Divorce and Remarriage, Pt. 2

Matthew 5:31‑32

As I'm sure you know by now we are studying together the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 specifically in connection with an on going study of the entire Gospel of Matthew. We thank the Lord for what He has already taught us, and for our lesson tonight we come again in Matthew 5 to chapter er, rather to verses 31 and 32, Matthew 5:31 and 32. And the Lord says, "It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement; But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery; and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."

Obviously the theme of our Lord's words are divorce, remarriage, and adultery. And you know as well as I do that these are major factors in the society in which we live today.

In a recent issue of Newsweek Magazine that came out on June 11th, 1979 just a few weeks ago, or one week ago, there is an article in the segment called, "My Turn," by Suzanne Britt Jordan. And I thought the article was interesting because it was on divorce and what she said fascinated me. Let me read you some excerpts, she writes, "My friends after 18 years of marriage are getting a civilized divorce. I object. I think people should be upset about so serious a thing as divorce. There is a redeeming quality in the honest screech and howl that I miss in our psychoanalyzed together generation." She goes on in the article, "My friend says that they are more like friends or bother and sister than husband and wife and she says the marriage has no spark and no umph. She's very much interested in the spark business. Perhaps I was in the kitchen slinging hash when the decree went out that marriages in the 20th century required pizzazz, romance, thrills. Perhaps I've got old fashioned notions about this once venerable but now crumbling institution. But my insides tell me that what everybody else is doing is not necessarily right, and what folks have dumped on marriage in the way of expectations, selfish interests and kinky kicks needs prompt removal before the marriage fortress is crushed by the barbarians. Marriage is nothing more nor less than a permanent promise between two consenting adults and often but not always under God, to cling to each other until death. It sounds pretty grim I know, but then we have a perfect model in our children and relatives for how marriage should be viewed, I cannot at any time send my children back to some other womb for a fresh start. I've got a few cousins and aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews with whom I might like to deny kinship but I can't, any more than I can change the color of my eyes. My parents are my parents whether I speak to them or not, in the same way the husband and wife are one flesh forever, if I divorced my husband I am in effect cutting off part of myself, I think we have forgotten the fundamental basis of marriage, a notion that has nothing to do with moonlight and roses and my own personal wishes. Marriage is a partnership far more than a perpetual honeymoon, and anybody who stays married can tell you that, it may be made in heaven but it's lived on earth. And because earth is the way it is marriage is often irritation, alliaceous, unsatisfying, boring and shaky. I myself as a human being am not always a prize. (Ha) Some days I wouldn't have me on a silver platter. But, those seekers after the perfect marriage are convinced that the spouse will display perfection, the perfect mate, despite what Cosmopolitan says, does not exist no matter how many of those tests you take. We have all sorts of convenient excuses for not staying married these days, in the old days, you're probably saying, people didn't live as long so a spouse could safely assume his partner would kick the bucket in 5 or 10 years and the one still breathing could have another fling at it. Wrong. People are actually living only a few years longer than they did in the last century if they survive the childhood diseases. The reports of our increased longevity are greatly exaggerated. We are also informed that marriage should be a place where we can grow, find ourselves, and be ourselves. Interestingly we cannot be entirely ourselves even with our best friends, some decorum, some courtesy, some selflessness are demanded. As for finding myself I think I already know where I am, I'm grown up, I have responsibilities, I am in the middle of a life long marriage, I'm hanging in there sometimes enduring and sometimes enjoying. My original objection was primarily to the flippancy with which we say good‑bye to a mediocre or a poor marriage. We are so selfish we want our fun and we want it now. We value pleasure above fidelity, loyalty, generosity, and duty. My friends might have remained married if they had stopped clutching greedily at pleasure. The spark might have returned if they had gently fanned the fire, and even if the spark never returned they might nevertheless have lived lovingly and patiently and kindly together. There are worse fates not the least of which is finding another even less satisfactory second mate." End quote.

Now that is a unique view for our age, I would say, and I'm sure you agree with me. She doesn't purport to be a Christian she just has some sense of integrity about human relationships. She has a perspective on promises that seems a little foreign to our age, she sees marriage as she sees any other dimension of family life, it's something that lasts for life. You can't get rid of your kinship, you can't get rid of your parents, you can't get rid of your children, why should you get rid of your spouse? It is refreshing to find that somebody in our society still holds to the value of a promise, still holds to commitment, still can face life with a perspective on unselfishness. And still sees those kinds of things as desirable virtues in our rotten decaying society.

Now I think this lady has some practical insights into the reality of true commitment. But you'll notice that her basis for it is this sort of a, a sort of a deep down sense of responsibility to marriage, and although that is a great and admirable basis for wanting marriage to stay together there is a far greater one than that. The greatest reality substantiating the permanence of marriage is the Word of God. And the Bible goes far beyond what somebody's gut level feeling might be no matter how good it is, or how true it is. Suzanne Britt Jordan is right. But in reading the article she's right for the wrong reason. She doesn't go far enough, to say that the reason that marriage is permanent is because God says it's permanent. And as a creature created in the image of God, she's tapping back to that original resource when she finds those kinds of feelings. But God is the source of the permanence of marriage.

Now the standard of scripture upholds the permanence of marriage again and again and again. And I want you to just kind of focus with me for a minute on what God says about marriage, that indicates this.

Now we've talked about some things last time, but let me call your attention for a moment to Ephesians 5:22, Ephesians 5:22, and here we find the Apostle Paul giving us God's view of marriage and he says, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church; and he is the savior of the body." Now immediately we face the fact that marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church, that's obvious from verse 23, and 22. Further, verse 24, "Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." Verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church." And then he talks about that a little while and when you come down finally to verse 32 you have the sum of it, "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church." In other words, marriage becomes a symbol defining for us in visible terms the relationship between Christ and His Church.

Now I ask you very simply, is the relationship between Christ and His Church permanent? Yes. Then it is demonstrably significant that marriage be permanent, if in fact it is to reveal the truth about Christ and His Church. Verse 31 says, "This is the reason that a man should leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they two should be one flesh." And the reason it should be that way and the reason it should sustain its relationship in that way is because it is an emblem of Christ and His Church. Husbands are to be as faithful as Christ is to His Church, wives are to be as faithful as Christ is ah, ‑ to, to the church and the church is to Christ. That is the imagery of Ephesians, and what this does beloved, and I want you to see this, is it lifts marriage out of purely the human dimension into the divine perspective. Marriage is a symbol of the relation between Christ and His Church. Marriage is not an end in itself, now listen to this one, marriage was not designed primarily for your happiness, it was not designed primarily for my happiness, marriage was designed primarily to be an illustration on a human level of a divine relationship. And when you lose that sense of priority in marriage and you make marriage a mundane thing that belongs only in the carnal world of the expression of personal preference you have denuded marriage of its divine priority. We can't expect the world to understand this but for God's sake we can expect the church to understand it. And when in one week I find four couples who claim to be Christians divorcing, then I begin to question whether Christianity has really understood its calling. And somebody even with a secular viewpoint like the writer I quoted tonight seems to have a higher standard than some of us.

In Second Corinthians chapter 11 we would also find a passage that would lend support to this perspective. In Second Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 1 and 2 we read, "Would to God you could bear with me a little in my folly; and, indeed, bear with me." In other words give me a, give me the benefit of the doubt in the way I communicate with you, try to understand how deeply I feel, why? "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy; (why?) for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." This is again that same beautiful imagery, that a believer is united to Christ in a kind of a marriage perspective.

We find further as you read in Revelation 19, as you read again in Revelation chapter 21, the church is seen as a bride and the city where the church dwells is seen as a bride city, and joined together with the bridegroom, Jesus Christ. And so the lovely imagery of the New Testament points up the fact that marriage is a symbol, it is a symbol. And that's why Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage is honorable in all." Why? Because its greatest honor is that it proclaims to the world that symbol of the union between Christ and His own blessed Church. And as permanent and as full of love and as absolutely binding and as wonderfully unique as is Christ's relationship to His Church so is to be your marriage and mine. That's why when you go very... right back to the very beginning, and God designed marriage in Genesis 2:23 and 24 He designed that marriage be two people becoming one for life. Even then it was to be the emblem of God's relationship to man. That's why in Matthew chapter 19 when they said to Him, "Well, why did Moses give us a bill of divorcement?" He replied by saying, 'From the beginning it was not so." "For what, God hath joined together, let not man divorce." And so we saw last time that this is God's perspective. And that's why when you come to Malachi 2:16 as we did in our last study you hear God say, I hate divorce, I hate divorce. I don't care for what reason divorce always violates that imagery God has designed for marriage, as well as violating the marriage itself.

Now, the Old Testament then lays down a standard and it never changes. Let me add this, divorce, now get this, divorce is never God's way to resolve a conflict, never. That's why God never com­mands divorce and God never really condones divorce in the Bible. God knows it'll happen, and God tries to regulate its consequences, but He never commands it because it's never the solution.

Now to illustrate that to you I want you to look with me tonight to the Book of Hosea, and I want us to see this marvelous prophecy. Hosea is the first of what is known as the Minor Prophets, not Minor be­cause they have an unimportant message but Minor simply in the sense that they're shorter, and in fact not all of them are that much shorter since Zechariah is at least as long as Daniel. But they came under the category the Minor Prophets, their message is major. But Hosea is the one that I want you to look at, because Hosea presents to us I think scripturally the most clear view of how God sees marriage, the most clear view at least in the Old Testament. And it be­comes the basis of what we are to understand as we go further in comprehending the New Testament.

Now, remember this, marriage was never designed by God to establish or promote human happiness. Now listen to me, human happiness, now get this, is found in a right relationship with whom? With God. And when that is right you will be rightly related to anybody and any marriage could work, you get that? Marriage is not the key to human happiness; God is the key to human happiness. If you're right with God then you can make a relationship work, both partners obviously have to cooperate. But marriage was designed to illustrate God's relationship with His Church, God's relationship in the Old Testament with His people Israel. It is a living illustration of how a person is joined together in an unbreakable union with the living God, and it's marvelously presented in the Book of Hosea.

Now let's begin at the beginning, chapter 1 verse 1, obviously we can't go through the whole thing, 14 chapters, but some of it I want you to see. "The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, the days of Uzzuah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel." Just a historical setting. Now here's the situation, there came a time when the Lord appeared to one of His servants, Hosea, and God's design was that Hosea would become a prophet. Only the prophecy that Hosea was going to give wouldn't just be verbal, it was verbal but it would be more than verbal it would be exemplary or in other words his life would become a pageant.

This is not uncommon we know that ah, this is the case in some of the other prophets as well. We know it from Jeremiah for sure, who made living pageants to illustrate the Word of God. Hosea is to become a dramatization; he is going to enact in his life a great drama to illustrate great spiritual truth. Now here's what Hosea was to do, Hosea was to marry a woman, a woman by the name of Gomer, and having married her, discover that she had become a prostitute or a harlot. And in spite of that he was to be faithful to his vow, no matter what the pain, no matter what the unfaithfulness, no matter what the excruciating agony, no matter what the price he was to be faithful to his harlot, prostitute, debauched, vile wife, no matter what she did, why? Because this was a pageant to demonstrate how faithful God would be to His wayward wife, Israel. And it sets for us the standard of relationship in a marriage as it is the image for God's relationship to His people.

Verse 2, "The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry; for the land hath committed great harlotry, departing from the LORD." In other words God had espoused Himself to Israel as a husband; God had taken Israel to be His wife, that was a permanent relationship. And by the way in the future God will yet restore that wayward wife, will He not? And draw Israel back with the cords of love, restore and save, as Romans 11 says, and bring Israel to the kingdom that He promised in the beginning. But at this time Hosea was to dramatize the fact that Israel had become adulterous, Israel had become a harlot, and Israel was having intercourse on a spiritual level with false gods. And so God said, Hosea I want a dramatization of this, I want a pageant to portray it, and I'm going to use you. And he was to live this drama, he was to play the part of the loving, faithful, forgiving God, and his wife would be the harlot.

Now I do not believe for a moment that God forced her into her harlotries to be an illustration. I believe God worked in His sovereignty with her own will. But the heart of the story is that dear Hosea was to be faithful and forgiving no matter what she did. In fact as we go into the story we find out that when she went into harlotry he actually paid her bills, because he felt so bound by the vow he had made when he married her, he followed her around paying her bills.

Verse 3, "He went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, who conceived and bore him a son. And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel." Jezreel means scattered, call his name scattered because that's what I'm going to do to Israel. Verse 6, "And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Lo‑ruhamah;" that means not pitied, "for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, I will utterly take them away." Verse 8, "Now when she had weaned Lo‑ruhamah, she conceived, and bore a son. Then said God, Call his name Lo‑ammi; for you are not my people, and I will not be your God." Now do you get the picture? Jezreel means scattered, Lo‑ruhamah means not pitied, and Lo‑ammi means not My people. Turn your back on that harlot; turn your back on those children of harlotry.

But gratefully the story doesn't end here. If this were you and I we might say, you know I've got a harlot for a wife, I've got children. I'm not sure that these second two were the children of Hosea, at all. And God says to reject these things; I've got every right to get rid of that woman, that vile prostitute, that woman of illegitimacy. Certainly I have a right to banish her from my life. But that's not how the story ends. Chapter 2 verse 4 says, "And I will not have mercy on her children; for they are the children of harlotry." Leads me to believe that Hosea had every right to just chuck the whole pile of them Turn them loose. And in a sense if this is an illustration it looks like God is saying good‑bye to Israel, and there are some today who conclude that.

There are some who say, well, God just turned Israel off, that's the end, they're done. That's one theological perspective, but is that how the story ends? Let's back up to verse 2 of chapter 2 and find out, verse 2 of chapter 2, "Contend with your mother, contend; for she's not my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her, therefore, put away her harlotries out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts, Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst." Well that's pretty strong stuff. You better tell that woman to shape up or she's a goner. In a sense this is God's perspective toward Israel. Verse 5, "For their mother hath played the harlot. She that conceived them hath done shamefully; for she said, I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink." In other words she was a prostitute for hire. This was no fa... infatuation with some nice guy at the office, you know? This was a business. "Therefore, (will) behold, (verse 6) 1 will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths." In other words Hosea says, I'm going to go after her. "And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but she shall not find them." He's going to get right into her life and make it hard for her; he's going to get right in there so she can't accomplish what she wants to. "Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now." I'm going to do everything I can to make it so tough on her that she'll have to come back. "For she didn't know that I gave her the grain, and the wine, and the oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal." You know what he was doing? He was actually following this woman around in her harlotry paying her bills, he was actually the one paying her, he was funding this, in a sense, to keep his link with her. Amazing, amazing. "And now (verse 10) I'll uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her sabbaths, her solemn feasts. I will destroy her vines, her fig trees, of which she said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me. And I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them."

And as you read through this, we're not going to have time to go to the details but as you read through it you see a ... this ambivalence all the time. I'm going to make it so hard and so miserable that she'll turn from it, but I have a responsibility, I'm going to keep staying along side and making sure her needs are met. So here in a sense is a husband who is chastening and judging all the while and supporting, so that she stays alive.

And you see exactly this in God's relation to Israel. God on the one hand is judging and chastening and dealing with Israel, on the other hand God is the very life of the nation, right? You look at Israel today, and God is chastening the land of Israel and yet at the same time God is the sustenance of that people. And so Hosea works with this ambivalence, a wife who is a prostitute and a harlot, and he wants so much for her to be judged and he wants so much for her to be condemned in this so she'll return and yet he, he goes along because of the vow that he has to her as a husband and he makes sure her needs are met. Incredible commitment.

Look down in chapter 2 at verse 22. God is going to restore Israel, and that's the picture here. "And the earth shall hear the grain, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them who were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God." Oh it's great. God's gonna, God's gonna reach out and take them back. Jezreel, instead of scattered is applied to sowing a field and it means God sows. Lo‑ruhamah is changed to ruhamah which means pity. Lo‑ammi is changed to ammi which means My people, and the one who is not My people becomes My people, the one who is not pitied is pitied, the one who was scattered is sown and shall grow. Why? Why does God do this, why does God promise restoration to Israel? The answer's very simple, because God made a promise and God is a God who keeps His word, right? And if God made such a vow to Israel then God will fulfill it.

The point is God's unchanging love for Israel is based on the permanent promise He made which is based upon His character. And so even though Israel became a harlot, God said I'll bring her back, even though she bore children of harlotry God said I'll change their names. And so it was that Hosea was to live the illustration of an adulterous wife to be brought back, to be brought back to a place of blessing.

Now beloved I think this is an apt picture, since marriage is a symbol of God's relationship to His people, and obviously so in Hosea, it is an apt symbol of how you deal with a wayward partner. In our society one false move and you're out. Just like it was among the Pharisees and the scribes. Is that the way God treated Israel? Do you know that God yet awaits the day when He'll regather Israel into His arms? Is that the way Jesus dealt with the church? Have you ever failed Jesus Christ? Has He ever turned you away? Have you ever committed spiritual adultery against the one who is your bridegroom? Has He ever turned you away? Never. Don't you see, this is the point, this is how a Christian marriage partner is to respond, no matter what the sin, no matter what the problem the instant reaction should be forgiveness. Here is Hosea traipsing along behind this harlot paying her bills. You say, ah, Hosea's nuts. I'm sure the people in his town thought he was nuts. What kind of a guy is this? I've seen love but this is stupid. But Hosea is saying to us what God is saying, this is how I love you, this is My heart for Israel. And this surely is what Christ is saying, this is My love for the church. You may run away from Me, you can g... you can run away from Me but you'll never run out of My love and you'll never run out of My relationship, and I'll even pay your bills along the way while I'm chastening you.

On the one hand isn't it amazing how in the Christian life when we sin God sustains us on the one hand and chastens us on the other. He covers our sin on the one hand and punishes it for us on the other. So Hosea kept on loving Gomer, and he loved her and he loved her and he loved her. And finally she sank to the pit, I mean she was so debauched that she wound up for sale on the block in the slave market. And that's where we find her in chapter 3, "THEN said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress," and he is her friend by the way, Hosea, "according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love cakes of raisins." Involved in pagan activities. You go love her he says, just like I've loved Israel in the midst of her harlotry. So you know what he did? Hosea went out to the slave block and there he saw Gomer for sale, his wife, the mother of his three children. The one who had played the harlot and broken his heart again and again, the one whom he loved and followed through all of her harlotries and even payed her bills, and now she stands there, for sale.

Now we know something about the slave markets in those days. Almost half the population was in slavery of one kind, and scarcely a day would ever go by when there wasn't an auction of slaves in the city. They were sold openly in the market place along with all the other commodities. So the Lord says to Hosea, go down to the slave market and buy your own wife. And the scene must have been something like this, Hosea walks into the market and standing on the block is a woman, stark naked, her clothes ripped apart so that she could be personally examined by anybody who wanted to buy her, a woman debauched by multitudinous harlotries. It's his wife whom he loves and the mother of his children. If ever a man has a right to divorce, he does. He could buy her and stone her, that's what he could do. He could claim the Old Testament law. But there is the woman of his heart.    Not only is her veil removed which would have been enough of an embarrassment, but she's exposed.

And the bidding begins for this woman, and he bids along with everybody else, for his own wife. Finally in verse 2 he says, "So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half of homer of bar­ley." Now that would have been a lot, a lot, a tremendous amount. You could just hear the auctioneer raising the ante and finally some­body may have said, 15 pieces of silver and a homer of barley. And Hosea said, 15 pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. To which the auctioneer may have replied, do I hear another bid? Sold. What happened? Verse 3, "And I said unto her, Thou shalt abide with me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man; (and I love this) and so will I also be for thee." Now wait a minute Hosea, nobody can forgive like that. The guy is saying, I'm yours from here on. You say, ahh, Hosea you are a glutton for punishment.

But you see there's more here than just a man and a woman, you see there's God and Israel here. And that's what I'm trying to get you to see with marriage. You have no more right, based on your promise to chuck your partner than God has to turn you loose when you offend Him. Did you hear that? This is the magnificence of marriage that we see in this tremendous, tremendous Book. And the amazing thing about it, is that it doesn't appear that Hosea says, I'm gonna stick it out, after all I'm a prophet, it's my career. I don't get that perspective. He loved her. Love a woman, He says, like I love a people. And he says to her, you'll stay with me many days, filling out our lives, you'll not play the harlot, and you'll not be for another man.

You know what it's kind of like? What if you, what if you were living in First Corinthians, and you