Let's read our text. And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, have you not read? I almost laugh when I read that phrase. Anyway, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore 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. They said to him, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? He said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. And from the beginning, but from the beginning, it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery. The disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. But he said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. Our Father in heaven, we pray, give us understanding of this text. give us submission of heart and mind to our blessed Savior and the instructions he gives us from his word. We thank you for giving us this text that corrects us in our thinking. We pray your blessing upon Pastor Jones as he teaches us from 1 Corinthians 7 and some of the things that this text brings into that text. We ask your help in these things in Christ's name, amen. Well, this may seem an odd text for a prayer meeting homily. However, remember that in these homilies, they usually arise from the unison reading chosen for the sermon. And so that's why we're looking at this. Pastor Jones chose this as an introduction to the sermon or as an explanation of some part of the sermon. We'll see that as he preaches. I won't be able to fully deal with this text this morning, but I'll try to glean some things from it that will be helpful to us and for our consideration. It really is an amazing text. In that attempt, let's start with a look at verse 10. If such is the case of a man with his wife, the disciples said to him, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry. Here they gave an objection to our Lord. He was training these men to be apostles, but they have much to learn. Remember that in Christ's interaction with the Pharisees, He was always teaching these men, instructing them in doctrine, in hermeneutics, and in ethics. Sometimes they were slow in their learning. But they would become the leaders of the early church, giving Christ's church both His literal words and the words from the Spirit. And so they would be teachers throughout the history of the church. But remember, before Acts 2 especially, They had so much to learn. They had to learn to trust the Lord Jesus Christ more than their own presuppositions about the scriptures and their own assumptions about God and about Messiah and about the nature of God's kingdom. And they made many mistakes along the way. They held many errors that Jesus corrected to prepare them to be ministers and to carry out the ministries he's planned for them. You just have to remember Matthew 16. Peter makes that great confession. You are the son of the living God, the Christ. And then Christ tries to explain to him how he must go to Jerusalem and die. And then what does Peter do? Can you imagine this? He steps up to rebuke Christ and confront him. And Christ says to him, get behind me, Satan. Your mind is not where it should be. And then even all the way up to Acts 1, he still has to correct them about their presuppositions on the nature of the kingdom of God. Their struggles help us to understand a basic principle. It is supremely difficult for sinners to understand the things of God. And if these men needed his help and his instruction and correction, how much more do we? Okay, well let's go on. To the text. Verse three, and the Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? The Pharisees schemed to undermine Christ's authority by challenging his conformity to God's word, especially Mosaic law. What they did is they failed to grasp to whom they spoke. For He, the Incarnate Word, stood before them, the one who gave Moses God's words. Here is the one who has a thorough going understanding of these words. But they failed to grasp to whom they spoke. They were moved by envy, most likely, jealousy to some extent at the attention Christ's preaching and miracles gained among the multitudes who followed Him. And they were caught. They were caught in the slavery of self-confidence and lust for the honor of other men. Get this in your mind. This is a wicked and evil slavery that still Cape takes men captive. They were not teachable and they were not true worshippers. And they set themselves before these people as teachers and as worshippers in truth. Christ must confront them and expose them. The Pharisees' question about marriage, in fact, avoided their own errors. They had worked hard with all kinds of plausible arguments to make divorce very easy. They, in fact, were captured in sins as they sought to trap Him. As if in their thinking, can we trick Him into contradicting the Mosaic Law? They underestimated their supposed prey and became the object of a very revealing rebuke. Christ took them back to the basic principles of life. We have a creator. He orders life as he sees fit. And we are responsible to know accurately his will and obey it. He alone has the right of mastery. So we read in verse four, he answered. Have you not read? I think there's kind of a Rhetorical sarcasm there. I don't know if that's the right way to describe it. But talk about confronting these men who profess to be professionals. Who read all the time the word of God. Have you not read? He's not being easy with them. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Right back to the most basic things in Genesis 2. And he 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 no man separate. Oh, I love these words. His creation, his command, his intentions are clear and they're good. And these Pharisees did not understand this. We must learn this from Him. We must know and remember these basic principles revealed by our Creator God. And if we will, it will deliver us from much sin. These are good things for us to meditate upon regularly, what Christ rebuked the Pharisees with. In addition, You will attain much wisdom and deliver yourself from great heartache if you will heed these words. It will deliver you from the confusion and chaos of your world. We must understand this, that Jesus Christ was dealing with spiritual fools. These men are spiritual fools. And so he rebuked them. If we will listen to this rebuke, we will attain much wisdom and deliver ourselves from great heartache. They thought they had cornered him. Verse seven, they said to him, they're going to double down on their foolishness. Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away? They thought they had cornered him. They thought they could, well, Jesus very easily parried their thrust, pierced them with the sword of God's word, laying bare their hypocrisy, declaring God's will, indicting them for their sin of making divorce easy for themselves. So we read in verse 8, And he said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, and from the beginning, 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. They had made the classic blunder of sophists and hypocrites. They attempted to trap him. To use God's word, to contradict God's word. But Christ Jesus knew what he was about. They're the fools. They're the ones who lack wisdom. Well, I must hasten on. While this interchange is going on, the disciples listened and watched. We see that scenario over and over in the Gospels. They understood that Christ once again had bested the Pharisees. However, they themselves struggled with his doctrine. And they reacted against this firm declaration of God's law. We read in verse 10, the disciples said to him, if such is the case, a man with his wife, it is probably better not, it's better not to marry. They were dominated with ignorance and worldliness themselves. Instead of asking for instruction, though maybe that's inherent there, I hope, they had voiced their objection to Christ's doctrine. They had not learned yet well the lesson of humility, the lesson of becoming teachable, the lesson of submitting their beliefs carefully to God's word under Christ's instruction. But they're learning. I think Christ was much more gentle with them than He was with the disciples. And so we see with them, as they came to Christ and they needed to submit their beliefs to Him, that we need to follow with them ourselves. We need to submit our beliefs to Christ's Word. You need to submit your beliefs to Christ's Word. Their mistake? Maybe seem to be easy to understand for us, but we often fail to do the very thing they failed to do ourselves. They needed to discipline their mind and their soul with God's word. And to search these things out, that's the very thing we need to do. We need to listen to what was going on in this text and see ourselves the need to discipline our mind, discipline our soul, use the Word of God, use our sound confession to instruct ourselves thoroughly. I'm 72 years old. I'm aghast at times at how often I have missed texts and how often I still find myself getting new instruction from old texts that I've read many times. Well, I don't want to be too hard on the disciples here. These men were more like the Pharisees and they realized. It is no wonder then that they failed to submit to their master, this hypocritical way of thinking had seeped into their thinking. And Christ must confront it. They must cause these men to consider carefully their way of thinking. So if they would come to repentance from their worldly way of thinking that pervaded their very culture. I think that's why we have verse 11, but he said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. That should provoke them to pray and to seek his face. Let me close with this. We must think of our own situation. Ask yourself, what worldly ways of thinking have seeped into my way of thinking? And I would submit to you, you must do that every day. Every day. You live in the United States of America. You live in North Texas. You live in this area. And there are ways of thinking that seep into your thinking that are worldly. that are not submissive to the word of God. We have a similar complication to what they had. They lived in a very religious culture that was steeped in error. And so do we. Let's don't miss this. Ours is different, but it has a similar dynamic. Many around us think that they understand God's Word, its doctrine and ethics, especially about marriage, but they have either not studied these kinds of texts, or they have unquestioned presuppositions that have distorted their understanding of it. That's what was going on with the disciples, wasn't it? What goes on with us? Let's pay attention to it. Let's ask for wisdom to discern and see these things. We live in a world of such errors regarding Christian doctrine and ethics. You must be very careful that you do not adopt these yourselves and you must be very careful to correct them within yourself because you have adopted some of them. You're tempted to adopt them constantly. cling to Jesus and his word, identify basic principles like we have here in verse 4, 5, and 6, and like we have here in verse 8 and 9. These are wonderful basic principles. In grace, our Savior gave us his word. He gave us sound preaching. He gave us a good confession. Let's use them to train ourselves. And pray regularly to this end, fervently, that our Father will deliver us from doctrinal and ethical errors, especially like these that we have here in the text before us. And pray the Lord's Prayer sincerely. When we pray together the Lord's Prayer, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're praying. Give us understanding in Matthew 19. Deliver us from the very errors that the Pharisees fell into and the disciples fell into.