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Introduction:
Good morning.
Please open your Bibles to the Gospel of Mark.
We are in chapter ten today as we are making our way through Mark’s Gospel.
Today we deal with another heavy topic as Jesus gives his followers important lessons on discipleship as they make their way to Jerusalem.
The topic we will be addressing this morning is the issue of Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage.
This can truly be a series on its own, so I won’t be able to address everything that needs to be said on this topic.
But if you would like to talk to the Elders about it or even discuss among your small groups, or even do some further study, I would be happy to recommend some good books for you or have a conversation with you.
Marriage and sexuality will be some of the most controversial issues we will face as Christians living in the 21st century.
We are in the midst of a sexual, moral, and worldview revolution where secular orthodoxy dominates the public sphere.
The culture shift we have seen celebrates what was once forbidden and shameful in the past and throughout most of human history.
Those who do not subscribe to the orthodoxy and faith of the secular culture will be viewed as hostile to progress, arrogant, hateful, mean-spirited, or too traditional and not with the times.
People who also do not hold to the celebrated views of sexuality today will be excommunicated by the larger culture.
It is already happening to Christians who are losing their jobs, institutions in danger of losing their accreditation, adoption agencies in danger of losing government funding.
The problem is not in the culture alone, but has made its way to the church.
The United Methodist Church, the second largest protestant denomination in America, made headlines the past week weeks as it split over the issue of same-sex marriage.
What we experience today is not because of primarily some democratic, liberal, or Hollywood agenda, even though they are some of the leading voices in our culture.
Christian historians have also argued that we have experienced a cultural and moral revolution because churches have failed to uphold the sanctity of marriage.
The place were marriage should have been valued and protected, often looks no different from the world.
In Nancy Pearcy’s book Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality, she states some sad statistics among Christians in regards to their views on sex and marriage:
2/3s of Christian men watch pornography at least monthly, the same rate as men who do not calim to be Christian.
One survey, 54 percent of pastors said they view porn within the past year.
A Gallup poll found amost half of teens with religious backgrounds support living together before marriage.
Among adults who identiy as Christians but rarely attend church, 60 % percent have been divorced.
Of those who attend church regularly 37%.
A 2014 Pew Research Center study said that 51 percent of evangelical millennials said same-sex behavior is morally acceptable.
“We live in a moral wasteland where human beings are desperately seeking answers to hard questions about life and sexuality.”
The church should we give clear and even prophetic voice because of what God has clearly revealed in his Word.
The most basic unity of society is marriage.
And those who seek to destroy marriages, will create a fundamental breakdown in society and ultimately rebellion against God.
And that breakdown is already happening before our very eyes in America.
Today we deal with another heavy topic as we turn to .
And the topic this morning is on Marriage and Divorce.
In our passage, we will see a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees because the Pharisees are trying to trap and corner Jesus to discredit him.
But Jesus will not play their scripture twisting mind games and will show them and the disciples of God’s true intention for marriage.
I have divided our passage in three headings:
I. Marriage Divided (vv.
1-4)
II.
Marriage Intended (vv.
5-9)
III.
Marriage Elevated (vv.
10-11)
We must uphold the institution of marriage because this is an institution ordained by God for the flourishing of families, churches, societies, and ultimately to give a picture of God’s love for us in Christ.
Again, because of our studies in Mark, we are just in the next chapter and verse.
And today is a another heavy topic that I would not naturally gravitate.
But as Christians, we must deal with the hard sayings of Jesus as well as the easy ones if we are going to be faithful to the Word of God.
My prayer is that we submit to the Word of God whatever is says.
The parallel passages are found in and if you would want to do some further study on your own.
Scripture Reading:
This is the Word of God.
Notice in verse 1 the context and location of where Jesus is at.
At this point, Jesus is making his journey to Jerusalem.
This would be like Frodo making his way to Mount Doom with his fellow hobbits.
Or Harry Potter making his way to the dark forest to be killed by Voldemort.
Or Luke Skywalker making his way to the Death Star to confront Darth Vader.
By the way, I would argue all these movies, whether they know or not, is taking their themes from the Bible.
Left there probably means Capernaum.
Now Jesus is traveling south into the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan and crowds are flocking to Jesus again.
Inventions and Decrees
Before the latter half of the 20th century, an evening of sexual pleasure often carried with it the possibility of a lifetime of child-rearing.
Having sex meant possibly getting pregnant, almost definitely staying pregnant, and then raising that child for life.
And notice it says, “He taught them.”
He was continually teaching them.
I just want to highlight that Jesus was not primarily a miracle worker, but a teacher.
His miracles confirmed the authority of his teaching.
Two things happened to flip this script.
Application:
First, contraception appeared in the form of birth-control pills.
Second, abortion was legalized and thus regulated, making the choice safer, cheaper, and easier across the board.
Suddenly, sex had fewer consequences, and though it may be crass to speak of sex as a commodity, it’s simply Economics 101 that a product that can be had more cheaply and with less risk will entice more consumers.
Alex Duke
And as Christians, we grow by learning and by instruction from the Word of God.
Do not minimize the importance of learning and what we do Sunday morning.
“We have not come to the preaching merely to hear what we do not know, but to be incited to do our duty.”
John Calvin
You are coming to learn and be instructed corporately.
But as you read the Bible personally, ask the Lord to teach you wonderful things in his Law.
Let us be humble in receiving His Word.
Such is the fulness of the Christian doctrine, that there is still more to be learned; and such our forgetfulness, that we need to be reminded of what we do know.
We are like the disciples, slow of hearing and slow of learning, and needed to be reminded again and again through instruction of the Word.
And ironically, he is approached by the supposed teachers of the Law, the Pharisees, who distorted God’s teaching which leads us to our first heading:
I. Marriage Divided (vv.
1-4)
The Pharisees come to Jesus asking a question about divorce.
Divorce was common in the first century just as it is today.
The word test is also word tempt.
It is the same word that is used of Satan in :
It is a temptation or a trap set up to make one stumble.
If the Pharisees could get Jesus to stumble on his answer, they could discredit him among the crowds and even accuse him for violating God’s Law.
Now they were asking Jesus a question that Rabbi’s debated in an OT passage.
The passage is found in .
The word indwcency was ambiguous and there were two approaches.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4
The stricter school of Shammai allowed divorce only in the case of adultery, while the more liberal school of Hillel allowed it for almost any reason (even burning a meal!).
Rabbi Akiba went so far as to say divorce was allowed even if a man “found another fairer than she” (m.
Giṭ 9:10).9
In Judaism only the man could initiate divorce, though powerful upper-class women sometimes did (Josephus, Ant.
15.7.10 §259).
The right to remarry was assumed and was an integral part of the divorce formula: “You are free to marry whomever you wish” (m.
Giṭ 9:3).
Strauss, Mark L.. Mark (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) .
Zondervan.
Kindle Edition.
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