Matthew 19: 1-12 – To divorce one’s wife for any cause
Introduction
A. The Pharisees presented the question "testing" Jesus.
1. Jesus walked in Perea, the region under the government of Herod Antipas who killed John because he condemned his marriage to Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip.
2. They already knew that Jesus was very strict about divorce, because Matthew 5:32 declared the Divine will very clearly.
3. Women were treated then as they are today by Muslims. The man was lord, and the woman was victim of the whim of her husband, often abusive and adulterous without consequence. They assumed that only a man could divorce a woman and for any cause, because he is the man who supported the woman and her children. With a cold heart, the Pharisee had no mercy on the poor mother and her children. They did not care about the curse of broken homes, or helpless children, or women left to live in the streets looking for crumbs to sustain them and their children. (The same injustice is shown in John 8:3-6.)
4. Therefore, Matthew 19 continues with the thread of Chapter 18, addressing the question of the little ones that God loves and defends. (See also Psalm 82:3-4; Proverbs 14:31; Leviticus 19:10; Psalm 41:1-3; James 1:27; Psalm 12:5; 68:10; 72:12-14; 149:12; Isaiah 25:4; 41:17)
B. The rule that Jesus presented is not difficult to understand, but by design, rebellious men reject Jesus’ rule and pretend that it is impossible to obey. Divorce is one of the most important causes of infidelity, unbelief, and what is called atheism or humanism. Let's face the implications of Jesus ' words.
I. Genesis is authentic. God created Adam and Eve at first.
A. Matthew 19:4, ““Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female”
B. The wild disorder of divorce and immorality of today is mostly the loss of faith caused by the teaching of the Darwinian "evolution" doctrine that men are animals.
1. The public schools deny the validity of Genesis 1 and 2 because in those chapters, God created and formed the universe together with animals and man in the first week. If man is nothing more than animal, there is no marriage, and there is no sin in fornication. In addition, they imply that the Bible is a book of myths and legends that teach us a god who does not exist.
2. From Adam's rib, God made Eve and gave her to Adam as a wife. So, marriage is from God, and God is the Lord of matrimony. It is sin to commit lasciviousness, fornication, and adultery. God will judge us for eternity for desecrating what God has made sacred.
3. Most of the laws of morality are intended to protect family and marriage. The laws of nudity are a shield to avoid sinful desires. The activities that provide opportunity for licentiousness and lust are forbidden because they cause the destruction not only of marriage but also of the family and the home.
II. Jesus also said, "He who created them from the beginning made them male and female." Matthew 19:4
A. Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…”
1. Why "male and female"? to "be fruitful and multiply."
2. Genesis 2:18, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
A. Jehovah God made every beast of the field, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” None of the beasts in the field could serve as “a helper fit for him,” because none could procreate children for man. They could not bear fruit and multiply to form home or family.
B. God sought a companion, who could give birth to children for the man.
B. Genesis 2:21-23, “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” … Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
1. The true story of Adam and Eve – The origin of men and women, and the "why." God made Eve to be his wife, the mother of his children.
2. They are not animals without morality. They are not of different races or types of creature.
3. The woman was not independent, nor was she autonomous from the man, nor was the man complete without the woman his wife. God made woman for man and man is born of woman. 1Corinthians 11:11-12, “Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; 12 for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.”
C. Adam understood and said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."
1. The woman is part of the man, for being taken from man.
2. When married, they are joined and become one flesh, Genesis 2:23-24. They're both one as at the beginning when God made Adam. Therefore, when they are divorced it is like cutting off a member of the body. One loses something of himself.
3. God took her out of the man. God brought her to the man. God made them only one flesh. What God joined, do not let man separate. God is the Lord of marriage. Only God can say when the two will not be married. The church does not marry the married. The state or the government does not marry the married. No one has the right to change the laws of God about marriage.
D. Jesus commanded mankind to return to the beginning and the original rule.
1. “Because of the hardness of your heart. " Moses allowed the man to give a letter of divorce.
2. Jesus rebuked human civilization for such stubbornness as to disregard God’s original design. For thousands of years men had ignored God’s design. The world was evil and full of sin and abuse, especially of women and children. God waited until sending His Son to die for lost men and to give them his very powerful Gospel which moves men to die to their old fleshly desires and order their lives according to the divine will. Only such a powerful force could compel men to change civilization and place marriage and the home in the order that God always wanted.
III. Jesus also said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife”
A. God anticipated the birth of children who would follow God's plan, marrying and forming new homes. God's normal, natural, and moral plan is to get married when reaching maturity and forming a new home. Therefore, it would be necessary to leave the parents' home and become parents raising the children of a new family.
B. Deuteronomy 6:4-9. When should we teach the precepts of the Lord? How long? Children are for life and parents are for life. Therefore, marriage must be for life for the welfare of the children, the grandchildren, and the great grandchildren.
1. Parents' relationship with the children is subject to marriage. Without marriage intact, parents cannot provide the discipline and instruction necessary to raise their children well. Divorce destroys God's plan and leaves children orphaned, helpless, and poor in many ways. The marriage that descends to the level of a battlefield between parents is not able to raise children without traumatizing them. God will judge them. It is a sin against the most vulnerable people, God’s little ones.
2. The lack of discipline in marriage teaches rebelliousness to children. Ephesians 6:1-4
C. The man works to support his wife and children, not to become rich, to build great palaces, or become mighty (Genesis 3:17-19; Judges 6:11; 1 Kings 19:19-21). The woman has the only body capable of having and nursing children. There is no love equal to the love of the mother for her children. For thirty years the woman can give birth and for twenty years more she can take care of them, raise them and advise them. Then, if God wills, she can rejoice in her grandchildren and be the Queen Mother of her tribe (Tito 2:3-5; 1 Timothy 2:9-15). There is no career better or greater than the career of the matriarch of a family.
IV. Jesus denies the validity of the marriage of homosexuals or lesbians.
A. The union of male with male, and female with female is one of the lowest levels of perversion. 1. Romans 1:24-32, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves…” “26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”
2. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, “9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, … 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
3. Jude 7, “just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”
B. God did not give Adam a companion to amuse him or to remove the loneliness or boredom of life without a partner. Otherwise, why didn't He give him another man? The truth is, men can't procreate without women. God made us this way. It is a matter of biology, psychology, and the reality that there can be no fruit and future without God's plan.
C. When we change the purpose of marriage, and when we stop marrying to have and raise family, the end is perversion. It's the end of marriage and normal biology. The final result is to bring an end to the family, the heritage of descendants, and the future of culture. We have already destroyed the future of our people. Now Christians don't have enough offspring even to sustain the church.
V. Matthew 19:9 "Anyone who repudiates his wife"
A. When a man divorces the mother of his children, he loses his parenthood of the children, and he also loses a part of his own flesh.
B. "Except for the cause of fornication"
1. Fornication is the union with another person and is a violation of the sanctity of marriage. It breaks the bonds of intimacy. It profanes the flesh of both of them, by making one spouse “one flesh” with a stranger, someone outside the marriage bond.
2. This phrase implies that it is not a sin to divorce the fornicator and it is not adultery for the innocent party to marry another after the divorce of an unfaithful spouse..
C. “And marries another, commits adultery.”
1. If the second marriage causes the person to commit adultery, obviously God does not recognize the right of the fornicator or the otherwise divorced person to marry. God does not recognize the marriage of him who divorces his wife who was not guilty of fornication.
2. “and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Also, the divorced woman, if she marries, commits the sin of adultery. Neither one is free to marry again.
3. Man is not the lord of his own marriage. God is the Lord, He who brought them together. The one who separates what God unites, will not be successful in achieving his goals, because he is not free to marry again without committing adultery. His children will also be children of adultery.
Conclusion: God who made them "in the beginning, male and female He made them."
1. God's design is obvious from the biology of the two. Men's plans are not God's.
2. God knows what is best for us.