Lord, we want to know you. We want to grow in wisdom and godliness in our minds, our speech, our actions. We want to grow in godliness as single people, as married people, as those who are able to minister also to both single and married folk. We pray that you would help us now as we open your word and we pray that your word would come to us as a power and as our help and as salvation to us. We pray that we would, through hearing your word this evening, would cleave to you more zealously and trust more perfectly that you will cleave to your people forever and never, ever let us go. We worship you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Our scripture reading this evening is from Matthew chapter 19. The bulletin says also Genesis 2.24. Genesis 2.24 is quoted in Matthew 19. We'll see that in verse 5, where Jesus says, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And so we've been, for several weeks now, looking at marriage through the lens of Genesis 2. And there we have verse 24. And so that, in a sense, will be our text. But Jesus takes that text and applies it to New Testament marriage, and particularly over the question of divorce. As we continue our marriage series this evening, we transition just a little bit from what is expected of a marriage from God's perspective to how can we achieve what is expected of us in marriage. And so, we'll see that this evening. Matthew chapter 19, then we'll read verses 1 through 12. Now, it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings that He departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And great multitudes followed Him and He healed them there. The Pharisees also came to Him testing Him and saying to Him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? 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 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 when God has joined together, let not man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to 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. His disciples said to him, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But he said to them, all cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He who is able to hear it, let him accept it. Amen. A few years ago, a friend of mine told a great story about about a meal that his mother cooked in their first days or weeks of marriage. His mom had spent hours cooking a tremendous meal and had set the meal out on the table. spread it out before herself and her husband. They sat down to eat. And her husband, with his first bite still in his mouth, said to her, you know, dear, this roast beef is not like my mother's roast beef. And the wife took the entire meal in the tablecloth, grabbed it in her arms, threw it in the trash, and said, well, you know what she said, right? I'm not your mother." Point made, right? You hear that, you can see that in the actions that she took to make that point. This is a classic example of failing to live out the principle of Genesis 2.24. This man, in some ways, was still wed. to his. Father and mother was still interpreting life through the grid of his experiences when he was in the home of his parents and interpreting the meals through that grid as well. Jesus knows the complications that we can face when two lives become one and so he quotes and brings to our attention this verse from Genesis 2.24, for this reason a man shall leave. his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh." The principle here then is the necessity of leaving father and mother and cleaving to one's spouse. This verse, Genesis 2.24, is written four times in the Word of God. Of course, once in Genesis 2.24, twice in the Gospels in connection with Jesus' confrontation with critics over divorce, and once by Paul in Ephesians 5. Once or more times, it's also mentioned in part, in various parts of the Bible. The point is that this principle of leaving and cleaving is one of God's emphasized principles when it comes to marriage life. We must learn to leave and cleave in marriage. And so we want to consider that principle of leaving and cleaving under three points this evening. First of all, we want to notice how This principle demands a radical life change at marriage, a radical life change. And here we're focusing on the leaving part. That's a radical life change. The word leave in the Bible is a very strong word. So when Jesus quotes God saying, for this reason a man shall leave, His father and mother, that word leave is powerful. It's used, for example, in Hebrews 11, 27, where the Bible says, by faith, Moses forsook Egypt. Same Greek word, different translation in this case, but the thrust is there. There's a separating. Moses, in this case, separated himself from Egypt. He didn't just leave Egypt. He didn't just cross the geographical boundary out of Egypt. He forsook Egypt. He began a new life outside of Egypt. He began a new identity apart from Egypt. Mark also uses the word to describe what happens when a man dies and leaves his wife behind in chapter 12, verse 19. This is what God is talking about here, to leave one's father and mother, it means much, much more than simply moving out of your parents' home. We could experience that moving out and say, wow, we've left father and mother, we've moved out, but there's a lot more going on here. In a sense, what God is saying here is that when a couple begins a life together, they must leave their parents, not just the house, but the parents themselves. We'll qualify that momentarily, but this is a radical concept. It's a major break, in other words. Marriage, in fact, even changes one's relationship to God, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. In single life, says Paul, a person's affections are between him and the Lord, but when he marries, he must now care for his wife. The point is that when we marry, our relationships have to change. Even our relationship to God changes, says Paul. And why this is, of course, is because in marriage, God is creating a new family unit, a new family unit. The start of a new family is the start of a new structure, a new, an independent sphere of leadership and submission and companionship. So if it's a new family unit, a new sphere of leadership and submission and companionship, then obviously the relationship between the married people and their parents has got to change. The influence, of course, that parents have over a child must decrease. In some cases, it must decrease dramatically. And that's harder, of course, for some parents and children than it is for others. But we have to recognize this radical change in the relationship. between parents and children that marriage produces. Of course, the married children may and should still ask for advice. It's a gift to have parents when we're beginning a new and difficult journey with another person. But marriage fundamentally changes the relationship between parents and children. Both partners then should work together to understand their unique family histories, to understand the ties that have bound the children to the parents and how those ties may differ and how the new couple is going to work out their new relationship with their parents and in-laws. It's extremely, extremely important. how we can cultivate appreciation for our parents without being overly tied to them. Because in marriage, God creates a new family unit. What this also means, though, is that children, for the purpose of getting married, must leave their parents gracefully. And so you can see there could be two errors that people getting married could make. On the one hand, there could be an error of really not leaving father and mother, being tied to them mentally or emotionally or in terms of time engagement. That could be one error. On the other side of the spectrum, there could be this error of leaving father and mother so carelessly that you sever that important relationship. Newly married people sometimes fail to appreciate how important their respective parents are. Right? You know, we're getting married. We're going to be our own family now. We don't need anybody. We don't need our parents. We don't care what they say. And that would be the opposite error. Newly married people sometimes assume they no longer need their parents and unlovingly cast them away. We need to graciously leave father and mother, God says. And in fact, in a certain sense, this leaving, Of course, it's something that we're, in a healthy family, we're preparing for even before we marry, right? Parents' job is to prepare their children to leave, right? You know, sometimes our children, especially when they're very little, would say, mom and dad, we're never going to leave you. And we'd say, yes, you are. You're going to leave someday. We're going to prepare you to leave someday. You've got to, right? You're going to start your own family together, God willing. So we can begin this practice in our young people as parents by training them for maturity, not for dependence on parents. And parents can go wrong, of course, by being too authoritative, even as their young adults in their home grow older and are really not accustomed to making decisions and can be crippled and handicapped when it comes to decision making. And so we can actually prevent children from leaving properly. But even after we marry, we need to continue this process of leaving graciously. And for some of us, that might mean that we have to, we need healing in our relationship with our parents. Maybe there's been hurts that we've taken from our childhood into our marriage, and in a certain sense, those hurts are exerting tremendous influence on our marriage still. We're carrying those wounds with us and we need to go to our parents and talk through those wounds and those hurts. We may need to seek restoration over any pain that our parents may have caused. Put to death bad attitudes about our parents. A new marriage is not gonna flourish if we take into that marriage bad attitudes about our parents. We complain about our parents, speak negatively about them. We also need to seek to develop a close, appropriate relationship with our parents in marriage as well. And what that will look like for each new couple is going to vary, but that's something that we need to talk about and work through together. Here's the point though. One marriage counselor after another, will say that one of the greatest One of the greatest difficulties that newlyweds face is a failure to leave and cleave. We're still living in a past relationship, a former structure that God says no longer exists the way that it did. There are inappropriate relationships between one or more of the spouses and their parents, either because they have failed to leave or they have left ungraciously. And so, this principle that God sets before us in Genesis 2 and elsewhere in scripture means, first of all, a radical change. For a marriage to be healthy, there must be real leaving of the parent-child relationship. Secondly, we need to consider this, that the principle demands a... means something for us that is a regular part of married life, and that is that we need to cleave. After we've left our father and mother, we need to cultivate a closeness together. And again, the image of cleaving is also very powerful. So these two words that God embeds in Scripture, leave and cleave, are masterful words that tell us an awful lot about what we're called to do in marriage. Very often, the word to cleave is used to describe a believer's relationship to God. Deuteronomy 10.20 is an example. You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast. The same word is used there. You picture an embrace, a holding fast to God. And so to cleave to one's spouse means that in our thoughts, in our words, in our actions, we hold fast to them. We support them. We trust them. We serve them. And so in marriage, each partner becomes the most important person in the other's life. And so, again, whereas, you know, little children, it's beautiful, isn't it, when you see little children, little children, and sometimes bigger children, love their parents so much, they can't imagine life without their parents. And little children, very often, will do almost anything to please their parents. And it's just that sense of, you're the most important people in my life. And God says, when we marry, that's what happens between ourselves and our spouse. We cleave to them. They're the most important person in our life. And we communicate that. So cleaving to a husband or to a wife means that they know that they and nobody else are the most important person in our life. And again, marriage counselors will say that marriages suffer when one or the other partner cannot affirm that. You know, you ask to the wife, you know, does your husband communicate to you in everything he does that you're the most important woman in the world? And if a woman can't say yes, that marriage is never gonna succeed. Of course, same for the man as well. And one of the things that this means, especially when the Lord grants children into the relationship, is that we need to learn to prioritize our spouse over our children. Maybe some of us are saying, well, that's easy. We do that really easily. Some of us find it a lot harder, right? Children can take over a relationship. They certainly can be the loudest voices in a family and can demand the most amount of attention. And as they multiply, they can outnumber us and take us away from our engagement with each other. It's interesting, studies indicate that during the so-called empty nest phase, the divorce rate rises 16% for married partners. This is the golden age of your marriage, right? This is that moment when parents have been looking forward to. We're finally alone together again, and why would the marriage crumble 16% more often in the golden years of marriage? because the husband and wife weren't building a relationship together. They were manning the family. They were overseeing the family and had not learned to cleave to one another. And so, you know, the last of the children start moving out and the husband and wife are alone and maybe, you know, They look at each other and say, I don't even know who you are. We haven't done anything. We haven't cultivated a love together. And so very often children have sidetracked the marriage. It's not, of course, to be critical of children, but we have to be vigilant to not allow that to happen. especially in our day. We live, of course, in a very youth-oriented culture, very different than the majority, the vast majority of cultures around the world and throughout history, where to be young is to be important, and young people have a louder voice than they ever have in history and around the world. And we need to be careful that that philosophy of our age doesn't affect our marriages, where we just assume, well, yeah, I guess children, We got to do everything for the children. You know, we got to take them everywhere. We have to spend time doing what they want to do. We can't do our own thing anymore because it's all about the kids. This is not God's way, is it? We need to prioritize our relationship together. This means that during marriage, couples must also not allow children to intrude on their romantic relationship. You know, children, you're going to fake, you're going to show gagging symbols to me right now probably, but you need to see your parents being appropriately romantic. It's healthy, even though you may not agree with this, it's healthy to see your mom and dad kiss each other, to embrace each other, to show you what it looks like to be affectionate in public without shame. I love my wife. I love my husband. We're going to embrace. We're going to show you what that looks like. We shouldn't be bashful about that. We need to model appropriate marital romance for them. Children need to see their parents schedule alone time together. You know, children who grow up in that kind of a family will say, boy, mom and dad, they loved each other. They would spend time together. They would date, even though we clamored for all kinds of attention. They were probably tired by the end of the day from working so hard to support us as a family, but they spent time together. They loved each other. They cultivated a relationship, even with all of us. Married people must not allow the children's schedule to run the family. Of course, this gets complicated, doesn't it, as we have multiple children with various schedules and sporting activities and whatever. But the point is if our children's schedules are controlling our marriage, then those schedules need to change. Because our permanent, prioritized relationship is to one another. That's why God says a man will leave his father and mother. The relationship that we have in our children, as it is when they're in our home, is temporary. But our relationship that we have with our husband or wife, in the flesh at least, is permanent. And so we need to prioritize appropriately. And so we can say, as husband and wife to our children, we love you children dearly, but we need to prioritize our relationship together. And you'll be happier children when your mom and dad are happy, Enjoy time together, be romantic together. It's good for the whole family, of course. This cleaving to one another also means, as Jesus demonstrates in Matthew 19, that we must not break what God has joined. Jesus uses this text in the context of this question put to him by the scribes, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? In a sense, the scribe is asking this, can a man leave his wife the way that a man can leave his father and mother? It's natural for a man to leave his father and mother. That happens, it ought to happen. Can a man leave his wife the same way? And there were schools of thought at the time that said, yes, a man can leave his wife in the same way that he had previously left his father and mother. Those relationships, in other words, were equal. You could leave both relationships in the same way. And Jesus responds by quoting Genesis 2, verse 24, saying that the coven is broken only by death or fornication. Paul seems to suggest later that the covenant also can be broken by willful, irreparable desertion. But Jesus is saying here, you must not break what God has joined together. Leaving and cleaving is meant to be for a lifetime. And so what we need to hear before we enter marriage, so children, if you can hear me, If you're 4 or 5 or 10 or 15, you need to hear this right now, that if I marry, when I marry, it's going to be for life. Because God has joined us together. God has caused us to cleave to one another. We must resolve to not even consider divorce. Now, of course, life is not perfect and there are times when we will have to consider divorce, but we need to resolve not to consider divorce until it's absolutely an impossibility to no longer consider divorce. And for this reason, then, your wedding day, young people, should be a sobering event. Of course, it's not only a sober event, it's also joyful. It's a beautiful thing to see a man and a woman in the Lord come together. But it should be a sober event, because you're entering into a covenant that you will perhaps be in for 60 or 70 years, if God blesses. There's no plan B when you enter a marriage. There's no, we'll try it, we'll see if it works. If we don't get along, then we'll have to try something different. That's not an option for God's people. Because God has welded us together in marriage. That's why now to married people, and of course to unmarried people as we're thinking about marriage, that's why the word divorce, should be like a swear word in our marriages. We should never joke about divorce. We should never tease our spouses about divorce. We should certainly never threaten divorce. You know, if you keep this up, I'm gonna divorce you. If divorce, if divorce, begins to run through your mind as a possibility as a married person, you need immediately to seek counsel from a biblical counselor, a pastor, an elder, a godly loved one. And here's an encouragement, because in marriage you are going to, you are probably going to be tempted to think about divorce. Probably, there are these few special couples who seem to never have fought or never went through a rough period in their early years, but that's not the case for most of us, I don't think. Many of us are unhappy for a spell, whether it's for years or weeks or occasionally for days, but studies suggest this, that two-thirds of unhealthy marriages will become happy within five years if the couple stays together. So that's some encouragement for us. If you are right now in a point of unhappiness, unhealthiness in a marriage, stay together, seek counsel, seek God's will in the marriage, live God's will, and statistically at least, within five years, most of those unhealthy marriages become happy. So, leaving and cleaving is a radical life change. It's a regular part of married life. But thirdly, I want to speak about the responsibility specifically of the husband. And I do so because the words in Genesis 2, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Those are words spoken to men. about the duties of a man. Now, it's not to say that women aren't listening in as God speaks these words, but the Bible is clearly, in most points at least, certainly in the Old Testament, it's clearly written to men. with the understanding that wives and children are hearing and are responding as well. You hear in the Ten Commandments, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. It's spoken to men. And of course with application to wives as well. But this is a text that's spoken to men about the responsibilities of men. That a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to a wife. The thrust here is that it's a man's responsibility to cultivate this leaving and cleaving. In Ephesians chapter 5, when Paul quotes this text again, he does so while he's speaking to men, while he's communicating the men's responsibility to love their wives. He quotes Genesis 2.24, a husband must be devoted to his wife. He must nourish and cherish her. He must regard his wife as Adam did, as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. That's what it means to cleave to one's wife. And so brothers, let me suggest that husbands, let me suggest with biblical warrant that husbands must initiate the leaving and cleaving. It's a man's responsibility. Of course, women have this duty as well, but the men take the initiative. It's primarily his, our responsibility to see that he and his wife begin a new family unit. After all, the husband is the leader of this new unit and needs to lead appropriately to leave and cleave. A man cannot leave it to his wife to initiate this process. Whatever that looks like specifically will vary from family to family, but the husband needs to take the initiative. He can't say, dear, you figure out, if you want to go on a date sometime next month, you figure it out and I'll go with you. That's not taking the initiative to cleave. A man must see to it that the couple is growing in grace. participating in church life, practicing biblical conflict resolution, praying together, reading the Bible, raising their children well. And when problems arise, the man needs to take the responsibility for those problems. One well-known pastor has written this, when a husband and wife come to me for marital counsel, And because there's problems in the marriage, he says, I have it as an operating assumption that the responsibilities for all of the problems fall on the man. Now, men hear that and say, that's not fair. What if the wife is doing, what if it's her fault? Well, this pastor is not saying that the problems in the marriage are the fault of the husband, but he's saying that the responsibility for the problems is the husband's responsibility. The man has been assigned by God to shepherd that marriage, to take responsibility for that marriage. Marriages fail sometimes with godly male leadership. certainly not trying to be insensitive here, that those failures are the husband's fault, but the man needs to take responsibility. The man, in a sense, is like the captain of a ship, and everything on that ship ultimately falls at the feet of the captain. There could be any number of problems on the ship, but he takes responsibility. Captains historically have been But neither the last one off a sinking ship or went down with the ship. They own the problems that took place on that ship. And so we brothers must do the same thing as well. And this means a number of things, but one thing it certainly means for us men. If we're going to follow God and take the initiative to cultivate a cleaving relationship with our wives, it means that we must strive not to give our wives second best. And this can be a problem for us. Certainly, we have responsibilities that can exhaust us physically or mentally throughout the workday. But it seems that many marriages falter because the men give their best energies elsewhere. Listen to one older minister, minister from a previous century, put it this way. Men fall into careless habits at home. They're not so in society. They are gentle to other women. How often do men beat other women, for example? Statistically, it's almost always the wife, the girlfriend. They're gentle to other women. They pride themselves on their thoughtfulness. But at home, too often they are rude, careless in speech, and heedless of the effects of their words and actions. They answer, Proper questions in an irritated tone. They speak impatiently on the slightest provocation. They're sullen, morose, and unsocial. Is he right? Do we not, brothers, feel that we're sometimes on our best behavior when we're outside of the home? You know, at work, we're capable leaders, we're cheerful leaders, we're pulling people along appropriately, they want to follow us, they like us, they respect us, but at home, it's not so all the time, is it? This author goes on to say, a man thinks that because a woman is his wife, she should know that he loves her, even if he is rude to her, that she should not mind anything he says or does, even if it is something that would sorely hurt any other woman. We become lazy at home sometimes, don't we gentlemen? We, you know, we give our very best at work and we come home and we're, you know, we're done. We've offered everything we have elsewhere. But probably if we were called to have worked overtime that night, we could have given more than we do at home. Have we slipped into the habit of offering our wives emotional table scraps? physical table scraps, relational table scraps. I know I have at times, probably a lot of us have at times. But leaving and cleaving will not happen until the man and the woman give themselves entirely to the other, offering the best that they have to the other. Of course, what this means is that when we say, I do, We're also saying, I die. I die to myself. I die to my single life. I die to taking care of myself. Jesus says in Matthew 19, the one couple, they're no longer two, but one. It means something had to die for two to become one. Both partners die to themselves to make one new unit. Surely there's got to be sacrifice in that union. But it's a sacrifice that's worth making. For oneness to occur, leaving and cleaving needs to happen. I mentioned that Genesis 2.24 is quoted, first of course referenced Genesis 2.24, quoted by Jesus in two places, Paul in Ephesians chapter 5. But there's one more place where Genesis 2.24 is not quoted in its entirety, but clearly in part. And that is in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 16. And in this place, Paul is arguing against fornication. And so he says this, he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her. For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. drawing into his argument, Genesis 2.24, do not have sexual relations with a harlot, because as God said at the beginning, the two become one flesh. Jesus is saying, excuse me, Paul is saying that the sexual union designed to be expressed in marriage makes two people one, even if they aren't properly married. That's why young people, We need to be vigilant against fornication, against uniting ourselves in a marital way, apart from marriage, and then perhaps doing it again, and then finally marrying and taking those previous marriages, as Paul describes them here in 1 Corinthians 6, into a marriage proper. So Paul is using Genesis 2.24 to argue against fornication, but what he says next is startling. Paul says this, verse 17, but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Now, it's inarguable that Paul is using a sexual metaphor to describe our union with God. He moves seamlessly from arguing against fornication to bringing in this principle that two become one flesh, to saying in the next breath that he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. This is what it means to experience salvation, to experience this joining of two lives, God's and ours. In salvation, God draws us, doesn't he, from the families of the world and joins us to himself as Jeremiah suggests in chapter 3.14. God seals this marriage with the shed blood of the bride's groom. He promises to never leave us or forsake us. And so that's why we're able to leave and cleave in marriage because we've done it before. We've been drawn out of a family, been united to the Lord. Now we're able to joyfully leave our father and mother and cleave to our husband or our wife because God has shown us what this is. We've experienced this marriage with the Lord. Christians know what it's like to find life in union with another. So that's why in marriage we can leave all others and cleave to our spouse with a tenacity that reflects God's commitment to us in Christ. Let's pray together. Lord, we ask for help in this high calling. It seems unnatural for us to leave a father and mother to whom we've been united for so many years when we're young and to start a new relationship with another person that we didn't grow up with, we may have grown up very differently from, and to cultivate a union, a clinging union together. We pray for your help in this. We want to model that relationship between you and us. We want to be faithful in our callings and we want to do it together in marriage. We pray that you would help us as we think on these things, whether single or married, that in either state, we would see in this image your precious union with us, which you've initiated, which you continue to work out by your sovereign grace, for your praise and glory, in Jesus' name, amen.