And I invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word to Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5, we'll continue working through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the most famous sermon in the history of the world, and we'll be looking today at verses 31 Matthew 5, 31 through 32. And remember, what Jesus is doing here in the Sermon on the Mount, He's letting us know that with His coming, the Kingdom of God has arrived, that Kingdom which is pushing back on the way that the world lives and the way that the world operates. This is a new reality that Jesus has ushered in with His coming. And with that new reality comes a new way of living, a new ethic. Now, it's not as it was completely new because God had revealed himself already to the people of Israel. By the time that Jesus comes, though, so many of those in Israel had taken God's law and had warped it and made it so much easier to keep. And on top of that, they had begun to look at the law as the means by which they were to be brought into the kingdom of God. If you obey the law, and that's why they lowered the standard of the law to make it obeyable, then you can become a part of the kingdom. But Jesus has been letting us know from the very beginning of the sermon, right with the Beatitudes, that the law of God is not the standard by which you and I can enter into the kingdom of God because we can never fulfill it. The only one who has fulfilled that law is Jesus. In his perfect life, he fulfilled the law of God in our place as our substitute. So we who are in the kingdom are in that kingdom because of what Jesus has done. and he brings us into the kingdom by grace. The law then becomes not what brings us into the kingdom, but the way for us who already are in the kingdom to behave. It becomes a standard that shows us how redeemed people are to live. And so what Jesus is doing here is he's going in the second half of chapter five through a number of different aspects of the Old Testament law that had been misunderstood by the people of his day and very much by the people of our day, and he's correcting them. And last week he dealt with a difficult subject. He dealt with adultery and the way that our minds are just as guilty of sin when we think lustful thoughts as when we actually engage in a physical act of adultery. And now he turns to another difficult subject, that which is a logical follow-up, which is divorce in light of marriage. So let's hear these two little verses that Jesus has to say about this. In verse 31, our Lord says, It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. May He bless it to our hearing, especially as it's preached to us this morning. Well, people of God, the subject of divorce is complex, and understanding it can at times be controversial. We have very clear statements like what Jesus says here in the Sermon on the Mount, also in the passage that we read earlier in Matthew chapter 19. We have to wrestle with what it is that Jesus is saying and how we apply it to us today. Sadly, divorce is a subject that touches so many people today. There are very few things that match the sadness of a broken marriage, very few tragedies in life that are greater than when a relationship which had been meant for love and for fulfillment degenerates into a relationship of bitterness and discord. This is something that has affected our entire society and has affected good men and women even here in our church. So we want to be sensitive as we talk about these things because it affects so many people. But we can't ignore it because Jesus addresses it here as part of kingdom life. Since He addresses it, we need to listen to what He has to say. The good news is that everything that Jesus said is good, for our good and for the good of our society. So, the fact that Jesus addresses it is because divorce is not something that's new. We look today and we see an epidemic. That's the language that you hear people talk about. Divorce is so commonplace. We would think, well, certainly it wasn't in Jesus' day, and yet that's not the case. It was a problem in the day of Jesus, and that's why he has to deal with it. And he continues using a formula that we've been seeing him use throughout the Sermon on the Mount where he says, you have heard that it was said. And then he tells us what people have been saying about the law. But I say, and again, we want to emphasize the contrast that Jesus is making. What's coming here is a contrast between what others say about how the law, God's law and how kingdom life should be versus what Jesus, the King of the kingdom, the one who created the law as well as have created us, what He has to say. And so clearly when Jesus says, but I say, it's emphatic in the original language, but I say. And Jesus is asserting his authority as our Lord to say, this is how we are to live. So let's listen to what he has to say, even if it turns out to go against the grain in terms of our society and our culture today. So we look at this little passage, we're gonna see three things. We're gonna talk about permanence, significance, and reconciliation. Permanence, the permanence of marriage, as God intended. Significance, what is the significance of the marriage relationship? And finally, reconciliation. What can we do when things go bad? So let's start with the first one, permanence. Divorce, as we were saying, has become quite a problem today, quite commonplace. And one of the things that makes it so easy is the ease with which people can get divorced for just about any cause. And you might say, well, that's obviously a new thing. And no, it was a problem in Jesus' day. In fact, in that society, it was the men alone who could initiate a divorce, and they could initiate it for the most trivial of reasons. They can say, my wife is an incompetent cook. I'm done with her. Or he could just simply lose interest in her and therefore could divorce her. So when Jesus says in verse 31, it was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, which is what people were saying back then. Those folks were not completely making that up out of whole cloth. They were looking back at a passage in Deuteronomy 24, first four verses. And in that passage, it's describing the phenomena of men who would engage their wives, marry them, and then for whatever reason, lose interest in continuing a real relationship with that woman, and so they would in effect abandon her. And it doesn't just simply mean that they weren't engaged with her in intimacy or anything, but like not even caring for that woman physically. And because only the man could initiate the divorce, the woman was then kept trapped in that relationship. In a patriarchal society such as existed during the 14th century BC, a woman who was trapped in a situation like that may very well find herself then out of necessity attaching herself to another man just simply so that she could live, so that she could have lodging and she could have food and those sorts of things. And in a situation like that now then they would say, well you, the woman is committing adultery. And so, Deuteronomy 24 says that's an injustice against the woman. If you're going to treat her that way, then at least divorce her so she is free to move on with her life. What we find is that by Jesus' day, this provision that was meant to protect women from capricious men who had rejected them had been turned around to say, oh, all we have to do is just give a certificate of divorce. And they began to see this not only as permitting divorce, but even commanding that they should divorce. That's what Jesus is dealing with here. That's what He's addressing to our ears. We may not know the context, but that's the context, the world in which they lived. And so when Jesus is saying, you've heard that said, I'm telling you, uh-uh, that's not the way it is. That passage in Deuteronomy 24 was actually meant to mitigate evil, to mitigate sin, to safeguard women. against being treated the way they had been treated or forcing her to then have to find somebody and technically commit adultery because she was still legally married. And yet by the time of Jesus, it had become an escape clause for self-indulgent men. And that's why Jesus is dealing with that here. Now, I said earlier we're going to turn to Matthew 19. Remember, we looked at that just a moment earlier. We read it. Turn back there. You can either look it up and well, I don't think it's printed for you in your bulletin. So look it up in your Bible. Matthew 19. We're not going to read that whole section, but I want to hear again. What Jesus is saying in verse three, it tells us the Pharisees are challenging him as they've done again and again. And they ask a question, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? They're trying to trap Jesus. Now when we get to Matthew 19, we'll unpack why they were trying to trap him and all that. At the rate we're going through Matthew, we'll probably get to that by 2032. So it'll be okay if we discuss it a little bit now. And so Jesus answers, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, 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. Now notice how they respond to him. They said to him, why then, referring to the Deuteronomy 24 passage, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? You see, they're already misinterpreting Deuteronomy 24 as in it commands us to divorce him. Deuteronomy 24, as we said, is saying, look, if you're going to mistreat your wife and not care for her, not fulfill your end of the bargain, at least let her go. But they're already seeing it. Well, why does Moses then tell us to do these things? And then Jesus replies. He said to them, because of your hardness of heart, because of our sin, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed not command. It allowed 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. Now, what we want to do is we need to unpack what Jesus is saying here. The Pharisees are all concerned about finding what are the grounds for divorce? With how much can we get away with so that we can get out of this? And Jesus is saying, no, I'm much more concerned with marriage itself. If we want to be, the institution of marriage is what defines and sets the, if we get marriage down and understand it, then we can understand the prohibition against it. But if you're just looking for all sorts of reasons and don't understand what marriage is and why it is, then we won't understand why there can be a prohibition against divorce and why there can be valid reasons for it. So let's take a moment and let's do what Jesus has done. As he lays out there in Matthew 19, let's understand what Jesus has to say about the standard, marriage. Then we can turn and talk about the prohibition that he talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. So there are several things that stand out as we look at Matthew 19. First, We see that Jesus is telling us that marriage is designed by God. Now this is the very first thing, the most important thing. Marriage is not a human institution. It was not something that the governments have decided, that the courts decide. You do not get married by the court. You do not get married by the government. We've moved in those directions, but historically the courts recognize a person's marriage because for decency and good order, it's good to keep records of everything, but they don't actually do it. Marriage is instituted by God. In fact, I would warn you that you should beware of any definition of marriage that is other than God's because He created it. and therefore he defines it. And because it's something that he did, then we have to begin to understand the divorce is actually us, human beings, undoing the work of God. So the first thing we see is that marriage is designed by God. The second thing we see is that it is exclusive. It's exclusive, right? It says in verse 5, the two shall become one flesh. Right? It is a human institution, a divine institution. It's God who has joined them together. But it is, who is he joining? The two. The two shall become one flesh. There are only two in marriage. Not three, not whatever. Remember, there are people today trying to redefine marriage. And they're trying to add in more people. It's called polyamory and all sorts of other things like that. But God who defines marriage has said it is two. It is exclusive to those two. He's also said that it is complementary. In verse 4, he says that the two are male and female, not male and male, not female and female, not male, male, female, not male, female, female, or any other combination. There's only two, and those are to be male and female. There is no legitimate same-sex marriage. Jesus also says that that marriage is a union. The two shall become one flesh. It's one of these mystical things in Scripture that speaks about the coming together of this man and this woman forms the deepest of bonds, unlike any other. And not just in physical intimacy, but in spiritual intimacy. Something happens where these two become one. That's why he also says in verse 5, a man shall leave, leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. That bond is even greater than the bond that exists between parents and children. And any of you who have experienced the tragedy of divorce know that that bond, when it's broken, how painful it is, and that's because it is that deep of a bond. And the last thing that Jesus points out is that marriage is permanent. Again, verse 6, Jesus is making clear that God's intention as the designer of marriage is that it would be a lifelong union. And that implies a commitment by both husband and wife to it. That's why it says, the man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. Holding fast requires effort. You've got to grab a hold and you've got to hold on. Right? We'll talk a little bit more about how to do that. These are the things that Jesus is teaching us about marriage right in this little passage. Reminds me of something that John Chrysostom, the early church preacher, well-known preacher of the fourth century had to say. He looks back to the Beatitudes in the first part of chapter 5 and comments on our verse. He said, that a husband should put this woman away and bring in another when he had made one man, he would have formed many women. But he did not. So what is Jesus telling us? This marriage is to be exclusive, it is to be permanent. But Jesus then, going back to our passage in the Sermon on the Mount in verse 32, and also the one we read here in chapter 19 verse 9, does say that there are grounds, biblical grounds for divorce. And he mentions that the chief of these is sexual immorality. Why? Because once you go outside of your marriage, and we talked about this last week, so I won't belabor it, the idea that our sexual union is an intimacy that transcends, again, it's much more than physical. And there's this union here, this spiritual union, and when we go outside of that, it breaks that union. So by default, sexual immorality has already broken the union. And Jesus is saying, which is something that Paul himself would take up much later in 1 Corinthians 7, but Jesus is essentially saying, look, it's as if, when that happens, it's as if that spouse was dead. And you are free from your vow. And you can then marry another. There is one other exception that's laid out in the Bible, and Paul deals with that in 1 Corinthians 7.15, and that is when one spouse is abandoned by the other. Paul says, 1 Corinthians 7.15, if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances. Here Paul is describing where a person is married to one who is not a follower of Jesus. Now perhaps it's because the person disobeyed because we're called to marry in the Lord and only marry fellow believers, but some people sometimes don't heed that advice and they do so and Paul's saying, well, you committed yourself. You don't back out of that. Sometimes it's two unbelievers and one of them comes to know Christ and he says that does not give you an excuse. Do not back out of it. However, if the unbeliever abandons you and leaves the marriage, then all right, let him go. Now you are free to remarry. Those are the grounds that Jesus lays out, Jesus and Paul, Paul is an apostle of Christ, lays out for us. And what he's telling us, and I want to say a little bit more about that in just a moment, but what he's telling us looking back at our passage in the Sermon on the Mount is any other set of grounds then truly is illegitimate. Now we live in a culture that doesn't want to hear that because it wants to allow all sorts of other reasons why. But we have to listen to what Jesus says. It's right there. The problem is not with what we say. If you have a problem with that, it's a problem with what Jesus, the Lord of life says. And if we divorce for any other reason than these reasons, then God continues to see the marriage as still in effect. And so to remarry and to engage with another is in fact adultery. That's what Jesus is saying. Now, before we move on, I do want to address something that has come up again and again nowadays, much more so, and it's only because we're giving more attention to it, but not because it's a new problem. If we talk about biblical grounds for the divorce, sexual immorality on one hand, being abandoned by an unbeliever on the other, what do we do when we have an abusive spouse? What would we do when we have a husband, which is usually the case but not exclusively, or a wife? We do have women who are abusive towards men. What do we do when the spouse is abusive? Is that not grounds for divorce? And some pastors have really wrestled with this because they'll look and say, well, I'm looking at what it says here in the text, and I gotta be faithful to the text. Only sexual immorality, only abandonment by an unbeliever. Man, I don't see that there, so no, you can't. Others have said, well, you know what? These were only guidelines. Now, once you start saying that, you know that you can start saying that about a lot of other things in the Bible, but it sure makes sense for us that we should allow that for our grounds for marriage, so that's okay. Let me see if I can resolve this problem for you. I do believe that these two grounds that we read in Scripture are the only legitimate grounds for divorce. What do we do when...I'm just going to use the example of a wife who is being abused. That's sadly very common. So here's a woman who is being abused either physically or verbally or emotionally or a combination thereof, and this happens a lot more than sometimes we realize. We counsel then for the safety of the woman that she move out of the house, that she goes somewhere safe, right? These things do not mean that a person has to be beaten on or treated in the ways that you see sometimes is happening. Now, for the safety, we've moved the wife, perhaps the children, away from the abusive spouse. But we're not saying divorce. We're saying separate for a time and then and here's where the failure happens and why some people wrestle with this. The church then needs to turn to the abusive spouse and call that person to repentance and not be afraid to say what you are doing is wrong and you need to repent. And if that person repents, and remember repentance doesn't simply mean I'm sorry. It means a change in behavior. In this case, it means a person no longer is abusive. And if that person truly repents and turns back to the Lord and obeys Christ in the way that he or she should, then that marriage can come back together in the same house and live together, and that makes perfect sense, right? But what happens if he does not? And this is where we get into a problem because too many churches just kind of sit back and say, well, you know, whatever. No, we pursue the person who has not repented in church discipline and we continue calling that person to account and continue working with them. And as these things take a while sometimes, but sadly as you have seen even in our own church, it could come to the time where you come to excommunication. And when that person is excommunicated from the church because they have been a deliberate and continual in their unrepentance, Then when we say a person is excommunicated, we're putting them out of the church and we're saying, as Paul tells us, that we are to treat them as an unbeliever. And don't you see at that point, the spouse who has been abused can say, I have been abandoned by an unbeliever who has not come to join me, has not done what it takes to move back in with me by repenting of their sin. And the church needs to hold men and women, if need be, accountable. So you see, that's how when you look at these abusive situations, they do fall under the rubric of desertion. of desertion. But we do always want to give opportunities for men and women to repent and to change in their behaviors. But what Jesus, to get back to our passage, is trying to ultimately tell us is that the way that God intended as the designer of marriage is that it should be exclusive, it should be permanent. And when there is divorce, then, and divorce is always the cause, always the consequence of one person, or perhaps two people abandoning that ideal, then that person is undoing what God has intended. And it's this that Jesus is pushing back against. We read earlier from Malachi 2.16, the man who hates and divorces his wife, says the Lord the God of Israel, does violence to the one he should protect, says the Lord Almighty. Why would he equate that to violence, even if the man is not? physically beating the woman, why does it equate it to violence? Because the breaking apart spiritually of that one body, that one flesh, is a violent act. It may be a spiritually violent act, but it is a violent act and goes against what God has intended. Now, I recognize that all this is very unpopular, very unfashionable to talk about today because it goes against everything with our easy divorce that we offer today in our culture. But remember that the Sermon on the Mount is consistently calling us to a new counterculture, a different way of living that is not going to be the way the world lives. Marriage for God is permanent. That's His intention. But let's look at the second point because we have to answer the question, Why then is divorce so wrong? Why does Jesus push so hard against it? What is it about marriage that makes divorce so despicable? And that's our second point. We have to understand its significance. When we read in Genesis 1 how God created us, Genesis 1.27 says that God created us in his image. We are created in the image of God, which simply means, and by the way, it says both male and female he created them to reflect the image of God. It's not just men alone reflect God's image or even women alone, both in their uniqueness reflect the image of God. And one of the key ways in which we reflect God and his attributes and in his goodness and so on is in marriage. Marriage is one of the key ways in which we do that. And that's one of the reasons why the relationship that we have with God, which is a covenant relationship, is so very often in Scripture also represented as a marriage. We see in the Malachi passage that we read earlier and other parts of Scripture, Proverbs 2.17 is one example. that the husband-wife relationship is a covenant. And that covenant relationship reflects the covenant relationship that God has with us. And that's important to recognize. All throughout scripture, again and again and again, you'll see God being described as the husband of his people in a marriage contract with us. We already saw it in Hosea chapter 2, but it's also throughout the first three chapters of Hosea. You can find it in Isaiah 54, Isaiah 62, Jeremiah 3, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 23, Just all throughout and the image is always the same God loves us with a steadfast love with a love that doesn't let us go. And even when we are unfaithful, like an unfaithful wife who has committed adultery, when we commit adultery against God, it's essentially idolatry because we've turned to someone else. But even when that's the case, and we've shown ourselves unworthy of the love of God, God continues to be committed to us. That's the whole message of Hosea with his marrying the faithless woman. And that marriage relationship is embodied supremely according to the New Testament in the relationship that exists between Jesus and the church. That is the ultimate reflection, the ultimate picture that we have in our human marriage of what we are in Christ with Christ. And we see that, we saw it in Matthew 9. As we go through Matthew, we'll see it in chapter 22. We'll see it in chapter 25. It's in Revelation 19, Revelation 21. all throughout this picture that Jesus is the bridegroom and we, the church, we, his followers, are the bride. And again, just to emphasize, we read earlier from Ephesians chapter five, in fact, I think we'll take a look at it again, that the primary relationship is not husband and wife, so that Jesus and the church reflects it, but no, Jesus and the church and their relationship is primary and our human relationships reflect that. But it's interesting to see what Jesus is calling us to do in our marriage relationship based on what Christ has done for us. He says in Ephesians 5, Why? That he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. So here is that relationship being depicted for us. Jesus and his love for his bride gives his life for her. Goes to the cross for her. And in so doing, affects the forgiveness of our sins, makes us holy without blemish. He does that both by removing the guilt of sin, what we call justification, where we're declared right before God, and then in sending His Holy Spirit, He begins to make us holy, and that's what we see Him delivering us from the power of sin, what we call sanctification. The point is that Jesus is the one who has done that even when we've been rebellious, even when we've been adulterous, even when we've been idolatrous. This Jesus is the perfect husband who never lets us go. In fact, he pursues us with a ferocious love. As Romans 5, 8 says, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That's the good news. He doesn't wait until you are spotless. He marries you just as you are. But, as you sometimes hear people say, Jesus accepts you just as you are? No, he does not. He meets you where you are, just as you are, but then he makes you without blemish. He's committed to make us what we are not. That's the kind of love and devotion that Jesus has called us to do in our own marriages. That same sacrificial love, where the husband sacrifices his all for the love of his life. That's what Ephesians 5 is calling us to do. And how should we respond then when we see Jesus doing that for us? We should respond out of love and with love and devotion because of what He has done for us. So, when we understand then that marriage is to reflect that great union with Jesus, and then when we see to the extent of what Jesus was willing to go to, To keep that marriage intact even though we've been an adulterous and idolatrous people against him Then you can understand what jesus is calling us to do in our human relationships To keep those intact you can see why? Sin is so heinous I'm, sorry divorce is so heinous a sin in the eyes of jesus. So that's the significance of marriage It's a divine institution that reflects The deep deep deep love and commitment that jesus has for his people that sacrificial love where everything he does is to elevate us, his people, and we out of devotion then live for him. And when we understand that, we can understand why it speaks so much to the world when our marriages are intact because it points and it's a part of our witness to the world through about Christ. But we do need to deal with one last thing. And that is after having said all these things, we've spoken about the permanence of marriage and why it's so significant. The reality is divorce still happens. Sexual immorality is a reality in a broken world. So how should we respond? And that's our last point, that of reconciliation. One of the things that we see today is, look, marriages are tough. You've got two sinful people coming together. Problems are going to come. And when those problems come, sometimes people think, well, I'll take the easy way out, and that's divorce. I can just walk away. I can hand a certificate of divorce, almost as easy as it was in the days of Jesus. The problem is it's not really the easy way out. In fact, it actually is harder in the long run because when we just divorce rather than dealing with our problems, those problems do not go away. The elders here in this church have sometimes seen people who've come to us, people who have been married four or five different times. And the same problem follows them from marriage to marriage because rather than dealing with the root problem that's hurting that marriage, They just try to look for somebody else because they always think the problem is external to them. And then we have to say, you know what, it's you. The problem is you. So divorce is not the easy out that a lot of people think it is. What Jesus calls us to do then, rather than easy divorce, is to maintain that high view of marriage that we've been seeing here and then to engage in what's necessary to fix those problems. The New Testament scholar Don Carson once said that marriage and love are for the tough-minded. That really is the case. Marriage really needs to be a commitment. And when things get tough, Jesus says that we need to work out those difficulties and to do so in light of the scripture. Now, what does that mean? It means you get two people who come together who are sinful. One of the interesting things is when I do premarital counseling, and they're all coming, oh, I love you, oh, you're so cute, and all these wonderful things that they do to one another, and I've gotta tell them, look, at some point, I know you academically understand that that other person is a sinner, but at some point, you're gonna really experience it. There's going to be a point in your marriage where you wake up and you realize, that person is a sinner who is wronging me. And it hurts. And we've got to come to grips with it. And Jesus says that when that happens, when things get tough like that, then we have to work out our difficulties, but do so in the light of Scripture. What does that mean? That means that we have to be willing to see what Scripture is calling us to. You know, I've been doing this for 31 years. And every problem I've ever seen in marriage has its answer right here. And it's usually not a very complex answer. It's like, you know, when Robert Fulgham wrote his book in the 80s, some of you are older will remember, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. You know, besides not running with scissors, we already know that we ought to be kind. We already know that we ought to be forgiving. We already know that we ought to be putting the interests of others above our own, right? We know those things. And almost invariably what happens in those moments of counseling is the person hears what the word says, usually something along those lines, and they say, yeah, not me, him. Not me, her. That I do see. We have to humble ourselves and be willing to say, I'm a part of the problem too. To confess our sin, to repent of our sin, to ask for forgiveness from the other person and to move towards that reconciliation. It's not something that you need to do on your own. That's why we have elders, that's why we have pastors and we have counselors and people that can come alongside you. That's why you have moms and dads and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and all sorts of others. who can come alongside you, but we need to work first on trying to make things work out before we just say, well, this is not working. I'm out of here. We took vows. It's interesting that as soon as Jesus talks about divorce, next week he's going to talk about vows and oaths. We took vows before both God and man to not just live together with this person, but to love one another. And we were to do that for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, and sicknesses and health until, until when? Until death separates us. So yeah, it's tough. Marriage really is only for the tough-minded. And I remind you that love is not a feeling. Love is not a sentiment. There are times when you may not feel very loving to the other person. But love, as we see in Scripture, is an action. It is an act of your will. You can choose love. When we talk about cherishing the other person, nurturing the other person, being patient with them, seeking their good, those are not feelings. Those are all actions. You can choose to do those things. How do we do it? Well, we need to do it in the strength of Christ, the one who is our eternal husband, who empowers us and equips us through his spirit to do that which normally would not be natural to our own hearts. But He offers that to us. So let's first seek, people of God, when you find yourself at odds with your husband or with your wife, let's first seek to be reconciled, to fix this. And yes, it requires a deep, deep-rooted obedience to God and a commitment to the scripture to say that you're going to do these things. It requires that you humble yourself. And it requires that you, yes, may very well have to repent of your own sin. That's what God calls us to. But what happens then if there is sexual immorality? Jesus does make provision for that. What happens? Well, let me just first say this. What we read in verse 32 back in chapter 5 of Matthew is that Jesus says, when that person breaks that bond through sexual immorality, then you are permitted to divorce. Please notice that he's not requiring you to divorce. You are free to divorce, but you don't have to. I just need to say that because one of the things we often do is we counsel the offended party, the one who has been cheated on, if possible, to forgive. We call the offending party to repent. And by God's grace, we have seen over the years that when the one who has committed the adultery truly repents, marriages can be saved. Marriages can be fixed. Very often what we discover is that there has been some underlying issue that marriage that was never addressed. And so we take that opportunity to get under the hood and find what was broken. And once those things are put back into place, marriages can actually be stronger than they were before the adultery. It can happen. doesn't have to happen, and if a spouse has been wronged in this way, Jesus says, you have permission. But we would urge you to at least consider being reconciled and trying to make the marriage work. Again, John Chrysostom once said, he that is meek and a peacemaker and poor in spirit and merciful, how should he cast out his wife? He that is used to reconcile others as a peacemaker, how shall he be at variance with her that is his own? So we should at least try to make it work. That's how Jesus responded to our own immorality, to our own sin. He forgave us. He was willing to reach out to us. He was willing to woo us, that unfaithful bride, and we should try that too. But there are times when that does not work. And there are times when the spouse remains unrepentant. And in that regard, it becomes clear that the marriage has been irrevocably broken and Jesus does give permission. There is one other thing that we have to think about here and this is as we wrap this up but this is so important because here we've laid out what Jesus has to say and we've looked at the scripture as a whole and we see two provisions and only two provisions for divorce. What if you have been married and now divorced and it was not for one of these reasons? What if you were divorced for unbiblical grounds? You and your partner just decided for whatever reason, you know, we can't get along, Or we each have different career goals or whatever. Any sort of many reasons why you see people divorcing today that is not because of sexual immorality or abandonment. And then understanding again abandonment can refer to unrepentant abuse in a relationship. What do you do in a case like that? Look, these are always difficult cases. I've run into them over my years of ministry in a few cases and they're all different, so we can't just come out with a blanket statement. We always want to be sensitive, we always want to have charity in how we understand this. But we do recognize that we live in a fallen world and believers sin. So, sometimes it's after the fact that we get convicted, perhaps by your sermon like this, on, hey, my divorce was not biblical. I did not have grounds for this divorce. What do we do? Well, let's think of this. These are just general guidelines. Let's think of two possibilities. You've been married, you have divorced without biblical grounds, and both of you are still unmarried. If that's the case, then I would counsel that, first of all, you seek forgiveness before the Lord for the sin, like any other sin. You disobeyed. You divorced when you were not supposed to divorce. Seek forgiveness for that sin. And then, if you're unmarried, and he or she is unmarried, seek reconciliation. Because in the eyes of God, as Jesus himself said, he still sees you as being married. Seek to be reconciled. Now look, that's tough. That's tough because there's been some serious issues in your marriage that have caused you to end up in this divorce. But if you're convicted of this, as you hear what Jesus has to say, then also be convicted that Jesus won't let you go and he will equip you and he'll enable you to persevere and to address those things. And again, we have seen when there are two repentant people, marriages can be fixed and become stronger than they ever were. Now, what if you do do that? You pursue that reconciliation, and the other person does not want to be reconciled. You've been convicted of it, but they have not. Okay? Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 10. He says, essentially, for that period, you have to remain unmarried, because in God's eyes, you still are married. So he says, to the married I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife shall not separate from her husband a bit if she does. She should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband and the husband shall not divorce his wife. So even though you as a human being were divorced, God still sees you as married and he's calling you then if for some reason you have to separate. Again, this is why I think that we can look at physical abuse as falling under this category of desertion. You remain unmarried. But sooner or later that person will go off and do something. They won't just remain unmarried. You've sought reconciliation. And then that person remarries or is intimate with somebody else. Then now you have grounds for divorce. You see how that works? Now, the second situation. What if you had a divorce that was not biblical grounds, but one of you or both of you have remarried, right? And you are convicted and you look back and you say, wow, we should not have divorced, but now I'm in this new relationship. Jesus says, in verse 32, you're reading it, this is not Pastor John's interpretation, you're guilty of adultery because you were still married to that other person. So what do we say? Well, we do what we do in all of the times that we're convicted of our sin. We go before the Lord again and we confess our sin and we ask Him for forgiveness, reminding ourselves that there is ample forgiveness in Christ for this sin and all sins. So it starts with recognizing what I did was wrong, what he did, what she did, what we did was wrong, and we ask the Lord to forgive us. And there's real forgiveness. Now here's where it gets a little squirrely. I've actually heard some people say, then once you seek, just like we said a moment ago, if you're unmarried, ask for forgiveness, seek reconciliation. I've actually heard people say, well then you've got to divorce the new spouse and go back to the old. And my take on this is no. No, you do not do that. You do not keep breaking things again and again and again. And the reason for that is really quite simple. Even though you are forgiven, if you're truly repentant and you come before the Lord and confess that sin, you will be forgiven. Being forgiven does not erase the consequences of sin. Let me give you an analogy, and I'm not equating divorce with murder. Can I just use that as an extreme example? If you murder someone, you kill that person, and later, you're convicted of that, not convicted by the court, but in your heart, you're convicted of that, and you repent of that sin, you truly are sorry. Not for the fact that you're in jail or whatever, but repentant before God for what you have done. And you ask the Lord to forgive you. He forgives murderers. He forgave Paul. He forgave David. Lions of Scripture, right? But these men were murderers who were forgiven. You truly are forgiven. But does that bring the dead person back? No, there are consequences in a fallen world to our sin. If you were involved in an unbiblical divorce, and you truly understand that now, seek the Lord's forgiveness. But if you have remarried, no, I would not say Divorce your current spouse, break everything all over again and try to go back to the other. There are consequences for the sin of the past. The beauty about what Jesus does for us is he gives us a fresh start. And that's the thing as we come and wrap this up, is no matter what, every single one of us, from last week's sermon when we talked about adultery in our own hearts, sexual immorality even with our thoughts and in our minds, All the way to this is that we all have sinned. There's not a single person in this room who is not guilty. And we need to remember the ample forgiveness that we find in Christ if we're truly repentant. We are being called to a new way of living and we've already screwed it up along the way. But Jesus comes and forgives us. He's the spouse who never lets us go, the husband who hangs on to us. So if you find yourself having heard these things and saying, oh boy, am I in trouble? then come to Christ. If you're an unbeliever, if you've never come to Christ before, we invite you to come so that you can know the true forgiveness that comes for all of your sin. And for us who are followers of Jesus and who recognize our failures, then come to Him again. Find forgiveness in Him again. And remember that He, and He alone, can give you a fresh start, not only in your life, but in your marriage. If you're wrestling with these things and don't know where to move forward in your marriage, talk to me, talk to some of our elders. We'd be happy to talk with you. There are people that we can point you to, there are professionals that deal with this all the time. There is real hope for your marriage. And there's really real hope for people who have been divorced and for people who have been divorced even unbiblically. There is forgiveness in Christ. And how do we respond to that forgiveness? Well, you remember what Jesus said to the woman who had been caught in adultery? Doesn't say that there was any question about her adultery. She really had done it. And when Jesus told her in John 8, 11, go and sin no more. May God, by his grace, enable us to do that as we repent. Let's pray. Father in heaven, these are difficult words of Jesus spoken into a culture that wants to define marriage and define divorce on its terms and not yours. But you have called us to this beautiful relationship that reflects the love that Christ has for us. And we have confessed early in the service that so often we have already screwed that up. Father, we have people here who have gone through terrible divorces, who have been betrayed by their spouses. And perhaps we also have folks here who have gone through divorces that were not biblically grounded. But we pray again and in all cases that we would once again be reminded that there is forgiveness in Christ and that he never lets us go. If we're the ones who've been betrayed, he will grab a hold of us as the one husband who is perfect in every way and provide for our needs and care for us. We pray, Father, that as a church we would live that out. That as we do as Paul says in Galatians 6 to bear one another's burdens, that we would do so to those brothers and sisters who have suffered the ill effects of divorce. And for those, Father, who are married, we pray that we would again take very seriously what Jesus has taught us about the character and the nature of marriage. And we give you thanks, Father, for the many marriages that are intact because we know the hard work and the sacrifice and the commitment that those take. But in the end, we give you the glory for your equipping and your enabling for those things to happen. We pray that your church would be very clear-minded about this. especially that you would give church leaders the willingness to call people to repent, men and women, as the case may be. To call them to faithfulness and to call us to humility, all of us, as we recognize our own sin in all of our relationships.