JAN 28 2018 | Matthew 19

Sea Change Church · "Matthew 19" · Adam Stadtmiller · January 28, 2018
Matthew 19
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

A reading from the book of Malachi, verses 13 through 16. Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament. The last words of Jesus to be written in the Scripture or the Lord to be written in the Scripture until he came 400 years later. You'd think that the last words would have some importance to listen to and to heed. In this section, it is written.

Another thing you do, you flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why? It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You've been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth. The man who hates and divorce his wife, says the Lord, the God of Israel, does violence to the one he should protect, says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard and do not be unfaithful. The word of the Lord.

So good. Chris, Chris Harrell and team. Goodness. Great voice, better person. FYI, our worship team. I love our worship team. The person leading that team, Chris Harrell, you're a rock star. I mean, we're just honored. I'm just. Let me assure you that Chris could be at a lot of other places and she gets lots of offers. Let me just assure you. And she's here because God's called her here.

And we're stoked. So I like what you're cooking up there. It's good stuff. All right. Good. Hey, if you have your Bibles, open up that Malachi passage, but also go put a little marker in Matthew 19. And we are still in. Pastor Adam offends every person in the church series. I've actually. I've actually had very civil discourse. I've just had the.

I've had the best emails from people. It's a lot. Some really good emails. But that's what I tend to invite civility in dialogue. I don't. You know. I don't know if you know that. And a lot of times I think being forthright, but not dogmatic. People appreciate. Hey, you really believe that. But you're not telling me what I have to believe. You know, or you're forcing it or foisting it upon me.

And I've just had. Just thank you for all the dialogue. And that I've gotten, especially from across the country. People that are listening to it and dialing in. Actually, let you know, we have. We were going to go into, I think, a crucial series on secular humanism. Something that needs to be spoken about. I'm going to push that series back to some until after the David series.

And we'll go back into a things Adam wants to talk about series. Because I like to be topical on occasion. And I think there's some important things that we need to have serious. But I want to get back into the scripture. And just to let you know, I'm emotionally tired from this three weeks. It's draining. It's draining to get up in front of people and speak about.

By the way, I'm not a victim. I'm more than happy to do it. But it's just draining. Hashtag victim. It's just tiring. And the amount of the emails that I'm answering and trying to answer well. And talking with people. And books being given to me. I've had a nice stack of books given to me. And it's been awesome. It's great. And I appreciate the dialogue.

But one of the things that I just want to say is I personally just need a break. And get back into a really inspirational story about a guy named David. So if we can do that, we'll get to secular humanism. I know you just can't wait. But that's where we're going. And the word that we've really been looking at here. A couple words. One is victory.

And the other is liberty. I think the scripture has a lot of liberty. Especially in this one topic. And this idea of divorce is a topic that I've been just waiting on. I was going to do it last week. And I just wasn't settled in what I wanted to say. Or how to say it. Or what I actually believed. And let me just say that I'm still in a journey of figuring that out.

And I hope that's okay. There's a fair amount of Christians who feel that the pastors should be more like an authoritarian father that has all the answers. And I just spit them out and you follow like lemmings. This really isn't the culture of our church. But a lot of things I'm still figuring out. I think we continue to figure them out. And so a couple things.

I've been setting up these talks with some thoughts and some, I guess, guidelines and some rules. I heard someone say recently, if you're cheating at chess, you're no longer playing chess. And I guess one of the things I want to do is make sure we understand some rules for civility and dialogue. At least where I'm coming from. And the kind of church that we as a staff are trying and a team, volunteer team, are trying to create.

And one where people have an equal helping of challenge with inspiration. And so we want to challenge you. And I don't think I have a problem challenging people. But at the same time, there has to be an invitation to Jesus to say, hey, I'm really gentle. Come hang out with me. And I love you. And I am a God of second chances and 98 chances and 7 times 70 chances.

And how do we do that? And that seems to be the tension that I see with many people, myself included, of how hard do we push certain thoughts and ideas and text, but at the same time allowing grace. Because Jesus turned this upside down in the New Testament. And it's one of the things that he was best at and that people were most uncomfortable with.

So let me give a couple of the guidelines. They're not really rules. But I think, one, I don't know if these are, I don't think these parts are in your notes. I've been adding a little bit. But the key to difficult discussions, I believe, is that we're all on a journey. And each of us has gotten to this communal location. So understanding that we are in a community now.

We are journeying together, at least during this part of your life. And hopefully you're taking what you harvest here to the third corner, which we talk about a lot, which is the corner you live on. Four corners here, your heart. This church is on a corner. The corner you live on, or maybe you live in a high rise, but you understand the metaphor.

And the four corners of the earth, which we talked about with Carmen today. And what we want to do is provide something that the journey here affects the journey there, if that makes sense. And so, as we're on this community together, we've come to this common location. But the thing we have to realize is we've all gotten here via a different path.

And the path in which you particularly got to this location, and you want to join in to what's happening. I understand why you would want to join in to what's happening here. I know why I want to join in to what's happening here. Because it's good, and it's life-giving, and it's fun. And I just love coming to church, and the reason we are growing, and we've grown a lot recently, is I think that people are saying, hey, there's a cool group of people journeying there, and they're godly in these different things.

But we have to realize that you all got here a different way. And so when it comes to difficult topics, a person who has been in marital bliss, it's just been amazing. There's never been a problem. They have the perfect marriage, you know. So they're going to have a way different understanding than a survivor of abuse. They're going to come with a different understanding.

And I guess we have to allow for that and to say that's okay. So that's the first thing I think is, and this is, if there is anything to do with marriages, the reason, the number one reason, in my opinion, that marriages break down would be for lack of empathy. Being able to understand where your partner is coming from, wanting to experience their heart's cry, understanding their passions.

I think that, you know, a lot of things cause divorces and abuse and unfaithfulness and all these different things. But I would say oftentimes, and not always, I'm not definitive, but oftentimes it's a lack of empathy for one another. So in regard to my journey, just so you know where I'm coming from, you know, I come from a divorced family.

And when I look at that, and I talked to my mom about this this week that I was going to share, but it destroyed our life. It's very deep wounding for me, very deep wounding. And it literally has destroyed my life in so many ways. Now, there was alcohol. That was another, if you have an alcohol or an addiction, just to let you know, you have another family member.

That alcohol becomes a family member. They have a voice in the home. They cause things to happen. And so both of my parents, before my mom had the courage at 49 years old to get sober, she's told her story. She ran into a telephone pole. She's told this many times, and I'm not stealing her story. But, you know, woke up and said, you know, my life needs to change.

And had the courage to go to AA, not as a Christian, and to get sober. And so then after that, she went to church and got saved, and now it's 40 years later. And just the beginning of your story doesn't have to be the end of your story. And so while not, you know, I want to say that this happened to our family, and it equally destroyed her life as much as it destroyed ours.

But I will say that the courage that my mom has shown has actually, the reward of what has happened since she's turned her life around and turned our family around is far worth anything I ever experienced. And the Bible actually talks about that often. That the, you know, for the joy that is set before you or the things that are happening now are not worthy to compare to what will happen.

And so you saved our lives and our family more than there was ever any issue. So I don't want you, you know, in any way that to feel that. But I need to let you know where my story and where I'm coming from. And so I am a person who has made a commitment in my life that because of that, I will never get divorced. I just won't. My wife told me this week the reason we're still married, she said it in our small group, some of your witnesses, is because Adam has a dogged determination to do whatever it takes.

Not to be a victim, not to lay down and do whatever I want. I'm not that type of person, but to do whatever it takes to make sure that my marriage works. And I will say that no matter what happens, from what I know today, I'm never leaving. Ever. I'm never leaving. I'm never going to quit trying. Now, some people would say, well, you haven't experienced what I've experienced.

And that's true. And how can you say that? Well, my question back would be, why should we take vows at all when we marry them? Don't you make vows about things that you don't know? But I know that my experience has affected, and it's affected my views of the Bible. It's affected my views of if I want to be part of certain marriage ceremonies. It affects how I think, just like all of you.

And so I want to let you know that those are the two levels that I'm coming in from. The next is allowing people to be on a journey. Okay? We need to allow each other to be in transition and journeying together. Jesus was so good at this. You know, Nicodemus comes to him at night. It took three years before he was willing to come out and take Jesus off the cross with Joseph of Arimathea, where he was putting his life at risk, coming with a kingly burial.

I mean, and Jesus was fantastic at letting people travel and figure things out. But we don't have to force our opinions on people. And one of the things that I'm very sensitive to is someone trying to change my mind without giving me the ability of time to, you know, respect my own personal journey. I have a friend I argue with on a... No, I don't argue with it, but we have discussions on a regular basis.

And my friend, I say, well, you know, I disagree with you. Well, if you understood what I was saying, you wouldn't disagree. I hate that. Like, no, I understand exactly what you're saying. I just disagree. Well, but if you really understood what I was saying, you'd agree. We're working it out. Can we just allow somebody? And can we disagree with somebody and say, I'm just, you know, they can just work that out.

So that's the thing. And then the next thing is this, you know, I guess the caveat of biblical proof. I got a... It's funny because I got a fair amount of emails about the Greek use of the word. So, you know, people go to the Greek and they send it to me. And it's interesting because one will come in and then like eight minutes later, another one will come in.

They'll say the exact opposite of what the Greek means. And, you know, we need to be biblical. We need to understand the text and understand what the Greek means and all these different things. You know, in the end, we can't even prove God exists as Christians, right? FYI. Do you know that? It's why it's faith. If we can't prove God exists, I take the Greek very seriously in these different things and understanding.

But I try to look at a wider array of things, history, tradition, reason, all types of things to form my opinions. And then how the spirit is leading me. And so, just so you know, there has to be some liberty here in doing that. So those are kind of some of the rules as I go forward. One of the other reasons I'm going to go to the David series is when I speak on these topics, you all just look at me with no expression.

There was one person last week smiling. They were like smiling all week. It was a woman, too. I was surprised. She was smiling the whole time. I just wanted to preach to her. You know, everybody else just looks at me. You know, I can't take it anymore. Just fake a smile, you know. Wave. No, don't wave. We're going to look at two crucial passages today.

And they're going to be in Matthew and Malachi. And they're two scriptures that are used when we understand the idea of divorce. And I want to give you a new thought. And can we journey with this thought? I'm not saying I'm right. Okay? But can we journey with this thought? And I think I have found some really fascinating proofs for it. In understanding the biblical teaching on divorce, especially in these two passages, is it possible that rather than Jesus, especially in the Matthew 19 passage, trying to create a new law, right?

Because Jesus came to fulfill the law. We know that. But we oftentimes try to take what Jesus says and turn it into a law that looks more like Torah than it does like new covenant liberty and freedom. Okay? And in regards to topics like this, a lot of us want law. We want to know exactly what it says so we can make a decision. And I want to say this is where I find that the New Testament is vastly different than the Old Testament, is it tends to give us liberty in some of our understandings of how we interpret it.

But here's a thought. What if Jesus, in Matthew especially, but perhaps in Malachi as well, but with Jesus in Matthew 19, we'll go over that text. What if instead of trying to create a how-to rule book on how, why, when, and if you can get divorced, Jesus was actually trying to protect women from the injustices that were happening in a divorce culture that allowed a Jewish man of the time to divorce his wife without any income, without anywhere to go, without any help, into the streets for any reason at all.

Now, in Matthew 19, it shows that they do that. And in Malachi, it talks about this. This comes out of Deuteronomy 24, where Moses says you can do a certificate of divorce. What if what Jesus was doing was less about creating a how-to manual on the ifs and hows and whys and a guidebook on how to do divorce, and he was more about trying to bring women back into the conversation and to give them not only freedom and protection, and I'll explain that in a moment, but giving them protection from just being abandoned into the streets.

What if Jesus was doing that? And Jesus' understanding of divorce was broader than just yes in this case, no in this case, yes, no, yes, no. Okay? This is a thought I'm traveling with right now, and I want to travel with you in this thought, and I want to show you why I think this is true. You know, oftentimes, we want a textbook answer for if we can get divorced, why we can get divorced, and how we are allowed to be remarried.

People come to me with those questions all the time. I will say rarely, rarely. It does happen. But rarely does a couple come to me. A couple. Both at the same time saying our marriage is in a very desperate state, and we will both do anything to stay together. Can you tell us how to stay together? Rarely do two people come. Now, a lot of times, one person comes, and they want out, and they're trying to find a way out, and if they can get out, and how they can get out.

But I would say no one ever gets divorced. There's only one reason people get divorced, actually. And I said it was a lack of empathy was the reasoning behind it, or the roots. But the reason people get divorced is because both parties are not willing to do whatever it takes to change to keep the marriage alive. It's the only reason. If both parties, one party, no matter what they've done, if they confess and repent, and I will do anything, and I will change, if both parties are committed to staying together, and they might not have to be under the same roof, by the way.

I wrote an article for Christianity Today called Redemptive Separation. If you want to look at what that means, it's called going apart, living separately until we figure our stuff out. And so this idea where both parties are willing to come together to save. Now, I don't meet many married couples. Usually there's one person who really wants it, and another person doesn't want it, or both people don't want it.

But rarely do they say, we want to save this love. And we've fallen out of love. You know, it's interesting, the Genesis account never mentions being in love. It mentions dominion, partnership, help, being help, mates. It mentions all these different things. It mentions a co-dominion partnership for the glory of God, basically. But it talks nothing about being in love.

And I would say today's marriage, idea of marriage, is closer to a modern fairy tale than it is to what I think the Bible talks about in regard to two people laying down their lives for the glory of the kingdom, and that their marriage becomes a visible representation on earth of the power and glory of God. So let me just, as we go into this, I want to say that I think Jesus is not trying to create a rule book.

I don't think he's trying to rewrite the Torah. I think what Jesus is doing is protecting women, and I will show you this, and I will show you where Jesus also, I believe, in the Matthew 19 passage, gives some liberty for people who do not have the ability to follow the hard teaching that he gives. We'll move into that in just a moment. People want to know this.

What is adultery? They come in, they want to know what is adultery. They have a yardstick of what adultery is. I want to know, if you look at the Old Testament, adultery, especially if you read through Jeremiah, and you read through Isaiah, and the prophets, and the Old Testament, when God speaks about adultery and Israel committing adultery against him, he talks about sexual sin.

But he talks about a lot more than sexual sin. He talks about injustice against the poor. I mean, it is a list. There is a hundred things that cause people to break the covenant, more than that, a covenant, the covenant with God, and to become unfaithful in the marriage covenant of Israel to God. It isn't just about a technical sexual act. Now, it does mention those, but it's absolutely more than that.

Well, then why would Jesus throw that card on the table? We'll talk about that in a moment. But covenant breaking is more than just that. So in my 25 years of pastoring, people come to me and they say, well, my husband, he had an emotional affair, but there was no physical. And so they'll try to say, well, is that adultery? Or they'll say, you know, my wife had an emotional affair.

Or they kissed, but they didn't technically have sex. So, I mean, is that what adultery is? And so we get this yardstick, and we start trying to figure and measure off exactly what it means. I want to tell you, in the Old Testament, if you look at adultery, adultery is unfaithfulness of a lot of different faces. It is an unfaithfulness to a covenant.

It can be, and I believe that when you have false gods, you start worshiping other things or putting your commitment and your time and your devotion to other things besides God. People do that in marriages. Men get blamed for that a lot. That work becomes an idol, and the wife is left aside with no emotional care. And Proverbs talks about how it's not a great thing to have a woman who feels unloved in that.

Or we have these different things that cause covenant breaking. We have people that are actually doing physical violence to others. That is mentioned in the Old Testament as well. If you want to know what adultery is, and when Israel commits adultery against God, it's not just a sexual act, I would argue that means, and we're on a journey here, that you could possibly say, you could pick one of a hundred reasons and say, I have the right to divorce my spouse because of any of these reasons, by what I just said there, for any of these reasons.

Well, if you want to say no to that, and no, it's just strictly a sexual thing, well, then every one of you probably has a right to get divorced anyway who is married, because Jesus said, if you look at a woman lustfully, you've committed adultery. It's the same as sleeping with her. Now, this is why they did not stone the woman in John chapter 8.

They all walked away because they all knew that they had done it. So let me just say, if you disagree, that there are multiple reasons that you can get divorced because you would consider it unfaithfulness, and you want to stick to the letter of the law that is a sexual thing, and we're going to stick to exactly what Jesus is because Jesus is forming a matrix that we can live and turn into a Torah, then I will say you have, I would imagine, that you have the ability to divorce your spouse currently because it is pretty much impossible that no one ever in this room has ever had one time where they have not looked at somebody in a lustful way.

So what is God saying there? My wife came to me and she goes, aren't you just giving people liberty to just divorce? You know what I've learned? People are going to do what they want. I've been in this a long time. People are going to do what they want, and just like biblical scholars can make the Bible say anything they want, and scientists can make science say anything that they want, people are going to do what they want.

And my job is not to police people. My job is to convince people. My job is to teach what I believe the scriptures say in regard to this. And I say that what God wants for you is not to have to have that conversation, but to have a better conversation of how do we fix this so we don't get divorced? How do we do whatever it takes so that those discussions of a measuring line, and look, I understand we're coming from different places.

Some of you have been emotionally uncared for for so many years, you can't take another day. If he just doesn't close the back door one more time. If you nag me one more time. Whatever it is. I believe that Jesus is offering that. And so the question is, what is adultery? And I think the Old Testament would say that it's a lot of things. So why would Jesus say it's only in the case of sexual immorality?

We'll get to that in a moment. We want to know if we can get divorced in good conscience. Has my spouse broken the covenant law? Jesus, like I said, if you look. Let's look quickly at these two provocative scriptures. We're first going to go to Malachi. I'm going to read through this quickly and hit a couple spots. So if you go to your notes, you're going to see this.

It says, another thing you do. Now this is God in Malachi speaking to the priest, but he's speaking to the men of Israel. And both of these divorce passages are not addressed to women. Do you know it's just a divorce? I mean, it's addressed to men. Because men are the ones that had the power for divorce. So another thing you do is you flood the Lord's altar with tears.

You weep and you wail. This is speaking to men, by the way. Weep and you wail because he no longer, that's God, looks with favor on your offering. He doesn't accept him with pleasure from your hands. And I love that thought. That was just a fresh little thing God gave me this week. I'm like, Hey, when you give stuff to God, he's so happy about it. That's cool.

Makes me want to give stuff to God. You ask why? Why? Now I love this. It's because the Lord is a witness. Now God is a witness of your life. This is part of the challenge. This isn't so much the invitation, but it is the invitation. If you're, feel like you're living a godly wife at life and trying to do the right things, but God is a witness. So when we come together in marriage, we have God as a witness to that.

That's why we do a ceremony. That's why we do these things. God becomes a witness and he stands there and he watches it. That isn't meant to be draconian. It's actually a loving father who's there that is excited about your marriage. And it says that he is a witness between you and the wife of what? Your youth. Let me, let me just say, what, what's the issue there?

Here's the deal. They married this really smoking 20 something, right? Probably more like 14 back in the day, but we want to go there. I mean, it's just like different society, right? Now the dude and her are like my age, like 48. You know what I'm saying? And dude goes, there, you know what? I just, I gotta, I gotta upgrade. I need an upgrade right now and I need a younger wife.

And so they would just write these divorce certificates. The reason it says the wife of your youth is because she's no longer young. She no longer has what he is looking for. And so they would just be in this thing of like at a certain point, now can you imagine being a woman in this situation? Like you never know when you're just going to get the slip and it could have been for any reason.

Potatoes are cold. Certificate of divorce. I'm not kidding. For any reason, they could just cast them out and they had no one to take care of them. Let me give you a spoiler alert. By Jesus saying that the woman has to commit sexual adultery, fornication in the physical sense, woman now has a security that as long as I don't do that, he has to take it.

He has to look after me. He cannot cast me aside anymore. And by Jesus making that one statement that this has to happen, that all of a sudden you cannot divorce me because I have not done that. Now that might be a miserable way to live and a relationship to live in, but it says later on in this that you have caused your wife, you have caused your wife to do what?

How could commit adultery? How do you cause someone to commit adultery? I didn't cause them to go get remarried. Yes, you did because they can't survive. They can't live anymore. They have no income. They have no house. They have no one to look after them. They have to go find a spouse at that time. So you have caused them to do it. And you know what?

They have to do it in order to survive or become a homeless widow or whatever it is if they don't have family to take them in. And I believe that that is what is happening. And so in this passage, I really believe that what Jesus is saying is, women, I'm going to give you a stake back in the game and you no longer can be cast aside. Now the irony of this is in the time, if a woman does decide that she wants out of the marriage, so I'm just going to go like commit adultery, what happens?

They stone her. So basically there's no, there's actually no, no one can get divorced without a death happening. You know what I'm saying? Do you understand the, the, the, what the, the, how brilliant that is on, not the stoning people, but, but how brilliant that is on Jesus' part to say, you can't cast the woman aside. And woman, I suggest you don't do this.

Now we know that Jesus wouldn't stone them because, in chapter eight, when a woman is actually caught in the act of adultery and they don't bring the man, you always see that very just, right? That Jesus gives this thing. Any of you who have not committed, you know, have not committed adultery or, you know, cast the first cast, or been without sin, cast the first stone and all of them walk away.

And Jesus, it's just Jesus and her alone. And Jesus just says, go and sin no more. It's a God of second chances. And this is the thing that I keep trying to reconcile. And I really believe that this is provocative. This is an insight that in the last two weeks that God has given me that I had never seen before. And I can't find anybody else saying it.

Maybe some other people have said it. So I'm always a little concerned when I come up with stuff that I can't find anywhere else. But people have been doing it all the time, right? If I had a big title and a name and you knew who I was, they'd just say, yeah, preach it. That's yours. But I think, I don't think Jesus is giving us a law because he wants to show us how to get divorced.

I think he's saying, women, you need to have some structure and some stability. And so we see this also being played out because this is in the Malachi scripture, talks about that the men were doing this. Back to the Malachi scripture. It says, you've been unfaithful to her. Okay. That's interesting. Unfaithfulness. Unfaithfulness. When you talk about adultery, it is seen as being unfaithful.

This casting aside, this injustice is, once again, this supports the fact that there are more than just sexual reasons for unfaithfulness. It says, you've been unfaithful to her, though she is what? Your partner. That goes back to Genesis. And the wife of your marriage covenant. Now a covenant has another person in it. God. God. Has not, has not the what?

What kind of God? Let me see what it says there. Has not the, in verse 15 in Malachi. Has not what? The one God. God is speaking about unity. God's really into unity. This is also the scripture that says God hates divorce, although only in about half the text. A lot of texts don't. They've removed that. And you can look into why some say that and don't want.

But the reason I entitled it is like, everyone hates divorce. We'll set these guys. But I mean, for the most part, don't we all hate divorce? Like, don't we all want it not to be? And so, yeah, God hates it. And people throw that around. God hates divorce. We must hate you. Well, you know what? I hate divorce too. And so do you probably. It is something that none of us want.

And so what the church has got to be about, and what this church is going to be about, is preparing people for marriage. Like, it's not a fantasy fairy tale, where you spend more time planning for one day than, you know, before you get married, than you do a life. And with the couples I meet with, many are here today. I, when we do marriage, I don't really do marriage counseling anymore.

I can't get into all your dad issues and all those things. I don't do that. But what I, but what I do, or you're nagging mom or whatever. So stop at them. But what I do is I, I help couples prepare for the first year of marriage that you can survive because ours was difficult. Ours was yelling. Ours was, had this one time where Carrie wanted to leave and she's, I'm going to go out.

I need to go out. And I couldn't handle, I was, I had abandonment issues. You know what I'm saying? So I like hit her keys. She's, Oh, give me the keys. And then I'm like, no, you can't have the keys. It's for your own safety. You're too upset to go out. Yeah. Right. And then she wanted to go out and we live on the second floor. So I stood in front of the door and I'm like holding the door closed, you know, and she wants to get out.

There's no hitting or anything, but I'm holding the door closed and she wants out. I think she went out. I think she went out the window to the stairway. I figured the best way to fix being worried that my wife's going to leave me has become the best husband that I can be. And I, I shouldn't say this, but I regularly say to her, go find better. Go ahead.

I go. I'm sure. I couldn't find better either. I'm just saying, but I just, I'm not worried anymore. I'm not worried because I'm not trying to be arrogant, but I've made it my life to not. I'm not, and I'm not a look, I'm not a rug. You just walk over, but I've made it my life to love that woman. And, uh, her and the kids are up in Northern California. They'll probably hear this at some point.

It's provocative. And so Jesus, so it says in this scripture, um, you've been unfaithful to your wife, the man, and going into verse 15, the man who hates, hates and divorces his wife. Says the Lord, the God of Israel does violence to the one he should protect. Wow. Violence to them. See, that's an injustice issue. And if you go on later in this Malachi passage, you're going to see that when it talks about covenant breaking, it goes on to injustices.

So it is putting how they are divorcing into the same category of injustices. Uh, he, the one he should protect says the Lord almighty. So be on this. Now this is, we're going to get to this because in regard to having a marriage, it sustains. So be on your guard. And the other one says, take, there's other verses that say, take heed to the spirit. Like in your marriage, just constantly be taking heed of the spirit.

That's one of the way you survive men and women in a marriage is constantly taking heed of the spirit. What does the spirit want to say? What does he want to say? What is he, you know, what, not good? Not good. Ouch. Okay. Plan hurt. Plan hurt. It's all good. Put me back in kid. Oh, that was a stinger. Okay. All right. All right. So the question is going to, to this next question that people ask on a regular basis is, can Christians remarry after a divorce?

Well, the answer is this. It depends. Right? All right. We can go home. Does, and this is a better question. Does the Bible allow, especially the new Testament margin in our praxis? Like I said earlier, the new Testament is not the Torah. You know, it's interesting. The new Testament is so different than the old Testament. And there's a lot of places that we have to be able to wrap our heads around.

And we see that instead of giving these dogmatic laws, there's many times in scripture where it's open, where the Bible says it's open to interpretation. Let me just give you three of these. The first one is in first Corinthians seven 25, where Paul is saying, this is not a command. Now, if you go to the first chapter of Timothy, he's like, this is a command.

This is a command. This is a command. This is a command. And he's just hammering us with commands. But then we get to first Corinthians seven 25. And he says, Oh, so kind. So thanks so much elder on. Oh, beautiful. Can you see me still? He says, this is a, this is not a command. Now. Why? And my question is, why does Paul do that? Why does Paul sometimes say, this is a command and this is not a command.

And what does that mean? We're not going to get into that, but it's interesting that sometimes he says, you know, I allow this. I don't allow this. And then other times he says, this is from God. So that's interesting. Is there liberty in praxis? And do we become uncomfortable when the Bible isn't dogmatic like the Torah, when the new Testament isn't dogmatic like the Torah?

And many people believe, well, if you allow for that, it's a slippery slope. You've unhinged the rest of the truth of the Bible. And we can know, you know, that everything falls apart. I'm not sure that's true, especially if you know the bits that are black and white. Here's another instance. Paul in Romans 14, 23, Paul says, this is sin for one person, but it might not be sin for you.

If the person knows it's sin, then it's sin to them. But if not, then it's not sin to them. So why is one thing sin, but one thing's not? That's interesting to me. It's not just all sin. Now in Matthew 19, this is where Jesus in talking about the ability to get remarried, he gives a really hard teaching. He says, you know, only in the case of sexual marital infidelity, but then he goes on and he gives a caveat because afterwards his disciples walk up to him.

He's like, Hey, in this case where somebody has had marital infidelity, should they just stay single? Jesus gives this answer to the, gives an answer to the Pharisees that I think protects women. But when the disciples ask, he gives somewhat of an open-ended answer that shows the liberty and grace of second chances that you often see with Jesus. I'm rest.

Now let me, I'm journeying in the scripture, but I want you to look at it this week. And then you don't have to email me. There's a lot of people in the congregation. Talk amongst yourselves. Okay. Now I'm serious. Like, like, Jim, Joe, Dave, Kimberly, my mom, you know, the Hardys, Noel, just talk to some, like, let's have a discussion. I don't always have to be, because that makes me the precipice of all knowledge.

I'm not the fount of all wisdom. Okay. As most of you know, already, let me just read this Matthew 19. And we're coming in for a landing that I think is, is interesting. Jesus replied, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives. And this is after the Pharisees come to him and they go, can we divorce a woman for any and whatever reason? That's what, that is the exact question.

What is, what a foolish, who asked that question? But they ask it because of the Deuteronomy 24 passage. And so they ask him, and Jesus replied, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because why? Your hearts were hard. And Jesus making a pretty strong statement there. He's basically, if you're going to get a divorce, you're not going to try. You're not going to fix it.

It's because you have hard hearts, but it was allowed, but it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual morality and marries another woman commits adultery. They decide. And then now here's the interesting part. So that's the answer to them. Then the disciples said to him, so they come up to him probably afterwards.

If this is the situation, meaning adultery has been committed. If this has been the situation between a husband and a wife, isn't it better just not to get married? And that is the teaching many people give. And it's one that, I've actually kind of leaned on. I thought, yeah, you know, if you blow it, you're kind of, I think, you know, you've blown it. I think a lot of that has to, has to do with my own upbringing and my own story, getting to this place in the journey.

But what I felt God gave me liberty here as I've been studying this is to show the duality of Jesus to keep a high standard, but to give grace. You can tell me if I'm, actually you can tell someone else if you think I'm wrong. And Jesus says this to them. That's so interesting. Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given.

So he's saying this, I'm going to tell you something right now. And not everyone can accept it. Except the ones who have the ability to accept it. That's interesting. Why would he say that? He should, why doesn't he just say, you should all accept this because I'm Jesus and I said it. No, he said, there's some people, this is a hard teaching. And not everybody can.

And I'm not sure everyone has to, is what I think Jesus is saying here. I could be wrong. Verse 12, for there are eunuchs who were born this way. There are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others. And there are those who choose, which means not to have sex, choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. So what Jesus is saying is there are people who are not in marital relationships, who are not in sexual relationships through marriage.

And they were made this way or born that way. But then there's other people who, because of the divorce, because of adultery, because of whatever, have said, I'm going to stay single. Uh, and I'm choosing to stay single for the rest of my life. Now I want you to know that that's my decision. Uh, whether I can live it out or not, you know, maybe I, hopefully I won't ever have to figure out.

But for me, there is like Morris, he said, uh, from the Smiths, you know, what's your backup plan? If music doesn't work out, he says, I've never had, you know, A is the only letter in my alphabet. I don't have a plan B. And I find for me, that's just where, where I am. And I feel that in this teaching, that hard teaching, because I don't believe there's anybody, else for me, except my wife, unless she dies or perhaps marries somebody else.

And I think bigger than that, I'd be, I'd be out. But I believe that I can receive this teaching. I believe I can. And I believe that that's what I would, I would do. Uh, but I don't believe that everyone can or should. Okay. Now we're getting into some interesting territory here with what Jesus is saying. And he says, the one who can accept this should accept it.

I think Jesus is recommending that if you've had a breakdown of your marriage, that if you can accept it, you can stay single. You should stay single if you can accept it. But if you can't, and like Paul says, it's better to get married. Um, and you can't, I believe that Jesus opens the door here for a reboot, for grace, for another chance. And the thing that I, with my strong views on marriage that I couldn't get around is seeing how many second marriages were so godly and produce so much fruit.

And I know that you know the root by the fruit. And I couldn't get around saying, God, there's fruit of you blessing that second relationship. And so I believe that there's a duality here. And I believe that it's a place we can find some commonality to say, yeah, he is saying that, but at the same time, he's opening the door. Now this is a new thought to me.

And in the last two weeks, it's come to me, but I think it's right. I've been reading up on it. Jesus is recommending. This is just one of many places in scripture where there's liberty and grace are allowed. Seeing the new Testament apart from the law of the old Testament. I'm going to skip down to a statement and we're going to close here in just a moment.

I think we give up too easy. I think we give up on marriage way too easy. There's a new idea now of serial marriage, having a different partner for each stage of your life. It's being foisted, right? Okay. So some of us have tried that. Um, we could tell you it doesn't work. Dick Cotton, no longer with us, but one of my heroes, he said, the best way to stay married is to stay married.

72 years of proof on that one. Miss that guy. Miss that old bird. That's what he called himself, an old bird. I think we need to raise our personal standards on, you know, um, staying married. But I understand all of us come from a different place and I want to be very aware and empathetic of where you are. Two things. Um, how do we stay married then?

Um, how do we stay married then? First thing is understanding the links that God went to. Like an REM song. The links that I would go to. Jesus in Philippians talks to the links that he would go to, to fix the divorce that we foisted upon him. See, we divorced God, right? And you see in other scriptures as well that over and over again, he wasn't willing to accept that concept.

He wasn't willing to accept that. And so from Genesis three on, he is constantly trying to fix our marriage with him to the point. And Philippians two, where he empties heaven of his only son, the jewel of heaven, and it gives him to be crucified on a cross to be redeemed that he might fix our marriage. That's the links Jesus goes to, to fix the marriage.

And once again, to quote Michael Stipe, what links would you go to? What links are you willing to go to? And that's a question, you know what? Only you can answer that. And I can't answer it for you, nor do I want to. I'm not trying to be the congregation's father or authoritarian leader. I want to journey together. The final thing is this. Take heed of the spirit.

Fight for your marriage. And fight, by the way, fight for your marriage when it's good. Fight for your marriage when you don't have to fight for it. Fight for your marriage every single day for you that are married. You know, no one has a bad marriage until they find, feel or discover that it's a bad marriage. But before then, we're living in love and in all these different things.

I said, we have to fight for your marriage in the good times. Final thing I want to show is a video that the team is going to get up here for us. You want to just give me a thumbs up when you have it, Jeff? And this is about a man. I saw this video this week. It's about a man and his autistic son. And it's about, you ready? It's about the links that he would go to, to not accept the diagnosis about his son.

He would not accept. He would not say no. He would not quit. He would do anything to save his son. And I, and I, and I, and it struck me because I believe that we would go to a lot greater links to save our children than we would to save our marriage. But, but scripture see, it shows that it's our marriage partner is the one that is closest. And so when you guys are ready, if you can give good volume, let's play this and then I'll come up and finish.

Chris is in 11th grade and pretty much on his own in high school. He has a mentor that helps him. No biting Chris. All right, Chrissy, go to mom. Let him walk off if you don't mind. Yeah. Go to mom and I'll be off in a minute. Go to mom. Chris probably had one of the worst diagnosis ever. Self-injurious, swollen intestines, poisons in his systems, neurological damage, mental retardation, severe autism, almost the Crohn's disease.

Chris did not communicate. He didn't sit down. He didn't put on clothes. He wouldn't go outside. He ate the walls. He ate the table. He ate the rug. We couldn't eat in the home. We couldn't have lights on. We couldn't have the TV on. If I coughed, he would run downstairs and punch me. It was a 24-hour-a-day job. Chris never slept. He never ate. He wore diapers.

He never spoke. I was pretty much told to put him in an institution. It was obviously depressing, but so we went on this battle, you know, to educate and to provide therapies. His mom went and studied everything she could get her hands on. She visited hospitals and schools and Johns Hopkins and Kennedy Krieger and Rutgers. And she set up a school in our home.

Our home became a school. It was one of the first centers of ABA, which is Applied Behavioral Analysis. We set up intern programs with kids from Penn State and Franklin and Marshall. And we began teaching Chris. I thought to myself, if he's happy, if he stops hurting himself, you know, if I could hug him, that that would be the greatest gift in life.

And we continued against all odds. And he got better. I was telling him that you go to Elizabethtown. Where do you go? Elizabethtown. Utah. Elizabethtown. I told. Elizabethtown High School. And we're very proud of that, right? And we collect a lot of movies. We buy movies. Yeah, so I'm going to just talk about you. Because I love you. Have a kiss. The thing I've learned most over the years is to be a parent first.

It changed my life completely. It put me in another direction. I was able to love unconditionally. And I never thought of him as this poor, broken human being that we need to cure. You know, he's not sick. You trying to get me to go? We've went long today. These messages take a lot longer. We'll get back to our normal message time. That right there is the fight that Christians need to start waging in regard to saving our marriages.

That right there. We went to battle. That was, there's a, there's a, rarely a marriage that is in bad of a shape as Chris was. But they went to battle. And they fixed it. And I'm going to say, look, I don't have all the answers on if you can get married, when you should get married, how you can get married. I have some thoughts on scripture and different things.

But what I do know as a church, and what we, and Garrett and Deb and Kai and myself and other couples, we are deeply committed to saving marriages and families. So that children like most of you, or 50% of you, and like myself, don't have to deal with the brokenness. And that the people will look at churches and say, they have something to offer that we don't.

And we'll be a glory for the glory of Christ. Amen? Let's stand.