DM 620463

As I read the Word of God, if you've been following along, we are actually in Exodus 20, I believe verse 14, which is, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And so we are technically going verse by verse through the first 17 verses of Exodus, but with each new commandment we have several other passages of Scripture to investigate. So I'll read from Matthew 19, verse 3.

And some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him and saying, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? And he answered and said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? He said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it has not been this way. and I say to you whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits adultery the disciples said to him if the relationship of the man with his wife is like this it is better not to marry but he said to them not all men can accept this statement but only those to whom it has been given.

This is the word of God. You may be seated. That was the Legacy Standard Bible. If it sounded odd to you. As we look at the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, we focused once on the fact that marriage is really God's design. And marriage is a good thing.

He who finds a wife finds a good thing. and in Matthew chapter 5, the section we looked at last, immediately after talking about adultery and talking about lust in your heart being adultery, Jesus says in verse 31, Now it was said, Whoever sends his wife away, which means divorces her, let him give her a certificate of divorce. And Jesus said, But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Now, in some ways, divorce is actually a violation of the ninth commandment. It could be argued it's even almost more of a violation of the ninth commandment than the seventh commandment. because in divorce you actually are saying I'm completely rescinding the covenant I made earlier and I'm no longer going to keep my word so you violated the ninth commandment and you bore false witness but Jesus groups divorce in the same section as adultery in Matthew chapter 5 and so I'm taking the liberty to group things the way Jesus grouped them when you talk about certain topics in the church at all there are certain topics that maybe we'll use maybe a worldly term trigger words for people. And I'm not insensitive to the fact that there are people in this room who have been part of a divorce, who have been in a situation where a divorce maybe almost happened, where they were children of divorce, grandchildren of divorce.

The effects of something like that can be felt for many generations. I'm trying to figure out how to say it. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what any of our personal experiences have been. It doesn't matter how you feel about it. What really matters is what God's Word says about a topic. And it's my role, and Brother Jason prayed beautifully that I would fulfill my role today.

It's my role to tell you what the Word of God says about the topic. And if that stings you in some way, that's the Holy Spirit, Lord willing, that's trying to get your attention about something. So I don't want you to think that I'm compassionless, though, that there are certain topics of the Bible that do seem to have such an effect on people at times.

And there's probably no one in this room who has not in some way been affected by a divorce. whether it's your own or I know even recently Sister Christian or Sister Kristen here she's been helping her friend deal with a difficult situation of the same sort so it affects you it affects your whole family it's affecting our church a person most of us have never met right and so it's a very serious thing now the mistake of the Pharisees was to accuse Jesus of contradicting God's law. That was their goal the whole time. So if you ever read the Bible again, you read the Gospels, and you see these Pharisees, and you start to figure out, like, what is their deal, right?

Their deal was, they're trying to trip Jesus up constantly, and they're trying to get Jesus to contradict Moses, which means contradict the Old Testament, so that they can say, well, there's no way he's actually the Messiah, because the Messiah would love God's law and would never contradict what Moses said. And so we'll see where their mistake was. And every time It helps to read Sometimes it helps to read a story if you know the end maybe you know You can you ever watch one of those movies where at the end of the movie they show you all the things that happened early that were clues to the thing at the end And you thought, oh, how did I miss that, you know?

And then if you re-watch the movie, you see all those things, right? And I'm not here to recommend a lot of movie watching, but if you read the Pharisees and you always assume, okay, these guys have horrible motives and what they're about to ask Jesus is actually inherently fallacious or inherently irrational. It helps you to understand the kinds of things that they're asking and why Jesus responds the way he does.

One thing Jesus rarely does is actually just straight up answer the question the way they asked it. As he corrects their question. Something to keep in mind as we go through this. I don't want to do a four week series on divorce. I'm not going to discuss all the possible things in the Bible that have to do with remarriage and divorce. I'm not going to go through the Corinthians passage where Paul tries to tell people whether they should stay married or not or whether they can get remarried.

But I want you to look at Malachi chapter 2. And depending on your Bible version, it's translated very poorly in some and very clearly and memorably in others. And I want you to turn there. although sometimes you can just listen to the guy preach and sometimes you're familiar with the verse already I want you to see it with your eyes if you have a copy of God's word with you and I recommend you bring a copy of God's word with you everywhere but particularly church Malachi verse 16 chapter 2 if you only memorize four words of this or maybe six words of this.

He says, For I hate divorce, says Yahweh, the God of Israel. He continues, And him who covers his garment with wrong, says Yahweh of hosts, be careful then to keep your spirit that you do not deal treacherously. Some of your versions will have language that is not as strong seeming and it doesn't mention the word divorce. Sometimes it says a putting away or putteth away.

I find in English it's easy to say God hates divorce. And it's kind of a simple thing to remember. And if you're wondering how can God say He hates divorce if He either allowed it or as the Pharisees proposed, commanded it. We're going to try to investigate that now. I'm not the kind of person that generally says pick a verse of Scripture and build a theology off that one.

And that's not what I'm doing. But what I'm going to tell you is God does, in fact, hate divorce. And this is not one of those things where we come back here and we figure out, oh, he really doesn't hate it. This is just fancy language in Malachi. All right? He really does hate it.

In fact, I'll venture to say that he would hate it if he even thought about it. Matthew 19. We'll spend our time there now. Mark chapter 10 tells the same story that we're going to read in Matthew 19. It's slightly different in the order that the events are actually told. And Mark gives us a little more detail, none of which I believe are particularly pertinent to what we want to go over today.

But if you want to cross-reference what Matthew's saying with what Mark says, you can. I find it interesting that in Matthew 18, at the very end of the chapter, one of the things that happens is Jesus says that we are to forgive our brother from our hearts. That's Matthew 18, 35. So as we lead into Matthew 19, which isn't necessarily like five minutes afterwards in Jesus' time, but in your reading, your natural reading of the book of Matthew, you're going to encounter Matthew 19 right after Matthew 18.

I think it's appropriate to keep in mind the concept of forgiveness. Another thing I want to remind you of is that in Matthew 5, several verses before Jesus gave the command about divorce in verse 31 and 32, Jesus said, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. one of the things that I am trying to be somewhat careful about in what is a difficult situation is that I do not become too black and white about an issue when I think the word of God in fact gives us a little bit of gray area on it so that we might deal with people on a case by case basis who have a situation like divorce coming up in their life now back to Matthew 19 chapter 3 keep in mind God hates divorce blessed are the merciful that's what I want you to remember some of you that's all you'll remember that's fine too I'll ask the kids afterwards what was the sermon about they'll remember those two things and not the rest but that's fine so some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him verse 3 and saying is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all. There's a reason why they ask this question.

Turn to Deuteronomy 24. I almost just apologized for making you jump around in your Bible. And I repent of that. You can jump around in your Bible. Deuteronomy 24. Verse 1.

Listen to the language that's used here. Because the Pharisees were taking this language to mean something very different than what any rational person reading this would get from reading it if a man takes a wife and marries her listen and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her And he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house And she goes out of his house and goes and becomes another man's wife. and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife. And then there's a little more information there.

But one of the things that you have to be able to do if you're going to read anything at all is you have to be able to know some grammar. Or you will read things and you will be as, forgive me, as stupid as the Pharisees. Because the Pharisees were looking at this rule that told a man that if he made the decision to send his wife away, that he couldn't have her back if she had married another man.

And they took that to mean God was granting permission to divorce wives. It doesn't say that. The command here is, verse 4, the former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife. The statements in verse 1, it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from her house are not a command of God.

In fact, it's hardly even given here as a permission. It's a statement of, hey, if you did this thing, of which there's no statement in verse 1 or 2 of Deuteronomy 24 that says whether God approves of it or not. there's no command that you have to do this either it's saying if you do this thing God's saying if you do this foolish thing this unloving thing then you can't have her back the Pharisees were taking this and they were turning it into well Moses permitted divorce Jesus responds to that So the first thing to understand, Matthew 19 again. I'm not sorry for making you jump around, but I'm sorry when I jump around and forget to tell you where I'm going.

Back to Matthew 19. The Pharisees say, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? The answer is unequivocally no. It's in fact wicked. They were reading the Old Testament law that was prohibiting them from remarrying the same woman once she had gone and been defiled in what is literally adultery at this point because she's gone and found another husband.

And the Pharisees were taking this, finding some indecency in her and they were taking it to what we'll say is the nth degree. So now the first thing you might think is, well, in Deuteronomy 24 they found an indecency of her and they sent her away, you might think, well, maybe that means he found that she was an adulteress. Either she had fornicated before the wedding or sometime after they were married.

If that was the case, then she would have rightfully been put to death in that society. They didn't need a special law for divorce for cases of adultery because if your spouse committed adultery, they'd be put to death, rightfully so and justly. And you would no longer be bound to that spouse. So Jesus will help us understand why there were these laws and why there were these rules and explanations.

But first of all, you can't divorce your wife for any reason at all. Deuteronomy 24, if it meant anything at all, it meant that there was something really bad going on that these men would have theoretically seen. And what happened was, men saw these laws and thought, well, if my mashed potatoes are lumpy, or if they're not lumpy enough, whatever your fancy is, I'm getting rid of her.

That's what they thought. Once she turns 30, find a 20-year-old. Things haven't changed, okay? You think there's an attack on marriage now? Read verse 10. Everything you see today isn't new.

We've just found advanced technology to do some of the things. I'd go off on a real hobby horse with that. So anyway. Verse 4. He answered. Jesus answers them and he says, Have you not read?

I love it when he does that to them. this is an insult so I know that most of you come from a background of Jesus was always nice first of all he was never nice if anything he was kind because kindness is actually an attribute that Jesus would have possessed and it's something that the spirit grants but nice is just a word we use to tell people hey let's get along But he says, have you not read? This is an old-fashioned insult to Pharisees. You don't even know the Scriptures, he's telling them.

Like, you haven't even read it, apparently, because if you just read it, it'd be obvious. It not like Jesus said you haven You been to seminary and had this taught to you This is stuff that an eight can read in the book of Genesis and understand what it means God's Word is utterly clear. He says, have you not read that he who created them, and them is added in mine, is he who created from the beginning made them male and female, which I've already offended a quarter of the United States at this point.

So thankfully we don't get that many downloads. It won't matter. But he created male and female. From the very beginning there was Adam and there was Eve. And said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So we talked about this a little bit already. the importance of your relationship with your parents was highlighted in the fifth commandment.

Some of you have wicked parents and you still owe them some level of honor because God has said so. Some of you have very good parents and you're dishonoring them even by your behavior in church right now. Maybe by your attitude. And then we can't see it. I'm not looking at anyone in particular. I noticed a couple kids actually perked up then.

But as important as your relationship with your parents are, that can absolutely never be truly severed. I mean, you can disown your parents. You can change your last name. But ultimately, that is an inseparable relationship. That's always your dad. Even when your dad or mom dies, they're still your dad.

Jesus is saying that you're actually going to leave your father and mother and be joined to your wife. and the two shall become one flesh. So whereas the relationship between a child and their parent is so connected, you're even more connected to your spouse. This is one of the things that makes divorce so utterly despicable is that it's one of the most unnatural things that you can actually do in our world because nobody's ever hated their own flesh.

But you nourish it and you cherish your own flesh, right? And so to hate your spouse is to hate a part of yourself the way God has now made you. Now, real quick, side note. Maybe you married the wrong person, right? I don't know if I quoted Piper last time. He said, I can't remember, but John Piper, who I don't necessarily recommend, but he's got some good old stuff.

He said, you know who the right person was that you were supposed to marry by looking at your marriage certificate? you may have been a fool when you picked the person you may not have thought it through very well you may be able to look back and realize it wasn't a good idea don't turn to each other now we don't need that but once you got married under the providence of God under the decree of God that Jeremy just reminded us of today that's the person that you were meant to marry Jesus says verse 6 so they are no longer two but one flesh so there's a joining of two people into one this is picturing the mystery of the gospel when's the last time you meditated actually on something called union with Christ when's the last time you heard of it listened to a sermon about it your union with Christ is actually the reason why you're going to be resurrected one day and have a new body. If you weren't joined with Christ, you'd have no real hope. If you weren't joined with Christ, if you were just following along behind Him, you wouldn't know what to expect.

But you actually receive all the blessings that Christ receives. because you're so inextricably linked to him that everything that he receives comes to you. And everything that you deserve justice-wise was given to him. Well, God gives us marriage as a picture of that. Now, no marriage is going to be perfect with two sinners. In fact, even the marriage that Christ has, he's got a difficult bride to deal with at times, but he deals with it perfectly.

Praise Him. But there's one flesh. There's this one flesh idea. And one of the reasons why adultery is such a horrible thing is that adultery is the physical consummation of the one flesh idea. And so when you do adultery acts with somebody that's not your spouse, you're creating a situation that wasn't meant to be. And it's a serious one.

And Paul makes it very serious when he says you wouldn't join the Holy Spirit to a harlot, would you? It sounds crazy to think about, but people in their flesh will do that. Jesus says in verse 6, What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Jesus takes the Pharisees' question about the lawfulness of divorce, and he basically turns it completely on its head and says this was never the intention.

And so you do have to ask the legitimate question, well, why divorce? Jesus anticipates our questions and answers them. He answers all the ones that need answered, that's for sure. Verse 8, he said to them, Oh no, sorry, seven. Then they said to him, well, why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? You can see they changed the wording of the command again here.

But, legitimate question though, well, why? Why divorce? We say we should abolish abortion. Why? Because we think abortion is evil all the time. I don't think that you should make a law that says you can kill some babies some of the time and other babies not.

I don't think you should do it with old people. I don't think you should do it with kids. I don't think you should do it with anybody. Because murder is wrong all the time. So why is there laws about divorce if divorce is wrong? And divorce is bad.

It's a good question. Let's hear his answer. Jesus says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning, it has not been this way. I have heard interpretations of what Jesus means about this hardness of heart that have never made sense to me. Let me give you one of them.

One of the interpretations is, well if a woman cheats on her husband the man we hope would want to forgive her and stay with her and bring her back just like God would just like God did with Israel who he called a harlot but because some of us are too hard hearted to be as forgiving as we ought to be, God allowed us divorce. So the logic is, you've been hurt a lot by your spouse, and because you won't forgive, that's the hard-heartedness, God says, well, you can go ahead and do a divorce. I don't think that's what Jesus means by this.

When Jesus says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, I think he's saying that men are so evil that he's having compassion on some of these women. Because men had decided at this time that they could put away their wife for any reason at all. I mean, if you don't believe me, go read the commentaries on these passages.

Literally, it was written like if she smelled bad. Bad breath. I mean, the reasons are laughable. And the point was, none of these guys wanted to be shackled down by what marriage means to a carnal heart. To the carnal heart that wants to be out doing whatever you want with whomever you want, anytime you want, marriage is wicked. and so they modified what was written by God and what was intended by God from the beginning in order to satisfy their lusts it was the hardness of heart of those who in fact hated marriage and would prefer to not have to live in the confines of what marriage confines them to that caused them to want to have these divorces.

And so that the victims in that situation, people that really needed support, people that really needed a husband to help take care of them and their children, somebody who actually loved God and just wanted to be loved by their earthly spouse, because there's so many victims, God allowed them to send them away. Because if he had forced them to stay married to these women, they would have got out of it a different way, and it may have ended very badly. And I think it works both ways.

It's not just men that have hard hearts. I think there's women with hard hearts. But to free Old Testament women from these wicked men, who, had they been forced to stay with these women, and may have done some horrible things, God permitted divorce. Some people would argue. There's a lot of views on marriage and divorce. Some people would argue, and I've seen this written, that if you are divorced, so you're a woman, your husband divorces you, let's say, and you get remarried, that you're continually in a state of adultery.

So Jesus says, in verse 9 I say to you whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits adultery. I think the general reform view would be that it may be considered adultery when you initially get remarried. And some churches would hold a very hard line about that. and like Vodie Bauckham's church for example if you're divorced they will not marry you to the subsequent spouse but they'll still welcome you in afterwards and they'll treat your marriage as valid and so they have what's called the permanence view of marriage I think that churches should think about what they believe on these things and so as a church our stance on marriage is already written It was written 400 years ago and it in the 1689 And what you notice in chapter 25 I believe the chapter about marriage, is that there's actually no mention of divorce.

There's no mention of divorce and remarriage. There's no mention of perpetual adultery or instantaneous adultery. And so our stance as a church at this point is going to be that we will deal with situations that come up in people's lives and in their marriages, and we will deal with them on a case-by-case basis. And by the grace of God, remembering the mercy of God, we will try to evaluate whether people are eligible to do certain things or not.

I have a lot of trouble thinking that I'm going to be a merciful person and a loving and compassionate person, telling a young lady who had a wicked husband who's left her, and maybe sometimes left her with nothing, well, sorry, you've just got to sit around and wait for him to come back. To some people, they might think I'm not taking a hard enough stance on that, and that's fine, we can talk about it. I think as a church, you can talk about those things.

But I think that God, in his mercy, recognized that there would be people who are truly victims of a tough situation, and that there would be times that remarriage would be appropriate. Additionally, in the New Testament, if your spouse commits adultery, they're not stoned to death, are they? You're still married to them. Your spouse commits murder and goes to prison for the rest of their life when they should have been taken out, right? am I going to tell somebody well you're still married to that person the rest of your life there's nothing you can do I'm not going to answer that question either way right now my point is I think we can talk about those things and we can keep in mind reasonability we can keep in mind mercy we can keep in mind the fact that God did permit marriage because of hard hearts verse 10 this is where I was studying and I just started kind of laughing the disciples said to him so this is the disciples it's not the Pharisees if the relationship of the man with his wife is like this it is better not to marry they literally just said, if I have to live with this woman the rest of my life, I'd rather just not get married.

I don't know who they were hanging around, what kind of women. Maybe they were real difficult friends, and they thought, I could never live with this lady. You realize the only reason any of us exist today is that people centuries ago got married and had children, and raised them and fed them. Like all the things people act like they hate so much. Taking care of kids.

I'm hesitant to even say like the old ball and chain. That's the word that people use, right? Like they're shackled. In our culture, there's more marriage jokes that you can count. and you know some of them are kind of funny because they stereotype some things and some of the stereotypes you know are kind of funny but a lot of the jokes if you listen to what people are saying they what they do is they really hate marriage and the reason most people hate marriage is that they are sexually immoral.

Marriage is a place where sexual purity is enjoyed. And if you do not love that, marriage is an institution that you don't want to even have in your society. Do you remember when they said, don't like gay marriage, don't get one? Nobody remembers that except Lindsay? That was a saying. Hey, if you don't want a same-sex union, don't get one.

Just leave us alone, right? And now, if you won't bow down and bake a cake for somebody's wedding that's a gay mirage, you're now going to jail or you're getting fined for it. This is really happening. I know you all have a photographer friend that hasn't yet gone to jail for not doing a gay wedding. But there's been enough in our country that's supposedly free that it should scare you a little.

You will bow the knee to the God of the culture or they'll punish you. It's that simple. And so you better be ready to know how to answer these questions because for the past hundred years Christians haven't had the answers. Christians have led the way in divorce in many ways. and then when the culture comes along and says well we want to marry our puppies and we say well you can't do that they say well what do you know you don even follow your own book and they right And so we can all do our small part Marriage can be tough, and Spurgeon had some quotes that I really liked.

Spurgeon said, when a couple falls out, there are always faults on both sides. And generally, you've got to know a little math here, conversion. He says, there is a pound on one side and 16 ounces on the other. You homeschool kids, you should know 16 ounces is a pound, right? The point is, there's always faults on both sides. I have no doubt, Spurgeon says, that where there is much love, there will be much to love.

And where love is scant, faults will be plentiful. Your fault finding in your spouse is more a reflection of who you are oftentimes than who they are. He had a lot of good quotes. When husbands and wives are well yoked, how light their load becomes. Marriage is a good thing, hated by our world, except to abuse it, to mar it. And one of the problems that we have in our world is the simple ease with which people can get divorced.

There's no encouragement for people to stay married, even if things are difficult. I know that in my friend who was in Norway recently said that there was a divorce going on in his church in Norway. He had a real difficult situation there. And he said in Norway, it was really strange, though. he said that they had to wait at least a year to get divorced.

When he said it, I said, praise God. And you know, that type of thing that even an unjust society might install is designed for obvious reasons. Not because the court wants to drag it out. It's designed in the hope that marriage would reconvene. The disciples said to him, If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.

God said he who finds a wife finds a good thing God says it is not good for man to be alone and then the very first thing he did is showed man that there is absolutely nothing on this earth that can satisfy his need for companionship but a woman and then God took the woman out of the man's flesh so that every time a man and a woman get married it signifies that joining together of the two fleshes into one. Jesus said in verse 11, Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. It gets kind of interesting.

For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb. Next time somebody asks you, well, what if someone's born without any obvious signs of what gender they are, right? Say, well, Jesus handles that, you know? This wasn't new. By the way, when somebody tells you that the reason we can't define gender is that there's some fraction of a percent of the population out there that don't have an outward gender, what they've done is they've just told you that they know it's biological, okay?

They've just revealed to you, well, we know it's biological, and because it's hard one out of eight billion times, we have to redefine it. Okay? Don't buy their rhetoric. Anyway, there's eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He says he was able to accept this, let him accept it.

There are some people who aren't meant for marriage. Some people have singleness as a gift, actually. And we know one of them, right? Mike Stockwell, he comes to our church. he gets up and all he does is talk about Calvinism probably every time he preaches right everybody's laughing and Mike dedicates his whole life to serving Christ as a preacher and he is not encumbered with some of the difficulties that come from being a man who has a wife at home and children to take care of and if everyone was like Mike Christianity would die out quickly and if no one was like Mike we wouldn't have some guys out there giving all for Christ too that we need and so God has appointed some people to be able to serve him in different ways you who are already married and are parents you have a group of people you've already been commanded to evangelize and catechize I'll remind you you should be doing family worship and you should be doing it every single day.

If you don't know what that is or why I'm saying it, you're just like I was about seven years ago before anyone ever told me about it. And that's okay. If you don't know, you don't know and we'll teach you. And you have little people that you should be praying for and you should be asking God to grant them mercy And you kids have a responsibility to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved You actually commanded to repent and believe the gospel.

Did you know that? It's a command. It's not a suggestion. It's not a guideline. It's not God begging. I'll tell you a secret.

God's not lonely. He doesn't need you. But if He's called you to Himself, what glorious grace. So when we think about the Bible's teaching about divorce, I want to remind you a few things. One, God hates divorce. If you are with a spouse who is abundantly difficult, God does not see divorce as an option for you.

If you are in a situation, let me clarify, If you're in a situation where life is in danger or some kind of abuse is going on, I would suggest that there be something done about that. And that's not the purpose of the sermon. It's to deal with some of the exceptions. But I'm talking about run-of-the-mill nagging or just a nasty guy. You're to love that person.

And you're to find out how you are being sanctified by dealing with that person's maybe quite obvious defects. And you're to let that work on your heart and your life. And maybe, just maybe, the security of knowing that you'd never leave that person is what God will use to be the motivation for them to grow. Maybe threatening them that if they don't quit what they're doing, you're going to leave is actually fuel for the fire of what's going on in their heart.

God hates divorce. He desires that you stay married. And if you're in a situation where a spouse is leaving, he desires that you try to keep that spouse. And I've heard stories of people who have waited decades. And I find them to be inspiring and faithful. And I've also heard stories of people who, by church counseling, found it necessary to maybe find a spouse sooner or later. and so it can be a complicated issue when people have to deal with one or the other spouse not being faithful whether it is through adultery or just through even desiring a divorce and the church should be compassionate the church should be biblical and the church should be able to be reasonable with people and help them deal with the difficulties but if you'll remember there was a point in the book of Jeremiah when God actually says that he's given Israel a certificate of divorce he sent her away and the reason he says he sent her away is because she played the harlot and it's because Israel happily will say jumped in bed with other gods Israel ran and worshipped other gods just as easily as as it says in in the Bible as animals who are in heat end up with another animal when the wind blows the right way and God said yet you will come back to me because God doesn't forsake his own and so as horrible as adultery is punishable by death in the Old Testament and I dare say we should have stricter penalties in our country right now for even what I'd call minor forms of it.

Like, I don't think pornography should even be legal. I don't care about free speech. I don't think that's free speech. But as bad as that is, and it's a picture for us of how bad it is when you worship another god, even for a moment in your heart. if for a moment you start to have affection for something other than Christ God sees that the same way we see adultery in our marriages and yet God is faithful and he doesn't leave his bride he instead sanctifies her and he washes her and cleanses her with the word and in the case of Jesus Christ actually paid the penalty for her transgressions but praise him he rose again Father in heaven thank you for the resurrection of Jesus Christ that he was willing to forgive sinners help us to go forth understanding that the seventh commandment is still a command for us today realizing the nuances of it even to our heart that we ought to be keeping pure our selves and our neighbor in thought, word, and deed.

We thank you that you're so kind and forgiving that even though we have committed spiritual adultery, you forgive us and bring us back. We pray that we would be as forgiving and merciful to all those around us, that we might be able to motivate people to love and good works. Amen.