Sermons

Fighting for Marriage – Matthew 19:1-12

Intro: In flow of Matthew, we’ve landed on Matthew 19 on Mother’s Day.  

• Scratched my head believing a section on divorce would not be appropriate for morning.
  • Decision to make.
    • Either pull something out on Proverbs 31.
    • Or, go with the text.

 

• Talking about Divorce on Mother’s Day seems grim.
  • However, found section less about divorce and more on the significance of marriage.
  • In fact, Jesus is fighting for marriage.

 

• For Mother’s Day and mothers, this passage carries significant gravity.
  • Emphasizing mothers, emphasizes a woman’s unique, maternal, and biological privilege.
    • To conceive of a child and birth a child.
    • To love and care for a child and raise a child.

 

• Children are the product of motherhood.
  • Motherhood begs the question of origin.
  • A child’s origin is always from a mother.

 

• Becoming a mother is also always the product of a father.
  • Without a father there is no mother.
    • History and logic of every age and era in mankind’s history.
      • I am stating the obvious.
      • What culture is desperately fighting against!

 

• Fathers and mothers make up the fabric of life as we know it.
  • All genealogical society comes from the first father and the first mother, Adam and Eve.
    • First two humans ever on earth were the first man and first woman.
    • Together who make history’s first marriage.

 

• Mothers highlight motherhood, which highlight womanhood.
  • Fathers highlight fatherhood, which highlight manhood.
  • Children highlight childhood, which highlight the future and society.

 

• All back to God’s established institution called, marriage.
  • Marriage is not Government Issued.
  • Marriage is God Issued.

 

[Appl] All this understanding should be one of the most obvious and practical realities there is. Yet, our world is on a direct collision course against everything I just said! All put in societal blender, flipping everything upside down. People exerting mass pressure to “suppress the truth!” (cf. Rom. 1:18).

 

^ESV  Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Rom 1:18 ESV)

[Appl] Before I continue my argument, I feel our culture is forcing me to make a clear statement on the Bible’s definition of marriage.

 

Marriage is first and foremost a covenant, established by God, between one man and one woman. Whereby two people, respectively and always are God’s union between a man and woman who vow before God and witnesses, to each other, making a life commitment to love and stay with each other, until death. Marriage is defined by God’s Word as monogamous or exclusive between two heterosexual people alone.

 

[KEY] Defining marriage, needs a quick defusing qualifier! Because I am speaking to the whole church [not a marriage seminar not only a Mother’s Day message].

 

Some, not married, never married, and never will be married.

 

• First, you do not fight for marriage because you want to be married!
  • Not Jesus’ motive in our text.
    • Lust for marriage is idolatry.
      • Common Temptation.
        • Physical satisfaction.

 

• Lust for having children, same.

 

• These godly desires must be held in check.
  • These are powerful urges.
  • Can be righteous urges when rightly channeled.

  

[Appl] Marriage is no guarantee and should not be sought for outside of Gods will.

Staying married is no guarantee and this too can become a soul-crushing idol or even a sinful decision. Staying in certain marriages when you are supposed to let go, can be wrong-headed. Christs addresses these things in our text.

 

There is also a call to singleness, as never married, or widowed or abandoned individual. The dignity of singleness has been wholly misunderstood and undervalued and underestimated by many in the church. Christ’s teaching addresses this as well. Widowed or divorced who might be biblically directed to marry again or not to remarry (cf. 1 Tim. 5). All, case by case. 

 

[KEY] In this marriage text, Jesus speaks to everyone in every station. “All Scripture is profitable!”

 

• So, standing for God’s marriage design, means you fight alongside Jesus!
  • Fight for what Jesus’ fights for. 
    • Culture-setters, always lowering the standard.
    • Culture-setters, always loosening commitments.

 

• Sleeping together culture.
  • Live together.
  • Casual culture.

 

• Our culture. 

 

[KEY] Jesus confronts this culture, by simply standing for what’s OBVIOUS, so offensive!

 

 

[Question] “What happens when we fight for marriage?”

• Fighting for marriage is fighting for truth.
  • Romans 1:18 – “They suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
  • Suppressing truth is suppressing the natural order or everything.

 

• Fighting for marriage is fighting for Gods design.
  • Based in the beginning.
  • Fighting for design is fighting for its Designer.

 

• People reject Gods design because they reject the Designer.
  • A Designer who holds everyone accountability.
  • Accountability to culture given over to its lusts!

 

• Marriage calls the world to submit its lusts to God’s design.
  • Passion is satisfied in one of two ways (married or not).
  • By the Holy Spirit or the flesh.
    • Satisfaction leaves you empty.
    • Twisting your flesh to squeeze satisfaction that is not there.

 

• Satisfaction (both inside and outside marriage) is found in one place. One source, Christ!

 

[KEY] Fighting for marriage is more than fighting for morality from an institution:

 

^ESV  Ephesians 5:21-33 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,

³⁰ because we are members of his body.

³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Eph 5:21-33 ESV)

 

[KEY] Marriage is a parable of Christ toward his covenant people.

So, fighting for marriage, fights for:

 

• Holiness not wordiness.
• Love not lust.
• Creation not evolution.
• For society not chaos.
• Biblical manhood and womanhood.
• The dignity of children and raising children.

 

• For the church as bride.
• Christ as Savior, church as saved.
• Picture of Christ washing his bride.
• Christ returning for his church.
• Heaven with marriage supper of the Lamb. 

 

[KEY] Why Jesus says there is no marriage in heaven. Marriage is temporary; a parable of heaven.

 

^ESV  Matthew 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. (Mat 22:30 ESV)

 

Prop: Three reasons Jesus fights for marriage

1. Marriage, explains God original design for “men” and “women” (vv. 1-6)

[Context] Over the next 3 weeks, will cover three themes.

• Why defining manhood and womanhood is the basis for marriage commitment.
• Why divorce is God’s mercy as a merciful concession.
• Why being single is God’s preferred exception, not the rule.

 

[KEY] Every time I try to move faster through the Bible, God makes me go slower.

[TRANS] Jesus’ been teaching kingdom values, now “finished these sayings” (v. 1).

• Moving away from Galilee, southward to “the region of Judea beyond the Jordan” (v. 1).
  • Region, Perea, top of Dead Sea.
    • Herod Antipas located.
      • Ruler for Rome, forced a divorce, to marry Herodias.
      • Had John the Baptist executed for preaching against their unlawful marriage.
        • Conspiring sin.
        • Married out from under, half-brother Philip.

 

• Context, germane to what happens next in terms of marriage and divorce.

 

1. Attacking marriage is attacking Truth (vv. 1-3)

[Point] God’s original design, (from the beginning), of “man” and “woman” explains the “WHY” for commitment in marriage (vv. 1-6).

[Context] Jesus continues w/mercy ministry, heading down toward Jerusalem, healing crowds that followed him.

• W/mercy comes next attack frm/Pharisees.
  • Jesus’ presence provokes this.
    • Accountability spikes their conscience.
    • Culture setting Pharisees, challenged.

 

• Attempting to loosen grip of accountability, while trapping X w/political trouble/Antipas.
  • Getting X on either front!

[KEY] Twisting meaning of Deuteronomy 24 (see, Matt. 18:7-8) inventing loophole for easy-divorce.  

^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. (Deu 24:1-4 ESV)

The Pharisees question, based on finding some indecency: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (v. 3).

• Equating “any cause” to “some indecency” (cf. Matt. 19:7-8).
  • Opening to the widest possible applications.

[Illus] Rabbi school of Hillel, allowed burned dinner, as grounds.

• Deut 24 meant in opposite fashion!
  • Egregious cases of sin, abject immorality.
  • Hardhearted, unrepentant.

Severe cases, meant severe discipline:  

^ESV  Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. (Lev 20:10 ESV)

• Haphazard divorce, nowhere in this realm w/this brand of finality!
  • Divorce by death.
  • Finalized forever, bc/defiling act shamed God’s covenant.

 

• Also, Law worked, case by case w/acts of indecency.
  • Account of when Joseph assumed Mary pregnant by immorality, put her away.
  • Lawful allowance.

 

• David’s adultery for him did not mean death.

[TRANS] Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus.

[KEY] Trap for Jesus to swing w/extreme applications.

• Either, never allowable divorce, in trouble with Herod.
• Or, “some indecency” meaning grounds for anything! To move on (by whim) from your marriage.

[Appl] Culture today moving high speed agnst/marriage. Issues, beyond covenant-keeping. Now perversions of immorality drive “gender confusion” legal protection for children to hold their parents hostage from alleged identity choice.

Divorce in this case, based on legalizing lusts. Culture of living together for lust. Pretend to be married and enjoy virtual marriage, throw it away, and move on with no consequences!

[KEY] Jesus’ response is to go back to the Beginning, the very beginning.

• Important, especially when defining the original intent of marriage.

 

• Defining the origin of marriage, you go back to the first marriage btwn/first male and first female.

 

[Appl] Bible says when you get married, you’re a one-woman man (cf. 1 Tim. 3:2), meaning that your standard of beauty is the woman who is your wife. For Adam, Eve was it. He was the ultimate one-woman man.

 

Idea is when God designed the first male, this the perfect counter part to the first female. Meant for each other!

 

[Question] “Why the application of verse 5?”

“…and said, “Therefore a man shall leaven his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (v. 5)

• To understand significance of Jesus’ saying, you must understand Jewish culture.
  • Loyalty to parents was deep.
    • Deeper than our Western World.
      • Genealogy was everything.
      • “I am of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob!”

 

• Embedded thinking.

 

• Jesus making a new spouse the reason to break out from under one relationship to meld with another carries absolute depth.

 

• Coming out from under your deepest influence into a union with another.
  • From relationship of obedience under parents.
  • Shifting to prioritize a new relationship.

 

• From obeying to honoring parents.
  • From being a friend to a possible spouse.
  • To whole commitment to becoming one with someone.

 

 

1. Defending marriage is defending Truth (vv. 4-6)

Being “one flesh” is both physical and spiritual.

• Husbands literally “hold fast to his wife” which is physical.

 

• “…the two shall become one flesh” based on physical design of the original, God-created, male and a female (cf. v. 4).

 

• For Adam, Eve was the standard of womanhood.
• For Eve, Adam was the standard of manhood.

 

[Appl] No other option to define what “man” is like or what “woman” is like outside of this real template.

 

All entitlement to define “a man” “a woman” is contrary to the beginning. Bible-defined beginning!

 

• The “two” were automatically drawn to the other.
  • No other option.

 

• Marriage is monogamous by design.
  • Two people, meant to cohere as puzzle pieces.
  • Each other’s compliment.

 

• Not good for man to be alone, so God created woman.
  • Adam was pulled apart so his compliment could reattach, they, becoming one flesh together.
    • Ish – Man; Isha – Woman.
    • One from beginning, woman made from man and then they come back together as one.

 

• Both, made in the image of God, equal but different.
  • Different by the way, in no way is inferior, either way.
  • Unique from one another but coalescing to be one in life together.

[KEY] This does not fit within the world’s schema of polygamy.

[Appl] You say, I thought polygamists were relegated to the Kings of the OT or to certain cults like Mormons (of old?). But, according to Jesus’ diagnosis of the heart, when people lust they commit adultery, so in this way with the vain living on the internet or the casual relations culture, people have many wives these days (John 4:18, “woman at the well” – “you have 5 husbands!”).

^ESV  John 4:17-18 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;

¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (Joh 4:17-18 ESV)

 

Modern concubinage should be thought of in terms of people going outside of their marriages.

Verse 6 seals emphasis, w/Jesus’ words, “So they are no longer two but one flesh” (v. 6).

• This makes the connection of both physical and spiritual within a marriage.

[Appl] Most problems within marriage begin by not recognizing the depth of connection the Lord has made between two people.

 

Verse 6 takes things to this level, where your marriage partner is clearly someone who the Lord himself has brought to be one flesh with you.

• God married you to your partner.
  • Why Jesus says, “What there God has joined together, let no man separate” (v. 6).

 

• This word separate χωριζέτω (Mat 19:6 BGT) could be translated, “to divorce.”

[Appl] The reason that you fight for marriage is that marriage is built out of God’s creative design and this creative design is being replicated all over the planet in every culture, over and over, repeatedly. And just as God designed Adam and Eve and literally presented the first woman to the first man, he is doing the same over-and-over-again.

[Appl] You may ask, does God bring together husbands and wives only in the context of Christians relationships? My answer:

The Bible does not dissect what he means in terms of his sovereign operations on this level. Only to say, that for Christians, we are commanded to marry in the Lord.

But even when this command is violated or when one or the other becomes and Christian, where the other does not, that 1 Corinthians 7:10-14 commands believers to stay in the marriage where possible.

But at the same time, in the case of abandonment, the believer is freed to let the unbeliever go.

[Appl] If you are like me, you can see retrospectively how you came to be with your spouse. I certainly can see this in my case. Judy’s upbringing and schooling and mine were all happening in a way that seemed to bring us together. I had heard of Judy by reputation and then us two, both on the east coast came to know each other and become friends on the west coast.

Then in ministry and starting in family in the mid-south only to end up in Alaska to be with you here.

This was the sovereign plan for us and understanding this is what puts the marathon of marriage in focus.

For believers, understanding that your spouse is your co-regent, fellow believer, uniquely gifted is to see this partner as God’s grace in your life.

 

[KEY] Jesus concludes w/final phrase in verse 6, “let not man separate” (v. 6).

• Full circle to the Pharisees’ question, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (v. 3).
  • Their question, assumes divorce is man’s decision, when it’s not.
    • Since, marriage was God’s idea, based on his original design, creating first man and first woman.
    • Then only logical to conclude God is only One w/final say on whether a marriage should stay together or not.

 

Conclusion: Goal this morning, not to make specific applications to anyone’s circumstances.

Calling you to Fight like Jesus by Fighting for marriage.

Defend God’s design for the world.

• Fighting for marriage is fighting for Truth because marriage is based within God’s original design.

 

• He made men and women with the intention that most would marry.

Fighting for marriage does not assume you are married or should ever be married but it does assume that you cannot ignore God’s design.

• The Bible describes manhood and womanhood.

 

• Evolutionary thought undermines reality.
  • Culture w/o X rejects God’s design and Designer.
  • Defend God’s design and defend the Designer.

 

• Mother’s Day is the fruit of family.

 

• Motherhood is the fabric of society!
  • Fight for Truth.
  • People need X.

 

2. Divorce is God’s merciful concession to the original design of marriage (vv. 7-9)

 

3. Singleness is God’s preferred exception in view of the normalcy of marriage (vv. 10-12)