EPISODE 150 GOSPEL OF MARK CHAPTER 10 Part1 "Biblical viewpoint of divorce"

Welcome to Share the Word. In chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark, we see a continuation of Mark's focus on Jesus's deeds and activities. And in this podcast, out of so much that Mark writes about, Paul's focus is on the subject of divorce, and he answers questions that are important, useful, and timely. Let's get going. Mark chapter 10: A Biblical View of Divorce. As we've already seen in this more condensed account of Jesus' public ministry, in chapter 10, Mark describes several different scenes in pretty rapid succession.

Maybe the most difficult, or at least unpopular, one to address, but one the Western society I live in most urgently needs to listen to, is what we read first in this chapter, in Mark chapter 10, verses 1 through 12. I'm going to read them to you from the very literal Legacy Standard Bible. Jesus went from there, that is, leaving the region of Galilee, to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. Crowds gathered around him again, and according to his custom, he once more began to teach them. And some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing him, and began to question him about whether it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife. And he answered them and said, What did Moses command you?

And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. But Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart he wrote that commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. And in the house the disciples began questioning him about this again, and he said, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery. Jesus is now moving southward in Mark's account toward Jerusalem. We're in the third year of his public ministry now, and he knew the time was approaching for him to lay down his life as a sacrificial atonement for sin. Later in this chapter, or a third time, Jesus underscores for his disciples that that's where he is deliberately heading. Make no mistake about this. What happened shortly in Jerusalem, described in the final chapters of this and all the Gospels—Jesus' betrayal and arrest and trials and crucifixion—was in no way a surprise to him.

This was the ultimate reason God the Son came out of heaven, that is, to suffer and die for our sins. That's why he keeps reiterating, I must do this. At one of their stops in Judea, or perhaps it was across the Jordan River in Perea, during a public teaching session, Jesus was approached by a group of Pharisees. Their purpose, Mark writes, was to try and entrap him. People often asked Jesus questions as he taught, or asked questions that launched him into a lesson. Good teachers welcome that.

By the way, we welcome that at Share the Word too. If you ever have a question connected to one of our lessons from the New Testament, please ask it. Tony will share with us the best email to do that with at the end of our episode today. But on this occasion, we read about in Mark 10, the Pharisees, members of Israel's most dominant religious sect, asked Jesus a loaded question they hoped would trip him up. The question, as relayed to Mark, was, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? In the Gospel of Matthew's parallel account, it adds, for any reason.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? And they meant, is it lawful in God's eyes? This might surprise you because we tend to think of the Pharisees as super conservative, but the prevailing view at the time was that, yes, a man could divorce his wife for any reason, for no reason at all. It wasn't even a legal question in that society. This was a very patriarchal society, and all a man had to do was give his wife a letter letting her know he was divorcing her. By the way, Elizabeth, I left a letter for you there on the table, said Asher as he left for work one morning.

Really, it was that easy. A man could be unhappy with something his wife did or said or just ready for a newer model, and he could divorce her and move on. As a result of how easy it was, divorce had become very common in Jesus' day. By way of comparison, these statistics I found kind of shocked me. With a little bit of research, I found that in 1960 in America, when I was a little kid, there were a little fewer than 29,000 divorces in the country that year. By the year 2010, 50 years later, there were 672,000 divorces in that single year.

That's a 25 times increase, 25 times more divorces occurring in 2010 than occurred in 1960. Wow. Why the drastic increase in American society? What do you think? The two biggest contributing factors are, this is what the research told me, changing social mores and the changing of state divorce laws. By changing social mores, they mean the attitudes in society during that span of time changed drastically about pretty much every moral question.

When looked at through the biblical lens, things were drastically changing against biblical morality during that 50 years. And by changing divorce laws, I mean new state laws that removed the requirement for reasons when someone filed for divorce. Something called no-fault divorce became the law of the land in all 50 states during that span of time. So in many of our lifetimes, divorce has become here also very easy to accomplish legally and so also very prevalent, not unlike the society in which Jesus found himself. Mark says this question was put to Jesus to entrap him. In what way did the Pharisees hope his answer would put Jesus in a bind?

Well, let me try and explain. Their question was rooted in the interpretation of what the Old Testament said about divorce in Deuteronomy chapter 24. There, in the law of Moses, it permits a man to divorce his wife if, and this is the key phrase, the one up for interpretation. If she finds no favor in his eyes because she has been found with some indecency in her, found with some indecency in her. By the time of Jesus, however, that was interpreted by most of the Pharisees very loosely, giving men spiritual permission to essentially divorce their wives for any cause. That's why the question was posed to Jesus about whether divorce was permissible for any reason.

Let me tell you a secret. The Pharisees already knew what Jesus believed on this serious question because Jesus had already taught about this serious question. Matthew chapter 5, and starting at verse 30 or 31, you can read what he'd said earlier. So why did they again approach him in public in Judea like this on the same question? Well, in general, it put him at odds with an awful lot of men who liked the lenient divorce laws. So I think the Pharisees hoped if Jesus took a more conservative or restrictive interpretation of Deuteronomy, it would dent his popularity with the multitudes who were pretty enamored with him.

But I also think there's a deeper reason, and I think it probably is more key. Not long before this, Herod Antipas, who was at that time the vassal king over Judea, Galilee, and Perea, had divorced his wife for no reason at all, other than he apparently found someone he liked more. That someone was a woman named Herodias, who just happened to be his own brother's wife. The heart wants what the heart wants, right? So Herod divorced his first wife, and Herodias left her husband, Herod's brother, and those two got married. This happened while the prophet John the Baptist was still alive, and that prophet boldly spoke out publicly and repeatedly against this immorality by the Jewish ruler.

We'll see the details when we travel through Matthew's Gospel. But calling Herod and his new wife out over this immorality led first to the prophet being arrested to shut him up, and eventually, through Herodias' cunning, cost John the Baptist his head. This had just happened perhaps a year prior, so I'm pretty sure the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus with the same question about divorce, hoping he too would say something publicly against the king's marriage, or that could be applied to the king's marriage. If he did, they reasoned, what happened to John the Baptist could also very well happen to Jesus, and then their problem would be solved. This is an important thing to note. It was not popular nor even safe for Jesus to say what he said on this occasion in response to this touchy question.

But our position on moral questions should never be decided by popular opinion, or even religious leaders changing their opinions. When the Pharisees asked, What's your opinion on this, teacher? Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? Jesus answered them, It was because of the hardness of your heart that Moses wrote that, referring back to the Deuteronomy passage. But from the beginning of creation, that's not what God's intended. God made us male and female, and for this reason we shall leave our father and mother, and two of us shall become one flesh.

So we are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, no man should separate. The passage in the law of Moses Jesus was asked about came after the fall of men into sin and was a concession to men's hard hearts, Jesus said. But divorce was never part of God's plan for marriage from the beginning. His plan was what he pronounced over Adam and Eve. Marriage unites two people as one, and no one should try to subsequently separate that bond.

To clarify this even further, later, when the disciples asked him again about this to be sure they were hearing him right, Jesus told them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery. So Jesus' view of marriage was that it should be a commitment between one man and one woman and for a lifetime. Once married, God sees a man and woman as one flesh, a unit, not two individuals anymore. And that's the way married people should see themselves too. This is why in the New Testament passage which most fully describes the Christian view of marriage, which is Ephesians chapter 5, the apostle Paul writes there, Husbands ought to love their own wives as their own body.

He who loves his own wife loves himself. Why is that? Because marriage makes you one. That's an interesting and consequential thought, isn't it? When you love your marriage partner, you are loving yourself. Why?

Because you've become one through marriage. Oneness in marriage. It's uniting together emotionally, sexually, intellectually, financially, spiritually, in every way. But I need to add that the New Testament, like Moses and Deuteronomy, allows for some exceptions in extreme cases. By that I mean under specific circumstances, New Testament Scripture permits, not recommends, but permits divorce. In this passage in Mark 10, Jesus is stating the general rule.

That is, God's will for marriage is one man and one woman committed for a lifetime. But that's not the only truth governing this question. In that other place I alluded to in Matthew chapter 5, when Jesus addressed the same question, he makes an exception there for immorality, like adultery. Again, I want to underscore that when a husband or wife commits even adultery or gets somewhere close to that, that's a grave sin against your spouse. But also realize, if adultery occurs, although divorce may be allowed, certainly not required, it's possible to forgive people just as God forgives us. That's preferable to breaking apart a family, especially when children are involved.

If a marriage partner has failed you, but admits their wrong and seeks forgiveness, I believe it's usually much better to forgive and give that marriage another honest chance. Get some good counseling and see if you can repair and heal what went wrong. I believe that's the godliest response in most instances. Later in the New Testament, after the church age was well underway, another situation arose which God's Word addresses too. In a passage written to Christians, the Epistle of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul discusses another possible exception when he writes about believers who find themselves in an unequal yoke kind of marriage. Imagine a case where one marriage partner accepts Christ and starts undergoing the kind of changes that a genuine conversion produces.

Sometimes then their spouse, if they don't follow them, they remain an unbeliever, may want out of that relationship, may say, Hey, you're not the person I married anymore. The believing spouse should not pursue a divorce, but Paul is saying, if the unbeliever leaves and divorces you, you're not forever bound to that marriage. The passage is clear that the believer should not be looking to end their marriage because he writes in the same context, this is 1 Corinthians chapter 7, For how do you know, O wife, if you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, if you might save your wife? He's saying, stay married to that unbelieving spouse if they will, because you may have a positive impact on them. You may, the Holy Spirit may through you, I should say, you may lead them to Christ, that they'll accept Christ too, and then your family would be joined together in the faith.

So Paul is saying, if that situation arises, the goal should be to influence your unbelieving spouse for the gospel. But the possibility remains. If someone takes the initiative to divorce you because of your faith, they leave you and end your marriage, the Christian partner is not bound to that relationship any longer. It's not on you. But what if, Paul, because no-fault divorce has made ending a marriage so legally easy today, and it isn't any longer even looked down on in our secular society, what if a professing Christian leaves their partner and initiates divorce? How should a person who wants to honor God react then?

I think they should react with patience and with love and with the qualities we call the fruit of the Spirit. They should allow time for that situation to play out. They should not exacerbate it. They should seek forgiveness if they need to seek forgiveness. They should treat their estranged husband or wife better than they deserve to be treated. This is a situation where our faith really gets tested.

But doesn't it sound like the godly reaction? In time, the Holy Spirit may persuade that partner they are on the wrong track. The Holy Spirit may soften their heart, and they may be reconciled to you, and you may get an opportunity to do better in your marriage. Nevertheless, according to Jesus' word, if they do not turn around and do divorce you and go on to marry someone else, that's adultery. And adultery is what frees you from your former marriage. If you want to honor Christ, though, who first said what's usually said at the end of every Christian marriage ceremony, What God has joined together, let no man separate, you should not be the one pushing for divorce.

You should be lovingly resisting that, honoring your marriage vows and looking for and praying for reconciliation until the erring partner remarries. At that point, once again, it's on them. I believe it's much more important to understand and honor the spirit of scriptural teaching on this subject than is commonly going on. From the very beginning, when God instituted marriage, he was clear that it's to be a union for a lifetime. It's the foundational basis for healthy societies. I can say this with certainty because God, through one of the Old Testament prophets, while decrying the sad state of affairs that had befallen Israel during its decline.

Made his attitude about this very clear. He said to them, this is written in Malachi chapter 2, Let no one deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For I hate divorce, says the Lord God of Israel. I've always felt that, even though exceptions do exist, for extreme cases, I think, and it may be permissible to divorce someone or have someone divorce you, and it may be unavoidable. Christians who want to please the Lord should never be taking the initiative to do that, because God says He hates it. Should we ever be taking the initiative as Christians to do something God hates?

On the contrary, we should be very seriously guarding our relationships, protecting our families, especially our children's interests. We should view divorce as a failure and a tragedy to avoid, if at all possible. You know, it's probably not by accident that it's on the heels of Jesus' teaching here about the permanence of marriage that He goes on to talk about protecting children. And in Matthew's account of the ongoing conversation with His disciples, that's where we read these following well-known verses. I tell you the truth, whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in Me to stumble, it is better for them if a millstone is hung around their neck and they are thrown into the depths of the sea. Wow, that sounds pretty serious.

We should seriously think and pray, therefore, before we do anything that may damage the spiritual welfare of our children. I think it's impossible to honestly deny that the 25-fold increase in divorce over the last half century has spiritually and emotionally damaged millions of children. Children who've been growing up during this span. Any thoughtful and honest person will admit there's a connection between children who experience divorce and family breakup and residual hurts inside, anger inside, often anxiety and insecurity inside, and it follows them and follows them.

God's plan has always been for children to learn from two loving parents, a father and mother who are committed to one another and to being in a relationship modeling fidelity, modeling forgiveness when it's needed, modeling security and stability, the environment their children need to grow up healthy emotionally and spiritually. This is why God established the family. And children don't learn and experience these things when their parents are unfaithful or abusive to each other or dishonest with each other or unforgiving toward one another, and certainly not when their parents become embittered and estranged and divorce one another. I know it hurts a man and a woman to go through divorce, but man, I believe it hurts children more. Let me say in conclusion that divorce is not an unpardonable sin. There's only one unpardonable sin.

We've already talked about that. Adultery isn't either. God's grace is sufficient for even these kinds of things. But no Christian should allow themselves to be deceived into minimizing their seriousness. That's one of the worst examples of allowing the world to press us into its mold, which the New Testament warns us against. We need to believe and order our lives according to what God has to say on this and every other subject.

I'm out of time to discuss this critical topic, but let me leave you with a thought. Jesus said here in our chapter that Moses wrote into the Old Testament law an exception for divorce because of the hardness of men's hearts. Marriages disintegrate due to hard hearts. When a marriage breaks down, it's usually because one or both partners have developed a hard heart. A hard heart is when you become calloused and you become insensitive toward your spouse and, if you're honest, toward God's will for your marriage and your life too. A person with a hard heart usually refuses to accept God's wisdom on how to respond to the problems going on in their marriage and will get defensive if someone suggests they even should.

A person with a hard heart refuses to listen to godly counsel, but will at the same time listen to those encouraging them to do the wrong thing. The person with a hard heart forgets they promised God and their beloved one time to love them until death separates, to love them as Christ loved the church, that is with patience, with loyalty, sacrificially, and unconditionally. So, as Proverbs tells us, guard your hearts above all else, for what flows out of them will direct the course of your life. This is Paul for Share the Word. I always find it compelling how the biblical view of issues like marriage and divorce continue to be under attack. From the very first attempt to skew God's truth with Adam and Eve, the issue still is based on man's effort to make himself God.

The endeavor to rewrite, to reinterpret, and sidetrack the meaning of family. of marriage and even gender. It continues to cause confusion and dissension. Guard your heart is so appropriate. Where do you stand on the subject? Are you in favor of divorce or against? We'd like to hear your thoughts.

Simply send your email to info at sharetheword.org. That's I-N-F-O, info at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.