Today, we ask the same question we began answering on our previous episode of Little Lessons.
"I'm divorced and remarried.
Am I living in adultery?"
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson.
We're going to continue talking about divorce and remarriage, particularly the idea that
those who have been divorced and remarried need to divorce again because allegedly, in
God's eyes, they're married to the original spouse because the marriage covenant is unbreakable.
We left off on our previous broadcast considering the basis of the Pharisees' question of Jesus,
"Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?"
That was the occasion of Jesus then responding with, "If you divorce and remarry, you're
committing adultery."
What was the evil that Jesus was trying to address when he made that statement?
Well, from the context of the story we're talking about found in Matthew chapter 19
and Mark chapter 10, the evil that Jesus was addressing was the idea that it was lawful
to divorce your wife for any cause and that was a very popular doctrine back in Jesus's
day amongst the Pharisees, is what they taught and lived.
Divorce and remarriage was rampant because you could divorce your wife for any cause
lawfully.
Of course, anyone who just thinks about that for a minute or two realizes that's not any
different than adultery.
If you can get out of your marriage for any reason and just go marry somebody else, how
does that make marriage a covenant?
It's no different than just sleeping around.
That's the evil that Jesus was addressing, not the "evil" of Christians who have been
married for a decade or more who, unfortunately, one of them prior to salvation was married
and divorced and now, to remedy their "adulterous marriage," they should get a divorce themselves
and break up their family and so on, this teaching that we sometimes hear.
Well, the basis of the Pharisees' question, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife
for any cause at all?"
Is a scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 24 because Jesus immediately stood against that idea.
He went back to Genesis chapter two and said, "Haven't you read God created the male and
female and so forth?
Moses said for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife
and they shall become one flesh.
What God has joined together let no man separate."
Then the Pharisees said, "But wait a second.
Why then did Moses allow for divorce?"
Jesus said, "Well, Moses allowed for divorce because of the hardness of men's heart."
From the beginning it has not been this way.
That is God never, ever intended for anyone to be divorced, but because he knew of the
hardness of people's hearts, there would be divorce.
He made some regulation concerning divorce, not because he wanted anyone to get divorced,
but because he was trying to mitigate some of the evil that results from divorce.
We find in the law of Moses, this is the basis of the Pharisees' question in Matthew 19,
a passage of scripture which I'd like to read it to you.
Starting in Deuteronomy chapter 24 in verse number one, "When a man takes a wife and he
marries her and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found
some indecency in her," and that was the big debate in Jesus's day amongst the Pharisees,
what constituted an indecency.
The Pharisees had decided anything.
Even if you saw a woman who was more attractive than your wife, that was an indecency.
That made your wife indecent and you could divorce her for that cause.
Anyways, Moses goes on, God goes on through Moses, "And he writes her a certificate of
divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house.
She leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife.
The latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in
her hand and sends her out of his house.
Or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then the former husband, the
original one, who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife since she
has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord."
You see, the Lord is only addressing in this case the twice divorced woman or the once
divorced, one widowed woman.
In both cases, she's not allowed to go back to her first husband.
Why did God make that law?
I can only think that he's trying to mitigate some of the evil of divorce.
He's trying to do something to prevent divorce by causing husbands to think, "Before I divorce
my wife, I better think about this because I'm not going to get her back.
Once she's remarried, God says that's forbidden."
It's just a regulation where God's trying to squelch divorce, knowing that people have
hard hearts and we're not going to be able to prevent this entirely, but at least we
can try to slow it down.
Of course, the Pharisees were trying to speed it up.
They're making divorce the easiest thing, divorce for any cause.
Christ totally contradicts their doctrine and he ends it up with saying, "Whoever divorces
his wife and marries another, except for the cause of morality, commits adultery."
Well, there you have it.
That didn't just become true the day Jesus said that.
That was an obvious truth for anyone who ever thought about it for hundreds and thousands
of years prior to when Christ said it.
He's not modifying the law of Moses.
He's not altering the law.
He's endorsing the law of Moses.
The indecency of which Moses wrote was grievous sexual sin.
Again, Jesus said, "It was never my intention for anyone to get divorced.
In fact, I allowed it because of the hardness of people's hearts, but a softhearted husband
who catches his wife in an affair, he doesn't just rush to divorce her.
He's heartbroken that this woman that he loved and has a covenant with has broken the covenant.
He's going to certainly confront her.
He certainly might be angry and feel betrayed, but he confronts her and he hopes he can bring
her to repentance.
If she repents, he gives her a second chance."
That's what Jesus taught, right, about confrontation and forgiveness and reconciliation.
It wasn't just true when Jesus said it.
It was true from the time that God said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Regardless, Jesus is endorsing the Mosaic law.
What he's trying to do is prevent people who are thinking about divorce and who are thinking
that divorce is okay for any reason then, if that's what you think, my goodness.
How is that any different than adultery?
Your covenant means nothing if you can divorce for any reason.
I have to go further and I'm out of time on today's Little Lesson so we have to go one
more time on this just to show that those who are promulgating this divine divorce doctrine
that Christian couples should divorce if one of them has been married and divorced in the
past, I'm going to show you from the New Testament that's not what Paul believed, that's how
the apostles interpreted what Jesus said at all.
This doctrine is not found in the New Testament outside of those four proof texts that divine
divorce advocates use and it's their interpretation.
It's not the apostles' interpretation.
Thanks for joining me.
See you next time.