THE SERMON - What Does The Bible Say About Divorce？ Part 2
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Summary
Divorce is one of the most controversial topics in the Christian faith, and there are few things more divisive in the church than the subject matter of divorce. In Matthew 5:31-32, we pick back up where we left off with a continuation of our series on divorce. This time, we focus on the second clause in the scripture regarding divorce, which is "abandonment."
Transcript
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Continuing our series this Lord's Day through the gospel according to Matthew.
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Our text for today is Matthew chapter 5, verse 31 through 32.
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We're picking back up where we left off last week.
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I told you that this would be at least two parts, perhaps even three parts.
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We'll see, I hope, by God's grace, Lord willing, to finish today on these two verses.
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It's only two verses, but this particular subject matter has been neglected,
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either neglected or wrongly taught in the evangelical church for a few decades at this point.
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The subject matter from these two verses, as you'll see just in a moment, deals with the topic of divorce.
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So again, our text for today, this is part two, carrying over from last week.
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Our text for today, the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 5, verse 31 and 32, the Bible says this.
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It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.
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But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
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And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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Our primary focus, if you were with us last week, was in regards to adultery, divorce, and remarriage.
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Lord willing, what I hope to cover today is on the second clause.
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There are only two clauses that we find in the scripture to be biblically permissible for getting a divorce.
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But the second that we'll try to give attention to this morning is abandonment.
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And I briefly got into this concept, painting the picture for you last week, that adultery and abandonment are not entirely unrelated.
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But in many ways, perhaps it's better to view the two as simply two different sides of one coin.
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On the one hand, you have adultery, which is breaking the marriage covenant by engaging in covenant relationships that are reserved for marriage alone and engaging in these covenant relations outside of the marriage.
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Whereas abandonment is the deliberate forsaking of the proper engagement of these covenant relations within the marriage.
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And the Apostle Paul is very clear about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.
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In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, he says that when it comes to the marital duty that each spouse has to one another,
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that you cannot deprive one another in marriage unless by mutual consent.
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And even then, it must be mutual, it must be temporary, and it must be purposeful.
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And the only purpose that's given as a sufficient or acceptable purpose is for the purpose of devoting yourselves to prayer.
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In the same way that as an individual, you might temporarily fast from eating food so that you might indulge yourself in prayer.
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If you're fasting, you stop eating food, but you don't start praying more.
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But if it's actually a spiritual discipline, it's actually fasting,
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then you're not just ceasing to eat food, but you're also replacing one discipline with another.
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You're saying, as it were, that a man shall not live by bread alone,
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that I believe that when God says this in his word is true
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and I'm not ultimately relying on temporal things
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but ultimately it is that which is spiritual that matters most
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and I'm relying on the food that comes from God alone.
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I'm relying on Christ and I'm going to him with prayers and petitions,
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It's to, I'm ceasing eating food for a time, and during that time, I'm going to up my prayer game, so to speak.
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So I'm not, it's not that I'm just not eating, and everything else about my life during this season remains the same.
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That would simply be dieting, intermittent, immediate fasting, you know, trying to lose some weight.
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So, too, when it comes to the marriage covenant, fasting from covenant relations within the marriage needs to be mutual.
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It needs to be temporary and it needs to be for the purpose of prayer.
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And then, even then, coming back together and sooner rather than later, the Apostle Paul says, so that you might not fall into temptation.
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He says, because the world is filled with various temptations.
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And it's for that reason that each man should have his own wife and each wife her own husband.
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I also said last week that when it comes to the body of the husband and when it comes to the body of the wife in marriage,
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that although the husband is clearly labeled by Scripture as the head of his wife in all matters,
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When it comes to his physical body, this is the one arena within the marriage covenant where there is an equal authority.
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The wife has rights to her husband's body, and those rights are at the same level as the husband's rights to the body of his wife.
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There are many other things within the marriage
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There are plenty of things in the marriage covenant
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and the husband can simply exercise his authority
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I'm sorry, I wish we agreed on this, but we don't.
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And that's perfectly biblical. However, when it comes to depriving one another of covenant relations, he actually, the husband, as much authority as the Bible gives him, he actually doesn't have authority to do that as an executive decision.
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It is only by mutual consent that you can deprive one another. So what does this mean? What's my whole point in laying this theological framework?
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It means that renewing the covenant, renewing the covenant within marriage is a really big deal.
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And denying the covenant and those covenant relations which are specific to that marriage and that marriage alone,
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denying these, the absence of these, this covenant renewal within marriage, the absence of that
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regular covenant renewal is a big deal. Every other decision, so long as it's not contrary to the word
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of God, a husband really does have an executive authority. He shouldn't wield that executive
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authority in a domineering manner, but he does have it. And for the record, if your biblical
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view of male headship boils down at the end of the day to, well, when the husband and wife disagree,
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they should just decide to pause on making the decision for a month and devote themselves to
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prayer. And if they still can't agree after praying for a month, they should go and seek
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to know that, men. 99% of churches, the pastors don't believe the Bible. They'll preach it,
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but they will not live it. They will come into your marriage and they will override your
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authority, cut out your legs from underneath you and reaffirm feminism and egalitarianism
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in your marriage. And now whatever conflict you already had in your marriage, it will now be
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multiplied by 100 because your wife will now have affirmation from those that she sees as spiritual
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authorities who essentially just gave her a biblical it's not really biblical but a biblical
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permission to rebel against her husband and that is marriage counseling in the evangelical church
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99 out of 100 times so when that doesn't happen which is extremely rare back to my analogy here
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Most people think that biblical headship boils down to if we disagree, then we just don't do anything.
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We're at a standstill and we'll pray for a month.
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If we still disagree, we go and seek out the pastors.
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And in this hypothetical scenario, let's just say that you have the rare pastors who still don't affirm male headship,
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but they at least don't affirm, you know, boss, babe, happy wife, happy life theology.
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Well, then in that scenario, in that scenario alone,
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Absolutely nothing, said the Christian church for the last, I don't know, 70 years or so.
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So if you can't tell already, if you're visiting, I don't believe that.
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I'm one of those crazy guys who gets in trouble because I believe what every single Christian always believed for 6,000 years until about 15 minutes ago, which makes me a far right radical.
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In other words, a completely normal guy, even outside of the Christian world, by every metric ever available until about 1940, 1950.
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So, all that being said, the Bible's view of male headship, especially in the home, is a really big deal.
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and it does not give all of the disclaimers and qualifiers
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that squishy, effeminate, evangelical pastors
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When it comes to the covenant relations within a marriage,
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the male headship thing doesn't get the final say.
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That's my whole point in framing this theologically.
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Male headship, according to God, really big deal.
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When it comes to the renewing of the covenant, covenant relations,
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We're family integrated, so that's, you know, I try to just be appropriate.
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I'm not trying to be silly and speak in code, but I'm trying to be appropriate.
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Those covenant relations within a marriage, that's the one thing.
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The Bible says, uh-uh, husband doesn't get the final say on that one.
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authority. That one has to be mutual. The wife has the wife's authority over the body of her husband
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is equal to the husband's authority over the body of his wife. That's a really big deal for the
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Bible to say that. And so then what does that mean? Well, this is, oh my goodness, Joel, you just
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discovered it. You know, the feminists are getting excited, you know, not you guys. But, you know,
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it's like Joel just provided a biblical argument for me to make my case for, you know, why the
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Apostle Paul, I have always hated him, but maybe I can hate him a little bit less because maybe he
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was groundbreaking, you know, for the time and swimming up against the cultural current, you
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know, and the world was steeped in toxic, you know, masculinity. But Paul was at least carving
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out some kind of ground for future feminists that we could live by. No, it's not what he's doing.
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What the Apostle Paul is doing is he is saying that adultery and abandonment are not two entirely unrelated issues.
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But again, they are two separate sides of one singular coin, and they're both a big deal because covenant is a big deal.
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And you can break that covenant, according to Scripture, in two ways, not just one.
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You can break that covenant by engaging in covenant renewal relations outside of the marriage, a betrayal.
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Or, not merely, you can break the covenant by the presence of covenantal relations outside the marriage,
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or the absence of covenantal relations within the marriage.
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And just to put one more practical qualifier, right?
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Now, in terms of the practical qualifier, the Bible does not put a time limit or a schedule.
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So my pastoral and practical counsel to you, brothers and sisters, is don't be legalistic.
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God's law matters, but where the Bible really is silent, don't try to make extra biblical man-made laws.
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well-known pastors who have tried to get really technical and that to be fair i think their intent
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was they were trying to simply be practically helpful those guys who have done that i've never
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seen it go well those sermons always age poorly i'm going to learn from those mistakes and not
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make it myself we have no such rule here at covenant bible church that you know thou shalt
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blank every two days or three like and I also think that there is a permissibility in scripture
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when a couple has been married for years and years and is getting older because part of the purpose
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of this is the renewal of the covenant but again the text in first corinthians 7 Paul says uh the
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mutual if you're one it has to be mutual two it has to be temporary this this depriving um and
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But then notice a fourth component that he lists is he says, but then be brought back together because there is much temptation.
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And the fact of the matter is that if you are in your 60s and 70s, you are not immune.
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Okay, so don't take this the wrong way, what I'm about to say.
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However, there is a sliding scale in the way that God has physically designed us
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to where the whole purpose of Paul saying it needs to be temporary
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and then come back together because there's much temptation in the world.
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Typically and biologically, ordinarily, the person in their 60s
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is probably not going to be quite as tempted as the young married couple in their 20s.
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will I be sitting here putting a time limit on it?
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So if you're newlyweds, get to it and enjoy God's good gift.
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And if you're older, maybe not going to be quite as ambitious.
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But there's Bible verses for that, too, to always rejoice in the wife of your youth, remembering her.
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Remember, this is the woman I married 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago.
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She is a beautiful woman in whom my heart, after 50 years, half a century, still delights.
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And I show her my affection in many different ways.
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So all that being said, that's all I'll say for that.
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But the big idea, as it pertains to divorce and remarriage, right?
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That's our primary text, Matthew chapter 5, 31 and 32.
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As it pertains to divorce and remarriage, the big idea is that there are two biblical clauses of permissibility for divorce.
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Adultery, that one is the one that most of us are aware of.
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And that's explicitly said in our primary text, Matthew 5, 31 and 32.
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But in cross-referencing, getting a larger theological view of this topic of divorce and remarriage,
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So let's look at 1 Corinthians 7, verse 10 and 11.
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I've given you a lot of stuff from 1 Corinthians 7, but let's hone in on these two verses now.
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To the married, I give this charge, not I, but the Lord.
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Because this is, again, where the liberal theologians, they get real excited, real excited.
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They're like, oh, it's right there in Scripture.
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Paul bifurcates and distinguishes what's from God and what's just his idea.
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And if it's his idea, well, then we know that that's just, you know, it's just culturally rooted for that time and that place.
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and by today's standard, you know, it's misogynistic
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the explicit verbatim teachings of the Lord Jesus
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he's not saying this command doesn't come from God
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He's saying this command is coming by apostolic authority,
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And it's just as authoritative as the red letters.
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not I but the Lord the wife should not separate from her husband but if she does she should remain
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unmarried or or else be reconciled to her husband and the husband should not divorce his wife so
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he's saying Jesus taught not to divorce now a little later notice verse 12 chapter 7 first
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Corinthians 7, verse 12 through 15, Paul says, to the rest I say, not the Lord, if a brother has a
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wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him. So you're a Christian man, your wife is
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an unbeliever. Perhaps Paul is describing a situation where both of you are unbelievers and
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then the husband later, after having been married to the wife, he comes to saving faith. He hears the
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preaching of the gospel the holy spirit gives him a new heart and the gifts of faith and repentance
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and he becomes a christian but his wife doesn't in those scenarios where the husband now is a
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christian but the wife is not paul says with apostolic authority so this is god's word
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it's just not a teaching explicitly espoused by jesus during his earthly ministry paul says
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if a brother as a christian man has a wife who is an unbeliever but she although she's an
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unbeliever, she's married to a Christian husband, she disagrees with him about certain things, but
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she consents to remain in the marriage, to live with him, then in those cases, he should keep his
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wife. He should not divorce her. If a woman, vice versa, has a husband who is an unbeliever, and she's
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a Christian, and he, the unbelieving husband, consents to live with her, then she should not divorce him.
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For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife.
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And vice versa, the unbelieving wife will be made holy by her believing husband.
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So, the unbelieving husband is made holy by his unbelieving wife.
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And the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.
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Otherwise, your children would be unclean.
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This is another example which is, again, it is a big deal.
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And the children are simply the covenantal fruit
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that it would only be covenantally cleansing for the whole house
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and says, even if the federal head of the house,
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namely the husband, is unregenerate and an unbeliever,
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but the wife, in a particular case, happens to be the Christian,
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Her Christianity is potent enough to sanctify her husband, her unbelieving husband,
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so that the children are not unclean, but rather holy.
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Which is an extraordinary statement to be made in the Bible,
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which is very clearly, text after text, patriarchal and not matriarchal.
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And so the point is, again, the point is that covenant matters and that this covenant is so intimate and so potent and so divinely inspired and instituted by God himself that the husband doesn't actually have, although he has much authority in this matter,
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he does not have the authority to deprive his wife as an executive decision made only by him.
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Her authority comes into play, her authority over his body, her rights to his body.
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And also when it comes to divorce, the believing husband as head of his wife,
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he has, by God's grace, he is able to sanctify his unbelieving wife
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that is the believing husband or the believing wife,
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but they were left by their unbelieving spouse,
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You would think that the Apostle Paul would say that in these cases,
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But he doesn't say that. He actually goes further. When he says not enslaved, that assumes
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the minimum standard of being absolved of moral guilt. But he's saying actually even further than
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that. He's saying not only are you not guilty, but you're also no longer bound. You are no longer
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enslaved to the marriage covenant. And so here's my position. For the record, anytime I say my
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position just assume what i'm saying is here's a position from an old dead guy a lot smarter and a
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lot godlier than me that i read and adopted that's what i mean when i say my position i don't think i
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have any position that is original to me and that's saying something because you're talking
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about a guy who occasionally does a video on mermaids even with mermaids i can cite some dead
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guys i'm not saying they're the most reliable dead guys in that case you know but i can cite
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some other guys i got it from somewhere i didn't just make it up um if you really want to read
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someone interesting read um king james you know the guy who's responsible for the king james bible
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he has a whole almanac of like his recordings and findings on because because guys during that age
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i mean even martin luther for instance all right so so to not just make it about king james because
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people say, well, he wasn't a theologian. King James was probably a better theologian than you
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are, to be frank. But Martin Luther was definitely a better theologian than you and me. And Martin
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Luther believed, that dude believed in some fairies. I'll tell you that right now. And King
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James, he took it a lot further. He believed in fairies and he believed in vampires and a bunch
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of different things because some weird things were happening in that time period and they didn't know
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how to explain them and so they were doing their best to kind of like you know record and categorize
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different spiritual beings and spoiler you know the nutshell version is they decided i don't think
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it's just as simple as two categories of angels and demons but that there are elemental spirits
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that are bound, you know, to certain geographic regions
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In the case of bald eagles, we know what's in that egg,
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and it's actually like a federal fine and crime to destroy it.
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But when it comes to the womb of a mother, we have no idea what's going on there.
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We'll never really know until the baby is delivered.
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So I don't have a lot of faith in the scientists today, you know.
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So, all right. Anyways, the point is my view on divorce and remarriage comes from better men than me.
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It's not my personal view. I didn't invent it. I didn't make it up.
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None of my views are invented, even even the wacky ones.
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So all that being said, let me use a little bit.
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I've been using Calvin last week throughout this little mini two week series.
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So let me use Calvin again, and then I'll use some of the Westminster standards.
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Christ condemns as an adulterer the man who shall marry a wife that has been divorced.
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This, and I put it in bold in your notes, is undoubtedly restricted to unlawful and frivolous divorces.
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So what Calvin's doing is he's taking the words of Christ,
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And then he's cross-referencing those with other portions of Scripture that speak about marriage and divorce, namely the teachings of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, as well as Romans chapter 7.
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And he's making a larger, cohesive theological position.
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He's saying that, yes, Christ says at face value, if we only had these two verses in Matthew chapter 5, 31 and 32,
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Christ says that a man who was previously married to another woman and has a divorce, if he remarries now to someone else, that he is committing adultery.
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But Calvin adds in his commentary, this is undoubtedly restricted to not just all divorces, but those divorces which were unlawful and frivolous.
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that Jesus isn't saying this as a blanket principle.
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if the previous divorce was without biblical cause,
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if it was an unlawful, unbiblical, frivolous divorce.
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In other words, if there's a divorce that was frivolous,
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Those are the only two clauses that are biblical
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or seek to be reconciled to your former spouse.
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Now, let me add a couple of clarifiers, because let's just be honest.
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Can I get an amen? America loves apple pie.
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America loves football and America loves divorce, adultery and abortion.
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It's like, man, I wish that Trump was stronger in his rhetoric, you know, against against abortion.
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But let's just acknowledge for a moment that I've been reliably informed.
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that they think the most people will agree with
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And I'm not making a moral argument right now saying,
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The reason why is because America loves abortion.
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but America loves abortion substantially more in 2024
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And that's why Trump is saying the things that he's saying.
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I thought we were talking about divorce and remarriage.
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Well, listen, it's never a bad Sunday to condemn abortion.
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Okay, so you just that one you can just do every single week.
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And you're probably you're probably going to be in good standing.
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But as it relates to our topic, abortion runs downstream.
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You need to see the correlation from adultery and divorce.
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it is because we have a country that is rampant in adultery and divorce
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that we have so much of an appetite for abortion.
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Abortion runs downstream of the sexual revolution
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and men and women in our country wanting to cast off all bonds,
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If you're the wife, all these different things.
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Or they ultimately committed adultery against you
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In that instance, they would be the guilty party.
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you would be innocent, declared in an ecclesiastical court by the church,
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And because that was not a frivolous divorce, but a biblical divorce,
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in those circumstances, you would be free to remarry.
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you got divorced because you just didn't like each other.
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in those cases the bible says remain single or return and reconcile to your previous spouse
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now because this is how i got on the whole america loves divorce and adultery because our nation is
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just divorce and remarriage is rampant in our nation within the church sadly as well
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there are many instances with people who got a divorce they didn't have biblical cause
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and you're thinking, oh no, I shouldn't have done
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divorce her too or i'll divorce him too no that would just be now piling up a third offense
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and that doesn't fix it two wrongs don't make a right well three wrongs don't make a right
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so what do you do what you do is you repent before god you say lord i was ignorant i was dumb
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i'm sorry please forgive my sin you repent before your current spouse sweetheart i'm sorry
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But I did, which means it was an unbiblical divorce, which means I was not free to remarry you.
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But the good news is that you are not in a continual, ongoing state of sin.
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And there's a difference in saying, I sinned, and saying, I'm sinning.
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God is sovereign over all things, including suffering and even sin.
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And so the solution moving forward is to repent to God, I'm sorry, and name your sin and prayer before the Lord.
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Repent to your current spouse, this is what I did.
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And the way that I'm going to seek to make it right is trusting, first and foremost, in the shed blood of Jesus Christ that covers sin.
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And number two, by trying to be the very best spouse I can in this marriage to you.
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And if there were any children from that previous marriage,
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and you try to have the most God-glorifying marriage
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and when you find out you even messed up really bad,
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and it's embarrassing, you have egg on your face,
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here's the beautiful thing about being a Christian.
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You don't have to go back and rewrite the history.
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You don't have to find some way to rewrite the record to where it will.
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I thought, at least you guys correct me if you think I'm wrong.
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I thought that the whole idea of being a Christian and believing the gospel of free grace for sinners was that when you mess up and you got egg on your face, you don't have to do a walk of shame.
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but you also don't have to pretend you never messed up
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What you can do is you can stand before God and men
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but jesus died for it i'm going to own it and then i'm going to be the best husband i can
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or the best wife i can that's what we do that's that's what christians do okay let's go ahead and
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land the plane now this is from the westminster confession of faith chapter 24 says this it is
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lawful so now talking about abandonment these kinds of things um and remarriage in those cases
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It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgment to give their consent.
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Yet, now right there, what it's getting at is this.
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So the Westminster divines are denying Rome, as you'll see in this.
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You can barely get through any paragraph of any chapter without them, you know, making fun of the papists and their idolatry, which I'm here for.
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But what they're saying here is they're saying,
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It was established by God, but it's not a sacrament.
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We have two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper.
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but he didn't give it exclusively to the church.
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So what they're saying in this very first line,
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who are able with judgment to give their consent.
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What they're saying in this is Muslims can marry
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we wish them a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.
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and wish you a pleasant conversion to Christianity.
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and wish you a very pleasant conversion to Christianity.
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Well, when Paul says, you know, that the unbelieving, you know, spouse is made holy by the believing spouse so that the children are not unclean.
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He's just he's just saying that those children who are holy, right, because this is the Baptist temptation.
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They want to somehow, you know, say, well, the children aren't really holy.
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And I think you can still be a credo Baptist and yet also embrace the Bible.
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And so what the Baptist is tempted to do is say,
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well, when the Bible says holy in that context,
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really all it means is that the children aren't bastards.
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It just, when the Bible says that they're holy,
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by saying that the marriage is legitimate,
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that a Christian husband and a non-Christian wife
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or a Christian wife and a non-Christian husband
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and therefore the children are not bastards
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What if there's not even one believing spouse?
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Well, in that case, if holy just means legitimate,
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then you're basically espousing the theology that says
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you've got to have at least one Christian in the marriage
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to make the marriage a legitimate marriage
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So then if you have a marriage with two unbelievers,
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we don't recognize any of these marriages as being valid
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to delegitimize like 80% of the children in the world.
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The point is, marriage is given not just to Christian people, but all people.
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It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who are able with judgment to give their consent.
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Yet, almost done here, it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord.
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They have a moral obligation. You need to marry a Christian spouse.
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And therefore, such as professed, the true reformed religion should not marry with infidels or papists or other idolaters.
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Adultery or fornication committed after a contract.
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Now, in this case, contract instead of covenant.
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but the contract is actually referring to the engagement or betrothal.
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Adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before the marriage.
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Although, continuing now, although the corruption of man be such as to unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage, yet nothing but adultery, and here it is, here's the language, or such willful desertion.
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So two clauses, adultery or abandonment, as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate.
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They can't be brought together for whatever reason.
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Adultery or willful desertion that cannot be remedied, reconciled by the church or the state,
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is cause sufficient for dissolving the bond of marriage.
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But it's really a modern Baptist phenomenon.
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This kind of halfway house of there are cases when you can divorce, but you still can't remarry.
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The more traditional position that I found in my reading, and a lot of the 1689 guys agreed with the Westminster guys.
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So if you just go back a little further in history, the position was actually on divorce and remarriage was a lot simpler.
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If you have cause for divorce, the same thing that lets you out of the marriage lets you enter into another marriage.
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If you can get out of the marriage, then that marriage bond really is dissolved.
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And if it's dissolved, then you're no longer enslaved.
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And if the covenant really is over, then you really are free to form a new covenant, a new marriage with someone else.
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However, all that being said, look back to everything I've said the last two weeks.
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But there are only two reasons that are biblically sufficient for ending a marriage.
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That is adultery on the one hand or willful desertion, abandonment on the other.
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And the last thing that I'm going to say is this.
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So you can, you may, and if you do, it is not a sin.
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that if the spouse who committed adultery, the guilty party,
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if there's any way that you could pursue them unto repentance,
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And in those cases, God in his mercy towards the innocent party allows that bond to be dissolved
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so that you're not miserably enslaved for the rest of your life.
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In the same way what Jesus said, Moses allowed you this because your hearts were hardened.
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So too, even today in this gospel age of the New Testament church,
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God allows these two reasons for biblical divorce because we live in a fallen world with hardened hearts.
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And because God is merciful and allows us to walk through this world without making it more difficult than it already is.
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Because of that, God gives two reasons where he will allow for divorce.
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But even in those two reasons, you may divorce, but nowhere does the Bible say you must divorce.
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And if you can reconcile for the glory of God and as a picture of the gospel, I believe that that's better.