it can never be repaired. Again, if the Lord divorces you, then you will find yourself without hope again. So now there's only one reason to put her away.

Now, Matthew chapter 5 relates to this. Matthew 5 verse 31, where the Lord Jesus says, Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, Let him give her a certificate of divorce. 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. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.

So, you know, how official is divorce? It's official. It is binding. In Matthew chapter 19, the Pharisees come to the Lord Jesus, and in verses 3 through 10 we see the story, And what we find is that the Pharisees are coming with false motives. They came to him testing him.

They were men who wanted to find any possible excuse to be released from their marriages. They were not interested in the will of God. They only wanted to talk about exceptions and exemptions and loopholes and strange outlying cases, escape clauses. And their question is, to Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And the answer that he gives is no.

No. And you know, during the intertestinal mental period, the rabbis have made up many laws regarding divorce that you could divorce your wife if she cooked poorly or salted your food incorrectly. Their culture was like ours, really. It was the no-fault divorce world that Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1969, where divorce became for any reason, just like the Pharisees. The Pharisees wanted a divorce for any reason at all.

Later on, Ronald Reagan regretted this in a conversation with his son, where he said that he believed that it caused the great uptick of the divorce rates and the collapse of the family. He was sorry for that law that he endorsed in 1969. It came out of his own experience as a divorced man and he was blinded and caused the fall of many. Because there do need to be constraints of law against divorce, lest you know the passions and the inclinations of men's hearts would find any reason for divorce. What we find is that God is far more patient than man in matters of divorce.

And that too we'll get to later. The school of Hillel and Shammai were in conflict of this. These Jewish sects, these Jewish perspectives, doctrinal persuasions, and the school of Hillel allowed that you granted divorce for the smallest infractions. And so you had a culture among the Pharisees that was like our own culture. I married the wrong person.

I love someone else. I've fallen out of love. My spouse doesn't love me anymore. I'm so unhappy. Why would God want me to be so unhappy?

We're incompatible. Our relationship and our ministry can't live under the same roof. I don't have peace about our marriage. If I divorce, God will forgive me. He committed emotional adultery.

Doesn't that give me reason? We're under grace, not the law. Divorce is the most positive decision I've ever made. I'm so much happier now that I've been divorced. Friends say, divorce will help you recapture your youth so that you can be the real you.

You're being so bound by this person. You're growing apart. You're different people now. It's time to separate. Divorce feels right.

If you're not happy you need to move on these are all about you know feeling the wrong thing But God would call us to maybe feel the wrong thing, but then do the right thing. And divorce happens when people feel all these wrong things, and then they do the wrong thing. But God has something far, far, far better. We cannot say, God led me to this divorce. You can get a divorce by going to www.mydivorcecertificate.com.

And for very little money and time, you can end it all very, very quickly. So Jesus answers the question in verse 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? And he 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. So then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate." The Pharisees asked the question, and Jesus answers it very, very clearly, and the answer is no.

And Jesus quotes Genesis chapter 2 to prove the point. And Jesus is telling them that every departure from Genesis 2 is a sinful departure. Here, he condemns polygamy and immorality and the dissolution of marriage. Every time the civil magistrate grants a no-fault divorce, it spits in the face of Jesus, because Jesus has spoken so clearly about it. Do your friends know that?

Calvin said that it's an example of, quote, the magistrate abuses of his power when he grants permission to divorce. And then the Pharisees asked a question to follow it up, because it's not that they wanted clarity. They just wanted another loophole. And so they said, well, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away? And 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. 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." what Jesus is saying here is that Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be given because of a radical and terrible reality in people's hearts, hardness of heart. That people get so hard, so uncontrollable, so ungovernable, and they have so wretchedly told themselves lies so many times, and that it creates a danger, that the situation is so untenable that Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to begin, but it was never the will of God. It was never that way.

It was not that way in the beginning. And Jesus says there is only one possible exception, and that is for sexual immorality. That's the only case. Now if you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, there's desertion. That the Lord Jesus speaks to the Apostle Paul on the same matter.

And Jesus is speaking about the two becoming one flash and what marriage is all about. And he's saying, how right is it to tear a person in pieces, to shred you? Last year, I went through the works of John Calvin on the family, and I wrote a book called Family Reformation, where I tried to extract the things that Calvin said on the family. The section on marriage is more beautiful, more tender, it's the sweetest it's the sweetest thing you can ever read about marriage. Calvin understood and he said it, he said it in his commentaries, when you divorce you tear a person in two.

And Jesus is outlining this terrible result. There's no command to divorce here in Deuteronomy chapter 24. There's no command at all. The focus is on verse 4 about remarriage. There's no command to issue a certificate of divorce.

There's no demand to divorce your wife on the basis of immorality. But because of hardness, there is an allowance for it. But yet, it's not meant to be. So the Lord Jesus, with these statements here, He puts to death no fault divorce. He puts to death polygamy.

He puts to death the excuses that men want to make for how they might escape for their divorce, for some kind of incompatibility that would drive them apart. The reality is, once there's a divorce, there are no clean answers. There are difficulties. And yet, God comes to us to protect from these things with these laws. And then He gives the law in verse 4.

And he says, And then her former husband, who divorced her, must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. So that's the reason. So let's just take a step back. We saw the literary structure of this. Moses is commenting on a woman who is involved in serial adultery.

And she just continues on this pattern. She's like that woman at the well in John, chapter 4, that the Lord Jesus met. And what the Lord Jesus is saying through Moses is that when there is serial adultery and without repentance, That if she goes to when she marries again, she cannot marry that husband again Because she commits adultery and causes him to commit adultery again And so it's a bit so it's about remarriage, you know, it's interesting the Westminster Confession has a section on this In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue a divorce, sue out a divorce, and after the divorce to marry another as if the offending party were dead. Although the corruption of man be such, as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage. In other words, he's saying there are lots of excuses you can make for divorce.

But nothing but adultery or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient for dissolving the bond of marriage, wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed, and the persons concerned in it nor left to their own wills and discretion in their own case." It's interesting that when the Baptists in England adapted the Westminster Confession and made their own, the Second London Baptist Confession, they dropped this clause out of the Second London Baptist Confession. Because of the great controversy that rages even today, those dear brothers of ours who say that any remarriage of any kind is adultery, And you cause that other to commit adultery of any kind. That's one view. And as the Second Line of Baptist Confession was being crafted, they acknowledged that. And they, instead of making The same statement as the Westminster Confession, they dropped it out.

Personally, I side with the Westminster Confession. Well, the second line about this Confession doesn't make a statement about it. It just doesn't comment on it with the clarity and the granularity that the Westminster Confession does. And so Jesus clarifies What this uncleanness is in Deuteronomy 24. It's adultery.

It's this adultery that's worthy of being put to death on the account of two witnesses. And the two become one flesh. There's power. There's power in this. There's so much power that so many people regret their divorce.

There are some who say it was the best thing that I ever did, but that's not the majority. So, so many after time think, oh, what a terrible error I made, and I cannot reverse it. Because becoming, to the two becoming one means something, something happens, because it is tearing, it's destructive, And the Lord Jesus acknowledges that when He says, when two become one flesh, what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. And then he explains the reason for the law, that it defiles the land. He says, you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance." So this passage is about remarriages that defile the land.

I was reading Thomas Watson on the Seventh Commandment. He says this about adultery, it's a feevish sin, which is what Moses is saying. That it debases a person, that it pollutes, that it is destructive to the body, that it's a drain on the purse, that it destroys your reputation, that it impairs the mind, that it incurs temporal judgments, that adultery without repentance damns the soul, that the adultery not only wrongs his own soul, but it destroys the soul of another, that the adulterer is abhorred of God, Proverbs 22, 14. So the sin of adultery is a pernicious and land-defiling sin. So Deuteronomy 24 is not first of all condoning divorce, but it speaks of the terrible consequences of indecency.

And if you do divorce your wife, anything short of adultery, you're causing her to commit adultery. Causing her to commit adultery. And so what I'd like to do is leave this section and go to the next and then we'll come back at the end and make some broad conclusions and how this all relates to the gospel and also what kind of clarity do we have about remarriage. So then Moses says something that seems to be kind of startling. You go from this terrible situation of these, the serial adultery, these failed marriages, two in a row, and then the restrictions that result from it.

And then, he gives the law for newlyweds. What's that all about? We're going from horrendous to making your wife happy. And it's a strange concuss. Why is Moses doing this?

Well, he doesn't tell us, but my suggestion is that Moses is speaking of what you can do to avoid some of these problems. How do you not create this kind of nightmare in your marriage? And he speaks of what you do in the first year of your marriage, how you set your marriage in place, in a good place. What does a husband do in the first year of his marriage to make it a blessing so that his wife is happy and not like this other wife. Perhaps that's what he's speaking of.

He speaks of a neglect that could inflame this kind of sin. So in verse 5 we read, when a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year to bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. Well, isn't that nice? Ah, yes.

Too bad, guys. You've been married for over a year. How are you going to turn the clock back? Well, you may be able to do it. You may be able to think.

Maybe there should be a whole wave of men who are going to go back to their first year of marriage. They're going to go back and try to do this. I had one of my dear friends, I was taking his wife away to some warm place in the Caribbean. And I said, so what do you do? And he says, I have one single objective.

I said, what's that? He said, I want to make my wife smile. That's what I'm going to do. So he took her there, and that's what he tried to do. Well, this passage is kind of like that.

So I don't know, would it be lawful to turn back the clock and relive your first year of marriage? Maybe it was a nightmare. My wife is saying, yes, let's do it. Let's do it now. Let's start today.

What's the date? But this is perhaps more relevant for those of you who might get married. You young men and young ladies here, I pray you'll do this. Now, this is for you. Yes, even you, Jake Dohm at the tender age of 11 years old.

This is for you. Think about this. What are you going to do, young man, to make your wife happy, to brighten her? That's what this is all about. So as you can see, we've gone from one very heavy and difficult subject to one that is so much sweeter.

Why is it that everyone is smiling around this room? Because there's something different. The heaviness is somehow lifted because there's light here and there's clarity about what a man might do. Now it's interesting, Moses has already spoken in Deuteronomy 20 verse 5 about the betrothed man. The betrothed man also has things to do.

If he's built a new house and not dedicated, let him go to his house. Don't send him out to war. He might die in battle. If he's planted a vineyard, let him eat of it. Let him go home.

Don't send him out to battle, because somebody else might eat of it. And if he's betrothed to a woman and he's not married yet, let him go back to his house lest he die in battle and another man marry her. So Moses has already spoken about when you're betrothed, don't go get yourself killed. Okay? Now, I actually know some guys that have done some things that could have gotten themselves killed while they were betrothed.

And actually, I know one who did, he did lose his life for doing very dangerous things two months before his marriage. So there really is a principle here. When I first was engaged to Deborah, I started strapping on my seat belt. I never put a seat belt on. This was before seat belt laws.

This was before a lot of cars even had seat belts. OK? So some of my favorite cars never had seat belts. Ah, for those cars. But when I was engaged to be married, I started strapping on that seatbelt.

I cared. I wanted to be there. I wanted that wedding day to happen. I didn't want to go flying through the windshield. I was taking more caution.

I wanted to marry that girl. I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, be with her for the rest of my life. I didn't want anything to mess it up. So this is another thing, you young men. Okay?

You know, don't go play the cowboy, you know, after you get engaged. Don't die. You have an obligation to this woman. All right? So there you have it.

Then, so Moses has dealt with that. If you're betrothed, he dealt with that in chapter 20, verse 5. So now he's dealing with, well, now you're married. Now what? You don't send the man out to battle because of this responsibility to be at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken.

So, get ready for this, guys, okay? You guys who are not married now, crank up for this. Be on deck. Don't be like the 45-year-old guy in here thinking, oh man, I wish I'd done that. My wife might be happier today.

She might not have so many problems if I had spent more time just happifying her, covering her with kindness and gifts and being at her shoulder all the time, and walking with her and talking with her instead of going out and doing my own thing. But there was a time actually to nourish something. You who are farmers know this. It really matters what you do, especially at the beginning. When you fertilize something, the beginning of a plant matters.

If you deprive that plant at the beginning, it might grow up kind of gnarly, right? That happens to women as well. It happens to wives. They can grow up with just, you know, in the years of youth of a wife, you know, things can happen where she can be soured. You know, I think all of us who are husbands understand that.

That we can do things that can sour the dispositions of our wives. And it's not a pretty thing. Some of the problems that you might be having in marriage today really go back to the, because you've not watered the garden. You've not put the fertilizer in like it should be. You've been off conquering something but not happy-fying this woman, and you need her to be happy.

What do they say about if mama's not happy, I don't really want to complete the statement. That's kind of the principle that's being dealt with here in this passage. Now, there are a number of really interesting things about this. First of all, this is a law for a newly married man. It's a principle.

And every newly married man has to figure out how he's going to apply it. Because it doesn't give you really any detail about it, except stay home with the girl. Other than that, you're there to make her happy. Those are the two big things. It's big picture kind of stuff.

Now, you've got to fill in the gaps. There are a lot of details that fall into that, right? You're going to have to figure that out. You say, well, I'm not creative. Get creative, young men, okay?

Get creative. They like it when you're creative. They like it when you think about it and spend time considering the various details and the things that you're going to do during that first year of marriage. It ought to be something that you should consider. Should you start thinking about it now?

It's not a bad idea. It's something that is a blessing, something that God has established as wonderful. So here are a couple of fascinating things about this. This law gives the family higher priority than the needs of the state. How's that?

In this case, the family stands above the state. Now, in some cases, the family stands under the state. If you have a disobedient husband, the sword of the state can come and deal with him and can come into the family. Here we have a law where the marriage relationship stands above the military requirements or desires of the state. And it's also kind of a restriction, it's a restriction on the family, that there's an important foundation to protect.

The language here doesn't restrict him from working, but it does seem to limit it. John Gill in his commentary says that the Jews, my mom, my momities, the great Jewish scholar, said that this also meant freedom from taxation for a year. I like that. It ain't gonna happen. But Aristotle learned this law from the Jews and apparently he taught it to Alexander the Great.

And after the battle of Granicus, Alexander the Great, after hearing of this law, he took his newly married soldiers and he sent them home for the winter and the spring. And they came back. But he did it Because Aristotle taught him this law from the Jews. Now, it's interesting too what's supposed to happen. There's a brightening up to make her happy.

This has to do with the bonding together of marriage in the first year. This is kind of a, is this where we get our idea of honeymoons? You know, I don't know. But this would be a honeymoon on steroids, wouldn't it? Like for a whole year.

Who gets to have a year-long honeymoon? Well, this is kind of what's being spoken of here. He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. And that good thing needs watering and nourishment and care. Now, It was pointed out when we were discussing this Bible study on Tuesday that there was a man in the room who had been married for 62 years.

That would be my father. My father and mother are here on the front row. They've been married for 62 years. And you know, this has been a marriage of happiness. I'll just give you a secret to their marriage.

Are you ready? It's extremely profound. Write it down. Write it down. Are you ready?

Okay, I want especially you young men, I want you to write this down. And young women, okay? Here's the secret of my parents' marriage. They constantly say nice things to each other. That's it.

That's not the only secret. But that's one of the 20 megaton secrets of their marriage. They're just constantly saying fun and funny things to one another, because they like each other. And they talk nice to each other. They don't get into all kinds of uncomfortable, heated, accusatory, strange conversations.

They just don't. I know. I lived with them for a bunch of years, every day, And then I've been watching this marriage ever since. And now they live in my home. It ain't changed a bit since I was a kid.

They're still doing the same old thing. And they're happy. So that's kind of the principle that emerges from this passage. Why would you have to cheer up your wife in the first year? Her life changes more than a man's life changes.

A woman leaves everything and gets joined to this man, And she moves from one family into this new world. And she comes into this new world. And if you're disappearing all the time, then she'll be more susceptible to discouragement. Because she has no one like she used to have. It's very different.

And the other thing is that she's also discovering new things. She's realizing that the guy that she married has actually a few more problems than she knew before they got married. She's realizing that there are areas of sort of idiocy in his life. There's some things that are broken. He's a man.

Here's the problem, girls. You marry a sinner, okay? That's one problem. And you also marry a male. You marry a man.

That's a whole other problem. Right? There are difficulties here. So a girl wakes up, you know, she realizes she's married a sinner and a man. He's worse of a sinner than she thought, and she's more of a man than she hoped for.

And so she needs this time. She needs her husband to be around her more. She's more vulnerable. There's a beautiful section that my wife has read to me a number of times. And I love this section in J.R.

Miller's book, The Family, where it speaks of the responsibility of the husband toward his wife because she has left so much and she is so tenderly vulnerable in a way that he is not at all. He's still charging on his work. No change. He's like George Whitefield. He's just keeping it.

He's going to keep on doing the same thing all the time. And he's not going to break a step. Now, George Whitefield did the wrong thing. George Whitefield, the great evangelist, preached twice on his wedding day and continued his pattern of preaching four to six times a day. And He should have had someone preach this to him, and he probably should never have gotten married.

God called him to something that really a wife didn't fit into. Let that not be the case with us, that we have such dreams that a wife can't really fit into it all that well. Now what does this mean that the couple becomes like hermit crabs? They cut themselves off from all other relationships. I don't encourage that.

I don't encourage that the husbands and wives go into a hole and then they suspend all responsibility. That would be taking this text farther than it means to go. It has to do with putting a man at home with his wife and not at military service putting himself in harm's way. That's the heart of the matter. And there's a focus on the home.

And, you know, there are often, You know, people read this and they cut themselves off from all relationships. They pull out of everything. They forsake all the other commands of hospitality, or they forget any other obligations. That, too, would be an overreaction. But at the same time, There's a new focus of life that may include the reduction of certain responsibilities for a time.

Malachi speaks of dealing treacherously with the wife of your youth. And So there are many ways that this principle can be violated. So hey, let's have a renewal of making wives happy somehow. It's a blessed work to do. OK, let's move to some application.

We've dealt with two principles of marriage, right? One is a principle of remarriage. And then here is what do you do in the first year of your marriage regarding the happiness of your wife? So these two things are set before us. Now, I want to spin out a number of sort of applicational conclusions.

Number one, adultery does not dissolve a marriage. Adultery does not dissolve a marriage. Malachi chapter 2, verses 14 through 16 makes that very clear. Malachi is speaking of dealing treacherously, but yet you are still married. One of the great mistakes of husbands and wives is to engage in a divorce because of an instance of adultery or something else like that.

It's a huge mistake. And we'll see that God has his own pattern to teach us how wrong this is. Yes, you have a reason for it. But much, much more needs to be considered. Richard Baxter says, abhor not only adultery itself, but all that leads to unchastness and the violation of your marriage covenant.

Anything that causes impurity, anything that brings an impure voice or a song or an image into your home, ban it. Any kind of unchastity inflames unchastity. We also know that the spiritual adulterer can be restored. Hosea chapter 2 verses 14 through 23 make that so so clear and out of out of out of Much spiritual adultery the prophet the prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah 50 verses 1 and 2 He says where is the certificate of your mother's divorce whom I put away? Where is the certificate of divorce?

Here Israel has been committing spiritual adultery for years and Isaiah is saying, Show me the certificate. I've not given you a certificate of divorce. You're an adulterer, but I'm not divorcing you." That's what he's saying in Isaiah chapter 50. Who gives you the right? I have not divorced you.

That's what Isaiah is telling the people of Israel. So there's this principle that's very important that Isaiah, that Malachi, that even the Lord Jesus himself clarifies That though immorality may be grounds for divorce, it's not a command for divorce. What we find is that Jeremiah, though, gives us a picture of the terrible consequence that we see in Deuteronomy 24, that the woman is now an outcast and she cannot be married again to her previous husband. After 700 years of harlotry, in Jeremiah chapter 3, verses 8 and 9, there's a terrifying statement. Jeremiah is writing after Isaiah.

This is later on. And now after 700 years of harlotry, Jeremiah says, I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce. I gave her a certificate of divorce. In Jeremiah chapter 3, God issues a certificate of divorce to his people. And he says, yes, that's it.

That's all. And yet, and yet, that's not all. Here's what you don't say. You don't say, my husband committed adultery. That's it.

He's been on the Internet committing spiritual adultery and emotional adultery. That's it. God says, for 700 years I put up with your adultery, and I did not issue a certificate of divorce. That's what God says. God is more patient than man.

But yet, because of hardness of heart, because of this terrible, gripping sin that blinds so completely, all mercy is cast aside. And couples have no patience for one another. And yet God says, after 700 years, I have patience with your adulteries. But yes, there is a time when I will issue you a certificate of divorce. And you will be cast into outer darkness for all eternity.

And that's the terrible judgment that comes upon those who do not repent of their adulteries. Yes, God is patient with hundreds of years of adulteries. But yet there is that time when there is no more hope left. There will be those, as Jorge spoke of, who will be at the feast, but they will not have the wedding clothes on, and they will be cast into outer darkness. You know, what this means is that if there's anyone here who has just continued in their spiritual adultery, and they've hardened their hearts and said, well, I'll wait.

I'll wait some more. Do not wait. Because you do not know when the issue of the certificate of divorce will come from God. When it comes from God, then you're dead. Flee from the wrath that comes.

Escape, escape the terrible consequence of spiritual harlotry. If anyone's holding back, please don't hold back. God, God, God is so patient and merciful. The consequences of unrepentant sin have to be weighed, and there's a time when they will slip terminally away. And if there is uncleanness, if there is uncleanness in you at the final judgment, then there will be the fire of God's wrath.

And there's only one way to be made clean, and that is through the blood of Jesus Christ. There's only one who kept the whole law, Jesus Christ. He keeps the law for His people so that His mercy will cover them. That's our only hope. But there is no salvation for the adulterous unrepentant.

And when people think that they can delay their repentance and their obedience, the time is ticking and there will be a day when God washes His hands. That's why the Apostle Paul said in Acts chapter 20, I'm innocent of the blood of all men, for I did not hold back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. There is a time. There is a time when you are on your own, and God forbid if God issues you a certificate of divorce. So repent, repent and flee from the rapture come.

That's the principle that's here. And there was a woman who had been married to five different husbands. The Lord Jesus met her and He spoke to her And he said to her, If you knew the gift of God and who it was who says to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. And the woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? And Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst. But the water that I give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to everlasting life. This is what God says to the adulterer, the serial adulterers. He says that and the woman replies, Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.' And Jesus said to her, Go and call your husband and come here.

And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, You have well said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. In that you spoke truly. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.

And Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You shall worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him.

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. And the woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called the Christ, and when he comes he will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, and he." And at this point his disciples came and they marveled and He talked with the woman, yet no one said, What do you seek? Or Why are you talking to her? Then the woman left her water pot and went her way into the city, and said to the men, Come see a man who told me all the things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ? Then they went out into the city and came to Him." So the Lord Jesus has constantly been dealing with serial adulterers as He was dealing with in Deuteronomy chapter 24. And the message is always the same. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, and out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. There is living water.

There's living water for adulterers, such were some of you and me. And this is our only hope, that there is mercy for adulterers like us. Now I want to just end with one thing for those of you who are married. We've spoken a lot about hardness of heart. We've spoken a lot about adultery.

We've spoken about happiness and making your wife happy in your youth. And I want to just tell you about something that happened in our family this week. Someone had sent me something that Richard Baxter had written about marriage, and I ended up reading it to Deborah and Claudia. And I want to read it to you now because it speaks of how important it is to nourish these marriages. You know, that God has established the nourishment and the cleansing to happen in marriage through the relationship of the husband and wife.

And Baxter speaks of looking forward, and I want to ask all of you who are married to look forward. Look forward to the day when you are laying your spouse in the grave, when you have your hand upon her head and she is dead or he is dead. In the time of health, you must often and seriously remind each other of the time when death will make the separation, and live together daily as those who are still expecting the parting honor, the parting hour. Reprove everything in one another, which would be an unwelcome memory at death. In other words, live your life now to remove unwelcome memories at that time when you lay your hand on your spouse's head.

Don't make unwelcome memories, brothers and sisters. If you see each other dull and slow in heavenliness, or living in vanity, warliness, or sloth, as if you had forgotten that you must shortly die, stir up one another to do all without delay with the approach of such a day as it requires. And when death is at hand, oh, then what an abundance of tenderness and seriousness and skill and diligence is needful for one that has the last office of love to perform, to the departing soul of so near a friend. Oh, then what need will there be of your most wise and faithful and diligent help, they that are utterly unprepared and unfit to die themselves can do little to prepare or help another. But they that live together as the heirs of heaven and converse on earth as fellow travelers to the land of promise may help and encourage the souls of one another and joyfully part at death as expecting quickly to meet in eternal life.

And so may it be among us that when there's a marriage formed, that it would be begun to raise the hopes of happiness and sweetness, so that in the day of death, the memories were just as sweet as that first year where one dedicated oneself to the happiness of a spouse. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we pray that you would help us with these marriages that you've given us, how foolish we often are, how stupid and short-sighted we often are, forgetting the great day ahead. Oh Lord, I pray that you would use this time to help us to love, to remove all hardness of heart, anything that would cause the adultery of the heart or any harmful thing. Oh Lord, help us now.

Amen.