Matthew 5: 31-32
Our American society has changed dramatically. A person would have to have his head in the sand not to notice the marked change in the American family. Perhaps if you are young, the change is not so apparent because your frame of reference is still limited. But if you are sixty years old or older, you cannot miss the extreme shift in values. In the year 1900, less than 1% of all marriages ended in divorce. Then came the world wars and with them an inordinate increase in the rate of divorce. Several factors were responsible for the increase. One was the separation of couples for extended periods of time and another, equally as important, was the entering of women into the work force. Thus, the family structure was dramatically altered.
But the most startling changes are to be found in the “Christian” family. Although accurate records were never kept to track the Christian family, trends can be seen and analyzed. For many years the Christian church had as its motto, “The family that prays together, stays together.” The evidence indicates that through most of the early-to-mid 1900’s, the divorce rate among Christian families never rose above 5 %. Many Christian denominations claimed that the divorce rate among their constituencies was less than 1%. In fact, Dr. Tom Ellis, chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Council on the Family, said that “…born-again Christian couples who marry…in the church after having received premarital counseling…and attend church regularly and pray daily together…experience only one divorce out of nearly 39,000 marriages, or 0.00256 percent.” But with the advent of television and the two car family and both mom and dad working and Viet Nam and “free love”, etc., the Church became infected by society rather than the Church affecting society. Most church leaders suspected something was radically askew, but no one wanted to ask questions for fear of finding the answers.
However, in 2008, George Barna, a renown Christian prognosticator and pollster, did a survey of 3,854 adults from the 48 contiguous states. The margin of error was 2 percentage points. What he found came as a shock to the evangelical church in North America. Divorce rates among conservative Christians were significantly higher than for other faith groups and much higher than professed atheists and agnostics experience. One of the summaries provided by Barna states that “...there no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce in the Church today; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage...” The researcher indicated, “Interviews with young adults suggest that they want their initial marriage to last but are not particularly optimistic about that possibility. There is also evidence that many young people are moving toward embracing the idea of serial marriage, in which a person gets married two or three times, seeking a different partner for each phase of their adult life”(The Barna Group, Marriage and Divorce Statistics Released).
I don’t think I have to tell you that I am deeply disturbed. Since I have been in the ministry, I have seen this escalating divorce rate among Christians. But even more devastating is the laissez-faire attitude by Christians toward the whole issue of divorce. If you are a student of history, you know that the dissolution of the great empires paralleled the disintegration of family life. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. With the disintegration of the family come higher crime rates, higher taxes, a dumbing-down of the judicial system and a host of other related bench marks that otherwise would help to hold society in check.
We cannot get around God’s design for life without consequences! When “every man does what is right in his own eyes,” there is always a price to pay. The problem is that the price is often paid in succeeding generations, so the consequences are not as noticeably recognizable as they are with some other sin. In order to see the effect that the disintegration of the family has had on society, we have to see the collective outcome over the last 100 years. If my grandmother were to come back to life, she would be shocked at things that we have come to accept as normal.
We are a generation that is caught up in the present. We keep ourselves so busy that we have lost our ability to be contemplative and to see where we are headed. When I was young, a group of us kids went tobogganing down a steep hill in the fresh snow. We were having so much fun, and the snow was blowing in our faces so strongly, that we were oblivious to the fact that at the bottom of the hill was a creek with freezing cold water. You can imagine the rest of the story. Society seems to be on a toboggan ride without any idea of what is at the bottom of the hill. And the sad thing is that the Christians should be the ones calling out a warning; but the reality is that we have lost our integrity to be the ones pointing others in the right direction. So unless God moves in a supernatural way, or unless the Church recovers and once again becomes a deterrent to the downward slide of society, we, as a nation, are on a collision course with destruction.
I can almost hear what some of you are thinking in your heads… “But Bob, Christ Himself gave us permission to divorce in some cases.” Let’s look together this morning at exactly what the Bible does say about divorce. If you remember the context of Matthew 19, the Pharisees were trying to trap Christ. They asked Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” And Christ answered by saying, “Surely you must have read that in the very beginning, God made us male and female and said, ‘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 in His sight, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate.”
To understand what was going on we need a quick background study. Perhaps at no other time in history has the marriage bond been more in jeopardy than it was at the time Christ was on the earth. This was true in both the Jewish and the Roman worlds. The woman had absolutely no rights and, in fact, was on the same level in the eyes of men as were slaves. She could not divorce her husband for any reason. Deuteronomy 24:1 says that “...when a man takes a wife and marries her, if he finds something about her that is shameful, he can write her a letter of divorce and send her away.” The Jewish Rabbis were split on the interpretation of this verse. The school of Shammai was very strict and interpreted the “uncleanness” to mean that she was not a virgin. However, the school of Hillel was very liberal and interpreted it to mean that a man could divorce his wife if she spoiled his dinner by putting too much salt on his potatoes or went into public with her head uncovered or if she talked to men in the street or if she spoke disrespectfully to her inlaws or if she was troublesome or quarrelsome. One rabbi even held that a man could divorce his wife if he found another woman to be more attractive.
In our text today, Jesus said, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate saying they are divorced.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for fornication, causes her to commit adultery, and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery.” The context of adultery begins back in Verse 27, where Christ tells them that even the thought of adultery is sin. The word He uses for adultery is moicheusais. This refers to sexual relationships by married people outside of their marriage commitment. But in our text today in Verse 32, Jesus uses the word porneia, which refers specifically to sexual relationships prior to marriage. So, in the Greek text it reads, “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for porneia, causes her to commit moicheusais, and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits moichatai.” The word porneia stands out like a sore thumb. Christ was obviously making a point by using a different word, which had meaning to his audience. I think that most of your Bibles have footnotes that refer back to Deuteronomy 24:1. In its historical context, if a Jewish man spent 5-10 years preparing a home for a bride and saving up money for his dowry rights, he was guaranteed a virgin for his wife. That came with the deal. But if after marrying, he discovered she was not a virgin or “found some uncleanness in her” or “something in her that was shameful”, he could give her back to her father, and the dowry money was returned. In exchange, he would give her a letter of divorcement.
It would seem from our text today that Christ is saying, “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for cases where it has been discovered that she has already had sexual relations prior to the marriage (or porneia)…” If He did not mean that, Christ would undoubtedly have used moicheusais in keeping with the pattern of the context. This would be in keeping with what Christ said in Chapter 19, that “...a man shall be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh in the sight of God. They are no longer two people but one, and what God has joined together, man has no right to separate” (Matthew 19:5, 6).
Whatever Christ’s teaching was, it was radically different from what they had been hearing from their Jewish Rabbis. When Christ was finished, his disciples huddled and came up with the conclusion that if it was really that stringent, it was probably better not to get married at all (19:10). Christ understood what they were thinking and followed up by saying, “Not everyone will be able to accept this teaching….” (19:11).
The exclamation point to this teaching is Malachi 2:13 ff., where God says,
Another thing you do: you flood the Lord’s altar with tears and weeping and groaning because He pays no attention to your offerings, and He doesn’t accept them with pleasure. You cry out, “Why has the Lord abandoned us?” I’ll tell you why! Because the Lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made to each other on your wedding day when you were young. But you have been disloyal to her, though she remained your faithful companion and the wife of your marriage vows. Didn’t the Lord make you one with your wife? In body and spirit you are His. And what does He want? Godly children from your union. So guard yourself: remain loyal to the wife of your youth. “For I hate divorce!” says the Lord, the God of Israel. “It is as cruel as putting on a victim’s bloodstained coat,” says the Lord Almighty. So guard yourself; always remain loyal to your wife.
Obviously this is a hard message to share in a time when the divorce and remarriage rate among Christians is at an all time high. For some, the message is cause for anger. For others, there are feelings of guilt. Yet others are certain I have misinterpreted Scripture. Christ understood this and said, “Not everyone will accept this teaching!” It is hard. I wish I had hours to talk to you about what Christ teaches. But I want to encourage you today. At any point in our lives, regardless of our past, regardless of mistakes we have made…if we present ourselves to Christ as living sacrifices, God will take what we offer and use it for His kingdom. Perhaps you are here today and struggling in your marriage relationship. I want to encourage you to do two things. First, get some help. We offer marriage classes on a fairly regular basis. Get counseling. Marriage is all about dying to self. God is doing something much bigger in your marriage than trying to make you happy and satisfied. He wants godly offspring from your marriage. He is looking generations down the line, whereas we tend to live for the moment. Secondly, slam the back door to your marriage. That means that divorce is never mentioned. It means that you seek a deep personal relationship with God and that you close your mind to all of the outside stimuli that Satan bombards you with that is an enemy to that which is “...true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy.” Paul told the Corinthians to “...accept whatever situation the Lord has put you in, and continue on as you were when God first called you”
(I Corinthians 7:17). God has placed us here to affect society, not to be infected by society. God wants to use you to be part of a renewal in America!