Sermons

Divorce is Easy; Divorce is Hard (Matt. 5:31-32)

 

It is no understatement to say, our world has become fragile. 

• Political and pandemic pressures have made relationships fragile and this is no exception within the local church.
  • Outside pressures become a catalyst for inside pressures.
  • As the great theologian former defensive lineman, Warren Sap once said, the pressure causes the pipes to break!

 

• The area of concern with the world we live in is marriage! Marriages within the local church.  Christian marriages.         

Chances are you have been impacted directly or indirectly by a divorce. 

• As a spouse or child or friend.
• The subject of divorce is always sensitive no matter the context.

I bring this up humbly recognizing the deep pain caused by just talking about it. 

• Out of all Jesus could have addressed in his Sermon on the Mount, he addressed this. the issue in view of the impact within the culture then.

 

“What about how divorce impacts people directly and indirectly today?” 

These verses unearth how culture attempts to make divorce easy when divorce is hard. 

• The hardships and fallout from any divorce are inestimably difficult and scary.
  • Society attempts to mask this to its own detriment.
  • Society creeps inside the church with this same falsehood.
  • To find hope in hardship, we need to face matters surrounding divorce head-on with Scripture.

I read an advertisement titled, Affordable Divorce Solutions. 

Divorce online is fast and easy.  It is a premier affordable divorce service center.  Our simple and inexpensive process will enable you to complete your divorce documents from the comfort of your home, without incurring the cost of an attorney, or dealing with lengthy completion and delivery periods.  The total cost is $249.00.  This company does not provide blank forms or divorce kits.  You will receive complete documents, explanations, and instructions.  The documents are customized to the state or province you live in, your children, your income, your assets, and other factors in your case.  3StepDivorce is an easy divorce solution.  “Do it yourself without a lawyer.” 

 

 These options exist because the “easy divorce” mindset is in vogue. 

• Still, even the world cannot suppress the pain inherent in divorce.

On a website called divorcing secrets:

To understand why divorce hurts so much it’s important to consider how you arrived at your current situation.  I don’t mean the fights that ultimately forced you to make the decision that continuing was too hard.  Rather I mean consider the thoughts that went into your finally deciding to marry.

Remember when you first met your ex?  This was the first person you thought complimented you, completed you.  Who knew you, trusted, and accepted you.  Someone that would watch you grow old.  Give birth to your children and work together to raise them into adults.  When you got engaged…people congratulated you…as if you had been nominated to the special club called “marriage.”  Everyone was happy for you and there was a public ceremony. 

Reality check, now here you are and suddenly your world is falling apart.  You can’t assemble a coherent thought without thinking about your ex.  You question your ability to make decisions and wonder what if your life with your ex was a lie and what was real. 

This is not like a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend…this is a leap of faith into the future.  Marriage is supposed to announce…here is my partner who will protect me, comfort me, stand by me from anyone who dares to intrude into our partnership.

Divorce is a public statement, and it hurts because of its suddenness.  Courtship often takes, weeks, months, years…But breakups happen quickly…The abrupt nature of the marriage ending leaves little time for you to get used to the idea…the person you expected to share the rest of your life with is gone. 

 

Divorce no matter the circumstances or fault is always hard.  Extremely hard. 

 

Believers experience another dimension of pain because sin was involved. 

• Whether you are at fault or not there is always hurt from the fallout felt by sins committed.
  • “Hope differed makes the heart sick” – dreams dashed – family members hurt.

 

• When the divorce is done without grounds, an unbiblical divorce will breed guilt.

 

Facing all scenarios surrounding divorce by understanding God’s clear teaching from Scripture is the path toward healing.  Grace to get through a divorce from taking Scripture at face value; allowing it to speak to your specific life scenario.   

 

Recognize Jesus is building on his theme of adultery (cf. vv. 27-30). 

• The Pharisees’ strong push to “relax” the law (v. 19) by relaxing adultery through codifying rather than heart examination making marriage more a business arrangement than anything else.
  • Relax adultery, relax marriage
  • This plays right into the way society was relaxing what warranted divorce and ignores the depth of pain therein.

 

Prop: Jesus compares two positions on divorce.  Divorce is easy and Divorce is hard.

 1. Divorce is easy (v. 31)

Easy divorce came by twisting the clear meaning of Scripture. 

Verse 31 begins with, “It was also said” which is Jesus referencing the Rabbis “relaxing” Law (cf. v. 19). 

• Rabbis quoting Deuteronomy 24:1 “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce” (v. 31).

^ESV  Deuteronomy 24:1 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house

 

According to the rabbis, the steps for easy divorce were made simple by God. 

• Twisting Moses’ intent.
  • Step one, of the husband, “she finds no favor in his eyes.”
  • Step two, “he has found some indecency in her (a sexual indecency).”
  • Step three, “he writes her a certificate of divorce…puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house.”

 

• Following these 3 steps puts you are in the clear.

 

• More than clear; you are right with God.

 

Nothing changed from Moses’ day to Jesus’ day, to the current day. 

• 1400 B.C. to 30 A.D. to 2021 A.D.

 

• Debating solutions for divorce is constant since divorce is always happening.

 

Easy divorce was mainstream in Jesus’ culture. 

• Rabbi’s promoted easy divorce in that day.
  • Rabbi’s Shammai and Hillel contemporary with Jesus’ day, set the religious tone, building what they called “matrimonial offense” – the case for easy divorce.

 

•  “When green-lighted to divorce?”

 

 

• Shammai and Hillel represent the spectrum of opinions.

 

• Shammai held a stricter view stating the sole ground for divorce was sexual sin, meaning there had to be proof something had happened prior to or during the marriage.

“indecency” (Dt. 24:1) was applied as every form of sexual sin up to “adultery” but not the act itself because the act was punishable by death. 

^ESV  Deuteronomy 22:22 “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. 

 

Shammai’s application was left intentionally broad being legal and superficial.  A “gotcha” mentality.

 

 In terms of the Law, both adulterers could be sentenced to death but the evidence had to be ruled upon by clear witnesses and death was not always the outcome.    

• Neither David nor Bathsheba was executed.
• Joseph clearly believed Mary had been morally unfaithful but was planning to divorce her.
• John 8:1-12, the woman caught in adultery could have been stoned based on how the elders ruled in the gates.
• In her case, Jesus overruled what was warranted by Law.

 

[Note] This means to find “some indecency” (Dt. 24:1) was not left as a whimsical discretion. 

 

Where Shammai targeted any sexual discretion but left it under sexual discretion, Hillel widened “some indecency” to a lax view, to the widest possible offense. 

• For example, “burning someone’s breakfast.”
• Worse, a husband losing interest because he found someone, he liked better.
• The “incompatibility”

Both Shammai and Hillel miss the point of Deuteronomy 24, twisting an allowance into a prescription. 

• Divorce is nowhere commanded nor prescribed in Scripture.
  • Moses is not commanded but conceding divorce.

 

• An actual command is not given until verse 4.

^ESV  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house,² and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife,³ and the latter man hates 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 man dies, who took her to be his wife,⁴ then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. 

 

This broader context teaches that a husband divorcing wife, assumes the wife will remarry and the new husband may divorce her and even if he dies, the former husband is disallowed to remarry her” (Dt. 24:4). 

Divorce represents finality.  Something has been severed.

Understand Moses’ concession was in view of Israel’s purity.

• This serves to warn husbands and wives to take marriage seriously.
• Stemming the tide of mainstream easy divorce.

 

Easy divorce is likewise indefensible from Jesus’ later teaching in Matthew 19:3-9. 

^ESV  Matthew 19:1-9 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.² And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.³ And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”⁴ He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,⁵ and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”⁷ They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”⁸ He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.⁹ And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”  

        

The Pharisee’s ploy to trip Jesus up was their attempt to put him in an unwinnable argument. 

 

Verse 3 says the Pharisees came to “test” him. 

Matthew mentioning Jesus was leaving Galilee moving into the “region of Judea beyond Jordan” (v. 1) was locating Jesus under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. 

• Antipas was Herod [one of the Tetrarch] who had dealings with John the Baptist.
  • He imprisoned and executed John for condemning Antipas’ unlawful marriage to his sister-in-law, Herodias.
  • Antipas had seduced her away from his brother Philip (cf. Matt. 14:3-12).

The Pharisees anticipate Jesus would take John the Baptist’s position; a likewise denunciation would mean he too would fall prey to John’s same plight. 

They ask: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” [Matt. 19:3]

• Antipas as one of the four Tetrarch Herods; a major political leader; setting the tone of the culture.
• Herod snatching Herodias out from under Philip undermined the sanctity of marriage. “Anything goes!”   

Jesus’ catch 22 – he would either relax the Law “any cause” or self-condemn siting Antipas as wrong. 

• Either side with them.
• Or, as a hardliner with Deuteronomy 24.

Jesus, does what we likewise should do with modern catch 22 debates. 

• Jesus goes elsewhere in Scripture to root out the real issue.
  • The issue beneath the issue.
  • Jesus grounds his position in Genesis 2:24.

 

• The Son of God uses Scripture to appeal to God’s original design of marriage.
• Jesus corrects the Pharisee’s twisting of Deuteronomy 24 where they wrongly see Moses “commanding” [“giving orders for”] divorce.

Jesus corrects this by going back to the root cause for this concession. 

• The origin being “hardness of heart.”
  • Jesus includes the Pharisees in his indictment (Matt. 5:8).
  • Like Moses, Jesus is curbing this laissez-faire attitude toward divorce.

 

• Easy divorce is rooted in the hardness of the heart.
• People will use whatever they can to rationalize divorce but and the only mechanism to diffuse this is going to the heart.

 

What appears as being a stickler with the Law was instead relaxing it because it avoids the heart. 

• This allowance was never God’s original design and as a concession should not be leveraged to weaken people’s commitment to marriage.         

 

 Back to Matthew 5.  Verse 31 represents the wrong teaching that Divorce is Easy while verse 32 reinforces that Divorce is Hard.

 2. Divorce is Hard (v. 32)

Upfront, understand Jesus took the same line on divorce as Moses did. 

• The same Holy Spirit who inspired Moses inspired Matthew.

 

• Jesus and the Holy Spirit are on the same page.
• Jesus came not to abolish but fulfill the Law (cf. v. 17).

 

• Neither Moses nor Jesus ever command divorce but placed limitations on someone considering divorce.

 

• In the same vein, Jesus likewise puts limitations on someone who is divorced in terms of remarriage.

 

To be extra clear, Jesus never commands someone to divorce who has been sinned against even in the case of adultery. 

 

Scripture models not divorcing as some kind of automatic nuclear option. 

 

Remember the testimony of the prophet Hosea? 

• A prophet of the Northern Kingdom.
  • They come through six kings and Israel’s prosperity had turned to moral decay and idolatry.
  • The symbolism of God’s grace to a nation turned to idolatry.

 

• Hosea’s unfailing love to Gomer.

^ESV  Hosea 1:1-2 The word of the LORD that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.² When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” 

 

^ESV  Hosea 3:1 And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 

The point of the Gospel is restoration.

 

Instead of Jesus answering the Pharisee’s question head-on, he describes the implications of a sinful divorce. 

• Exactly what Moses was doing under the Old Covenant.
• He was telling God’s people what not to do.
• Jesus offers grace – limitations restraining someone from falling into license – hardening their hearts away from God.

These limitations do something else. 

• Bringing clarity on how God views marriage, stating whether or not you have committed a sin by divorcing.

 

• Principle: Divorcing your spouse without biblical cause is actually no divorce at all, in the eyes of God.

 

• In the eyes of God, you are not truly divorced (still one flesh with your spouse, 2:24) which means a new relationship (from God’s vantage point) is committing adultery.

According to Romans 7:2, what releases someone from the marriage covenant is death.    

^ESV  Romans 7:1-3 Or do you not know, brothers–for I am speaking to those who know the law–that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?² For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.³ Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. 

 

Some churches hold to a “no divorce” in any case position, based on this text. 

 

• But then you ask, how does this square with the “ground of sexual immorality” from Matthew 5:32?
  • Sexual immorality [pornea] is a sexual sin against your spouse and I would make the case that this is hardhearted unrepentant immorality committed against your spouse.

 

• The sin of “lustful intent” a few verses earlier (v. 28) is sin Jesus calls people to radically repent of and when someone does not repent, this moves into grounds for divorce.

 

“Sexual immorality” [pornea] is intentionally broad in scope encompassing a pattern of sexual unfaithfulness, not only specific to but neither the exclusion of physical acts. 

 

Divorce is allowed when the marriage is dead. 

• Old Covenant Law states in serious cases of adultery, where witnesses validate, the likely result is execution, by stoning.

 

• Likewise, when someone is hardhearted and unrepentant of their sexual unfaithfulness, then God rules that person dead in the marriage.

 

Likewise when the Apostle Paul makes one more allowance for divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:10-12.       

 

^ESV  1 Corinthians 7:6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this.

 

^ESV  1 Corinthians 7:10-12 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband¹¹ (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.¹² To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.¹³ If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.¹⁵ But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.¹⁶ For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? 

 

 

Paul taught what Jesus taught but expanded this to the case of abandonment. 

 

• When someone in a marriage becomes a believer and his or her spouse does not, this does not allow you to bale.
  • Your Christian life is not corrupted.
  • Your partnership in marriage is not doomed.

 

• The opposite is actually the case because your role is evangelism!

 

 

Still, you are not bound if the unbeliever leaves. 

 

 

The three biblical reasons a marriage is considered by God to be broken.

 

1. Death (Rom. 7:2)

 

2. Hardhearted unrepentant immorality (Matt. 5:19)

 

3. Abandonment (1 Cor. 7:15-16)

 

 

What the world assumes should be an easy option,

 

Jesus corrects by promising it will be very hard. 

 

All three allowances that end a marriage – still promises hardship. 

 

Still, all three can be overcome with God’s help.  God’s grace.    

 

Take-Home Points:

 

1. The Gospel offers hope for marriage, no matter its present state.

 

 

2. The Gospel offers hope to you if you have been divorced.
   1. For biblical divorces
   2. For unbiblical divorces

 

 

3. The Gospel offers power to take your wedding vows seriously.

 

 

4. The Gospel offers power to be single.
   1. You are married to Christ.
   2. You are freed to minister.
   3. You are reminded to approach marriage with sobriety.

 

 

5. The Gospel offers power to minister to others impacted by divorce
   1. Whether you have been through a divorce
   2. Whether you have been impacted by divorce
   3. Whether you know someone impacted by divorce