Discipleship and Wedlock
Preached by Jason Abbott
January 19, 2014
Reintroduction to Our Study in Mark
Once again, we are returning to our study through The Gospel of Mark. The first part of our study in Mark (roughly chapters 1-8) examined the arrival of Jesus in power. These chapters mainly established the identity of Jesus as God’s King.
The second part of our study is essentially an examination of the rejection of Jesus. For, at this point in Mark’s narrative, Jesus has set his face toward the cross. Because of this, Jesus begins (here in chapter 10) to teach his disciples evermore specifically about what it looks like to follow him.
Therefore, in the next three weeks, we will see what Jesus has to say about discipleship and marriage, what Jesus has to say about discipleship and children, and what Jesus has to say about discipleship and possessions as his earthly ministry is coming to its close.
Mark 10:1-12
1 And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them.
2 And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” 5 And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Introduction
For many of you the topic of marriage and divorce can be an especially sensitive one. Some of you are divorced; others have parents who are divorced; almost all of us have friends and family who are divorced
Let me say, therefore, before I get into the details of this passage, that what I say here is not meant to rub salt in anyone’s wounds. I speak as a sinner; I speak as one who falls short in my own marriage time and time again. However, I also speak as one who is attempting to accurately explain what Jesus is teaching concerning marriage and divorce. It is my hope and prayer (as always) that you will hear Jesus’ voice during this time.
Furthermore, if you are divorced, allow me to point out that this is no unforgivable sin. Many in God’s eternal kingdom will have been divorced. I think particularly of the woman whom Jesus meets at the well (John 4). She had had five husbands and was tangled up in an adulterous affair even as Jesus spoke with her. Yet, she put her faith in Jesus during the course of that conversation, and she was consequently transformed forever—even being used by God to lead many from her small town to faith in Jesus and to everlasting life.
Jesus is good news (he’s gospel) for those who are married and for those who are divorced as well! We will not enter into the kingdom of heaven by having a successful marriage! As Paul explains, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, it is “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…” (Ephesians 2:8).
Without further introduction, let’s begin to dig into Jesus’ teaching here about God’s intention for marriage in the lives of his people. In order to do so, we will ask 3 questions:
How do these Pharisees see marriage and divorce?
How does Jesus see marriage and divorce?
How should a disciple of Jesus see marriage and divorce (cross)?
So, let’s begin with these trickster Pharisees.
1. How do they see marriage and divorce?
Now, I call them tricksters because it’s obvious from the text that they are trying to trick Jesus. They hope to make him stumble with their divorce question. So Mark tells us: “Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife’” (v. 2)?
A couple things are important here.
First, this probably indicates that these Pharisees know that Jesus has “extreme views” on the question of divorce. They probably know that Jesus will condemn divorce as against the will of God.
Why do I say this? Because, whether or not a man could obtain a divorce was not really a debated question in Jewish religious circles. Most everyone agreed that divorce was permissible. The real question or debate concerned the grounds on which a man could obtain a divorce from his wife.
Could he get a divorce only for adultery?
Or, could he get a divorce for almost any reason?
So, the Pharisees, I believe, attempt to get Jesus to make his views about marriage and divorce public because they differ from mainstream Jewish beliefs.
Therefore, if Jesus shares his views, the Pharisees believe he will likely alienate himself from these people who are flocking to him. They believe he will harm his ministry by voicing his “extreme views” about marriage and divorce. (It’s a strategy that’s akin to someone today asking a Christian to share biblical views on homosexuality in order to alienate him or her from mainstream opinion and from his or her contemporary audience.)
Second, the Pharisees’ little question is asked in order to put Jesus in danger. You see, this little exchange takes place in Herod Antipas’s domain, and if you recall, he had already arrested and eventually executed John the Baptist because of John’s condemnation of Antipas’s divorce and remarriage to Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife.
Thus, the Pharisees hope that Jesus will condemn divorce publically and face the ire of Herod Antipas. They likely hope that Jesus will be arrested (and perhaps even executed) as John the Baptist was.
But what about their (the Pharisees’) views on marriage and divorce? Let me briefly sum up what, I believe, is being revealed about their views here.
It seems that the Pharisees are primarily focused on the negative question of when one can legally get divorced rather than the positive question of how one can worshipfully stay married.
They want to know—How can one dissolve a marriage?
They’re apparently not even asking—How can one maintain unity in it?
In this way, I would suggest that the Pharisees are like lawyers who specialize in prenuptial agreements. They want to understand how to manipulate the boundaries of the institution of marriage, to know the loopholes in wedlock. They want to become legal surgeons able to cut and divide one flesh—make what was united by God back into two separate pieces again.
This is a far cry from how Jesus views it.
2. How does Jesus see marriage and divorce?
He sees divorce as a product of sin; he sees it as a concession for hard hearts. So Jesus explains that it was:
Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment (v. 5).
Then, Jesus does something that is really neat. He demonstrates how people should read and interpret their Bibles. He shows us how one must understand Scripture in relationship to Scripture. He takes the passage to which the Pharisees are appealing (Deuteronomy 24:1-3) and creates a dialogue between it with another passage which God inspired Moses to record (Genesis 1:27).
The really amazing thing here is that the Genesis passage (in which God creates man and woman to image him in their relationship with one another) is a more foundational biblical passage concerning marriage since it pictures the marriage relationship as God intended it to be, before our sin entered the world.
In short, Jesus is saying to the Pharisees (and to us) that our focus must not be on how one might exit marriage but on what marriage was originally meant for. It was originally created so that man and woman could image God as one flesh!
You see, the Pharisees had begun to view marriage as primarily about them. At best, they saw it as a way for men and women to benefit and find pleasure. However, at worst, they saw it as a way for men to benefit and find pleasure while being served by women. In either view, the focus is primarily on what human beings get out of the arrangement.
Jesus says “No!” to this. He argues that marriage was made by God for God! And this is precisely the key truth! Marriage is not primarily for our pleasure. Rather, the primary purpose of marriage is to bring glory to God. I’m reminded of Paul’s words about the glory of the Son of God:
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him (Colossians 1:16).
Does this not include our relationships? Aren’t our relationships (not the least of which is the marital relationship) part of what was created by the Son of God and for the Son of God? Certainly marriage is for him!
Now, don’t get me wrong. Marriage is of great benefit for us; it’s awesome! In the garden, the only time when God declares it’s not good is when man is alone. Consequently, whenever God creates woman to be with man, we get the only declaration of it was very good.
However, as long as we treat marriage as if it’s primarily for us, it won’t be! Marriage won’t be a blessing but a curse if we think and act as if it’s all about us!
Today, we too often make marriage mean what we think it should mean. This generally looks like marriages that are meant to serve us and our purposes; moreover, we dissolve that commitment whenever it isn’t serving those purposes. Jesus says “No!” to this.
And his “No!” brings us to our last question.
3. How should a disciple of Jesus see marriage and divorce?
Christian’s should see marriage as an important way in which we image and glorify God. We must see it as primarily a way in which we proclaim the gospel. For, this is precisely what it is.
Consider what Paul says in Ephesians concerning the purpose of marriage. He clearly sees Christian marriages as intimately motivated by the gospel and as a proclamation of the gospel. Thus, he tells husbands and wives how to behave in marriage and that such behavior is to be motivated by God’s love for us in Christ. Then, Paul explains that the ultimate purpose of marriage is to preach good news, to mysteriously preach (through our marriages) Christ’s relationship to his church:
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Do you think of marriage as a visible and active proclamation of the gospel? If you’re a Christian then you should. Your marriage is meant to point people to Christ’s relationship to his church.
If we follow Jesus, we should see our marriages as gospel demonstrations.
Husbands should be willing to serve their wives sacrificially—even to death.
Wives should be willing to serve their husbands sacrificially—even to loss of self.
Yet, too often we think selfishly about our marriages; we think like the Pharisees do about marriage. We think that if marriage doesn’t please us then we should be able to get out. Such selfish thinking will never make a marriage work, and such marriages will never proclaim good news.
Let me end with this. At the point in which Jesus is teaching this lesson about marriage, he is not asking too much of husbands or too much of wives. When Jesus says that God did not intend marriages to end in divorce and that divorce and remarriage is essentially adultery, he is not being insensitive to Christians in broken marriages.
Rather, Jesus is seeing marriage clearly. Jesus is seeing marriage correctly. He sees that sacrificially loving your wife or husband, even when it isn’t pleasant, is intended to clearly reflect what he is about to do.
Jesus set aside his own pleasure to glorify the Father and to save you!
