The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. Luke chapter 16 and we are picking up in verse 14. This is the reading of God's Word. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men. but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news that the kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. This is the reading of God's word. Please have a seat. Let's begin in prayer. Our father, we thank you for your word. And we know that everywhere in your word, you intend to bless us. You intend to help us. And in this passage, in this challenging passage, we pray that you would accomplish your will for us. We pray that by your Holy Spirit, the weakest words would be turned into our eternal good. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So chapter 16 is just an incredible challenge of a chapter as far as the scriptures go. Last two weeks, we spent considering the radical ideas that Jesus had, particularly about the use of money, particularly about how we could trade in our temporary blessings. And like that shrewd manager, we could trade them for the blessings of eternity. It took us two weeks to work through that, and we got some very practical points out of it. Jesus was very clear. He wants his people to care about the poor. He wants his people to care about the needy, and to actually do something. Having a heart that does nothing doesn't add up too much. He wants us to have the heart and the actions. And he concluded, and this is where we need to pick up the transition, he concluded by telling his disciples that they could not serve both God and money. Said they must choose. Well, as it turns out, the Pharisees were still within earshot. Maybe this is just a straight continuation ever since chapter 15 when they were there scoffing because the sinners were coming near, or maybe it's just another circumstance, but the Pharisees are still in earshot and they hear these teachings about money and they ridicule Jesus. Why? Luke helpfully fills in because they loved money. You see, Pharisees had a reputation and they had a reputation for being wealthy and proud. And they thought that their money, that their wealth, that it was the result of having so faithfully served God. And so in other words, they saw no problem with loving God and loving money. No, the only problem they had was with Jesus for teaching that there was any problem at all. And so they ridicule the Son of God for his teaching about money. How arrogant do you have to be to mock the Son of God? But they absolutely arrogantly mock Jesus because they're convinced. They are absolutely convinced that how they are living, what they are believing, they believe they are completely right. Absolutely right. And so Jesus turns and he's going to confront his scoffers. He doesn't always do this. He's doing it now. And he turns to them and he says, you are those who justify yourselves before men. And what he's talking about is that the Pharisees looked good from the outside. They looked zealous. They looked holy. Oh, how devoted they looked. They put on a very good performance out in public. And specifically, Jesus is probably talking about the way that they handle their money, the way that they handle their money in front of other people. They were the types that gave, but they wanted everyone to know that they were giving. They gave in order to be seen. They wanted everyone to know just how many good deeds they were working. And so Jesus says, sure, you look good before men, but God knows your heart. God knows your heart. Sometimes we use this phrase and we mean it as a comfort. It could be a complicated situation and there's no guarantee that what you're trying to accomplish is going to happen. But what you might say is, you know what, I don't know what's going to happen of this, but I know that my intent was pure. I know I was trying to honor the Lord. God knows my heart. And we take some comfort out of a situation like that. I want you to notice that this is the exact opposite of what's happening in this passage. It is not a good thing for the Pharisees that God knows their heart. They are playing this big religious game, but God isn't fooled. God knows why they give. God sees their proud, people-pleasing, money-loving hearts. and the high standards that they think that they are meeting before men, they are an abomination in the sight of God. Far from being impressive, far from even being acceptable, their hearts and their behavior are abominable. It's a word we don't use that often, but this is what it means. There's something disgusting that arouses wrath. Something disgusting that arouses wrath. They go around thinking that they're earning all these accolades, that everyone's gonna think well of them. And oh, what a reversal. God sees the true state of their heart and he is disgusted with them. From this confrontation, Jesus turns now to something bigger. In verse 16, I want to show you the text one more time, because he turns to this. He says, the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. Now, this is where the passage starts getting hard. The first part was a little clear, right? He knows your hearts. He condemns your standards. We could preach that, but Jesus keeps going. And it's not entirely clear how the verse before relates to the verse we just got to. It's just not. But what is clear is that Jesus is saying something big. Jesus ushered in a new era. What you have to have at all times, and this is what we're going to do in Sunday school here soon, is you want to have something of a roadmap of the scriptures. You want to have that you are here in the scriptures, because this is what Jesus is talking about. From the fall of humanity onward, God's people had been waiting. They had been waiting. They'd been waiting for the fulfillment of God's promises. And you're going to see this longing all throughout the Bible. It pervades the entire Bible. And at the beginning of Luke's gospel, we've already gone through these passages when John the Baptist's father, he had all these great descriptions of how the people of God had been waiting. You remember, he's rejoicing because he's going to have a boy and his boy is the one that's going to lead up to the Messiah coming. And so he says things like this. He rejoices that at long last, God was going to show mercy, the mercy that was promised to our forefathers. He said that the deliverance Jesus would bring was going to be seen as a fulfillment of God's oath to Abraham. As he described this ancient longing, he said, Jesus's arrival was like light to people who had been sitting in darkness. The place on your roadmap we are is just to say that all this time from the fall onward, the people of God had been longing for their long awaited savior. And then the coming of John the Baptist marks fulfillment arriving. John the Baptist is a transitional figure. John marks on the one hand the end of the period of the Law and the Prophets, and at the very same time, he marks the beginning of the period in which the King is revealed and the Kingdom of God is made known. Jesus says that humanity has entered into a new era. And it's no longer the era merely of promise, it is the era of fulfillment. The fulfillment of these ancient promises that the people of God have been looking forward to for so long. And the fulfillment is Jesus himself. Jesus is the fulfillment. The law, the prophets, all of it was pointing to him. Jesus can rightly say without an ounce of arrogance that he is the fulfillment of history and that he is the one who brings the kingdom of God. If you can grasp in your mind where we are in this roadmap and to see that so much is fulfilled in this single man who steps on the scene, it is glorious. It is glorious to consider. Then we hit another difficult part. It's like the pilot coming on over the intercom saying, yeah, we're about to hit some more turbulence because, you know, you just got through the stuff that made you just want to scream and your knuckles are all white. And then he comes on and says, it's coming again. It's about to get harder. Okay. I know it's after lunch. I know we're tired. I know you want to take a nap. Now is not the time. I need you. Are you with me? All right. We hit a difficult part in the second half of verse 16 because It's really hard to translate. It is really hard to translate the second half of verse 16. It's hard for everyone. It's not just like hard for me, like I'm preaching from my own Bible I've been translating. It is hard for everyone. The way most of your Bibles read, the way I read it out of my ESV here, is something like the kingdom is preached and everyone forces his way into it. That second part, and forces his way into it, that's the big discrepancy here. That is the big disagreement here. What does that word mean? Now when we translate it, we're taking a guess at what it means. But when it's back in the Greek, we have to figure out what we think it means. The standard way your Bibles are translating it is going to mean something like people are seeing the kingdom of God for its true worth and they will do anything to enter into it. So everyone's forcibly entering into the kingdom, right? That's the standard sort of translation. The problem. The problem is that it seems that there are lots of people who don't care about the kingdom of God and are not entering in. Darabach helpfully said of this translation, it just seems entirely too positive. So then you can say, okay, what other translations are there? And there's a number. So here's your next one. This phrase could be translated something like the kingdom is preached and all act violently toward it. And all act violently toward it. So, okay, that is just confusing on its face. But if that were the translation, it means something like there is sort of a universal opposition to the kingdom of God. The problem with that one is sort of the opposite of the first one. Just as not everyone was entering the kingdom, likewise, not everyone was opposing the kingdom. And you see how that's sort of a problem here. In either case, with those first two translations, I personally, I find that there's a difficulty connecting the kingdom being preached with those translations. The flow of the thought does not seem to match up with an idea of mass acceptance or violent opposition. So I give you one last way to translate it, and it's not my personal quirk one, but it is slightly less popular. You could also translate this so the kingdom is being preached and all are strongly urged into it, or maybe urgently invited into it. You may see that in your footnotes in your Bible because that is actually out there, but it doesn't tend to be the one that people go to. Now, why do I go with this one? It seems to match the flow of the thought best. Because everywhere Jesus preached the kingdom, whether implicitly or explicitly, there was always this sense of an invitation to repent and come into the kingdom. Even when Jesus is confronting people, even when he's pronouncing woes upon them for the wicked way that they are living, there's always this sense of you're not yet judged. You could repent now. You could come in now. Jesus doesn't go anywhere and just mass preach, you guys are damned. You guys are damned. There's always this sense of you're in trouble, but you could turn. You could turn. And he urges people everywhere to come into the kingdom. And so as the kingdom is preached, all are urged to enter in, even those who are resisting Jesus. Now full disclosure, just like I had to admit with the unfaithful manager, I also have to admit here that my solution has some problems to it. There's just a good humility that comes when you acknowledge that you don't have it just locked down. The problem with this translation is that the word in question is actually a fairly negative word. And so the translation urgently invited or something like that, it just might not do justice to that negative side of this word. I want to admit that. But in the big picture, the urgent summons to enter the kingdom of God just seems to make the most sense of what Jesus is getting across. So I hold that out to you in humility, but that's what I'm preaching this passage on, that translation. Jesus, the fulfillment of the promises of God, preaches the kingdom of God and urges everyone to enter in, even the most arrogant, even the most wicked, even the rebels. He urges them and he tells them to repent and be welcomed into the kingdom of God. And then you get into verse 17, and Jesus adds a clarification about this new era of fulfillment. He says, but it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void. In this new era that Jesus is talking about, even though it's the era after the period of the law and the prophets, he wants to point out that the law of God continues on. The law of God continues on. When he says that the law and the prophets lead up to his coming, he's not discounting the law. Not in the slightest. The law does not, will not fade. It is the law of God and it endures. And he says that the law of God is so sure that creation itself could pass away before even the smallest part of the law could become void. That part about one dot of the law, or your translation might say a stroke of a letter, the stroke of a pen, it all refers to the smallest stroke of a letter in Hebrew. And so in other words, it's this picture that not even the tiniest part of God's law will fail. Not even the tiniest part. And as an example of the enduring character of the law of God, Jesus turns in verse 18 to divorce laws. This is like the third or fourth part that makes this passage challenging. Because we all look at this and you can be, it's really understandable if you read this passage and you're just like, wait, how did we just get to divorce laws? You're following the flow of thought, and it's just not obvious why Jesus got to divorce laws. And what's unfortunate here is it's really distracting to us, but divorce laws are not the big point that Jesus is making here. This isn't a divorce section. It's like divorce as an illustration of a principle. And so what we're going to have to do, because this is important, because we're distracted wondering why I talked about it, we end up needing to talk about two parts here. We have to at least summarize some divorce teaching, some divorce and remarriage principles. But then we're going to try and move quickly through that because I want you to get to what I believe is the bigger point Jesus wants us to see. So when he says in verse 18, that everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. We need to know from the start that Jesus is giving a basic teaching on marriage and divorce. Why do I say basic? It's because it's not comprehensive. He's not saying everything he would say in his ministry. There are other places Jesus teaches on divorce as well. He's also not going to describe the principles that Paul is going to preach on later when he is describing divorce and remarriage principles. If you want a comprehensive teaching, you have to go to not just this passage, but all of what Jesus said, all of what the scriptures are going to point you to. But here's the basic teaching, and it's going to follow a number of principles. First, God intends marriage to be lifelong. God intends marriage to be lifelong. Our culture has slipped into something different and we have to admit that so often the church has drank from that Kool-Aid and we've begun to act like the world. The marriage is meant to be lifelong. If you intend anything else when you approach a marriage, you are not approaching marriage the way God designed it. The marriage covenant is not meant to be broken. Now, there are legitimate reasons that people do get divorced. Honestly, biblical, faithful reasons that people do get divorced. But there are so many other reasons, ancient reasons and modern reasons alike, that God would never recognize as being a legitimate divorce. And so what he comes to here is to say that illegitimately divorcing a spouse would not free someone, in God's eyes, to go and marry again. and entering a new marriage in that circumstance, that would be sinful. Now, practically, that's really significant, isn't it? There were a lot of divorces back then. Just like today, there were. And someone might ask, just really practically, what is someone supposed to do If they did this, if they sinfully exited a marriage and sinfully began another marriage. And so the short answer here would be don't get divorced again. Don't get divorced again. Don't multiply the suffering by divorcing another person. A marriage sinfully begun is in fact still a marriage. And God would expect that covenant to be honored. A sinful beginning should be addressed like any other sin. It turns out we, as lifelong sinners, have a lot of experience with what to do with our sin. A marriage sin is just like any other sin of your life. You repent where you need to, and in this case, you would repent where you are able to, and you seek God's gracious forgiveness. Now, divorce and remarriage is just an incredibly difficult subject, personally, pastorally, societally, and it's an important subject. But this is where I'm gonna urge us to try and keep moving forward because this is not where Jesus is camping and we're not going to either. Now, recognizing that you may have this in your life right now, whether for you or for a loved one, I just wanted to point out that Brian actually preached a nine-part series on divorce, marriage, and remarriage. Actually, it's marriage, divorce, and remarriage. And that's on Sermon Audio. And if you've got these burning issues, we just really encourage you to go to those sermons online and dive into it. But for today's passage, we need to move forward. And we need to recognize that something bigger is going on, something bigger than a teaching on divorce and remarriage. The bigger point of the passage is going to have to do with who Jesus is. The bigger point is going to have to do with Jesus and his authority over the law. So let me paint a picture for you. Let's come back to this teaching and I want you now to consider some important details from this teaching that Jesus just gave on divorce. Illegitimate divorces had become rampant in their time. We like to picture that we're the only society that's messed up marriage. But they were doing it, both Roman and Jewish alike, divorces were rampant. And in part, in the Jewish community, this was going to be flowing out of a rabbinic twisting of God's laws regarding marriage and divorce. Because what had happened is many, if not most, divorces were not happening on biblical grounds. Men weren't bothering with biblical reasons for divorce. They were divorcing for any cause that they wanted. And where they got the religious backing for this was a rabbinic school called Hillel that infamously taught, even to the extent that you could have a husband divorce his wife because she ruined his dinner. That is, in any cause, no fault divorce if you've ever heard one. And so this is what I want you to connect the dots on. When Jesus calls these illegitimate divorces adulterous, he is completely contradicting his society's view toward divorce. I want you to also see that twice now, in a very short stretch, twice now, he has completely undermined the religious elites on what they had been teaching. He's undermined them on the use of money. He's undermined them now on marriage and divorce. Here's another detail for you. Furthermore, I want you to notice that when Jesus enters this debate, he's not actually quoting the Mosaic law to settle this. Why is that important? Well, clearly, Jesus upholds the Mosaic Law. But when he speaks against these illegitimate divorces, he's not just quoting another part of Deuteronomy. He can do that. He does do that, but not here. When Jesus gives an example of the permanence of the law, this is the moment, all right? This is what you've been building up to. When he gives an example of the permanence of the law, he does not quote a rabbi. He does not quote a traditional school of thought. He doesn't even quote the original text. When he wants to explain the permanence of the law of God, he speaks. And he speaks on his own authority. Who is Jesus that he can speak with authority when it comes to the law of God? The answer is he is God. He is God. He is the Lord of the law. See, Jesus has been doing this across his ministry. This isn't the first time. I want you to consider the famous Sermon on the Mount where Jesus goes around intensifying the law's demands. Ask yourself, how is he even capable of doing that? Who said, yeah, Jesus, why don't you go around and soup up the law of God? Who says you get to raise the standard? How does he get to do that? We already, we were in Luke 6 a while ago now, but there was a dispute over the Sabbath. And Jesus was able to weigh in and he was able to say, I govern the laws of the Sabbath. He said, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. You better believe I can talk about the Sabbath. See, it all comes back to this fundamental truth. Because he is God, he can speak with unique authority over the law of God. And as a part of that, he can also perfectly interpret the law of God. This is mind bending if you have your thinking caps on. He can say more than just, this is what the law says. Jesus can also say, this is what the law says and this is what it was intended to do. Jesus can uphold the eternal law of God by explaining the will and design of God. And so in this case, men had twisted the law. They had twisted the law to give them the ability to divorce at will. And Jesus says those divorces are illegitimate. And the marriages you're running into from those illegitimate divorces are also sinful marriages. He can speak like that because he has the authority of God over the law of God. So here we bring it all together. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises of God. And then the king arrives and he preaches the kingdom of God. And the king preaches of that kingdom and authoritatively explains and upholds the law and the kingdom of God. and the king of all creation who is the purpose of history, who is the authoritative perfect interpreter of the law of God, he urgently beckons us to enter into his kingdom. It is a mark of our incredible pride if that does not impress us. God, God himself wants us He beckons us. He invites the people who just try to justify themselves in the eyes of men. He seeks the people who hide abominable sins and play religious games just to look good for their neighbor. He wants the people who mocked him. He wants the people who opposed him. And what's even more amazing, especially for us today, is not just that he wants those people, but that he can transform those people. Foes can become friends. Scoffers can become worshipers. The abominable, the morally disgusting children of wrath can be forgiven and made clean and brought into the family. God can replace our fake self-justification based on our work for a true justification anchored in the work of Christ instead. The wretched can stand unashamed because of the work of Christ on our behalf. The outsiders can be welcomed into the kingdom because the King himself is welcoming them in. The kingdom of God invaded the world and marches steadily toward the day when every secret of our hearts will be laid bare before judgment. But until that day, until that day, the king himself urges you to enter while there is still time. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for our Lord and King Jesus. We thank you for the incredible ministry that he executed. We thank you for his authority over the law, for his ability to fulfill the law. We thank you for hard passages. We thank you for being gracious with us, patient with us as we seek your will on these things. We thank you for seeking the abominable. We thank you for pursuing the wicked. We thank you for urging a rebellious people to enter into your family. Pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.