So I have a last minute change for you guys. This morning I was preaching through this in my office and discovered a problem. We are gonna be here a very long time if I preach this whole passage. And so we're gonna have a one point sermon today and you'll get the other two at another occasion. And so we're just going through the first 12 verses today. This was several sermons in one I discovered. And so actually the next two weeks are already planned out. We have a guest preacher coming next week. Brandon's preaching the next week. And so we'll get the second half of this passage in three weeks. And so thanks for being flexible with me. I think you'll appreciate it rather than stay here a very long time. So let's give our attention to God's perfect inerrant word. Mark chapter 10 beginning in verse one. and he 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 in order to test him, asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? He answered them, what did Moses command you? They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of 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 his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two 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. With this foreign God's word, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this word. Lord, it's a difficult, controversial topic, but we know you mean for our good. This, among many others, is not really what our culture thinks. And so, Lord, we pray that you would help us, help me as I preach, that I'd faithfully, I want your approval, God, not theirs. I just want to explain to them and understand and see your love for them in this text. Lord, I pray for their hearts, that they would both see a law and grace. They would see the gospel played out in Scripture. So Lord, we need your help with this, and so we ask in the name of Christ, amen. Well, for all you couples, I don't know if any of you had this experience when you got married, but you had disagreements about whose job it was to do something. Because always in my house growing up, he or she did X. Whether it was take out the trash or wash dishes or whatever. I don't know, does anyone have that? You don't have to raise your hands. Maybe it's still going on, I don't know. But we all came with expectations. This is how we, where did that come from? Right, it came from, well I grew up and this is the way it happened and so it should always be that way, right? And so what that, how that relates is, is that we all form our opinion of right and wrong, either usually based on two things, either our experience or our sensibilities. Like this seems to be right, and isn't that true? That's how many of us form what we think. The challenge is, is then scripture lands right in the middle, right? And so scripture often doesn't agree with that, right? It might be different than what your mom and dad did and who took out, well, there's no scripture that says who takes out the trash, so sorry, you gotta figure it out yourselves. but there are many teachings of Jesus, this is one of them, that are counter-cultural and controversial. And so here's our instinct. Our instinct is, is that we actually, we don't mean to, but we place ourself above the word of God. Now, none of us would admit to that, but here's how it happens. That we say, well, it can't be so, because that makes no sense. So we're placing ourselves rather than saying, here's what the word says, let me understand it, and I will form and conform what I think to it. Now this is, if you've been here long and if you stick around long, this will be very inconvenient for all of us at some point. At some point, Scripture always pokes us. And so you saw from the call to worship how that went down when one time Jesus did that. It was a different teaching, but very difficult. So what happened? A bunch of folks left and they said, enough of this, I'm done. That's how they responded. And so Jesus turned to his apostles and said, do you want to go as well? You see, Jesus was not primarily concerned about public approval. It is a difficult example for me and for us, isn't it? that I would say my goal is not primarily to win your approval, but primarily to win God's. Now my hope is is that you guys won't all leave, but my primary conviction is is that we will hold to the word of God and that as we do that, it's the safest way to be. Now think about a surgeon. Now I imagine a young surgeon probably feels like I do right now. A young surgeon hasn't had to deliver bad news lots of times. And so he kind of feels awkward about it. But could you imagine a surgeon not telling someone what he saw on the scan? Can you imagine that? I mean, he'd probably lose his license. That's probably partly what helps him keep moving, right? But it's very difficult. And so that's what we have to do. Now, I imagine 10 years from now, this won't be nearly as hard for me because I've done this a hundred times and you will have experienced this. But here we are now. Look at page seven for outline. Well, it's one point. It's only the first one. Don't view marriage like the world. Let's begin and end with our first point. Don't view marriage like the world. Again, I just want to acknowledge up front, this is very personal for many people here. Now whether it's your parents that are divorced, whether you've been through a divorce, whether you've thought about getting a divorce in the past or you are right now, it's an experience many people have had. And so I understand how sensitive it is. But you are safe with Scripture. You are safe with Scripture. God loves you. He made, designed everything. And anytime He gives a hard teaching, there's also grace to come with it. Right? Because what did He do when He finished all these hard teachings? He went and He died. Why did He die? Because of the necessity of all those hard teachings. Because of those hard teachings, it proved that all of us failed. whether it's marriage or whether it's any other commandment, right? We've all failed, and so we need Jesus. And so as he brings difficult teachings, he also brings the gospel. And so we're gonna hold those in tension this morning. Do you remember last week? I don't have the diagram, so I'm gonna illustrate it for you and see if you can remember it. Okay, so remember the thing in the bulletin, and it had two lines. If you weren't here, I'm sorry, ask me afterwards, I'll draw it for you. Okay, so you have two lines, so you get converted, and then as you go as a Christian, your knowledge of God's holiness grows over time. But also, your knowledge of your sinfulness grows. And so it's not that you're becoming more sinful, but you realize more and more, the more you read Scripture, you realize, oh, God's actually more holy than I realize, and I'm more sinful. The great thing about that is as that happens, the cross gets bigger. Because you thought that the gap was very small when you were converted, but over time you realize, oh no, God died for much more. This happened this week for me. I'll tell you later what happened. But I realized I'm more of a sinful man, sinful leader than I thought. That's a miserable experience. but it's important. But the good thing is is I realized Jesus died for that. I'm okay, I wasn't delighted with that earlier in the week, but hey, I'm okay. So you might have that experience. If you realize at the end the worst thing that can happen this morning is that you realize God's holiness and your sinfulness is there's a larger gap and Jesus died for more. That's the worst thing that could happen this morning. Okay, let's look at our passage. So the Pharisees come to Jesus So first you have to know who's coming, Pharisees, not good guys, okay, got it. Why do they ask him? To test him. This is not a genuine question. This is meant to trap him. What's their question? Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Matthew, the parallel of this, says this. The question is, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Okay, so they're coming and asking, can a man divorce for any reason? Again, not genuine question. See, there's two rabbinic schools. The rabbis, basically they divide into the more liberals and the more conservatives. The liberals said you could divorce for any reason, and the conservatives said only for sexual morality. And so basically, no matter what Jesus says, he's gonna make half the Jews angry, right? And so they're trying to trap him. Okay, so then what happens? Look at verse three. What did Moses command you? So he puts, did he get asked a question? He asked them a question. He often does this. What did Moses command you? They said, Moses, verse four, allowed a man, allowed's an important word, allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. Okay, important note here. This is coming from Deuteronomy 24. You don't have to turn that, I'll tell you what it says. In Deuteronomy 24, Moses says this. If a man writes a certificate of divorce for his wife and sends her away, and then she marries someone else, and then he also writes her certificate of divorce, the first guy can't decide, ah, I changed my mind, I'll take her back. Okay, what Moses is doing is protecting women. Women have not always been protected through history, and so women cannot just be pushed around and just, oh, I'll divorce her now, I'll take her back later, right? And so this is a protection. His focus is not on certificates of divorce, but rather on protecting that you, one, you have to actually give her something, you can't just send her out the door and then with nothing, that she at least has to have something that says, no, I'm not connected to this guy anymore, they just kicked me out. but then also they can't just push. Does that make sense? So that's what's going on in Deuteronomy 24. The Pharisees have now used this to now have this whole law because remember, they like surface laws. Give me a rule and then they'll keep it to the surface and then they feel good about themselves. Okay, let's go back to our passage, verse five. So Jesus says to them, they're appealing to Deuteronomy 24. He says, because of your hardness of heart, he being Moses wrote you this commandment. But look at verse six. From the beginning of creation, okay, so they've appealed to Deuteronomy 24, Jesus goes back to what? All the way back to Genesis 2. Okay, saying, hey, it didn't start that way. Okay, that's verse six. From the beginning of creation, Jesus says, God made them male and female. See, what Jesus is doing is shifting their focus. They wanna talk all about divorce. Again, they just wanna trap him. They don't care about marriage or anything. They just wanna trap him. But he says, no, let me focus you back to marriage. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. A verse familiar to many of you. The two shall become one flesh. And so they no longer are two, but one flesh. Okay, so Jesus appeals back to creation, and he's gonna, so let's talk about this. We're gonna set divorce aside, we'll come back to it. Let's focus on marriage. Now, to any teens in the room or even kids, this is really important for you to understand. This is one of the reasons why you should only marry a strong Christian. Scripture teaches this very clearly in 2 Corinthians 6. Listen, it says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship with light with darkness? Or what portion of believers share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? He's saying it lots of ways to get the point across. For we are the temple of the living God. Marriage is one of the most wonderful, amazing relationships on earth. And God intends it to be a blessing And so it says, to become one flesh, certainly it's talking about sexual union, but also much more, right? Anyone that's married knows that. It's emotional and spiritual in every other way, right? And so because of this, for young people particularly, you need to reject the cultural view that this is just something trivial. It's not that important. No, it's really important and it's supposed to be lifelong. So be careful who you marry. Now to all you married, this also applies to you, doesn't it? That you must leave no room in your mind to think about divorce. You have to take it off the table because marriage is so tough. Anyone that's married knows that marriage is hard. Even when it's two good Christians, people married, it's hard, it's really hard. And so the only way to sustain or rebuild a marriage is if you've taken it off the table, divorce off the table, in order to do the hard work to sustain a marriage. In the year 1519, you know what happened in 1519? Cortes arrived at the New World. So Cortes gets off his ship with all his men, and they're all standing there. Imagine you're there, one of those soldiers, on the beach, looking back at your ships. You know what Cortes does? He burns the ships. Well, what kind of message do you think you got from that? You're standing there on the beach, a soldier, watching the ship there burn and sink. Well, the message is pretty clear. There is no turning back. We're headed for the Aztecs. Now, this is not, no commentary on their practices, but what is important is if you are married, you must burn the ships. If you enter marriage with an exit door, you're probably gonna use it at some point. You must enter marriage without an exit door. Don't threaten divorce. Don't consider it, you must burn the ships. Look at verse seven tonight. Is that not what Jesus is saying? What's it say? How many times have you heard that verse at a wedding? What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." We're gonna get to divorce, but we have to see what does Jesus do when he's asked about divorce? He says, hey, I wanna talk to you about marriage. Why is that? Because that's the design of God. See, there's lots of broken things in our world, and God wants to focus us back to his design, and we must understand that. Okay, but look, the conversation goes on, doesn't it? The disciples, I mean, they're mystified. You see, we have no-fault divorces now. They had them then, they just didn't call them that, right? It was very acceptable to get a divorce for any reason you want. If you were not satisfied with your wife, you could just send her away, send her with a stipulated divorce, right? They had a place for that. So the disciples really wanna talk about this. And so they go into the house, look at 10 through 12. And so look what Jesus says. And I'm gonna explain the logic of this. Whoever divorces his wife, verse 11, and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Okay, this makes no sense on the surface. Here's what you have to understand. You have to understand man's view and God's view. Okay, let's talk about this. So I'm a pastor, I can do a wedding. So imagine I'm doing a wedding and I'm joining two people together, right? And so I say, by the power vested in me, in the view of the state, right? I'm joining two people together that are now married. Okay, so two have become one in man's eyes. Is it legal? When I sign that little thing, it is, right? That marriage certificate? In man's eyes, they're joined together. Now parallel to that, in God's eyes, they're also joined together. Okay, so in parallel, on earth and in heaven, we have two people being joined together. With me so far? Okay. So then it's possible in man's eyes to get a divorce, but not in God's eyes. God's eyes, he does not honor that, okay? So you're still married in God's eyes, you're divorced in man's eyes. Then if you go marry someone else, so to first take the man. Here's the man, here's the woman. The man marries someone else. When he consummates that marriage, he's still actually in God's eyes, married to her, and so it's adultery. That's what verse 11 is saying. Then Jesus reverses it, he's equal opportunity, and so to the woman he says, if a woman divorces her husband, and still married in God's eyes, and marries someone else, then it's adultery. Does the logic of that make sense? That's what verse 11 is saying. So you have to understand, this is what was very helpful to me in my life, understanding that God's eyes and man's eyes. Okay, this naturally raises the question, in God's eyes, does he ever, does he ever see divorce? The answer is yes, we'll come back to that, okay? But verse 11 is saying that just because man has given you, just because someone gave a certificate of divorce, even though the state says, yep, you're good, you can marry anyone you want, that doesn't necessarily mean, in God's eyes, there's been a divorce. Okay, that's what verse 11 is saying, that's the logic of it. Okay, in order to understand this whole thing, You have to understand what the whole purpose of marriage or the whole function of it. It is an earthly picture of us and Jesus. Did I just make that up? No, it's in Ephesians 5. Let me read it to you so you don't take my word for it. All right, this is Ephesians 5. Earthly picture of us and Jesus. I'll read some sections of it. Husbands, love your wives, why? Just as Christ loved the church, Jesus loves you, the church. And he gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself. Remember, Todd talked about justification and sanctification, right? We're saved and then there's the process of making us more beautiful. Every woman for a wedding day, she tries to get as beautiful as she can. Nail treatment, hair treatment, the whole nine yards, right? And so Jesus is using this analogy. It must have been true even then, I guess. making her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water of the word, to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. At the end of the passage, it says, for this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife. Hey, that's a verse from our passage, which is again from Genesis 2, right? For this reason, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. So there he's saying that the verse in Genesis is a profound mystery about Jesus and you. Do you see what he's saying? So earthly marriage is a picture of Jesus' love for you. Okay, so let's flesh this out. John 6, oh right, so is that a breakable union? Is your union to Jesus a breakable union? Think about that for a second. Is your union with Jesus a breakable union? Listen to John chapter six. Jesus says this, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, listen to this, I will never cast out. You know what that means? If you come to Jesus, you really come to Jesus, you believe in him, you place your faith in him, he will never divorce you. Isn't that what he said? Anyone, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. You see, marriage is a picture of how Jesus loves us. Now, of course, we're all broken sinners, so we mangle everything, right? Our relationship as parents to our kids is also to be a picture, but we mangle that too. So we just need to understand what the picture is. It helps you as parents be a better parent. As I understand that I'm a picture of God to my children, man, that raises the ante, doesn't it? So also marriage is a picture. of Jesus' love for us. He goes on, Jesus, in that passage in John 6 and says, That is really good news. Man, forget about marriage and divorce. Jesus will never divorce you. No matter what you do, no matter how mangled you are, if you've really placed your faith in Christ, he will never cast you out. That's really, really good news. Okay, we go back to our question. Remember we've had man's perspective and God's perspective, right? And so you can get a divorce on earth that God is not honoring in heaven. He said, that's what verse 11 said, right? So the question remains is, is there anything that would make a couple not married in God's eyes. Okay, let's look at other gospel accounts. There's three gospel accounts that record this story. Luke does and Matthew does as well, okay? Luke is almost identical, okay? So was there any exception clause in here? Did you see any like, except for this case? There wasn't any in Mark, Luke doesn't either. Okay, well if we go over to Matthew, he does. Let's look at Matthew for a second. Matthew says this in Matthew 5.32. Okay, that's basically verse 11 with this other phrase added in. Right? Okay, again in Matthew 19 it says, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. Okay, now what do you do? We've got Luke, Luke and Mark over here and Matthew over here. Who are you going to believe? Well, there's two of them over there. They're all disciples. What do you do? So some people have said, well, they say it twice over here. Okay, here's just a principle on how to read your Bible. You can use this in lots of places. Here's what you do. There's often places where there'll be a smaller teaching on something. Somewhere else, you'll have a more expanded teaching on it. You use the Bible to interpret the Bible. Anytime you have a smaller teaching on something and you have a more expanded teaching somewhere else, you inform your understanding of the smaller with the larger. Does that make sense? This is really important for how you read your Bible. Lots of people get confused, or they say, well, maybe I can't trust the Bible. Well, no, sometimes people say shorter stories, and other times they tell longer stories. God knew everything he would say, so he knew it was all gonna be in there. And so whenever you have a smaller teaching, you inform it by the larger. So we inform our understanding of Mark with Matthew. Okay, so now what do we do? We have this exception clause that says, except for sexual immorality. Now, why that? That, so one thing Jesus spells out is sexual immorality? Why not something else? I mean, there's lots of sins. Lots of sins do damage. Listen to 1 Corinthians 6, verse 18. It says this. As I choke on water. And then you're supposed to drink water, right? When you're choking. Let's try again. Okay, here we go. 1 Corinthians 6 says this, flee from sexual immorality. For every other sin a person commits outside the body, but sexual immorality a person sins against his own body. So here it's saying, flee sexual immorality. Every other sin is committed outside the body, but sexual sin is committed against your own body. So there's a separation being made from all other sin. The reality is is that sexual immorality so shatters the marriage covenant that it is the one thing that Jesus gives as an allowance when divorce is allowed. Now teens, I just want you to realize this. You likely have friends who are sleeping with their boyfriend or girlfriend. do you realize the thing that they're doing is the one and only thing that Jesus said? There's another clause that's gonna come up later, we'll talk about it in a second. But for Jesus, the one thing he says, the only thing he says is the thing that high schoolers, or if you're in a high school, right? That what's happening rampantly is the one thing that Jesus says shatters a marriage. That should make you realize how big a deal that is. Do not take it lightly just because your friends do. That's important. Okay, so there's, in that very next chapter, that was 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 7 says this. Paul says, now he's talking about a believer and a non-believer being married. He says, now what do you do? This happened commonly. Many women became Christians. They were smarter than the men in that day. They maybe still are. Oftentimes women come to their senses a lot quicker than men do, particularly about spiritual things. And so they're still married to this bozo who's not, is not getting the memo that there's a gospel. And they're like, what do we do? And so he says, if they'll stay with you, stay with them. You will be an unbelievable witness to them. But then he says this line, listen to this, this is 1 Corinthians 7.15. But if the unbeliever partner separates, Let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. Okay, so then we have now a second clause for divorce that went so loud is abandonment by a non-believing spouse. Okay, so if they'll stay with you, stay with them. If they won't, let them go. You're no longer bound to them. Okay, I wanna appeal now to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Let me tell you what the Westminster Confession of Faith is. It was written in 1647, real modern document, and ever since then, churches have held to this. It was a bunch of preachers got together and wrote a standard of theology, an understanding of scripture on all kind of things. And so we've been, our denomination holds to that. Still now, how many years after 1647? And it's very, very thorough and very good, and it stood the test of time. Let me read to you an excerpt on this topic. Now bear with the language, remember it's written in 1647. Okay. In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for an innocent party to sue out a divorce, or old language for to pursue a divorce, and after the divorce to marry another, as if the offending party were dead. Okay, so it's saying that when there's adultery after marriage, a divorce is allowed and then the divorce parties are able to remarry as if their partner was dead. Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those that God has joined together in marriage. Okay, what it's saying is we just have a tendency to break apart marriages, right? We just have a tendency not to value this and to let them fall apart, that's what he's saying. yet nothing but adultery or such willful desertion, that was what we read in 1 Corinthians 7, as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage, wherein a public and orderly discourse of proceedings is to be observed and the person's concern is not left to their own will's discretion or their own case. It's saying, church, you're to help. One of our roles is to help. If you're struggling in marriage, our role is to help. Okay? And if it can't be resolved when there is adultery or desertion, there can be divorce. That's our denominational understanding of Scripture. And now you see where it came from. I've just given you the verses and how we understand those. But I want to encourage you. This is not like the unforgivable sin. Divorce is not the unforgivable sin. It's a sin like any other sin. So if you are divorced and remarried and you've concluded from this, I don't know that my first divorce was actually biblical. It's a sin like any other. Just repent for it and move on. Like this is not like the big scarlet letter, right? That one of our goals of this church is that we would be a place that we can look at God's word and find all kind of sin, right? About us, about each other. And then we can love each other and move on, right? That this is not our identity. And my identity is not what I discovered in myself last week. It's not what you discover yourself this morning. Our identity is in Christ. And the ground at the cross is level. the ground of the cross is level. No matter what your history is, it's level. Many people miss both things. They fear looking at Scripture because they think, what might it say of me? But really, if you hold the law and the gospel together, it brings great peace. Many people have shame, they don't know what to do with. Rather, we look at Scripture, we figure out what to do with it, we take it to the cross, and we move on. That's the beauty of the gospel, no matter what sin it is. As we wrap up, obviously Jesus has challenged our view of marriage and divorce, hasn't he? He's lifted it up, he's held it as sacred. He said marriage is a really big deal. He intended it to be permanent. It's an earthly picture of his relationship with us. That he does give cause, there are situations, there's two that scripture gives, that is cause when a divorce is allowed, not essential, but allowed, Right? And so it gives those, but the point is, it's to be lifted up. So let me apply this to several categories. If you're single, you need this passage. You absolutely need this passage. Culture does not set you up for success for your future marriages. You need a high view of marriage. A low view of marriage puts your future marriage in danger. If you're married, you also need this passage to protect you, that you would burn the ships, that you would never consider divorce, but rather work through things. But if you're struggling in marriage, you should come talk. I'd love to help. Brandon would love to help. Your missional community leader would love to help. If you're in an abusive marriage, please hear me. Come talk to me. Do not sit silently. Do not sit silently if you're in an abusive marriage. If you're divorced, grounds that aren't specified in Scripture, don't feel shame, just ask for forgiveness and move on. If you're divorced and remarried, you still need this passage. Because if you look at this and realize, because here's what happens. If the divorce was not for biblical grounds, and yes, verse 11 says there's adultery, but now you're married again. And so God sees this, you need this passage to hold your new marriage together. Second marriages are hard. And so you need to realize the sanctity of it in order to preserve it as well. If you're tempted to judge, you should not be tempted to judge. Go read the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5, Jesus says, if a man looks lustfully at a woman, he has committed adultery with her in his heart. Okay, well, we're basically all guilty at some point in our lives. And so the ground is level at the cross. We're all guilty. No one has any room. We cannot look at this passage or any and say, hey, I nailed that one. Right, we all must come and say, well, remember that gap? There's a big gap between God's holiness and my sinfulness. Now I'm hoping you don't do what they did in that John 6 where they just ran away. If it was the last time I see you, that would be very sad. Right, stick around and you'll get to see all of us at some point will be confronted with scripture that's very inconvenient. But holding up the marriage covenant as sacred is a good thing for all of us, regardless of our experience with divorce. I wanna steal a line from actually the rest of the passage that we would have read. Look there, it's actually printed, because you have the rest of it. Look at 26 and 27. So after he teaches on another difficult thing about everyone's love of money, we'll get to that in a few weeks. It says 26, they were exceedingly astonished and said, who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God. You see, the reality is none of us measure up to the standard of Scripture, whether this Scripture or any Scripture. But it is possible with God, because after Jesus said this difficult teaching, He went to the cross. He died so that we can have life. He died so we can have life. So you remember that diagram from last week. It's not that bad of a thing. Oh, I promised I'd tell you. So this week I discovered that I'm more of a micromanager than I realized. Well, that was not pleasant. I really want to be like the best leader I can be. And I discovered that I micromanage people sometimes. Well, that was not fun to figure out. And so I've continued to have conversations. And so the more I talk to you, the more I find out of how I've done it, right? But that's, so the gap is growing a little bit, but it's not the end of the world. I've repented, I came to Christ with it, and I continue, and some of you, maybe I'm micromanaging other people, I don't know yet, come talk to me, and I'll apologize to you too. But this is not the end of the world, right? It's not the end of the world to discover sin, discover that gap is bigger. It only means that the cross is greater than we knew before. And this is not just for those who have never been saved. Some of you, it might be true. You've actually never placed your faith in Christ. Yes, do that. That is absolutely a good application. Place your faith in Christ that the cross would fill that gap. Don't try to make excuses for your life. And there's plenty of other commands other than this one on marriage, right? Just come to Christ. But if you're a Christian, still hear this. We come to Christ and you just, you can let go of stuff. You can let go of the shame, you can let go of all this baggage, and you can just stand, my identity is not as a micromanaging, I'm not micromanaging pastor, right? Same with divorce, same with anything else, any other failure, right? We can, we stand as Christians, we stand as Christians. We are adopted, we can say Abba Father, and that is such comforting news, no matter our history, no matter our past, and we all have one. Jesus said in John 6, 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Jesus will never divorce you. That's great news. Philippians 1, 6 says, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Where God starts, he always finishes. You can go with that confidence today. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gospel. Thank you that though all of us have not held marriage up as high as we should have, you do. And so we can acknowledge our sin before you because we know that you will never reject us. You can't. You've bound yourself to us forever. And that is good news. And for people that micromanage like me, and we all have different sins, Lord, I just pray that we'd be a church that just feels the freedom to come to the word, even hard passages, and know that the worst that can happen is we see the cross bigger and the gap between us and you greater. Lord, I pray that you would help that be the DNA of our people, myself, that we may bring you glory. I pray this morning for anyone who's going through pain in marriage, whether from the past or the present, Lord, I pray that they would feel your comfort and your forgiveness. For everyone who confesses their sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, to cleanse us, to wash us pure white as snow, clean from our sins. Thank you, Jesus. In your name we pray, amen.