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MARK’S GOSPEL…DIVORCE – 23

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Mark‬ ‭10‬:‭2‬-‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.””

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Divorce! A very current and thorny topic! Divorce is so easy these days that couples can spouses like changing their clothes!

It was almost like this in Jesus’ day, not because God made divorce easy but because “Moses” did, according to the interpretation of the religious leaders. 

There were two mains schools of thought, led by two respected rabbis, Hillel and Shammai. 

Google says…

“Rabbi Hillel permitted divorce for “any cause,” even for trivial reasons such as a husband finding his wife’s cooking unsatisfactory, whereas Rabbi Shammai only allowed divorce for adultery. Hillel’s view was that the term “any cause” in Deuteronomy 24:1 allowed for divorce over any issue the husband disliked, a perspective that became the dominant view in Jewish law (Halakha), though more pious individuals still favored Shammai’s stricter approach.”

The Pharisees tried to draw Jesus into the debate, testing His opinion against those of these two most respected rabbis “with authority”.

Jesus refused to be caught in their trap. As He always did, He referred them back to the source of the instruction…God’s command “at the beginning of creation”. Marriage was a creation ordinance not to be tampered with by foolish humans. 

Jesus not only took them back to the source and initiator of marriage, but He also diagnosed the cause of their deviations!

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,”

Hardness of heart! How true it was then and equally true now! What was and is missing in many marriage relationships that undermines the meaning and purpose of marriage?

““Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭23‬:‭23‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Did you get that? Justice! Mercy! Faithfulness! Jesus came down hard on the Pharisees for two main reasons. One…they were hypocrites, play acting in the game of life. They wore the mask of “righteousness”, always doing the right thing in public, but rotten to the core with greed and wickedness inside. Two, they had no mercy for offenders who did not do what they demanded. 

So, if the wife “offended” them, they gave her a “bill of divorce” and sent her away without hope, while they calmly married the woman they had set their sights on… a convenient way of handling 

their unfaithfulness. 

Jesus also highlighted the purpose for marriage that most people don’t understand, ignore, or forget. 

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Marriage is not primarily because two people are “in love”, or for companionship, or legalised sex. Marriage is about two people becoming one to reflect on earth the unity “echad” between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Godhead. Sexual union is the physical symbol of this unity between one man and one woman for life. 

How far, then, has corruption in the human heart degraded marriage in all its perverse practices to what humans have made it today. The only cure for human depravity is to go back to the beginning, as Jesus did, and apply God’s Word, with hearts renewed by God’s grace to faith and obedience. 

It takes God’s grace, His strength for our weakness, to overcome the inborn selfishness of our hearts, to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”, growing in unity as an expression of our love and obedience to Jesus as Lord. 

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – NOT THE ACT BUT THE MOTIVE

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NOT THE ACT BUT THE MOTIVE

1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.
2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.
4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:1-12

What Jesus said about divorce and the way it is generally interpreted are two different things. He focussed, not on the act of divorce but on the motive or reason for divorce. Long before divorce separates two people who have been married, ECHAD has been ruptured by thoughts, attitudes and actions that have already destroyed the unity in the heart. The act of divorce is merely the confirmation and completion of what has already happened in the heart.

In Matthew 19, Jesus pointed to marital unfaithfulness as the reason for breaking the ECHAD, not only adultery but anything that violates the marriage agreement entered into freely by both parties antenuptially. Jesus made it clear that the marital unfaithfulness was not as much the issue as the reason for it. It seems that the Pharisees were looking for a legal loophole to legitimise divorce on the grounds of marital unfaithfulness. He recognised their hard-heartedness as the reason for divorce. They were not looking for ways to uphold the ECHAD but to break it so that, according to them, divorce could be “legal”. For Jesus, in line with His teaching in Matthew 5, what constituted adultery was what lay in the heart long before it was acted in the behaviour.

It is not the act of marrying someone else that is adultery but divorcing one’s spouse in order to marry someone else that is the problem. It was this inward thing that Jesus was exposing in the religious leaders and this was what they hated most about Him. He was able to see right into their wicked hearts and tell them the truth that offended them so that their hearts were exposed.

God established marriage as a visual aid of the ECHAD that exists within the Godhead. To protect the love that fosters unity and the unity that reflects the image of God should be our highest priority because it is God’s priority. When we look for excuses and make choices that destroy ECHAD, we attack the very essence of who God is and how the entire universe functions.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK – GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING

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CHAPTER 10

GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING

​1 Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.
2 Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
3 “What did Moses command you?” he replied.
4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
5 “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. 6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Mark 10:1-9

Something that stands out in this passage comes clearer as we go through this gospel. The religious leaders focussed on the way things are now. Jesus always went back to God’s original intention. It is clearly seen here in this discussion about divorce. The rabbis concentrated on the law – the boundaries God set to regulate the people’s behaviour so that they would understand God’s character and not live in a way that unravelled their lives and caused chaos.

Jesus held up the pattern that God had set up in the beginning. He asked a question to answer a question. Their question: “Is it legal…” His question: “What did Moses command?” This question was designed to expose the heart of the matter. Moses’ command was a concession to man’s hard-hearted attitude to his spouse. The ketubah (marriage contract) entered into before a couple married was not intended as bondage but as freedom. Its purpose was to protect the love and ECHAD that marriage embodied. The provisions of the ketubah were a fleshing out of these two qualities in marriage that was intended to reflect the image of God.

God’s command is that a man and a woman break their connection with their birth family and create a new unit with a new loyalty that overrides their original family loyalty and develops a safe place for a new family to grow. This is not possible unless both parties:

  1. Leave and cleave – no unity with their spouse is possible until they do that;
  2. Understand that the goal of marriage is unity in diversity – self-centred and selfish attitudes will hinder that process;
  3. Keep their focus so that this bond remains intact. God has done the joining. It is not man’s right to break it.

If two people make the choice to marry, it must be with the understanding that marriage is not about living together for legal sex; it’s not about compatibility or incompatibility. It’s about two people choosing to become one and then meeting each other’s needs at their own expense to grow and express that unity.

The Pharisees’ question revealed how far they had moved from understanding God’s purpose for marriage to looking for loopholes to satisfy their lustful intentions. How tragic that many in the church today follow the attitudes of the Pharisees rather than the purpose and intentions of the Father.

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD OF GOD

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THE INDESTRUCTIBLE WORD OF GOD

“‘The sky will disintegrate and the earth dissolve before a single letter of God’s Law wears out.

Using the legalities of divorce as a cover for lust is adultery; using the legalities of marriage as a cover for lust is adultery.'” Luke 16:17-18.

This seems like an odd combination of ideas, the eternal nature of God’s word and a warning against using legal ways as an excuse for adultery. But there is never anything random about Jesus’ thinking. He always came from the perspective of God and His ways rather than the natural, human way of thinking.

The concept of adultery has far wider implications than simply breaking a marriage relationship. It is a violation of the essence and nature of God Himself and the power that holds the universe together.

According to the Shema – the Hebrew confession of faith – “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV), which an Israelite would recite more than once every day, God is one (echad – in Hebrew), not in uniformity but unity in diversity. Those who deny the Trinity or reject the deity of Jesus or the personality of the Holy Spirit have not grasped the significance of this unity. God is three persons, separate, but in essence and nature, perfectly one.

This oneness is reflected in the universe. Everything in the universe is interactive and interdependent. Everything on earth functions as one; man is a unit – every system in his body functions as one and when one system malfunctions, the whole body is affected.

God created a man and a woman and brought them together in marriage to function as one as a perfect reflection of His being. So, according the Genesis 2:24, marriage is primarily to be a visual aid of the unity of the Godhead. “For this reason (that the woman was fashioned from the body of the man), a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The purpose of marriage is not primarily for companionship, procreation or legalised sex but to express the unity of God. 

Is it any wonder, then, that Satan targets marriage and the family as his most potent expression of hatred against God? Our so-called sexual ‘freedom’ has done more damage to the fabric of society than any other deviation from the ways of God because it has caused the whole of society to unravel.

Adultery is not just the disruption of a marriage partnership. It is a denial of the nature of God and attack on society as a whole and every human being in particular. The consequences of adultery are not only individual, they are universal.

Since God’s word is the manifestation of Himself in another form, it cannot be destroyed. It is as eternal as He is. His word is not broken – those who reject or disregard His word are broken by it and whatever is broken will land up in the trash.

Jesus warns that we must not think that we can get away with lust by disguising it under a legal divorce or even a legal marriage. Using divorce as a way of getting free to marry someone else does not fool God and neither does legal marriage as a cover-up for lust. These are the ways in which the selfishness that breaks ‘echad’ can be expressed. The only legitimate motivation for marriage is the sincere purpose of becoming one as a true, though imperfect, expression of God’s echad-ness.

Here is the Apostle Paul’s take on marriage. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord…Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy…and to present her to Himself as a radiant church…In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies…’For this reason a man must leave his mother and father and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and His church.” Ephesians 5:22-32 (NIV).

God’s word on marriage does not change because society has decided otherwise. Unity inside a monogamous union is the only way in which marriage can flourish because tha’t the way God planned it and that’s what He said.

Jesus The Family Man

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JESUS THE FAMILY MAN

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.’

People were bringing little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, He was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to each of them. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.

 And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them and blessed them (Mark 10: 13-16).

We tend to think of Jesus as the rabbi, the homeless, wandering teacher who spent three years roaming Israel from north to south and east to west, but we don’t think of Him as a family man. He may not have had a wife and family of His own (in spite of what Dan Brown may have written) but He was at heart a family man. How do we know this?

First of all, His attitude and behaviour towards woman elevated them from the lowly position they occupied in society to people with dignity who had the right to be treated with honour and respect. It was the women who travelled with Him who took care of His needs and even provided for Him and His disciples from their own means. He healed many women. He spent time in the home of Martha and Mary, enjoying the company and their hospitality. He forgave their sinful practices and treated them with compassion.

Secondly, He protected the sanctity of marriage. He came down hard on the Pharisees for their hard-hearted attitude towards women. They favoured the rabbis who either sanctioned divorce for any flimsy reason, or even for a legitimate reason, marital unfaithfulness, instead of upholding God’s original intention. They were obviously looking for an excuse to cover up their own practices.

He loved and blessed the children. He saw in them, not immaturity but potential. They were the ones who would accept the kingdom of God in simple faith without doubts and questions. The disciples treated them with disdain, as though they were an intrusion into Jesus’ time and space. This annoyed Him because He was never put out by interruptions, especially from the ones who needed Him.

Jesus rapped His disciples over the knuckles for their hard-hearted attitude towards little children. Like the rest of Jewish society, as far as they were concerned, women and children were just there and had no significance except in the home where the women served, had babies and raised them. When the sons reached adulthood at the age of twelve, they were accepted into adult male society as young men but, until then, they were insignificant.

Unlike us ordinary mortals, Jesus looked beyond who and what people were to what they could and would become, given the opportunity to be exposed to the Word of God. But we, in the church, have not absorbed His outlook and attitude, in the main. Ministry to children in the church does not take precedence over ministry to adults. This reflects the same attitude as the disciples. We treat the children as peripheral and not central to the kingdom of God.

Our ministry to children is run as a rescue ministry rather than as foundational to their lives as they grow up in a very evil world. What would happen, for example, if parents made it a priority to focus on their children above everything else, and raise them to know and follow Jesus? Instead of treating them as peripheral, treat them as the very reason for their living until they have grown up and left home.

Let’s take to heart Jesus’ rebuke. ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to each of them.’

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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