Mark 10:1-12
Introduction: Today, on Father’s Day, we will look at this passage in its context,
and consider God’s design for marriage, and especially focus today on the man’s
role in the family. Of all human relationships, the Lord used marriage to
describe His relationship with the church. It is important to remember He
designed marriage as a key aspect of His plan for humanity before the Fall: In the midst of His good creation it was not good for the man to be alone. Adam
was incomplete until God created a helpmate suitable for him. When we come to
the NT, the church is described as the Bride of Christ. We look forward
to celebrating with Him one day at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Paul says husbands—as we
live in this fallen world—are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Note that this passage comes
between two instances in which Jesus taught about children (9:37; 10:13), and,
perhaps, warned against causing them to stumble (9:42). Perhaps the greatest
example a man can give to His children is to love their mother, as Christ loved
the church. It models God’s design for the family, and also Christ’s love
for the church.
In this context emphasizing
discipleship, serving, and pursuing peace (9:50b) Mark is showing us that in this
fallen world, as two people are seeking to live life together, as husband and
wife, that God would use the give and take, the joys and the trials, the good
times and the bad to teach us, to remind us about humility and the need to have
the attitude of a servant, to conform us more and more to the image of Christ.
Dr. Paul Tripp talks about
marriage rooted in worship, and he illustrates it with a triangle. At the apex,
God as Creator—He designed marriage, He has a plan—if we are willing to
receive it. At another point of the triangle, we worship God as Sovereign.
He is Lord, He has brought you and your spouse together (or, if you are single,
He has either given you the gift of singleness, or at the right time He will yet bring the right person into your
life as you prayerfully seek His will). Since God is good and does all things
well, His will is to use your spouse to grow your relationship with Him, to
mature you as a disciple, to make you more like Jesus. Does that mean it is
always easy? That brings us to the third point of the triangle, God as
Savior. He can redeem your marriage—for you both—for your
good and for His glory. It strikes me that Jesus is approaching
Jerusalem, where He will soon lay down His life to redeem His bride. Marriage
and discipleship? Ok, but this is Father’s Day, right? That points to…
The BIG Idea: Your children will be blessed as
they see God’s design for marriage modeled in your relationship: one man, one
woman, learning and growing together, for life. And in our better moments
they’ll get a glimpse of Christ’s love for the church.
I. CONTEXT: As Jesus moves toward Jerusalem the
Pharisees again seek to trap him with His words, looking for a reason to accuse
Him (1-2).
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?"
This last section of Mark shows Jesus transitioning from Galilee to
ministry in Judea, leading to the final confrontation in Jerusalem. We see Jesus’
popularity again, as soon as He appears in public, crowds begin to gather. And,
as He was accustomed to do, He taught them. It didn’t take long for word to get
to some Pharisees, who came to him “to test Him” (cf. 8:11). It is likely that
they wanted to lead Jesus into conflict with Herod Antipas. Remember the whole
story with John the Baptist who called Herod out for marrying his brother’s
wife Herodias, and John’s eventual execution. If Jesus took a “hard line” on divorce
maybe that would get Him out of the picture as well!
At a minimum they intended to set
up a “no-win” scenario in that someone would surely take offense at
Jesus’ answer! There were two main rabbinic schools at the time. The stricter,
more conservative teachings of Rabbi Shammai, and the more liberal school of
Hillel. The stricter school allowed for
divorce only in the case of adultery, whereas the more liberal school
essentially allowed divorce for any reason at all – for example if a husband
didn’t like his wife’s cooking! That was the predominant view of the time,
propagated by the Pharisees. If Jesus took a hard line on marriage and divorce,
would His popularity would quickly fade? We are not sure what Pharisees’ plan
was, but we know they wanted to “test Him,” to get something that would blunt
His popularity.
Certainly the Pharisees were
not on a quest for truth. They were not asking Jesus to arrange for a
marriage conference so that they could be better husbands. They were testing Him, trying to set a trap,
looking for a reason to accuse Him. That sets the stage for the Big Idea here
as Jesus teaches on God’s plan for marriage: one man, one woman, learning and
growing together until death do us part. As you model that commitment, your children
will be blessed, and they will get a glimpse of Jesus’ love for the church.
II. A command, or a concession to human fallenness (3-5)?
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.
Jesus knew the hearts and
the intentions of the Pharisees, so He answers their question with a question:
What did Moses say about it? They refer to Dt 24:1…
"When a man takes a wife and marries her, 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...
Where is the commandment in
that verse? The Pharisees themselves answer Jesus by saying that Moses allowed the husband to write a
certificate of divorce. The NLT gets the idea when it starts Mark 10:4 with the
phrase, “Well, he permitted it…” As
you read the context in Deuteronomy, Moses is describing what was
happening already, not prescribing God’s will for the situation in v.1. The
only prohibition comes later in v.4, seemingly to protect the wife against her
husband taking an “easy-in/easy-out” kind of behavior. Divorce was a
concession to the hardness of human hearts.
Jesus will show in the following verses that God had no provision for
divorce in the beginning—that came with the Fall. *Your children will be blessed as they see God’s design for marriage
modeled in your relationship: one man, one woman, learning and growing
together, for life. And in our better moments they’ll get a glimpse of Christ’s
love for the church.
III. God’s Creation-Design for
Marriage: One man, one woman, for life (6-9).
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 they shall become
one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh.
9 What therefore God
has joined together, let not man separate."
Notice how Jesus responds –
the Pharisees are trying to “test Him” with their question about divorce, and
Jesus points them back to the more fundamental question, God’s design for marriage
as revealed in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis (Gen 1:27: 2:24). In
the pre-Fall creation everything was pronounced “good” [tov] by God. The only thing that was “not good” [lo-tov]
before the fall was the man being alone. God’s design for creation was
incomplete. And so, He made Eve, to complete Adam. And it was good. Now they could
experience the fullness, the abundant life [shalom]
for which they were created.
Genesis describes “leaving”
and “cleaving.” A lot of problems
in marriages result from our failure in one of those areas. “Leaving” speaks
about a man separating from the family of His birth, and taking responsibility
as the head of a new family unit. And “cleaving,” speaks of sexual intimacy yes,
but also loving, leading, protecting and providing. It doesn’t mean we have no
relationship with our parents of course (that was very important in first
century Judaism). But it does imply independence, taking responsibility. Two
people committing to one another, for a lifetime together. That is the Big
Idea: And your children will be blessed as they
see God’s design for marriage modeled in your relationship: one man, one woman,
learning and growing together, for life. And in our better moments they’ll get
a glimpse of Christ’s love for the church.
IV. The consequence of
illegitimate divorce (10-12). The prophet Malachi said, “God hates divorce…” (Mal 2:16).
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."
As they often did, the disciples ask Jesus
in private to clarify His public teaching. As Mark is writing to a community
under persecution in Rome, he is emphasizing here God’s design, His intention
for marriage since Creation: one man, one woman, learning and growing together,
in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, through good times and
through hard times, until death parts them. He is specifically writing against
any “easy in, easy out” view of marriage. God’s plan is for a lifetime commitment.
Think about Mark’s message: As a husband and wife live, for the time God gives
them together, as pilgrims in a fallen world, they can learn and live, stronger
together than either of them could be alone. God will just as surely use your
marriage, if you will allow it, to grow you to be more like Jesus. In a
sense it is like a microcosm of the church.
So then, is divorce always
sinful? Yes, there is always sin in a divorce, but not every person
involved in a divorce has necessarily sinned. The OT does not actually talk
about adultery as a ground for divorce—why? Under the Law, the penalty for
adultery was death (Lev 20:10). In that scenario the innocent party would naturally
be free to remarry! Yet in the first century, under Roman rule, the Jews had limited
freedom to carry out such penalties. So then how should it apply in the church?
Matthew gives a more complete version of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:8,9…
8b "Because of your hardness of
heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was
not so. 9 And I say to you:
whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality [porneia], and marries another, commits adultery."
Clearly Jesus was giving an “exception” with this statement, saying that
unfaithfulness, a capital crime under the Law, would be legitimate grounds for
divorce. There is no command that divorce is necessary, but it would be permissible.
I’ve known cases where there has been unfaithfulness, and then repentance,
forgiveness, and reconciliation. So, divorce is an option for the offended party in the
case of adultery. Is that the only situation? The Apostle Paul also addresses
the matter of abandonment by an unbelieving spouse in I Corinthians 7, that will have to be a study for
another day!. In that passage Paul says that
the unbelieving spouse is “set apart,” as are the children. Why persevere
when marriage gets difficult? Remember Paul Tripp’s triangle: we worship God as
Creator, as Sovereign, and as Savior. The Apostle Paul
says, “How do you know if you will save [your
husband/wife]?” We know that we don’t
save anyone, but he is speaking a kind of “shorthand” there: “Save” in the
sense, “used by God that our witness might win them to Christ.” Compare I Peter
3:1-2, “Likewise, wives, be
subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they
may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives- 2 when they see your respectful
and pure conduct.”
But what if the
unbelieving spouse leaves? Then the believer is “not enslaved.” This is the second circumstance where a divorce is
not required, but may be permissible. This seems to say that in the case of
abandonment by an unbelieving spouse if the “brother or sister,” the believing
spouse, the one who is who is left behind, desires to remarry he (or she) is
free to do so, “he is not in bondage.”
Reconciliation should be sought, staying celibate is an option, but if there is
no other way, the believer is allowed to marry, “in the Lord.” God so values the marriage
relationship so should we. Jesus said, “What God has joined, let no one
separate.” *Our commitment to each other is a witness
to our children, and beyond, to our community. They’re watching, and will be
blessed…
What is God saying to me in
this passage? …as they see God’s design for
marriage shown in your relationship: one man, one woman, learning and growing
together, for life. And in our better moments they’ll get a glimpse of Christ’s
love for the church.
What would God have me to do
in response to this passage?
1) Be grateful: If you have
or had a believing Dad, be thankful for his example. None of us is perfect, but
with God we have what it takes. If you didn’t have that kind of example, it
might be harder to grasp, but know this: God is your Father, and the
church is Christ’s Bride. He is faithful, He will hold you in the
grip of His grace.
2) Whatever your state, trust God, He is
Sovereign. If you are single, serve Him with your whole heart. He has a plan! If
you are married, know that your marriage can lead you deeper in your worship
of the Lord, as Creator, Sovereign, and Savior.
3) Understand God’s good design in Creation. In a perfect world
before the fall, God said it was not good for the man to be alone. Then He
created Eve. God has a plan. A man, and a woman, together for life. Maybe
you are at a hard point in your marriage—you are not sure if you are going to
make it. With God all things are possible. He is also our Savior, and He
can redeem your marriage and use it for your good, and for His glory.
4) Husbands, with fear and trembling, know to what you have been called: love your wife, as Christ loved the church!
5) And know that your children and others are watching, and they will be blessed as they see in your relationship what marriage can and should be, and they will get a glimpse of the unshakable love Jesus has for the church. AMEN.
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