The Ancients Were Told #6

So, I had a terrible dream about this sermon that I'm about to preach. Not last night, but two nights ago. And I don't remember a whole lot of the details. What I remembered was that it was the worst sermon I've ever preached, that I was completely disorganized, and you all were like, not throwing tomatoes, but dissatisfied with me. And I woke up just not wanting to preach on this topic. Because it's personal, for one. Which one of us hasn't had parents divorced or had friends who have parents divorced or haven't been around it? Which one of us who's married hasn't been tempted to think that divorce would help resolve the conflict in our own marriages? So it's a very difficult topic. It's something that we've all had face-to-face contact with in our own hearts and in the marriages that we've been around, whether those are marriages of our parents or extended family or what have you.

And so what I hope is that God will give us an extra measure of his spirit to understand what he says and to believe it and to love it. Last week we started our study of this passage in the Sermon on the Mount, and we covered verse 31 that is a restatement of the allowance or provision for divorce in the Old Testament law from Deuteronomy 24. And last week we also saw that divorce was not a part of God's original design and also that God does hate divorce. And that the law was given to allow for divorce was not given because God was ambivalent, didn't care, or thought that it was a fine thing, but rather that they made room for it only because of the wickedness of men's hearts, the hardness of men's hearts, that it is not God's desire and not something that we should desire ourselves.

And so we saw very simply that divorce is not something that is pleasing to God. It does not fix the problems of an unhappy marriage. And if there are children involved, it is especially devastating. And so this week we're going to be moving on to the second half of this passage, verse 32, where Jesus provides an acceptable reason for divorce. Now, this is not to undo. what we said last week or what Jesus said in the verse just preceding it, but rather to moderate it and to give an example or really to teach us what Moses was getting at way back in Deuteronomy. And so my hope is that God will use our time this morning to help us better understand what the Bible says regarding divorce and the biblical justifications for it. What I'm going to be arguing for this morning is the historical reform position on this issue. There are men of good conscience that I would trust and appreciate who would differ with what I'm saying.

And I would say on this issue, I believe they're maybe wrong, having not understood what this passage teach and ones surrounding it teach. It's a hard topic. It's hard to hear because it stirs up stuff in us. And yet here it is. And so it's God's word and it's God's word to us. And so we ought to learn from it and grow as a result of it. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 5, verses 31 and 32. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. It was said, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I will say before I started that what I just said may have sounded like I'm ashamed of this text or that I don't want to preach it, and that's not actually the case at all.

I actually think this is a very necessary sermon for us, and that's why I was nervous about it. What you may be reading is apprehension is probably more the result of tiredness and a really bad stye on my eye. So no one poked me in my eye. I've just got a bad stye. And so I do think this is something that we need to know and understand because we're just inundated with this sin around us. And so if we pick up in verse 32. Jesus said, I say to you that everyone divorces his wife except for the reason of unchastity. Commits adultery. Makes the wife commit adultery. And so what can we learn? Before we get into all of the difficulty of this passage and how to sort out what it actually means, what is the stuff we can glean right off the top and say, well, we can tell that's true. What we can tell first is that there is such a thing as unbiblical divorce and that an unbiblical divorce is a violation of the seventh commandment.

And the seventh commandment is you shall not commit adultery. We can also learn from this that if there is a remarriage after an unbiblical divorce, that also is a violation of the seventh commandment. And so this passage deals with both the reasons for divorce and the question of whether those who are divorced can get remarried. Now, I can tell you as a pastor, this is probably one of the hardest things that I've had to deal with. is the question of whether or not someone has grounds for divorce or had grounds for a divorce when they got it, and whether or not they can or should get remarried. And if they do, is that adultery? It's a very hard question to answer, and it's very dependent on the circumstances. And so we have unbiblical divorce being adultery. We have unbiblical remarriage being adultery. And the question before us is, well, Why is it adultery for them to get remarried? How is it adultery if you get a divorce? Now, this is the part that's uncomfortable and actually what I wanted to talk about because we have to wade into the waters of sexual desire and recognize that single people and married people have different appetites. Or maybe it's better to say that married people have appetites awakened that single people who have been chased have not yet had awakened.

If you remember back in 1 Timothy 5 when Paul was talking about the widows, this was the primary reason he said that he wanted younger widows to get remarried. And he said if they don't, it's going to cause them all kinds of trouble. He says, I refuse to put younger widows on the list for when they feel sensual desires in disregard of Christ, they want to get married, thus incurring condemnation because they have set aside their previous pledge. At the same time, They also learn to be idle as they go around from house to house, and not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things not proper to mention. Therefore, I want the younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach, for some have already turned aside to follow Satan. Now, it would be very easy in a passage that long to just sort of pass over the first thing he said, which had to do with the desires of the widow. But we do have to realize the implication or the bearing that those desires have on a divorce.

Most people don't decide, I want to get divorced because I don't have any sexual desire. That's usually not the reason. There's many other reasons, but that's not it. They don't say, you know, I'm tired of this aspect of marriage, and so I think if I get a divorce, then I'll be free of this burden. Instead, what happens is there's some other reason that they want to get a divorce, and then they get a divorce, and then they're left with this desire and no way for them to meet it. And so what typically happens? If you had to guess, what would you say? What typically happens with unmarried folk?

or divorced folk with regard to chastity and purity. It's an incredible burden to them in the same way that it would have been for a widow. And this is what the Bible teaches us. Now, we might blush at it and say, oh, we shouldn't talk about it. It's awkward. But this is the reality of what these scriptures teach us. The Holy Spirit wasn't ashamed to admit this difficulty for widows, and we should not ignore this difficulty when it comes to the divorcee and what life will actually be like for them after the fact. Instead of... Instead of divorcing because we're angry or frustrated, we ought to work to protect our marriages. If for no other reason, then we don't have the self-control to be pure if we become accustomed to having a spouse. So this is the first difficulty that this passage presents, and it's intensely personal and it's intensely practical. If your marriage was on the rocks and you were saying, I want to go, I'm thinking about a separation. Maybe you'll go to Christmas and you'll hear that some family member is having a problem.

Saying this, I mean, thinking it's hard enough. But could you imagine saying, I don't think you should be so quick to do that because you're not going to be able, you're going to fall into sin, sexual sin. This is an incredible difficulty in the reality of divorce is that sexual sin is always following it. When I was reading commentary on this and listening to what older men commentators have to say on this, what they say is if someone's going to go through a divorce, and they're saying even for the, you know, not an unbiblical divorce, but a biblical divorce, he says they are going to have to commit their lives entirely to the church to avoid the temptations that they're going to face. Like every minute of every day is going to have to be surrounding them keeping pure because of how intense this temptation will be. It will be so intense.

And so their whole life is going to have to be ordered around them fighting this temptation. And so adultery is hanging right in the shadows of divorce because of our sexual desires and our inability to control them. So in this passage then, Jesus does give us a reason that's acceptable for divorce. He says, except for the reason of unchastity. Now, I want to caution you, you know, what is the exception? What is unchastity? What's that mean? When is it okay? allowable for someone to get a divorce, for a Christian to get a divorce. And I'd caution you first, don't misread permission as a command. Unchastity does not require you to get a divorce, okay? It doesn't require it. It doesn't say, if this happens, then you are bound to do this. You're actually not. This is the trap that the Pharisees tried to lay for Jesus in Matthew 19 when they asked him, is it lawful for, you know, Moses commanded that we get a divorce, is it lawful for us to do it? And he says, no, no, no.

God didn't, Moses didn't command, he permitted it. He allowed it. And so when we come to this passage and we look at the exception clause for the reason of unchastity, we shouldn't go, and this is what has to happen if there is unfaithfulness, that there's a violation. Divorce is not what's required. Now, what is the exception? What is unchastity? What's that mean? That's not the sort of word we use today. We don't talk about being chased. in common society. Maybe you understand the word, maybe you have some conception of it, but what is it? Well, the word behind it, the Greek word behind it, is a Greek word, pornea. That is the word for unchastity. It's where we get the root word for pornography. Same word. If you translate this word pornea faithfully, you're going to end up with words like fornication, unchastity, sexual immorality, or sexual unfaithfulness, okay?

The point of this word, this is not a narrowly defined word. It's an all-encompassing sort of word. It's sort of a catch-all word that includes any kind of sexual unfaithfulness that literally means to sell off your purity, okay? To sell off your purity. And so if we were not going to the end of the spectrum where we're dealing with obvious adultery, if we were to go to the other end of the spectrum and say, what qualifies? Where is the boundary? When have we been unchaste? When have we violated this commandment? We would find things like lustful thoughts and desires qualifying as porneia, as well as immodest dress, that these things actually would be a violation. Now, is there anyone who's not a young child who hasn't hit puberty yet who can say, I haven't violated this or transgressed this? Of course, we can't say that.

Perhaps a young child that's had their innocence protected for a time in their youth can say, well, those desires and the awareness of that hasn't been awakened in me yet. I don't know what you're talking about. It may be that you're going to talk to your children later today because they're going to say to you, Daddy, I don't know what Pastor Dave was talking about. That's okay if they don't know what I'm talking about. But you should know full well that they will someday know what I'm talking about. And they won't know what I'm talking about because somebody talked about it. They'll know what I'm talking about because they will have experienced it.

And so if this word, this exception clause, this unchastity or porneia is so widely defined, is Jesus teaching us that there is a one-size-fits-all excuse or justification for divorce? If we've all sat here and said, there's none of us who haven't failed in this regard. Is he saying, therefore, then we all have grounds to divorce our spouses? No. This is the difficult work of this passage. It's like, okay, well, that's what the word... You know, words on a paper, this is what the word means. Okay, but in real life, how do we sort this stuff out? Is Jesus giving us an olly olly in for you can get a divorce if your spouse has ever violated this passage in some way or the other? And I say, no, that actually was the practice of the Jews at the time. That was what Jesus was correcting in them. This idea that they could get divorced for just about any reason they wanted to. My wife dresses immodestly. I'm going to divorce her. These are the sorts of things that they would have been divorcing their wives for.

at that time. And so this exception is a difficult sort of thing to sort out when the situation or the sin being committed is not overt or repeated, obvious sexual sin. And so when we're working through these sorts of situations, these sorts of desires, these sorts of temptations or sins in our own marriages or in the marriages of those around us, our disposition or our desire should not be to figure out how to apply this exception and get out of our marriage, but rather to work to preserve our marriage whenever possible. I'm saying that to us because divorce is so common, because we take our words so lightly. The passage that comes right after this in the Sermon on the Mount has to do with vows. And how can you read about murder and then adultery and then divorce and then vows and not think, see how Jesus is working through this and saying, you said this thing. Next week, we'll be talking about vows. When you get married, you make vows.

You say, till death separates us. But how easy is it for us to say, well, I didn't know that getting married to this person meant I would have to deal with this or that, and I shouldn't have to. And so I need out. I asked you last week with regard to divorce. I said, what reason would someone have to give for a divorce for you to actually have a response of like, you're what? You're getting a divorce for what? Why are you doing that? It's accepted in our society that if we just fall out of love, or no longer compatible, that these are reasons. And we go, well, yeah, it happens sometimes. I mean, it's tough. Do Christians have better reasons for their divorces? No, we really don't. We give the same sorts of reasons. They amount to, I'm tired of dealing with that person, or I think that one's better. That man, he listens to me. He understands me. He knows my heart. My husband, on the other hand, he's just an idiot.

She's younger. She's more pretty. She's fun. She doesn't cry all the time. Divorce, for any reason, is accepted in our society. It's accepted in the church. We don't even bat an eye at it, let alone try to figure out if what's happening or has happened is biblical. And the reason is because it's so intensely personal. Like, it's so hard to talk about. You remember I asked, could you imagine? Taking a family member aside at Christmas and saying, hey, I don't think what you're doing is, we're Christians and that's not, you shouldn't do that. Or saying something simple like, have you talked to your pastor about this? Like, is anyone giving you, are you talking to anybody? Are you just, you know, why is an uncle, whoever, here? You understand you get the door slammed in your face, that's none of your business. You don't have anything to say about that. But God does have something to say about that.

Yeah, it's very hard to hear. So what qualifies as an appropriate or an acceptable reason of unchastity? Well, I wanna give you an example for a minute and just think for a minute about divorce in our society outside the church. If someone gets a divorce, there's a legal process that goes along with it, right? There's paperwork that has to be filed. And when you file the paperwork, If you've ever known someone who files paperwork, they don't go in and say, I filed my paperwork, and I got my certificate. Like, I can go get a divorce. They don't walk in and walk out with it. There's this process that goes on. And there's actually laws about how long you have to wait. And you say, well, I just can't stand them, and they're miserable. And the law will say, okay, come back in a few months. I don't know if it's three months or six months or whatever. They will not let you just rashly dissolve your marriage. They'll say, well, you just have this time frame, this waiting period. You have to wait before we'll allow you to get a divorce.

And this is sort of the residue of what was once there, which was a society and a government that would be for keeping your marriage together. All that's left now is a little bit of time. What else goes along with a divorce and the legal process? Well, if the couple is upset and can't work it out themselves, they're going to go to court and they're going to fight about absolutely everything. They're going to fight about the kids. They're going to fight about the times. They're going to fight about money. They're going to fight about their assets. Every little detail of their marriage is going to get hauled up in front of the judge. And the judge is going to make a decision based on the details about who gets the kids and when and for how long and if you're going to pay this and who gets the house and how we're going to divide the debt and if you need to sell that thing. They're just going to be involved in every little bit of it. And our society will submit to it. They will submit to that sort of scrutiny of their divorce and those sorts of judgments.

And so my contention is, if unbelievers will submit to that sort of adjudication of their divorces, doesn't it make even more sense that Christians would submit their broken marriages to the judgments of those who keep watch over their souls? This is the very thing that Paul is correcting the Corinthians for in chapter 6, 1 Corinthians 6. He says, does any one of you, when he has a case against his brother, dare to go to a law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Now, he doesn't say end marriage, but the very next chapter of 1 Corinthians is about marriage. It is about desertion. Do any one of you, when he has a case against his brother, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge the angels? How much more matters of this life does marriage not fall into this category?

So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? I say this to your shame. Is it so that there is no one among you, not one wise man who is able to decide between his brethren? A brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers. My point in reading all this is to say, This level of privacy that we would like to maintain and this autonomy that wells up inside of us that I can do, should be able to do what I want to do is not good. That it's destructive. And that if you're having trouble or you're having temptations, it makes all the sense in the world for you to come to your elders and to say, help me, help me, tell me what I should do. And then for you to do it.

I realize the church has given up a lot of this work and has not taken on this mantle and said this is something that we should be doing. We've been willing for the courts to sort out all that stuff. We're just going to preach the gospel. But what I'm saying to you is people's ability to accept the gospel and to obey it, if they're not shepherded at these points in their lives and told yes and no, they will not be able to grow as Christians. They will not be able to come to God because no one's ever told them what you did was sinful. You should not have divorced your spouse. No, you should not get a divorce. No, it's not our judgment that you have grounds to leave the home. And I'll tell you, if you think that what I'm saying is like, whoa, you're pushing really hard, if you were to read historically what the church would say on this issue, I would seem like a puppy. The best thing you can read on this, if you really want to have a concise...

statement of it that is excellent is the PCA's position paper on divorce and remarriage. You can read it in about an hour, and it's absolutely excellent. It has a historical explanation of what the Westminster divines would have said about this, thought about this, what they would have taught on these texts, and it is so foreign to our ears. But they reason thoroughly and thoughtfully from Scripture. And one of the things that's most helpful about that, other than the historical accounting of what those who've gone before us, have said is that they're very, very sensitive to the details of the case, and they're repeatedly saying this is something that the elders and the pastors of the church need to be involved in, that people should not be given license to make these decisions apart from your leadership and guidance. You have to do this work. Now, that's not exactly how they say it, but if you read it, that is what they're saying has to be done. So to answer the question, what about the exception? What qualifies? I say you should never make that decision yourself.

Another thing you should realize is that if there is adultery in your marriage, you will not want to tell anybody. You will not. And I don't mean you won't want to confess what you did. I mean a party that is offended, the one who was sinned against, they will not want to tell. Because of the incredible shame associated with saying, I couldn't satisfy my husband. I couldn't keep him at home or whatever the feeling is. No wife's going to want to ever say that. She's not going to want that sort of shame exposed. And so it would not be uncommon for the couple to decide, we're going to sort this out ourselves. We're going to deal with it just between us. I've watched it happen. Because then I find out months later, years later, hey, this thing happened. And I'm left going, what? Like, I understand why you didn't say anything because of the shame and the pain associated with it. But there's also a part of me that's going, why didn't you say anything?

I know it's shameful. You feel shame if you were to say something about it. But here you've been dying on the vine with no support and no help, no protection or guidance. And so when it comes to sorting out what qualifies, what constitutes, what's acceptable, you should not do that yourself. You should come to your elders immediately and you should say, our life just blew up and we need help. Whatever you are doing, we need you. And too often you guys will say to me or to our elders, I don't want to be an inconvenience to you. I don't want to take up your time. It's our job. And I don't say like it's our job and we have to do it. I say we want to be able to help. We want to be able to guide. We want to be able to shepherd your souls. But we are not omniscient. We cannot read your minds and see what's going on in your homes if you don't tell us.

And I know it's crazy to say this because you're telling me as an American, I'm supposed to invite you into my home? And I'm like, yes, but not even just for dinner. I mean, invite us into the hard stuff. Let us help so that in time to come, you don't feel like I've ruined my life and destroyed my children and made the wrong decision. Whether you want the help of others, you need the help of others. You need their help. We need our souls to be shepherded and guided at this point. And so if you find that you're tempted to despise your spouse, you go, man, I wish I'd never married her. None of your elders are going to say, you're the first person that's ever felt that way. We can deal with it. We can help you. We'll try to help you. We'll pray with you. But if you decide, yeah, I just don't want to do the work, I don't want to have to actually go and look and see what I've done, what they're doing, and what can be done to fix it, you'll end up divorced. Our church is young, 13 years.

We've not gone through a nasty divorce where a family just blows up as a church yet. But I'm not so silly as to think we're going to stand here 13 more years from now and say, oh, yeah, no, we're the good people who don't have those problems. We've not had a marriage blow up in our church, but we've had people that used to come to our church whose marriages have blown up. This is all around us, and we need help sorting out what we should do. And the more intense the situation, the more important it is that we recuse ourselves from making our own decisions and simply say, would you please guide me through this? Point me in the right direction. Tell me how far I can go and what I should do. And then make it our aim to do it. If you've grown up as a child of a broken home, you understand how devastating a divorce is. But the children will always act like it's okay because they end up becoming the ones who are supposed to provide support and stability to their parents because their parents are falling apart. Their mom's falling apart. Their dad's falling apart.

Life's falling apart, and they don't know what to do. But as they get older and they reach adulthood, they go, what in the world happened? As they start to think about getting married themselves, how many times have you heard somebody say, I don't want to get married because my parents got a divorce. Their marriage was awful. That's devastating because that person isn't saying, I don't want to act like I'm married with somebody. Happy to be close to them, happy to live with them, happy to fornicate with them, but get married to them, no. We can go on vacation, but we can't have the same last name. We can have children together, but we won't get married. It's absolutely devastating. So there's a view out there that would say, because of everything I've just said, our response then should be that divorce is never permissible. And they would understand this passage largely as being a function of the hardness of men's hearts and their unwillingness to be divorced, or unwillingness to forgive.

They'd say, well, Jesus does permit this here, but we don't think you should do that. They would probably end up advocating for a permanent separation. Or the Roman Catholics would advocate for an annulment. Roman Catholics say they don't believe in divorce, so the way they solve that problem, crack that nut, is they say, well, we'll just annul the marriage. What is annulment? Just get an eraser out and erase it. And you're left looking being like, but there's kids. How can you just erase a marriage and say, well, it didn't happen. It doesn't count. Strike it from the books. It doesn't help the people deal with what just happened. But it is an end around to get past the difficulties. In our circles, in Reformed circles, there are those who would hold to what's called the permanence view of marriage. Roman Catholicism is one iteration of that. That's not the one I would spend my time talking about. But there are men that we would trust that we'd say, they'd say, you know, I just don't think this is ever appropriate or right.

And some of them might, if you push them, they might come to where they say, okay, well, all right, well, it's possible to get a divorce without sinning, but it's never possible to get remarried. Because this passage says that if the husband gives his wife a certificate of divorce, he makes her commit adultery. And it's really complex. It's confusing. How is it that a husband, if he divorces his wife, makes his wife commit adultery? And further, how does that husband make her new spouse commit adultery? Well, their answer is, the reason that adultery is committed is because that marriage bond that was formed between those two people cannot be erased. And so any relationship with another person, any remarriage, is adultery because you still have a spouse, even if you're separated from them. There is something that I think that view is wrong. I think it's a misunderstanding of this passage. And what we have to do is sort out.

How is it that a husband makes his wife commit adultery? And how does the man who marries her commit adultery? Are we talking about all divorces? Or are we talking about unbiblical divorces? I believe that we're talking about unbiblical divorces. That if a man and a woman tear apart what God has put together, you remember I started out saying, there are desires that married men and women have, even that when they're divorced, they don't go away. They just go unmet for a time. Those desires will cause them to get into another relationship, and that is the adultery, is that you've not divorced for biblical reasons, and the desires, the appetites, and the weaknesses of your own flesh will cause you to end up in another sexual relationship, whether you're married or not. But I do not believe that this passage teaches us that if someone is divorced biblically, meaning there was a violation.

or a repeated violation or an unrepentant violation, and they do divorce their spouse with the counsel of those who keep watch over their souls, they say, no, no, no, we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to get a divorce. I do not believe that this passage teaches us that that spouse is bound to remain unmarried and that if they get remarried, they will commit adultery. And here's why. If John and Jill are married, And John commits adultery and is unrepentant and unwilling and ends up moving out, moving in with his mistress, right? This is not an uncommon scenario. Does Jill have grounds for divorce? This is a very simple scenario. It could be absolute. It's all the devastating stuff for the kids. That's all still intact. Just because the divorce is biblical doesn't mean it's any easier on the people involved. But let's just say John's living with his girlfriend now and Jill's sitting there taking care of the kids.

Does Jill have grounds for divorce? Yes. Can Jill get remarried? Some people would say no. People like John Piper would say no. People like Votie Bauckham would say no. I would say that understanding is a misunderstanding because the violation of the marriage, who broke the marriage bond, John or Jill? John broke the bond. Jill responded to what John did. because John was no longer willing to be married, to repent, to work at it, to get counseling. Do you know how common it is for couples to go through stuff like this and for the offending spouse to say, I will not go to counseling? What's the other spouse, like what resource do they have left? They will not go and get help. They refuse it. What will be said is that Jill's the one who initiated the divorce, so she's the initiator, but she's not. She is the one responding to what's been done by her husband.

He's the one, through his actions, not through his words or through a legal process, but through his actions, has destroyed the marriage, has broken the covenant. And so I read this passage, this exception clause, as being the thing that undoes the marriage. Not that it never existed, but that the commitments of the marriage have been so broken that they are no longer intact. If you were to take the exception clause out of this passage and read it, it would read like this. I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery, and I'd say yes. But what's implicit in that is the verse immediately preceding it, which is an unbiblical divorce. That men are divorcing their wives for whatever reason they saw fit. That that is not a biblical divorce, that they have not done what's pleasing in God's sight, and that commitment is not broken in God's mind, in God's sight, because they didn't have grounds to do what they did. But the exception clause, except...

For unchastity, it says, we were in the category of unbiblical divorce before. We are now in a new category, which is actually allowed and permitted. And it removes the responsibilities of the offended party going forward. So Jill, in my understanding, in the Westminster Confessions understanding, in the Reformed understanding, Jill, Henry Mary, in the Lord. There are those who would say no, and I'd say I think that they're wrong. I think they place an undue burden on Jill and on her children to have to live in such a way that is going to cause her to be tempted perpetually with her sins, with her desires, rather. Now, that's a nice and neat example where we can say, yeah, it's clear to see what's done there. It's hardly ever that clear. It's often much more difficult. You get questions of what constitutes adultery?

What if there was an inappropriate emotional relationship but not any physical contact? What if it was with one person? What if it was with three persons? What if it was when they were drunk? What if it was a pornography habit? What if it's gotten better? What if it's gotten worse? What if it's reared its head again? What about the type of pornography it is? This gets really nasty really quickly trying to sort out what constitutes... a violation, and what justifies a destruction of a marriage. It's very, very hard and difficult work. This passage is heavy. And so what I want to say to you is, just to reiterate what I've already said is, you want the counsel of your pastors and elders. And I go so far to say is, if you don't trust us to help you, then you should come tell us why.

You should come tell Daniel and John and Dan and Abram and me. You should say, here's why I don't trust you to counsel me about this situation. So I'm going to go over here and get help. But if it turns out that the reason we're not, you know, that no one's competent to counsel you, you should be very careful that what you're doing is not simply laying the groundwork for you to do whatever's right in your own eyes and then turn around and blame other people for it later, which is very often the case. Divorce is a terribly destructive action, whether it's lawful or not.

It's not the sort of thing that should be done in haste or without godly counsel and oversight. Even in cases where the sexual immorality is overt, the effects of breaking up that marriage have to be carefully considered. You know, when we get married, if I've done your wedding, there was a section I read about how to enter into marriage. And I think those words are very helpful in how to consider dissolving a marriage. It says this, holy matrimony is commended by St. Paul to be honorable among all men. and therefore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly. Now, these are all words that we don't just use regularly, but are very helpful. It is not to be enterprised. What does it mean it's not to be enterprised? It's not to be negotiated. It's not to be taken in hand unadvisedly. Have you got counsel? One of the things we'll ask a couple when they are wanting to get married is, on the premarital questionnaire, what do your parents think about your guy's relationship?

What do your close friends think about your relationship? Has anyone told you that they don't think you guys should get married? And we just ask them. Well, actually, no. Well, actually, yes. It shouldn't be entered into lightly, without careful consideration, because the stakes are so high. If you enter into a marriage unadvisedly or lightly, and you end up divorced later, it will ruin your life and the lives of your children. A man should not get married to satisfy his carnal lusts or appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding. To have someone to have relations with. How should it be entered into? Reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. So these are the things that are said at our weddings. Why do we say those things at our weddings? To prevent the divorces later. To build up an Ebenezer and say, these are the things that we're about now as a protection against those temptations that will come later. If you're married, you have an obligation to the Lord.

to be faithful to your spouse and to not give them reason to wonder whether they want to stay married to you or whether they should stay married to you. You have this obligation both to them and to the Lord. You've made commitments to God in the sight of witnesses that you will work this out and work this through. And so all I'm meaning to say to you here is that if you're married, you should never want to have a divorce. And if you feel temptations or if you feel the dangers of divorce arising in your marriage, in you or in your spouse, you should immediately ask for help. Stop what you're doing. Ask for help. Because you don't want the destruction that will be wrought. Now, not all marriages are salvageable. John and Jill, their marriage wasn't salvageable because John was unwilling. Don't let it get to that point. At some point in tough marriages, one or both of the couples say, I quit. I don't care anymore.

If you notice that you don't care about your marriage the way you used to, that you're kind of like content to just let it be, you're in dangerous water. Here's another indicator. If you're unwilling to fight with your spouse anymore, am I commending fighting and saying fighting is good for you? No, I'm saying it's the reality when you put two sinners in the same house that are different, especially that are opposite sex. They fight, they argue, they disagree, they see the world differently, they have different priorities. They get irritated and angry and furious that the other person sins. This is our lives. If you decide, I'm done fighting with you, it's not worth it, that is a red flag that you're headed toward divorce. Because what you're saying is, this marriage is not worth the trouble. And you should know that that's a common temptation that men and women, husbands and wives face. I'm tired of fighting with you. I've had both wives and husbands say that. I'm tired of fighting with my husband. He doesn't listen. It's just hopeless. All he does is tell me I'm wrong, make me feel stupid. I end up thinking I'm literally crazy because of the things he says, and I just don't want to fight with him anymore.

What do I say to the wife? Don't stop fighting with him. Husband says, she doesn't listen. She doesn't care. She accuses me of everything. It's all my fault. Never does she say she's sorry. I'm just done fighting with her. And what do I say? Don't you dare stop fighting with your wife. If there has to be a fight, if there has to be a marital conflict, it should be between the husband and the wife, not the children, not the public. You should have the fight. And if you're weary of the fight, I understand. Don't quit. Pray and ask for help. Don't say, oh, we'll fight on our own. There are times where we need other people to help sort out our messes. Our elders would love to help. I mean, I don't know, would you agree that we'd love to? I mean, it's not like we look forward to it and it's lots of fun. Can't wait, you know. But we would much rather help you sort out your marriage fights than your custody battles.

We'd much rather sort out not wanting to sleep in the same bed at night because you're disgusted with each other than whether or not you can ever get remarried again. I think you'd want help with the former instead of the latter. So don't forsake the former. I think the last thing I'll say is me talking about pastors and elders is not me saying that we're somehow supermen and that the pastors and elders of this church are somehow just especially equipped for this work. We're the men that God's raised up to lead this church. We are not special. compared to other pastors and elders. I've told people when they don't go to our church, they're having bad marriages, I say, you should go talk to your pastor and elder. Go talk to them. They need to be involved in this. Make them do their job. They don't want to get involved in this. Make them get involved in it. You should come as Christians and as congregants and as a church family, you should come to expect that the men who keep watch over your souls and who will have to give an account for it will be involved in your life.

at the hard points, at the difficult points. And if we're unfaithful, you shouldn't allow us to continue to be unfaithful. If you were at work and someone that was at work and they weren't doing their job, wouldn't you go to them and say, it's your job. I need you to do your job. If there's pastors and elders, this is their job to get into this stuff and to deal with it, to cry and weep and argue and fight and pray and sort it out. Let them do this with joy. and not with sorrow. Listen to them. I know this isn't how the church functions today, but it is how it should function. And it is what we're trying to restore is a proper relationship of congregant to those who keep watch over their souls. You don't just come here to sing nice songs and to leave feeling warm and well-fed and having had an experience with God. You come here to have the scriptures opened and to have them exposed.

where you need to grow and how you need to change and what it means to believe in Jesus and follow him. That's the aim of my preaching. That's the aim of our leadership. That's what you're here for. If that's not what you want, then you probably don't want to be here. But if that's what you've come for and you said, that's what I need, then avail yourself of it. We'll help. We don't want to see your marriages broken. We don't want to see you committing adultery. We don't want to see your hard heart get harder. We take our job seriously. Do you take your job seriously as a husband or a wife? Are you afraid to fail at it? Do you tremble at the thought of standing before God, having divorced your wife for an unbiblical reason? Can you imagine what that would be like? Let us help you avoid that. Let's pray.