Serious Responsibilities and Serious Battles, Pt. 2
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It’s not always easy to do the right thing. Have you ever had to choose the harder option because you knew, deep down, it was actually the healthier one? Pastor Nick Gatzke returns to Jesus’ shocking words about cutting away whatever leads us into sin and why lasting change so often costs something up front
Marriage and divorce was a difficult conversation in Jesus’ day, just as it is today. And when Jesus comes across the Pharisees, they decide that they would try to trap him around questions of this most common human experience.
And so listen to what happens in Mark 10, starting at verse 1. It says, “And went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And the crowds gathered to him again and again, as was his custom, he taught them. And the Pharisees came up in order to test him and asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And he answered them, what did Moses command you? And they said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Design, intimacy, permanence. And fourthly, Jesus indicates that God’s action in this whole marital dynamic is a reason to continue in it. He says in verse nine, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. God is at work in bringing two people together in marriage. He is the one who joins them. He does so with purposes that we don’t get to see right away. He does so with desires that we can’t understand. And this is so often the case with the things of God. We only see those purposes and those desires of God somewhere way down the line. But if the core of the question is how serious does God take marriage and divorce and all of these issues together, then the core of Jesus’ teaching is found right here.
What God has joined together, let us not tear apart. What God has joined together, let us not tear apart. And in verses 10 through 12, and then on to a couple other passages, he gives some implications of divorce and some The spiritual implications of divorce and walking away from your marriage and then marrying another are quite severe.
Look at verse 10 and on. “In the house, the disciples asked him about the matter further.” Why is that? Some of those guys were married. They knew. This is complicated stuff. “And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” So the commitment of marriage is so serious that the consequences of divorce are this severe.
The idea that we often hear in our culture today of falling out of love or for someone else to provide the spark that we once had, or we’ve just, oh, we’ve just grown apart over time. All of those are expressions, certainly, of very real and important problems in marriage. But the idea that those would be a reason for divorce is completely absent in Scripture. On many people, on many occasions, I’ve had people say to me, I’m not happy in my marriage. and I just want to be happy, surely God doesn’t want to rob me of my happiness, does he?
But that’s the wrong question to ask. Because the right question is one that assumes God’s commands are attached to his promises, and it helps us to do the right thing even in marriage. And if God’s promises are for the good of his people, then when we follow his commands, even no matter how painful in the short term, we trust that it’ll work out in the long term. This is very real in my own life. The first three years of my marriage to Amy were very difficult.
If happiness was the gauge of success, we were failing. If intimacy and spark was the gauge of success, we were failing. And by all accounts, the question is raised, is this going to work? Like, I don’t even know if it’s going to work. But we’d made a commitment to God that we would not have divorce as an option in our marriage. And we made that commitment to each other as well. And that commitment, based on God’s command, helped to drive us back together. And this is what I mean by that. Because if staying where you’re at in your marriage is not an option, if the status quo is untenable, if you’re miserable, You’re not getting along. It’s not an option to stay there. And if going this way, the way of divorce, is not an option, you’ve made a commitment. So if you can’t stay here and you can’t go there, there’s only one place left to go. And that’s back toward your spouse to try to figure it out and to move. And to do the very hard work to move from unhappiness to reconciliation.
What God has joined together, let us not tear apart. Now we see in Jesus’ teaching and the teachings of the Apostle Paul, two exceptions in the New Testament where divorce is permissible from God. The first is found in Matthew 19. And I’ll just read it for you very quickly. Account of the same interaction. And Matthew records it slightly differently. He says, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for marital unfaithfulness and marries another woman commits adultery.”
So Jesus indicates that the betrayal of infidelity is so severe and he acknowledges that the damage is so great that the victim in this case is released from the marriage without moral culpability if they so choose. And the implication is that they would be free to remarry. He’s not commanding that they need to divorce. Reconciliation is possible even in the cases of infidelity because forgiveness and healing through the gospel is absolutely miraculous and profound. But the damage is very great and the implication is that they would be free if they so choose.
Secondly, you see another exception in 1 Corinthians 7. Paul is writing to the believers on the relationships of marriage and divorce. He gives the same exception in infidelity. And he says, “to the rest, I say this, not I, but the Lord.” And what he’s saying there is not that his words are somehow second tier. He’s saying, I’m not quoting Jesus here. I’m giving you the authority of the apostles. “If a brother has a wife who is not a believer and she’s willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who’s not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him.” So the issue is spiritual incompatibility, but they’re still getting along, generally speaking. And he’s saying divorce is not allowable. And then he goes on to say, “but if an unbeliever leaves, let him do so.” And so the Apostle Paul elaborates that abandonment in a marriage allows a person freedom then to remarry. So there’s those two exceptions that are permissible, not necessarily desirable, but infidelity and abandonment. Remarriage is valid on the grounds if those divorces are valid in that way.
Now, there’s a lot in there. I’m just going to touch a little bit more on a couple of the implications in a second because I can hear the questions, and I know so many of the circumstances. Where does my situation fit into that? You don’t understand the pain that I’ve been through. You don’t understand that I tried. I tried. As hard as I could try. And we still ended up in that place. What does God say for me? Well, the gospel informs our view of marriage.
If Jesus came to usher in the kingdom of God, and in doing so, he gives God’s design for our kingdom relationships and his mission then, and his sacrifice made way for the forgiveness of sins to restore us to God. and this becomes the whole lens by which we view and experience life, then most certainly the gospel informs our marriage to our spouses. And it does so in many ways, but here’s just three. The first way is that marriage gives us an image of Christ and his church.
Ephesians chapter five, the apostle Paul speaks about the unique nature of the church, the believers of Jesus being spiritually united to their savior, Jesus himself through faith and Jesus being united to them. This is a profound mystery, he says. And then he gives the opportunity to point to how our marriages in this life allude to the mystery. Your marriage to your spouse as a Christian is the way in which you display the gospel daily. Your relationship mirrors a divine relationship between God and humanity. In self-sacrifice, in love, in honor, in respect, and in submission, your marriage points to the greatest spiritual reality of them all.
And so as you walk through life with the one that you are wedded to, live in a way that is seriously intentional about reflecting the divine reality. Secondly, the gospel informs our marriage in the ideas of forgiveness and growth. Because when you come to understand the core action of the gospel is that God forgives us because of the work of Jesus. even though we don’t deserve it, and that forgiveness allows us to take what was fractured by way of a relationship with God and to be reconciled with him, we understand forgiveness as Christians because we have been forgiven so very much.
And so you see how the gospel plays a part in your marriage then because you will sin against your spouse. And your spouse will sin against you. And that sin will have a fracturing effect in your marriage. And so how, when a relationship is fractured, does it become reconciled again through forgiveness? So for Christians, one of the key things that I emphasize in premarital counseling, is that there’s a big difference when you’re having trouble with your spouse and your marriage and you’re trying to restore this relationship.
There’s a big difference between simply acknowledging the wrong. We’ve had tension. We haven’t talked for a day and a half. And that didn’t go so well, did it? But we both want to move on. And so we say something like, are we okay now? Yeah, yeah, we’re okay. There’s a big difference between that versus a clear acknowledgement of sin and a request for forgiveness with very specific words like, I’m really sorry I was selfish. Will you forgive me? And the importance of saying those words, will you forgive me?
Points to the very core of who you are as a Christian. You understand the sin. You want reconciliation. It takes divine gospel work to give and receive this type of forgiveness. And God is right in the middle of it. And it shines a light and it moves toward reconciliation. Try it. The next time you offend your spouse and you, instead of just going your separate ways for a couple of days and then pretending like it never happened and moving on. Actually ask the question and see what happens.
The third way that the gospel informs marriages is redeeming those with broken marriages. Because we recognize that some of us have failed in marriages and that leaves us wondering where the gospel shines here. We have hurt, difficulty, pain. Well, Jesus gives us the categories to understand what’s acceptable to God and what isn’t. And maybe… You’ve been the one to violate your marriage. Or maybe you’ve been the one who’s been the victim in your marriage.
But divorce is not… sin. As in all sins, Jesus welcomes those who have fallen to come, to repent to their father, to receive the grace that he offers, even for those with broken marriages.
Now this leaves a host of questions. Questions like, what do I do? What do I do if I’ve been divorced unbiblically and reconciliation isn’t an option to my spouse? Or what do I do if I’m miserable in my current marriage and considering divorce? Or what do I do if I was divorced before I came to faith in Christ? Or what do I do if I’m in an abusive relationship right now? Or what do I do if I’m considering getting married? How do I evaluate if this is the right type of situation?
Friends, time escapes us. We cannot handle every of these nuances in a message because number one, that’s not the focus or the thrust. The focus of this text is to simply encourage us how seriously God takes the issue. But the practical implications of it are fleshed out in all kinds of ways in the context of Christian community. You have all kinds of Christian friends around you that want to help work through the nuance, pain, and difficulty of these situations, and people are willing to do it.
You just have to take the step of bringing it into the light. What God has joined together, let us not tear apart. I want to close this morning by reading you a letter. It’s very short. Former President Ronald Reagan knew the pain of divorce. His first wife left their marriage after just eight years or so. And as you know, he would later go on to marry Nancy. But in the June of 1971, just days before his 26-year-old son Michael got married, the future U.S. president sent him the following letter of advice.
He wrote, “Dear Mike, you’ve heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the unhappy marrieds and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all of human life. It can be… you decide to make it. There are more men griping about marriage who kick the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There’s an old law of physics that you can only get out of such a thing as much as you put in. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. It takes quite a man to remain attractive. To be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick, and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way that it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of the day, knowing someone on the other side of that door is awaiting the sound of his footsteps. Love, Dad.” “P.S. You’ll never get in trouble if you say, I love you once a day.” What God has brought together, let us not tear apart.
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This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
