In the sermon 'Because of the Hardness of Your Hearts' by Scott Brown, the topic of marriage and divorce is explored through the lens of Matthew 19:7-9. Jesus addresses the permissiveness of divorce due to the hardness of human hearts, contrasting the historical view of marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union with the revisionist view that sees marriage as an emotional partnership subject to change. The sermon highlights how cultural attitudes towards divorce in Jesus' time mirror those of today, emphasizing the importance of understanding marriage as a covenant designed to reflect God's glory. The sermon critiques the Pharisees' misuse of Deuteronomy 24 to justify divorce and underscores the sanctity and permanence of marriage. It also discusses the exception clauses found in Matthew and Corinthians, which allow for divorce under specific circumstances, such as sexual immorality and desertion by an unbelieving spouse. The core message is a call to examine and soften one's heart, recognizing the destructive nature of hardness of heart in relationships.

Please open in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 19, verses 7 to 9. They said to him, Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away? 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." Let's pray.

Oh, Lord God, we thank you for your word and Lord the blessing to hear that joyful sound. Lord God, would you send forth this preaching with power, Lord, the power to change our hearts and our thinking on marriage, on divorce. Lord, would you give us your thoughts? Lord, change us, convict us by the power of your Spirit. Amen.

Our Lord is continuing to instruct us on this very, very important subject of marriage and divorce. Marriage, that institution whom He loves, so says the Scriptures. And this week's text is Matthew, you know, 19, 7 through 9, where Jesus is continuing to instruct His disciples how to think rightly about marriage and divorce in the midst of what is a wicked and a corrupt generation. And the disciples happen to be living in a culture that believed that you could divorce for any reason. Sound familiar?

It's kind of like our culture. And there was a very specific ethic, a very clear understanding of marriage and divorce in that culture. And the Lord Jesus Christ is coming and bringing wisdom from heaven in order to correct this terrible understanding of divorce. And we just have to recognize that when the Lord Jesus is speaking here, He is speaking about a real culture. He's speaking to real men who have real views about divorce.

And we know that the disciples had seemingly almost completely embraced this understanding of marriage and divorce. Because when Jesus finished saying this, He said, they say, well, if that's the way it is, in other words, if you have to stay with your wife, in other words, if you can't divorce for any reason, why would anyone want to get married? They had completely become saturated in the ethic of the day, these disciples of Jesus Christ. And those disciples are just like us. We too live in a culture.

There are ways of thinking about really everything. But marriage and divorce are critical areas, and these are areas that we are influenced by in our own thinking. And I want to give you three snapshots of that and how the thinking works out in our own culture. Just last week, the magazine National Review ran a story speaking of this very thing, and they were commenting on the President's view of divorce and marriage. And what the article said is that there really are just two views of marriage and divorce.

There's the historic view, as they called it, which sees marriage as a comprehensive union, that it calls for an all-encompassing, lifelong, permanent, exclusive commitment of a male and a female. And the National Review was saying this is what they called the historic view. And then they spoke of what is the revisionist view. And here's how they describe the revisionist view. Marriage is a union of two people who commit to a romantic partnership and domestic life.

Essentially, an emotional union, merely enhanced by whatever sexual activity partners find agreeable. Such committed romantic unions are seen as valuable while emotion lasts. State recognizes them because it has an interest in their stability and in the needs of spouses and any children they choose to rear. This is the revisionist view of marriage. And so the article goes on to say that the president embraces this revisionist view.

And they make note of the fact that he makes no arguments for it, other than just his own feelings and his own children's feelings, and that it's just kind of grown on him over the years. He sort of picked it up. It's part of his evolutionary understanding of marriage. And of course, that includes the union of males and females individually. And the article goes on and just makes the observation that if marriage is just about emotions, then just have as many relationships as you like, which is why we have over half a million relationships that classify themselves as polyamorous.

Just multiple emotionally-led relationships with all kinds of people, whoever you might want. And this really forms the structure of thinking of many in America. So that was an article. Here is now a book, a book that was written by John Adam and Nancy Williamson called divorce, how and when to let go. Here's what they say.

Your marriage can wear out. People change their values and lifestyles. People want to experience new things. Change is part of life. Change and personal growth are traits for you to be proud of, indicative of a vital searching mind.

You must accept the reality that in today's multi-faceted world, it is especially easy for two persons to grow apart. Letting go of your marriage, if it is no longer fulfilling, can be the most successful thing you have ever done. Getting a divorce can be a positive, problem-solving, growth-oriented step. It can be a personal triumph. And then finally, a blogger.

I'm just trying to illustrate the way that people think about marriage in this age that we live in and really how very consistent it is with the ways that even the disciples themselves understood marriage. A blogger, There's a popular mommy blogger who recently just got a divorce and she is writing a series called Reinventing Divorce and here's what she says, we both deserve to be happy. We both deserve another chance. Our kids deserve to grow up in homes without tension, without arguments, without parents who are angry that they are still together. We hope to learn from both of our divorced parents' ways.

You won't have to choose sides. You can continue with both of us, to our kids who one day may read this. We are doing this for you, too. You deserve to see and feel love and passion between adults. You deserve parents without anger.

You deserve parents who wake up happy. You deserve parents who want to love life. You deserve parents who can parent their best. You deserve parents who are on the same page. You deserve parents who can give you their all.

We can, just in different homes, so we plan to reinvent divorce. Hopefully, we can be a better team apart than we are together from different homes that will be the best way to reinvent divorce. And so our Lord is really addressing a number of wrong thoughts about marriage and divorce. As we have so many, we have so many wrong ideas, even on our own heads. It takes a lifetime to be washed by the water of the word to begin to understand even how you ought to think about your spouse and how you ought to deal with the conflict, how you even understand the conflicts.

What is the purpose of the conflicts? And God is so kind to show us that marriage is designed for the glory of God, that Mary is His holy institution, which He loves. And its purpose is not your fulfillment. Its purpose is to declare His mercies in the world through a living demonstration of a husband and wife who love one another and who never leave and never forsake one another. And so when the Lord Jesus is speaking to His disciples, He's speaking to real people in a real culture who have real problems with the heart of God on marriage.

And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is confronting a culture of divorce. And then also, I just want to sort of bring us up to speed in terms of an overview of where we've been going. His instruction hangs on two questions. The first question is in verse 3, where the Pharisees ask, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?

And then the second question which we're dealing with today, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away. So in last week's text, we saw God's authority over marriage. He says, had you not read that these things are really found in scripture. Jesus is not contradicting the Old Testament. He's, have you not read?

And he's being consistent with what's been written, that he actually wrote himself through Moses. And then the beauty of God's design in verses four through six, that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female. And then we spoke last week about the act of marriage in verse 5. 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.

And then lastly, the permanence of marriage, therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. So as we move into verse 7, we're going to speak of these things that are there in front of you on your outline, the depravity of twisting scripture, and then secondly, the exposure of the dark underbelly of divorce, and then thirdly, the exception clause and the consequences of it as well. So it's also important, I think, to recognize the flow of Matthew's thinking in this whole section. From Matthew chapter 17 verse 22 to the end of chapter 18, the Lord Jesus, who is the great shepherd of the sheep, is shepherding his disciples on how to deal with conflicts, with relationships, with sins against one another in the family of God. And if your brother sins to you, you go to him.

And all of that's explained in Matthew chapter 15. What do you do when people sin against one other in the church? And then, after dealing with sort of the corporate nature of the family of God, He then turns to the family relationships, biological family relationships. So there's definitely an organization and a flow in the Lord Jesus' instruction here. And so the Lord here is now beginning to speak about this institution, this institution that was designed to declare how good the grace of Jesus Christ is.

That really is the purpose of marriage, is to display what it means to be in a covenant of love, what it means to repent of your sins, to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to be saved and then enter into an everlasting covenant with God where He never leaves you or forsakes you. That's what marriage is meant to depict. And so all of the conflicts of marriage have to be seen underneath that great heading. Now, I think it's very fortunate this morning that most of the people in this crowd today are not married. Because you can, so you can think about this before you get married.

There's no better time than before you're married to consider these things. So you, you ones who are not married, don't, You don't have to raise your hands, you don't have to stand up or identify yourselves, but listen up. Tune those ears, okay, because you're going to hear some things that will help you later on because we're speaking about this whole matter of marriage and divorce. And then the heart of the text here is really that the Lord is going to the heart of the matter of divorce. And that it is this, that in every marriage there's a potential for hardness of heart.

And it can lead to the most devastating things in your life that will affect you and your prosperity. And hardness of heart is the heart of the matter in this text. And how hardness of heart, it destroys the beautiful design of marriage. It unravels everything that God intended. And that hardness can become so devastating, so pernicious, so harmful and poisonous that it can just be a wrecking ball in your life, in your relationship with your spouse.

And so, if you're a young person here today and you ever struggle with hardness of heart, be warned. God, God is preparing you for marriage. As you identify hardnesses of heart, that He would teach you how to deal with hardness against your siblings, against your parents, against your friends, against your teachers, against your ministers, against your civil authorities, whoever it might be, Whatever authority there is in your life that you might be tempted to hardness of heart, recognize this, God is giving you an opportunity to learn how to be married, to deal with that hardness in a right way. And So the Lord here is dealing with this issue. Now when the Pharisees heard Jesus say what he just said, let no man separate, It sounded like he was prohibiting their hardness of heart, and he was.

He was putting his finger on the wound. And They heard him contradicting Deuteronomy 24, which actually was a misuse and a misunderstanding of it. So that's, I hope, is helpful to understand this whole context within which Jesus is speaking. He's confronting a culture of divorce. There's a way of thinking that he's proceeding with, and there's something so critical for us to consider, and that is the whole matter of hardness of heart.

And all throughout this time together, I really want us to consider the ways that we have allowed hardness of heart to enter any relationship because it's devastating and it's devilish and it causes such a contradiction to what God intended in marriage. So let's move here into verse 7 in the exposition. And the first point that I want to make out of verse 7 is really to identify the depravity of twisting Scripture in the Pharisee's question about the certificate of divorce. They said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away? Now, this is one of four texts about critical texts to understand divorce.

And of course, you have Matthew 19. You have Matthew chapter 5, verses 31 to 33. You have 1 Corinthians 7, verses 10 to 15. And you have Malachi 2, 14 through 16, and also Deuteronomy chapter 24. And what the Pharisees are doing here is they're trying to pit Jesus Christ's authority against the Old Testament.

And they are putting Moses and Christ and their authority in opposition to one another. Now, what we recognize right away, that Moses actually never commanded divorce. That was actually not stating, that was not a fair representation of what Moses said. Moses was not commanding divorce. What Moses did do was in a particular instance, provide an orderly and principled process to deal with uncleanness that was repeated over and over again in a marriage through multiple marriages.

That's what Moses was talking about. And here Jesus is opposing the Pharisee's low view of marriage that was derived from this misunderstanding or willful rejection of what actually Moses was trying to do in Deuteronomy chapter 24. Now the ungodly always want to make Moses and Christ oppose one another and the Pharisees of course were trying to do that. And we have to recognize that it was Moses who also wrote Genesis 1 and 2, who Jesus was just quoting, to establish the nature of marriage. Moses wrote Deuteronomy chapter 24.

And the Lord Jesus actually wrote those things because He is the Word of God. Every word of Scripture is a word of Christ and so Christ is now making commentary on what He wrote and he's setting them straight. And so they make this observation about Deuteronomy 24. Well, Here are a few things that I think we should say about Deuteronomy 24. I'm going to give you three observations.

First is that this is the only Old Testament law about delivering a certificate of divorce. It was not an example of permissiveness in divorce. And there are a number of texts that corroborate what is written, but this was not a permissive text. The Pharisees had taken advantage of it and made it a permissive text. And that's what dark hearts do.

They take something in scripture and they make it mean something it doesn't, it wasn't intended to mean because of willful passions and lust and things like that. Secondly, the text of Deuteronomy 24 doesn't even focus on divorce. The focus of it is on remarriage after the second marriage that ended in an unlawful, original, sinful divorce. And so Deuteronomy 24 isn't really even focused on divorce, but it's rather focused on the remarriage of a person who is divorced and then marries again and then wants to remarry the original person. That's what Deuteronomy 24 is all about.

And the key teaching in Deuteronomy 24 is that The new union that is desired to marry the first spouse is invalidated. That's the point of it. So you can see how the Pharisees were trying to take a straw and making it into an oak, and something that really didn't exist. And thirdly, they really misrepresent the wording of Deuteronomy 24. They say that Moses commanded divorce, and that's not true.

There's not a single command anywhere in the Bible to be divorced, never. And Moses didn't command divorce and Jesus doesn't command divorce and you won't find any any authoritative writer in Scripture commanding a divorce. So they were actually misrepresenting the wording. They were taking a toleration in a terrible circumstance and making it a prescription. That's what they were doing.

And so Moses is in Deuteronomy 24, He's speaking about various ways that sin defiles the land. And he's expounding on the eighth commandment in this section of Deuteronomy 24, thou shalt not steal. And the first two laws in chapter 24 deal with stealing. And the first one is this one here. And the other one is really an amazing one where it's actually stealing to make a man in his first year of marriage go to war.

He should be home to please his wife. You do not want to steal from his marriage by making him go to war in the first year of his marriage. That's the second law that explains this, how you do not steal from a marriage. So these are case laws that deal with specific situations that are representative of real things that happen and they reveal the heart of God on a particular matter. And so in verse 1 in Deuteronomy 24 is an explanation of the first marriage.

When a man marries a wife, and 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 and puts it in her hand. So in this first broken marriage, the wrecking ball has come across this marriage as the wrecking ball of uncleanness. And there was a pernicious uncleanness that caused the dissolution of this marriage. And then she marries again.

And then the law is given in verse 4. Then her former husband, after the second marriage, who divorced her, must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for it is an abomination before the Lord." So in the law here, she can't marry him again. That's what that law is about. The Pharisees were using it for something completely, They were off topic and they were taking something out of context. The reason for the separation in the first place was uncleanness.

And because of that uncleanness, she is defiled. That's the whole issue. And so when the Pharisees are asking, can a man divorce his wife for any reason, you can tell they just want to find any possible use for divorce. And they were twisting scripture to try to fit their lifestyle. And this is what, this is the human tendency, to try to twist scripture because we don't want to have God speak into our lives.

Because the truth is, we do think it's more fun to be without God and we lie to ourselves in that way. We think that our ways are pleasant ways. We don't believe that God's ways are pleasant ways. So we twist Scripture in order to make it mean something it never really was intended to meet. So Moses never commanded anyone to get divorce.

So Jesus is now exposing that. And then in verse 8, we see the Lord, He's just exposing what I'm just calling the dark underbelly of divorce and why Moses permitted it in the first place. 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. So first of all Jesus corrects them. He says Moses didn't command, he permitted.

And there's a world of difference in commanding and permitting for some exceptional, terrible case. And what we find is that Moses was, under divine inspiration, regulating divorce. He was regulating the passions of, the passions in people's hearts that would lead them to divorce and then limit in a very, very narrow range of things that would allow for the permission of a divorce, which was far different from, you know, a man can divorce his wife for any reason. Moses was doing exactly what Jesus does in this passage. He narrows it way down and says, no, there's no license for this except in these very extreme situations.

And so our Lord is correcting them in that sense. And the laws of God, all of them at least have this in their core, they restrain evil. They constrain it. And this law in Deuteronomy 24 was designed to constrain evil, because the hearts of men run so hot and hard and passionate and they reach points of no return and so there is an allowance for that kind of situation that becomes so defiling and so contradictory to the heart of God, which is something completely different from a man can divorce his wife for anything. So there's a difference between constraining evil and fulfilling God's design.

And the question we should always ask is, how can I fulfill God's perfect design? Not how can I find the loophole, not how can I find the exception, But how can I become a living picture of what God has described is good? And at the same time, there are laws that identify, that constrain evil and help people stay within the bounds of what is good outside of their own feelings and passions. And so the question we should not be asking is the question of the Pharisees. How can I get away with what is permitted?

This is not a hard turn toward God. How can I get away by just doing what's permitted? Rather than looking at, well, as Jesus is already done with his disciples at Genesis 1 and 2, that the two shall become one flesh. What God has joined together, let not man separate. That's what God desires.

Or you want to find some kind of loophole around that? And so the Lord is confronting that whole way of thinking. And the Lord has said he hates divorce, so why would we want to be looking for the loopholes, I think is really the question. And then he gives the reason, because of the hardness of your hearts. And so it is hardness that forms the basis for the beginning of the end in a marriage.

And hardness of heart is stubbornness of heart. It's refusing to yield to the truth. It's refusing to grant mercy in marriage. It's refusing to perform your function in marriage. It's a stubbornness to do those kinds of things.

And there are many examples of hardness of heart in the scriptures. And But here, it was hardness of heart for any reason that was the concern of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here's our tendency, is that we're willing to have a hardness of heart for any reason. Those are the seeds of divorce. So as a church, I just want us to consider both single people and those who are married.

We have to consider this issue of hardness of heart. Because hardness of heart is the beginning of the end in your marriage. If you do not repent of it and turn from it because it can grow to a level that can cause the dissolution of your marriage. And so you know how how willing are we to continue in any area of hardness of heart toward anyone around us? Are you willing to have hardness of heart for just any reason, like the Pharisees.

And that applies to single and married people. Hardness of heart is the thing that will separate you from God. That's why the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 2 verse 5 said, But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his deeds. Eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality, but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, indignation, wrath, tribulation, and anguish on every soul of man who does evil." So those who have hardness of heart will be put out by God. And those who have hardness of heart in their marriage can be put out of their marriage.

Marriage is a picture of the glory of God. It's even a picture of the glory of God in judgment. That somehow hardness could grow to such a degree that it would cause a putting out in the same way that God would put out the heart of heart into everlasting darkness. So even divorce is a picture of the glory of God, even in judgment. So it's so important that we just stop as a church and all of us examine our hearts to see if there be any wicked way, to see if there be any lingering hardness of heart.

Wives, wives, ask the Lord to search your hearts to see if there be any hardness against anything in your husband. Husbands, you cry out to God, search your hearts to see if there is any hardness. Children, children, ask God to penetrate your hearts to see if there is any there. There's always a reason that God has His people move across passages of Scripture. He's divinely ordained that we'd be considering these things today.

And I believe that it's because God would like to relieve some of the poison, that He would like to save a marriage here today by bringing it back to softness of heart, and the hardness would be gone. My prayer for today is that when we walk out of these doors today, that there are no hard hearts that depart you from here. But there is a restoration of happiness in these marriages if any have lost, but that there is reconciliation because of the love of God, because marriage is meant for the glory of God, to glorify His love, to glorify His patience, to glorify His mercy, to glorify the softness of heart that happens in the life of a believer toward God, where they're given a heart of flesh and replacing that heart of stone. I pray that the picture here today would be the replacement of any hearts of stone to declare how beautiful that is when the individual does that before God, To glorify God in the world by the soft-heartedness in marriage. Did your spouse sin against you?

Did your spouse commit adultery? Because divorce is not commanded. Does your spouse offend you every day? Do you believe that hardness of heart for any reason is legitimate? In this church, let it be that we do not think that way at all, but that hardness of heart for any reason is not legitimate, and that it's a corrosion, it's a curse upon us if we would have it.

So let me just wrestle, let me appeal to us today. Search our hearts so that we might glorify God and be His lights in the world to be living demonstrations of his love. Has the laughter gone out of your marriage? Has the laughter gone out of your brotherhood and you can no longer rejoice in your brother or sister because you have hardness of heart? Has the hope gone out of your marriage?

Has the hope gone out of your family life because of hardness of heart? There's no faster way to deprive happiness from an individual as to see their heart go hard. Hardness of heart kills. It destroys children. It destroys what God has declared the greatest, and that is love.

It sucks happiness out of life. It contradicts the kingdom of heaven. It makes a home, not heaven on earth, but hell on earth. It's better to live in the corner of a roof with hardly any food than to live with hardness of heart. And what it does, eventually, is that it causes a divorce that defiles the land because of the adultery that spawned it.

And then our Lord says, from the beginning it was not so. But that's kind of a curious statement. What do you mean from the beginning it was not so? What did he mean by that? And, you know, as the Lord creates man and woman, and He sets them in this perfect garden, and they sin and sin infiltrates their lives, and they pass it on to their offspring, Sin spreads.

Polygamy begins to spread. Mixed marriages spread and they threaten God's people. And even though God hated divorce from the beginning, even though He said the two shall become one flesh, even though he said, let not man separate. Still, in the hearts of men and women, they began to divorce, even though God hated it. We see this in the books of Malachi and Ezra.

We see the immorality of David. We see the struggle of Hosea with his wife Gomer, who believed that others could just give her a better life so that she could be more fulfilled. We see how the fracturing took place. But when Jesus says from the beginning it was not so, he was saying that sin has come and destroyed what was from the beginning. One of the common misconceptions in the Gospels, and particularly the Sermon on the Mount, is that Jesus is setting himself against the law of God.

Jesus is not setting aside Deuteronomy 24. He's establishing it, and he's using it in the way that it was meant. And that is to correct the Jews about remarriage, to constrain unlawful divorce. Jesus is doing exactly the same thing. He's not abrogating Moses' law.

He's just acting in a very similar way that Moses is by upholding Genesis 1 and 2, by clarifying Deuteronomy 24, and then explaining it in even clearer terms under the New Covenant. Things become clearer in the New Covenant, and Jesus is doing that here. He's explaining the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter has to do with hardness of heart. That's why Moses did that.

Because that hardness of heart contradicted what Moses said in Genesis about the two shall become one flesh. Is Jesus saying, hey divorce is fine as long as there's adultery? Is that really what Jesus is saying? Yeah, if there's adultery, divorce is a beautiful thing. Does that somehow fit with what Jesus Christ wrote from Genesis to Revelation about divorce and marriage?

No, it's not consistent with it at all. Jesus is doing what Moses was doing. Jesus is a prophet like Moses, remember? Jesus says, He wrote about me. And Jesus is doing what Moses did in Deuteronomy chapter 24.

And he is saying that divorce was never meant to be that way. And in the same way that murder and lying and stealing and bearing false witness, They happen among the people, but there are laws to regulate it, to constrain the evil. And Jesus is making that exact same appeal. So to say that divorce is just fine with Jesus is the same as saying that lying and murder is just fine with Jesus as well. It just makes no sense if you read the whole testimony of Scripture about it.

There are laws that regulate murder and theft to constrain it and to punish it. That does not mean that the Lord is pleased with it. In our Bible study, I think it was Tommy Vestal brought up the whole idea that Israel wanted a king. It wasn't God's best. But God gave them a king, and He gave them laws to govern kings.

It's a pretty complex subject, isn't it? But you do see these two things. There are things that God hates, But he also gives laws to govern them to restrain the passions, to identify the sin, to cut it off, to stop a trajectory of life. That's what the laws do. They stop you.

They show you your dark heart. And they say, no, turn back. Get off this divorce for any reason, jag, that's so sinful and destructive. Polygamy was not ideal, but there are laws to regulate it. And divorce was not ideal, but God regulated it.

Slavery in the Old Testament was not ideal. It came upon people that fell into hard times, and They sold themselves so that they could have a place to stay and a place to work and a way to work out. And it could only happen for a limited number of years. And then the owner would have to set them free. It wasn't ideal.

Slavery is not ideal. But it's a measure to identify and constrain sin, relieve it, and move people into a better place. And that's what Jesus is doing with Moses as well. And then there's the exception clause in verse 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. So here our Lord in very plain language is saying that divorce is sometimes permissible. It's not the unpardonable sin. And the Lord, he re-emphasizes his authority in the same way that he did in the first section. He says, and I say to you.

So he establishes authority first, and then the exception is clearly stated, sexual immorality. Now, there are those that hold the permanence view of marriage and that say that divorce is never, ever lawful. Let's just say, you know, at the beginning of this discussion, you know, this is not something to divide over. This is not something for men to not have fellowship with one another. This is a difficult and confusing issue.

And you have really, really significant worthy men that should be listened to on both sides of this issue. So I don't think we want to turn this into some kind of an ungodly debate here. But Our view is the view that is found in the Westminster Confession that understands this exception clause in the way that it sounds, the way that it's read. But those who reject this idea that there is a lawful way to divorce, they point out that there is no exception clause in Mark and Luke. Mark and Luke do not have the exception clause.

Matthew is the only one that has the exception clause. So what do you do with that? So those who hold the permanence view say, look, it doesn't exist in Luke 16 and Mark chapter 10. And it causes them to conclude that there is no exception. I would just like to appeal to the hermeneutical principle that Scripture interprets Scripture.

And you can't demand that every text says everything about everything. And so you have to allow Scripture, and how do you deal with such a clear and dogmatic statement in Mark and Luke that have no exceptions and no counterpoints, but then when you get to Matthew. And it's not a problem if you believe that Scripture interprets Scripture. We ran into a similar thing in Mark chapter 8 where Jesus says, no sign will be given to it. And then in Matthew, Jesus says, no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.

Is it a contradiction? No. Mark just shortened. Mark just didn't say everything that Jesus said in that context. And so it's, we've got to harmonize the texts in order to understand the will of the Lord.

And this is a good example of that hermeneutical principle. Unless you want to say that Matthew was wrong. Matthew was lying. I mean, it forces you into a box canyon that you don't, you really can't find your way out of. The second thing is that those who hold the permanence view take the word sexual immorality, pornea, and they limit the meaning to premarital intimacy.

And they, because, So in this case, divorce is only allowable if the woman were never married. And quoting the situation with Joseph and Mary, where Joseph was going to put her away. That's the scenario. If you hold the permanence view, you rest, I think, about 85% of your weight on the meaning of the term pornea. And you have to make it mean premarital intimacy.

But if it means more than that, and we do believe it means more than that, then it's a broad term. It's actually a broad term that includes, in scripture, homosexuality and bestiality. In Deuteronomy 24, where this term is found, this term uncleanness. It refers to nakedness, nudity, shame, shameful exposure, any kinds of indecency. It's used 54 times in the King James Version and it's rendered nakedness.

If you go to Leviticus 18 and 20, you see the breadth of the use of this word erva, nakedness, uncleanness, And it includes more than the premarital, illicit sexual relationship. It has to do with sexual sin in general and the sexual sin that breaks the covenant of marriage. And also, you know, it can't mean it can't mean just premarital intimacy, because the whole context that Jesus is dealing with is a consummated marriage. Remember? Let no man separate.

The two shall become one. Jesus is talking about marriage. He's not talking about betrothal. He's clearly dealing with the marital relationship. So to take pornea, to jump you back only and isolate it to the premarital experience, it just doesn't fit the context at all.

Because Jesus is speaking about a married people who should not be separated. So there is one reason, there is one exception given, and that is stated here by our Lord. And you just might ask yourself, what are the things that would make you want to get divorced? Most people here probably wouldn't say, well, not for any reason. I'm not like that.

But what if your wife would not take care of your children? Would that be grounds for divorce? Or what if she didn't manage your household well? Or manage it at all? Would that be grounds for divorce?

Or what if she had a debilitating physical condition? Would that be ground, like she couldn't talk, she couldn't really even recognize you? Would that be grounds for divorce? I mean, even just within the last year in the national news, there was a national leader who proclaimed, his name was Pat Robertson, that if your wife fell into a coma, then it would be reasonable for you to divorce her. So what reason would you give for having a divorce?

Well Jesus gives one, just one. And so the counsel of the Lord is stay with one. There's only one in this text. The Apostle Paul under the authority of God as an apostle, declares another one. We'll get to that later.

So this exception is declared. Now we could go to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, please open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7, where the second exception is declared. You know, Jesus is addressing Jews and their marriages. Paul, though, is operating in a world that has more nuances to it, and that is Jews and Gentiles ending up married. You have two Gentiles, and one gets saved.

And now you have a mixed marriage. So the Apostle Paul is speaking to issues that arise because of the spreading of the gospel and the fulfilling of the Great Commission. Unbelievers end up being married to believers. So that's the issue that he's dealing with there. And so in verse 10 of 1 Corinthians 7, he addresses the issue of a Christian, and he says, Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, a wife is not to depart from her husband.

So a Christian is not to leave or divorce. Now, he says, yet I, Yet not I but the Lord, a wife is not to depart from her husband." And then remarriage in verse 11, that even If she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and a husband is not to divorce his wife." And then the whole issue of a believer not being able to divorce an unbeliever in verse 12 and 13. But to the rest, I, not the Lord, say, if any brother has a wife who does not believe and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe. If he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him." Now, he says, not I.

He says, I, not the Lord. What's that supposed to mean? Does this mean that this is not the instruction from heaven, but it's instruction from a man? Is that what he's saying? No.

No, that's not what he's saying at all. If you believe in apostolic authority, and If you believe in what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, 37, where he says, the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord, then these things have apostolic authority. So when he says, I not the Lord, he's not abrogating apostolic authority. He'll do the same thing in the text that we'll deal with next week on singleness. How do you glorify God in singleness?

He'll use the same phrase in 1st Corinthians chapter 7 on this issue. And then in verse 15, or I'm sorry in verse 14, there's this whole sanctifying effect of the marriage. The display of God's glory is not limited when your spouse is not saved. There are people who say, well, if only I had a spouse who was saved, then I could glorify God in my marriage. That's not true at all.

You can glorify God just as well in a mixed marriage as in a marriage that's unified in Christ. And so that's why he says, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they're holy. In other words, there's an influence that godly people have in a marriage. It's implicit, it cannot be denied, it will have an effect.

There will be a sanctifying, blessed influence of a Christian partner in a mixed marriage. So we need to perish the idea that you can't glorify God in marriage unless your husband or wife is a Christian. Maybe some of you are married to non-Christians. You need to recognize that it's a wicked idea to think that somehow God has cut off your ability to glorify Him. That's just not true.

Your very presence in that home has a sanctifying effect. And you can represent your Savior in many, many, many ways. And then in verse 15, if the unbeliever departs, then the believer is free to remarry. So there is a possibility for remarriage after a lawful divorce. And then the general rule and principle is given from the second part of 15 to the end of verse 28.

So in terms of this whole exception clause, our view really follows the Westminster Confession. I'll just read it to you. It's Chapter 24, Sections 5 and 6. Adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage gives just occasion for the innocent party to dissolve that contract. In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and, after the divorce, to marry another as if the offending party were dead." And then The sixth section, although the corruption of man be such as is act to study arguments unduly to put us under those whom God joined together in marriage, yet Nothing but adultery or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or the civil magistrate is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed, and the person's concern in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case." In other words, when there is a possibility of divorce, The church, the civil magistrate, everyone needs to rally to preserve that marriage.

That's what the confession is saying. And yet it is lawful in the most pernicious, hardened circumstances. When none of the councils of your friends, when none of the councils of your friends, when none of the councils of your pastors, when even the roadblocks of the civil magistrate are not enough for you and you will get your divorce, then it can be granted in the most extreme cases of hardness of heart. In North Carolina, there's a barrier to divorce. You have to live apart from your spouse for 12 months before the state will grant you a divorce.

At least that's the way it used to be. There are various roadblocks in the way that ought to be in the way. Moses put them there, and Jesus has put them there here in this text. OK, I want to give you some conclusions. Number one, divorce always contradicts God's design.

Moses and Jesus come out here as ardent defenders of the significance of marriage, to be fruitful and multiply, that man should not be alone, that there should be a leaving and a cleaving us and no man should separate it. Divorce always contradicts God's design for marriage. Number two, there are two conditions, two grounds for divorce that qualify Jesus' teaching. Sexual immorality and desertion, those two. Number three, divorce was allowed because of the destructiveness of sin, specifically because of the hardness of heart.

And it should remind us that there are things that will cause everything to fall down. Common things in your heart today can cause all of these calamities to come upon you. Number four, marriage is a sacred covenant that God has established between a man and a woman, and it cannot be broken without violating God's design for marriage. Number five, Christians should not divorce their unbelieving spouses. God promises that he will continue to work sanctification through a mixed marriage because of the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of God working cause a powerful influence in a mixed marriage.

Number six, remarriages that occur after illegitimate divorces are adulterous. Number seven, if the unbelieving spouse leaves, the believing spouse is released from the covenant bonds and is free to remarry. Number eight, there is no encouragement for divorce in this text, nor is there encouragement for divorce in any text of scripture. Number nine, you can cross boundaries that lead you into really, really bad places. There are consequences and you cannot turn back sometimes.

There's a finality about marriage, but you can unravel it. Number ten, Divorce is not always intrinsically sinful. Because it always takes place because of sin. But a person can be divorced and not sin in getting the divorce. So there are times when it is not sin to divorce in the face of extreme situations.

Number 11, God provides a jurisdictional provision for hard-heartedness. You can get your divorce, but you'll be judged, perhaps, like the unforgiving servant. So how to apply all this? I think, you know, whenever you're trying to explain something in Scripture, you have to ask, what is the heart of the matter here? What is God saying to us?

And I think one of the things that he's saying to us is how important it is how we think about marriage and the problem Jesus was dealing with in Israel is that people thought about marriage all wrong and men actually thought that they could get a divorce for any reason, the national consciousness was polluted. And I just want us to ask, how polluted are we? How polluted am I in the way that I think about everything regarding my marriage. Even the disciples were thinking wrongly about marriage and that situation is something that we live with today. To those who have never been married, it's so important to think rightly about marriage and to focus upon what God has ordained, to understand what it means, I will never leave you or forsake you.

And then learn what that means. Learn what that means as a single person, in your own relationships as a single person. Learn it now. Learn it with your father. Learn it with your mother.

Learn it with your siblings. Learn it with your pastor. Learn it with your president. You learn it with the authorities that God places in your life. And you single people, you need to recognize what pornea means, what does sexual immorality mean.

It's a broad term. And you need to understand that the lusts of the eyes are so dangerous to you, because it can enter you into multiple virtual fornications and even divorces. And don't think that you can look at pornography and commit adultery and think that it won't hurt your marriage later. Don't think that for a minute. Pornea is deadly.

Pornea is the only thing that Jesus mentions here that can bring the house down in a marriage. So you need to guard your eyes completely. And you should follow what David said, learning probably by experience in Psalm 101, I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. I will set no wicked thing before my eyes. Of course, that applies to married men and women as well.

The defiling nature of pornea, virtual adultery, is a real problem. Sin begets sin. Do not think that you can do this and not have it affect your marriage. If you're a young single woman, if you're a young single man, prepare yourself for marriage by depriving your eyes from the things that cause pornea. And then, of course, the gospel significance of the attacks against marriage.

Your marriage is in the crosshairs of the devil. There's no question about that. The entire enterprise of God is to spread the message that Jesus Christ came to save sinners, that He has mercy on sinners, that He forgives sinners, that He forgives the homosexuals and the immoral and the liars and the thieves, such were some of you." And he gives marriage to put a picture in the world to show the love of God. So the Gospel really is at stake in your marriage. It's something...

Your marriage means something far more than just your marriage. It's not just for you. It's for the world. It's for your community. It's for your children to declare the mercies of God.

And if you cannot have mercy, then you cannot display the glory of God. God is glorified in mercy, in Love never leaving or forsaking. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love never fails.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for your Son who speaks so beautifully and helpfully to us, who gives us the words upon which we might build our lives. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us such a vision of your mercies through our marriages, that they would be such pictures of the Gospel. Oh Lord, we pray for help for any hardness. We pray for help to reject all pornea for Your own glory, for your namesake.

Amen.