Divorce — An Ugly Topic (Part A)

The woman that had five husbands, one, two, three, four, five, five, he busted her. And he said that the one you're now with is not your husband too.

He did not say, you need to be stoned. He looked to reach her heart. Going forward, going forward was his approach. I can't wind back the clock. I cannot go to each one of those lives and try to unscramble this egg.

So there comes a time when I really got to go forward because the past is too damaged. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this book. But for now, here's Pastor Rick in Mark Chapter 10 as he begins his message, Divorce, an Ugly Topic. He was accustomed.

He taught them again. The Pharisees came and asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, testing him? And he answered and said to them, what did Moses command you?

They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her. And Jesus answered and said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept, but from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So then, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. In the house, his disciples also asked him again about the same matter.

So he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. The title for this morning's consideration from this passage of scripture I think is very descriptive of what's going on in my head. The title is Divorce, an Ugly Topic. I would rather preach on almost anything else this morning.

I would like to hurry up and get through this message, but I have my orders, and so do you. It is important that when we come to unpleasant things from the Word that we stare them down. We face them as God would want us to face them. This is a sensitive subject for some. For some of you, if you have a good marriage and you're not involved in, you know, there's no one else in your family going through tough times, you might not see how sensitive this is.

But for some of the others, this can be really difficult consideration. And as I go through this, I hope that I don't lose you on that. You must understand what we want from the Word. If you're someone going through these things, what we want from the Word is, Lord, how do I respond to what I am faced with? And of course, this is sin written all over it.

Divorce is the product of sin and nothing else. And to be able to speak on such a topic, the pastor has to remember what his objectives are. He is to exhort, he is to look for solutions, he is to encourage, and he is to deter. There may be things said that really have nothing to do with you now, but at some point in your life, you may have to face these things, whether on your own or someone you love or someone that you use to minister to.

So it's important to keep up with it. Keep our feelings out as much as we can and let the Spirit receive as the Lord directs. It is a very distasteful topic for a pastor to preach on. And this because of the misery and sin, or should I say it this way, the misery because of sin, especially in the lives of professing Christians, who oftentimes, very often, or too often is more like it, behave as though they've never been saved. Many are too hard-hearted to reconcile, to be encouraged, to be tolerated.

It does come a time when some people just cannot tolerate the impenitent behavior that they are exhibiting. This is a topic that is sensitive for children, for adults, for victims, for violators, for pastors, and for spectators. We're all involved in this, and though you may not have gone through a divorce personally or been victimized by some other sin in this category, it still concerns you. So what do we do? What do we do in the face of such difficult experiences? Be blameless, be useful, be Christ-like. That is our objective all the time, no matter what we're faced with. No matter how much it hurts, we want to be blameless before God, we want to be useful to God, and we want to be like Christ. And the forces of hell will try to get us to not be any of that. Some will claim to be blameless and useful to Christ and like Christ, but they're lying.

And you will know them by their fruit. They will say one thing with their mouths, and they will do something entirely opposite with their lives, and they will do it bold-faced, too. What would the angels say about someone in a bad marriage that is adamant, that is determined to be guilty in breaking up their own home, their own marriage? What would the angels say?

I think the angel would nudge another angel and say, do you believe this person? They're claiming to be a Christian. Look what they're doing. They're making no effort to be Christ-like. They're only out for themselves, which is the root, self-exaltation, oftentimes vilifying the innocent spouse to the children.

There's not really much of an excuse for that. That is slander. It's what the devil is made of, slander. He slanders in the beginning of the Bible. He slanders God to Eve, and he slanders man to God when he talks about Job, and then he faces Jesus in the wilderness and continues his efforts to slander. Ephesians 6, honor your father and mother.

That does not give a parent the right to get the child to dishonor the parent, the other, the spouse, the other parent of the child. And again, I'm talking about professed Christians. We'll get to this, but we need to set this up some as we go through it so that we understand that there's no malice intended.

There's no hardness of heart, at least on the speaker's part or my part, but I want to get things done. And again, my role as pastor is to encourage the believers. And when believers become entangled in sin, if they will let me, the role of the pastor is to seek solutions, reconciliation. And for those who may not have entered into these troubled waters, hopefully you will be deterred by listening to the word of God dispensed on these matters. And the role of the pastor is to uphold the scripture, no matter what people might think. First Thessalonians chapter 5, now we exhort you brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.

That last one catches us. Be patient with everybody? There's a few people that don't want to be patient.

I don't think they need patience. They need to be a patient. But Second Timothy chapter 4, convince, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching. And then Titus, Paul says to this pastor, speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you. Don't take their mess.

You preach the word Titus, you preach it with authority that God has given you, and don't take their mess. Who's there? Who's their mess? All the ones who are impenitent. They have weak, inactive believers who need encouragement. We have active believers who are guilty, but they repent. They need solutions, restoration, make things right. They can't do it on their own all the time. And then you have the impenitent, ignorant, guilty, who double down on their rejection. They need the deterrence. We all need deterrence so we don't become that way.

So not an exhaustive attempt to address our unfortunate and ugly subject, but we have to face it. So now we look at verse 1. Then he arose from there and came to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan.

And the multitudes gathered to him again, and as he was accustomed, he taught them again. And if you're joining in late online, we are in Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, where he arose from Capernaum. That's the last place we know him to be at in Mark's Gospel, chapter 9, verse 33. He is heading towards Jerusalem, and there they will crucify him. Pretty much his public ministry is now fading, and it is about the cross. Verse 2, well, back to verse 1 a second. As he was accustomed, he taught them again. He was always teaching them because ignorance of God is no benefit to anyone. And though some behave as though ignorance of the Scripture is somehow a good thing, your emotions can direct you through your faith, and who really needs too much Scripture?

That's out of hell, not heaven. Verse 2, the Pharisees came and asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, testing him? What we would call a loaded question. This question is intended to cause division. At that time, as maybe even today in many circles, this was a divisive topic. Hotly debated, because largely of rabbinical Judaism. Their intention was to discredit him by getting him to pick one rabbinical school of thought over the other. They're using as their platform their interpretations of Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verses 1 through 4, to dominant and different interpretations of that passage of Scripture in Deuteronomy on the law of remarriage and divorce are influenced mainly at this time by the school of Hillel, who was a rabbi, who was a liberal, teaching that Moses permitted a man to divorce his wife for pretty much any reason he wanted to. If she didn't make his dinner the right way, he could divorce her.

Now there were cultural stops in place that slowed this down, yet it was still in the thinking of many of the people and influenced their behavior. And so if you had a husband that just liked somebody better or didn't like his wife anymore, he could push this point and get away with it. Then there was the other rabbinical school of Shimei, and he followed a stricter interpretation of Deuteronomy 24, allowing divorce only in cases of adultery. Now when we talk about divorce in the Scripture, we are also talking about remarriage, because that's what's going to happen.

If there is a divorce, both or one of the parties are going to look to remarry, and this is a big problem today in pastoral ministry, how to deal with this the right way. Jesus will choose neither of those rabbinical schools in dealing with Deuteronomy 24 and these Pharisees who are looking to trip him up. He will go to the Scripture, which they did too, but they went to their interpretation of the Scripture, and he's going to go beyond there, back to the very intention of God at creation. And so what Jesus has to say about divorce is too often disrespected by some churchgoers who say they are Christians. I mean, it's one thing to struggle with what he says, it's another thing to disrespect what he says, to trample what he says.

And this could be true of any subject, not just this one we have before us this morning. To some Christians, when they make their vows, for better or for worse, till death do us part, it means nothing to them, even though that is based off of Scripture. And they list, they tend to list, quite a few pathetic reasons for breaking up their homes. And when they don't find the pastor agreeing with them, they shop for a different pastor, look for a different church. They often do it under the guise of, you know, I didn't care for, you know, that message today, or something else, or the color paint, or they find some excuse, and we need to find another church, and all the while they're scheming.

This happens. The Scripture really, to get to the point of it all, concerning divorce, gives three reasons why a person may consider divorce. Of course, there's death, the death of the spouse, and that's not a divorce, but that's a reason to remarry legitimately. There is infidelity. If one of the spouses are unfaithful, the other spouse can get out of the marriage, though that's not encouraged. It's not even encouraged in Scripture, thus we have, you know, the story of Hosea and Goma, and they're not the only ones in Scripture. And then there is, if a Christian is married to an unbeliever, and the unbeliever abandons the Christian, then they are legitimately free. But if they are married to a believer, they do not have that option. Now this, it gets ugly after that, and the egg starts to get scrambled, and they bring it to the pastor, and they hand it to the pastor, they go, and scramble this. And I say, I don't know how to do that. But, still seeking solutions, the radar is always on, looking for a way to not banish them, and at the same time, not violate the Scripture.

And it is an unpleasant task. I have many notes in my computer on these things. I don't know how much, I probably will give you none of the cases that I've faced in over 30 years of ministry. The bizarre, the ridiculous, just all sorts of encounters with people saying, I'm a Christian, and I'm getting out of this marriage, and I don't really care what you have to say.

And often times, to me, many, many times, this one villain, one, not both, and I'll come back to that, and so, Scripture, again, the reasons are stated, the three, the apostles are going to have a problem with that. You know, what do you say, for example, to someone who is, you take a couple, they're married to someone else, and then they commit adultery with each other, and their marriage dissolves. And then they marry. It's a scrambled egg. What about the children on both sides?

What do you do with them? Do you banish them forever from church? Maybe, maybe not. This is why God said to Malachi, Malachi chapter 2, for the Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce, because, and he goes on, he says, for it covers one's garment with violence. He continues, covers one's garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts, therefore take heed to your spirit that you do not deal treacherously. Remember I'm telling you about how they come up with schemes and list all these risks?

Treachery! They're trading on God, the guilty one, the one that is determined to get out, no matter what. And so, when you come across a verse like that as a pastor, and you're preaching, you're saying, you see faces, you see experiences. Over 30 years, they've added up. I'm pretty much out of marriage counseling at this point, and delegated it to the other pastors, and I'm glad about that. They're not, maybe, I don't know.

You know, you think you enter into this, you're going to fix it, you're going to help, you're going to be part of the solution, you're going to deal with two Christians that want a solution. Wrong! Wrong!

Usually by the time they get to our office, it's done. There are some exceptions. These are the bare facts. Should we sweep them under a rug, so you can trip over them later?

Not at all. We need to understand these things. Verse 3, And Jesus answered and said to them, What did Moses command you? So he, ignoring the dominant schools, he never yielded any respect for rabbinical Judaism. It was the word of God, and that was it. He didn't care about their doctrines, the doctrines of men, unless those doctrines of men were in line with what the scripture has to say. And so, this question, what did Moses say, taking them to the word, he said, what exactly did Moses mean when he said that?

Because that's where it all goes south. Their interpretation of Deuteronomy 24. Moses put boundaries on remarriage.

That was the purpose of Deuteronomy 24. He wasn't adding permissions for divorce. He prohibited divorcing a wife and then remarrying her after she remarried and divorced that husband or he died. He said, you know, you can't go back to her. That was the thrust of what he was saying. If you find a problem with your wife, you end up divorced, Moses says, almost hypothetically.

You can't be going back and forth with this. Revive the marriage after that person remarried another. They took, what they focused on was when Moses said, if the husband finds something unclean about her, some displeasure, he can divorce her. That's all they heard. They took that and they built this doctrine, and Jesus knew that, of course. So, it was not a command in Deuteronomy 24, but a limitation, not a command to divorce or an endorsement of it. And so they leaped on Moses.

You could say vague comment about these things. David, King David, had grounds to divorce Michelle years later when she remarried. He said, I'm the king. He stole my wife. I never divorced her. She is my wife and he takes her back. Hosea, he could have had Gomer stoned according to the law. He opted not to, but he took her back and he rebuilt her as best he could. He looked to reconcile that marriage even though he certainly could have gotten out of that marriage. Then Joseph, the husband of Mary in the New Testament, when he thought that Mary was unfaithful to him in Matthew chapter 1 verse 19, he thought, how do I get rid of her without shaming her publicly and causing her troubles? He was such a noble man, Joseph was. He did not always call for a death sentence. The laws gave that option, but we don't see it exercised in those two men, Hosea the prophet and Joseph.

So you see the mercy of God. When Jesus encountered the woman in John chapter 8 who was caught in infidelity, he did not look to stone her. He sought solutions. Then there was the woman who had, count them, let's have a Sesame Street moment. The woman that had five husbands, one, two, three, four, five, five. He busted her and he said, the one you're now with is not your husband too. He did not say, you need to be stoned.

He looked to reach her heart. Going forward, going forward was his approach. I can't wind back the clock. I cannot go to each one of those lives and try to unscramble this egg. So there comes a time when we've got to go forward because the past is too damaged. You'll get those high-minded, judgmental, self-righteous ones that will criticize whatever decision you make and when you show mercy. I've seen that. We've had big problems with some folks here.

We've looked to restore and they received the restoration and then others we've heard about criticizing the restoration. Why are people like that? Sin. As Gypsy Smith, an evangelist from decades ago said, sin. You can't say it without hearing the hiss of the serpent.

Verse four. Oh, I should pause here. I did say, Lord, can you help me be humorous tomorrow? Because this is an ugly topic and I got the sense that he said no. So, God, because I don't have any joke. Hey, did you hear about the pastor?

I had nothing. So we're just going to go forward with it. And again, if you're squirming, it's what it takes to deal with sin. It's not pleasant to deal with sickness. It's not too bad when you drive someone else to the dentist. But when you're the one being taken, it's not pleasant. I mean, there's nothing kind in the dentist's office.

Even the doorknobs are wrong. Anyway, we live in the age of gentle dental kind of approach. As a kid, man, it was like, no, we're going to just do this without any painkillers just to see what happens. Verse four. I'm sorry. I said no humor. But now I'm thinking about when you go to the dentist and he gives you a stick. You bite down on this.

But how's he going to get in? All right, anyway. They said, verse four, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her. See, that's all.

Just write her divorce. That's not what he was really going with when Moses was talking about some other things, too. But, nope, that's not what they wanted to have dealt with. Have you ever dealt with Christians like this? The Bible says. The Bible says. Satan did that. He did that to Jesus in the wilderness.

He did that to Eve. Has indeed God said? Anyway, verse four, they bring this up to dismiss the wife, wanting to make divorce easy and convenient.

They're not the same thing. Something can be easy but an inconvenience. They wanted to make it just as smooth as butter. Verse five. And Jesus answered and said to them, Because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. So, again, Jesus is saying, well, your foundation is wrong. So everything you build on this foundation is wrong. The premise of their argument. Moses, again, not to at risk of repeating myself, was not endorsing divorce. But there it is because of the hardness of your heart. He gets very personal with them.

He's not limiting to those that lived in the days of Moses, although they included them, but he's singling them out. Your heart's hard. That's it. The hardness of the heart in a marriage, that's what brings the divorce. In scripture, the heart is the seat. It's the place where the emotions and the intellect and the will all reside in the heart.

It's all of you. You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength. It's where the soul resides.

It's where you are. And he says, you are hard in heart. There's no compassion there. There's no agreement with God. You're adamant like stone. And as I mentioned earlier, in a bad marriage, there is often one hard-hearted spouse.

Sometimes they're both knuckleheads, granted, but many times it's just one. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.