Happy Mother's Day again to all the mothers and if you came to church for a encouraging, warm, thoughtful message celebrating the mothers in our lives. We're going to continue in Matthew talking about adultery and divorce. Not quite a Mother's Day message, but I preface this with With that, just bear with me till the end and you'll see why I made the decision to continue as opposed to choosing a much better passage for Mother's Day. I think there's some good application for us to not just praise and honor our mothers, but are we protecting that relationship with our spouse and So, before we get started, let's take a moment to just ready our heart and prepare to study God's Word. Father, it's hard to break through the silence of hearing your creation at work right now to pray to you, but we do pray to you. And we rejoice in the God of our salvation. We thank you for revealing yourself to us in your word. Your word is powerful. It is mighty. It is life changing. And I pray that it would have that effect on us this morning. I pray that through an uncomfortable topic, we would see the encouragement and the righteousness that you have called Israel to in the law, but also the righteous principle remains that you have called us to. And so I pray that you would be with us as we make good observations from your text and with that good interpretations and ultimately good application as we seek to live our lives according to your word. So I pray you bless the reading and exposition of your word in Jesus name. Amen. So as I said, the Gospel of Matthew now, I always, when it comes to special messages, I'm not opposed to them. I've done them before, but sometimes I'm just curious at the providence of God, what might I be preaching through on that given, you know, Resurrection Sunday, Christmas morning, Mother's Day, what have you. And it usually ties in very well. This one was one initially I thought, I cannot preach about adultery and divorce on precious Mother's Day. But as I looked at the passage and I started to think about the application that comes out of this, I thought, actually, I think this could be a very appropriate message as we, as I mentioned before, seek to guard, to protect that relationship with our wife. Now, with that, it's Mother's Day, gentlemen, so it's going to sound like I am just talking to you and this has no regard to women. Disregard that. This has full application for all with, of course, special emphasis on the nature of it being Mother's Day. So keep that in mind as well. Ladies, don't turn your ears off. There's still application for this for you. So the gospel of Matthew is looking at the question, why did the king come but not the kingdom? All these Old Testament prophecies foretold that when the Messiah comes, with him comes this glorious kingdom of peace and righteousness. So the first century Jew might ask, if Jesus is who you say he is, where's the kingdom? Matthew seeks to answer that in this gospel. And we've seen thus far, General flow of the book the first part is dealing with the king has come so Matthew sets forth an argument Defending that he is in fact the Messiah demonstrated by his birth his heritage His miracles doing the messianic miracles that only the Messiah could do Demonstrating that he is the Messiah plus the countless fulfillment of prophecies that Matthew is already alluded to We're in the second section dealing with the Declaration of the Principles of the King. So he has been presented publicly, and now he is going about teaching, preaching, healing, and he is starting to garner a large following. And this large following is the audience of the Sermon on the Mount, one of the premier sermons that we have in Scripture, running from chapter 5 through the end of chapter 7. Now, we've dealt with the Sermon on the Mount, the background. It's not for salvation. In fact, I would say it is not directly applicable for the church at all. And that's controversial in some circles. Now, the key word is directly applicable. There is plenty of application, as you'll see today, for us to glean from this powerful sermon. But you have to understand what Jesus was doing. He was preaching the kingdom. He was preaching to Jews. He was preaching to people who had made a covenant with God to follow the Mosaic law and be blessed or not follow it and be disciplined by God. Well, through rabbinic theology, all these additures to the law led to Israel not fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law. They thought this external, showy stuff was good enough. And it wasn't. And so Jesus, in this sermon, is correcting this misguided, interpretive approach to the law. And he's correcting it. We looked at last week, dealing with murder. The Jewish mind thought, as long as I don't kill someone, I'm good. I'm a good boy. Jesus says, I tell you, if you're angry with someone, you have broken that righteous requirement. And so we continue on looking at the true intention of the law, which is Jesus's purpose through this, against adultery and divorce. Now, why two? Isn't one hard enough? Why are we tackling two? Well, it's interesting the order here. Because divorce isn't mentioned in the Ten Commandments. Now, Jesus seems to be following the Ten Commandments. So why does he bring up divorce here? Well, I think it's because divorce ties in as an addendum to the conversation on adultery. And we'll look at that. So, Jesus' discourse on the Mosaic Law is the specific portion we're in now. And he deals with essentially three laws. Three of which are in the Ten Commandments. Murder, we looked at last week. Adultery. Now divorce is next, but that's an addendum. It's not in the Ten Commandments. It's mentioned later. And Jesus will elsewhere say that the reason divorce was permitted you was because of the hardness of your hearts. It was not originally given according to the law. And then oaths. He talks about oaths, but it's tied in with the law of not bearing false witness or testimony. And then there's two elaborations. Now, some commentators, if you read a commentary, will say there's six laws mentioned or dealt with by Jesus and corrected. I'm not going to fight with that. But there seems to be three specifically addressed. And then personal retribution. Well, that's a judgment. When God is listing the judgments for breaking one of the Ten Commandments, It's eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And so Jesus deals with that and says it's not to be a personal retribution. In other words, you don't exact your justice. You leave it to God's plan, which is the council, the Sanhedrin. And then the summary of the law is love your neighbor. Now I talked about, and Bill mentioned it downstairs, that there is two tablets for the Ten Commandments. The first tablet is vertical, our relationship with God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Those commandments. The next five are horizontal. It's the relationship with fellow Jews. And so murder, if you want to fulfill the law, don't kill your fellow Jew. Jesus says, but I tell you, having anger in your heart is essentially breaking the righteous requirement. And then he goes on. And so keeping that in mind is helpful, the vertical and the horizontal relationship. So there's four parts to this. The first three are essentially the same outline with different verses from the first sermon last week, where he declares the law, the familiarity that the Jewish person had, and then he explains the intention of the law. You have heard it said, but I say, and then he gives the practice. How do you observe the law according to what Jesus is saying? And then he's going to talk about adultery. Or he's going to talk about divorce, the addendum to adultery. So what the Israelites understood, you have heard that it was said to those of old, essentially their forefathers, you shall not commit adultery. Now what does adultery presuppose in our understanding? What do we need to understand before we talk about adultery? I think it's marriage, right? Adultery is something that can only happen within the marriage union. Outside of the marriage union, the Bible has another word for it, that's fornication, right? So adultery is a breaking of a covenant. This is a serious thing. Because that is essentially what marriage is. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, I wish it was more emphasized when I got married, But as I've come to understand truly what marriage is, it's a covenant between two people. You are making vows, you are making a covenant with that person. It's a serious thing. And our society today breaks it too lightly, too easily. And that ought not be. Now we'll talk about what are the grounds of divorce. Now this is going to be potentially a sticky subject, but I refuse to let it be an issue. If you happen to disagree with me, that is perfectly acceptable. We can have a conversation on the side and discuss this, but we want to have a biblical understanding of how this should be understood and how we should address these things. So, like last week, we're going to be going back and forth. Go to Exodus 20, but keep, of course, a tab in Matthew. This one I don't think we'll be going back and forth too much. Exodus chapter 20. And verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. Now again, one of the 10 commandments. Now while you're in Exodus, or excuse me, while you're close to Exodus, go over to Deuteronomy chapter 22. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy 22. And verses 22 through 29 deal with this in a more detailed fashion as far as how the Israelites are supposed to address the issue of adultery. So in verse 22, if a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die. The man that lay with the woman and the woman and the woman. So you shall put away the evil from Israel. So what's the judgment for adultery? Death. Is that the judgment for today? No. And for obvious reasons, because the law had a function, right? It was to sanctify the Israelites. And that's why he says, you shall put away the evil from Israel. What were the other scenarios? Verse 23. If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death. with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife, so you shall put away the evil from among you." But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. So I wanted to read a little bit further into this because the law gave a detailed example of how to interact with this discussion in various scenarios. It gave the proper treatment or the proper judgment for breaking this law. So summary application, the Israelites understood the letter of the law. Yeah, God said you shall not commit adultery. They understood the consequence of breaking the law. They understood committing adultery means death. And so they obviously don't want to die, so they're not going to commit adultery. Rabbinic teachings emphasized no judgment unless the letter is broken. Now this is the key to what Jesus is doing. They were thinking, well, as long as I don't sleep with someone who's not my spouse, I have not broken the letter of the law. I'm good. I'm righteous. Jesus says, not so fast. The righteousness of the law was therefore neglected. Jesus will now explain the righteousness of the law. So number two, the intention of the law, verse 28. So back in Matthew, And I'll just read 27 again. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So he escalates it, right? So first of all, he corrects their misunderstanding, the beginning of verse 28. But I say to you, the righteousness of the true intention of the law, the second part, whoever looks at a woman to lust for her, got to do a little bit of Greek because it's important. Ha-ti-pa-sa-ble-pon-gu-ne-ka-pras-ta-epi-thu-me-sai-au-ten. Right? Everyone with me? So the two highlighted words there, pras and epi-thu-me-sai, are crucial. First of all, pras is a preposition. Right? When I was learning Greek, there's a chart that we used with a big piece of Swiss cheese, and they were mouse all over. Some were in the cheese, some were on the cheese, some were going through the cheese, some were coming toward the cheese. So prepositions are words that show relation. Prost essentially means towards. It's the same word that's used when communion, do this toward. Remembrance of me the idea or the sense there is purpose do this with the purpose of remembering me And that's why we do communion every week and I have come to really like that Epithumasi is essentially the word for lust or desire craving now. It's in the infinitive everyone Got that I've been hounded by infinitives lately. They showed up in the paper I was doing. And so I've been studying this. So I'm not pretending like I've got a grasp. It's just fresh on my brain. But this is an infinitive of purpose. What does that mean? It's a purpose. So toward a woman for the purpose of lusting for her. So it's literally whoever looks at a woman for the purpose of lusting for her. Now, why does this matter? Didn't he say that? Not exactly. Because sometimes you might think, well, if you are walking and you notice something that you shouldn't, oh, I've sinned and I'm guilty. That's not necessarily the case. Something that one of my professors at Frontier said that's very helpful is you can't help the birds that fly over your head, right? But you don't have to let them make a nest. That's kind of the idea. You can't help what happens to cross your vision, but you don't have to gaze or dwell or, as this implies, hunt. Seek search out Which might that have been an issue amongst the religious leaders Thankfully no one in our society has that problem So Jesus corrects their misunderstanding, but I say to you the righteousness whoever looks at a woman for the purpose to lust for her is has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And then I have 2 Samuel 11, 2-4. And a fun question. I'll open this up. At what point did David sin? The story of David and Bathsheba. Was it when the act was done? Or prior to? You could even say prior to that. You know, the story starts off with when the kings went off to battle. Where was David? not off to battle. And that ties into what Jesus is talking about. We'll talk about the interpretation of plucking out your eye, and hopefully no one is scared by the end of this. But the idea is not letting there be any provision for sin. Well, that seems to be an awfully big provision, being the king, and people are off to battle, and you're one of the only men back. Who else is in the city? Oh, the women, the wives, right? And so he's on his rooftop, and he looks upon and beholds Bathsheba. And what was his response? Oh, shoot. You know, walk away. He was curious. He dwelled. And then he sinned. And so I would say his sin began on the roof. And that is essentially what this is implying. He was looking toward her to lust for her, and that's what led to his actions. Summary application Jesus corrects their misunderstanding of the righteousness of the law Intentional lusting breaks the righteousness of the law. That's essentially what he's saying with the purpose of his intentionality and So that could be even premeditated in other words you're seeking in advance which is of course wrong, but it could also be upon happenstance The intentional not looking away, or whatever, dwelling on, like David did, breaks the righteousness of the law. Now, because we're under the Mosaic Law, does this have no application to us? Of course it does, right? The principle stands true. Plus, we could go through all the passages where Paul talks about putting these very things aside. The false understanding could have been, you can look, but don't touch. That would probably summarize, essentially, their thinking. So long as you don't touch, right? They're eye candy, the phrase that is used in contemporary language. Is that protecting women? And it goes both ways, by the way. Now, there does seem to be statistically a larger problem amongst males, but it goes both ways. In fact, the statistics have started to become more and more equal in terms of pornographic material accessed by both male and female. It's a problem in our society. It has always been a problem, but it remains a problem. And we want to resolve that problem. Breaking the righteousness of the law makes one liable for judgment. In other words, they're not righteous like they think they are. Jesus is trying to expose their unrighteousness, and they won't have it. They think they're fine. So how do you observe or how do you keep this law? Because that's a pretty tough standard, right? He just escalated things. Who then can be saved, they might be wondering, according to that logic. Well, again, isn't that the purpose of the law? To be a mirror, to show your sinfulness, your need for a savior? Yes, but they're still obligated to keep the law. Sometimes we get this thinking that because the law was so impossible, so perfect, and man is sinful, that it's just throw your hands up and don't do it. They were expected to observe the law. And there were generations that did. I mentioned downstairs, the era of David and Solomon experienced tremendous blessing at the hand of the Lord. Why? Because I think the nation was following the Lord. Was everyone? Probably not. But the majority were. And that didn't last, right? So, Jesus now, after giving the bad news, is going to give the remedy, the solution. How do you keep this after escalating the standard? or rather providing the true standard of what the law intended. The application for avoiding this sin is in verses 29 through 30. So he breaks it into two ways. There's the sin of perception dealing with the eye and the sin of action dealing with the hand. So I think they're kind of somewhat figures that he's using to speak of the sin of perception and the sin of action. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, the word sin is skandalize. It's often translated to stumble. When he talks about children later, he says, if any man causes one of these little ones to skandalize, to stumble or to be offended, and it's not saying a mean word that hurts their feelings and they're offended, it's to cause them to stumble. You trip them up in their righteousness. He says it'd be better that a meal stone be tied around his neck and he'd be thrown into the sea. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. Now we interpret scripture literally, historically, grammatically, right? What do we do with this? By the looks of it, everyone has their eyes. So are we in good shape then on this? We can move on to the next topic? No, I don't think so. But what do we do with this? If we're interpreting literally, historically, and grammatically, oh, grammatical implies figures of speech, right? Could it be that this is a figure of speech? And I think it is. It's hyperbolic language. Hyperbole is overstating something to emphasize the severity or seriousness of it. So if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and cast it from you. In other words, remove whatever is causing you to sin, might be the simple interpretation. And here's why. If you cut out your right eye, does the problem go away? Cut out both, does the problem go away? So that can't be what he means, right? For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into most English or all English translations have hell. I dealt with that last week. I don't like that word simply because the Bible talks about a lot of places in the afterlife. Hell is kind of used for all of them. And it's just imprecise. Gehenna is often used. It's a literally what it was is the Valley of Hinnom. And it was where they would sacrifice children and all sorts of abominations. When Israel was doing better, they turned it into a dump, and that's where their trash ended up. And it would be perpetually burning, and it would stink, and it was terrible. So Jesus used that imagery to describe the lake of fire. So I think Gehenna, when it's used, and you got to check the context, because perhaps there's a contextual area that it wouldn't fit, but I think it's talking about the lake of fire. And so he's saying it's better that you deal with this and you deal with a little sacrifice now than for your whole body to go to hell. So is he preaching a works-based salvation? You've got to avoid murder and adultery and these other things in order to be righteous? No, again, he's already used hyperbole. I think it's hyperbole again. He's saying he's talking in extremes. It's better this than that, right? Do you agree with me? That's what Jesus would be essentially saying. The application for avoiding the sin, the sin of action, if your right hand causes you to sin. Now, why does he say right eye and right hand? Well, I think this confirms a long-held belief of mine that we were all intended to be right-handed. Left-handedness is actually a deficiency. I've tried to tell this to my mom. She's left-handed. She was upset with me because my son Baker is apparently wanting to use his left hand and I'm trying to force him to correct that to no avail. My grandma was left-handed so pray for my family. Now, statistically, right-handedness is more dominant. So he's talking about the dominant hand, the hand that's used for most functions. So if you're left-handed, you cut that hand off. He says, cut it off and cast it from you. Four, it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be. So same exact thing. He's using that hyperbolic language. Deal with the sacrifice rather than the extreme. There should have been fancy things, but there it is. Number one, if the law observer with internal lusting If the law observer stumbles with internal lusting, they are to take serious action. That's essentially what he's saying. If your eye or hand causes you to stumble, to sin, if you're a law observer, they are to take serious action. The action required is not woodenly literal, as removing an eye or hand will not solve the problem. There have been people in history that have They've done this. They've taken it literally. Origen, one of the early church fathers, did this, but he castrated himself. Did that solve the problem? No, I think it created more, right? The application is to remove all provision that leads to temptation. I think that's essentially the essence of what he's saying. Remove all provisions for the flesh. I think Paul alludes to this in his writings. remove all provisions that lead to temptation, or lead to sin. Because that is what the eye is, right? And that is what the hand is. The eye is the gate, if you will, that leads down the road to sin. What did Eve do? She saw that it was good to eat. It was appealing. David saw, or he beheld Bathsheba, and that led to his action. So the application is to remove all provision that leads to sin or temptation. But how is this done in such a sexualized world? I've got a friend on Facebook. He's in the Free Grace community. I believe Pastor Dave is good friends with him as well. Roger Fonkhauser wrote his doctoral dissertation on this topic. sexual purity and he wrote a book called storm proof men how to experience sexual purity in a Sexually saturated world something like that Great book and the reason I like it is if you deal with this topic of sexual purity It is always going to be legalistic and I find that that is not helpful But Roger is very free grace minded and I find that to be very helpful because grace is the only Issue with this now with that. I want to talk about this just for a moment but you need to understand this because again, you could easily fall into legalism and that is there's a difference between Unrepentant sin and struggling with sin. Does that make sense? Struggling with sin is not the same as it's fine. I could do it. There's no problem with it. That's of course evil and wicked now sin is sin and But there's a difference with a believer who knows it's wrong, and they aren't experiencing victory in the Christian life. Why is that? Well, I think they've got one side here saying, it doesn't matter, just do it, God will forgive you. And then you've got another side, you better not do it, or else God's going to hate you. What's the remedy? It's mentioned downstairs, Romans 6. We are dead to sin. Right? Every time Paul gets into application point of a hard truth. What did he just talk about? Position. Know your position. So if you're struggling with this, remember your position. You're dead to sin. That sin in particular. Live in your new position, not in your old position. The last point there, consider the areas of mental, emotional, and spiritual adultery. I think this should be said, because lest we fall into the same line of thinking of the religious leaders thinking, well, as long as you don't physically sleep with someone who's not your spouse, you're good, right? Well, what about mental, emotional, and spiritual adultery? Now, what is that? Well, how does adultery take place? It's not usually, you know, someone gets a harebrained idea and goes and does it. Sure, it probably happens with the way our world is. Doesn't it start with mental connections and emotional connections and spiritual connections? And those connections get greater and greater and greater until sin occurs. And so be aware of that. That's how sin works in our life. And you should remove all provision that leads to that. This was something that was told to us in our pastoral theology class. It said that as a pastor, you need to be careful, especially when counseling people in their marriages that are struggling. Because you're going to look like, and he said, don't believe it for an instant, like you've got things all put together, right? All figured out. That you're spiritual, you're spiritually put together and that is going to be attractive and you need to be on guard for that. How many pastors have there been that their ministry's ruined? The testimony of that local church, gone. The witness for Christ in that community, gone. And how many souls in that community will never listen to a Christian again? So I'll ask again, does this not have any application for us? Of course it does. We need to defend this. And it doesn't just mean the physical act. It could be mental, emotional, or spiritual, or whatever metaphysical, whatever area it might be. Now the addendum to the law on adultery, verses 31 through 32, Furthermore, it has been said whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. So notice he's still talking about adultery and it's the addendum to the adultery talking about divorce. So a few observations. First of all, the misinterpretation of divorce law So he says, furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Now we won't go there, but it says this in Deuteronomy 24, 1. And by the way, we're going to talk about divorce later in Matthew, because the religious leaders try to get Jesus to stumble on this. So we'll do a full picture, but I do want to deal with it now. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any cause now we have to deal with this because I think it's worded in a way that doesn't truly deal with what was going on in first century Israel. Rabbinic theology introduced what is called the any cause divorce. And so back in that text Deuteronomy 24 1. Originally in Hebrew, when translated, it says, if a man finds a cause of sexual immorality, what they did is they found a legal loophole and they separated a cause from sexual immorality. And they said, if anyone finds a cause for divorce, let him give a certificate. And that a cause is pretty broad, right? And so the traditional saying is, your wife burns your toast. There's a cause, right? Cause for divorce. Sorry. Good luck to you. And it was happening in Israel where people were getting divorced on any cause or any grounds. And Jesus is saying, if you divorce your wife for any cause, you just committed adultery if she remarries. And you've caused that person to commit adultery. So you're breaking the righteous requirement of the law through your ignorant misunderstanding of this law, trying to find loopholes in the law. You know what the solution is? Don't get divorced, right? And that's my counsel to people. Divorce shouldn't be an option. But because of sin, it happens, right? And so we need to, as Christians, have a biblical understanding of this concept. Apparently, there are other grounds. Now, some might not see this, and that's fine. They'll say sexual immorality is the only grounds listed in scripture. Now it is the only thing mentioned here, but it's because I think it's in the context of what Jesus is talking about. But, the grounds of divorce according to Mosaic Law and Jewish application, first of all, Deuteronomy 24.1, sexual immorality. But, jump over to Exodus 21. verses 10 and 11. It's talking about servants, but it says, if he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free without paying money. So the line of thinking was that, well, if this is true for the second wife, wouldn't it of course be true for the first wife? So it's the argument I mentioned, I forgot the name, we used it a few weeks ago, the lesser to the greater argument. So it's basically that rationale, well, if this is true, shouldn't that be true? Yes. And so what happened in practice is these grounds were listed as grounds for divorce. Food withheld. So not providing for your spouse was grounds according to Mosaic Law and Jewish application for divorce. Clothing withheld. Now, clothing Don't get too excited, ladies. You've got to let me go buy that dress or that jacket or that shirt or else, you know, there's grounds for divorce. That's not what it's saying. Clothing is essentially protection. You provision those sort of things. And in agricultural society, it's essentially food and clothing is you're tending the flocks and you are planting the seed so that it will lead to a harvest that will provide for your family. and conjugal rights. If you have a question, you could ask one of the elders besides me about that. The Jews reasoned that if this were true for a second wife, then it is true for the single wife. So these three grounds were added to divorce certificates and formed the basis for Jewish marriage vows. Now, that's important. This became the vows. Now, these are the types of things I wish I knew, because we think of marriage in the modern age is so kind of fairytale, you know, I'm going to write my own vows, which if you've done that, I'm sorry, if I'm poking fun at that. But what is marriage? A covenant? Shouldn't we make our vows biblically? I vow to be faithful to you. I think these are on the next list. So Yeah, the Jewish marriage vows in the marriage covenant, which also Paul talks about these very grounds in 1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 5, faithfulness, providing food, providing clothing, shelter, protection, and conjugal rights. Paul deals with that, especially in 1 Corinthians 7. And so vows to each other are on those lines. And so breaking those is breaking the covenant, right? And so therefore are grounds. Now, I want to say this. Just because there are grounds for divorce doesn't mean the first instant you jump at the opportunity to get out, right? Because is that the true intention of marriage? No. God intended marriage to be forever. Now I know things happen. Life happens. This provision was added because of sin and hardness of heart. And so how do we go about this biblically? Well, I would propose to you that it's the continual unrepentant action of any of these, in my estimation, that would be grounds for divorce. So, and I would also add emotional or certainly physical abuse as, and I'm not talking about just a one-off loss of temper or something happened, that needs dealt with, and this is getting too nuanced for this sermon, but I want to just state that, that it's that continual unrepentant action that he has no concern for his wife or she has no concern for his husband. My personal view would be that they have broken that marriage covenant. But even still, I will always encourage to fight for marriage. And as a pastor, I will fight alongside anyone's marriage. And I think God can make any marriage work. He can make any marriage healed and those sort of things. Failing to provide these in a continual and unrepentant manner were grounds for divorce. Whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. Again, he's dealing with that any cause issue. That's the key. He's saying that if you just divorced her because she burnt your toast, you're still married, bud. And if she goes and marries someone else, she's now committed adultery. The person she married has now committed adultery. You've created unrighteousness in Israel. Now here's where we turn more towards the encouraging Mother's Day type. Kind of. First of all, adultery is more than physical. Adultery is more than physical. Religious leaders thought the physical act was all that God was concerned with. Otherwise, you can look, but just don't touch, right? Is that what God intended? No. We must identify and remove the provisions for adultery. What did God do with Adam and Eve after they ate the fruit? Removed them from the garden, right? They can't eat of the knowledge of good and evil, but also the tree of life and access to the garden any longer. And so we must identify and remove those provisions. You know the book of Song of Solomon a great book by the way I would love to do a study at some point and I am being serious about that because I think it's rightfully so not Commonly taught but it talks about the little foxes catch the little foxes and I think it's it's language figurative languages about what foxes can do for the garden and how it can harm and so what are the little foxes in your life and that can destroy your house, your life, your marriage, your relationship. Identify and remove. And that removal is going to take sacrifice, right? Well, Jesus was pretty serious. If your eye causes you to sin, cut it off. Pluck it out. Now again, figurative language. We must guard against emotional, mental, spiritual, and of course, physical adultery, guard. If we want to protect the mothers of our children, we're not Jacob of the Bible, the mothers of our children. If we want to protect the mother of our children, we must guard against this. And moms, if you want to continue to be outstanding, which all of you are, guard against this. We must cultivate loving affection for our spouse. It's not enough to just guard. Are we cultivating defenses from emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical adultery? Because then you have to ask, where does that start? Where does emotional, mental, and spiritual adultery, which often leads to physical adultery, start? Well, doesn't it start with not feeling affection? That distance grows. Don't let it grow. Divorce shouldn't be an option, but because of sin, it happens. How do we develop a biblical approach to this? This is an ongoing conversation. It's not going to be something we settle here in two minutes. Husbands, you have a responsibility in your marriage to provide, protect, and be faithful to your wife and mother of your children. Like it or not, those are the vows inherent with the biblical view of the marriage covenant. You have that responsibility. That's why Paul says things like, if a man does not provide for his own house, he's worse than an unbeliever. It was abhorrent behavior to not provide. Now I know we live in a day and age that One income is not enough, so we're not going to get into what I think is a ridiculous conversation of only men work and, you know, most households require two incomes, right? It's just the way it is. And so we need to be accommodating to our context. But the idea is providing for your family. And we must celebrate Mother's Day. See, I told you it would tie in. But here's how it ties in. We have to defend the women in our lives. We have to. Women, you have to defend yourself. Adultery is not a victimless crime. You ever watch those movies and that? Piracy is not a victimless crime. Which, by the way, I found out that that was the song that they used for that was pirated. It's kind of funny. But we have to protect our marriages. We have to protect our moms. And you could also view this in terms of caring for widows. What are widows? Moms who lost their husbands, right? We care for them. We celebrate Mother's Day by adhering to the principles Jesus dealt with dealing with adultery and divorce. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for even tough passages like this. Sometimes, often, your word is a mirror. And sometimes when we look into that mirror, we don't like what we see. We don't like what it reveals in us or what it has revealed in us before. But Lord, I pray we keep looking. And I pray we make those changes that we wouldn't leave the mirror and immediately forget what we just saw. I pray, Lord, that that is not the case here. I pray the application from this passage is not lost on any of us. I pray that we would take it to heart, that we would take it seriously, that we would protect our mothers, and that our mothers would protect their marriages, and that all of us would protect our relationship with you, which is also used as a imagery related with marriage. And so, Lord, we pray that you would continue your work in us. And with all of that being said, Lord, I pray that we would not forget grace and the position that you have placed us in, and that victory is ours when we reckon ourselves to be dead indeed to sin and to the law. We love you, Lord, and thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.