Trouble in Big "D" (and I don't mean Dallas)

The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached Part XIII

Reflections on the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew 5-7

(Commentary by Guy Glass and Scott Hescht)

Matthew 5:31-32 "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Scott: Jesus takes marriage extremely serious.

On an another occasion He answered the religious officials by saying,

"Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast 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 not man separate."

They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?"

He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."

(Matthew 19:3-9)

Divorce is rampant in our culture. Celebrities wear spouses like hats and many in America have followed suit. What has happened?

One of the big issues is a lack of understanding of what love really is. Couples are saying vows everyday in wedding ceremonies but not truly grasping the idea of commitment. Young people are learning more about love from rock ballads and prime time television than they are from Scripture. Couples “fall in and out of love” because their skewed view of love is based on selfish emotion.

The Bible says that husbands are to love their wives just as Jesus Christ loved the church. He died for the church and lives to work through the imperfections of the church for the good of the church. That is sacrificial love. It looks out not for self, but loves the other as one’s self (Ephesians 5:22-33).

Love is a conscious choice to be committed to your spouse for better or for worse. In my home, divorce is not an option. That is not something that I commanded of my wife, but rather a commitment we made to God and to each other on our wedding day. What reward there is in working through problems instead of running from them! Jesus allows for divorce in the most extreme of circumstances (sexual immorality or abandonment of the believer [1 Corinthians 7:14]) but reconciliation is always preferred if possible.

Maybe you have already been through a painful divorce. Now what? Is there any hope? Of course there is! We serve a merciful God who is ready to forgive those who seek it. However, the issue may be whether or not you have sought it. Have you justified what God has called sin or have you humbly bowed your knee in repentance seeking God's forgiveness?

Maybe you are now in another marriage and you have a hard time reconciling your current happiness with regret over a prior divorce. What are you to do? First of all, realize that we serve a God that can even work evil for our own good (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). God is not asking you to compound a wrong with another wrong by divorcing your current spouse to marry a prior one.

However, if there is not a recognition of the sin of an unwarranted divorce, that sin still has a grip on your life. There is no way to walk in the intimate relationship that God wants with you if there is unconfessed sin hidden in your heart. Maybe you are a believer and you recognize that your sins were forgiven 2,000 years ago on the cross, however unconfessed sin can cause a great deal of pain in your life and rob you of spiritual blessings. A spiritually numb state is not the place to be and that is exactly what sin can do to a professing Christian.

Trust me. I carried the heavy burden of unconfessed sin for years. It is imprisonment, and there is nothing like the freedom of a clear conscience.