As we journey through the gospel of Mark over the past year, we've seen many times and in many different ways that Jesus lived and taught a completely revolutionary lifestyle. He flipped the world's value system upside down, and he told us that anyone who follows him in faith is going to live the same kind of life that he lived. We must die to ourselves, our self-made identities, our ambitions, our agendas, and learn to come truly alive in who we were meant to be in Jesus Christ. We have to let every area of our life be governed by the countercultural principles that he taught by his radical love, by his radical grace. There's no such thing as halfway discipleship. You cannot say I will give certain parts of my life over to the Lordship of Jesus, but other areas of my life I will not give to him. But I'm still a disciple. I'm still a Christian. The Bible doesn't know of any person who does that. There's no category for people who do that. The call of Jesus encompasses every facet, every dimension, every moment of our lives. And as we begin March after 10 this morning, we're going to see in this chapter over the next several weeks that Jesus says that includes your marriage, children, money, your finances and your status. Now, this morning, we'll just have time to look at the first of those subjects, the topic of marriage and divorce in the first 12 verses. Let me give you a heads up that what Jesus says here in these 12 verses is radical. It is countercultural. It is contrary to popular opinion, but it's also the word of God. So it governs our lives. Let's look at Mark 10, verse one, and Jesus left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds gathered to him again and again, as was his custom, he taught them and Pharisees came up and in order to test him, asked, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Jesus answered them, What did Moses command you? They said, Well, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter, and he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. This is the word of the Lord. What I'm going to say to you this morning is not a new belief of mine that's based on personal experience or based on the divorces that have happened in this church. I'm not teaching this because of what's happened. I'm teaching this because this is what I believe the word of God says. I pulled out things that I wrote 10 years ago in seminary on the subject of marriage and divorce and remarriage. I pulled out my ordination statement from seven years ago. And what I'm saying this morning is no different than what I wrote then. OK. We're going to break this passage down with three sections, a question of permission. An answer of design and then a reason to hope. The whole passage begins here with a question of permission, the Pharisees held that the law and that is the law of Moses permitted divorce on the basis of Deuteronomy 24, verses one through four, all the Pharisees, all the religious leaders agreed that a man had the right to divorce his wife under certain conditions. Now, in verse four of our text that we just read, Deuteronomy 24 is the passage that they're referring to. So I think it would be helpful to you if I actually read that for you this morning so you know what the passage actually says. So this is what Deuteronomy 24, beginning of verse one, says. when a man takes a wife and marries her. If then she 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 of his house and she departs out of 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 away It may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. All of the religious leaders of Jesus, they looked at those four verses and they said, See, you can get a divorce. It's right there. If you find any indecency in your wife, you can kick her to the curb and you can get a new wife who's better in the ways that you want her to be better than the first wife. In the time of Jesus, the only debate amongst the various sects of Pharisees and religious leaders was over the conditions of divorce. So they're coming and they're saying, Jesus, the law permits divorce. We disagree over the conditions. What do you say? And that's the background for what the question is, when they when the Bible says they come to tempt him or trap him or test him with this question. The more conservative sect of Pharisees followed a rabbi by the name of Shema and they said in Deuteronomy 24 when Moses refers to the indecency in a woman he's talking about sexual immorality and Shema said that if a man found his wife to be adulterous He not only could divorce her he had to divorce her that was the teaching of Shema the more liberal school of Hillel and said an indecency refers to whatever the man wants it to refer to. It's a man's world. Back in this time, there are documents that go back to this time. If a man said that his wife was a bad cook or he found someone who was more fair or more beautiful or attractive than his wife, he could say, I found an indecency in her and he could throw her out and he could turn and get remarried. And by the way, Hillel's interpretation is almost exactly what we would refer to today as no fault divorce. You can find any indecency in your spouse and you can say we have an irreconcilable differences. And so this marriage is over and legally it is. So if you look back in your text in Mark 10, verse two, you see the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say, Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? The parallel in Matthew 19 adds the words for any cause they're trying to differentiate. They're saying, Jesus, between these two schools of thought, where do you land? When is it permitted to get a divorce? You're a rabbi, you're a great teacher. Tell us your opinion. And I want to repeat here that the Pharisees main concern is over what's technically permissible, their main concern is how far can we push the envelope on allowable divorces? How much can we get away with? Now, before I go to point two, let me take a little bit of a detour and let me make a couple of comments about Deuteronomy 24, since that's what comes up in Matthew 19 and Mark 10 here. And let me tell you that it's both logically and theologically impossible to deduce from Deuteronomy 24 that God wants you to get divorced or that God even allows for divorce. And let me give you three reasons why. Number one, regulation does not imply consent or approval. What I mean by that is something like this. You could pull out a huge book called the IRS Tax Code. There's a whole section in the IRS Tax Code that says here are penalties for not doing what we tell you to do for not paying the taxes we tell you to pay. And there is one section in there that says a failure to file penalty is five percent a month on what you owe, and it's capped at twenty five percent plus four percent interest on what you should have paid but are not paying. OK, now here's my point. Nobody opens the IRS code and draws the conclusion, man, the government's practically begging you not to file your taxes because look at all these regulations. They look at the code and they say, I'd better pay my taxes on time because there are penalties if I do not. Now, back to Deuteronomy 24, notice that all Moses is doing is that he's regulating and he's penalizing something that's bad for the simple reason that divorce was happening. So the fact that he regulates something does not mean that the Bible says here divorce is good or divorce should be taking place. Number two, the net effect of Moses regulation was not to encourage divorce, but actually to deter divorce and to protect the most vulnerable. And what I mean is Moses looks at the situation in life of the Jewish people and divorce is rampant. So he writes a new law and he says there are going to be some new consequences for the man when he divorces his wife. Once you divorce your wife and she gets remarried, you can't take her back ever, even if she's single again. The women are the vulnerable. The women are the one who are getting walked all over in this cultural arrangement, which is not God's design. And so he writes this law. And the effect was to get men to think twice about divorcing their wife and to protect their wife and not abandon the covenant. So don't take this as meaning that Moses is encouraging anything. He's discouraging divorce. He's protecting innocent parties. And a third problem with taking this passage as condoning divorce is that it's written in response to man's rebellion. And you can look in Mark 10, verse five. And when the Pharisees are referring to this passage and they're saying, see, we can get divorced now, when do you allow it? Jesus says, oh, you guys have it all wrong. The only reason that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 24 is because the people had hardened their hearts against God's intention for marriage. Not only is Deuteronomy 24 not even remotely describing God's purpose for marriage or God's design for marriage, you should read Deuteronomy 24, the way that you would read a crash manual. And what I mean by that is it's Moses way of saying, all right, if you are determined to rebel against God's design for marriage, your marriage is going to have a crash landing. Now, here's how you crash to mitigate the damage. It's like going to the guy who landed the plane on the Hudson River and saying, man, how did you do that with no engines? How did you do that? And he says, well, this is how I did it. And you think, cool, now I know how to fly a plane. No, you don't. And if you're using Deuteronomy 24 to learn about God's purpose for divorce, remarriage, you're doing basically the same thing. The commentator France says that the legal provision of Deuteronomy 24 was not intended as a statement of God's purpose for marriage, but as a regrettable but necessary means of limiting the damage when that purpose had already been abandoned. Now, let me come back to Mark 10. And say again that the Pharisees question was not about what they should do, the question was about what they could do. They were not asking, God, what do you desire? What do you command? They were saying, how far can we go? What do you permit? And I think by and large, that's the way our Western contemporary church culture is. Professing Christians treat the subject of marriage and divorce and remarriage very flippantly and not really at all biblically. And they just think, what's the big deal? I mean, how far can you go? In what instances can I get divorced? And I've had to talk to a lot of people, both in our church and other people who come for counseling about marriage and the possibility of divorce or the reality of divorce. And what I hear time and time again, it's usually the woman who comes to me and she says, look, my husband's a bum. He spends money we don't have. He doesn't do his part in caring for our children. He this, he that. You can't tell me that God, a God of love, would require me to stay in a marriage where I don't love the person I'm married to anymore. And I'll say, well, no, I won't tell you that. Read this verse. What does it say? And they'll say, so you're saying that I can't get it. And I'm saying, no, I'm not saying anything. What is the verse say? Go home and love your husband, go home and love your wife. But I think our contemporary church cultures is asking these kinds of questions. How far can I go? What can I get away with? And a question I hear a lot from professing Christians is something along these lines. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. What's God really going to do about it? We're asking the wrong questions. Really, we're having the wrong conversation altogether. And what Jesus does here now in this passage is that when he goes to answer the Pharisees, he raises the discussion to a whole different plane. They want to talk about what's permitted, what's allowable, how far can I go? And Jesus, I tell you, he gives an answer of design because he goes back to and says, the question you should be asking is, what does God want me to do and how will God give me the grace to do what he's called me to do? Not how far can I go or what can I get away with? So Jesus is coming along and he's saying. This is God's original unaltered design for marriage, and we know that because he's quoting Genesis 127 and Genesis 224. You can look back in your text. This is what Jesus says. This is his answer of design. Jesus says, from the beginning of creation, God made the male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And then the son of God adds his own commentary, which is authoritative because he is the son of God. And he says, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God, therefore, has joined do not permit man to separate. And do you see what Jesus is doing here? He's not being evasive or clever or cute. But what he's doing in answering the Pharisees, he's saying, you Pharisees, you want to talk about the wrong story. You want to talk about divorce. I want to talk about marriage. You're assuming that sin and brokenness and unfaithfulness and pain is just the way things are going to be. And so in this fallen world, you can do what you want to do. He says you're telling you're living in the wrong story. And what Jesus is doing is he's saying, I'm telling you, there's a different story that God is writing. And if you listen, instead of sitting there and arguing with each other, and by the way, you're all wrong. If you listen and you heed God's words, I'm inviting you into God's story. I'm inviting you into restored marriages. I have more to say, but if you only hear one thing this morning, what I want you to hear is that you don't have to live with broken, miserable lives. or a broken, miserable marriage. You don't have to. Because Jesus comes along, the Son of God, and he says, God is writing a different story. And because I've come to restore all things, including marriage, I invite you to become a part of God's story. So when it comes to the subject of marriage, here's God's story, five things that Jesus says about marriage, number one, marriage is God's idea and design. He begins by saying that from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, the way that we recognize and honor God's design for the sexes is by entering into the covenant of marriage. He's saying, then, that every marriage is made in heaven. Even the marriage between two unbelievers, Jesus says, every legitimate marriage is made in heaven. God made you, God made your spouse, God ordained the circumstances whereby you met and became attracted to each other, and when you got married, that was God who was joining your two lives together. Jesus' big point here is that marriage isn't man's idea, it's God's idea. The fundamental design for marriage, which is one man and one woman living together for their lifetime. That's God's design, and the implication is that if God has designed this before the fall and he's repeated it after the fall, we don't have the liberty, the freedom, the right to change the design. To say, I have a different plan or I have a different design for my marriage. And the reason you can't do that is that you're not the lord of your marriage. God is the lord of your marriage. Well, going on here in the next verse, the second thing that Jesus says about the story that God is writing. He says marriage is an exclusive commitment to companionship. And the way he says this, he says, it's God's design for a husband and wife to leave their parents and cleave to each other. Leaving your parents signifies that no one, nothing other than God. Is more central to your heart, is more important to you than your spouse. In other words, your spouse is your top priority, and he or she shouldn't have to compete for your attention or your affection. I know I'm going to stereotype a little bit here, but that means men, you can't go outside of your home and become a workaholic and your wife at home all the time is saying, I have to compete for his attention. He loves his job and the money that he makes and the lifestyle that he provides more than he loves me. Or women, a lot of times what happens is when children come along, you have an innate motherly love that is good and it's beautiful and it's right. But you let that love for your children replace your love for your husband and your husband comes home from work and he has to compete for your attention and affection. And every night, as soon as the kids are in bed, you're exhausted and you don't talk to him. You don't relate to him. There are a host of different things that can do this in a marriage. It's not just work and other family members. But the point that Jesus gives us here is that your love for your spouse should be exclusive and it shouldn't have any rivals. That's part of what he means by cleaving as well, that you are you are faithfully holding fast to your husband or wife. And you're aware, is anyone or anything jeopardizing this one flesh relationship? Marriage in God's design is such an exclusive commitment of companionship, of friendship, of oneness, that if anything at all jeopardizes that, get rid of it. Number three, Jesus says in God's story, marriage is the co-creation of a new entity. Jesus puts it like this, he says, a husband and wife shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh. He's literally saying that God's design for every marriage is two independent lives woven into one so that they become inseparable. I can't think of any picture that Jesus could have given us to more clearly communicate that marriage is inseparable, indivisible. It's permanent than saying that two people become one person, two people become one new entity. And when you get married, you're literally co-creators with God of that one new entity. And particularly in the act of marriage, two bodies are becoming one. And it's more than just that, that it encompasses all of your lives. But it certainly encompasses the sexual relationship between a husband and wife. You're becoming one flesh. Now, our Western culture says the exact opposite of what Jesus says here, they say, assert your rights. Don't let someone control you to any degree in your marriage. Express your independence. Make sure your identity remains distinct from your husband or your wife. And Jesus says, Are you kidding me? How can you do that when two people are becoming one? Jesus says you become interdependent. It's a reality. Your identity is dependent on the other person and theirs is dependent on you. And if you're married, you shouldn't be able to think of your life without your spouse. You shouldn't be trying to think, well, what's my identity apart from him apart from her? This is not a business partnership. This is not a mere contract of mutual convenience. You come together because it's convenient, and if it becomes inconvenient for either party, then you get out and you move on to another contract of mutual convenience. He says that is not the nature of marriage. That is not the story that God is telling. All right, number four, the story that God is telling, he says, Jesus says marriage is sacred and permanent. Jesus says in the next statement, what I've already said implicitly, now I'm going to say explicitly, he says, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. He's making it unmistakably clear because God put it together, it's sacred because I'm telling you, you cannot separate it. It's permanent. Now, there are some who are here who think that Jesus is saying you cannot tear it apart. In other words, even if you tried to tear a marriage apart, you couldn't do it. That is true in a sense, and I'll talk about that in a moment. That's not what Jesus is saying here. If you look back at Mark 10, verse nine, and also Matthew 19, verse six, when Jesus says, don't let man separate what God has joined, the verb tense is imperative. If Jesus were just making a statement of fact that you can't separate a marriage, even if you want to. That would be in the indicative mood. What Jesus is saying is a command. In other words, he's saying, I command you do not separate what God has joined. You must not separate what God has joined. In no uncertain terms, Jesus says, I forbid divorce, period. So if you divorce your spouse, you're doing the exact opposite of what Jesus tells you to do here. And in the Bible, that's called rebellion. A divorce always tells the world at least one person's heart is hard and maybe often both people's hearts are hard. If you look at Malachi 2, let me read to you beginning in verse 13. Malachi, the prophet says, and the second thing you do, you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping, with groaning because he no longer regards your offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Now, verse 14, but you say, why does he not listen? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant, did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who hates and divorces, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless. Our whole culture, including much of our church culture, Soft pedals, divorce, and we use very benign terminology. We say people have affairs. They split up. Let's get divorced and then we'll be friends. If you look at Malachi 2 here, he's saying you want to know why I'm not listening to you is because you don't listen to me. I told you not to do something that is bound into the very nature of creation and you've done it anyway. Look what God in the Old Testament here calls divorce. He says divorce is always an ESV had the word faithless. I read the word faithless three times. It means treacherous. God says three times in three consecutive verses, you're committing an act of treachery against your spouse. He says, when you divorce someone, you're declaring your hatred of them. You're clothing your life with the violent destruction of something that God has ordained. It's all right there in Malachi 2. You're saying my heart is hard. I refuse to do what God has told me to do. I'm rebelling. I'm breaking a covenant vow that's unconditional. I'm betraying my spouse. I hate my spouse. Let's be friends. I know those are really strong statements, right? So let me let me immediately jump to this. I want to say that God's grace is infinitely greater than sin. I have friends here, you're sitting here in front of me and you're divorced or you're divorced and remarried. Some of you have talked to me about this. You said, I know that what I did was wrong. It was done in some cases years ago, and I repented and God forgave me. And I would say, I'm not looking at you any different this morning than I look at anybody else. You're my friend. You have the spirit and God is listening to your prayers because the grace of God has forgiven the mistakes that you have made. I would also say it is a sin to divorce. It is not a sin to be divorced. There are innocent victims of divorce. Now, I said that before and some people got mad at me and they said, there's no innocent victims of divorce. You're saying you're not a sinner. Well, of course, I'm a sinner and you're a sinner. We're all sinners. But there are marriages that one person breaks up. And because of the culture we live in with no fault divorce, there's nothing the other party can do about it. In fact, I'm not going to go there, but First Corinthians chapter seven actually commands people that if you have a spouse who wants to depart, they want to abandon you. They want to abandon their relationship with God. He says, let them go. That's kind of a no fault divorce situation where they want out of your life and God says do not prevent them from leaving because you're only going to cause strife and I've called you to live at peace. Of course, I'm a sinner. You're a sinner. We're all sinful spouses. You know, as I interact with different ones of you, I think these are the kinds of things that could lead to divorce if they're not forgiven. If there are recurring patterns of sin in your relationship and in most marriages, there are. If one person decides to become bitter and resentful, you can wreck a marriage. And the church should be very compassionate toward sinful people who did not desire to break up their marriage and desired to maintain it and preserve it, but could do nothing about it. God takes this very seriously because he's saying marriage is sacred and permanent. But also, if you've sinned and you've repented, there's grace. I don't feel like that's a backpack that you have to carry around the rest of your life. And the church should stamp you with a scarlet D and say, those people are divorced. Those people are divorced and remarried. We just forgive, just like we would forgive any other sin, and you're a part of our community, you're part of our fellowship, OK? One last thing that Jesus says here is he's continuing to tell the story of God for marriage. He says marriage is for your lifetime. Jesus goes on in verses 11 and 12 and he says that whether you're the husband or the wife, if you file for divorce and then turn around and get remarried to another person, what does Jesus say? He says you're committing adultery. Now, a lot of people read that to mean that everyone who gets divorced is committing adultery. That's not what Jesus says. Adultery and divorce are two different sins. OK, understand that the fact that you're getting divorced doesn't mean that you've been unfaithful in your marriage. What Jesus is saying is the sin of adultery is committed if a divorced person remarries. Now, that can only mean one thing. That means that divorce doesn't terminate your one flesh union, that mystical union of God putting two people together. Now, I know that there are plenty of godly people who disagree with that statement and they say, well, no, any divorce, it is over and you're free to get remarried. I find it hard to make sense of what Jesus says here, if that's what he meant to say. I think the plainest way to understand what Jesus says here is this, that filing for a divorce. changes your marital status. It breaks the covenant agreement. It does. But it doesn't change the reality that you're still one flesh with an ex-spouse. Follow Jesus logic here. If you divorce your spouse and there's a clean break and you have no other spiritual or legal obligation to them, it certainly would not be adultery to get remarried because adultery is marital unfaithfulness. I think that's the plainest way to understand what Jesus says here, that you're ending a legal marriage, you're ending a legal contract, a covenant, but you're not ending that metaphysical union. By the way, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 verses 10 and 11. If you look there, he says the same thing. He says, you absolutely may not get divorced now. When you disobey God and you get divorced anyway, this is what Paul says. You have one of two options. You can either remain single if your spouse will not reconcile with you or you can reconcile with them. Nowhere and under no circumstances does the Bible recommend or encourage divorce. I chose those words carefully. If you're looking for a biblical justification, if you're looking for the verse that says that this is what I should do, that this is God's design for me. You're not going to find a verse that says this is what God recommends for you. This is God's ultimate perfect plan for you. Jesus would say that even in failing marriages, especially in failing marriages. You're called to be faithful and committed. You're called to forgiveness, you're called to grace. Now, human nature is OK. God calls us to that general rule. OK, but what are the exceptions, Jesus? And I can't take time this morning to really give that question the attention it deserves. But since I don't plan on speaking on this again for any time in the near future, let me say a little something. I'll preface this by saying I know very godly people. People that I respect very highly who disagree with what I'm about to say. I love them. I appreciate them. I do not desire to argue with them. There have been multiple Orthodox opinions on divorce and remarriage for most of the history of the Reformed Church. If you disagree with me, I'm OK with that. Jesus answer to the question of are there any exceptions, I believe is yes, because in the parallel passage in Matthew 19, where Matthew is telling the exact same story that Mark is telling in verse nine, this is what Jesus says. He says, And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. If you took out the exception clause, it would read like this. Jesus says, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. That's exactly what he said in Mark. But the difference here in Matthew is that it says except. I take this to be an actual exception, not a semantic game that Jesus is playing. And I know people who say no divorce, no remarriage ever. What about the exception clause? I think the plainest way to understand what Jesus says in Matthew, nineteen nine, is that if your spouse has an affair, commits adultery, the plainest way to understand what Jesus is saying is it would not be a sin for you to divorce and be remarried. Now, why would there be that one exception where it's different than she's a bad cook or he's a bum? He spends money we don't have. He doesn't take care of the kids as much as he should. She's a nag. Why this? I think if you look at the whole testimony of Scripture, the reason why Jesus points to this is because all throughout Scripture you can see it, adultery cuts out the heart of the marriage covenant. I mean, I could put it this way, it eviscerates the marriage covenant. And not just the fact that it's a contractual or a legal arrangement, but the fact that it's one flesh between two people, when you bring a third party or a fourth party into that. You are gutting the one flesh union, and that's why I believe Jesus says there's this one exception, because in the case of adultery, if you divorce a spouse who has cheated on you, You are not sitting against God, you're simply recognizing the reality of what's already taken place. You're free to be remarried, in my understanding, what Jesus says in Matthew 19, nine, you're innocent in this divorce, you're not held guilty, you're not held liable, and the one flesh union has been destroyed by the partners infidelity. And now let me offend some more of you and say that. Though I believe you're technically free to get remarried at that point, I believe that if the spirit of grace that embodies the gospel embodies you as well, that you should still pursue your wayward spouse, pray for them and forgive them whether they repent or not. I'm interpreting scripture now, I'm not reading a verse for you, but I believe you should exhaust your opportunities to reconcile with even adulterous spouse. Because you're going to see in just a moment, that's exactly what God has done for you. And if the gospel really transforms our view of marriage as Jesus calls for it to. I don't think you should be saying, awesome, he cheated on me. I'm sure I can find a better man anyway and see how quickly you can do that. I think there is a pursuit that lines up with Luke 15, the parable, the prodigal, the parable, the lost sheep and other passages like that. I also add one more thing about this. The penalty for adultery in the Old Testament was death. OK, if you cheated on your spouse in the Old Testament, you were taken outside the walls of the city and you were stoned and your spouse was free to get remarried because you were no longer in the picture. You were six feet under. Now, I believe. And this is scripture, this is not my opinion, but I believe that the new covenant in Christ gives far more grace to adulterers than the Old Testament did. We do not stone adulterers anymore. And Jesus would say, forgive them because I can transform their life. But I have a serious problem with anyone who says that the new covenant offers far more grace to offenders if it offers simultaneously far less grace to innocent people. I think the new covenant offers more grace in Jesus to both parties. And that's the one exception that Jesus gives. OK, if you have other questions, you have other comments, I'm available to talk to you after the service or any time I can't talk about every situation. OK, but I also want to say this. I think the one exception proves the rule. The rules, those five things I just gave you, this is God's story of marriage that he is writing. And the fact that he allows for so few and limited exceptions to that rule shows you how near and dear the idea of faithfulness to a covenant partner who's a sinner is to the heart of God in the story that God is writing. And if you're listening to all this and you're saying, so marriage is for life, I can't get out of it. Whoa. I mean, what Jesus says about marriage is really restrictive. And if you're thinking that you're not alone in Matthew 19, when Jesus taught this, that's exactly what the disciples said. They listened to what you said about marriage and they said, whoa, are you sure? Because if this is the way it is between a man and woman, it's better not to get married. That's what the disciples said. And I think if you're hearing what Jesus says about, yes, this is one exclusive person that you're giving your life to for the rest of your life. And when they sit against you time and time and time again, your only option is to keep forgiving them, to keep loving them, to keep pursuing them. And if you're sitting there saying there's no way I could do that, that's why I wanted to close with this last point, a reason for hope. I said a few times that Jesus invites us into the beautiful story that God is writing. Let me tell you about another part of that story. In closing, if you're a follower of Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus God pursued you. He went after you. He chose you to be his beloved, to be his bride. And Jesus didn't choose you because of what you could do for him. Jesus didn't choose you because you were beautiful or talented or funny or even because you were righteous. Jesus chose you not to get something from you. Jesus chose you so that he could give you something, something you desperately needed. Jesus loves you in a way that no human husband or wife ever could. He loves you perfectly, and the greatest proof that he loved you in a way that no one else could is the cross. Jesus Christ came to this earth and he saw you as a sinful, filthy, broken bride. And he said, I'm going to go to the cross so that I can make you clean, so that I can make you healed, so that I can restore your life in every way. Jesus has always been faithful and true to you. Jesus has never sinned against you. In the big picture, what we would see if we had eyes of faith, we would see that in every situation, Jesus is always doing the best possible thing for you. He's the most supportive husband you could ever have because he gives you every gift you need to become all that you were designed to be, all that you were redeemed to be. Unselfish love is a love that doesn't need anything. And one of the reasons we're so bad at loving other people, even a spouse, is because we're very needy. We think I need stuff from you. I need time. I need your efforts. I need your energy. I need to know that you care about me. I need to know. I mean, you could go on and on with your list of what you need. Jesus doesn't need anything from you, and so he has a pure, unselfish love, and so he can give and give and give for your benefit at his own sacrifice. Because he loves you that much, he loves you that purely. And I don't mean to be clever, but I'm going to say that time and time again, Jesus comes to you in purity and faithfulness and love, and he finds you in bed with another lover. The Bible says that we're all spiritual adulterers. That when we turn from that primary relationship with God in Christ through his spirit and we say, I want status, I want wealth, I want I'm proud, I want me to be the Lord of my life right now, or I'm going to do what God tells me not to do. Jesus says you're committing spiritual adultery and we don't do it once. We do it over and over and over again. And it's like every time Jesus returns home, we're in bed with a different suitor. And Jesus says, what are you doing? What are you doing? I, I died to rescue you from these kinds of relationships that are just killing you. And our hope would be lost except for the fact that Jesus love is relentless. As a Jesus story of a Bible puts it, he loves us with a never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. And you can cheat on him time after time after time after time and repent and he'll say, not only do I forgive you, I'll never bring up what you did again. I'll sing over you with joy, with delight. I'll restore you to a place of honor and blessing. The Bible calls this story the gospel. This is the good news. That this is who you were, but Jesus pursued you and found you and chose you and rescued you and you fell back into sin. You chose sin a lot of times. You chose your adultery a lot of times. But Jesus pursues again, relentlessly. Winning your heart. It's the greatest love story the world has ever known. Every other love story that we hear and enjoy, we enjoy because it somehow mirrors this one. And the best part of all is that this one's true. This is a story that compels us not just to believe in Jesus, but to worship Jesus. Paul Tripp says in his book, What did you expect? He says a marriage of love, unity and understanding is not rooted in romance. It is rooted in worship. When you are actively worshiping God for his grace, it makes it hard for you not to give grace to your husband or wife. If you're actively understanding the story that I just told you that this is who I am by nature, I am an adulterer. I'm a cheater. I break my vows to God. on a daily basis, and he pursues and forgives and restores over and over and over again. He wins my heart by degrees, which is really the process of sanctification, where more and more I start to dislike some of that stuff and more and more I fall in love with Jesus and worship him to the degree that I understand and believe that story. And my spouse does the same. That's the story that God invites all of you into. That's really what Jesus is teaching on in Mark 10. And he's saying it's possible. This is your hope, not looking within you and saying, OK, I need to learn. I need to remember to be more romantic flowers. Right. Your wife sitting there thinking, OK, he loves baseball. I hate baseball. I'll go. I'll pretend like I'm having a blast. Right. That's not your hope for restored marriage. Your hope for restored marriage is that Jesus invites you into the story that God is telling and you say, I'm coming. That's our hope for restored marriages that exceed all of our expectations.