Our scripture reading this morning is from the Old Testament, and you can find its location there in your bulletins. Before we read these verses, let's ask God's blessing upon His Word. Our Father in Heaven, as we are, some of us, tired and sleepy for getting up earlier this morning than we're accustomed to, and perhaps being out last night, We do pray that nonetheless you will take our minds and help us to attend to your word as we hear it read this day in our hearing. In this we ask in Christ's name, amen. When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house. When she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year, and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. Very early in the scriptures we are introduced to husband and wife and the persons of Adam and Eve. And it's in the context where God has said to them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. It is to be the closest of all human ties, closer than that of parent and child. So that God says, for this reason shall a man leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall be one flesh." A union that we properly call a covenant of marriage, meant to be permanent for as long as both live, and meant to be exclusive. And then throughout the rest of Genesis, we read the contemporary account of marriage. You know, if you read contemporary experts who've studied marriage, what they will tell you is there is no one single institution of marriage. It varies by society. It's one thing in ancient India, it's one thing in Japan, it's one thing in China, it's one thing in Europe. And we Christians are inclined to say, no, no, no, that's not true. But Genesis actually says, yes, it is true. There is a God-given institution of marriage that then gets distorted by human sin and by human society. so that, in fact, you do have places where they practice polygamy. You do have instances where infest is allowed and practiced. You do have instances where there is very little faithfulness between husband and wife and some people wanting to say, well, there need not be. You certainly have countries like ours where large numbers of the marriages end up in divorce and tragedy. You have Places like India before the English got there where when a husband died the wife's life was presumed to be at an end and she was burnt on his funeral pile along with him. You have places like China with the large family institution that the missionaries ran into that when you got married you joined your husband's household and you were under the authority of his mother and the mother-in-law ran the whole show. You can find all sorts of varieties of marriage. Now, moderns with no sense of natural law, except what remnants are left in their consciences, and moderns with no respect for God's revelation will say, well look at all this variety, there is no such thing as marriage and therefore we can do whatever we want with ourselves now. By the way, the latter doesn't follow either, but anyway, that's what the claim is. We Christians are somewhere in between. We say there is a God-given pattern for marriage. One man, one woman looking towards children, exclusive and permanent. And when you discuss marriage, if you end up at the water core or with neighbors as a political issue, this is now a central political issue in this country. What is marriage? Focus on the question, what is marriage? And notice how people confuse it with friendship. At this point, that's what's going on. I just read in the paper that the state of Maryland had a marriage, a gay marriage bill through the senate. The governor said he would sign it. Couldn't round up enough votes in the assembly. We're still a little short of legislatures actually passing this through. Judges, however, are telling us what to do. Issue they won't face. Question, what is marriage? We Christians know the answer. Marriage is a man and a woman, for life, looking towards children, exclusive. When you get to Exodus, which is what we looked at last week, what we see is the continuing vitality of marriage despite all of the distortions that you see evil has introduced throughout the book of Genesis. And we particularly see the vitality of marriage in the birth of Moses. As God had said to the serpent, I will take the seed of the woman and he will crush your head. And you'll notice that in the account of Moses' birth, the big emphasis is on Moses' mother. It's his mother who makes him a little ark to put in the river. It's his mother who sends the older sister to watch. It's his mother who then raises the child for Pharaoh's daughter. Then Moses, of course, is sent back by God to deliver Israel. And that's a foretaste of what God does with Samuel. You know, Samuel's the first of the prophets and begins to deliver Israel from the Philistines. And to the end of the period are the judges of that anarchy and to look towards the anointing of David and Samuel anoints him, that great man after God's own heart. And in the story of Samuel's birth, who's the central figure? Mother. Hannah. Hannah wants a child. She goes and she prays. Eli says the Lord is urging. And then we come to the New Testament. The first thing we read in the New Testament about Jesus is Mary and Joseph are betrothed. And then an angel appeared to Mary. And the emphasis of course is on Mary. Why? The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. But in all three families we have the basic structure of marriage. Husband and wife, husband and wife, husband and wife. There's one main law in the book of Exodus given by God to protect marriage, and that is the seventh commandment. You shall not commit adultery. And then the related commandment, part of the tenth commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. What we're going to look at this morning is some of the things, it's not exhaustive, some of the things that the rest of the law say about marriage. In other words, what's in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy where marriage is concerned. And you may have picked up, when we read in Mark's Gospel, one of the questions that comes to Jesus has to do with the marriage law, and it's from Deuteronomy that the question comes. So, we're going to look at four things. The law's rules about whom you should marry. Second, the question of divorce. Third, marriage and war. And fourth, husband-wife relations again. Rules on whom you should marry. Deuteronomy 7, verse 3. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. That's the law given to Israel as they go in to Canaan, and here are all the Canaanites. They are not to marry the Canaanites. One of the things long observed by lots of people is that when, back when most people lived in villages, most marriages took place outside the village. That is, if a whole bunch of boys and girls grew up together in the same village, even if they're not brothers and sisters, they felt enough like brothers and sisters, they tend to marry outside the village. Right? And that's why I look at this congregation and I say, See, when Joe wanted a wife, he went off to the village of Lisbon and got somebody. And when Will wanted a wife, he went off to some little town west of Philadelphia, towards Harrisburg. Mechanicsburg? Mechanicsburg. Whoever heard of Mechanicsburg? So we're from Lancaster, right. When Alex wanted a wife, He went for, you know, he went for somebody sophisticated from Boston, right? It's a big city, right? But you notice it's outside. There'd be a temptation when they go into the land of Canaan, you know, within these tribes, they've been marching around together for a long time. And, oh, I mean, I have heard young people in this church speak of some other young people in the opposite sections of this church basically this way. Oh, well, Tim. Well, the reason they speak this way is, it may not be, Tim, it's just all that obnoxious, it's just, I've known him for 20 years, what are you talking about? So, the temptation would be, marry one of these cute day and night women. The law says, no, you may not do that. And I'm making it sound funny, but I think actually there would be something of this temptation, and the law says, don't do this, why? Because the surest way, the surest way right out of the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is to marry outside that circle of faith. The New Testament says the same thing. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. I think more people, outwardly at least, are lost to the kingdom of God than lost to the church through marrying somebody who has no faith than any other path out. We can blame college education, we can blame public education, we can blame the parents, we can blame the kids themselves. I'm as much as anything else inclined to say you married the wrong person and they need your heart away. That's what the scriptures say will happen and you can see it and observe it. All of you who aren't married, whatever you do, do not marry outside the Christian faith. It will be the biggest mistake of your life to marry outside the Christian faith. However, otherwise compatible, by the way, the scriptures only have one test for compatibility in marriage. Same faith. That's the only scriptural test for compatibility. If you have the same faith, you should be able to work out how you live. There may be other issues of wisdom, I'm not going to deny that, but the only test of compatibility is saying faith. Also prohibited. You can go to Leviticus 18 and 20. There is an exhaustive list of possible marriages to people who are too closely related to you, so that you're basically marrying yourself again because you're so much alike. Brothers are not to marry sisters, and sisters are not to marry brothers. The term for it is incest. I was looking through this and kind of got my eye. It says, you may not marry your aunt. And I thought, who in the world would ever think of marrying an aunt? But then I realized if you have an oldest child with a child and the oldest has a younger sister 18 years younger, this is not so impossible an imagination. There were special rules for priests. The priests were to be specially careful about whom they married. And this is what makes the book of Hosea, by the way, so remarkable. We won't go into that this morning. Priests were not allowed to marry women who were divorced. They were not allowed to marry women who had been prostitutes. They were not allowed to marry women who were defiled. And I suspect that means simply they're not virgins at the time they married. And this is because the Lord says in the life of the temple, things are to be kept holy and outwardly pure as an indication of the purity that he requires in his worship and looking forward to the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. There's one type of marriage that is required, and this is something that I never heard of any Christians practicing, but it's required, and it's in Deuteronomy chapter 25 verse 3. 5. If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the widow of the dead man shall not be married to a stranger outside the family. Her husband's brothers shall go into her, take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. The term for that is levirate marriage. which does not mean it comes from the book of Leviticus. It actually comes from the book of Deuteronomy. It has to do with a Latin word meaning brother. And the law says if my brother is married and has no children and he dies, I have to marry his widow. I have not faced that problem myself. and sometimes you can tell from the book of Ruth men did not want to do this. And this is the basis for the question that the Sadducees put to Jesus as we read it there in Mark chapter 12. You remember the story of seven brothers and the first one marries a wife, no kids. The second one marries her, all seven marry her, none of them have, and then they ask the question so in the resurrection whose wife will she be? Now the point of the question is to make fun of the resurrection. That's actually the point of the question. But Jesus' answer adds our further knowledge about marriage. And that is, here it is very clearly stated, marriage is only for this life. At death, our marriages end. And occasionally I'll hear prayers of families that there's this kind of a standard way of saying it. It wasn't in my family. I never heard it growing up in my family, but something about the circle of the family would not be broken in heaven or something along those lines. I thought everybody would be truly people of faith. I'm not saying it quite how I've heard it, but I've heard it several times. And what's the difficulty with that prayer is the circle of the family breaks at death. Now, we pray that we are all in God's presence for eternity together. But I will not be Gretchen's husband for all eternity. And she will not be my wife for all eternity. Here is where the Mormons are quite wrong. The Mormons teach that marriage is for eternity. This is one of their sales points. When they go to a husband and wife and they say, wouldn't you like to be in love and married for all eternity. Now, husbands, how many of you would dare with your wife sitting there next to you when the Mormon missionary comes to your house to say, God forbid. I mean, you don't want to answer that way. So, that's one of the Mormon missionary sales points on this, but it is flatly contrary to what Jesus says that we've just read. So, marriage is for this life. And I will add, there is, this is a sort of not altogether cheerful observation, this is one of the bases for Christians saying to people who just don't get along all that well together as husband and wife, Christ does not allow you to divorce. It's not an eternal sentence. It's only for this life. And this life, from the perspective of eternity, is going to look short and brief. Actually, this life, from the perspective of 65 or 70, looks pretty short and brief. It may not feel that way when you're 25, but by the time you get to be old, it begins to look back and say, boy, didn't that go fast? Marriage, move now from rules on who to marry. Where is the clock that belongs back there? Put it down. It should be up. For your sakes, it should be up. I don't want to preach and keep doing this. Because then you'll all do the same thing. But I want to be able to see the clock. Thank you, Joe. Divorce. In the King James Bible, there was a bad translation of Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, that made it sound as though the rule was, when you divorce your wife, be sure to make it legal and proper. And you can go back and look at King James, and that's how it sounds when you read it. That is not actually the point of 24 verse 1. Let me paraphrase those four verses that we read. Let me go this way. When you decide to divorce your wife, and you go ahead and do it, and she goes and marries somebody else, and then he can't stand her either, and he divorces her, you can't marry her again, that would be disgusting. That's my paraphrase. So the point of the law isn't so much about even how to do divorce, or to do it legally, it accepts this is happening, it's happening, and the law is aimed at not making it so outrageously corrupt that you marry a wife, divorce her, she marries somebody else, he divorces her, and then you go back and marry her again. Now, you'll notice there's no barrier until you divorce your wife, and then she doesn't remarry, and you marry her again. In God's eyes, you probably weren't divorced in the first place. So, that's fine. But if she's gone on and married somebody else, now you're compounding the breaking of the Seventh Commandment. And the Bible is very clear, this is just awful. And as I read this I wondered if this is some sort of ancient version with a little more time span to some of the modern goings on in this country of wife swapping. Brief story from when we were in Arizona from my first cousin. Unwarily fell into a party of six or eight couples. discover that the deal is you put all your keys on the table and you mix up the keys for the husband, they pick up a key in any old car, and then for the knife they get the car and the wife that goes with the car. I hope you're revolted at that. It goes on in this country. And that would be an extreme modern version of I have her this week, you have her next week, I have her the week after. Divorce is not sanctioned, therefore, here. It is simply acknowledged that's how people are acting. It was sufficiently common in Jewish society that the Mishnah, which is, what to say, a Jewish commentary on the law, rules associated with it, had a standard form. And the form was, behold, you are free to marry any man. I like the nice, generous sound of that. It's like you call the worker into your office and say, you are now free to get a job any place. Behold, you are now free to marry any man. By the way, the Muslim law is a three-fold, I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. You have to say it three times. In the Christian world, historically, there was no such form. Why? Because Jesus' teaching said, you're not to divorce. except for reasons of, and the big word is pornea, we won't go into that further. But, in the Christian world, you didn't have any standard way like the Jewish and the Moslem world. Now, in verse 24, verse 1, there's something where nobody knows for sure what Moses is referring to. Suppose he marries a wife and then she finds no favor because he has found some uncleanness in her. And he writes a certificate of divorce. What's meant by, find some uncleanness in her? This was, since it wasn't clear, a source for a great deal of writing of commentaries by the ancient Jews and by modern Christians. If you look up this verse someplace, you'll find lots of discussion. What might it mean? I'm not going to give you the eight or ten suggestions scholars have come up with. But I will tell you that in Jesus' day, this was a sharp debate among the Jews. For what reasons may a man divorce his wife? And on the permissive end is a fellow by the name of Kellel who basically says anything about the wife that displeases her husband is good enough, he may get rid of her. Burn the toast. I told you not to burn the toast. Too many burnt toasts, you're divorced. Whatever it is. On the unpermissive side was a fellow named Shammai. who said it refers only to she's committed adultery. This is the question that they put to Jesus which we didn't read but we've read other times. They put the question to Jesus and I'll read it to you in Matthew chapter 19 verse 3. The Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying to him is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason. Alright, whose interpretation are they asking about? That's Hillel's interpretation. They're asking, Jesus, do you agree with Hillel? The reason that's a put-Jesus-on-the-spot question is Jesus, on some things, looks really lax to the Pharisees. For example, on fasting, Sabbath day keeping, who he keeps company with, Jesus looks really lax. Is he like Hillel on the issue of divorce? By the way, notice we mostly would be on the side of the Pharisees, actually, on the intent of this question. What's Jesus' answer? Well, his answer is to basically explain the whole reason there's even any reference to divorce in the Law of Moses. It's there because people's hard hearts mean that they start living with a husband or wife and they just insist on holding on to a hard heart to the other one. Hard heart sometimes being unfaithful, hard heart being sometimes I won't forgive. You know, if there's any place that Jesus' command to forgive 70 times 7 comes into play, it's when you're living with the same person for 40 or 50 years. 70 times 7. And sometimes people just have hard hearts and they remember and remember and remember. And they can list all the faults and the sins of the other person. Often they're quite true. And so they say, all right, you know what, we'll just divorce. Sometimes it's mutual. Sometimes in our society it's the wife. In a lot of societies it's only the man who has that sort of initiative that he can carry it out. Jesus says it's because of the hardness of your heart that Moses had that law there. But, it wasn't there in the beginning. That wasn't part of God's plan for marriage. And refers, as we've seen before, back to that passage. By the way, Jesus is an indirect no there to Hillel's interpretation. No, it's not for any old reason. In fact, here he gives no reasons at all. I remember growing up in the 1950s in this country, If you're old enough, you may remember, I was just reading an article that sort of describes the country this way, especially those of us who went to the public schools. And in the 50s, you either went to the public schools, or you went to the parochial schools, the Catholic schools, or if you were really well off, you went to Penn Charter, or some of those schools in this area. But those were your choices. Schools like Delaware County Christian School haven't been founded yet. And growing up, I grew up with basically three kinds of people, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. That was the actual understanding of the sociology of American life in most places was you've got those three commitments, Catholic, Protestant, or Jew. And there were just a few standard markers of the difference between these different groups. And one of the things we Protestants understood was, in the Catholic Church, no divorce allowed. Protestant Church by that time was all over the map on the subject. But Catholic Church, no divorce allowed. And I can remember conversations, this was one of the three or four things in the Catholic Church teaching that was really unpopular in the Protestant and Jewish world. Very unpopular. And I would go on to say, Jesus' teaching in general, has often been quite unpopular. It was unpopular with his own disciples. Do you remember their question after he said, well, in the beginning, God had no place for divorce? One of them says, well, who would dare to get married in that case? That's how unpopular that teaching is. It's unpopular with people who don't happen to like their marriages at the moment. Why do we insist on it in the Christian church? Can anybody give me one good reason something that unpopular gets insisted on in the Christian church? You can't give me one good reason? Why do we insist that you can't just say to your husband or wife, I've had enough of you good-bye? That's why. That's why the church hangs on to it. The church hangs on to it because that is the teaching of our Lord. And therefore we say, Other things have to be accommodated to his teaching, not the other way around. That's what makes us his disciples. We accommodate ourselves to his teaching, not his teaching to what seems good and right and reasonable and necessary and essential in our eyes. Now, what about civil law? You know, it's at this point that a number of ancient Christian commentators observe that Civil law cannot get too far away from the moral level of the society that you rule, or you will have to impose a tyranny. Aquinas makes this observation. Calvin makes the same observation. A wise ruler can push his populace a certain distance beyond their current moral understanding, but you can't go all the way too hard against your own populace. So, there may be some necessity for certain civil laws that give permission that aren't there within the scriptures, and there is a short summary term for that. Because of the hardness of the hearts of many Americans, we have the laws that we do at this point on divorce. Third topic in the law, marriage and war. Deuteronomy chapter 24 verse 5 right after the word on divorce is this law 24 verse 5. When a man has taken a new wife he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. Every Christian my age who comes out of high school during the Vietnam War Knew that verse. I thought it was a good verse. I like that verse. Now I want to point out something about that verse. It was more extreme in Israel than it ever was in the U.S. Here's why. In Israel, when war comes, it's from neighbors that are really close, and this is urgent. It's from the Philistines to the west. It's from the Moabites to the east. It's from the Syrians to the north. It's from the Amalekites to the south. War is pressing on a very tiny little piece of land. It's much more like year 1700 in the middle of Massachusetts, and the Indians begin to make a lot of noise, and you're worried on the frontier. And when that happens, you want all the men as, you want everybody there to defend you. That's the situation for Israel. And yet, the law says, if a man's been married for a year, you can't call him for war. I like this just as an expression of limited government. If the government can't call you as a young man for war when it has the war right there at its borders, then that government is limited in what it can demand from you. One year after marriage, he is to stay home, bring happiness to his wife. All the commentators on the website said, yep, that first year of marriage, very important. You want to get established. move into new routines of husband and wife, put all your efforts into your marriage, that's where they need to be. Why? So that when difficulties do come, you have things well-established between you and the marriage will be solid. Notice how this comes right after the law on divorce. We don't want divorce. What do we do? Well, for the first year at least, we take the pressure off the new husband and wife. Law can't call you even for war. So that they can become established in love and unity. I would add, I suspect also and produce a child, if so God wills, in that first year. Is there any application to that today? Well, we don't have a draft right now, so the government is not calling people up to war. Our wars at the moment are a long way away. They're not urgent like the Philistines. We may have to fight them, but they're a long way away. I'd read this advice. First year of marriage, limit your business trips. First year of marriage, limit the hours of your work if you have some flexibility. First year of marriage, that's not a good year to be elected an elder or a deacon. First year of marriage, make it your aim to settle into that marriage with love and kindness and happiness. And so notice behind this there's my implication for the governments. A government is wise if it devises its policy so that there will be thriving families in its borders. A government is unwise if it puts so much pressure on the successful families that they begin to break apart all in the name of sharing stuff with the unsuccessful. There is danger in too much of that. This isn't to say that those who are blessed do not owe something to everyone, but there is a danger in a government putting so much pressure, financial especially. By the way, our government is much more supportive now of married couples raising children than it was when my oldest two children were young. And if you ask me something, I can give you all the ways in which The American government now has, I would say in many ways, come to its senses where family is concerned in its policies compared to where it was in the 1970s in particular and the early 80s. Last, husband-wife relations in the law. When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year, and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken." Husbands, what should you be aiming for in your marriage? Isn't it that you have a happy wife? If the whole purpose of that year off or more is to bring happiness to the wife, that implies that a husband's calling, among other things, is to bring happiness to his wife. Ephesians 5 verse 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. Let's read from Titus 2 verse 4. The older women, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. That they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, good, and so on. It's an interesting calling for the older women in the church. Say to the younger women, now you be sure you love your man. Say to the younger women, now you be sure you love your children. Say to the younger women, watch your tongue, be discreet. Say to the younger women, now be chaste, watch how you dress, and so on. Notice the commandment is actually both ways. Husbands to love their wives, wives to be taught how to love their husbands. In detail. I would say that very few new husbands know immediately how and what will make their wives happy. And I'm guessing a lot of wives have things to learn about how to make their husbands happy. That first year should be focused on that. But then the whole marriage should be. Husband-wife relations, there's also the passage, and we won't look at it again this morning because I have earlier, Numbers 30. Wife free to make a vow, it stands until the day the husband hears of it, and if on that day he says, you may not keep the vow, then for the sake of family unity, she's released from the vow. And so the picture you have from the law is of a family with unity established by the husband being head, but freedom, the wife is free to make her own vow to the Lord without first going to the husband saying, may I please, may I please. That can get rather repressive for a wife. and on both sides to be characterized by love as husband seeks to make his wife happy and wife seeks to make her husband happy as they love each other. Marriage is a critical life decision second only to the decision what will you do regarding Jesus Christ. I've prayed, as I've told you, basically only two things for my children, that they would be faithful to the Lord all their lives and that they would marry within the Christian faith. The state of your marriage is central to how happy you are in life. Proverbs 21 verse 9, warning, better to dwell in a corner of a housetop than in a house shared with a contentious woman. Can you reverse that? Better to dwell in the corner of a house up than in a house shared with a contentious man. I think so. Verse 19. Better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman. Chapter 19, verse 13. A foolish son is the ruin of his father and the contentions of a wife are a continual dripping. Chapter 12, verse 4. An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones. Everybody understands this. The state of your marriage is central to your well-being in this life. Strong marriages produce strong societies. Husbands are called to reflect in their lives the one husband, even Jesus Christ, with love, protection, and care. A wife's calling is to reflect the church, with respect and love and embracing her husband. And the law wants to protect marriage. How does the law protect marriage? There's a commandment, no adultery. There's a rule, you can't go to war that first year of life. And there is an abhorrence in the scripture of divorce. We are to marry only believers with whom we share our deepest commitments. And we are to aim at love and unity. hard as that sometimes is to maintain.